Emil Cioran

Emil Cioran , born the April 8th 1911 with Răşinari in Austria-Hungary (current Romania), dead the June 20th 1995 with Paris, is a Philosophe and writer Rumanian, of expression Rumanian E initially, then French starting from 1949 ( Précis of decomposition ). Although he lived the major part of his life in France, he never asked French nationality. He signed sometimes under the name of “E. M. Cioran”.

Biography

Cioran is born from an orthodoxe father priest and from an atheistic mother . After a few years of happy life in Rasinari, small village of Transylvania then under domination Austro-Hungarian, Cioran is traumatisé by a removal towards the Rumanian city of Sibiu. Its compatriot Lucian Blaga, philosopher of the culture, as described the matric role as could have a Rumanian village. This shock, as well as the difficult relationships to his/her mother and many insomnia from which he suffers during his youth quickly work its pessimistic vision of the world and make him think of the Suicide.

It makes its studies of philosophy to the Université of Bucharest as of the 17 years age. Its first work relates to Kant, Schopenhauer and, particularly, Nietzsche. It obtains its license in 1932, after seeing finished a thesis on Bergson, whose Cioran will reject philosophy later, that it will judge not to have included/understood the tragedy of the life. In 1933, it goes to Université of Berlin.

At 22 years, it publishes On the summits of despair , its first work, with which it registers, in spite of its young age, its name with the Pantheon of the Rumanian great writers. After two years of training to Berlin, it returns in Romania, where he becomes professor of Philosophie to the college Andrei-Saguna of Brasov during the school year 1936 - 1937. In its country of origin, Cioran côtoya briefly, in company of Mircea Eliade, members of the fascistic movement and anti-semite of the Guard of iron. In 1936 Cioran publishes the Transfiguration of Romania (Schimbarea the fata has Romaniei) in which it develops a passably xenophobe thought and anti-semite: “the Hungarians hate us by far while the Jews hate us heart even of our company” and “the Jew is not our similar, our next and whatever the intimacy maintained with him, a pit separates us”. Cioran will cross out the passages more the anti-semites for the French edition.

In 1937, its third work, Of the tears and saints , made scandal in its country. Cioran settles then with Paris during the occupation, thanks to a purse, in order to finish its thesis there on the philosopher Bergson. It gives up all then Idéologie to devote itself to the writing. It is strongly influenced by nihilist philosophy , in particular Schopenhauer and Spengler, but also by Nietzsche.

These influences and its past lead Cioran naturally to destroy, through its works, any ideology. Refusing the honors, it declines inter alia the price Morand decreed by the French Academy. Its work, primarily made up of collections of Aphorism S, marked by the Asceticism and the Humor, is a growing success; in return, it preserves an ambivalent report/ratio with “success”: “I knew all the forms of forfeiture, including success. ”

The Communistes which seized the power in Romania after the Second world war having prohibited its books, it will remain with Paris until the end of its existence, living rather poorly, writing its French works henceforth, while in addition translating the poems of Stephan Mallarmé into Rumanian. He is surrounded there by thinkers and writers such as Eugene Ionesco, Mircea Eliade, Samuel Beckett, Henri Michaux or Gabriel Marcel, and by some readers fanatic but very few.

After the war, he writes a whole part of his French work, giving up completely his native tongue, Rumanian: “In French, one does not become insane”, insinuation for a not-French because of the particular Syntaxe of the language.

The work of Cioran, ironic and apocalyptic, is marked with the seal of the Pessimisme, the Scepticisme and disillusion. In 1973, Cioran publishes its most outstanding work: Of the disadvantage of being born . In 1987, it publishes its ultimate work, Aveux and anathemas , before dying, eight years later.

The thought of Cioran

The work of Cioran comprises collections of aphorisms, ironic, skeptics and percussion, such Of the disadvantage of being born , which forms its most known works, but one can find also there texts longer and more detailed. Generally the work of Cioran is marked by its refusal of any philosophical system. Its Scepticisme is probably its most outstanding character, much more than its Pessimisme. It is besides to note that Cioran, whose writings are rather dark, was a man of very good company, rather merry. He said itself that he had passed his life to recommend the written suicide and to disadvise it by oral examination, because in the first case that concerned the world of the ideas whereas in the second he had a being of flesh and blood opposite him.

One cannot however show Cioran to have taken in his writings a “installation” of despair. It seems that he was deeply sad not to be able to establish system which would give a direction to its life, while at the same time in his youth he had been extremely impassioned (cf Summits of despair ).

Its despair is not pretends but it is exclusively philosophical and related to this impossibility to include/understand the world and the Man, or to have perhaps included/understood it too well.

The literary advance of Cioran and its spiritual way have, seems it, three major benchmarks (according to Liliana Nicorescu ): “temptation to exist”, temptation to be Rumanian, and temptation to be Jewish. Neither its refuted roumanity nor its missed judeity could offer the least consolation for humiliation to him, for “the disadvantage of being born”.

