Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran | |
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Resinár, Austria-Hungary (modern-day Rășinari, Romania) | |
Died | 20 June 1995 Paris, France | (aged 84)
Nationality | Romanian; stateless after 1948, when Romania became a communist country |
Alma mater |
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Partner | Simone Boué |
Awards |
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Region | |
School | |
Main interests | aesthetics, antinatalism, ethics, hagiography, literary criticism, music, nihilism, poetry, religion, suicide |
Signature | |
Emil Mihai Cioran (Romanian: [eˈmil tʃoˈran] ⓘ, French: [emil sjɔʁɑ̃]; 8 April 1911 – 20 June 1995) was a Romanian philosopher, aphorist and essayist, who published works in both Romanian and French. His work has been noted for its pervasive philosophical pessimism, style, and aphorisms. His works frequently engaged with issues of suffering, decay, and nihilism. In 1937, Cioran moved to the Latin Quarter of Paris, which became his permanent residence, wherein he lived in seclusion with his partner, Simone Boué, until his death in 1995.
Early life
Cioran was born in Resinár, Szeben County, Kingdom of Hungary (today Rășinari, Sibiu County, Romania).[1] His father, Emilian Cioran, was an Orthodox priest, and his mother, Elvira, was the head of the Christian Women's League.[2]
At 10, Cioran moved to Sibiu to attend school, and at 17, he was enrolled in the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy at the University of Bucharest, where he met Eugène Ionesco and Mircea Eliade, who became his friends.[1] Future Romanian philosopher Constantin Noica and future Romanian thinker Petre Țuțea became his closest academic colleagues; all three studied under Tudor Vianu and Nae Ionescu. Cioran, Eliade, and Țuțea became supporters of Ionescu's ideas, known as Trăirism.[citation needed]
Cioran had a good command of
From the age of 20, Cioran began to suffer from insomnia, a condition which he suffered from for the rest of his life, and permeated his writings.[4] Cioran's decision to write about his experiences in his first book, On the Heights of Despair, came from an episode of insomnia.[5]
Career
Berlin and Romania
In 1933, he received a scholarship to the
Cioran's first book, Pe culmile disperării (literally translated: "On the Heights of Despair"), was published 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 It was awarded the Commission's Prize and the Young Writers Prize for one of the best books written by an unpublished young writer. Regardless, Cioran later spoke negatively of it, saying "it is a very poorly written book, without any style."[10]
Successively, The Book of Delusions (1935), The Transfiguration of Romania (1936) and Tears and Saints (1937) were also published in Romania. Tears and Saints was "incredibly poorly received", and after it was published, Cioran's mother wrote him asking him to retract the book because it was causing her public embarrassment.[11]
Although Cioran was never a member of the group, it was during this time in Romania that he began taking an interest in the ideas put forth by the
Cioran revised The Transfiguration of Romania heavily in its second edition released in the 1990s, eliminating numerous passages he considered
His early call for
France
After returning from Berlin in 1936, Cioran taught philosophy at the Andrei Șaguna High School in Brașov for a year. His classes were marked by confusion and he quit in a year.
In 1937, he first applied for a fellowship at the Spanish Embassy in Bucharest but then the Spanish Civil War started. Then he left for Paris with a scholarship from the French Institute branch in Bucharest, which was then prolonged until 1944. He was supposedly working towards a doctoral thesis in the Sorbonne University, but he had no intention to actually work towards it, as the identity of being a student gave him access to cheap meals at the university cafeteria. This he continued until 1951 when a law passed that forbade enrollment of students older than 27.[21]
After a short stay in his home country (November 1940 – February 1941), Cioran never returned again.
