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eligos's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
mihai_chindris's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
Hrană pentru suflet! Te poartă de la agonie la extaz.
motifenjoyer's review against another edition
5.0
"Shakespeare and Dostoevsky leave you with an insufferable regret: for having been neither a saint nor a criminal, the two best forms of self-destruction."
Banger book. Cioran is extremely quotable, but his aphorisms are substantial and thought-provoking, not just pithy sayings. Very compelling even when you don't agree with what he's saying. Also worth mentioning that the UChicago Press edition that I have is great, I can't compare it to other English versions since it's the only one I've read, but I really liked the introduction, and there are also brief explanations of the saints Cioran mentions at the end of the book. Visually pleasing, too.
Banger book. Cioran is extremely quotable, but his aphorisms are substantial and thought-provoking, not just pithy sayings. Very compelling even when you don't agree with what he's saying. Also worth mentioning that the UChicago Press edition that I have is great, I can't compare it to other English versions since it's the only one I've read, but I really liked the introduction, and there are also brief explanations of the saints Cioran mentions at the end of the book. Visually pleasing, too.
mattshervheim's review against another edition
4.0
It would be inaccurate to call Emil Cioran, who described life as "too full of death for death to add anything to it," as a bearer of sweetness and light. He was also, in all probability, not much fun at parties.
Tear and Saints, Cioran's examination of saints (read: mystics), existence, God, and only tangentially, music, is an aphoristic work of existential and pessimistic philosophy, following after Nietzche in style and bitterness. As he writes of God late in the book, Cioran is possessed by "such fierce longing to press God on my heart as if he were a loved one in the throes of agony, to beg of him one last proof of his love only to find myself with his corpse in my arms!" Cioran stands outside the church, hating it with the vehemence only a spurned lover could feel, unable to either reconcile or move on.
Yet, in his frustrated invectives, Cioran is often insightful, and if you can bear his pessimism and his heresies (which seem to be more emotional than reasoned), Tears and Saints can be a worthwhile read, with fine prose, bursts of genuine humanity, and a lucid (if external) look at the phenomenon of faith.
Cioran's central focus is the renunciation of the world by mystics, best summed up in his aphorism "saints live in flames; wise men, next to them."
For Cioran, the saint's love of suffering is a perversity, and yet, he is fixated on them. Attempting to make sense of mystic's renunciation, he posits a "voluptuousness of suffering," insanity in the form of a will-to-power aimed either (Cioran alternates) vertically towards heaven or towards an escape from the self in a sort of annihilation, an imperialistic drive towards ecstasy. This will is what makes saints remarkable, and why he cannot forgive them, or Christ, who inspired their love of suffering. As he puts it, "without their madness, saints would merely be Christians."
Is Cioran right? Perhaps partially. His emphasis on the individual will in pursuit of God seems a worthy reminder for contemporary Christianity, which often seems to ignore the will, either because it assumes the regenerated will is correctly oriented without critical individual effort, or because it fails to see the importance in the orientation of the will at all.
Going further, the tension between affirmation and renunciation of creation that Cioran describes so well is, so far as I can tell, still inadequately reckoned with by the (protestant) church. How would 2019 evangelicals make sense of St. Rose of Lima, who (it is said) took a vow of perpetual virginity, who only slept two hours a night to have more time to pray, and made herself a crown with small spikes inside to cause her constant pain, a reminder of Christ's crown of thorns?
I am not inclined to follow her example on those three counts and would be rather inclined, with Cioran, to see that self-destructive behavior as unhealthy or perverse; to see the renunciation of sex and sleep as rejections of two of God's good gifts, masochistic, and as a challenge to the goodness of the created order bordering on Gnosticism. (And going further then Cioran, there's something privileged about in her rejection of conventional roles within society, and yet, relying on her family to feed and cloth her while she chases the experience of God.)
And yet, as Arch Llewellyn wrote in his review of Tears and Saints "whether God exists or not, the saints are facts," and must be reckoned with, particularly in an age when the transcendent seems closed off, and conventional understanding of faith seems more and more immanent. As Richard Beck has written, "when we don't have direct, personal experiences with the sacred and divine—experiences that move, stun and shake us—faith becomes unsustainable. We come to lean on secondary structures—God talk and morality—that eventually collapse without the foundation of religious experience."
