A review by lispectorsexual
The New Gods by E.M. Cioran

challenging informative reflective tense

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.0

Here Cioran diverges from his usual aphoristic style and presents his work in somewhat of an essay format and maintaining the same subject with each individual chapter 

The Demiurge

 first defining the concept that is a Demiurge, it’s an artisan-like figure responsible for fashioning and maintaining our physical universe. In this chapter Cioran argues that the critique towards God is due to Him being presented as an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent being yet the world as his creation is far from what he is or represents, and that if He was to admit to making mistakes and errors, an equilibrium could arise and there would be no contradictions to His essence.

“In order to evade the difficulties inherent in dualism, we might postulate a single God whose history would develop in two phases: in the first, discreet, anemic, retiring, with no impulse to manifest Himself, a sleeping God exhausted by His own eternity; in the second phase, ambitious, frenzied, a God committing mistake after mistake, participating in a supremely blameworthy activity.”

The New Gods

Centres around theism; monotheism and polytheism, the latter being in the context of paganism. Cioran explains the implementations of such beliefs on society and the individual, as well as the death of polytheism, and the current death that monotheism is facing.

“It is the periods without a specific faith (the Hellenistic one or our own) which busy themselves classifying the gods, while refusing to divide them up into the true and the false. The notion that the gods are all worth something—are each worth as much as any other—is on the contrary unacceptable in the intervals when fervor prevails. We cannot pray to a god who is probably true. Prayer does not demean itself to subtleties nor tolerate distinctions within the Supreme: even when it doubts, it does so in the name of truth.”

Encounters With Suicide: This chapter had its powerful Cioranesque, written in an aphoristic style containing his ever so beautiful lyricism. He goes into his own experiences and feelings regarding suicide, not once rejecting it or its appeal.

“The only way of dissuading someone from suicide is to urge him to do it. He will never forgive you for your gesture, he will abandon his scheme or postpone its execution, he will regard you as an enemy, as a traitor. You thought you were rushing to his aid, rescuing him, and he sees in your eagerness no more than hostility and contempt. The strangest thing of all is that he was seeking your approval, pleading for your complicity. What did he actually expect? Haven’t you deceived yourself as to the nature of his confusion? What a mistake on his part to turn to you! At this stage of his solitude, what should have struck him is the impossibility of coming to an understanding with anyone except God.”

“Death is not necessarily experienced as deliverance; suicide always is: it is a summum, the paroxysm of salvation.

We should, out of decency, choose for ourselves the moment to disappear. It is debasing to die the way one does; it is intolerable to be exposed to an end over which we have no control, an end which lies in wait for us, overthrows us, casts us into the unnameable.”