brenticus reviewed On the Heights of Despair by Emil Cioran
None
4 stars
It's a bit hard to review this because Cioran clearly gets despair and suffering in a way few do, but he also just kind of wallows in it. His writing and insights are beautiful, but his worldview and philosophy are profoundly unhelpful. This is almost closer to a work of poetry than of philosophy.
That said, my copy has so many sticky notes in it that it's daunting to sort through them. Even if his drive towards the absurd, the sexual, and the lazy is unhelpful, it provokes thought in a way few works can. He discusses despair in a way that speaks right to your own suffering, and then he has a paragraph talking about it in a way that jolts you out of it, confuses the mind and destroys the relatability. And, oddly enough, that formula works wonders for considering how the work relates to your own experience. …
That said, my copy has so many sticky notes in it that it's daunting to sort through them. Even if his drive towards the absurd, the sexual, and the lazy is unhelpful, it provokes thought in a way few works can. He discusses despair in a way that speaks right to your own suffering, and then he has a paragraph talking about it in a way that jolts you out of it, confuses the mind and destroys the relatability. And, oddly enough, that formula works wonders for considering how the work relates to your own experience.
So it's an odd work, where the insights are so profoundly unhelpful that they prompt you to think of your own experiences and your own philosophy. It's a remarkable work in some ways and borderline drivel in others. I'm not sure I'd recommend it, but god knows I'll read it again.
