Ethique de l'irréparable. Lecture de l'exil cioranien

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2013

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My dissertation examines the experience of exile in relation to the transplanted writer. Cioran (1911-1995), a Romanian-born writer and philosopher, moved from his native Romania to Paris in 1937 and started writing in his adopted country's language in 1947. His experience of exile was multifaceted. The experience of exile proper and the drastic linguistic changes to which he was submitted complemented, in his case, an acute awareness of the quintessential, metaphysical exile. A brief encounter with fascist ideology in his youth prompted him, once he understood the extent of his error, to banish himself from any political and ideological involvement for the rest of his life.

Trying to adapt to his new French environment while being torn between the Romanian and French languages, Cioran expresses, through his writings, his keen perception of displacement, and translates it into a paradoxical, fragmentary style. His existential approach to exile as the ultimate human alienation warrants a perpetual shifting between solidarity with his fellow human beings and a desire to dissociate himself from them.

My analysis of Cioran's philosophical, self-reflective essays suggests that his experience of exile determines his personal code of ethics, which draws its strength from the notion of the "irreparable", a concept central to Cioran's thought. Thus, exile evolves from the external, contingent experience, and takes on the characteristics of a literary topos: the experience of writing becomes the very illustration of exile itself. This experience reaches its cathartic potential when it entails, as is the case in Cioran's meditations, a realization of the tragic human existence.

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