“But who dares to face the consequences ?”: Emil Cioran and the Relations Among Vanity, Suicide, and Writing
Joseph Acquisto
Université du Vermont , United StatesAbstract
According to Emil Cioran, every human being is “full of the conviction that all is vain.” But Cioran wonder immediately after indicating that universal recognition of vanity: “But who dares to face the consequences?” How does the writing voice in Cioran associate with and distinguish himself from this generalized humanity? And what should our reaction to the vanity of all things be? We could be tempted to say that destruction, and self-destruction above all, seems to be the most reasonable reaction. Although Cioran writes in a near-obsessional way about suicide, he does not ultimately recommend it as a solution to vanity precisely because vanity resists all solutions. The writer is thus in a contradictory position: what would be the use of declaring the vanity of all things if that declaration only participates in that same vanity? The act of publishing books is not, according to Cioran, more effective than suicide as far as the attenuation of vanity is concerned, but reading and writing as simultaneous creation and destruction allow us to forget vanity at least enough to continue living.
Keywords:
Cioran, vanity, suicide, writingReferences
Bollon, P. (1997). Cioran, l’hérétique. Paris, France : Gallimard.
Cavaillès, N. (2011). Cioran malgré lui. Paris, France : Éditions CNRS.
Cioran, E. (1997). Cahiers. Paris, France : Gallimard.
Cioran, E. (2011). Œuvres. Paris, France : Gallimard.
Compagnon, A. (1980). Éloge des Sirènes. Critique, 396, 457-473.
David, S. (2006). Cioran. Un héroïsme à rebours. Montréal, Québec : Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal.
Eliade, M. (2009). Ascèse. Dans L. Tacou (dir.), Les Cahiers de l’Herne : Cioran (p. 209-210). Paris, France : L’Herne.
Jarrety, M. (1999). La morale dans l’écriture : Camus, Char, Cioran. Paris, France : PUF.
Liiceanu, G. (1995). Itinéraires d’une vie : EM Cioran, suivi de Les Continents de l’insomnie, entretien avec EM Cioran, traduit du roumain par Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine. Paris, France : Éditions Michalon.
Mauriac, C. (2009). L’un des meilleurs écrivains français. Dans L. Tacou (dir.), Les Cahiers de l’Herne : Cioran (p. 215-218). Paris, France : L’Herne.
Nadeau, M. (2009). Un penseur crépusculaire. Dans L. Tacou (dir.), Les Cahiers de l’Herne : Cioran (p. 211-212). Paris, France : L’Herne.
Stanisor, M.-G. (2015). Aveux et anathèmes ou la transformation de la philosophie. Dans A. Demars, N. Cavaillès, C. Lauren et M.-G. Stanisor (dir.), Cioran, archives paradoxales : Nouvelles approches critiques (p. 47-54). Paris, France : Classiques Garnier.
Zarifopol-Johnston, I. (2009). Searching for Cioran. Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press.
License
Papers of the journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
