2026-05-29

E. M Cioran - The Heights of Despair

This is why lyricism represents a dispersion of subjectivity; it is a certain quantity of an individual's spiritual effervescence which cannot be contained and needs constant expression. To be lyrical means you cannot stay closed up inside yourself. The need to externalize is the more intense, the more the lyricism is interiorized, profound, and concentrated. Why is the suffering or loving man lyrical?

You never suspected what lay hidden in yourself and in the world, you were living contentedly at the periphery of things, when suddenly those feelings of suffering which are second only to death itself take hold of you and transport you into a region of infinite complexity, where your subjectivity tosses about in a maelstrom.

I live because the mountains do not laugh and the worms do not sing. The passion for the absurd can grow only in a man who has exhausted everything, yet is still capable of undergoing awesome transfigurations. For one who has lost everything there is nothing left in life except the passion of the absurd. What else in life could still move such a person? What seductions? Some say: selfsacrifice for humanity, the public good, the cult of the beautiful, and so forth. I like only those people who have done away with all that—even for a short time. Only they have lived in an absolute manner. Only they have the right to speak about life. You can recover love or serenity. But you recover it through heroism, not ignorance. An existence which does not hide a great madness has no value. How is it different from the existence of a stone, a piece of wood, or something rotten?

"The Charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;"
" Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter:
   In sleep a king, but waking no such matter. "
(Sonnet 87)

Praise, praise, praise all your old friends

Praising the pope's wonderful personality, style, and tone, I understand the cultural attraction of monarchy, of noble royalty and celebrity

celebrare - to sing praises

intellectual procrastination is a sin:

there may be sin by reason of the appetite or study directed to the learning of truth being itself inordinate; and this in four ways. First, when a man is withdrawn by a less profitable study from a study that is an obligation incumbent on him; hence Jerome says [Epist. xxi ad Damas]: "We see priests forsaking the gospels and the prophets, reading stage-plays, and singing the love songs of pastoral idylls."

forgive me

Fourthly, when a man studies to know the truth above the capacity of his own intelligence, since by so doing men easily fall into error: wherefore it is written (Sirach 3:22): "Seek not the things that are too high for thee, and search not into things above thy ability . . . and in many of His works be not curious," and further on (Sirach 3:26), "For . . . the suspicion of them hath deceived many, and hath detained their minds in vanity."