The Trouble With Being Born (Penguin Modern Classics)

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The more I think of what could not have failed to happen when my own soul’s turn came, the more I realize that if there was one soul which more than the rest must have resisted incarnation, it was mine." Como todos los libros de Emil son exorcismos nocturnos, uno va desarrollando cierto olfato/goce para descifrar sus humores: cuando es irónico, cuando exagera, cuando escribe sabiendo que ni él mismo se toma demasiado en serio, etc. Me han llamado mucho la atención estos dos fragmentos, que en la lectura se me presentaron como paradójicos y conmovedores: Ce-ai păţit, dar spune, ce-ai păţit? - Nimic, nimic, am făcut doar o săritură în afară soartei mele şi nu mai ştiu acum încotro să mă îndrept, spre ce să alerg..."

In The Trouble With Being Born, E. M. Cioran grapples with the major questions of human existence: birth, death, God, the passing of time, how to relate to others and how to make ourselves get out of bed in the morning. Este imposibil să simţi că a fost un timp când nu existai. De aici ataşamentul pentru personajul care erai înainte de a te fi născut." Chopin's music is alternately slow and soothing, and fast and maddening. Much the same for Cioran, whose epigrams can range from one-liners that make me question entire ways of thinking, to pointless opinions on things he has read. Somewhere, I get lost in his writing and in Chopin’s music. I encounter familiar ideas of antinatalism, efilism, idealism, pessimism, and all the other isms on which I occasionally construct self-identity. But I also encounter the unfamiliar, the dream, and the partly-familiar three types of thought mentioned above. As art sinks into paralysis, artists multiply. This anomaly ceases to be one if we realize that art, on its way to exhaustion, has become both impossible and easy.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.

As well as insomnia, themes explored in his first work include all the joyous staples of the great pessimists: death, suffering, nothingness, nihilism, anguish, and the absurd, themes that recurred in Cioran’s later works, such as The Trouble With Being Born (1973), which was my first introduction to the philosopher’s thoughts and musings. Cioran'ı tanımış olmanın okuma sürecimde beni çok etkilediğini düşünüyorum. Bana farklı bakış açıları ve tersten düşünebilmeyi bir kere daha gösterdi. Olumsuzdan olumlu çıkarabilme gücü veya olumsuzu olduğu gibi kabul etmenin erdemi üzerine kurduğu binlerce cümleyi sanırım uzun yıllar düşüneceğim. I was walking late one night along a tree-lined path; a chestnut fell at my feet. The noise it made as it burst, the resonance it provoked in me, and an upheaval out of all proportion to this insignificant event thrust me into miracle, into the rapture of the definitive, as if there were no more questions—only answers. I was drunk on a thousand unexpected discoveries, none of which I could make use of. …

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Jonathan Romney of Screen Daily called the film "a powerful and revelatory achievement [...] complex, artfully crafted, sometimes wilfully perplexing". [5] Jessica Kiang of Variety called it a "desperately creepy, queasy, thought-provoking film", and concluded: "Wollner's lacerating intelligence and riveting craft make this extraordinarily effed-up riff on the 'Pinocchio' legend [...] much more than empty provocation". [1] Chris Barsanti of Slant Magazine gave the film a rating of two out of four stars, and wrote that the film "suffers from the same issue as its moody androids: enervation borne out of repetition." [3]

