Philosophers: Visionary of Darkness

Every night, during the "May Days" of the Sorbonne revolt, a greying, middle-aged man descended from his Left Bank attic flat and ambled over to the student-occupied Théátre de L'Odéon. There he listened with amused interest as youthful nihilists denounced the entire span of French history as irrelevant. Their harsh judgment did not surprise him. In five slim volumes of pel lucid, painfully distilled essays, Rumanian-born Philosopher E. M. Cioran, 57, has argued the terrible futility of human history. More originally than any other living thinker, he has defined the case...

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