Emil Cioran is one of the most important Romanian philosophers, who spent more than half of his life in Paris. He wrote both in Romanian and French and received many prizes for his work. However, he only accepted one, the Rivarol Prize.
Emil Cioran was born on the 8th of April, 1911, in the village of Răşinari, 15 km from the city of Sibiu. He had a brother, Aurel, and a sister, Virginia. His childhood was an idyllic one, according to Eleonora Cioran, his siter-in-law, playing with the other children and exploring the surroundings of the village.
He studied at the “Gheorghe Lazar” High school in Sibiu and then at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy in Bucharest. In 1932, he enrolled in a doctoral program in the hope of obtaining a scholarship abroad. And sure enough, in 1933, he received a scholarship to Berlin, where he spent two years. During this time, more precisely, in 1934, his first book, “On the Heights of Despair” was published in Romania.
In 1936, he returned to Romania and became a philosophy teacher at a high school in Brasov, but he didn’t like it and only taught for one year. According to his sister-in-law, he used to tell his students not to study, because philosophy should be judged, not studied.
In 1937, Cioran received a scholarship to Paris, where he eventually settled down. In 1947, his works were banned in Romania by the communist regime, for which reason, Cioran decided not to write in Romanian any longer. From then on, he wrote all of his books directly in French. He lived out the remainder of his life in France, but never asked for French citizenship.
Some of the books that followed were "Précis de décomposition", published in 1949, "Syllogismes de l'amertume", "De l'inconvénient d'être né” and "La tentation d'exister". His last novel was called "Aveux et anathèmes", and was published in 1987. After this last book, Cioran wrote to friends that he wished to stop writing. Fifteen book, he thought, were enough.
He died on the 20th of June, 1995 at age 84, and was buried in the Montparnasse cemetery, in Paris.
Sources:
Andra Mihaela Cimpean
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