An Infamous Past: E.M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in

An Infamous Past: E.M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in Romania

A writer who does stupid things in his youth is like a woman with a shameful pastâ€•never forgiven, never forgotten. E. M. Cioran, the renowned Romanian-French nihilist philosopher and literary figure, knew this better than anyone. Alongside Heidegger, Sartre, Paul de Mann, and others, Cioran was one of the great scholars of the twentieth century to be seduced by totalitarianism: he experienced a most disturbing intellectual and moral drama. More than any other study of Cioran, Marta Petreu's intensive investigation of his life and work confronts the central problem of his biography: his relationship with political extremism. The scene of Cioran's excesses is Romania and Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, a time of xenophobia, anti-Semitism, racism, Nazism, and Stalinism. In an incendiary book published in the mid-thirties, Cioran openly praised Hitler and Lenin and compared the leader of the fanatical Romanian Iron Guard to Jesus himself. This book, The Transfiguration of Romania, is the focal element of Ms. Petreu's analysis, which she carries on to Cioran's posthumously published Notebooks, characterized by the regret and remorse of his twilight years. In straightforward and lucid prose, grounded in a wealth of documentary evidence, she provides the entire history of a painful individual and collective drama. For many of Cioran's yearnings would later be realized in Ceausescu's dictatorship of Romaniaâ€•to the regret of the Romanian people. Norman Manea's Foreword reminds us of Cioran's stature in Western intellectual circles and explains the critical importance of An Infamous Past.

Country	USA
Author	Marta Petreu
Binding	Hardcover
Brand	Brand: Ivan R. Dee
EAN	9781566636070
Edition	0
Feature	Used Book in Good Condition
ISBN	1566636078
Label	Ivan R. Dee
Manufacturer	Ivan R. Dee
NumberOfItems	1
NumberOfPages	348
PublicationDate	2005-09-15
Publisher	Ivan R. Dee
Studio	Ivan R. Dee
ReleaseDate	0000-00-00

An Infamous Past: E.M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in Romania

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