Life &/or Death – Part 2 of 3: E.M. CIORAN (1911-95)

The Trouble with Being Born

 French publication 1973, English translation 1976

selected & edited 1989 by MMB

This very second has vanished forever, lost in the anonymous mass of the irrevocable. Everything is unique -- and insignificant. (p.38)

We dread the future only when we are not sure we can kill ourselves. (p.77)

A book is a postponed suicide. (p.99)

When I torment myself too much for not working, I tell myself that I might just as well be dead and that then I would be working still less. (p.115)

In order to conquer panic or some tenacious anxiety, there is nothing like imagining your own burial. Pope Innocent IX, who, having commissioned a painting in which he was shown on his deathbed, glanced at it each time he had to make an important decision. (p.117)

My vision of the future is so exact that if I had children, I would strangle them. (p.130)

I was alone in that cemetery when a pregnant woman came in. I left at once, in order not to look at this corpse-bearer at close range, nor to ruminate upon the contrast between an aggressive womb and the time-worn tombs -- between a false promise and the end of all promises. (p. 151)

In the slaughterhouse, I watched the cattle being led to their death. Almost every animal refused to move forward. This scene often comes to mind when, ejected from sleep, I lack the strength to confront the daily torture of Time. (p. 159)

When someone complains that his life has come to nothing, we need merely remind him that life itself is an analogous situation. (p.168)

What is injustice compared to disease? If we find it unjust to be sick, we must speak of the injustice of existing. (pp.189-190)

The undeniable advantage of growing old is to be able to observe at close range the slow and methodical degradation of our organs. They become detached from the body, as the body becomes detached from us: it escapes us, no longer belongs to us. (p.206)

Man gives off a special odor: of all the animals, he alone smells of the corpse. (p.208)

Only to the degree that our moments afford us some contact with death do we glimpse on what insanity all existence is based. (p.209)