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Adiós a la filosofía y otros textos
Visionario a fuerza de desengaño al que la pasión de ver despejadamente ha quemado los ojos, «alma alerta», E. M. CIORAN es una de las figuras intelectuales más notables del siglo xx. ADIÓS A LA FILOSOFÍA Y OTROS TEXTOS antología que da cuenta de manera plenamente significativa de todas las obsesiones del autor, como el destino de los pueblos, la decadencia, el fanatismo, la compleja maldición de la literatura, el suicidio o la imposibilidad necesaria de la filosofía
comprende, como afirma Fernando Savater prologuista y traductor del volumen, «todo Cioran, completo y verdadero, no una simple muestra», pues «la lucidez no tiene la obligación imperiosa de la variedad no salta de lo uno a lo otro, sino que ahonda en lo que los demás pretenden olvidar».
comprende, como afirma Fernando Savater prologuista y traductor del volumen, «todo Cioran, completo y verdadero, no una simple muestra», pues «la lucidez no tiene la obligación imperiosa de la variedad no salta de lo uno a lo otro, sino que ahonda en lo que los demás pretenden olvidar».
- GenresPhilosophy
190 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
17 people are currently reading
116 people want to read
About the author
Emil M. Cioran
180 books4,322 followersBorn in 1911 in Rășinari, a small village in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania, raised under the rule of a father who was a Romanian Orthodox priest and a mother who was prone to depression, Emil Cioran wrote his first five books in Romanian. Some of these are collections of brief essays (one or two pages, on average); others are collections of aphorisms. Suffering from insomnia since his adolescent years in Sibiu, the young Cioran studied philosophy in the “little Paris” of Bucarest.
A prolific publicist, he became a well-known figure, along with Mircea Eliade, Constantin Noïca, and his future close friend Eugene Ionesco (with whom he shared the Royal Foundation’s Young Writers Prize in 1934 for his first book, On the Heights of Despair).
Influenced by the German romantics, by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and the Lebensphilosophie of Schelling and Bergson, by certain Russian writers, including Chestov, Rozanov, and Dostoyevsky, and by the Romanian poet Eminescu, Cioran wrote lyrical and expansive meditations that were often metaphysical in nature and whose recurrent themes were death, despair, solitude, history, music, saintliness and the mystics (cf. Tears and Saints, 1937) – all of which are themes that one finds again in his French writings. In his highly controversial book, The Transfiguration of Romania (1937), Cioran, who was at that time close to the Romanian fascists, violently criticized his country and his compatriots on the basis of a contrast between such “little nations” as Romania, which were contemptible from the perspective of universal history and great nations, such as France or Germany, which took their destiny into their own hands.
After spending two years in Germany, Cioran arrived in Paris in 1936. He continued to write in Romanian until the early 1940s (he wrote his last article in Romanian in 1943, which is also the year in which he began writing in French). The break with Romanian became definitive in 1946, when, in the course of translating Mallarmé, he suddenly decided to give up his native tongue since no one spoke it in Paris. He then began writing in French a book that, thanks to numerous intensive revisions, would eventually become the impressive 'A Short History of Decay' (1949) -- the first of a series of ten books in which Cioran would continue to explore his perennial obsessions, with a growing detachment that allies him equally with the Greek sophists, the French moralists, and the oriental sages. He wrote existential vituperations and other destructive reflections in a classical French style that he felt was diametrically opposed to the looseness of his native Romanian; he described it as being like a “straight-jacket” that required him to control his temperamental excesses and his lyrical flights. The books in which he expressed his radical disillusionment appeared, with decreasing frequency, over a period of more than three decades, during which time he shared his solitude with his companion Simone Boué in a miniscule garret in the center of Paris, where he lived as a spectator more and more turned in on himself and maintaining an ever greater distance from a world that he rejected as much on the historical level (History and Utopia, 1960) as on the ontological (The Fall into Time, 1964), raising his misanthropy to heights of subtlety (The Trouble with being Born, 1973), while also allowing to appear from time to time a humanism composed of irony, bitterness, and preciosity (Exercices d’admiration, 1986, and the posthumously published Notebooks).
Denied the right to return to Romania during the years of the communist regime, and attracting international attention only late in his career, Cioran died in Paris in 1995.
Nicolas Cavaillès
Translated by Thomas Cousineau
A prolific publicist, he became a well-known figure, along with Mircea Eliade, Constantin Noïca, and his future close friend Eugene Ionesco (with whom he shared the Royal Foundation’s Young Writers Prize in 1934 for his first book, On the Heights of Despair).
Influenced by the German romantics, by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and the Lebensphilosophie of Schelling and Bergson, by certain Russian writers, including Chestov, Rozanov, and Dostoyevsky, and by the Romanian poet Eminescu, Cioran wrote lyrical and expansive meditations that were often metaphysical in nature and whose recurrent themes were death, despair, solitude, history, music, saintliness and the mystics (cf. Tears and Saints, 1937) – all of which are themes that one finds again in his French writings. In his highly controversial book, The Transfiguration of Romania (1937), Cioran, who was at that time close to the Romanian fascists, violently criticized his country and his compatriots on the basis of a contrast between such “little nations” as Romania, which were contemptible from the perspective of universal history and great nations, such as France or Germany, which took their destiny into their own hands.
