1. Summary
This text is an excerpt from a 1996 interview by Norbert Dodille with Simone Boué, the long-term companion of the philosopher Emil Cioran. The interview, conducted the year after Cioran’s death, focuses on his literary life and writing habits. Boué recounts Cioran’s pivotal decision around 1947 to switch from writing in Romanian to French, a choice famously made in Dieppe while he was struggling to translate Mallarmé. His first French work, Précis de Décomposition, was rewritten multiple times after a friend’s harsh critique.
Boué clarifies her role in his work, explaining that while she typed all his manuscripts, she was not his primary French language advisor; that role fell to a woman Cioran nicknamed “la grammairienne.” She describes his writing process: he wrote little at a time, often asking her to read his work aloud to him to judge its quality. He was resistant to criticism, once refusing to alter a preface for Ceronetti despite her objections. Boué suggests Cioran did not particularly enjoy writing and was often pushed to do so by commitments, such as those made to Jean Paulhan for the Nouvelle Revue Française, especially after the commercial failure of Syllogismes de l’amertume. The text also notes that Boué and Cioran are buried together in Montparnasse Cemetery and that she established the “Bourse Cioran,” a literary grant funded by the royalties from his work.
2. Summary with Marked Entities
This text is a summary of an excerpt from a 1996 interview conducted by Norbert Dodille with Simone Boué, the long-term companion of the philosopher Emil Cioran. Published in Lectures de Cioran by L’Harmattan, the interview took place a year after Cioran’s death in 1995 in Paris. Boué, an agrégée d’anglais who died in 1997, discusses Cioran’s literary life, particularly his pivotal decision around 1947 to switch from writing in roumain to français. This decision was famously made in Dieppe while he was attempting to translate Mallarmé. His first French work, Précis de Décomposition, was submitted to Gallimard and rewritten multiple times after a friend criticized it for “smelling of a foreigner.”
Simone Boué clarifies her role, stating that while she typed all of his later manuscripts, Cioran was initially helped with his French by a woman he nicknamed “la grammairienne,” a habit of giving nicknames he apparently shared with people from his home region of Rasinari. Boué describes Cioran’s writing process: he would often ask her to read his daily page aloud to him, and although she occasionally made suggestions, he was fiercely protective of his text, once refusing to change a single comma in a preface for Ceronetti’s Le Silence du corps. She reveals that Cioran did not seem to enjoy writing and was often reluctant, only producing essays for Jean Paulhan at the Nouvelle Revue Française (N.R.F.) under pressure, especially after the commercial failure of Syllogismes de l’amertume, which received only a single review in the magazine Elle. According to Boué, Cioran felt incapable of writing in other genres and dismissed suggestions to write his memoirs. The introductory and concluding notes mention that Cioran and Boué are buried together in the cimetière Montparnasse and that Boué established the Bourse Cioran, a literary grant for essayists, through a bequest of her rights to Cioran’s work, managed by the Centre national du livre.