I don't know if it is possible to follow St. Rose's path now, even if I wanted to, or if the heights of her mystic experiences are still scalable. Or, if they were, if I would ever be ready to pay the cost in pain and suffering necessary to reach them. But Cioran has helped me ask the question, in his depressive, bitter, stylized way, and there's something worthwhile in the asking. And for that, I'm grateful to him.
Tear and Saints, Cioran's examination of saints (read: mystics), existence, God, and only tangentially, music, is an aphoristic work of existential and pessimistic philosophy, following after Nietzche in style and bitterness. As he writes of God late in the book, Cioran is possessed by "such fierce longing to press God on my heart as if he were a loved one in the throes of agony, to beg of him one last proof of his love only to find myself with his corpse in my arms!" Cioran stands outside the church, hating it with the vehemence only a spurned lover could feel, unable to either reconcile or move on.
Yet, in his frustrated invectives, Cioran is often insightful, and if you can bear his pessimism and his heresies (which seem to be more emotional than reasoned), Tears and Saints can be a worthwhile read, with fine prose, bursts of genuine humanity, and a lucid (if external) look at the phenomenon of faith.
Cioran's central focus is the renunciation of the world by mystics, best summed up in his aphorism "saints live in flames; wise men, next to them."
For Cioran, the saint's love of suffering is a perversity, and yet, he is fixated on them. Attempting to make sense of mystic's renunciation, he posits a "voluptuousness of suffering," insanity in the form of a will-to-power aimed either (Cioran alternates) vertically towards heaven or towards an escape from the self in a sort of annihilation, an imperialistic drive towards ecstasy. This will is what makes saints remarkable, and why he cannot forgive them, or Christ, who inspired their love of suffering. As he puts it, "without their madness, saints would merely be Christians."
Is Cioran right? Perhaps partially. His emphasis on the individual will in pursuit of God seems a worthy reminder for contemporary Christianity, which often seems to ignore the will, either because it assumes the regenerated will is correctly oriented without critical individual effort, or because it fails to see the importance in the orientation of the will at all.
Going further, the tension between affirmation and renunciation of creation that Cioran describes so well is, so far as I can tell, still inadequately reckoned with by the (protestant) church. How would 2019 evangelicals make sense of St. Rose of Lima, who (it is said) took a vow of perpetual virginity, who only slept two hours a night to have more time to pray, and made herself a crown with small spikes inside to cause her constant pain, a reminder of Christ's crown of thorns?
I am not inclined to follow her example on those three counts and would be rather inclined, with Cioran, to see that self-destructive behavior as unhealthy or perverse; to see the renunciation of sex and sleep as rejections of two of God's good gifts, masochistic, and as a challenge to the goodness of the created order bordering on Gnosticism. (And going further then Cioran, there's something privileged about in her rejection of conventional roles within society, and yet, relying on her family to feed and cloth her while she chases the experience of God.)
And yet, as Arch Llewellyn wrote in his review of Tears and Saints "whether God exists or not, the saints are facts," and must be reckoned with, particularly in an age when the transcendent seems closed off, and conventional understanding of faith seems more and more immanent. As Richard Beck has written, "when we don't have direct, personal experiences with the sacred and divine—experiences that move, stun and shake us—faith becomes unsustainable. We come to lean on secondary structures—God talk and morality—that eventually collapse without the foundation of religious experience."
I don't know if it is possible to follow St. Rose's path now, even if I wanted to, or if the heights of her mystic experiences are still scalable. Or, if they were, if I would ever be ready to pay the cost in pain and suffering necessary to reach them. But Cioran has helped me ask the question, in his depressive, bitter, stylized way, and there's something worthwhile in the asking. And for that, I'm grateful to him.
mobilisinmobili's review against another edition
3.0
Cioran remains, as always, a brilliant writer. However I connected most with this book when it verged away from hagiography and god, and towards sadness and death.
In the dark clarity around sadness, around loneliness, around death, Cioran remains - peerless.
Each aphorism bursts with the precision and pulchritude of a struck tuning fork.
There were some unexpected gems about music that I was not expecting in a book of saints and tears.
Only a must read for the Cioran completist, or for those who want to read of the tears that fill saint's hearts.
In the dark clarity around sadness, around loneliness, around death, Cioran remains - peerless.
Each aphorism bursts with the precision and pulchritude of a struck tuning fork.
There were some unexpected gems about music that I was not expecting in a book of saints and tears.
