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Emile Cioran Biography

Émile Cioran

(Émile or Emil Michel Cioran; Rasinari, 1911-Paris, 1995) French philosopher of Romanian origin whose thinking is characterized by extreme pessimism and nihilism.The son of a rural priest, he studied philosophy in Bucharest, where he became friends with Eugène Ionesco and Mircea Eliade; his doctoral thesis dealt with Henri Bergson, in a few years in which he assimilated influences from Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.Later he traveled to Germany and was for a short time professor of philosophy in Brasov.In 1937 he obtained a scholarship from the French Institute of Bucharest and went to Paris, where, with some absence, he lived until his death.

Émile Cioran

He began writing in his country and in France in the Romanian language, and early composed some books anticipating his marked pessimistic and challenging attitude to ideologies and social conventions, such as En las cimas de la desparación (1934) , The book of chimeras (1936), Of tears and saints (1937), The decline of thought (1940) and Breviary of the vanquished (written during the Nazi occupation of Paris).The first had a great reception, but the third caused a strong scandal, which consolidated his decision to stay in Paris.

In 1946 he renounced his nationality and declared himself stateless.In 1947, while translating Stéphane Mallarmé into Romanian, he decided to adopt French as the language of expression. Breviary of rottenness (1949) will be his first text written in French, as a challenge to his roots and the affectivity that is linked to them and to the language.

His essay production is immense, resolved in numerous cases through aphorism and paradox, which gave him the freedom to argue without needing a system to do so, lash out and expose his opinions and analysis.His many books include Silogismos de la amargura (1952), The temptation to exist (1956), The fall in time (1964) , Of the inconvenience of being born (1973).Each one of them is a furious attack on ideologies, religions and philosophies created by human beings to justify their behavior.

His life and his work, inseparable, are located on the periphery of the established, outside of any conventionalism.Thus, he renounced the term "philosopher", adopting that of "organic thinker", according to which, every lived event, physical or intellectual, is used to mold a conceptual body.His style escapes from the usual formal rigor of philosophers, acquiring freer and more literary, even poetic ways.

His work arises from a negative inner impulse, the result of an awareness of the nonsense of existence and a desire to oppose it through the therapeutic exercise of writing.In his texts, Émile Cioran is convinced of the intrinsically evil nature of humanity, and takes pleasure in recreating the dark side of it, in order to draw conclusions that are not at all reassuring.In his later days he embraced Buddhism.

Book by book, E.M.Cioran affirmed his nihilistic and marginal personality, which, however, grew in popularity.With his radical freedom of thought (which also governed his personal life, as well as asceticism and mocking attitude towards everything around him), Cioran is one of the most creative and original thinkers of the 20th century, much as for his contempt and amusement was often described as heretic, provocateur, "esthete of despair" or "courtier of the void," because of his bitterness and corrosive vision.On the other hand, he called himself a "man without a biography" and applied other equally mocking considerations.Other works of his are Exercises in admiration (1986) and The twilight of thought (1991).

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