Cioran XVIII
Set XVIII of my translations-variations [70% translations, 30% additions, something like that] of Emil Cioran’s untranslated notebooks, covering the period May 18 1967 — May 17 1968
The links to the previous ones are here:
Cioran I / Cioran II, Chazal / Cioran III, Chazal II / Cioran IV / Cioran V / Cioran VI / Cioran VII, Shestov I / Cioran VIII, Shestov II / Cioran IX, Shestov III / Cioran X / Cioran XI / Cioran XII / Cioran XIII / Cioran XIV / Cioran XV / Cioran XVI / Cioran XVII [627/1,111 pages]
May 18 1967
I have been able to hold out so far only by countering every sadness with an even greater sadness. It has not always been easy to apply this method, but it is the only method.
If this world is empty, the next is more so.
June 2 1967
Talked with E on the phone about the future of Israel. “There’s nothing to be done, of course, but all the same, everything must be done.”
July 7 1967
The miracle of the world is not hope but the possibility of hoping.
July 29 1967
It has always amazed me that certain people rely on me, certain people feel confident that I will not, at least this time, disappoint them. Soon enough, of course, I disappoint them, for I am the ur-disappointer, the ur-disappointment.
I can’t distinguish between ‘life’ and ‘suicide’.
July 30 1967
England: a country where homosexuality is the only problem.
Having deduced that only in this way might he finally achieve a sense of ‘balance,’ he shot himself in the head.
September 17 1967
Of a certain historian: he is doing journalism in another century.
Everything is mine. Or rather: everything, except my life, is mine.
October 3 1967
Fresh from Cuba, X tells me that “Che Guevara is the greatest living art critic.”
October 4 1967
The autumn of everything, the everything autumn, total autumn, the autumn of all things, autumn über alles —
Three years ago, Paulhan asked me to preface his Complete Works. I refused, even though I owe him a great deal. This was wrong of me; moreover, I failed to explain to him that, back then, even if God Himself had asked me to write Him a preface, I would have refused.
October 11 1967
I have spent every moment of my life trying unsuccessfully to have an epileptic fit.
October 30 1967
Unhappiness is the postponement of revenge.
“The essence of man is speech and the essence of speech is hymn.” (Upanishads)
November 11 1967
Being is easy; non-being is not. This is a great misfortune.
November 13 1967
“None can touch the ground of the soul but God” (Eckhart).
December 5 1967
According to Ms Susan Sontag, my essay on the Jews is the most superficial and the most hastily written part of The Temptation to Exist. I haven’t read my book, but I know from having written it that the essay on the Jews is the least superficial and the least hastily written part of it.
These ‘critics’ would like us to believe that they produce their ideas effortlessly, as a byproduct of some other activities they are engaged in (or ‘by mistake’, as it were). But the truth is they produce no ideas at all, they produce literally nothing.
“Cretinisation by means of philosophy.”
Only when Schopenhauer fails most completely to be what he thinks he is — a “philosopher” — does he succeed in being interesting.
As if he were writing in some personal code where the word God signals that he is about to start lying — 1
As a method of composition, “forgetting everything you believe in” is supreme.
December 7 1967
A professor on the radio accuses the sophists of selling out, accepting money from their students for lectures, talks, etc. Though his life consists of nothing but luxuriating in a similar hypocrisy, the professor cannot be similarly accused — he has nothing to sell. He is merely — paid.
Attempting to re-read Valéry for money. Purified dust.
French vivacity, German tenacity. Synthesised to perfection by the Jews.
The insolence of cemeteries.
December 16 1967
Only emptiness is not sick. But sickness is the condition of our access to it.
December 17 1967
The sky is only beautiful in winter.
January 1 1968
Tried again to re-read Valéry. “It is impossible to love for a second time anything you have ceased to love” (La Rochefoucauld).
January 4 1968
Met Celan, fresh out of the madhouse. Everything that isn’t prayer is impersonal.
January 7 1968
An “anecdote” in Barrés: a sick child, seven or eight years old, had become completely mute. His father watched over him day and night. Eventually, the child said: Father, I am tired of dying. Then returned to mutism.
Before killing himself, Tacitus’ Otho declares: Here is your best proof that my decision is irrevocable: I accuse no one. To accuse gods or men is a task for those who still hold onto life.
It doesn’t work; circumlocution betrays a ‘hold’ on life. You cannot die and indulge in rhetoric at the same time, but only a sick child can really understand this.
February 13 1968
