All Gall Is Divided: The Aphorisms of a Legendary Iconoclast Paperback – July 2, 2019

MAGIC THEATRE: NOT FOR EVERYBODYCioran has his momentsNeither far nor few between,But he's best in moderationAnd he demands a cynic's spleen.His youthful folly -- do forgive himWe're all products of our ages;Keep this book beside the bog rollYou might need some of its pages.

One can sense when every cherished belief one has ever had reveals itself to be dust born of an uneasy squalor and disorganization of the mind.

Witty sharp vocabulary enhancing, despair with him, won't you? Good stuff, I'm off to read his other works. Funny too.

So far I've read All Gall is Divided, Drawn and Quartered, Trouble with Being Born, and Anathemas and Admirations. EM Cioran is a riot, and especially suited for readers of Nietzsche. He's like Nietzsche at the end of his life, reduced to pithy one-liners, but in good physical health.All Gall is, in my opinion, the funniest of the lot. Almost stand-up comedian like in its absurdity and nihilistic flair. It was the first book by him I read, and I remember afterwards it had a strange effect on my thinking. Highly recommended... start with this one.

Certainly an interesting set of aphorisms that will blow your mind, not recommended for soft or weak minds, just kidding. hope you enjoy it as much as I did

From MY 1980S by Wayne Koestenbaum: "On a train I read ROLAND BARTHES by Roland Barthes (translated by Richard Howard): I looked out dirty windows onto dirty New Jersey fields. I began to take autobiography seriously as a historical practice with intellectual integrity. On an airplane I read Michel Leiris's MANHOOD (translated by Richard Howard) and grooved to Leiris's mention of a 'bitten buttock'; I decided to become, like Leiris, a self-ethnographer. I read Gide's THE IMMORALIST (translated by Richard Howard) in Hollywood, Florida, while lying on a pool deck. I read many books translated by Richard Howard."Good thing, too. I'd be lost without Richard Howard because I don't know French. But he should've given the title a direct translation. Which would be: SYLLOGISMS OF BITTERNESS.

E.M. Cioran, the Romanian decadent writer and anti-philosopher, stands firmly alongside the great aphorists, La Rouchefoucald, Lichtenberg, Nietzsche, with this compilation of stiletto epigrams. Paradoxical and iconoclastic, he treats of subjects as varied as language, death, music, despair, philosophy, religion and love. He represents one of the most unrelenting currents in nihilist thought, as he directs the solvent of his scepticism against everything -- (even scepticism itself) -- all with the most polished prose and a hard, gem-like brilliance. "The history of ideas is the history of the spite of certain solitaries." -- "Leukemia is the garden where God blooms." -- "The Creation was the first act of sabotage." -- "For two thousand years, Jesus has revenged himself on us for not having died on a sofa." -- "Events -- tumours of Time." Of such a quality are Cioran's rapier-sharp aphorisms. However, the beauty of his style draws our attention to another, more deep-lying paradox. That in his distrust of humanity, his yearning for extinction and hatred of life, Cioran, with his tremendous stylistic gifts, actually succeeds in finding a route towards affirming life all the more happily and courageously. Even the strength of a certain drive to nothingness, this quanta of the hatred of life, converts itself, in spite of itself, as an ever more potent stimulant to life.

Cioran is mentioned often, and I had to see. These aphorisms, to me, are quite boring. There are so many other works of this sort that I liked better.