Cioran: an author who deserves to be known in the US

[F.W. Braun]

One of my favourite authors is E.M. Cioran...while a literary star in France and Germany...he's virtually unknown in the U.S. This, I believe, should change.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1566636078.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Romanian poet, philosopher and editor Petreu shows in this dense but fresh work that many Romanian intellectuals were seduced by fascist ideology during the interwar years—and that philosopher Cioran, an "aphorist of humorous despair," was haunted by this legacy for the rest of his life. Petreu details the ultranationalist, pro-Christian ideology of the Legion of the Archangel Michael, a movement of intellectuals that gained prominence in Romania after WWI. As with many ideologies of the era, Petreu writes, anti-Semitism lay at the movement's core. Cioran's own ideology, rooted in the wish to turn Romania's "depressing present into a grandiose future," included a more complex view of Jews, outlined in his 1936 The Transfiguration of Romania. He envied what he saw as Jewish productivity in government, business and the arts. But Petreu shows how his outlook, adapted from Spengler, also necessitated hostility toward Jews and other non-Romanians. Cioran left Romania after WWII and became ashamed of his earlier fascism, but Petreu mines his life for lessons to be learned today about how good intentions can lead to extremism. (Nov. 4)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Book Description
Cioran was one of the greatest scholars of the twentieth century to be seduced by totalitarianism. The scene of Cioran's excesses is Romania and Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, a time of xenophobia, anti-Semitism, racism, Nazism, and Stalinism.

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To Infinity And Beyond

Stephen Mitchelmore explains why the writing of E.M. Cioran refuses explanation

http://www.spikemagazine.com/1197cior.php

[F.W. Braun]

Foreign Affairs:

To confront ideas so opposed to the aspirations of liberal democracy, so unapologetically anti-Semitic, elitist, and authoritarian, startles one at first. But then the encounter stirs curiosity, until one recognizes in these ideas a fleeting contemporary echo, which makes them even more unsettling. Cioran, an errant Romanian intellectual provided fascism with one of its most powerful and disturbing paeans in his 1936 book, The Transfiguration of Romania. After 1941, having fled his country and his native language for Paris and French, he spent the next 54 years swearing off politics in an attempt to separate himself from his youthful "error." Petreu, a historian of Romanian philosophy, is a sure and unobtrusive guide to the fevered, alienated milieu that turned Cioran, an apolitical philosopher of history and culture, into a passionate partisan of Hitler, Mussolini, and Lenin, filled with contempt for the lassitude and failings of Romania's crippled democracy and enraptured by the creative potential of the irrational, the unconstrained, and the ruthless.

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060101fabook85146/marta-petreu/an-infamous-past-e-m-cioran-and-the-rise-of-fascism-in-romania.html

[FranzJoseph]

One of my favourite authors is E.M. Cioran...while a literary star in France and Germany...he's virtually unknown in the U.S. This, I believe, should change.

Decent enough ambition, Fred, but Americans DO NOT read books. From time to time an exception proves the rule.

There are three hundred million Americans, allegedly. Not quite 2% read books. Of them, most choose garbage-fiction (think romance, science fiction, mystery and occult.)

I once told an audience that America supports fewer living writers per capita than Iceland. In Finland, a young poet might make a good living writing books of poetry -- a situation that would be absurd in America.*

Since the fifties Americans have bragged about how out-of-touch they are where art/culture are concerned. Amazing when you think whose hands this fact plays right into, isn't it?

- - - - - - - - -
* The last "famous American poet" was Allen Ginsburg, who was actually a lot more famous for being a political and sexual pervert. When he died a girl at a local college town went into a tizzy, on and on about our "great loss". In a moment of lucidity I asked her to quote her favorite line of Ginsburg's brilliant poetry. Right. She had no idea what he'd ever written. This is a pretty good capsule of US culture in the 21st century.

Read a Romanian? Most Americans have no clue there is a Romania.

[F.W. Braun]

You can order his books from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&field-author-exact=E%20M%20Cioran&rank=-relevance%2C%2Bavailability%2C-daterank/002-5036869-3732049

[Rhadley]

Read a Romanian? Most Americans have no clue there is a Romania.


Well said, sir! Although I am sure some of our good 'ole citizens would say it's a country... somewhere, like in Asia? :)

[F.W. Braun]

Is the U.S. education system that bad? And Americans that parochial and uninterested in what happens outside their country?

[FranzJoseph]

Is the U.S. education system that bad? And Americans that parochial and uninterested in what happens outside their country?

Yes and Yes.

Had a talk with a truck driver from a parts firm, a guy who might work maybe 6-7 hours a day and pulls over 65K per year doing so. He has economic security, leisure and no obvious mental defects.

Most of our conversation revolved around the chatter of an upcoming war with Iran. He thought we already were. Tried to explain the difference between Iraq and Iran to him, he actually got hostile listening. He left me with a "So what, let's bomb 'em all."

That's a typical American. They don't know and can't be bothered to find out. About anything. The ones who have never felt economic pain are the worst. Insular, hostile, and purile. Since 911, getting worse.