I like thought which preserves a whiff of flesh and blood, and I prefer a thousand times an idea rising from sexual tension or nervous depression to empty abstraction. In 1937, Cioran went to Paris with a grant from the French Institute in Bucharest and after 1940, he moved there and began writing only in French. In 1949 Gallimard, the publishing company that came to publish the majority of his books published his first French book, “A Short History of Decay”. In 1950, the book won the Rivarol Prize. Self-conscious rejection of the absolute is the best way to resist God; thus illusion, the substance of life, is saved. The sphere of consciousness shrinks in action; no one who acts can lay claim to the universal, for to act is to cling to the properties of being at the expense of being itself, to form a reality to reality's detriment. aesthetics, antinatalism, ethics, hagiography, literary criticism, music, nihilism, poetry, religion, suicide

Acquisto, Joseph (2015). The Fall out of Redemption: Writing and Thinking Beyond Salvation in Baudelaire, Cioran, Fondane, Agamben, and Nancy. Bloomsbury Academic. p.142.In this sense, Cioran’s work is an endlessly circling meditation on that “dark night of the soul,” of a world emptied of idols. It is a study of caducity and a dogged reflection on the world’s failure to meet our measure. Still, even despite my shortcomings, I suspect that Cioran simply gives the world’s idols too much credit because in those rare moments when my indirections cease, when I stop ventriloquizing my gods, and a divine silence settles, I always still here my children calling.

Compared to the refined culture of sclerotic forms and frames, which mask everything, the lyrical mode is utterly barbarian in its expression. Its value resides precisely in its savage quality: it is only blood, sincerity, and fire. One of the biggest paradoxes of our world: memories vanish when we want to remember, but fix themselves permanently in the mind when we want to forget. His major works includes book such as The Book of Delusions (1936), Tears and Saints (1937), The Temptation to Exist (1956), History and Utopia (1960), The fall into Time (1964), The Trouble With Being Born (1973), Anathemas and Admirations (1986-1987), The Passionate Handbook (1991). Regier, Willis (2004). "Cioran's Insomnia". MLN. 119 (5): 994–1012. doi: 10.1353/mln.2005.0018. JSTOR 3251887. S2CID 170780097– via JSTOR.I live only because it is in my power to die when I choose to: without the idea of suicide, I'd have killed myself right away. After having struggled madly to solve all problems, after having suffered on the heights of despair, in the supreme hour of revelation, you will find that the only answer, the only reality, is silence (123). 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. We are so lonely in life that we must ask ourselves if the loneliness of dying is not a symbol of our human existence.

True confessions are written with tears only. But my tears would drown the world, as my inner fire would reduce it to ashes. Never to have occasion to take a position, to make up one's mind, or to define oneself — there is no wish I make more often. His early call for modernization was, however, hard to reconcile with the traditionalism of the Iron Guard. [16] In 1934, he wrote, "I find that in Romania the sole fertile, creative, and invigorating nationalism can only be one which does not just dismiss tradition, but also denies and defeats it". [17] 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."), [18] which led to criticism from 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"), [19] as well as from various Iron Guard papers. [20] France [ edit ] Portrait of Cioran The only interesting philosophers are the ones who have stopped thinking and have begun to search for happiness. The skepticism which fails to contribute to the ruin of our health is merely an intellectual exercise.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." [38] 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 [ edit ] I don't need any support, advice, or compassion, because even if I am the most ruinous man, I still feel so powerful, so strong and fierce. For I am the only one that lives without hope. The poor maidservant who used to say that she only believed in God when she had a toothache puts all theologians to shame. Detachment from the world as an attachment to the ego... Who can realize the detachment in which you are as far away from yourself as you are from the world?

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 cannot be regarded as a complete failure". [35] Cioran went on to say "Bach, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche are the only arguments against monotheism." [36] In 2003, the Project Cioran was started; its aim is to promote the study of the life, work and influence of Cioran. Everything is possible, and yet nothing is. All is permitted, and yet again, nothing. No matter which way we go, it is no better than any other. It is all the same whether you achieve something or not, have faith or not, just as it is all the same whether you cry or remain silent. There is an explanation for everything, and yet there is none. Everything is both real and unreal, normal and absurd, splendid and insipid. There is nothing worth more than anything else, nor any idea better than any other. Why grow sad from one’s sadness and delight in one’s joy? What does it matter whether our tears come from pleasure or pain? Love your unhappiness and hate your happiness, mix everything up, scramble it all! Be a snowflake dancing in the air, a flower floating downstream! Have courage when you don’t need to, and be a coward when you must be brave! Who knows? You may still be a winner! And if you lose, does it really matter? Is there anything to win in this world? All gain is a loss, and all loss is a gain. Why always expect a definite stance, clear ideas, meaningful words? I feel as if I should spout fire in response to all the questions which were ever put, or not put, to me.” Although Cioran focuses on negative emotions and gives contrarian opinions, he also considers certain positive emotions and expresses more conventional views rejecting certain negative states, although these rejections have an anti-Christian content. Innocence and grace are described as positive states, although Cioran's grace is more secular and aesthetic, as opposed to the religious sense of the English word. [7] Although he praises the heightened emotions which suffering can induce, Cioran explicitly rejects poverty and suffering themselves as purely destructive states which have none of the nobility or catharsis which Christianity confers upon them.The only minds which seduce us are the minds which have destroyed themselves trying to give their life a meaning. In 1933, he published his first book entitled “On the Heights of Despair”, which won the Prize of the Royal Academy for young writers. It was the first of only two literary prizes that Cioran did not reject. Read romania-insider.com's review of Cioran's 'On the heights if despair' here. 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". [37]