Biography of Emil Cioran

The temptation to exist

April 8, 1911
June 20, 1995
Philosopher and essayist, undisputed master of the aphorism that has entrusted all his thoughts (composing an opera so fragmented as it is fascinating), this Solitaire Romanian was born on April 8, 1911 in Rasinari (Sibiu) in Transylvania. The son of an Orthodox priest and the President of the local Association of orthodox women, graduated from the University of Bucharest with a thesis on Bergson. He began teaching at high schools in Brasov and Sibiu: experience you will remember as catastrophic.
His first book, which marks the literary debut of his inner torment, is "at the height of despair" composed back in 1934. Follow "the book of flattery" in 1936 and "The Transfiguration of Romania" in 1937. In the same year he won a scholarship which he went to Paris ("the only city in the world where you could be poor without shame, without complications, without drama ... the ideal city to be a failure") whence he shall return no more to his homeland.
Before leaving for France at its own cost public "Tears and saints". In 1940 he published his last book in Romanian "dark thoughts": from now on will write only in French ("suitable language for the laconic reply, the definition, the formula ..."). Of 1949 's "Summary of decomposition" where vitalism and rebellion that cropped up earlier writings give way to the cancellation total skepticism and absolutely impossible to believe and hope. In 1952 released "Syllogisms of bitterness" collection of corrosive aphorisms, as of 1956 is one of his most enduring achievements, success perhaps facilitated by the suggestive title, "the temptation to exist". In 1960 processes instead "history and utopia" which underlines how any utopian dream based on a supposed golden age, be it past or future, you always can unleash forces liberticide. Of 1964 's "the fall into time" whose last seven pages-declares in an interview--"are the most serious thing I've written." In "the fatal demiurge" of 1969, explores and clarifies its link with the tradition of Gnostic thought while talking "the inconvenience of being born" (written 1973), among the books he has always claimed to love more, his art philosophical fragment capable of piercing the veil of things and emotions reaches one of its highest peaks. The existential wisdom of Cioran is, moreover, increasingly analytical and despairing dig look at the world, arriving to a nihilism that has no borders and which goes beyond the same philosophical horizon to get refusal form of reality and existence.
Records show this the next "Knacker" (1979), in which one can see its ties with the Gnostic thought and Eastern, seen as the only truly authentic approach to reality. Of 1986 's "exercises of admiration", collection of portraits of famous personalities of international culture (from Ceronetti to Eliade to Borges) but containing mainly a large essay on Joseph de Maistre. In 1987 he published "confessions and anathemas," "... book-Testament, which testifies to a total break time and a certain serenity founded on nothing." Emil Cioran died in Paris on June 20, 1995.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.