Cafard : le vertige d’exister

In nine conversations recorded between 1974 and 1990, Emil Cioran reflects on childhood, Paris, writing in French and the recurring despair he calls cafard. Insomnia and boredom lead him to questions of time, consciousness, mysticism and Gnosis; laughter and contradiction complicate his bleak outlook.

0:00 — Fallen from the hand of God
0:29 — His mother's words and the accident of birth
1:42 — Childhood games in the cemetery
3:11 — The lost freedom of a Carpathian childhood
4:52 — Paris, poverty and belonging nowhere
8:06 — Living without a profession
9:21 — The decision to write in French
15:14 — French as a straitjacket and a lost cause
16:19 — Writing and its inward echo
17:32 — Truth in sensations rather than books
19:59 — Cafard and writing as relief
24:06 — A mystic who believes in nothing
24:55 — Raté: friendship with those who failed
26:35 — Brothels, women and the loss of independence
28:29 — Women, asceticism and imbalance
29:31 — Insomnia and the first book
32:08 — Sleepless nights and unbroken time
33:18 — The dark side of things
34:20 — Boredom and the awareness of time
35:33 — Childhood boredom and mystical experience
39:46 — Gnosis and the evil creator
41:29 — Salvation only in moments
42:58 — Consciousness as a fatality
44:31 — Loneliness: myself and God
47:23 — Mystery within nothingness
49:21 — Living with the consciousness of nothingness
52:05 — Irony as a mask for unhappiness
53:17 — Melancholy and the feeling that everything is in vain
55:33 — Age and becoming a caricature of oneself
56:31 — The responsibility of bringing someone into the world
57:47 — Humanity's adventure and its ending
1:01:49 — Seeing life's other side and still feeling its charm
1:03:18 — Contradiction and pleasure in the insoluble
1:07:57 — Failure, hope and their lack of substance
1:10:10 — The ecstasy and horror of life
1:10:51 — Laughter as a victory
1:11:14 — The idea of suicide as a way of bearing life
1:13:23 — The glory of death

Emil Cioran — 1 recording in the archive.

Personally, I have the impression that I have fallen from the hand of God. I believe that a person who keeps busy from morning until evening is a damned person. He belongs in hell. You see, an animal does nothing at all. It eats and watches. My father was a priest. Curiously, my mother was not a believer because of that. She was much more independent in spirit than my father. I remember an event that was extraordinarily important to me. I was twenty, perhaps a little younger. One afternoon only my mother was at home. It was two in the afternoon, I remember perfectly. In my mother's presence I threw myself onto a sofa and said: “I can't take it anymore.” Then my mother said: “If I had known, I would have had an abortion.” It made an extraordinary impression on me, but not a negative one. Instead of rebelling, I remember a kind of smile. It was also a revelation: I was the fruit of chance, without any necessity. In a way it was a liberation, but it marked me for the rest of my life. We had a garden alongside a cemetery—a large cemetery. The village had six thousand inhabitants; it was almost a little town. I was very friendly with the gravedigger. He always gave me skulls to play football with. Skulls, bones—everything you can imagine. All my friends were very happy, and we played in the cemetery with the bones of God knows whom, perhaps our ancestors. I retain a very pleasant memory of that cemetery. Perhaps it also played a part later, when I was around twenty and the idea of death became an obsession. I thought about it day and night. Now I think about it much less, although now I would have a reason to. Then I was young; there was no need to think about it. But it was an obsession. I have always thought that it might have come from that cemetery—as though it were the revenge of the dead upon me, against me. I have been very unhappy in life because my childhood was so extraordinary. I was born in a village in the Carpathians, a very beautiful village, and lived like a wild animal, so to speak. It was wonderful. My parents were very understanding. [Unclear phrase.] I think I was punished in life for having had such…