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Caiete III: 1969–1972
Vreme de cincisprezece ani (1969–1972), Cioran a umplut treizeci şi patru de caiete cu însemnări. Ele au fost găsite după moartea autorului de Simone Boué, prietena sa de o viaţă, şi au fost publicate, în 1997, la Gallimard. Nu avem de-a face cu un jurnal propriu-zis, deşi numeroase însemnări sunt datate. Ne găsim mai degrabă în faţa unui „laborator" de încercări pentru cărţi ulterioare. Oricum, se regăsesc în aceste Caiete toate obsesiile şi toate imprecaţiile lui Cioran, toate furiile şi toate regretele sale, exprimate într-un stil a cărui exactitate nu e cu nimic mai prejos de aceea pe care o cunoaştem din eseuri şi aforisme. Câteva „personaje“ revin frecvent în însemnări: Ionesco, Michaux, Beckett sau Noica îl determină pe acest mizantrop să-şi dezvăluie nebănuitele resurse de prietenie; altele, anonime sau desemnate doar prin iniţiale, îi provoacă obişnuitele răbufniri de sarcasm. Nu altă voce răzbate, aşadar, din aceste Caiete, ci modulaţiile glasului inconfundabil al ultimului moralist al veacului trecut.
Ediţia Humanitas a Caietelor lui Cioran apare în trei volume.
Ediţia Humanitas a Caietelor lui Cioran apare în trei volume.
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First published January 1, 1997
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About the author
Emil M. Cioran
179 books4,332 followersBorn in 1911 in Rășinari, a small village in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania, raised under the rule of a father who was a Romanian Orthodox priest and a mother who was prone to depression, Emil Cioran wrote his first five books in Romanian. Some of these are collections of brief essays (one or two pages, on average); others are collections of aphorisms. Suffering from insomnia since his adolescent years in Sibiu, the young Cioran studied philosophy in the “little Paris” of Bucarest.
A prolific publicist, he became a well-known figure, along with Mircea Eliade, Constantin Noïca, and his future close friend Eugene Ionesco (with whom he shared the Royal Foundation’s Young Writers Prize in 1934 for his first book, On the Heights of Despair).
Influenced by the German romantics, by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and the Lebensphilosophie of Schelling and Bergson, by certain Russian writers, including Chestov, Rozanov, and Dostoyevsky, and by the Romanian poet Eminescu, Cioran wrote lyrical and expansive meditations that were often metaphysical in nature and whose recurrent themes were death, despair, solitude, history, music, saintliness and the mystics (cf. Tears and Saints, 1937) – all of which are themes that one finds again in his French writings. In his highly controversial book, The Transfiguration of Romania (1937), Cioran, who was at that time close to the Romanian fascists, violently criticized his country and his compatriots on the basis of a contrast between such “little nations” as Romania, which were contemptible from the perspective of universal history and great nations, such as France or Germany, which took their destiny into their own hands.
After spending two years in Germany, Cioran arrived in Paris in 1936. He continued to write in Romanian until the early 1940s (he wrote his last article in Romanian in 1943, which is also the year in which he began writing in French). The break with Romanian became definitive in 1946, when, in the course of translating Mallarmé, he suddenly decided to give up his native tongue since no one spoke it in Paris. He then began writing in French a book that, thanks to numerous intensive revisions, would eventually become the impressive 'A Short History of Decay' (1949) -- the first of a series of ten books in which Cioran would continue to explore his perennial obsessions, with a growing detachment that allies him equally with the Greek sophists, the French moralists, and the oriental sages. He wrote existential vituperations and other destructive reflections in a classical French style that he felt was diametrically opposed to the looseness of his native Romanian; he described it as being like a “straight-jacket” that required him to control his temperamental excesses and his lyrical flights. The books in which he expressed his radical disillusionment appeared, with decreasing frequency, over a period of more than three decades, during which time he shared his solitude with his companion Simone Boué in a miniscule garret in the center of Paris, where he lived as a spectator more and more turned in on himself and maintaining an ever greater distance from a world that he rejected as much on the historical level (History and Utopia, 1960) as on the ontological (The Fall into Time, 1964), raising his misanthropy to heights of subtlety (The Trouble with being Born, 1973), while also allowing to appear from time to time a humanism composed of irony, bitterness, and preciosity (Exercices d’admiration, 1986, and the posthumously published Notebooks).