After spending two years in Germany, Cioran arrived in Paris in 1936. He continued to write in Romanian until the early 1940s (he wrote his last article in Romanian in 1943, which is also the year in which he began writing in French). The break with Romanian became definitive in 1946, when, in the course of translating Mallarmé, he suddenly decided to give up his native tongue since no one spoke it in Paris. He then began writing in French a book that, thanks to numerous intensive revisions, would eventually become the impressive 'A Short History of Decay' (1949) -- the first of a series of ten books in which Cioran would continue to explore his perennial obsessions, with a growing detachment that allies him equally with the Greek sophists, the French moralists, and the oriental sages. He wrote existential vituperations and other destructive reflections in a classical French style that he felt was diametrically opposed to the looseness of his native Romanian; he described it as being like a “straight-jacket” that required him to control his temperamental excesses and his lyrical flights. The books in which he expressed his radical disillusionment appeared, with decreasing frequency, over a period of more than three decades, during which time he shared his solitude with his companion Simone Boué in a miniscule garret in the center of Paris, where he lived as a spectator more and more turned in on himself and maintaining an ever greater distance from a world that he rejected as much on the historical level (History and Utopia, 1960) as on the ontological (The Fall into Time, 1964), raising his misanthropy to heights of subtlety (The Trouble with being Born, 1973), while also allowing to appear from time to time a humanism composed of irony, bitterness, and preciosity (Exercices d’admiration, 1986, and the posthumously published Notebooks).
Denied the right to return to Romania during the years of the communist regime, and attracting international attention only late in his career, Cioran died in Paris in 1995.
Nicolas Cavaillès
Translated by Thomas Cousineau
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 13, 2017
Somedoby should translate this very collection of Cioran's aphorisms, selected by Fernando Savater, into English.
I'm not especially fond of Savater as a philosopher nor writer, but he was one of the first scholars in knowing and caring about Cioran in Spain and he did a terrific job here.
I'm not especially fond of Savater as a philosopher nor writer, but he was one of the first scholars in knowing and caring about Cioran in Spain and he did a terrific job here.
March 23, 2021
No cabe duda que la esencia del pensamiento de Cioran se encuentra en esta selección, pero carece de la espontaneidad de cualquiera de sus libros. Una serie de paradojas ordenadas según el temperamento o el azar de Savater.
June 12, 2024
Joder, que talentazo para odiarlo todo.
July 27, 2024
Al igual que Nietzsche y sus "espolones", Cioran nos enseña a pensar contra él y con él a partir de su obra. Por fin cierro un capítulo con este muchacho.
January 22, 2025
Vivan los rumanos
December 21, 2020
Éste no es un libro de Cioran al uso, per se.
Traducido y redactado por Fernando Savater, gran amigo, admirador y traductor de Cioran al español; nos decanto un libro quimérico, hilvanado por él sobre algunas de las cuestiones que más obsesionan a Cioran y trata de darle más abreviación usando como material para la estructura del libro fragmentos de Breviario de podredumbre; El aciago demiurgo; La tentación de existir.
Desfilando ante un Cioran más tibio y templado, por momentos volcánico, que le escribe a la nada, que le escupe a todo como bien nos tiene acostumbrados.
En sí es buen material para adentrarse en su mundo no tan conceptual y lírico abordando obras capitales del mismo de forma más amena.
Eso sí, advertidos quedan que el Cioran de aquí en sus trabajos per se será mordaz, ácido e incará sus colmillos hasta el tuétano bajo sus obsesiones: la vida, la muerte, el ser, la nada, el pensamiento, la historia, el arte.
Traducido y redactado por Fernando Savater, gran amigo, admirador y traductor de Cioran al español; nos decanto un libro quimérico, hilvanado por él sobre algunas de las cuestiones que más obsesionan a Cioran y trata de darle más abreviación usando como material para la estructura del libro fragmentos de Breviario de podredumbre; El aciago demiurgo; La tentación de existir.
Desfilando ante un Cioran más tibio y templado, por momentos volcánico, que le escribe a la nada, que le escupe a todo como bien nos tiene acostumbrados.
En sí es buen material para adentrarse en su mundo no tan conceptual y lírico abordando obras capitales del mismo de forma más amena.
Eso sí, advertidos quedan que el Cioran de aquí en sus trabajos per se será mordaz, ácido e incará sus colmillos hasta el tuétano bajo sus obsesiones: la vida, la muerte, el ser, la nada, el pensamiento, la historia, el arte.
December 29, 2020
buena interpretación de la obra de gógol, bastante pesimista en general pero mola la seguridad con la que afirma cosas
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews