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

Marta Petreu (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 2005

A writer who does stupid things in his youth is like a woman with a shameful past—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 Romania—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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Romanian poet, philosopher and editor Petreu shows in this dense but fresh work that many Romanian intellectuals were seduced by fascist ideology during the interwar years—and that philosopher Cioran, an "aphorist of humorous despair," was haunted by this legacy for the rest of his life. Petreu details the ultranationalist, pro-Christian ideology of the Legion of the Archangel Michael, a movement of intellectuals that gained prominence in Romania after WWI. As with many ideologies of the era, Petreu writes, anti-Semitism lay at the movement's core. Cioran's own ideology, rooted in the wish to turn Romania's "depressing present into a grandiose future," included a more complex view of Jews, outlined in his 1936 The Transfiguration of Romania. He envied what he saw as Jewish productivity in government, business and the arts. But Petreu shows how his outlook, adapted from Spengler, also necessitated hostility toward Jews and other non-Romanians. Cioran left Romania after WWII and became ashamed of his earlier fascism, but Petreu mines his life for lessons to be learned today about how good intentions can lead to extremism. (Nov. 4)
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Review

An enormous contribution to our understanding not only of Romania's tormented past, but also of European intellectual history. (Marci Shore, Indiana University Slavic and East European Journal )

Represents the most thorough analysis of Cioran's inter-war fascination with fascism and nationalism…thought-provoking read. (Patterns Of Prejudice )

A thorough and vivid portrait of a Romanian gifted fascist thinker, who dreamed about ‘a Romania with the population of China and the destiny of France.’ Like his legionary colleagues, Emil Cioran admired Hitler, justified his crimes and believed that capitalism was ‘immoral, Judaic and anti-Christian.’ Unlike other Iron Guard ideologists, Cioran praised Lenin and envisioned a modern Romania driven by industrialization and urban values. Like his comrades, Cioran advocated a fascist dictatorship and cultivated Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the criminal führer of the Iron Guard. But unlike his friend and fellow Iron Guard ideologist, Mircea Eliade, who did not show any willingness to part with his totalitarian past, Cioran had the decency, in his productive French exile, to regret his fascist youth and break with it. (Radu Ioanid )

Dense but fresh work. (Publishers Weekly )

A vivid social and political memoir. (Donovan, Diane C. Midwest Book Review )

A sure and unobtrusive guide to the fevered, alienated milieu that turned Cioran...into a passionate partisan of Hitler. (Robert Legvold Foreign Affairs )

Excellent.... Marta Petreu's biography is a well-documented account of everything shameful that Cioran ever wrote. (Zbigniew Janowski First Things )

Brilliantly thorough. (Carlin Romano Chronicle of Higher Education )

From now on, I’ll never read Cioran with as much appreciation. (Eric Rasmussen University Of Illinois, Chicago )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 348 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee; First Am edition edition (September 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566636078
• ISBN-13: 978-1566636070
• Product Dimensions: 11.5 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,755,169 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Cioran's apology, November 23, 2007

By 

Cromulus "Magnus Cromulus" (Rome) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: An Infamous Past: E.M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in Romania (Hardcover)

"An Infamous Past" concentrates on Cioran's early days and his infatuation with the legionary movement and its rise and effect on Romania's intelligentsia in the 1930's.

While the book is excellent, and Marta Petreu has performed both impressive research and drawn reasonable conclusions, the translation by Bogdan Aldea (who incorrectly translates "Totul Pentru Tara" as "Everything for the Fatherland" (the word "patria" means fatherland while the word "tara" means country), and the failure to acknowledge Codreanu's eventual abandonment of antisemitism and violence as a means (both actions which perpetuate a distortion of Romanian history), earn this book a one star demerit.

