Searching for Cioran

Notes

Notes Introduction Cioran, interview with Fritz Raddatz, 1. Entretiens, 183. The quotations are Cioran’s own words. He described the scene at the Flore in many 2. interviews, as well as to me personally, especially the detail about Simone de Beauvoir. Maurice Nadeau, “Un penseur crépusculaire,” 3. Combat 29 (September 1949). My personal interview with Simone Boué. 4. 20 January 1950; Liiceanu, 5. Itinéraires d’une vie, 50–51 (italics added). Cioran, Gabriel Liiceanu interview, in 6. Itinéraires . . . , 108–9. Cioran, interview with J. Weiss, 7. Grand Street (1983), 106, 138. André Maurois, 8. Opéra, 14 December, 1949. Claude Mauriac, 9. Table Ronde, January 1950. Stéphane Mallarmé, “Le tombeau d’Edgar Poe,” 10. Poems, trans. Roger Fry (New York: New Directions, 1951), 108–9. Two plays inspired by Cioran’s texts, interviews, and journal were produced in Paris 11. shortly after his death: Conversations avec Cioran (1996) and Insomnies avec Cioran (1999). Cioran, interview with Hans-Jurgen Heinrichs (1983), reprinted in 12. Magazine Littéraire, 373, February 1999, 102–3. Liiceanu, “Les Continents de l’insomnie,” in 13. Itinéraires, 76. Cioran himself explained the origin of his name to me. He has also observed, with 14. pointed interest, how some people change their names after important or traumatic experiences (Cioran, interview with Weiss, 113). VladimirTismaneanu,“Romania’sMysticalRevolutionaries,” 15. PartisanReview61(1994): 601. William James, 16. Varieties of Religious Experience, 199; quoted in Erik Erikson, Young Man Luther, 41. In 17. Young Man Luther (1958), Erik Erikson describes his revisionary version of the classical Freudian “identity crisis” as it applies to “self-made” men, exemplifying it by the case of Luther. He elaborated this model in Gandhi’s Truth (1969). The pattern is also useful for understanding Cioran. Jerry Z. Muller, 18. The Other God That Failed: Hans Freyer and the Deradicalization of German Conservatism, 4–11. As Muller notes, the phrase “the god that failed” has usually been 246 Notes to pages 10–25 applied to communism; he cites a 1949 anthology of the same title (ed. Richard Crossman) which contains autobiographical accounts of disillusionment among leftist intellectuals, such as Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, André Gide, Richard Wright, and Stephen Spender. He also notes that accounts of political disillusionment among right-wing intellectuals have been comparatively rarer, although he recognizes a tradition in this vein that extends back to the “Counter-Enlightenment,” including such figures as Hegel and Schleiermacher in Germany, and Burke, Wordsworth, and Coleridge in England. Ibid., 12. 19. Ibid., 19. 20. See Matei Calinescu’s foreword, which compares IZJ’s book to Bollon’s and to two 21. others, one by Marta Petreu, the other by Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine. Petreu’s book contains valuable information about Cioran’s writings from Germany, which I have added to Appendix 2. (KRJ) Milan Kundera, 22. Testaments Betrayed (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 191. Hannah Arendt, 23. The Origins of Totalitarianism, xiv (italics added). Kundera, 24. Testaments Betrayed, 191. William Wordsworth, 25. The Prelude (1805), Book X, 692–93. Cioran, 26. Ţara mea / Mon Pays (1996); my translation. In her foreword to this booklet, Simone Boué, who discovered the manuscript in a brown envelope marked “Mon Pays,” estimates that the undated text was written prior to 1960 when Cioran moved to his attic apartment in the rue de l’Odéon. Cioran, “De l’inconvénient d’être né,” in 27. Œuvres, 1299. Cioran, “Penser contre soi,” 28. La tentation d’exister, 18. Quoted in Erikson, 29. Young Man Luther, 13. Cioran, 30. L’incovénient, in Œuvres, 1332. Cioran, “Valéry face à ses idoles,” 31. Exercises d’admiration, 75. Sorin Antohi, 32. Civitas imaginalis: Istorie şi utopie in cultura romana [Civitas Imaginalis: History and Utopia in Romanian Culture], 224. Cioran, 33. Anthologie du portrait, 17. 1. Răşinari, Transylvania, 1911–1921 Cioran, 1. Cahiers, 32. Cioran, letter to Bucur Ţincu ( 2. Scrisori [Letters], 319). The memory dates from 1921, when Cioran was ten years old, just three years after the 3. union of Transylvania, a former Austro-Hungarian province, with the neighboring kingdom of Romania. Cioran, “De l’inconvénient d’être né,” 4. Œuvres, 1274. Ibid., 1283. 5. Cioran, 6. Cahiers, 769. Cioran, interview with J. L. Almira, 7. Entretiens, 122. Cioran, interview with Leo Gillet, 8. Entretiens, 70. Cioran, letter to his brother, 9. Scrisori, 56. Cioran, 10. Cahiers, 111–12. Notes to pages 25–33 247 Cioran, 11. Œuvres, 1271. Cioran...