NEW YORK: From his Paris exile in 1970, Emil Cioran, the iconoclastic Romanian philosopher, wrote of his nostalgia for the somewhat naive energy of those who stayed behind. "I can guess the secret of so much vitality. Without hell, no illusions." Cioran felt old and worn out. "We pay dearly for not having suffered. We believe in nothing." In Bucharest, Cioran once savaged Romania’s corrupt interwar democracy. In Paris, however, his blasphemies against French idols, he wrote wistfully, were "well received...people like to demolish all reputations, even legitimate, even justified. Especially those."
NEW YORK: From his Paris exile in 1970, Emil Cioran, the iconoclastic Romanian philosopher, wrote of his nostalgia for the somewhat naive energy of those who stayed behind. "I can guess the secret of so much vitality. Without hell, no illusions." Cioran felt old and worn out. "We pay dearly for not having suffered. We believe in nothing." In Bucharest, Cioran once savaged Romania’s corrupt interwar democracy. In Paris, however, his blasphemies against French idols, he wrote wistfully, were "well received...people like to demolish all reputations, even legitimate, even justified. Especially those."