Spike Magazine

Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com
away without helping. ‘Beyond the Novel’ adds to the
demands of genuine creation, and thus the unexpected
joy of what has been and might be achieved. Instead
of Postmodern cacophony – its sloppy apologia borne
on positive negativism – we get to hear the silence
behind the noise. One thinks of Beckett, of course, and
the equally great Thomas Bernhard. To confirm this,
Cioran pulls up in a lay-by and, in a passage one might
describe as uncharacteristic, seems to hold back from
hopelessness and bitter regret:
“Let us not be needlessly bitter: certain failures are
sometimes fruitful … Let us salute it, then, even celebrate
it: our solitude will be reinforced, affirmed. Cut off from
one more channel of escape, up against ourselves at last,
we are in a better position to inquire as to our functions
and our limits, the futility of having a life.”
Well, not uncharacteristic after all. This is as near
to abstract celebration as Cioran gets. He leaves it to
others with ‘the courage of dilution’ to give us the
succour using the ‘banalities’ necessary for the novel.
His admiration for other writers is due precisely to
their ability use the banal surface to reach the subterranean.
Cioran’s rapid lyricism will not spread into a
delta plain of banality to allow such an exploration.
This is his limit.
Despite this, he is able to prospect worth by refamiliarizing
us with what is important. Perhaps his most
worthwhile work apart from the aphorisms, we can
BUY E.M. Cioran books online from and
find in his short pieces on other writers collected in
Anathemas And Admirations. In particular, the essay on
Scott Fitzgerald. Here is a writer one might otherwise
ignore: sentimental claptrap elevated to art by a lazy
world. Cioran lays this aside. What he concentrates on
the time when Fitzgerald awoke from the American
Dream into the intensity of lucid consciousness, something
“that transcends contingencies and continents”.
By this time, Fitzgerald’s famous books have been
written, the American definition of success achieved:
fame, money and even requited love. “Literally and
figuratively, [Fitzgerald] had lived asleep. But then
sleep left him.” Why? Returning to the his deepest
theme, Cioran answers: “Insomnia sheds a light on us
which we do not desire but to which, unconsciously,
we tend. We demand it in spite of ourselves, against
ourselves.”
Fitzgerald’s inner experience remained despite
worldly success, indeed was heightened as a result. On
the heights of his despair, Fitzgerald wrote ‘The Crack-
Up’. Cioran’s commentary on this non-work – it was a
series of fragments – is like most of Cioran’s commentaries,
a commentary on his own procedure, also a series
of fragments. ‘The Crack-Up’ represents for Cioran the
direction Fitzgerald should have pursued rather than
regarding it as an aberration. He tried to overcome it by
going to Hollywood to write screenplays. Fitzgerald is
rightly judged inferior to what he discovered, unlike a
169
More
Spike
email
RSS
Facebook
Twitter
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z