The Transfiguration of Romania

by Cioran, Emil; Iordachi, Constantin; Turda, Marius

• ISBN13: 9781472519368
• ISBN10: 1472519361
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-08-13
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

A close friend of Eugene Ionesco and Mircea Eliade as well as - in his later Paris years - Paul Celan and Samuel Beckett, the Romanian philosopher and essayist Emil Cioran is an important figure in central European Modernism. Cioran's existentialism channelled many seminal intellectual influences of the time from Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche to Georg Simmel, Martin Heidegger and Henri Bergson. More controversially, it was also a philosophy that that took on distinctly fascist overtones in the inter-war years, especially in his early work The Transfiguration of Romania.

Now available for the first time in English translation, the publication of The Transfiguration of Romania casts new light on Modernist culture's engagement with the rise of European fascism between the wars. Supported by an extended introduction that explores Cioran's life, work and enduring influence up to the present day as well his ongoing engagement with the far-right in Romania and beyond, this is a crucial text for anyone seeking to understand the rise of fascist culture in Europe in the interwar period.

Author Biography

Emil Cioran (1911-1995) was a Romanian philosopher and essayist and one of the most important Central European thinkers of the 20th Century. A prolific writer who came to prominence late in his life after settling in France, his major works include A Short History of Decay and History and Utopia.

Constantin Iordachi is Associate Professor in the History Department at Central European University, Hungary. His previous publications include Charisma, Politics and Violence: The Legion of the 'Archangel Michael' in Inter-War Romania and Citizenship, Nation- and State-Building.

Marius Turda is Reader in 20th Century Central and Eastern European Biomedicine in the Department of History at Oxford Brookes University, UK.

Table of Contents

Introduction:Cioran and His Work \ The Transfiguration of Romania \ 1. The Tragedy of Small Cultures \ 2. Romanian "Adamism" \ 3. Romania's Psychological and Historical Gaps \ 4. National Collectivism \ 5. War and Revolution \ 6. The World of the Political \ 7. Romania's Historical Spiral \ Annotated Bibliography \ Index.