E. M. Cioran, Author, Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston, Translator University of Chicago Press $29 (150p) ISBN 978-0-226-10670-0
The dark, existential despair of Romanian philosopher Cioran's short meditations is paradoxically bracing and life-affirming. Written in 1934, when he was 22 and desperately insomniac, this feverishly lyrical, at times slyly humorous confessional...
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E. M. Cioran, Author, Richard Howard, Translator Arcade Publishing $22.95 (256p) ISBN 978-1-55970-128-0
Cioran's absolute, dark pessimism is, paradoxically, invigorating, even inspirational. Readers who have yet to encounter the Romanian-born thinker (author of The Trouble with Being Born , etc.), who lives in France, will find in these aphorisms and...
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E. M. Cioran, Author, Richard Howard, Translator Arcade Publishing $25 (128p) ISBN 978-1-55970-471-7
Ambrose Bierce produced a small book of mordant paradoxes he called The Devil's Dictionary (1911). This is Cioran's existentialist equivalent. Often aridly clever, it can quickly elicit indigestion, but on occasion its bleak terseness strikes a...
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E. M. Cioran, Author, Richard Howard, Translator Seaver Books $16.95 (118p) ISBN 978-0-8050-0391-8
Human beings, in Cioran's dark vision, are intolerant creatures driven by an appetite for glory; creativity implies self-expansion, hence aggression toward others. ""Every conviction consists chiefly of hate, and only secondly of love,'' broods the...
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