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Feature [published November 1997]
E.M. Cioran: To Infinity And Beyond
Stephen Mitchelmore explains why the writing of E.M. Cioran
refuses explanation
“Nothing is more irritating than those works which
‘co-ordinate’ the luxuriant products of a mind that has
focused on just about everything except a system.”
What is there to know about Emile Cioran? He was
born in Romania, in 1911, the son of a Greek Orthodox
priest. In adolescence, he lost his childhood in the country
and was moved to the city. He also lost his religion.
For years he didn’t sleep – until he took up cycling. He
passed sleepless nights wandering the dodgy streets of
an obscure Romanian city. In 1937 he moved to Paris
and wrote, producing what are generally classified as
‘aphorisms’, collected together under such titles as The
Temptation To Exist, A Short History Of Decay and The
Trouble With Being Born. He knew Samuel Beckett,
who eventually lost sympathy with his pessimism. Late
in life he gave up writing, not wanting to “slander the
universe” anymore, and died a few years later after an
encounter with an over-excited dog.
I hope none of this helps.
Cioran’s sentences are of little or no help. That is
their worth. Just think of the aphorisms; each sentence
has the company of only one or two others. The gaps
BUY E.M. Cioran books online from and
between groups of sentences appear like sands of the
desert encroaching on an oasis. Or is it the other way
around? That the answer is so unclear is the worth of
Cioran’s sentences.
His aphorisms are unlike the smug, bourgeois exponents
of the 19th century. They open wounds. Still,
Cioran is not studied. This is the academic orthodoxy.
And that’s fine. Scholars read texts like drivers read
diversion signs. La Rochefoucauld 20 miles, Nietzsche
40, Existentialism, forever. Alternatively, just
read the sentences.
“…lyricism represents a dispersal of subjectivity.”
The end of a sentence in this case; a place of especial
elation and despair. (The want of elation and despair
generating their presence in the vertiginous lack which
is the peculiarity of consciousness. Reading is like consciousness
in that nothing happens. ) Cioran is lyrical.
His style is a variant on song. At the same time he is a
writer of solitude and subjectivity. This last word has
gained a pejorative meaning lately, akin to solipsism,
selfishness, ignorance, certainly ‘untruth’. But let us
wrest it back for as long as we can. Subjectivity is the
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