Only a must read for the Cioran completist, or for those who want to read of the tears that fill saint's hearts.
blackoxford's review against another edition
4.0
Dangerous Failures
As I have mentioned elsewhere, mystics are the bad boys (actually, more likely girls) of religion (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1928220149 ). They ignore established theology, berate spiritual authority, and prefer their own personal rituals to public displays. Mystics are therefore often considered heretical and banished to the margins of organised religion. They are wilful failures, socially and politically. And, according to Cioran, that is precisely how they achieve their goal: power.
Christian mystics are especially intrigued by power. Think about it: Jesus’s dictum that “the last shall be first” is a Machiavellian political instruction for how to beat the system. By withdrawing from the race for power, one is rewarded with... Power! It takes an immense physical as well as mental and spiritual effort to achieve an maintain the required level of mystical fanaticism. But the payoff is equally immense: existence detached from that which is most desired, and power over it.
For Teresa of Avila what was most desired was sex. For Catherine of Siena it was authority over men. For Ignatius Loyola it was authority period. For Bernard of Clairvaux it was the impulse toward violence. Each of these desires is satisfied by being denied. All are symbols of the divine that are rejected as not-God in the tradition of mystical negative theology. The ultimate failure of the denial is the achievement actually sought, the union with that which is most desired.
That is to say, mystics are consumed by their own enthusiasm (literally en theos , their ‘being in God’). This is the source of their strength, of their authority, of the influence of their commands. They are without shame in their exercise of their divinely mandated mission to save the world through their own failure. They have nothing to gain but also nothing to lose. There is nothing more to be achieved; and everything has already been lost. They are free. “Detachment is a negation of both life and death. Whoever has overcome his fear of death has also triumphed over life. For life is nothing but another word for fear.”
And, somewhat annoyingly, they flaunt that freedom to the rest of us. “The world of saints is a heavenly poison that grows ever more virulent as our loneliness increases. They have corrupted us by providing a model that shows suffering attaining its goal.” What they give us is not a path to paradise but “a graveyard of happiness.” The only defence against this poison, in light of mystical “metaphysical indiscretions,” is despair. “The Christian demon. Has woven its nest in money, in sexuality, in love. It has caused humanity so much trouble, that from now on superficiality should undoubtedly be looked upon as a virtue.”
I’m determined to maintain my own superficiality at all costs.
As I have mentioned elsewhere, mystics are the bad boys (actually, more likely girls) of religion (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1928220149 ). They ignore established theology, berate spiritual authority, and prefer their own personal rituals to public displays. Mystics are therefore often considered heretical and banished to the margins of organised religion. They are wilful failures, socially and politically. And, according to Cioran, that is precisely how they achieve their goal: power.
Christian mystics are especially intrigued by power. Think about it: Jesus’s dictum that “the last shall be first” is a Machiavellian political instruction for how to beat the system. By withdrawing from the race for power, one is rewarded with... Power! It takes an immense physical as well as mental and spiritual effort to achieve an maintain the required level of mystical fanaticism. But the payoff is equally immense: existence detached from that which is most desired, and power over it.
For Teresa of Avila what was most desired was sex. For Catherine of Siena it was authority over men. For Ignatius Loyola it was authority period. For Bernard of Clairvaux it was the impulse toward violence. Each of these desires is satisfied by being denied. All are symbols of the divine that are rejected as not-God in the tradition of mystical negative theology. The ultimate failure of the denial is the achievement actually sought, the union with that which is most desired.
That is to say, mystics are consumed by their own enthusiasm (literally en theos , their ‘being in God’). This is the source of their strength, of their authority, of the influence of their commands. They are without shame in their exercise of their divinely mandated mission to save the world through their own failure. They have nothing to gain but also nothing to lose. There is nothing more to be achieved; and everything has already been lost. They are free. “Detachment is a negation of both life and death. Whoever has overcome his fear of death has also triumphed over life. For life is nothing but another word for fear.”
And, somewhat annoyingly, they flaunt that freedom to the rest of us. “The world of saints is a heavenly poison that grows ever more virulent as our loneliness increases. They have corrupted us by providing a model that shows suffering attaining its goal.” What they give us is not a path to paradise but “a graveyard of happiness.” The only defence against this poison, in light of mystical “metaphysical indiscretions,” is despair. “The Christian demon. Has woven its nest in money, in sexuality, in love. It has caused humanity so much trouble, that from now on superficiality should undoubtedly be looked upon as a virtue.”
