Emil Cioran And Oscar Wilde: On Christ And Suffering

By chance or design I will never know, my reading brought me together with two pieces of writings which deals with suffering. In addition to the theme of suffering, these writings engage the figure of Jesus Christ. Which I think is really fascinating. The authors of the writings are Oscar Wilde and Emil Cioran (pronounced Chore-on ). Of course, Oscar Wilde is more familiar than the later author while Wilde is a famous literary figure, Cioran is a Romanian born French Philosopher and literary figure, who is not as famous as the former. The texts are De Profundis[1] by Wilde and On the heights of Despair[2] by Cioran. Their meditation of Christ could be interesting because, they are not theologians and do not have any traditional theological prejudices. Here I will try to present their views on suffering and how they connect to the figure of Jesus Christ to suffering and their converging and diverging points of view.

Cioran s writings take the form of the Nietzschean genre in scathing and unrelenting attacks on Christianity. Elsewhere he writes, I began to define myself, I was in reaction against the truths of my father, against Christianity. [3]However un-Christian his writings seem on the surface, it will be too early to discount him as an atheist. Like Nietzsche he is also a son of an Orthodox Priest which makes him wrestle with Christianity. These two thinkers, Nietzsche and Cioran are the most inverted thinkers of spirituality.

On the other hand, Wilde has his own take on religion. He writes:

Religion does not help me. The faith that others give to what is unseen, I give to what one can touch, and look at. My gods dwell in temples made with hands and within the circle of actual experience is my creed made perfect and complete I feel as if I would like to found an order for those who cannot believe: the Confraternity of the Faithless, one might call it, where on an altar, on which no taper burned, a priest, in whose heart peace had no dwelling, might celebrate with unblessed bread and a chalice empty of wine. Every thing to be true must become a religion.

While Wilde defines his own religion, Cioran fears he would end up as the founder of a religion. [4] Both these thinkers are in a way are serious thinkers about religion.

Suffering is one very long moment is how the text De Profundis begins. De Profundis which means from the depths some think it is taken from Psalm 130. The text itself is a long letter to his friend from the prison. Oscar Wilde writes this letter while being incarcerated for the act of gross indecency. This letter is a kind of a meditation over suffering. This letter for me strikes parallel to John Milton s On his blindness. Here, Wilde meditates on his humiliation and pain, his fall from glory. He ruminates in his fall as follows:

She and my father had bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honoured, not merely in literature, art, archaeology, and science, but in the public history of my own country, in its evolution as a nation. I had disgraced that name eternally. I had made it a low by-word among low people. I had dragged it through the very mire. I had given it to brutes that they might make it brutal, and to fools that they might turn it into a synonym for folly.

This trauma leads him to deeply meditate on suffering and sorrow. This personal experience of suffering helps him open up to the idea of universal value of suffering in life. It is the religious theme that interlaces within the text which interests me the most. The figure of Jesus appears to be the interlocutor within this meditation. Wilde writes about suffering as something as holy ground which produces humility in people and he calls it a supreme emotion of which man is capable of and for him, suffering lies behind everything it is the secret of life.

On the other hand, Emil Cioran s biographer writes that he is never tired of singing the praises of suffering. [5] This is very evident in his book On the heights of Despair which a full-fledged meditation on suffering. He begins by saying, Life is just a long, drawn-out agony.' For him only those who suffer are capable of infinite seriousness in their thinking. He also thinks that there is sadness behind everything in which life extends itself. Cioran makes suffering highly subjective rather than to universalise it. He writes, The most interesting aspect of suffering is the sufferer s belief in its absoluteness. He believes he has a monopoly on suffering. I think that I alone suffer, that I alone have the right to suffer. This subjective view of suffering is staggering. He thinks that suffering can be more justified than life itself.

My contention is that he is not simply praising suffering. He thinks through suffering deeply. He develops a kind of love-hate relationship with suffering. From his suffering experience he writes, I owe to suffering the best parts of myself as well as all that I have lost in life. Therefore I cannot either curse or love suffering. Moreover, he states that he is not writing an apology on behalf of suffering. He thinks only superfluous people are capable of loving suffering. Instead what suffering brings is a formidable destructive energy, and a rich fertility, dearly paid for. For him genuine suffering is a long-lasting abyss which destroys.

It is within this understanding of suffering both the thinkers approach Jesus Christ. In a characteristic Nietzschean style Cioran makes few remarks about Jesus Christ in the text and at the same time there is also deeper and more serious views on him. Cuttingly he writes, who can say with precision that my neighbour suffers more than I do or that Jesus suffered more than all of us. In the same tone he writes, nobody in this world has yet died from another s suffering. And the one who said he died for us did not die he was killed.

