A Short History of Decay

by Emil M. Cioran

(Lord, give me the capacity of never praying, spare me the insanity of all worship, let this temptation of love pass from me which would deliver me forever unto You. Let the void spread between my heart and heaven! I have no desire to people my deserts by Your presence, to tyrannize my nights by Your light, to dissolve my Siberias beneath Your sun. Lonelier than You, I want my hands pure, the contrary of Yours which were forever corrupted by kneading the earth and busying themselves with the world’s affairs. I ask Your stupid omnipotence for nothing but the respect of my solitude and my torments. What have I to do with Your words? And I fear the madness which would make me hear them. Grant me the miracle gathered before the first moment, the peace which You could not tolerate and which incited You to breach the nothingness in order to make way for this carnival of time, and thereby to condemn me to the universe—to humiliation and the shame of Being.)