Emil Cioran

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Emil Cioran, known in French as Émile Michel Cioran (April 8, 1911—June 20, 1995), was a Romanian philosopher and essayist.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career in Romania 3 Career in France 4 Major themes and style 5 Manuscripts 6 Major works 6.1 Romanian 6.2 French 7 Notes 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Early life

Emil Cioran was born in Răşinari, Sibiu County (in Transylvania, which was part of Austria-Hungary at the time). His father, Emilian Cioran, was a Romanian Orthodox priest, while his mother, Elvira Cioran (born Comaniciu), was originally from Veneţia de Jos, a commune near Făgăraş. Elvira’s father, Gheorghe Comaniciu, a notary, was raised to the status of a baron by the Imperial authorities. Thus Emil Cioran, by virtue of his maternal bloodline, could be linked back to a small Transylvanian family of nobles.

After studying human sciences at the Gheorghe Lazăr high school in Sibiu, Cioran started to study philosophy at the University of Bucharest at the age of 17. Upon his entrance into the University, he met Eugène Ionesco and Mircea Eliade, the three of them becoming lifelong friends. Future Romanian philosopher Constantin Noica and future Romanian thinker Petre Ţuţea, became his closest colleagues while all were taught taught by Tudor Vianu and Nae Ionescu. Cioran, Eliade, and Ţuţea became adherents to the ideas of their teacher Nae Ionescu - a tendency deemed Trăirism, which fused Existentialism with ideas common to various forms of Fascism.

Having a good command of German, his first studies revolved around Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, and especially Friedrich Nietzsche. He became an agnostic, taking as an axiom "the inconvenience of existence". During his studies at the University he was also influenced by the works of Georg Simmel, Ludwig Klages and Martin Heidegger, but also by the Russian philosopher Lev Shestov, who added the belief that life is arbitrary to his central system of thought. Cioran graduated with a thesis on Henri Bergson; however, later Cioran rejected Bergson, claiming the latter had not comprehended the tragedy of life.

[edit] Career in Romania

In 1933, he obtained a scholarship to the University of Berlin, where he came into contact with Klages and Nicolai Hartmann. While in Berlin, he became interested in measures taken by the Nazi regime, contributed a column in Vremea dealing with the topic (in which Cioran confessed that "there is no politician today who would inspire me more sympathy and admiration than Hitler",^[1] while expressing his approval for the Night of the Long Knives — "what has humanity lost if the lives of a few imbeciles were taken"),^[2] and, in a letter written to Petru Comarnescu, described himself as "a Hitlerist".^[3] He held similar views about Italian fascism, welcoming victories in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, arguing that: "Fascism is a shock, without which Italy is a compromise comparable with today's Romania".^[4]

Cioran’s first book, On the Heights of Despair (more accurately translated: "On the Summits of Despair"), appeared in Romania in 1934. It was awarded the Commission’s Prize and the Young Writers Prize for one of the best books written by an unedited young writer. Successively, The Book of Delusions (1935), The Transfiguration of Romania (1936), and Tears and Saints (1937), were also published in Romania (the first two have yet to be translated into English).

Although Cioran was never a member, it was during his time in Romania that he began taking an interest in the ideas put forth by the Iron Guard - a far right organization whose nationalist ideology he supported until the early years of World War II, despite allegedly disapproving of their violent methods.

Cioran censored The Transfiguration of Romania in its second edition released in the 1990s; he eliminated numerous passages considered extremist or "pretentious and stupid". The volume expressed a sympathy for totalitarianism,^[5] a theme which was also present in various articles Cioran wrote at the time,^[6] and which aimed to establish "urbanization and industrialization" as "the two obsessions of a rising people".^[7] Marta Petreu's An Infamous Past: E.M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in Romania, published in English in 2005, gives an in-depth analysis of the book.

His early call for modernization was, however, hard to reconcile with the traditionalism of the Guard.^[8] In 1934, he wrote: "I find that in Romania the sole fertile, creative, and envigourating nationalism can only be one which does not just dismiss tradition, but also denies and defeats it".^[9] Disapproval of what he viewed as specifically Romanian traits had been present in his works ("In any maxim, in any proverb, in any reflection, our people expresses the same shyness in front of life, the same hesitation and resignation... [...] Everyday Romanian [truisms] are dumbfounding."),^[10] which led to criticism in the far right Gândirea (its editor, Nichifor Crainic, had called The Transfiguration of Romania "a bloody, merciless, massacre of today's Romania, without even [the fear] of matricide and sacrilege"),^[11] as well as from various Iron Guard papers.^[12]

After coming back from Berlin (1936), Cioran taught philosophy at the "Andrei Şaguna" high school in Braşov for a year. In 1937, he left for Paris with a scholarship from the French Institute of Bucharest, which was then prolonged until 1944. After a short stay in his home country (November 1940-February 1941), Cioran never again returned; it was this last period in Romania which saw signs of a closer relation with the Iron Guard, which had by then taken power (see National Legionary State) — on November 28, he recorded a speech for the state-owned Romanian Radio, one centered on the portrait of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, former leader of the movement, who had been killed two years before (praising him and the Guard for, among other things, "having given Romanians a purpose").^[13]

He started writing The Passionate Handbook, his last book in Romanian, in 1940. The book was finished by 1945.

He later renounced not only his support for the Iron Guard, but also their nationalist ideas, and frequently expressed regret and repentance for his emotional implication in it. For example, in a 1972 interview, he condemned it as "a complex of movements; more than this, a demented sect and a party", and avowed: "I found out then [...] what it means to be carried by the wave without the faintest trace of conviction. [...] I am now immune to this thing".^[14]

[edit] Career in France

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 fact, he refused to ever write in Romanian again, exaggerating his detachment from Romania to such an extent that even his letters to his parents were written in French.

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 all of the literary prizes 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.

[edit] Major themes and style

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

Pessimism characterized his later works, which many critics trace back to events in 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) is able to continue existing and remain, in his own particular manner, joyful; it is not a pessimism which can be traced 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 depicted an atmosphere of torment and torture, states which Cioran experienced, and came to be dominated by lyricism often prone to expressing violent feelings. The books he wrote in Romanian when he was young 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 which could help one go on living, an idea which he fully explored in On the Heights of Despair. 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 consolidation through faith, the obsession of the absolute, life as an expression of man's metaphysical exile, etc. He was a thinker passionate about history, which he had been studying at the University; he read of the authors that were associated with those periods widely viewed as "decadent". Authors such as Oswald Spengler influenced Cioran's political philosophy in that they offered Gnostic reflections about 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 through artificial triumph".

Regarding God, Cioran has noted "without Bach, God would be complete second rate figure" and "Bach's music is the only argument proving the creation of the Universe can not be regarded a complete failure".^[15]

William H. Gass called Cioran's work "a philosophical romance on modern themes of alienation, absurdity, boredom, futility, decay, the tyranny of history, the vulgarities of change, awareness as an 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 adoptive language was rarely as harsh as his use of Romanian, while the latter offered resources of originality in tone.

[edit] Manuscripts

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 unedited work.

[edit] Major works

[edit] 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

[edit] 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
• Écartelèment (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 (English translation published April 3, 2006, only to be released in 2007)

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Z. Ornea, Anii treizeci. Extrema dreaptă românească, Ed. Fundaţiei Culturale Române, Bucharest, 1995

[edit] External links

• Planet Cioran - Extensive multilingual linkspage.
• To Infinity And Beyond - Spike Magazine's overview of the work of Cioran.