Emil Cioran (8 April 1911 20 June 1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist Emil M.

. Cioran was born in Fgra, Braov County, which was part of Austria-Hungary at the time. His father, Emilian Cioran, was an agnostic priest, while his mother, Elvira Cioran (born Comaniciu), was originally from Vinu de Jos, a commune near Fgra. Cioran's house in Rinari After studying humanities at the Gheorghe Lazr High School in Sibiu (Hermannstadt), Cioran, aged 17, started to study philosophy at the University of Bucharest. Upon his entrance into the University, he met Eugne Ionesco and Mircea Eliade, the three of them becoming lifelong friends. Future Romanian philosopher Constantin Noica and future Romanian thinker Petre uea, became his closest colleagues for they all had Tudor Vianu and Nae Ionescu as their professors. Cioran, Eliade, and uea became supporters of the ideas that their philosophy professor, Nae Ionescu, had become a fervent advocate of a tendency deemed [Trirism[1]], which fused Existentialism with ideas common in various forms of Fascism. Cioran had 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 Ciorans central system of thought. He then graduated with a thesis on Henri Bergson (however, Cioran later rejected Bergson, claiming the latter did not comprehend the tragedy of life). Career: 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 to Vremea dealing with the topic (in which Cioran confessed that "there is no present-day politician that I see as more sympathetic and admirable 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 to today's Romania".[4] Ciorans first book, On the Heights of Despair (more accurately translated: "On the Summits of Despair"), was published in Romania in 1934. It was awarded the Commissions Prize and the Young Writers Prize for one of the best books written by an unpublished 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 titles have yet to be translated into English). 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 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 revised The Transfiguration of Romania heavily in its second edition released in the 1990s, eliminating numerous passages he considered extremist or "pretentious and stupid". In its original form, the book expressed sympathy for totalitarianism,[5] a view 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 Transfiguration. His early call for modernization was, however, hard to reconcile with the traditionalism of the Iron Guard.[8] 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".[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 from the far right Gndirea (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. France 21 rue de l'Odon (red point) from Coasta Boacii to the Rue de l'Odon After coming back from Berlin (1936), Cioran taught philosophy at the "Andrei aguna" high school in Braov 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 returned again. This last period in Romania was the one in which he exhibited a closer relationship with the Iron Guard, which had, by then, taken power (see National Legionary State) on 28 November, 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 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 it".[14] In 1940, he started writing The Passionate Handbook, and finished it by 1945. It was to be the last book that he would write in Romanian, although not the last to deal with pessimism and misanthropy through delicate and lyrical aphorisms. From this point on 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). The tomb of Cioran and Simone Bou In 1949 his first French book, A Short History of Decay, was published by Gallimard and was awarded the Rivarol Prize in 1950. Later on, Cioran refused every literary prize with which he was presented.

The Latin Quarter of Paris became Ciorans 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, Eugne Ionesco, Paul Celan, Samuel Beckett, and Henri Michaux. He is buried at the Montparnasse Cemetery. Major works:

Pe culmile disperrii (literally On the Summits of Despair; translated "On the Heights of Despair"), Editura "Fundaia pentru Literatur i Art", Bucharest 1934 Cartea amgirilor ("The Book of Delusions), Bucharest 1936 Schimbarea la fa a Romniei ("The Transfiguration of Romania), Bucharest 1936 Lacrimi i Sfini ("Tears and Saints"), "Editura autorului" 1937 ndreptar ptima ("The Passionate Handbook), Humanitas, Bucharest 1991 Mon pays/ara mea ("My country, written in French, the book was first published in Romania in a bilingual volume), Humanitas, Bucharest, 1996 Prcis de dcomposition ("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 | Histoire et utopie ("History and Utopia"), Gallimard 1960 La chute dans le temps ("The Fall into Time"), Gallimard 1964 Le mauvais dmiurge (literally The Evil Demiurge; tr. "The New Gods"), Gallimard 1969 De l'inconvnient d'tre n ("The Trouble With Being Born"), Gallimard 1973 cartlement (tr. "Drawn and Quartered"), Gallimard 1979 Exercices d'admiration 1986, and Aveux et anathmes 1987 (tr. and grouped as "Anathemas and Admirations") Cahiers ("Notebooks"), Gallimard 1997 uvres (Collected works), Gallimard-Quatro 1995 Des larmes et des saints , L'Herne | English edition: Sur les cimes du dsespoir, L'Herne, | English edition: Le crpuscule des penses, L'Herne, Jadis et nagure, L'Herne Valry face ses idoles, L'Herne, 1970, 2006 De la France, LHerne, 2009 Transfiguration de la Roumanie, LHerne, 2009 Cahier Cioran, LHerne, 2009 (Several unpublished documents, letters and photographies).