Searching for Cioran

by Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston, Matei Călinescu (Foreword), Kenneth R. Johnston (Editor)

Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston's critical biography of the Romanian-born French philosopher E. M. Cioran focuses on his crucial formative years as a mystical revolutionary attracted to right-wing nationalist politics in interwar Romania, his writings of this period, and his self-imposed exile to France in 1937. This move led to his transformation into one of the most famous French moralists of the 20th century. As an enthusiast of the anti-rationalist philosophies widely popular in Europe during the first decades of the 20th century, Cioran became an advocate of the fascistic Iron Guard. In her quest to understand how Cioran and other brilliant young intellectuals could have been attracted to such passionate national revival movements, Zarifopol-Johnston, herself a Romanian emigré, sought out the aging philosopher in Paris in the early 1990s and retraced his steps from his home village of Rasinari and youthful years in Sibiu, through his student years in Bucharest and Berlin, to his early residence in France. Her portrait of Cioran is complemented by an engaging autobiographical account of her rediscovery of her own Romanian past.

Genres: Philosophy, Biography, France, Romania

312 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Uğur Karabürk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cioran'ın İzinde

-Cioran'ı yakından tanımak isteyenler için bence şu anlık Türkçedeki en iyi kaynak. Öncelikle oldukça titiz ve kapsamlı hazırlanmış. Cioran'ın doğumundan ölümüne kadar olan dönemi ayrıntılarıyla okuyoruz. Hem yazarın yaşadığı bölgeler hem de o bölgenin siyasi ve sosyal durumu belirtilmiş. Kitap iki ana bölüme ayrılmış ben ilk bölümü daha çok beğendiğimi söyleyebilirim. Bir insan nasıl oluyor da bu kadar sert ve acı şeyler yazabiliyor gerçekten benim için ilgi çekici. Çevirisi de gayet başarılıydı. Cioran'ı okumayı benim gibi seviyorsanız kaçırmayın derim.

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sad, haunting, melancholic book - a meditation on the totalitarian impulse of the lyrical. Some fabulous material in Part I. Part II (the author's personal diary) can be skipped. Even part I is a stump, as illness and death prevented its completion. But the final pages, completed by the author's husband, are themselves stunning.

[Sam Schulman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very sad because the woman who wrote it escaped from Romania at the age of 22 and died at the age of 52 in 2005 - after having married a very nice Wordsworthian teaching at IU when she was young. And she was so pretty, and so aristocratic-for-a-Romanian (she was a relative of the great Romanian conductor Zarifopol. So much of this book was unfinished and un-thought out, and the second part descends into the struggles between Romanian exiles that Bellow depicts in the Dean's December - which makes it more fascinating than a book on Cioran alone might have been.
Here's what's remarkable about it - she tells what is like to be relatively young and attractive and to be an object of pleasure for an aging literary genius - it's a charming moment. She describes, and lives, the frustration of coming from a country that is too small for one - and she adds to the picture of the generation of Eliade and Cioran, and their brief fling with totalitarianism, now so unforgiveable in retrospect (flogged by literary opportunists); now so common in our public life - re-enacted by nice guys like Tom Friedman whose China-philism is exactly akin to the appeal of Mussolini and Hitler to journalists and politicians in the early 1930s. Cioran merely writes better than Friedman, as Z-J describes him: "beautiful style places in the service of the most melancholy of themes, the decadence of Western civilizations. The death of the west ...symptoms are liberalism, democracy, and the parliamentary system,,,, longing for a utopia, un delire neuf capable of exciting the collective imagination of a nation and inciting it to revolution. Blah blah blah - you can read it in NYRB and in Friedman's columns and those of Martin Wolf these days, and will for the next few years. Not longer, one hopes.

[Tatyana · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I am the sort of man who has changed completely under the effect of suffering, even though this transformation may simply be the intensification of elements already there.
Thus amplified, they give an entirely new perspective on life. I believe, frenetically and fanatically, in the virtues of suffering and of anxiety, and I believe in them especially since, though I’ve suffered greatly and despaired much, I nevertheless acquired through them a sense of my own destiny, a sort of weird enthusiasm for my mission. On the heights of the most terrifying despair, I experience the joy of having a destiny, of living a life of successive deaths and transfigurations, of turning every moment into a cross-road.
And I am proud that my life begins with death, unlike the majority of people, who end with death. I feel as if my death were in the past, and my future looks to me like a sort of personal illumination."
-- Emil Cioran, in a letter to Petre Comarnescu
(21 February, 1937)

"I am not from here; condition of inner exile; I’m nowhere at home — absolute rootlessness. Paradise lost, — my constant obsession."
-- Emil Cioran, from “Cahiers”

"April 17, 1993.
Cioran is very ill in the hospital. He fell, broke his hip, and they had to operate. He seems to have lost the will to live. He hangs his head and looks at Simone Boué with a dull expression. Refuses to eat, is in a great state of anxiety, twists himself in the chair, lashes out at the nurses and orderlies, was tied to his bed for being too violent. Premonition of madness, he quotes to her from Mihai Eminescu’s “Second Letter”:
“organele’s sfărîmate şi maestrul e nebun”
[the instruments are broken and the maestro’s mad]."

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-balanced, informative, ultimately heartbreaking. Invaluable for the Cioran fan.

[Simon Brass]

An unfinished biography that focuses on Cioran's childhood and young adulthood. Nothing from the main text itself is revelatory - an analysis of Cioran's complicated and perhaps overblown association with the Iron Guard can be found in Marta Petreu's 'An Infamous Past.'

In any case, the real insight from this book comes in the epilogue / appendixes which provide a diary-style account of the author's relationship with Cioran and his lifelong companion Simone Boué. Zarifopol-Johnston's unscripted account of Cioran's sharp and tragic mental decline, was extremely raw, poignant, and captivating. I had not previously known the extent to which Cioran declined mentally before his death. Quite frankly it was more depressing to read than anything in the incredible collection of work he left behind.

[Stu Napier · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating interrogation of the self-mythologised life of a self-exile (sorry C., I mean apatride).

Part I is very informative, taking a balanced view of an angry young man's early mistakes in aligning with Romanian and German fascism - which would be later disavowed by the older and wiser Cioran.

Part II is particularly heartbreaking, as Zarifopol-Johnston recounts visiting Cioran towards the end of his life, as Alzheimer's took hold to the extent that he no longer recognised passages of his own books that were read to him. How crushing it must have been to watch the man whose life's goal was to become a stranger transform into a stranger even to himself.

[MillardTeethFilledMaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Effectively half of a critical biography of Cioran that the author died before completing. The back half of the book is material from her diary during the time she knew Cioran and his partner (when he was dieing of Alzheimers). Very readable, but idiosyncratic.

[Iosiv Basarab · Rating 5 out of 5]

the official biography of E.M. Cioran, completed with the work diary of the author (which is even more interesting than the bio itself) - a revelation on some levels, and a slight disappointment because the author didn't live enough to finish it as planned - regardless, a highly recommended lecture

[Fact100 · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Cioran'ın İzinde", huzursuz ve aykırı düşünür Cioran'ın hayatının, özellikle erken dönemlerine detaylı bir bakış imkânı sunuyor. Cioran gibi Rumen asıllı olan Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston tarafından, gözlem ve araştırmanın ötesine geçip Cioran ve hayat arkadaşı Simone Boué ile empati ve açık sözlülükle etkileşerek oluşturulan "Cioran'ın İzinde", yazarın vefatı nedeniyle, eşi tarafından tamamlanmış, öngörülenden eksik ama olduğu hâliyle de doyurucu bir çalışma.

Cioran'ın, Romanya'da yayımlanan kitaplarını ve arka planlarını yakından tanımamızı sağlayan "Cioran'ın İzinde", bu düşünürün, savaş öncesi dönemdeki aşırı sağcı ideolojik yaklaşımıyla yazdığı "Romanya'nın Dönüşümü"nü ve Cioran'ın geçmişin karanlığına terk etmeye gayret ederek çevrilmesine bile izin vermediği bu kitabın, onun peşini bırakmayan gölgeli mirasını da ele alıyor.

Cioran'ın, 1940'larda geçirdiği devasa ideolojik, kültürel ve coğrafi değişimi de irdeleyen eser, olduğu haliyle ülkesinin kültüründen utanç duyan, kimlik ve aidiyet arayışında bir insanın, kaygı ve öfke dolu yolculuğunun izlerini takip ediyor.

Bu öylesine güçlü bir öfke ve azimle terkediş ki, bilmediği bir dilin konuşulduğu bir ülkede, o dili sadece öğrenmekle kalmayıp benimseyen ve bir daha ne gündelik hayatında ne de eserlerinde ana dilini kullanan Cioran, 1949 yılında Fransızca kaleme aldığı ilk eser olan "Çürümenin Kitabı"yla önemli bir başarı yakalıyor.

"Cioran'ın İzinde"yi, karamsar ve umutsuzlukla bezeli eserler üreten münzevi düşünür imajının ardında saklı kalan (ve öyle kalmayı arzulayan) bir insanı daha yakından tanımak ve Cioran'ın değişim ve düşünsel büyüme sürecini öğrenmek isteyen yetişkin okurlara öneririm.