Friday, September 28, 2012
The Cancer of the Earth
Cioran (1911-1995), De l'inconvénient d'être né (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), p. 199:
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Des arbres massacrés. Des maisons surgissent. Des gueules, des gueules partout. L'homme s'étend. L'homme est le cancer de la terre.Translation by Richard Howard, The Trouble With Being Born (New York: Seaver Books, 1976):
Trees are massacred, houses go up—faces, faces everywhere. Man is spreading. Man is the cancer of the earth.Cf. a letter from Gerd Heinrich to his son (Easter morning, 1975), quoted in Bernd Heinrich, The Snoring Bird: My Family's Journey Through a Century of Biology (New York: Ecco, 2007), p. 419:
Homo sapiens is certainly the greatest pest the earth has ever borne.
Labels: arboricide
