Emil Cioran XI
Set XI of my translations-variations of Emil Cioran’s untranslated notebooks, covering the period November 15 1964 — March 10 1965.
Previously:
Cioran I / Cioran II, Chazal / Cioran III, Chazal II / Cioran IV / Cioran V / Cioran VI / Cioran VII, Shestov I / Cioran VIII, Shestov II / Cioran IX, Shestov III / Cioran X
November 2 1964
5.30 am. A single bird, taking the opportunity afforded him by this disinherited hour to try out a new song. Something in the morning touched him, and via him, touched me. I was overjoyed. But at 6.30, having walked for an hour, I was brought back to myself by the sight of an elderly woman defecating in a public square. I ran into the nearest church; a hunchbacked priest with one eye was explaining to five or six of the faithful that the wonders of God are eternal. Nearly believed him.
The only thing worse than a worldview is a system.
‘Everything disappears forever’ — overheard on the metro.
November 15 1964
At last, my book is out. I refuse to do any interviews, I refuse to do or say anything at all, it would be too degrading, as I told Y. Why did you write it then, he asked. There are degrees of shamelessness, I said.
That Shakespeare could write tragedies and comedies with equal ease — there is no more disturbing fact.
Wanting to appear more intelligent than one is is tiresome. The opposite failing, characteristic of the English, is preferable.
What a long afternoon! Like a river trying to drown in its own water.
December 2 1964
After the First World War, electricity was introduced in my village. The devil has come, the devil has come, observed the villagers. A few years later, it was installed in the village church. It is the end of time, they said. Nietzsche’s so-called untimeliness, relative to the intuitions of the illiterate Romanian peasantry, is comically unprofound (you could interview a hundred of them and not come across a single ‘fact’).
The opposite of sincerity is speech.
What we really need to invent is some kind of anti-mirror. And yet what do I see when I look outside? Miles upon miles of washing machines, hair-driers, toasters —
December 25 1964
I am enjoying Dylan Thomas. For example: And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb / How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm —
That skepticism cannot be converted into a religion — the tragedy of my life.
December 27 1964
Some people claim to find my latest book interesting. But I will never recover from the boredom I felt last August, when, for some reason, I had to look again at the proofs.
The goal of my life: to spend the smallest possible amount of time thinking about ‘psychology’.
I read in an interview with a Soviet ‘professor of style’ that only a genius has the right to use “three adjectives in a row.” He only allows his students to use one adjective at a time.
December 30 1964
The earth, having created the most beautiful creatures imaginable — goats, leopards, horses — was surely exhausted. Hence man.
A writer is lost as soon as his audience exists. The genius escapes this by existing before his time, which is to say, before his audience can exist, and by existing, kill him. An artist that is understood is subhuman.