Emil CIORAN - Autograph manuscript on the birth.

Emil CIORAN (1911.1995)

Autograph manuscript.

A large in-4° page. Slnd (Circa 1969-1970). Frayed right margin.

“To ruminate on birth is to sigh and pray for another error than that of being. »

Remarkable manuscript by the Romanian philosopher – preparatory to his work On the Disadvantage of Being Born – questioning the meaning of existence and the human suffering resulting from being born.

It is certain that if I have attached myself to this problem it is out of taste, out of passion for the insoluble. In other words, out of a need for torment. Because what can this imagination lead me to about the phenomenon of birth? Nothing but more suffering. But perhaps suffering is a vital necessity for some. They only think of moving forward by torturing themselves, by inflicting defeat upon defeat. I circle around my birth, and start from every birth, but I cannot stop what is triggered, what has happened.

But perhaps this escape has a more serious meaning. It would represent a roundabout way of questioning creation as a whole, because without a doubt, birth is the starting point of all being and all power. Questioning birth is equivalent to attacking origins . That there is no longer an origin is also the will that nothing should have happened, that what was should not be, that nothing would be and that it would have been preferable if it had not happened. there would have been nothing, that being is an error ; as if we could conceive of any other error than that of Being! To ruminate on birth is to sigh and pray for another error than that of being.