On the Heights of Despair

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In Romania in the 1960s and 1970s, Cioran was a mysterious, almost mythological, presence. One would hear that such a person existed, but it was impossible to read him. His French books were neither sold nor published in translation, and his Romanian books had disappeared without a trace. Although he had departed his homeland some ten years before the war and the communist takeover, he was as invisible as the most unspeakable, or un-nameable, of non-persons. The present book is the first translation of Cioran from his native language into English, mastered by Ilinca Zarifopol Johnston, a graduate of the University of Bucharest in 1975, majoring in English and German. Her senior thesis "Speech Acts of Permission in English" was awarded the first prize of the Romanian National Student Scientific Colloquium for 1976. After official interventions on her behalf by nearly a dozen U.S. Congressmen and Senators, she was allowed to emigrate to the United States in 1977.

a b Regier, Willis (2005). "Cioran's Nietzsche". French Forum. 30 (3): 76. doi: 10.1353/frf.2006.0012. JSTOR 40552402. S2CID 170571716– via JSTOR.

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 1995, Cioran died of Alzheimer's disease [29] and was buried at the Montparnasse Cemetery. [1] Major themes and style [ edit ] 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. Good health is the best weapon against religion. Healthy bodies and healthy minds have never been shaken by religious fears. Emil Cioran was a Romanian philosopher and essayist who became famous for his finely crafted essays and aphorisms dealing with alienation, boredom, futility and the decay of civilization. His works helped him become one of the greatest nihilistic philosophers of the 20th century.

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 ] Whether or not there exists a solution to problems troubles only a minority; that the emotions have no outcome, lead to nothing, vanish into themselves — that is the great unconscious drama, the affective insolubility everyone suffers without even thinking about it. The skepticism which fails to contribute to the ruin of our health is merely an intellectual exercise.

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A harmonious being cannot believe in God. Saints, criminals, and paupers have launched him, making him available to all unhappy people. I don't understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn't it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this 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] Man should stop being—or becoming—a rational animal. He should become a lunatic, risking everything for the sake of his dangerous fantasies, capable of exaltations, ready to die for all that the world has as well as what it has not. [5]

We replace God as best we can; for every god is good, provided he perpetuates in eternity our desire for a crucial solitude. . . .The more one is obsessed with God, the less one is innocent. Nobody bothered about him in paradise. The fall brought about this divine torture. It's not possible to be conscious of divinity without guilt. Thus God is rarely to be found in an innocent soul. Emil Cioran died on June 20, 1995 at the age of 84. He was buried in Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris, alongside other famous Romanian artists such as Constantin Brancusi and Eugen Ionescu. The same year Gallimard paid him homage by publishing his complete works in a single volume, "Oeuvres" ("Works").