Denied the right to return to Romania during the years of the communist regime, and attracting international attention only late in his career, Cioran died in Paris in 1995.
Nicolas Cavaillès
Translated by Thomas Cousineau
A prolific publicist, he became a well-known figure, along with Mircea Eliade, Constantin Noïca, and his future close friend Eugene Ionesco (with whom he shared the Royal Foundation’s Young Writers Prize in 1934 for his first book, On the Heights of Despair).
Influenced by the German romantics, by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and the Lebensphilosophie of Schelling and Bergson, by certain Russian writers, including Chestov, Rozanov, and Dostoyevsky, and by the Romanian poet Eminescu, Cioran wrote lyrical and expansive meditations that were often metaphysical in nature and whose recurrent themes were death, despair, solitude, history, music, saintliness and the mystics (cf. Tears and Saints, 1937) – all of which are themes that one finds again in his French writings. In his highly controversial book, The Transfiguration of Romania (1937), Cioran, who was at that time close to the Romanian fascists, violently criticized his country and his compatriots on the basis of a contrast between such “little nations” as Romania, which were contemptible from the perspective of universal history and great nations, such as France or Germany, which took their destiny into their own hands.
After spending two years in Germany, Cioran arrived in Paris in 1936. He continued to write in Romanian until the early 1940s (he wrote his last article in Romanian in 1943, which is also the year in which he began writing in French). The break with Romanian became definitive in 1946, when, in the course of translating Mallarmé, he suddenly decided to give up his native tongue since no one spoke it in Paris. He then began writing in French a book that, thanks to numerous intensive revisions, would eventually become the impressive 'A Short History of Decay' (1949) -- the first of a series of ten books in which Cioran would continue to explore his perennial obsessions, with a growing detachment that allies him equally with the Greek sophists, the French moralists, and the oriental sages. He wrote existential vituperations and other destructive reflections in a classical French style that he felt was diametrically opposed to the looseness of his native Romanian; he described it as being like a “straight-jacket” that required him to control his temperamental excesses and his lyrical flights. The books in which he expressed his radical disillusionment appeared, with decreasing frequency, over a period of more than three decades, during which time he shared his solitude with his companion Simone Boué in a miniscule garret in the center of Paris, where he lived as a spectator more and more turned in on himself and maintaining an ever greater distance from a world that he rejected as much on the historical level (History and Utopia, 1960) as on the ontological (The Fall into Time, 1964), raising his misanthropy to heights of subtlety (The Trouble with being Born, 1973), while also allowing to appear from time to time a humanism composed of irony, bitterness, and preciosity (Exercices d’admiration, 1986, and the posthumously published Notebooks).
Denied the right to return to Romania during the years of the communist regime, and attracting international attention only late in his career, Cioran died in Paris in 1995.
Nicolas Cavaillès
Translated by Thomas Cousineau
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 28, 2022
"Trecerea timpului este cumplită în sine. Dar cu cît ar fi mai cumplit un timp încremenit! Dacă s-ar opri pentru totdeauna! Moartea însă tocmai asta înseamnă. Iată poate motivul profund al spaimei pe care o inspiră. Distruge, nimicește timpul, îl împiedică pe vecie să mai curgă ...
A înțelege înseamnă să fi înțeles timpul."
A înțelege înseamnă să fi înțeles timpul."
April 14, 2021
1 ianuarie 1969
M-am plimbat între Êtréchy şi La Ferté-Alais. Ninsoare şi ceaţă, o ceaţă atât de diafană că arborii păreau un fum încremenit. Rareori am văzut un peisaj atât de poetic. Totul era ireal – în plus, din cauza poleiului, pe drumuri nu era ţipenie.
Am intrat într-un bistrou din Villeneuve-sur-Auvers, unde am auzit un şlagăr american (englezesc?), „Those were the days”, care, prin tonul lui elegiac, m-a tulburat mai mult decât era cazul.