Safety in esthetics

Confronted with the thought of clearness, with the permanent disavowal, Cioran finds a deferment in the esthetic way. It takes again clearly the topic of the vital illusion (Nietzsche). The attention with the style of its writing, the taste pronounced for prose and the aphorisms become, for example, of the engines ensuring its vitality. It moves away from the ideas, losing its reader sometimes, or rather obliging it not all to include/understand. Poetry becomes as much a means of representing its thought as a temporary remedy vis-a-vis clearness. “It has - as the life - the excuse nothing to prove. ”

Attempt which he considers ashamed, too vivifying, hateful sometimes, Cioran are however let there lead. It accepts this paradox of its thought, like others. Lucid, it perceives also the imposture of the nihilist which is still alive: “to exist is equivalent to an act of faith, with a protest against the truth”. If Cioran must survive the unbreathable truths , if it is thus obliged to believe in something, it chooses deliberately art, the illusion queen. To escape from the Dead and the vacuum, which it foresees around him, as a “door from help”, it chooses the writing. Similar to the modern figure of the cursed artist, author little read and almost unknown of alive sound - in spite of the regard of the literary circle - Cioran will inlassablement continue inlassablement to write.

Parisian asceticism

Arrived to France, Cioran settles in Paris. It moves in with the Marignan hotel, to the 13 of the street Sommerard in the fifth district. It is in the Latin Quarter and the district of the Sorbonne that it will remain until its death. In its writings, he reports his long nights of loneliness and insomnia, in tiny hotel rooms and his ambulations in the night. Then later, its rooms of good, single ivory tower during long years. There remains poor, decided “never not to work”. Then he walks simply to the Garden of Luxembourg. He profits sometimes from the material aid of rare friends, but takes his meals at the university canteen, whose exclusion towards the 40 years age is one of the most tragic moments of its existence.

These details on its daily newspaper cross its work and its speech. But Cioran by no means explores the sordid aspect under this condition. It describes simply a kind of advance or combat, which is established as much in its writings as in its existence: a “frame of mind”. For Cioran, it is not a question only any more of of knowing - to identical of the professor of university - but especially “to feel”. In loneliness, the material destitution and its withdrawal of the modern entertainments is then established a philosophical step - spiritual - comparable with the Ascétisme S preached by the Bouddhisme, the Cyniques or Diogène de Sinope.

The Cioran myth

If Cioran modestly lived truly most of its existence, this self-portrait of recluse and desperate that it draws up in its books entirely does not correspond to the writer; it is rather there the myth Cioran, the character of the books. But to speak about “installation” in despair would be inaccurate. Because Cioran highly criticizes the authors of speeches moralists which carry out in addition an immoral existence, he seeks itself sincerity in his texts, i.e. the adequacy of his speech with his existence. He will say to only want to keep secret his private life: its love life, the happy and optimistic share of its existence. Because happiness is not made for the books, explained it.

Keeping away from the academic world and literary Parisian, it had nevertheless some close friends with whom it liked to converse: Mircea Eliade, Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Gabriel Matzneff…

Criticisms and opinions

The work of Cioran does not seem prone to a particular controversy. It profits from a notable acceptance, in the media, perhaps due for a purpose of mode, since its redécouverte recent. Or she is simply ignored, without criticism with accompanying notes, in the literary and philosophical debates current. The general public will consider it even morbid often pessimistic.

Sometimes one can release a criticism against the stylistic excess or the classicism of his writing, which would compromise the diffusion of the ideas. Or a lack of depth of its philosophical research, in the direction where Cioran takes up ideas nietzschéennes, by illustrating them simply.

Anecdotes

Cioran refused all the literary prizes (Holy-Beuve, Combat, Nimier, Morand…) except for the Rivarol price in 1949, acceptance which it justified by a financial need.
In 1940, place Saint-Michel, it “failed to be the first victim” of the entry of the Germans in Paris, because he launched cigarette packs to a convoy of prisoners.
Invited in an American university, and presented like the equal one of the largest philosophers, it declared anxious: “But I am only one joker! ”

Works

The first five titles appeared initially in Rumanian:

On the summits of despair (1934)
the Book of the lures
Transfiguration of Romania (1936)
Of the tears and the saints (1937)
the Twilight of the thoughts
Breviary of overcome the
Precise of decomposition (1949)
Syllogisms of the bitterness (1952)
Temptation to exist (1956)
History and Utopie (1960)
the Fall in time (1964)
the Bad Demiurge (1969)
Valéry vis-a-vis its idols (1970)
Of the disadvantage of being born (1973)
Test on the thought reactionary. In connection with Joseph de Maistre (1977), Fata Morgana (initially published like prefaces of a compilation of texts of Joseph de Maistre into 1957 with the editions of the Rock)
Écartèlement (1979)
Exercices of admiration (1986)
Aveux and Anathèmes (1987)
the remote Friend: Paris Bucharest (1991)
Talks (1995)
Books, 1957-1972 (1997)
Book of Talamanca (Mercure de France 2000)
Loneliness and destiny (Gallimard-Arcades 2004)
negative Exercises (Gallimard 2005)
Works (Gallimard-Quatro 1995)

Manuscripts

After the death of Simone Boué, a series of manuscripts (approximately 30 books) writings by Cioran were recovered during the emptying of the apartment. They contain in particular all the books of its newspaper as from 1972, that is to say the year when the Cahiers already published stop.

The manuscripts were acquired to be put at the biddings in December 2005. However, their marketing was stopped by the Court of Appeal of Paris. One thus remains for the moment in waiting of the legal resolution of the business.

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