Antoine de Rivarol, ‘Dialogue between a King and the Founder of a Religion’

Draft translation of an unpublished text published in André Le Breton, Rivarol: Sa vie, ses idées, son talent d’après des documents nouveaux (Paris: Hachette, 1895), pp. 258–9. A brief, ironic piece touching on the relation of sacred authority and secular power.

PDF here.

King: ‘How is it, impostor, that you come to my states to found a false religion?’

Apostle: ‘Sir, my religion is not false; nor could it be.’

‘What! Will you prove your religion to me?’

‘No, Sir, I will preach it.’

Selections from Vauvenargues

Clarity beautifies deep thoughts.

There are no errors that, rendered clearly, would not erase themselves.

That a thought is too feeble to bear simple expression is the sign to reject it.

Courage is better armed against disgrace than reason.

Reason and liberty are incompatible with weakness.

War is not as onerous as servitude.

Claudio Mutti, Interview with Aurel Cioran

Interview conducted 3 August 1995, Sibiu. Note that Emil Cioran had died on 20 June that year. Italian original, Origini 13 (February 1996). This translation made from the French version in Nouvelles de Synergies Européennes 22 (August–September 1996). Cioran offers interesting reflections on his brother’s relationship with religion, youth, and involvements with Nae Ionescu and the Legionary movement.

French version:

http://planetcioran.blogspot.com/2006/11/entretien-avec-aurel-cioran.html

http://www.archiveseroe.eu/histoire-c18369981/85

PDF of this translation:

https://www.academia.edu/43160665/Claudio_Mutti_Interview_with_Aurel_Cioran_1995_6_

“Philosophistisiren” with Novalis, Pater, Nettleship

Novalis, in one of his Logologische Fragmente:

Philosophistisiren ist dephlegmatisiren—vivificiren.

Two translations thereof, with their context. First by Walter Pater in his conclusion to The Renaissance:

The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit is to rouse, to startle it into sharp and eager observation. Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive for us,—for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.

And second by Richard Lewis Nettleship in “The Value of Theory,” one of his Lectures on Logic (cf. Philosophical Remains, second ed. [London: Macmillan, 1901], p. 128):

To philosophise is to get rid of one’s phlegm, to acquire a vivid consciousness of some aspect of reality. This is the value of theory or thinking; but thinking which is not also producing, thinking which leaves experience what it was before, has no value.

To philosophise is to dephlegmatise—to vivify. What would this be in blue-eyed English? The phlegmatic are peaceable, equanimous. To “get rid of one’s phlegm,” then, is to rouse oneself to—passion? But that’s bastard Latin. Perhaps:

To lust after wisdom is to stir up strife in one’s heart, to grow newly alive.