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Breviario pasional: 70 fragmentos inéditos
BREVIARIO PASIONAL
148 pages, Paperback
Published April 4, 2022
21 people want to read
About the author
Emil M. Cioran
179 books4,340 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 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 14, 2025
Atropellada.
Read
April 16, 2025“Con lo que nos desencadenamos nos engrillamos”
September 2, 2025
Yo también he llegado a odiar al mundo después de una situationship
August 26, 2023
¡Este es el último librito que mi amorchito me regaló y no me leí al segundo! Así que era hora de leerlo :) Muchas gracias amorchito por este súper regalito, te amo infinico <3
No sé cómo hacer una reseña de un libro de Cioran. Para mí es como una antiiluminación, como una manifestación de todo lo contrario al optimismo, el respeto y la perfección (no entendido como algo pulido sin mella sino más bien como algo en su desarrollo constante). Es un autor extraño, un rumano perdido en Francia. La mejor explicación que le he encontrado es la misma que él da de sí mismo: él escribe como una forma terapéutica y de supervivencia. Además, siempre dijo en sus Cuadernos que se arrepentía de gran parte de las cosas que escribía, o le parecían tonterías. Y a pesar de todo lo loco que muchas veces parece o quizás digno de odio, era alguien que sabía infinidad de cosas, leía todo el día y cada vez más me sorprende al leerlo. Sabía de música, de filosofía y religión tanto oriental como occidental, filología... Siempre he experimentado que los rumanos han sido una caja de saberes tanto académicos como populares y literarios, pero al dedicarse al estudio es como que aumentan todo eso al infinito. Es una cosa rara. En fin, me he desviado. Es raro.
Gracias por el libro mi amorchito prechioso.
Te amo infinito y para siempre <3
No sé cómo hacer una reseña de un libro de Cioran. Para mí es como una antiiluminación, como una manifestación de todo lo contrario al optimismo, el respeto y la perfección (no entendido como algo pulido sin mella sino más bien como algo en su desarrollo constante). Es un autor extraño, un rumano perdido en Francia. La mejor explicación que le he encontrado es la misma que él da de sí mismo: él escribe como una forma terapéutica y de supervivencia. Además, siempre dijo en sus Cuadernos que se arrepentía de gran parte de las cosas que escribía, o le parecían tonterías. Y a pesar de todo lo loco que muchas veces parece o quizás digno de odio, era alguien que sabía infinidad de cosas, leía todo el día y cada vez más me sorprende al leerlo. Sabía de música, de filosofía y religión tanto oriental como occidental, filología... Siempre he experimentado que los rumanos han sido una caja de saberes tanto académicos como populares y literarios, pero al dedicarse al estudio es como que aumentan todo eso al infinito. Es una cosa rara. En fin, me he desviado. Es raro.
Gracias por el libro mi amorchito prechioso.
Te amo infinito y para siempre <3
November 26, 2024
Breviario pasional
Emil Cioran
Fragmentos inéditos en español de un libro que fue publicado por Cioran mas éstos recopilados en el libro fueron descartados por el autor por considerarlos basura.
Con una muy buena calidad y cuidado por parte de la editorial, con traducción directa del rumano se nos presenta un Cioran jóven ultra lírico en el que nos abruma con su prosa.
Desde mí subjetividad no le veo desperdicio a su publicación y lectura. Una bella obra desesperada que no se duerme tanto en los tópicos pérfidos, ácidos y pesimistas en extremo del pensador rumano. Si gustan de la poesía pueden encontrar una delicia entre sus páginas, siendo un libro pequeño mas no de fácil digestión.
Cioran nunca decepciona demostrando que incluso su categorización de "basura" logra despertar un interés, sentimiento de desasosiego y contundencia en su prosa.
Si bien no es un típico libro suyo de desesperanza perenne se nota la impronta de sapiencia aunque salpicada con cierto toque romántico entre sus máximas, fragmentos y dichos.
Altamente recomendable para fanáticos del apátrida, del que cada letra es una pulsión de ácido y vehemencia; si bien como he dicho no polula el veneno mortal de otras obras.
Emil Cioran
Fragmentos inéditos en español de un libro que fue publicado por Cioran mas éstos recopilados en el libro fueron descartados por el autor por considerarlos basura.
Con una muy buena calidad y cuidado por parte de la editorial, con traducción directa del rumano se nos presenta un Cioran jóven ultra lírico en el que nos abruma con su prosa.
Desde mí subjetividad no le veo desperdicio a su publicación y lectura. Una bella obra desesperada que no se duerme tanto en los tópicos pérfidos, ácidos y pesimistas en extremo del pensador rumano. Si gustan de la poesía pueden encontrar una delicia entre sus páginas, siendo un libro pequeño mas no de fácil digestión.
Cioran nunca decepciona demostrando que incluso su categorización de "basura" logra despertar un interés, sentimiento de desasosiego y contundencia en su prosa.
Si bien no es un típico libro suyo de desesperanza perenne se nota la impronta de sapiencia aunque salpicada con cierto toque romántico entre sus máximas, fragmentos y dichos.
Altamente recomendable para fanáticos del apátrida, del que cada letra es una pulsión de ácido y vehemencia; si bien como he dicho no polula el veneno mortal de otras obras.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews