On the Heights of Despair

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On the Heights of Despair ( Romanian: Pe culmile disperării) is a Romanian philosophical work written by Emil Cioran, published in 1934 as his first book. It consists of several brief reflections on negative themes which later permeated Cioran's work, such as death, insomnia and insanity. Although Cioran focuses on negative emotions and gives contrarian opinions, he also considers certain positive emotions and expresses more conventional views rejecting certain negative states, although these rejections have an anti-Christian content. Innocence and grace are described as positive states, although Cioran's grace is more secular and aesthetic, as opposed to the religious sense of the English word. [7] Although he praises the heightened emotions which suffering can induce, Cioran explicitly rejects poverty and suffering themselves as purely destructive states which have none of the nobility or catharsis which Christianity confers upon them. Only thoughts that are randomly born die. The other thoughts we carry with us without knowing them. They have abandoned themselves to forgetfulness so that they can be with us all the time.

As long as I live I shall not allow myself to forget that I shall die; I am waiting for death so that I can forget about it. I thought that the only action a man could perform without shame was to take his life; that he had no right to diminish himself in the succession of days and the inertic of misery. No elect, I kept telling myself, but those who committed suicide. Still, even despite my shortcomings, I suspect that Cioran simply gives the world’s idols too much credit because in those rare moments when my indirections cease, when I stop ventriloquizing my gods, and a divine silence settles, I always still here my children calling.

The University of Chicago Press

To repeat to yourself a thousand times a day: 'Nothing on Earth has any worth,' to keep finding yourself at the same point, to circle stupidly as a top, eternally... Ideas should be neutral. But man animates them with his passions and folly. Impure and turned into beliefs, they take on the appearance of reality. The passage from logic is consummated. Thus are born ideologies, doctrines, and bloody farce.

All men have the same defect: they wait to live, for they have not the courage for each instant. Why not invest enough passion in each moment to make it an eternity? We all learn to live only when we no longer have anything to expect, because we do not live in the living present but in a vague and distant future. We should not wait for anything except the immediate promptings of the moment. We should wait without the consciousness of time. There’s no salvation without the immediate. But man is a being who no longer knows the immediate. He is an indirect animal. (111) What every man who loves his country hopes for in his inmost heart: the suppression of half his compatriots. I don't need any support, advice, or compassion, because even if I am the most ruinous man, I still feel so powerful, so strong and fierce. For I am the only one that lives without hope.At the edge of life you feel that you are no longer master of the life within you, that subjectivity is an illusion, and that uncontrollable forces are seething inside you, evolving with no relation to a personal center or a definite, individual rhythm.", essay 2 - On not wanting to live I seem to myself, among civilised men, an intruder, a troglodyte enamored of decrepitude, plunged into subversive prayers. It was one of several works that Cioran wrote in his native Romanian language. In 1937, Cioran left Romania and relocated to Paris, where he lived for the rest of his life. This break marked two definite periods in Cioran's life and work: an early Romanian period, and a later, mature French period. Cioran later published several works in French, which brought him to wider attention. His early call for modernization was, however, hard to reconcile with the traditionalism of the Iron Guard. [16] In 1934, he wrote, "I find that in Romania the sole fertile, creative, and invigorating nationalism can only be one which does not just dismiss tradition, but also denies and defeats it". [17] Disapproval of what he viewed as specifically Romanian traits had been present in his works ("In any maxim, in any proverb, in any reflection, our people expresses the same shyness in front of life, the same hesitation and resignation... [...] Everyday Romanian [truisms] are dumbfounding."), [18] which led to criticism from the far-right Gândirea (its editor, Nichifor Crainic, had called The Transfiguration of Romania "a bloody, merciless, massacre of today's Romania, without even [the fear] of matricide and sacrilege"), [19] as well as from various Iron Guard papers. [20] France [ edit ] Portrait of Cioran Although pessimism perspires throughout the book, still you can find traces of optimism, which was said to define his life, rather the pessimism in his works, as in the essay “Enthusiasm as a form of love”: “the joy of achieving and the ecstasy of efficiency are the essential characteristics of the man for whom life is a leap toward heights where destructive forces lose their negative intensity.”

I find in myself as much evil as in anyone, but detesting action — mother of all vices — I am the cause of no one's suffering.No one has the audacity to exclaim: "I don't want to do anything!" — we are more indulgent with a murderer than with a mind emancipated from actions.

Everything is possible, and yet nothing is. All is permitted, and yet again, nothing. No matter which way we go, it is no better than any other. It is all the same whether you achieve something or not, have faith or not, just as it's all the same whether you cry or remain silent. There is an explanation for everything, and yet there is none. Everything is both real and unreal, normal and absurd, splendid and insipid. There is nothing worth more than anything else, nor any idea better than any other. Why grow sad from one's sadness and delight in one's joy? What does it matter whether our tears come from pleasure or pain? Love your unhappiness and hate your happiness, mix everything up, scramble it all! Be a snowflake dancing in the air, a flower floating downstream! Have courage when you don't need to, and be a coward when you must be brave! Who knows? You may still be a winner! And if you lose, does it really matter? Is there anything to win in this world? All gain is loss, all loss is gain. Why always expect a definite stance, clear ideas, meaningful words? I feel as if I should spout fire in response to all the questions which were ever put, or not put, to me.In 1942, Cioran met Simone Boué, another insomniac, whom he lived with for the rest of his life. Cioran kept their relationship entirely private, and never spoke of his relationship with Boué in his writings or interviews. [26] On the Heights of Despair was written in a bout of depression and insomnia, conditions from which Cioran suffered throughout his life: "I've never been able to write otherwise than in the midst of the depression brought about by my nights of insomnia. For seven years I could barely sleep. I need this depression, and even today before I sit down to write I play a disk of Gypsy music from Hungary." [10] The book's title derives from a phrase that was commonly used in Romanian newspapers of the period to begin the obituaries of suicides, e.g. "On the heights of despair, young so-and-so took his life...". [11] [12] The only interesting philosophers are the ones who have stopped thinking and have begun to search for happiness. There is value only in that which bursts forth from inspiration, which springs up from the irrational depths of our being, from the secret center of our subjectivity. The fruit of labor, effort and endeavor has no value, and the offspring of intelligence is sterile and uninteresting. I delight in the barbaric and spontaneous élan of inspiration, effervescent spiritual states, essential lyricism, and inner tension—these things make inspiration the only reality of creation. [4] The only minds which seduce us are the minds which have destroyed themselves trying to give their life a meaning.