The Trouble With Being Born (Penguin Modern Classics)

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In conclusion, I will just repeat myself - Cioran does it nonstop in this book so I don't think any reader of his will mind : In a series of interlinking aphorisms which are at once pessimistic, poetic and extremely funny, Cioran finds a kind of joy in his own despair, revelling in the absurdity and futility of our existence, and our inability to live in the world. To compensate for the consequences of entrapment inside the bubble human beings have invented a religion of language (and a language of religion) that tells the story (actually many stories) of what exists outside the bubble. This of course is paradoxical since that which is beyond the bubble is reality, which as soon as it is brought inside the bubble becomes literature. Prompted by this contradiction, some people declare their language about things outside the bubble to be sacred, thus making life inside the bubble toxic. These people are idolatrous and call those who are not idolaters: atheists, agnostics, non-conformists, dreamers, and sometimes artists, by which they mean useless. Archiv - "The Trouble with Being Born" ". Vienna Film Commission (in German). Vienna. 2018 . Retrieved 9 July 2021.

I feel entitled to interpret and respond to Cioran’s aphoristic mode with some of the same chiastic development (even if not nearly as witty): On the Heights of Despair displays the young Cioran’s philosophically pessimistic outlook and brooding thoughts, all captured in his elegant, lyrical style of writing. In this work, we moreover find reflections on insomnia, a condition that Cioran long suffered from. He writes: The Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran (1911 – 1995) was a precocious thinker, reading the likes of Diderot, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche at the age of 14 (the latter having a major influence on his work). His precociousness was later exemplified by first major philosophical work, On the Heights of Despair, published in 1934, when Cioran was just 22 years old. This work also earned him the Prize of the Royal Academy for young writers, one of two literary awards he accepted (Cioran also accepted the prestigious Rivoral Prize, in 1950; but every other award he was given, he rejected). I do not read philosophy generally, because it confuses me almost immediately given that I have no capacity whatsoever for abstractions. But I can do E. M. Cioran. Cioran was born in Romania in 1911, spent most of his working life in France, mulling over suicide and death while living to a ripe old age. Much of Cioran’s work is in the form of aphorisms or maxims, and are therefore accessible (I re-read this book recently; I return to his work every few years or so). He is the most relentlessly pessimistic human being that has ever lived, which you might have guessed from the title, and this makes for some really, really fun reading. Sometimes he makes a lot of sense. Below are a few of my favorites. Several mention poetry, which is not one of his chief preoccupations, and yet he says interesting things about it: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. Burukluk gerçekten Cioran'ın kafasının içerisindeki keskinliği tam olarak anlattığı üst düzey bir kitaptı. The Trouble With Being Born is a collection of aphorisms mostly about (but not limited to) the horrors unleashed on us by birth. Cioran argues that perhaps existence is exile and oblivion itself is salvation. You know, I used to love this book, and having started to re-read one day due to an insomnia outburst that left me incapable of sleeping, long after I had renounced philosophical pessimism, I am honestly struggling to express how garbage it is, how embarrassed I feel for ever having liked it, and the amount of second-hand embarrassment I feel for the amount of people around me, in such pessimist circles, that considered Cioran to be in possession of some sort of "deep truth" that most people would not admit to.

Without realizing how absurdly self-important it sounds ("Yes, my suffering is so unique that, of all the people that ever existed, undeniably it is I who loathe life the most, who resisted incarnation the most!"), it is frankly embarrassing. Literature is an evolved form of language. It is constituted by an ideal philosophy, and ideal religion, and an ideal politics. Or at least as ideal as can be reached by Homo sapiens. Initially written in French, the 1976 English translation by Richard Howard received the PEN Translation Prize. [3] Usage of aphorism [ edit ] 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.

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The Trouble with Being Born is a 2020 science fiction drama film directed and co-written by Sandra Wollner. An international co-production of Austria and Germany, the film depicts an android (Lena Watson) living with a man ( Dominik Warta) as a replicant in place of his young daughter who had disappeared years prior. [3] This human tendency of being unable to relate with the realities of life and then enwrapping it with shallow meanings in the guise of happiness and countenance is also a very depressing thought, which is hardly shrugged off. 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 Trouble with Being Born had its world premiere at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival on 25 February 2020, as part of the festival's Encounters section. It was reported that several audience members walked out during the premiere. [9] The film received the Special Jury Award in the Encounters section. [4] These collections of aphorisms, quite blatantly despairing through the existence of man and his quest of importance and meaning, explains the dread of it all, perhaps pointing towards an existence of non-existence, by just being. Cioran considers life not as an ontological abstraction, but a situation in which you have to go out, meet people in the street, have a look at your prospects, whether they are your own books in a library or job offers in your corner agency... You would feel quite the same at reading a notepad teeming with wild thoughts all over the place.Those who recognise the existence of the bubble and its implications strive to keep story-telling free from such ossification. Feeling in need of support in a hostile world, they too have succumbed to the religious impulse but in a very different way. Their alternative religion is a kind of ethical politics which allows any story to be told and heard. They make no claims to knowing what is outside the bubble or approaching closer to it by working hard at story-telling within the bubble. Their life consists of the unrestricted exchange of words in unusual and unexpected combinations. They often allude to what they imagine might be outside the bubble but remain interested in the imaginations of others. From this they derive pleasure from which many other inhabitants of the bubble take offence. All these poems where it is merely the Poem that is in question – a whole poetry with no other substance than itself! What would we say of a prayer whose object was religion? Se lever, faire sa toilette et puis attendre quelque variété imprévue de cafard ou d'effroi. Je donnerais l'univers entier et tout Shakespeare pour un brin d'ataraxie.' In periods of sterility, one should hibernate, sleep day and night to preserve one’s strength, instead of wasting it in mortification and rage." Hay ferocidad en todos los estados de ánimo, salvo en el de la alegría. La palabra ‘Schadenfreude’, alegría maligna, es un contrasentido. Hacer el mal constituye un placer, no una alegría. La alegría, única victoria sobre el mundo, es pura en su esencia; es, por tanto, irreductible al placer, sospechoso siempre, en sí mismo y en sus manifestaciones.