E. M. Cioran was a Romanian-born essayist and aphorist living in Paris and writing in French from the age of twenty-six. Upon the publication of his first book in French, Précis de decomposition (A Short History of Decay), Cioran was hailed by Maurice Nadeau in Combat as “le prophète des temps concentrationaires et du suicide collectif [. . .] le porteur [. . .] de la mauvaise nouvelle” [“the prophet of the era of concentration camps and collective suicide [. . .] the bringer of [. . .] bad news”]. While his writings are suffused with philosophical themes, Cioran often resisted the label of philosopher, preferring an unsystematic and fragmentary approach to …
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Citation: Acquisto, Joseph. "Emil Cioran". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 February 2009 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12517, accessed 08 December 2024.]