Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston's critical biography of the Romanian-born French philosopher E. M. Cioran focuses on his crucial formative years as a mystical revolutionary attracted to right-wing nationalist politics in interwar Romania, his writings of this period, and his self-imposed exile to France in 1937. This move led to his transformation into one of the most famous French moralists of the 20th century. As an enthusiast of the anti-rationalist philosophies widely popular in Europe during the first decades of the 20th century, Cioran became an advocate of the fascistic Iron Guard.In her quest to understand how Cioran and other brilliant young intellectuals could have been attracted to such passionate national revival movements, Zarifopol-Johnston, herself a Romanian emigre, sought out the aging philosopher in Paris in the early 1990s and retraced his steps from his home village of Rasinari and youthful years in Sibiu, through his student years in Bucharest and Berlin, to his early residence in France. Her portrait of Cioran is complemented by an engaging autobiographical account of her rediscovery of her own Romanian past.

Table of Contents

Foreword; Editor's Preface; Chronology: E.M. Cioran I. The Romanian Life of Emil Cioran Introduction: Cioran's Revenge; 1. Rasinari, Transylvania, 1911-1921; 2. Sibiu, 1921-1928; 3. Bucharest, 1928-1933; 4. Berlin, 1933-1935; 5. Romania's Transfiguration, 1935-1937; 6. Romania's Transfiguration: Continuing Controversy; 7. Tears & Saints, 1937; 8. Stranger in Paris; 9. The Lyrical Virtues of Totalitarianism II. Memoirs of a Publishing Scoundrel Prelude; Paris, 1992-1994; Romania, 1994; Paris, 1995; Romania, 1995-1997; Postlude Bibliography; Index; Biographical Notice: Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston

Prizes

A critical portrait of French philosopher and mystic E. M. Cioran

Reviews

"Intellectual history at its best. Elegantly written, meticulously researched, and subtly nuanced, this book will be read by all those interested in the intellectual torments of the 20th century." Vladimir Tismaneanu, author of Fantasies of Salvation "Very valuable and beautifully written ... introducing her exciting subject in a context broad enough even for those who don't know much about Cioran." Irina Livezeanu, author of Cultural Politics in Greater Romania "Zarifopol-Johnston insists on understanding Cioran , Before any Moral Judgement or theoretical disagreements are even possible. Her book may be read as a long meditation on Cioran's self-fashioning and self invention. His disastrous passing through the buddy waters of interwar Romanian politics left him politically disenchanted and existentially empty, but it did not break him... He came to term with this exile not just by accepting it, but by making it part of a cosmic scenario... Cioran construed his "entire life as exile into the world". Zarifopol-Johnston, who died before completing this book, was in many ways ideally placed to understand her subject. Not only was she Cioran's translator... And profoundly familiar with his Romanian background, but she was also an exile herself. Her feelings towards the place Cioran left thirty years before her are not unlike his. The books unfinished quality and fragility resonates with Cioran's own precariousness and especially with his illness and death. " - Costica Bradatan, TLS, October 2009 "[Searching for Cioran] tells the story of his Romanian years and gives a fine account of the personal and political circumstances in which both his philosophical ideas and his brand of nationalism were formed." oThe New York Review of Books