Interview
conducted 3 August 1995, Sibiu. Note that Emil Cioran had died on 20 June that
year. Italian original, Origini 13 (February
1996). This translation made from the French version in Nouvelles de Synergies Européennes 22 (August–September 1996). Cioran
offers interesting reflections on his brother’s relationship with religion, youth,
and involvements with Nae Ionescu and the Legionary movement.
French
version:
PDF
of this translation:
Among
the new street-names of Bucharest today we find the name of Mircea Eliade; but
in Sibiu, there is still no road bearing the name of Emil Cioran. What does
Cioran represent for his fellow citizens of Sibiu at the present moment?
“It
falls to the municipal authorities to give names to streets or locations.
Normally a little time must pass after a personality’s death before his name
enters the toponymy. As far as the inhabitants of Sibiu are concerned, and
local intellectuals in particular, they will be unable to give a precise
response to your question.”
I’ll
put it to you in another way. In a town in which there is a faculty of
theology, how is so (at least apparently…) negativist a thinker as your brother
welcomed?
“You
did well to add ‘apparently.’ In a passage in which he speaks of himself in the
third person, and which was published for the first time in the Gallimard Œuvres complètes, my brother spoke very
precisely of the ‘paradox of an apparently negative thought.’ He wrote: ‘We are
in the presence of a work at once religious and antireligious, in which a
mystic sensibility is expressed.’ Indeed, I consider it altogether absurd to
put the ‘atheist’ label on my brother’s back, as we have done for many years.
My brother speaks of God on every page he has written, in the accents of a
truly original mystic. It was upon just this theme that I spoke at a symposium
held here in Sibiu. I will cite for you another passage that dates from 1990
and which was published in Romanian in the review Agorà:
Personally I believe that religion runs more deeply than any other form of reflexion emanating from the human spirit, and that the true vision of life is the religious vision. The man who has not passed through the filter of religion, and who has never known the religious temptation, is an empty man. For me, universal history amounts to the unfolding of original sin; and it is on this front that I feel myself closest to religion.
Let’s
speak a little about the relations between Emil Cioran and the places of his
childhood and of his youth. Did he ever ask you to speak of Rășinari and Sibiu?
“He
remembered things that I had completely forgotten. One day he told me by
telephone: ‘I see every stone of the streets of Rășinari.’ Throughout his life
he preserved in the recesses of his heart the images with which he had left
Romania.”
He
never showed a desire to return?
“When
we were separated in 1937, he said to me, with a choke, on the train: ‘Who
knows when we’ll meet again?’ And we only saw one another forty years later,
but not in our own country. He had always desired to return. In 1991 he was on
the point of departing for Romania. It was then that the illness struck him,
for which he had to return to hospital. In these last moments he was required
to use a wheelchair. He inevitably feared seeing an entirely new reality if he
were to return. And there have in fact been many changes: in Rășinari the
social composition has completely changed: almost a majority of the village’s
inhabitants work in the town, which inevitably leads to a change of mentality.
Everything is very different from the time of our adolescence. In Rășinari we
were street-children; we would spend the day rambling through fields, forests
and rivers…”
And
in Coasta Boacii.
“Yes,
indeed: he endlessly evoked, with enormous regret, that paradise that was
Coasta Boacii. ‘What good can come, having left Coasta Boacii?’ he said. Then
there was that pasture, near Păltiniş, where we would go every summer. We
stayed there for a month, in a rather primitive barracks, situated in a
clearing where an extraordinary atmosphere reigned.”
You
were very close to your brother, not only in the years of infancy, but also
during your adolescence and your youth. Tell me of your shared experiences…
“We
attended Nae Ionescu’s course at the University. This professor was an
extraordinary figure! Many men went to listen, and not only students. My
brother even returned after leaving the University, to make a call on the
professor. One day, as soon as the lecture was over, Nae Ionescu asked: ‘On
what else should I speak?’ And my brother spontaneously responded: ‘On
boredom.’ Then Nae Ionescu delivered two lessons on boredom. Afterwards his
adversaries, having no more ammunition with which to attack him, because he was
the thought-leader of a whole young generation of intellectuals who supported
the ‘Legionary Movement,’ they accused him of being…a plagiarist! This kind of
attack is an infernal manifestation… The work of a criminal mafia, which began
by attacking Heidegger, then by trying to put Eliade on trial…”
And
even Dumézil!
“Always
on the pretext of anti-Semitism. During that era in Romania there was certainly
anti-Semitism, in reaction to the mass arrival of a million Jews coming from
Galicia. It was a real problem at that time. But I get the impression that this
manoeuvre aiming to criminalise Eliade, Noica and the other intellectuals of
the ‘young generation’ produces effects contrary to those desired.”
You
were active among the Legionary Movement. Did you know Corneliu Codreanu?
“He
was an exceptional man from every point of view. He had charisma. I have often
said that he was too great a man for the Romanian people, too serious, too
grave. I wanted a radical reform based upon religion. He was a very intensely
religious spirit. There is one thing that still deeply impresses me today: the
way in which the Legionary Movement approached economic problems. The Movement
opened restaurants, refectories at which one would be served a very good meal,
with wine in limitless quantity. The idea that seemed extraordinary to me is
that the price was not fixed. Each paid according to his own means, or
according to his pleasure.”
Where
did you know the Captain?
“In
Bucharest, because I was studying jurisprudence there. But I encountered him
two or three times in a legionary labour camp. He was an exceptional man from
every point of view.”
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