To walk along a stream, to pass, to flow with the water, without effort, without haste, while death continues in us its ruminations, its uninterrupted soliloquy…" What spoils the French Revolution for me is that it all happens on stage, that its promoters are born actors, that the guillotine is merely a decor. The history of France, as a whole, seems a bespoke history, an acted history: everything in it is perfect from the theatrical point of view. It is a performance, a series of gestures and events which are watched rather than suffered, a spectacle that takes ten centuries to put on. Whence the impression of frivolity which even the Terror affords, seen from a distance." In periods of sterility, one should hibernate, sleep day and night to preserve one’s strength, instead of wasting it in mortification and rage." Most people, unlike the poor oh-so-underprivileged and tortured Mr. Cioran, do not get to just "sleep day and night" to preserve their strength - the expenditure of their strength is necessary for their survival, for that is what the selling of labor-power is, and most people can only survive through that... It is one of the clearest examples of Cioran's class, which shines through in every tepid, impotent aphorism of this dreadful book, and of how utterly clueless he is of the world outside himself, this little abstract gloomy world that exists solely inside his head and of the readers stupid enough to agree with him, where he can narcissistically bitch and moan in writing all day without knowing any suffering besides that of the idiotic middle class melancholic." The Trouble with Being Born (French: De l'inconvénient d'être né) is a 1973 philosophy book by Romanian author Emil Cioran. The book is presented as a series of aphorisms, meditating primarily on the painful nature of being alive, and how this is connected to other subjects, such as God, metaphysical exile, and decay. [1] In 2020, The Trouble with Being Born became a Penguin Modern Classic. [2]The film explores the topos of the artificial human, presented here in an unusual way with a focus on the emotional level. Elli is an android, a machine, in the shape of a girl, as well as a sex robot. Elli lives with Georg, whom she calls "Papa". [6] They drift through a summer, swimming in the pool during the day and in the evening he takes her to bed with him. Georg created Elli from a personal memory, to make himself happy. A memory that means nothing to her and everything to him. For Elli, it is merely the programming she follows. When she later meets her real-life role model, an odyssey develops that increasingly brings the audience to Elli's perspective. The dystopian film portrays "the story of a machine and the ghosts we all carry within us". [7] Cast [ edit ] Quinn, Karl (18 August 2020). "Film critics slam festival for dumping controversial Austrian robosex movie". The Age . Retrieved 18 August 2020. For Cioran, philistine contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, what is frivolous is true greatness, and world-historic events that changed the whole world are frivolous (of course, other people are too stupid to notice that, unlike our "genius" Mr. Cioran!). No aphorism in the book expresses this contrarian faux-superiority better than this: Orice mizantrop, oricât de sincer ar fi, ne aminteşte uneori de acel bătrân poet ţintuit la pat şi uitat de toată lumea, care, pornit împotriva contemporanilor săi, decretase că nu mai vrea să primească pe nimeni. De milă, nevasta lui se ducea să sune din când în când la uşa." All these nations were great, because they had great prejudices. They no longer have. Are they nations still? Scattered crowds, at best.

Să simţi singurătatea inconceptibilului neant: asta înseamnă să trăieşti în filosofia plină de lirism a lui Cioran. *Amu... poate cineva, rogu-va, să conceapă neantul?! Eu îl percep ca un gol universal, ceea ce constituie o antinomie, în contextul în care neantul e... nimic pur.*

Is Cioran sportsmanlike or is he putting a sham sometimes? In the end, does that matter? Emil Cioran is a man of contradictions, yet, highly consistent in his contradictions. He writes every one of them in earnest. Truthfully, Cioran is dour and despairing in much of his writing, which is what you might expect from someone extolling antinatalism, the view that procreation is wrong, based on the serious harm that follows coming into existence (the gist of which is of course expressed by the book title The Trouble With Being Born). But moroseness and poignancy are just one aspect of Cioran’s aphorisms. There is also solace, compassion, wisdom, realism, and soul-baring honesty in his words, as well as a concern for the more mystical and spiritual aspects of life. Like Schopenhauer, Cioran defends the value of living an ascetic sort of life. Cioran is the worst example of the braindead levels of stupid, philistine "middle class melancholic" - not being a worker, a wage earner, being an aesthete with some insomnia, all that he cares about is about gloominess - truth, insight, everything worthwhile we seek when reading someone else's opinion on something is sacrificed on the altar of "what is the gloomiest position I can possibly hold in this topic?" Cioran is thus an aestheticist, meaning that how something sounds, how aesthetically pleasing it is for him, is what determines what position he will hold at any given point - not its truth value. Cioran also strongly affirmed his role as a comedian. He was once invited to speak in Zurich and when being introduced before his speech, he was compared to the likes of Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer. In response to this high praise, Cioran said, “But, I’m just a joker.” Of course, Cioran was much more than a joker, but he was known to be averse to admiration and success, keenly aware of their dangers as he was; although this aversion may relate to his self-critical nature as well. Eu mereu am fost adeptul convingerii că opera lui Cioran se particularizează prin subiectivismul extrem. N-am găsit la el -deşi m-am identificat, nu de puţine ori, cu dansul- nici "atâtica" obiectivism. Viziunea lui se substituie relaţiei pe care A AVUT-O cu realitatea, iar aceasta are să determine relaţiile ulterioare care, de asemenea, cuprinse de subiectivism, nu au cum să se întoarcă radical, ci -în cel mai rău caz- să se afunde în propriul abis. Particularitatea asta este ceea ce-l individualizează. N-am citit -e drept!- prea multă filosofie existenţialistă, în schimb, în maniera în care am făcut-o, n-am mai întâlnit în cazul niciunui filosof viziunea subiectivismului pur. Totul pleacă -se înţelege- de la subiectivism. Platon a văzut Republica în contextul epocii sale, Voltaire în cadrul societăţii de factură absolutistă a Franţei s-a gandit: "Io-te! Iluminism!", dar ideile lor se bazau pe un impuls general din partea intelectualităţii societăţii din care făceau parte (şi în cadrul căreia, fără doar şi poate, erau figurile proeminente).