I’m determined to maintain my own superficiality at all costs.
epictetsocrate's review against another edition
4.0
Încercat-am să înţeleg de unde vin lacrimile şi m-am oprit la sfinţi. Să fie ei responsabili de strălucirea lor amară? Cine ar şti? Se pare, însă, că lacrimile sunt urmele lor. Nu prin sfinţi au intrat ele în lume; dar fără ei nu ştiam că plângem din regretul paradisului. Aş vrea să văd o singură lacrimă înghiţită de pământ… Toate apucă, pe căi necunoscute nouă, în sus. Numai durerea precede lacrimile. Sfinţii n-au făcut altceva decât să le reabiliteze.
Nu e posibilă o apropiere de sfinţi prin cunoaştere. Numai când trezim lacrimile adormite în străfundurile noastre şi cunoaştem prin ele înţelegem cum cineva a putut fi om şi nu mai este.
Sfinţenia în sine nu e interesantă, ci numai vieţile sfinţilor; procesul prin care un om renunţă la sine şi apucă pe căile sfinţeniei… Dar procesul prin care cineva devine hagiograf? A merge pe urmele sfinţilor… a-ţi umezi tălpile prin lacrimile lor…
Djelal-eddin-Rumi: „Vocea viorii este zgomotul pe care-l face, deschizându-se, poarta paradisului”.
Cu ce ar putea fi atunci comparat un suspin de înger?…
Ce-i vom răspunde oarbei care se plânge în poezia lui Rilke: „nu mai pot trăi aşa cu cerul pe mine”. Oare am mângâia-o de i-am spune că nu mai putem trăi cu pământul sub noi?
Mulţi sfinţi – dar şi mai multe sfinte – şi-au mărturisit dorinţa de a-şi odihni fruntea pe inima lui Iisus. Tuturora li s-a împlinit dorinţa. Acum înţeleg de ce inima Mântuitorului n-a încetat să bată în cele două mii, de ani. Doamne! Ţi-ai hrănit inima din sângele sfinţilor şi-ai îmbrăcat-o cu sudoarea frunţii lor!
Nu e posibilă o apropiere de sfinţi prin cunoaştere. Numai când trezim lacrimile adormite în străfundurile noastre şi cunoaştem prin ele înţelegem cum cineva a putut fi om şi nu mai este.
Sfinţenia în sine nu e interesantă, ci numai vieţile sfinţilor; procesul prin care un om renunţă la sine şi apucă pe căile sfinţeniei… Dar procesul prin care cineva devine hagiograf? A merge pe urmele sfinţilor… a-ţi umezi tălpile prin lacrimile lor…
Djelal-eddin-Rumi: „Vocea viorii este zgomotul pe care-l face, deschizându-se, poarta paradisului”.
Cu ce ar putea fi atunci comparat un suspin de înger?…
Ce-i vom răspunde oarbei care se plânge în poezia lui Rilke: „nu mai pot trăi aşa cu cerul pe mine”. Oare am mângâia-o de i-am spune că nu mai putem trăi cu pământul sub noi?
Mulţi sfinţi – dar şi mai multe sfinte – şi-au mărturisit dorinţa de a-şi odihni fruntea pe inima lui Iisus. Tuturora li s-a împlinit dorinţa. Acum înţeleg de ce inima Mântuitorului n-a încetat să bată în cele două mii, de ani. Doamne! Ţi-ai hrănit inima din sângele sfinţilor şi-ai îmbrăcat-o cu sudoarea frunţii lor!
amybh4rucha's review against another edition
5.0
history divides itself in two: a former time when people felt pulled towards the vibrant nothingness of divinity and now, when the nothingness of the world is empty of the divine spirit.
one conquers the temptation of the world through pain.
jesus is responsible for so much suffering. in his followers, his heavenly passion has become a virus.
voluntary hunger is the road to heaven.
what would be left of paradise if it were seen from the viewpoint of despair? a graveyard of happiness.
mozart is a melancholy botticelli: ‘primavera’ covered with the dew of tears.
sexual orgasm pales beside the saints’ ecstatic trance.
could it be that i am not well equipped for happiness? have i only known the melancholy which precedes it and the sadness which follows?
nobody believes in God- except to avoid the torment of solitary monologue. is there anyone else to speak to?
mechthild’s enthusiasm inspires me with such a longing for self-destruction that i wish to be pulverised like stardust!
the christian demon has woven its nest in money, in sexuality, in love.
