Cioran's "Anathemas and Admirations"
Still restless in my literary wanderings, though still interested in Cioran. Ergo: mixing in Anathemas and Admirations (late Cioran) with Decay.
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From the forward to A/A (by Eugene Thacker of "dusty planet" fame) comes an interesting biographical fragment (fitting?) re Cioran's final days:
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Also from A/A, in an essay (Admiration) on Joseph de Maistre (1753 - 1821), a snippet re the Fall:
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From the forward to A/A (by Eugene Thacker of "dusty planet" fame) comes an interesting biographical fragment (fitting?) re Cioran's final days:
In the 1990s, an emaciated, elderly man with sharp eyes and wavy hair is found sitting on the side of the street somewhere in Paris's Latin Quarter. He is lost. He can recall neither the way back home nor even his address. He is taken home. Eventually he stops eating. After an accidental fall, he is brought to a hospital. He drifts in and out of lucidity, rarely recognizing those closest to him. He stops speaking entirely. After slipping into a coma, Emil Cioran dies, on June 20, 1995.
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Also from A/A, in an essay (Admiration) on Joseph de Maistre (1753 - 1821), a snippet re the Fall:
. . . Like all great ideas, that of the Fall accounts for everything and for nothing and it is quite as difficult to utilize as it is to do without. But finally, whether the Fall can be imputed to a fault or a fatality, to an action of moral order or to a metaphysical principle, the fact remains that it explains, at least in part, our erring ways, our inconclusiveness, our fruitless quests, the terrible singularity of beings, the role of disturber, of broken-down and inventive animal, that was assigned to each of us. And if it involves a number of points subject to caution, there is one, however, whose importance is incontestable: the one that traces our failure to our separation from the All. It could not escape de Maistre: "The more one examines the universe, the more one is inclined to believe that Evil proceeds from a certain division that cannot be explained, and that the return to Good depends on a contrary force that ceaselessly impels us toward a unity just as inconceivable."
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