On the Heights of Despair

Rating:
Summary: Nietzche's heir
Review: I have to disagree with the previous reviewer who suggests new readers try another one of Cioran's works...This is an excellent introduction to his works, and as I believe it is his first written work, I think it's a good place to start...His writing is hauntingly beautiful and the concepts he addresses more pertinent than ever to the world we currently live in...Anyways, to oversimplify, if you like Nietzche, you should definitely enjoy Cioran, and this work is as good a place as any to start...

Rating:
Summary: Read something else
Review: If you really wanna read Cioran, start with something like "Exercises fo Admiration", "Treatise on Decomposation" or "Admirations and Anathemas". "On the Heights od Despair" is a too young and too pesimist Cioran. It is a half-Cioran.

Rating:
Summary: Read something else
Review: If you really wanna read Cioran, start with something like "Exercises fo Admiration", "Treatise on Decomposation" or "Admirations and Anathemas". "On the Heights od Despair" is a too young and too pesimist Cioran. It is a half-Cioran.

Rating:
Summary: The gall to tell it like it is
Review: This is an amazing, ingenious depiction of pessimistic, Nietzsche driven thoughts of philosophy. The works are, by all means, negative in dialect, however, extremely satisfying to read. Anyone who is interested in thought provoking ideas and modern philosophy as a whole will enjoy this book by Cioran, and find at least one essay you can relate and aspire to so closely it's scary!

Rating:
Summary: The gall to tell it like it is
Review: This is an amazing, ingenious depiction of pessimistic, Nietzsche driven thoughts of philosophy. The works are, by all means, negative in dialect, however, extremely satisfying to read. Anyone who is interested in thought provoking ideas and modern philosophy as a whole will enjoy this book by Cioran, and find at least one essay you can relate and aspire to so closely it's scary!

Rating:
Summary: The best place to begin is the beginning
Review: This is Emile Cioran's first book, written in his native Romanian language and published when he was but 23 years old. So much of what he would later express so masterfully in his adopted French language is on display here, not in embryonic form, but in the most incendiary and extreme form of nihilist regard for human existence in this world. This is the kind of book that one would have expected Nietzsche to have written if he had really been a nihilist, but Nietzsche was only ever content to talk about the abyss, whereas Cioran in his first book is already reporting to us from the abyss. The literary technique and conceptual vocabulary that he employs are always explosive in their intent and darkly expressive in their purpose. His outlook is so searingly negative at times that a kind of reverse light appears to emanate from it, and one has the impression that he only writes with the wish to destroy what is of value in order that he might thereby find what is of some lesser and thus higher value...and only for the short span of our mortal admiration.