Cioran and the Philosophy of the Decadence
The present study aims at observing the relation between Cioran’s philosophy of decadence, as it appears mainly in his last Romanian book, On France, and the style of his concrete life as a French philosopher. The question central to this study is: What are the limits of the (self-)destructive impulses, how far can one go in self-destruction? Cioran did not have the courage to go too far, the longevity of his existence betrayed the purity of his doctrine. Cioran has sacrificed everything: his country, his language, his relatives, his „remote friends”, his own culture – except for his life, whose whole energy was aesthetically sublimated. Here we have the paradox of a barbarian converted to decadence.
Keywords: 20th century European philosophy, French existentialism, philosophy of decadence, Cioran, On France
1. Emil Cioran, Despre Franţa, stabilirea textului, prefaţă şi note de Constantin Zaharia, Humanitas, Bucureşti, 2011, p. 50.
2. Emil Cioran, De la France, traduit du roumain par Alain Paruit, Édition de l’Herne, Paris, 2011, p. 8.
3. Emil Cioran, Exerciţii de admiraţie, Humanitas, Bucureşti, 2011.
4. Publicat în Cuvântul, anul XV, nr.3130, 31 ian. 1938, p. 4.
5. Publicat în Vremea, anul XII, nr.581, 8 dec. 1940, p. 3.
6. Emil Cioran, Revelaţiile durerii, ediţie îngrijită de Mariana Vartic şi Aurel Sasu, prefaţă de Dan C. Mihăilescu, Editura Echinox, Cluj, 1990, p. 193.
7. Ibidem, p. 182.
8. Ibidem, p. 193.
9. Emil Cioran, Despre Franţa, p. 67.
10. Ibidem, p. 72.
11. „Eu sunt imperiul de la capătul decadenţei, / Mă uit cum trec uriaşii barbari blonzi, / Compunând acrostihuri indolente, / Într-un stil poleit de melancolia soarelui…”
12. Emil Cioran, Despre Franţa, p. 72,73.
13. Ibidem, p. 82,83.
14. Ibidem, p. 89.
15. Ilina Gregori, Cioran. Sugestii pentru o biografie imposibilă, Editura Humanitas, Bucureşti, 2012, p. 24.
16. Sintagma are o notă tautologică pe care o subînţelegem, niciun decadent nu e lipsit de componenta estetică, pe când nu orice estet este în mod obligatoriu şi decadent, deşi condiţia estetică se deschide către această posibilitate.
