“A sort of final philosopher of the Western world. His statements have the compression of poetry and the audacity of cosmic clowning”—
The Washington Post
This collection of eleven essays, when originally published in France, created a literary whirlwind on the Left Bank. Cioran writes incisively about Western civilizations, the writer, the novel, mystics, apostles, and philosophers.
The Temptation to Exist
first introduced this brilliant European thinker twenty years ago to American readers, in a superb translation by Richard Howard. This literary mystique around Cioran continues to grow, and
has become an underground classic.
In this work Cioran writes about Western civilizations, the writer, the novel, about mystics, apostles, philosophers. For those to whom the very word
philosophy
brings visions of arduous reading, be assured: Cioran is crystal-clear, his style quotable and aphoristic.