Ieri-seară, la familia Corbin, ascultat concertul nr. 3 pentru pian şi orchestră de Rahmaninov. În afară de câteva momente foarte frumoase, multă umplutură ce strică bucata. Devin tot mai puţin capabil să suport lungimile în muzică şi, bineînţeles, în literatură. În afara celor foarte mari, toţi umflă un text sau o bucată muzicală. Nu mai accept nimic din oficiu. Aproape pretutindeni, valori îndoielnice, false. În lume domneşte neesenţialul.
Nu mai pot să-l citesc pe Nietzsche şi nici să-mi păstrez interesul pentru el. Mi se pare mult prea naiv. De mult am încetat să-l admir. Un idol mai puţin. Şi el s-a complăcut în prolixitate, în umplutură, în ceţosul grandios.
Acum vreo trei ani, Pierre Oster, un tânăr poet, a venit să mă roage să scriu o prefaţă la volumul al şaselea din Operele complete ale lui Paulhan. Am refuzat. M-am gândit atunci că Paulhan îmi devenise duşman şi nu l-am mai întâlnit. Am spus în dreapta şi-n stânga că ne-am certat, că Paulhan e un ins răzbunător.
Or, alaltăieri, mă întâlnesc cu Pierre Oster şi-l fac mai mult sau mai puţin răspunzător pentru această ceartă. Îl întreb în ce termeni i-a prezentat lui Paulhan refuzul meu. Îmi răspunde că nu-i spusese nimic, că Paulhan îi dăduse câteva nume printre care al meu şi că nu fusese informat despre răspunsul meu negativ.
Timp de trei ani am trăit cu gândul la răzbunarea lui Paulhan, or această răzbunare nu era decât o idee plăsmuită în mintea mea.
M-am plimbat între Êtréchy şi La Ferté-Alais. Ninsoare şi ceaţă, o ceaţă atât de diafană că arborii păreau un fum încremenit. Rareori am văzut un peisaj atât de poetic. Totul era ireal – în plus, din cauza poleiului, pe drumuri nu era ţipenie.
Am intrat într-un bistrou din Villeneuve-sur-Auvers, unde am auzit un şlagăr american (englezesc?), „Those were the days”, care, prin tonul lui elegiac, m-a tulburat mai mult decât era cazul.
Ieri-seară, la familia Corbin, ascultat concertul nr. 3 pentru pian şi orchestră de Rahmaninov. În afară de câteva momente foarte frumoase, multă umplutură ce strică bucata. Devin tot mai puţin capabil să suport lungimile în muzică şi, bineînţeles, în literatură. În afara celor foarte mari, toţi umflă un text sau o bucată muzicală. Nu mai accept nimic din oficiu. Aproape pretutindeni, valori îndoielnice, false. În lume domneşte neesenţialul.
Nu mai pot să-l citesc pe Nietzsche şi nici să-mi păstrez interesul pentru el. Mi se pare mult prea naiv. De mult am încetat să-l admir. Un idol mai puţin. Şi el s-a complăcut în prolixitate, în umplutură, în ceţosul grandios.
Acum vreo trei ani, Pierre Oster, un tânăr poet, a venit să mă roage să scriu o prefaţă la volumul al şaselea din Operele complete ale lui Paulhan. Am refuzat. M-am gândit atunci că Paulhan îmi devenise duşman şi nu l-am mai întâlnit. Am spus în dreapta şi-n stânga că ne-am certat, că Paulhan e un ins răzbunător.
Or, alaltăieri, mă întâlnesc cu Pierre Oster şi-l fac mai mult sau mai puţin răspunzător pentru această ceartă. Îl întreb în ce termeni i-a prezentat lui Paulhan refuzul meu. Îmi răspunde că nu-i spusese nimic, că Paulhan îi dăduse câteva nume printre care al meu şi că nu fusese informat despre răspunsul meu negativ.
Timp de trei ani am trăit cu gândul la răzbunarea lui Paulhan, or această răzbunare nu era decât o idee plăsmuită în mintea mea.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews