Copyright Delia Kelly 2022
“11 vorbe…d-ale lui Cioran”, article pubished in Magazine TIMPUL BRUXELLES, Belgium- 2022
Link: https://portal.revistatimpul.ro/timpul-bruxelles/11-vorbe-de-ale-lui-cioran/
English translation available below. The English translation of this text was generated with the assistance of Gemini, a large language model from Google. The text provided herein has been translated from the original Romanian sources. The quotes attributed to E.M. Cioran were taken from his Romanian-language books (as listed in the References section). The English versions used in this text are new translations created for this context and do not correspond to the standard English titles or official translations found in Cioran’s established English works. Readers should consult the original Romanian editions for exact wording.
1.Cioran viewed the world as a simulacrum of goodness. In his vision, time could not construct its sacred nature without space; yesterday, today, and tomorrow became mere servant categories. For him, days are perpetually tainted by sterility, and man lives a continuous drama because he has separated his time from his existence: by fleeing existence, he is weighed down by time. And (..) he feels time growing within him, much like death.
The author delimits time, constructing an ideology separate from a pure, clarified time, freed from events, beings, and things, which reveals itself only in certain passing moments of the night, and which constitutes for man the sole concern of dragging himself toward an exemplary catastrophe.
2.Thus, life can frame one’s becoming. The spirit appears in antithesis to life, competing with it: in the face of any fact of life, the spirit plays the role of the spoilsport. Nevertheless, he discovers the purpose of life: it has no purpose; however, each of us finds one.
3.For this reason, man acts as an ambidextrous agent of destiny: there are people who seek the meaning of life and people who have found it without seeking it.
If man tries to depend entirely on God, he will progress slowly, so slowly that he will not even realize it.
If man no longer lives in the shadow of anyone, he will rush, and this will sadden him, and he would give anything to reclaim the belief he abandoned.
4.Although Cioran states that he detests man, he cannot maintain the same attitude toward the human being. I detest the human being for the simple fact that the word being contains, no matter what one says, a certain something of fullness, of enigmatic and passionate quality—attributes foreign to the notion of man.
This delineation arouses a suspicion in him, the very nature of being thus becoming questionable: What then to say about life, which is its becoming and its fading?
5.Subsequently, the antithesis of good and evil intervenes, aiming for adherence to a single direction: that of obtaining salvation, in order to clarify the doubled chain of Good and Evil.
The world is seen as an obstruction, and human beings are regarded as creatures too spiritually underdeveloped to grasp this fundamental reality.
Meanwhile, Evil separates itself, achieving its own identity apart from the primal, original indifference, and disguises itself under the alias of Time, taking time as its pseudonym. To obtain salvation, however, people must believe in morality, as only then will Evil die, exhausting its vitality.
6.Freedom thus appears as a gift. A gift of understanding life.
Freedom will belong solely to the one who has unveiled the vanity of all perspectives, and truly freed is only the one who has acted upon the consequences of that finding.
The verb “to feel” gains a double meaning: to understand experience and reality.
Therefore, Cioran states: I feel that I am free, but I know that I am not.
7.Intuition manifests after freedom, complementing it and delimiting the human being.
Cioran held that intuitions are twofold: the essential (Homer, Upanishads, folklore) and the belated (Mahayana Buddhism, Roman Stoicism, Alexandrian Gnosticism). Intuitions that are nothing more nor less than primary flashes and pale glimmers that lead to the awakening of consciousness and the boredom of being awake.
8.Man constructs his image by saying what he wanted to say. However, he must leave an incomplete self-image. Cioran considers this to be a golden rule.
9.Out of a desire to define his becoming and motivate his existence, man turns toward God. Cioran views God as a disease: a disease you believe you are cured of because no one dies from it.
And he defines Him as the interval between two heartbeats—thereby giving Him an ambivalent value; however, there are also hearts into which He cannot look without losing His innocence.
In the author’s view, God is, even if He is not, and Cioran seeks to explain how He will succeed in truly comprehending humanity: Will God be able to bear all my shortcomings? Will He be able to stir under the burden of so many sorrows?
10.Through defining God, humanity will gain a deeper comprehension of mortality. For Cioran, death is the flavor of existence. Man appears to accept the idea of dying, but not ‘the hour of death’: he is willing to die at any time, just not when he is truly obliged to.: to die anytime, but not when one must die, no!
Thus, the human being realizes that he carries not only his life but also his death.
11.In conclusion, man will be left with only one solution to survive. Cioran affirms, with stoicism, the plausible solution he has adopted. A simple, elegant solution: What do you do from morning till night?
I endure myself.
Note:
The bolded text is Cioran’s.
References:
Cioran, E. M. (1992). On the Heights of Despair (Pe culmile disperării). Translated by I. Zarifopol-Johnston. University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1934)
Cioran, E. M. (1991). The Book of Delusions (Cartea amăgirilor). Humanitas. (Original work published 1936)
Cioran, E. M. (1990). The Transfiguration of Romania (Schimbarea la față a României). Translated by M. Z. The University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1936)
Cioran, E. M. (1995). Tears and Saints (Lacrimi și sfinți). Translated by I. Zarifopol-Johnston. University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1937)
Cioran, E. M. (1991). The Twilight of Thoughts (Amurgul gîndurilor). Humanitas. (Original work published 1940)
Cioran, E. M. (1991). The Passionate Handbook (Îndreptar pătimaș). Humanitas. (Original work published 1991)
Google. (2025). Translation of Cioran’s Romanian philosophical quotes [Large Language Model]. Generated by Gemini, November 30, 2025.
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