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", saying, "I found out then [...] what it means to be carried by the wave without the faintest trace of conviction. [...] I am now immune to it".[24]
Cioran started writing The Passionate Handbook in 1940 and finished it by 1945. It was the last book he wrote in
In 1942, Cioran met Simone Boué, another insomniac, whom he lived with for the rest of his life. Cioran kept their relationship entirely private, and never spoke of his relationship with Boué in his writings or interviews.[27]
In 1949, his first French book,
Later life and death
The
In 1995, Cioran died of Alzheimer's disease[30] and was buried at the Montparnasse Cemetery.[1]
Major themes and style
Professing a lack of interest in conventional philosophy in his early youth, Cioran dismissed abstract speculation in favor of personal reflection and passionate lyricism. "I invented nothing. I've been the one and only secretary of my own sensations", he later said.[31][32]
Aphorisms make up a large portion of Cioran's bibliography, and some of his books, such as The Trouble with Being Born, are composed entirely of aphorisms. Speaking about this decision, Cioran said:
I only write this kind of stuff, because explaining bores me terribly. That's why I say when I've written aphorisms it's that I've sunk back into fatigue, why bother. And so, the aphorism is scorned by "serious" people, the professors look down upon it. When they read a book of aphorisms, they say, "Oh, look what this fellow said ten pages back, now he's saying the contrary. He's not serious." Me, I can put two aphorisms that are contradictory right next to each other. Aphorisms are also momentary truths. They're not decrees. And I could tell you in nearly every case why I wrote this or that phrase, and when. It's always set in motion by an encounter, an incident, a fit of temper, but they all have a cause. It's not at all gratuitous.[33]
Philosophical 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).[34]
His works often depict an atmosphere of torment, a state that Cioran himself experienced, and came to be dominated by lyricism and, often, the expression of intense and even violent feeling. The books he wrote in Romanian especially display this latter characteristic. Preoccupied with the problems 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?" in On the Heights of Despair.[35]
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 "Decadent movement". 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.[citation needed]
Regarding
William H. Gass called Cioran's The Temptation to Exist "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".[38]
According to Susan Sontag, Cioran's subject is "on being a mind, a consciousness tuned to the highest pitch of refinement" and "[i]n Cioran's writings... the mind is a voyeur. But not upon 'the world.' Upon itself. Cioran is, to a degree reminiscent of Beckett, concerned with the absolute integrity of thought. That is, with the reduction or circumscription of thought to thinking about thinking."[39]: 80
Cioran became most famous while writing not in Romanian but French, a language with which he had struggled since his youth. During Cioran's lifetime, Saint-John Perse called him "the greatest French writer to honor our language since the death of Paul Valéry."[40] Cioran's tone and usage in his adopted language were seldom as harsh as in Romanian (though his use of Romanian is said to be more original).[citation needed]
Legacy
After the death of Cioran's long-term companion, Simone Boué, a collection of Cioran's manuscripts (over 30 notebooks) were found in the couple's apartment by a manager who tried to auction them in 2005. A decision taken by the Court of Appeal of Paris stopped the commercial sale of the collection. However, in March 2011, the Court of Appeal ruled that the seller was the legitimate owner of the manuscripts. The manuscripts were purchased by Romanian businessman George Brăiloiu for €405,000.[41]
An aged Cioran is the main character in a play by Romanian dramatist-actor
Susan Sontag was a great admirer of Cioran, calling him "one of the most delicate minds of real power writing today."[39]: 82 She wrote an essay on his work that served as the introduction to the English translation of The Temptation to Exist, published in 1967. The essay was included in Sontag's 1969 collection Styles of Radical Will.
Under the rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu, Cioran's works were banned.[25] In 1974, Francoist Spain banned The Evil Demiurge for being "atheist, blasphemous, and anti-Christian", which Cioran considered "one of the greatest jokes in his absurd existence."[1]
American electronic musician Oneohtrix Point Never named a song for Emil on their 2009 release Zones Without People.[45]
Danish neofolk musician Kim Larsen re-enacted Cioran's choking arms photograph on the cover of the 2021 album Your Love Can't Hold This Wreath of Sorrow.
In the 2023 Mexican/US English-language film Rotting in the Sun actor and character (and director) Sebastián Silva is seen reading Cioran's book, The Trouble with Being Born, at the beach and quotes passages from it.
Major works
Romanian
- Pe culmile disperării (translated "On the Heights of Despair"), Editura "Fundația pentru Literatură și Artă", Bucharest 1934
- Cartea amăgirilor ("The Book of Delusions"), Bucharest 1936
- Schimbarea la față a României ("The Transfiguration of Romania"), Bucharest 1936
- Lacrimi și Sfinți ("Tears and Saints"), "Editura autorului" 1937
- Îndreptar pătimaș ("The Passionate Handbook"), Humanitas, Bucharest 1991
French
All of Cioran's major works in French have been translated into English by Richard Howard.
- Précis de décomposition ("Gallimard1949
- Syllogismes de l'amertume (tr. "All Gall Is Divided"), Gallimard 1952
- La Tentation d'exister ("The Temptation to Exist"), Gallimard 1956 | English edition: ISBN 978-0-226-10675-5
- Histoire et utopie ("History and Utopia"), Gallimard 1960
- La Chute dans le temps ("The Fall into Time"), Gallimard 1964
- Le Mauvais démiurge (literally The Evil 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")
- Œuvres (Collected works), Gallimard-Quatro 1995
- Mon pays/Țara mea ("My country", written in French, the book was first published in Romania in a bilingual volume), Humanitas, Bucharest, 1996
- Cahiers 1957–1972 ("Notebooks"), Gallimard 1997
- Des larmes et des saints, ISBN 978-0-226-10672-4
- Sur les cimes du désespoir, ISBN 978-0-226-10670-0
- 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 photographs).
