CIORAN Emil M. (1911-1995). AUTOGRAPHIC MANUSCRIPT,... Lot 30

CIORAN Emil M. (1911-1995). AUTOGRAPHIC MANUSCRIPT, Les degrés de la délivrance..., [1969]; spiral bound in-4 notebook (Librairie-papeterie Joseph Gibert) of 80 pages folioed 1 to 40, plus 3 pages (on 2 loose sheets), red cardboard cover. Interesting first draft manuscript, prefiguring the book De l'inconvénient d'être né. Written in blue or red ballpoint pen, with numerous erasures and corrections, on the front and back of the pages numbered in red by Cioran, this notebook bears on the cover the crossed-out title: Nostalgia of the Deluge. One entry bears the date of August 21, 1969 (f. 39): "Last night, a particularly bad night, I understood under what conditions the obsession with birth arises. - The obsession with birth is the fruit of bad nights // Woke up at 3 a.m. Could not get back to sleep. Impossible to go back to sleep. Alone with all this darkness. What do I have to say to him? Of all that seemed to be, only she and... I remain. [And it will always be like this; crossed out] I can't even imagine the day. Everything is suspended. And as the future seems inconceivable to me, I turn back to the past, rush it up, and run into my birth. I can no longer speak. It is therefore the great obstacle, the center and origin, the secret of all that I am, the point of process of my self. Besides, there is no more me, there is only this darkness and the thought of my birth. And I have only to triumph over this thought, so that night reigns alone at last. This page, concentrated in five short sentences, will form the incipit of De l'inconvénient d'être né. Indeed, the notebook appears as the first draft of the 1973 book, but in a more meditative or dissertated form, which will later be considerably concentrated into aphorisms or more condensed thoughts; thus an anecdote about a Polish woman (p. 4) will be reduced to a few lines in section IX. However, there are already some remarkable aphorisms: "All opinion is slavery"; "I am an unbeliever contaminated by the absolute"... The booklet appears to be a long reflection and meditation, punctuated by titles or themes: The degrees of deliverance; Spiritual level; "The universal nightmare"; Birth; The abyss of birth; "The great question: how to cure our birth"; "The consequences of birth"; Eternity; The pride of "knowledge"; "The vision of the universal game"; Reality and dream; etc.