Emil Cioran – Circumstanţele unei vinovăţii asumate/Emil Cioran – The circumstances of an assumed guilt

Abstract

This article summarizes some of the conclusions of a larger paper where we have extensively described the context and circumstances leading to young Emil Cioran’s “crime of sympathy” for the interwar far-right movement. It is rather unbelievable how, in most cases, Cioran’s detractors do not take into consideration the many mitigating factors characterizing his particular situation: the novelty and apparent viability of the totalitarian solutions during his time, the sublimed perception of the legionary phenomenon, the obvious limitations of the transitivity of guilt, the blind passion for a genuinely great Romania, etc. Similarly, they cannot answer a simple question: Why wasn’t Cioran a registered member of the legionary movement?