In 2003, the Project Cioran was started; its aim is to promote the study of the life, work and influence of Cioran. The lover who kills himself for a girl has an experience which is more complete and much more profound than the hero who overturns the world. Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later, he will regret not having left it intact. There is value only in that which bursts forth from inspiration, which springs up from the irrational depths of our being, from the secret center of our subjectivity. The fruit of labor, effort and endeavor has no value, and the offspring of intelligence is sterile and uninteresting. I delight in the barbaric and spontaneous élan of inspiration, effervescent spiritual states, essential lyricism, and inner tension—these things make inspiration the only reality of creation. [4]

Nothing surpasses the pleasures of idleness: even if the end of the world were to come, I would not leave my bed at an ungodly hour. On the Heights of Despair was written in a bout of depression and insomnia, conditions from which Cioran suffered throughout his life: "I've never been able to write otherwise than in the midst of the depression brought about by my nights of insomnia. For seven years I could barely sleep. I need this depression, and even today before I sit down to write I play a disk of Gypsy music from Hungary." [10] The book's title derives from a phrase that was commonly used in Romanian newspapers of the period to begin the obituaries of suicides, e.g. "On the heights of despair, young so-and-so took his life...". [11] [12] Danish neofolk musician Kim Larsen re-enacted Cioran's choking arms photograph on the cover of the 2021 album Your Love Can't Hold This Wreath of Sorrow. What happens when indirection fails and the tangent of my life, for once, not only touches but crosses this moment? Regarding God, Cioran has noted that "without Bach, God would be a complete second-rate figure" and that "Bach's music is the only argument proving the creation of the Universe cannot be regarded as a complete failure". [35] Cioran went on to say "Bach, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche are the only arguments against monotheism." [36]I seem to myself, among civilised men, an intruder, a troglodyte enamored of decrepitude, plunged into subversive prayers. The dark, existential despair of Romanian philosopher Cioran's short meditations is paradoxically bracing and life-affirming. . . . Puts him in the company of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard."— Publishers Weekly, starred review Self-conscious rejection of the absolute is the best way to resist God; thus illusion, the substance of life, is saved. If we would regain our freedom, we must shake off the burden of sensation, no longer react to the world by our senses, break our bonds. For all sensation is a bond, pleasure as much as pain, joy as much as misery. The only free mind is the one that, pure of all intimacy with beings or objects, plies its own vacuity. As long as I live I shall not allow myself to forget that I shall die; I am waiting for death so that I can forget about it.

What would happen if a man's face could adequately express his suffering, if his entire inner agony would be objectified in his facial expression? Could we still communicate? Wouldn't we then cover our faces with our hands while talking? Life would really be impossible if the infinitude of feelings we harbor within ourselves would be fully expressed in the lines of our face. Nobody would dare look at himself in the mirror, because a grotesque, tragic image would mix in the contours of his face with stains and traces of blood, wounds which cannot be healed, and unstoppable streams of tears. I would experience a kind of voluptuous awe if I could see a volcano of blood, eruptions as red as fire and as burning as despair, burst into the comfortable and superficial harmony of everyday life, or if I could see all our hidden wounds open, making of us a bloody eruption forever. Only then would be truly understand and appreciate the advantages of loneliness, which silences our suffering and makes it inaccessible. The venom drawn out from suffering would be enough to poison the whole world in a bloody eruption, bursting out of the volcano of our being. There is so much venom, so much poison, in suffering!” Although Cioran gained a following among French intellectuals during his later years, the response to his early work in his home country of Romania was overwhelmingly negative. Cioran's father was a priest, and his mother was head of a local Christian Women's League. The blasphemous nature of Cioran's work forced his parents to maintain a low profile. [16] His mother once said that if she had known how miserable he would become, she would have aborted him, a statement which Cioran described as "liberating". Despite this, she still read his works, whereas his father refused, because of his profession: "Everything that I wrote bothered him and he didn't know how to react. But my mother understood me." [17] Cioran's works were banned under the rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu. [2] See also [ edit ] This is how I recognize an authentic poet: by frequenting him, living a long time in the intimacy of his work, something changes in myself, not so much my inclinations or my tastes as my very blood, as if a subtle disease had been injected to alter its course, its density and nature. To live around a true poet is to feel your blood run thin, to dream a paradise of anemia, and to hear, in your veins, the rustle of tears. Irons and the unbreathable air of this world strip us of everything, except the freedom to kill ourselves; and this freedom grants us a strength and pride to triumph over the loads which overwhelm us.As incompetent in life as in death, I loathe myself and in this loathing I dream of another life, another death. And for having sought to be a sage such as never was, I am only a madman among the mad. aesthetics, antinatalism, ethics, hagiography, literary criticism, music, nihilism, poetry, religion, suicide Emil Cioran ( Romanian: [eˈmil tʃoˈran] ⓘ, French: [emil sjɔʁɑ̃]; 8 April 1911 – 20 June 1995) was a Romanian philosopher, aphorist and essayist, who published works in both Romanian and French. His work has been noted for its pervasive philosophical pessimism, style, and aphorisms. His works frequently engaged with issues of suffering, decay, and nihilism. In 1937, Cioran moved to the Latin Quarter of Paris, which became his permanent residence, wherein he lived in seclusion with his partner, Simone Boué, until his death in 1995.

In 1933, he published his first book entitled “On the Heights of Despair”, which won the Prize of the Royal Academy for young writers. It was the first of only two literary prizes that Cioran did not reject. Read romania-insider.com's review of Cioran's 'On the heights if despair' here. Cioran’s works cover themes such as despair, death, loneliness, disease, suffering, the abyss, nothingness, anguish, agony, madness, and the absurd. Without its assiduity to the ridiculous, would the human race have lasted more than a single generation? Mon pays/Țara mea ("My country", written in French, the book was first published in Romania in a bilingual volume), Humanitas, Bucharest, 1996What we want is not freedom but its appearances. It is for these simulacra that man has always striven. And since freedom, as has been said, is no more than a sensation, what difference is there between being free and believing ourselves free? No modern writer twists the knife with Cioran’s dexterity. . . . His writing . . . is informed with the bitterness of genuine compassion."—Bill Marx, Boston Phoenix But, above all, it is a probing – the sensitivity of our fragile, ruined teeth be damned – of the vast silence that arises when we stop begging and complaining long enough to actually listen for God’s reply. What every man who loves his country hopes for in his inmost heart: the suppression of half his compatriots. I thought that the only action a man could perform without shame was to take his life; that he had no right to diminish himself in the succession of days and the inertic of misery. No elect, I kept telling myself, but those who committed suicide.

We suffer: the external world begins to exist . . .; we suffer to excess: it vanishes. Pain instigates the world only to unmask its unreality. Pe culmile disperării (translated " On the Heights of Despair"), Editura "Fundația pentru Literatură și Artă", Bucharest 1934

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Quotes [ edit ] On the Heights of Despair (1934) [ edit ] We are fulfilled only when we aspire to nothing, when we are impregnated by that nothing to the point of intoxication. Romanian title: Pe culmile disperării The dark, existential despair of Romanian philosopher Cioran’s short meditations is paradoxically bracing and life-affirming. . . . Puts him in the company of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard."— Publishers Weekly, starred review The fear of your own solitude, of its vast surface and its infinity... Remorse is the voice of solitude. And what does this whispering voice say? Everything in us that is not human anymore. His power to adore is responsible for all his crimes: a man who loves a god unduly forces other men to love his god, eager to exterminate them if they refuse.