Volume 11, Number 3 · August 22, 1968
The Evil Demiurge
By William H. Gass
The Temptation to Exist
by E.M. Cioran
Quadrangle Books, 223 pp., $5.00
The neck, Plato tells us in the Timaeus, was fashioned by the Demiurge as a kind of isthmus between the head, which houses the higher soul, and the damper, softer regions given to the appetites and passions. This was done in order to protect the mind from their pollutions. Since then we have had nothing but complaints about the arrangement. That sovereign light, we hear, is a sly beguiler, a false leader, creator of gods and myths, an envious organ of denial, and a professional instrument of deceit. Long have the liver and the lungs, the bowels, heart and privy members, languished out of sight in the ghettos of the body—becoming more resentful, more impoverished, more maligned, and more embittered every age.
Review, 2653 words
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