Emil CIORAN – Manuscript on knowledge and work.

Emil CIORAN (1911.1995)

Autograph manuscript.

One large quarto page crossed out in red pen. [Place of publication unknown]

Missing at the top of the page with slight damage to the text.

Cioran recalls the memory of two childhood friends and cynically compares them to Napoleon Bonaparte.

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The image of two high school classmates comes to mind. Both came from extremely poor peasant backgrounds. What makes me think of them is something inexplicable that had already struck me at school: they knew everything without ever working. Excellent in every subject, they grasped every detail of the lessons immediately and remembered every detail the teachers could reel off. Everything that could be known, they knew. I don't think they ever needed to make an effort to understand. They simply understood, as if it were all commonplace. Even in geometry, it seemed as if they remembered everything they learned, but in their case, the word "learn" is meaningless, because they simply didn't learn. In this, they resembled Napoleon, who, having fought sixty battles, declared on Saint Helena that after the last one he knew no more about the art of war than after the first. My comrades also carried this innate knowledge within them, with the difference that one became a judge and the other something even less brilliant.