See also
- Antinatalism
- Diogenes of Sinope
- French moralists
- Misanthropy
- Philosophical pessimism
- Romanian philosophy
Notes
- ^ a b c d "Obituary: Emil Cioran". The Independent. 23 October 2011. Retrieved 22 March 2021.
- ^ Cioran, Emil (1996). On the Heights of Despair. p. 13.
- ^ S2CID 170571716– via JSTOR.
- S2CID 170780097– via JSTOR.
- S2CID 170780097– via JSTOR.
- ^ Cioran, 1933, in Ornea, p.191
- ^ Cioran, 1934, in Ornea, p.192
- ^ Cioran, 1933, in Ornea, p.190
- ^ Cioran, 1936, in Ornea, p.192
- JSTOR 40548762– via JSTOR.
- JSTOR 40548762– via JSTOR.
- ^ Acquisto, Joseph (2015). The Fall out of Redemption: Writing and Thinking Beyond Salvation in Baudelaire, Cioran, Fondane, Agamben, and Nancy. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 142.
- ^ Ornea, p.40
- ^ Ornea, p.50-52, 98
- ^ Cioran, in Ornea, p.98
- ^ Ornea, p.127, 130, 137–141
- ^ Cioran, 1934, in Ornea, p.127
- ^ Cioran, 1936, in Ornea, p. 141
- ^ Crainic, 1937, in Ornea, p.143
- ^ Ornea, pp. 143–144
- ^ "The Philosopher of Failure: Emil Cioran's Heights of Despair". Los Angeles Review of Books. 28 November 2016. Retrieved 14 March 2024.
- S2CID 146282921– via JSTOR.
- ^ Cioran, 1940, in Ornea, p.197
- ^ Cioran, 1972, in Ornea, p.198
- ^ a b Pace, Eric (22 June 1995). "E. M. Cioran, 84, Novelist And Philosopher of Despair". The New York Times. The New York Times. Retrieved 13 September 2020.
- ^ Cioran, Emil (1998). The Trouble with Being Born. Arcade Publishing. p. 62.
- S2CID 170571716– via JSTOR.
- S2CID 170780097– via JSTOR.
- ^ A Short History of Decay, p. ix.
- ^ Bradatan, Costica (28 November 2016). "The Philosopher of Failure: Emil Cioran's Heights of Despair". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 8 January 2018.
- ^ Kirkup, James (24 June 1995). "Obituary: Emil Cioran". The Independent. Retrieved 23 March 2020.
- ^ Drawn and Quartered, p. 148.
- ^ "E.M. Cioran". Itineraries of a Hummingbird.
- ISBN 9781587292491.
I'm simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously?.
- ^ Cioran, Emil (1992). On the Heights of Despair. University of Chicago Press. p. 106.
- ^ Cioran, 4 December 1989, in Newsweek
- S2CID 170571716– via JSTOR.
- ISSN 0028-7504. Retrieved 28 September 2022.
- ^ ISBN 978-0312420215.
- ^ Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston, Searching for Cioran (Indiana University Press), p.6
- ^ "Manuscripts by Romanian Philosopher Cioran Fetch €400,000". Balkan Insight. 8 April 2011. Retrieved 22 March 2021.
- ^ a b c (in Romanian) "Teatru românesc în Luxemburg", at HotNews.ro; retrieved 15 November 2007
- ^ a b Ioan T. Morar, "Cronică de lângă teatre. A făcut Emil Cioran karate?", in Academia Cațavencu, 45/2007, p.30
- ^ (in Romanian) Membrii post-mortem al Academiei Române, at the Romanian Academy site
- ^ "Zones Without People".
References
- OCLC 33346781.
- ISBN 978-0312420215.
- Wampole, Christy. (2012) "Cioran's Providential Bicycle." Revista Transilvania, January, pp. 51–54.
External links
- Cioran.eu – Project Cioran: texts, interviews, multimedia, links.
- E. M. Cioran on Samuel Beckett The website states that: "Scattered throughout the one thousand pages of Cioran's Cahiers 1957–1972 are many intriguing remarks about Beckett and his work, of which the following are among the more memorable."
- The Book of Delusions [Cartea amăgirilor] (chapter 5), translated with an introduction by Camelia Elias. Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics, Vol. V, Issue 1, MAY 2010.
- Isabela Vasiliu-Scraba, Ideas- a variable background in Cioran-s writing