EMIL CIORAN - greatest nihilistic philosopher of the twentieth century

Emil Cioran April 8, 1911 – June 20, 1995) was a Romanian philosopher and essayist.

Early life

1937 witnessed Cioran’s departure for France with a scholarship from the French Institute of Bucharest. From the moment of his departure, Cioran only published books in French (all were appreciated not only because of their content, but also because of their style which was full of lyricism and fine use of the language).

In 1949 his first French book, A Short History of Decay, was published by Gallimard – the publishing company which came to publish the majority of his books later on – and was awarded the Rivarol Prize in 1950. Later on, Cioran refused every literary prize with which he was presented.

The Latin Quarter of Paris became Cioran’s permanent residence. He lived most of his life in isolation, avoiding the public. Yet, he still maintained numerous friends with which he conversed often such as Mircea Eliade, Eugène Ionesco, Paul Celan, Samuel Beckett, and Henri Michaux.

He is buried at the Montparnasse Cemetery.

Major themes and style

Exhausting his interest for conservative philosophy early in his youth, Cioran denounced systematic thought and abstract speculation in favor of indulgence in personal reflection and passionate lyricism. "I’ve invented nothing; I’ve simply been the secretary of my sensations", he later claimed.

Pessimism characterizes all of his works, which many critics trace back to events of his childhood (in 1935 his mother is reputed to have told him that if she had known he was going to be so unhappy she would have aborted him). However, Cioran's pessimism (in fact, his skepticism, even nihilism) remains both inexhaustible and, in its own particular manner, joyful; it is not the sort of pessimism which can be traced back to simple origins, single origins themselves being questionable. When Cioran's mother spoke to him of abortion, he confessed that it did not disturb him, but made an extraordinary impression which led to an insight about the nature of existence ("I'm simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously?" is what he later said in reference to the incident)

His works often depict an atmosphere of torment and torture, states that Cioran experienced, and came to be dominated by lyricism often prone to expressing violent feelings. The books he wrote in Romanian are best identified with this characteristic. Preoccupied with the problem of death and suffering, he was attracted to the idea of suicide, believing it to be an idea that could help one go on living, an idea which he fully explored in On the Heights of Despair. He revisits suicide in depth in The New Gods, which contains a section of aphorisms devoted to the subject. The theme of human alienation, the most prominent existentialist theme, presented by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, is thus formulated, in 1932, by young Cioran: "Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home?"

Cioran’s works encompass many other themes as well: original sin, the tragic sense of history, the end of civilization, the refusal of consolation through faith, the obsession with the absolute, life as an expression of man's metaphysical exile, etc. He was a thinker passionate about history; widely reading the writers that were associated with the period of "decadent". One of these writers was Oswald Spengler who influenced Cioran's political philosophy in that he offered Gnostic reflections on the destiny of man and civilization. According to Cioran, as long as man has kept in touch with his origins and hasn't cut himself off from himself, he has resisted decadence. Today, he is on his way to his own destruction through self-objectification, impeccable production and reproduction, excess of self-analysis and transparency, and artificial triumph.

Regarding God, Cioran has noted that "without Bach, God would be a complete second rate figure" and that "Bach's music is the only argument proving the creation of the Universe can not be regarded a complete failure".

William H. Gass called Cioran's work "a philosophical romance on the modern themes of alienation, absurdity, boredom, futility, decay, the tyranny of history, the vulgarities of change, awareness as agony, reason as disease".

Rather ironically, Cioran became famous while writing in French, a language with which he had struggled since youth. His use of the adopted language was seldom as harsh as his use of Romanian, while the latter offered resources of originality in tone.

Legacy

After the death of Simone Boué, Cioran’s companion for most of his life, a series of manuscripts (over 30 notebooks) written by Cioran were found in their apartment by a manager who tried, in 2005, to auction them.

However, a decision made by the Court of Appeal of Paris stopped their commercialization; the trial is still taking place in France. Amid the manuscripts, which were mainly drafts of works that had already been published, an unedited journal was found which encompassed his life after 1972 (the year in which his Notebooks end). The document is of major interest to readers and editors, and is probably Cioran’s last unpublished work.

An aged Cioran is the main character in a play by Romanian dramatist-actor Matei Vişniec, Mansardă la Paris cu vedere spre moarte ("A Paris Loft with a View on Death"). The play, depicting an imaginary meeting between Vişniec and Emil Cioran, was first brought to the stage in 2007, under the direction of Radu Afrim and with a cast of Romanian and Luxembourgian actors; Cioran was played by Constantin Cojocaru. Stagings were organized in the Romanian city of Sibiu[ and in the Luxembourg, at Esch-sur-Alzette (both Sibiu and Luxembourg City were the year's European Capital of Culture).

Major works

Romanian

Pe culmile disperării (literally On the Summits of Despair; translated "On the Heights of Despair"), Editura "Fundaţia pentru Literatură şi Artă", Bucharest 1934

Cartea amăgirilor ("The Book of Delusions”), Bucharest 1936

Schimbarea la faţă a României ("The Transfiguration of Romania”), Bucharest 1936

Lacrimi şi Sfinţi ("Tears and Saints"), "Editura autorului" 1937

Îndreptar pătimaş ("The Passionate Handbook”) , Humanitas, Bucharest 1991

French

Mon pays/Ţara mea ("My country”, written in French, the book was first published in Romania in a bilingual volume), Humanitas, Bucharest, 1996

Précis de décomposition ("A Short History of Decay"), Gallimard 1949

Syllogismes de l'amertume (tr. "All Gall Is Divided"), Gallimard 1952

La tentation d'exister ("The Temptation to Exist"), Gallimard 1956 English edition: ISBN 0-226-10675-6

Histoire et utopie ("History and Utopia"), Gallimard 1960

La chute dans le temps ("The Fall into Time"), Gallimard 1964

Le mauvais démiurge (literally The Poor Demiurge; tr. "The New Gods"), Gallimard 1969

De l'inconvénient d'être né ("The Trouble With Being Born"), Gallimard 1973

Écartèlement (tr. "Drawn and Quartered"), Gallimard 1979

Exercices d'admiration 1986, and Aveux et anathèmes 1987 (tr. and grouped as "Anathemas and Admirations")

Cahiers ("Notebooks"), Gallimard 1997

Œuvres (Collected works), Gallimard-Quatro 1995

Des larmes et des saints , L'Herne

Sur les cimes du désespoir, L'Herne,

Le crépuscule des pensées, L'Herne,

Jadis et naguère, L'Herne

Valéry face à ses idoles, L'Herne, 1970, 2006

De la France, L’Herne, 2009

Transfiguration de la Roumanie, L’Herne, 2009

Cahier Cioran, L’Herne, 2009 (Several unpublished documents, letters and photographies).