Searching for Cioran

Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston's critical biography of the Romanian-born
French philosopher E. M. Cioran focuses on his crucial formative years as a mystical
revolutionary attracted to right-wing nationalist politics in interwar Romania, his
writings of this period, and his self-imposed exile to France in 1937. This move led
to his transformation into one of the most famous French moralists of the 20th
century. As an enthusiast of the anti-rationalist philosophies widely popular in
Europe during the first decades of the 20th century, Cioran became an advocate of
the fascistic Iron Guard. In her quest to understand how Cioran and other brilliant
young intellectuals could have been attracted to such passionate national revival
movements, Zarifopol-Johnston, herself a Romanian emigré, sought out the aging
philosopher in Paris in the early 1990s and retraced his steps from his home village
of Rasinari and youthful years in Sibiu, through his student years in Bucharest and
Berlin, to his early residence in France. Her portrait of Cioran is complemented by
an engaging autobiographical account of her rediscovery of her own Romanian
past.