Wilde on the other hand is more sympathetic towards the figure of Jesus Christ. One can say here boldly that it is Wilde who is all praise for Christ. He calls Christ an artist, a poet and he adds, and certainly, if his place is among the poets, he is the leader of all the lovers. Wilde is fascinated by Christ s idea of life. For him life of Christ is sorrow and beauty made into meaning and manifestation. The image of Christ as man of sorrows is truly a fulfilment of prophecy not in a biblical way, but, as work of art, which he explains as:

Every single work of art is the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every work of art is the conversion of an idea into an image. Every single human being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every human being should be the realisation of some ideal, either in the mind of God or in the mind of man.

Thus the life of Christ is ideal of the suffering man. And it is only being man of sorrows, He understood the leprosy of the leper, the darkness of the blind. And only through this view of suffering and sorrow, Christ was able to say in his parables that the beggar goes to heaven because he has been unhappy.

For Wilde, Christ s life has all the elements of life, mystery, strangeness, pathos, suggestion, ecstasy, love. Christ s poetic angle to life makes him treat everybody alike and that there was no difference at all between the lives of others and one s own life. That is why he was able to say Forgive your enemies. Wilde notes that, Christ took the entire world of the inarticulate, the voiceless world of pain, as his kingdom, and made of himself its eternal mouthpiece. Moreover Wilde finds it incredible, that a Galilean peasant could imagine that he could bear on his own shoulders the burden of the entire world.

While Wilde unravels the life of Christ in a more artistic and aesthetic way, on the other hand, Cioran delves into existential side of Christ and his suffering. And it is the humaneness of Christ s suffering that captures Cioran s attention. He writes, I love him for his moments of doubt and regret.

Cioran understands that Christ suffered the cross to bring salvation to people but not in a traditional way. This salvation is an act of sadism from the part of believers who are unwilling to accept someone unless they strip of everything from the one who they choose to believe. This he writes as saying, Jesus suffered crucifixion because he knew that his ideas could triumph only through his own sacrifice. People say: for us to believe in you, you must renounce everything that is yours and also yourself. Here Cioran is highly kenotic in his view of soteriology.

Cioran writes, Christ really doubted not on the mountain but on the cross. This is the image of existential and suffering Christ that he views in Jesus. He adds, I am convinced that on the cross Jesus envied the destiny of anonymous men and, had he been able to, would have retreated to the most obscure corner of the world, where no one would have begged him for hope or salvation. And in all this Cioran is convinced that, He (Jesus) accepted death uniquely so that his ideas would triumph.

Cioran believes that it is because of human experience of suffering and pain salvation for him is a burning insoluble question. And that is why Christianity for him is a religion of revenge of those who suffer. Cioran thinks that the idea that someone dying for another s salvation is abhorrent idea. He writes, If anybody had died so that I could be happy, then I would be even more unhappy, because I do not want to build my life on a graveyard.

Cioran s idea of spirituality is deeply tied to suffering, as he writes, to achieve spirituality, one must be very lonely. In the same lines, spirituality through suffering for Wilde is when there is not a single degradation of the body which I must not try and make into a spiritualising of the soul. Within the pain, degradation, humility and suffering, Wilde sees something grand at work behind the suffering. He writes:

On the occasion of which I am thinking I recall distinctly how I said to her that there was enough suffering in one narrow London lane to show that God did not love man I was entirely wrong. Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world.

For Wilde there is love of God behind every suffering and it is through this Christ the man of sorrows brings a new light into morality and justice. Wilde says Christ s morality is sympathy and his justice is poetical justice.

Both these thinkers believe that there is suffering behind all of life and that through pain, humiliation and suffering one can experience spirituality. They approach the question of salvation and suffering totally in a non-religious way of thinking. In connection with suffering and pain they view Jesus Christ as an archetype of suffering human being. For them experience of crucifixion itself is tied to the question of salvation and suffering.

Wilde views that there is love of some kind (God?) behind all these sufferings, contrary to this for Cioran, all suffering is like an abyss, which is both curse and blessing. While Cioran can accuse Wilde for aestheticizing suffering and in them same way Wilde can dismiss Cioran and not taking into view the power of healing through hands of one who understands suffering.

[1] Oscar Wilde, De profundis, Dover ed., Dover thrift editions (Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 1996).

[2] E. M. Cioran, On the heights of despair (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

[3] Quoted in Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston and Kenneth R. Johnston, Searching for Cioran (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), p. 52.

[4] Ibid., 87.

[5] Ibid., 97.

Bibliography

Cioran, E. M. On the heights of despair. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Wilde, Oscar. De profundis. Dover ed. Dover thrift editions. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 1996.

Zarifopol-Johnston, Ilinca, and Kenneth R. Johnston. Searching for Cioran. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.