adam’s fall is paradise’s only historical fact.
the ultimate cruelty was that of jesus: leaving an inheritance of bloodstains on the cross.
heavy red and black crosses will rise from the saints’ inhuman suffering on the day of the last judgement to punish the son, dealer in pain.
every saintly woman is an ophelia, only more passionate, for Jesus is not so blasé a lover as Hamlet.
blue skies make us sadder than gray skies because they offer us hopes which we do not have the courage to entertain. heavy black clouds allow us the freedom of feeling abandoned without hope. couldn’t we live without a sky?
only light souls can be saved: those whose weight will not break the wings of angels.
the twilight philosophers - so full of shadows that they no longer believe in anything - embrace you like a sea cradling your drowned body.
poor clowns of the absolute, we forget that we act out a tragedy to enliven the boredom of one spectator whose applause has never reached a mortal ear.
i am bent over under the weight of a curse called eternity, a poison of youth, a balm only for corrupt hearts.
there are tears which pierce through the earth and rise as stars in other skies. i wonder who has wept our stars?
music is the last emanation of the universe, just as god is music’s final effluence.
drowning in god is a refuge from our own individuality.
god is nothing more than a projection of our longing for annihilation.
there is only god and me. his silence invalidates us both.
there is nothing blander or more comfortable than stoicism as both a practical and a theoretical justification of wisdom.
it’s not possible to be conscious of divinity without guilt. thus god is rarely to be found in an innocent soul.
pity for god is a human being’s last solitude.
eternity is rot, and god a carrion which the human worm feeds on.
science has dulled people’s minds by diminishing their metaphysical consciousness.
there is purity only where nothing grows.
i think of man and see only shadows; i think of shadows and see only myself.
had we thought about it a little, we could have made God happy. But now we have abandoned him, and he is lonelier than at the beginning of the world.
one conquers the temptation of the world through pain.
jesus is responsible for so much suffering. in his followers, his heavenly passion has become a virus.
voluntary hunger is the road to heaven.
what would be left of paradise if it were seen from the viewpoint of despair? a graveyard of happiness.
mozart is a melancholy botticelli: ‘primavera’ covered with the dew of tears.
sexual orgasm pales beside the saints’ ecstatic trance.
could it be that i am not well equipped for happiness? have i only known the melancholy which precedes it and the sadness which follows?
nobody believes in God- except to avoid the torment of solitary monologue. is there anyone else to speak to?
mechthild’s enthusiasm inspires me with such a longing for self-destruction that i wish to be pulverised like stardust!
the christian demon has woven its nest in money, in sexuality, in love.
adam’s fall is paradise’s only historical fact.
the ultimate cruelty was that of jesus: leaving an inheritance of bloodstains on the cross.
heavy red and black crosses will rise from the saints’ inhuman suffering on the day of the last judgement to punish the son, dealer in pain.
every saintly woman is an ophelia, only more passionate, for Jesus is not so blasé a lover as Hamlet.
blue skies make us sadder than gray skies because they offer us hopes which we do not have the courage to entertain. heavy black clouds allow us the freedom of feeling abandoned without hope. couldn’t we live without a sky?
only light souls can be saved: those whose weight will not break the wings of angels.
the twilight philosophers - so full of shadows that they no longer believe in anything - embrace you like a sea cradling your drowned body.
poor clowns of the absolute, we forget that we act out a tragedy to enliven the boredom of one spectator whose applause has never reached a mortal ear.
i am bent over under the weight of a curse called eternity, a poison of youth, a balm only for corrupt hearts.
there are tears which pierce through the earth and rise as stars in other skies. i wonder who has wept our stars?
music is the last emanation of the universe, just as god is music’s final effluence.
drowning in god is a refuge from our own individuality.
god is nothing more than a projection of our longing for annihilation.
there is only god and me. his silence invalidates us both.
there is nothing blander or more comfortable than stoicism as both a practical and a theoretical justification of wisdom.
it’s not possible to be conscious of divinity without guilt. thus god is rarely to be found in an innocent soul.
pity for god is a human being’s last solitude.
eternity is rot, and god a carrion which the human worm feeds on.
science has dulled people’s minds by diminishing their metaphysical consciousness.
there is purity only where nothing grows.
i think of man and see only shadows; i think of shadows and see only myself.
had we thought about it a little, we could have made God happy. But now we have abandoned him, and he is lonelier than at the beginning of the world.