International Competitions in Architecture
A HOUSE FOR EMIL CIORAN
We could easily call this house THE HOUSE OF DESPAIR.
Of course, such a house could have a rich multitude of “beneficiaries”, not just Emil Cioran.
But he was the author of a book called: “On the Heights of Despair.”
And indeed, this Romanian / French moralist was obsessed by despair, if we can say so, even when combing his hair, rather carefully, if we are allowed in this case to be amusing.
A master of the French language, Cioran amazes us with his total lack of shame in attempting to totally disregard the tenets of modern life, that is: work from nine to five, a family, a comfortable home, a spacious car, etc.
This man refused to work all his life, unless one considers his beautiful “Oeuvres Completes” published by Gallimard, work.
And indeed, what else is it…?????????
To live all your life in a room not bigger than a bathroom (although, it is true, not far from Place de l’Odeon in Paris) and to write, write, write… wouldn’t this be, indeed, a truly EARNED LIFE…?????????????
The relationship Cioran had with God seems paradoxical.
While many might consider him a nihilist, we ask this question:
How could a nihilist ever like Bach…????????
And Cioran loved Bach, and thus, we cannot avoid saying it, God.
But the possible circumvolutions of the subject should not distract us from the essence of Cioran’s thinking, which is as pessimistic as it can get, although, considering again his carefully combed hair, one wonders…!?!
But all in all, this beautifully written French philosophy is so beautifully (aesthetically speaking, in terms of its language) dark that it becomes, through a predictable alchemy, its opposite: it is light, through and through, because, as Dostoevsky well knew, “beauty will save the world” and in this case it saved Cioran himself from his own ”heights of despair.”
So please conceive a House for the tenor of despair, since Cioran is definitely a tenor. He sings about despair as a tenor, not as a bass.
Thus, his despair could make one fly.
Fly, dear architect, from the heights of despair over the abyss of your misery, and try to find, architecturally, a language as inspired as the one that saved Cioran.
It is best if you read him in French, but available English translations will do too.
Plus, does despair need any translation…?
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