10 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Book on Cioran in English, November 14, 2006

By 

Willis G. Regier "Billinois" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: An Infamous Past: E.M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in Romania (Hardcover)

The Chicago publisher Ivan R. Dee has already published one major Romanian book in English translation, Mihail Sebastian's JOURNAL 1933-1945. Petreu's book is something different--a clear, serious, and straightforward scholarly study, a type of book seldom undertaken by an American commercial publisher. It is well chosen, though its future depends entirely on the reputation of Cioran, and it will do little to enhance that reputation.
Petreu is intimately familar with Cioran's writings, and quotes from them liberally. That alone would make this book an important source for readers of Cioran who cannot read Romanian. She has also troubled to read his 1930s journalism and his correspondence (some of which she has collected and published in Cluj), texts unavailable in English. There is some repetitiveness, but with good reason.
Petreu also is a student of history and is able to place Cioran's "lyrical philosophy" and praise of fascism (and of Hitler) in the context of Romanian politics. This by no means excuses Cioran. Rather, Petreu shows how and why fascism appealed to him in his twenties, when his literary ambitions, his dismay at European contempt for Romania, and his faith in destiny converged in opportunistic rant. Later in life, Cioran bitterly regretted these years. Petreu provides the ugly details, showing how much he had to regret.
Finally, her discussion of the Iron Guard, the blackshirts of Romania, who murdered and marauded in the name of pure Christianity, is a frightening reminder of what militant Christian politics can do.
Petreu writes that Cioran's "fundamental nature--decadent, amoral, aesthetic" (p. 182) was a fertile ground for his commitment to Romanian fascism. Cioran's current fame as a writer and a philosopher rests on the books he published in Paris after World War II. Petreu's book provides vital background for his Parisian career, showing how his fascist years continued to affect his later work, sometimes with hints, often with suppression, and always with fear and revulsion.

0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A portrait of Romanian hooliganism, December 4, 2010

By 

Paul Gelman "PAUL Y. GELMAN" (HAIFA , ISRAEL) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: An Infamous Past: E.M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in Romania (Hardcover)

This book is an excellent contribution to one of the darkest chapters of Roumanian history,namely:the dark days of the Iron Guardists.Not only were they anti-Semitic,but they were
also a bunch of fanatic hooligans who lived under some kind of illusion that Roumania would one day be pure, free of any other foreign elements. They were assisted by a great number of Roumanian intellectuals,and among those Emil Cioran was one of them. An early admirer of Hitler and a rabid anti-Semite,he develpoed a philosophy of his own which preached for the advancement of Roumanian history through industrialization,while constantly preaching in his writings about the indolence and stupidity of his Roumanian comrades and his own people. On this point he was right,since the Roumanians are to this day lazy,corrupt and hope for their salvation by some deus ex-machina. The period discussed in this book is mainly about Roumanian fascism,religious fanaticism and anti-modernism. These motifs were spread by other fanatical philosophers such as the known anti-Semitic and notious historian of religions Mircea Eliade,Nae Ionescu and other gutter-writers who sold their soul to the devil. Some of them, including Cioran regretted their shameful past after World War Two,though one cannot be sure whether they had really done so honestly or just for the sake of their wish to be remembered as the good fellows who finally realized their mistakes of being friends with the dark forces, such as Codreanu,the Iron Guards and Hitler.
According to Codreanu and Marin,the Jews were responsible for the misfortunes which fell upon Roumania. In fact,Cioran had some kind of different opinion and he believed thaat Roumanians and not the foreigners were to blame for past failures,although he himself remained ambivalent on this point and thus he cannot be excused in any way for is support of the Fascists .Even his infamous sentence that had he been a Jew,he would have committed suicide cannot be forgotten.
Cioran was not only an antisemite, but also took an anti-Hungarian stance which reflected his resentment toward his former masters of his country. He preached for a dictatorship-a dream which had materialized in the horror system devised by Ceausescu and his cronies. This because the Legionary doctrine was anti-democratic and anti-liberal.
Most of Cioran's writings are and will remain destructive and and so will their messages.
This book is excellent and should be read by those who think that dictatorships are the answer to the evils of any society. The memory of Cioran will always be one of infamy,despite his efforts to recant and expunge his past.