31 Facts About Emil Cioran

Emil Cioran's work has been noted for its pervasive philosophical pessimism, style, and aphorisms.

In 1937, Cioran moved to the Latin Quarter of Paris, which became his permanent residence, wherein he lived in seclusion with his partner, Simone Boue, until his death in 1995.

Emil Cioran was born in Resinar, Szeben County, Kingdom of Hungary.

Emil Cioran's father, Emilian Cioran, was an Orthodox priest, and his mother, Elvira, was the head of the Christian Women's League.

At 10, Emil Cioran moved to Sibiu to attend school, and at 17, he was enrolled in the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy at the University of Bucharest, where he met Eugene Ionesco and Mircea Eliade, who became his friends.

Emil Cioran had a good command of German, learning the language at an early age, and proceeded to read philosophy that was available in German, but not in Romanian.

Notes from Emil Cioran's adolescence indicated a study of Friedrich Nietzsche, Honore de Balzac, Arthur Schopenhauer and Fyodor Dostoevsky, among others.

Emil Cioran became an agnostic, taking as an axiom "the inconvenience of existence".

Emil Cioran held similar views about Italian fascism, welcoming victories in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, arguing that: "Fascism is a shock, without which Italy is a compromise comparable to today's Romania".

Tears and Saints was "incredibly poorly received", and after it was published, Emil Cioran's mother wrote him asking him to retract the book because it was causing her public embarrassment.

Emil Cioran revised The Transfiguration of Romania heavily in its second edition released in the 1990s, eliminating numerous passages he considered extremist or "pretentious and stupid".

Emil Cioran's early call for modernization was hard to reconcile with the traditionalism of the Iron Guard.

Emil Cioran's classes were marked by confusion and he quit in a year.

Emil Cioran was supposedly working towards a doctoral thesis in the Sorbonne University, but he had no intention to actually work towards it, as the identity of being a student gave him access to cheap meals at the university cafeteria.

Emil Cioran later renounced not only his support for the Iron Guard, but their nationalist ideas, and frequently expressed regret and repentance for his emotional implication in it.

Emil Cioran started writing The Passionate Handbook in 1940 and finished it by 1945.

Emil Cioran told a friend that he "wanted to write a Philosophy of Failure, with the subtitle For the exclusive use of the Romanian People".

In 1942, Emil Cioran met Simone Boue, another insomniac, with whom he lived for the rest of his life.

Emil Cioran kept their relationship entirely private, and never spoke of his relationship with Boue in his writings or interviews.

Emil Cioran lived most of his life in seclusion, avoiding the public, but still maintained contact with numerous friends, including Mircea Eliade, Eugene Ionesco, Paul Celan, Samuel Beckett, Henri Michaux and Fernando Savater.

In 1995, Emil Cioran died of Alzheimer's disease and was buried at the Montparnasse Cemetery.

Aphorisms make up a large portion of Emil Cioran's bibliography, and some of his books, such as The Trouble with Being Born, are composed entirely of aphorisms.

However, Emil Cioran's pessimism remains both inexhaustible and, in its own particular manner, joyful; it is not the sort of pessimism which can be traced back to simple origins, single origins themselves being questionable.

Emil Cioran revisits suicide in depth in The New Gods, which contains a section of aphorisms devoted to the subject.

Emil Cioran's works encompass many other themes as well: original sin, the tragic sense of history, the end of civilization, the refusal of consolation through faith, the obsession with the absolute, life as an expression of man's metaphysical exile, etc.

Emil Cioran was a thinker passionate about history; widely reading the writers that were associated with the "Decadent movement".

Emil Cioran is, to a degree reminiscent of Beckett, concerned with the absolute integrity of thought.

Emil Cioran became most famous while writing not in Romanian but French, a language with which he had struggled since his youth.

An aged Emil Cioran is the main character in a play by Romanian dramatist-actor Matei Visniec,.

The play, depicting an imaginary meeting between Visniec and Emil Cioran, was first brought to the stage in 2007, under the direction of Radu Afrim and with a cast of Romanian and Luxembourgian actors; Emil Cioran was played by Constantin Cojocaru.

Under the rule of Nicolae Ceausescu, Emil Cioran's works were banned.