The Temptation to Exist

The Temptation to Exist

<B>“A sort of final philosopher of the Western world. His statements have the compression of poetry and the audacity of cosmic clowning”—<I>The Washington Post</I></B><BR><BR>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.<BR><BR><I>The Temptation to Exist</I> 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 <I>The Temptation to Exist</I> has become an underground classic.<BR><BR>In this work Cioran writes about Western civilizations, the writer, the novel, about mystics, apostles, philosophers. For those to whom the very word <I>philosophy</I> brings visions of arduous reading, be assured: Cioran is crystal-clear, his style quotable and aphoristic.