CIORAN Emil M. (1911-1995). autograph manuscript,... Lot 38

CIORAN Emil M. (1911-1995). autograph manuscript, Aveux et Anathèmes; spiral bound booklet in-fol. (29,7 x 21 cm, Joseph Gibert) of 154 numbered pages, red card cover. Interesting workbook for his last book, Aveux et anathèmes (Gallimard, 1987). Written on both sides in blue ballpoint pen, but also sometimes in black, green and red, with numerous erasures and corrections, this notebook (titled on the cover: I Aveux et anathèmes) gathers more than 650 thoughts or aphorisms. Some of them are marked in the margins with crosses in red pen; others with question marks or the question "already? Some have been crossed out or crossed out. This working manuscript is a first draft of what will become, after elaboration and reclassification, Aveux et anathèmes. One finds here, in an order that is not yet that of the book, a quantity of thoughts and aphorisms that will be found in the six chapters of the book (these are generally those marked with a red cross), here in a primitive version, often overloaded with corrections that chisel and perfect the aphorism. Many other entries in this notebook seem to have remained unpublished. Let us quote the first entries of this notebook, of which only the fifth has been marked with a cross (the words in square brackets have been crossed out): "The idea of death takes away the reality of everything, of death itself. The remains - to speak of a deceased person. What a word! It alone would be enough to throw you into [debauchery or renunciation or debauchery] an unprecedented form [of idiocy] of [mental] disaster. Fleeing from who I was, [desertion, evacuated self] evacuation of self, desertion. Someone else has [taken] taken my place. Well, let him occupy it. Everything that emanates from the crowd, everything that it imposes, turns [badly] [to disaster]. [The crowd lacks political instinct] [Ignoring the] Impervious to doubt, it knows only how to idolize or abhor, - two equally fatal reactions. As the years pass, a being is no more than a residue that bears his name. The feeling we have for our origins is a mixture of tender love and furious contempt"... Let us quote again the clarification of this reflection on Mallarmé (p. 31, included in the chapter Magic of Deception): "For Mallarmé, condemned to [wakefulness] watch, he claimed, twenty-four hours a day, sleep was not [is not] a 'real need' but a 'favour'. ' [Again, he should have added that he to whom it was denied [was the last] deserved to be in the first rank of the pestiferous]." And Cioran, after crossing out this last sentence, adds in red pen: "Only a great poet can afford the luxury of such a paradox or such insanity. Last example of Cioran's exploitation of this notebook. Pages 38 and 39 contain five entries, two of which are quite long, three of which marked with a cross are taken up in the chapter Fractures: the first one, very corrected, is inspired by the agony of Armel Guerne (his initials have been crossed out) who considers himself as "a blown-out candle"; the second one is about music ("It is only music"...); the fifth one is inspired by an encounter ("On the banks of the Seine, a young German asks me for a franc"...). The third entry seems to have remained unpublished: "X., in his seventies, is leaving the hospital. The doctor, to reassure him, grants him a ten-year reprieve. X. is disappointed, even worried. "Considering your age [(he was far from young)], it's not so bad," I tell him to calm him down. "It's not enough. I'd like to live longer," he replied. // A few months later he was no more. Overly proud of himself, in agony he considered every possibility, except [that of [his death] dying] the one [which he dreaded] that imposed itself and which he eliminated from the outset." The fourth entry also seems to be new: "The disease is a plot. It bears all the hallmarks of such a plot: long preparation, work in secret and in silence, calculated slowness, surprise attack, etc.".