980 words
Emil Cioran was a Romanian philosopher. Cioran was born on April 8, 1911 in Rășinari (Transylvania, then part of Austria-Hungary and today part of Romania) and died stateless in Paris on June 20, 1995. A nationalist writer in his youth, after the Second World War he achieved fame as a French-language author of essays and aphorisms of a markedly dark and apparently nihilistic bent. (more…)
152 words
In the latest episode of Guide to Kulchur, Greg Johnson, Guillaume Durocher, and Ty E join Fróði Midjord to discuss the life and art of Yukio Mishima. On November 25th, 50 years ago, Mishima committed ritual suicide to inspire the Japanese to return to their aristocratic honor culture.
The episode is archived on BitChute (video) and Spreaker (audio only). Guide to Kulchur streams live on DLive every Tuesday at 2:00 PM Eastern Time / 20:00 CET.
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Alphonse de Neuville, The Huns at the Battle of Chalons
2,411 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note: The following extracts are drawn from Emil Cioran, Précis de décomposition (Paris: Gallimard, 1949). The title is editorial.
There are no beings more dangerous than those who have suffered for a belief: The great persecutors are recruited among the martyrs who were not beheaded. (13)
John William Waterhouse, Diogenes (1882)
872 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
One cannot know what a man must lose to have the courage to defy all conventions; one cannot know what Diogenes lost to become the man who allowed himself to do everything, who turned his most intimate thoughts into acts of a supernatural insolence, as would a god of knowledge, at once libidinous and pure. No one was more frank; an extreme case of sincerity and lucidity, as well as an example of what we could be if education and hypocrisy did not restrain our desires and actions.
369 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Hailing from some unfortunate tribe, he paces about the West’s boulevards. Having loved one fatherland after another, he no longer hopes for any: Frozen in a timeless dusk, a citizen of the world – and of no world, – he is ineffective, nameless, and without vigor. (more…)
Taisen Deshimaru
3,080 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note: The following extracts are drawn from Taisen Deshimaru, Zen et Arts martiaux (Paris: Albin Michel, 1983 [1977]). The style reflects the rambling, spontaneous speaking of many Zen masters, whose “writings” are often not of their own initiative, but rather sayings recorded by their pious (often Western) followers. Another example of this would be Shunryū Suzuki, who was popular in California. This does raise the question of how “Taisen Deshimaru” authored the books ascribed to him. (more…)
1,472 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note: This article is translated from the French version in Emil Cioran, Apologie de la Barbarie: Berlin–Bucharest (1932-1941) (Paris: L’Herne, 2015). (more…)
Gábor Vona, the former President of Jobbik, in 2015. Beginning in 2013, Jobbik began to soften its earlier militant image, in what was known in the Hungarian media as the “candy campaign.” These efforts to appear more centrist gradually altered the party’s rhetoric beyond recognition. Source: Facebook.
4,685 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Long considered the most radical parliamentary party in Europe, over the course of only a few years, Jobbik has morphed into a centrist and pro-European Union party, completely abandoning its former radical rhetoric opposing the EU, NATO, the LGBT movement, and gypsy crime. Today, in fact, Jobbik is trying to ally with the liberal and progressive Left in order to topple Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his party, Fidesz. Thus, this article is a brief history of a political 180.
497 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
We can penetrate the error of a being, reveal to him the inanity of his schemes and of his errors; but how can we tear him away from his relentlessness in time, when he hides a fanaticism as ingrained as his instincts, as ancient as his prejudices?
1,016 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note: This article is translated from the French version in Emil Cioran, Apologie de la Barbarie: Berlin – Bucharest (1932-1941) (Paris: L’Herne, 2015), pp. 67-71. (more…)
Lieutenant Le Pen being decorated by General Jacques Massu
1,431 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note: The following is an excerpt from the concluding chapter of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Mémoires: Fils de la nation (Paris: Muller, 2018), pp. 396-398. The title is editorial.
[The civil war between Gaullists and anti-Gaullists] calmed down somewhat in the 1950s, or shifted to other areas. It came into focus again with Algeria. (more…)
Jean-Marie Le Pen as an MP in 1957.
2,304 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note: The following is an excerpt from the concluding chapter of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Mémoires: Fils de la nation (Paris: Muller, 2018), pp. 391-396. The title is editorial.
In France, the man who marked the twenty-five years between 1944 and [President Georges] Pompidou was De Gaulle, who also maintained a complex relationship with Communism – sometimes opposing it, sometimes allying with it, sometimes seeking a consecration from the masters of Moscow. (more…)
1,980 words
Emil Cioran
Apologie de la Barbarie: Berlin – Bucharest (1932-1941)
Paris: L’Herne, 2015
This is a very interesting book released by the superior publishing house L’Herne: a collection of Emil Cioran’s articles published in Romanian newspapers, mostly from before the war. (more…)
François de La Rochefoucauld
620 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note: François de La Rochefoucauld was a seventeenth-century French nobleman, an opponent of royal autocracy, and a noted author of maxims and essays. The title is editorial. Source: François de La Rochefoucauld, Maximes et Réflexions diverses (Paris: Gallimard, 1976 [1665]), “De la Conversation,” pp. 169-171.
The French signing the armistice with the Germans at Compiègne on June 22, 1940.
3,210 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note: The following extracts are drawn from Emil Cioran, De la France (Paris: L’Herne, 2015). The original was written in Romanian in 1941. The title is editorial.
Sébastien Bourdon, The Sacrifice of Iphigenia
833 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note: The following extracts are drawn from Emil Cioran, De la France (Paris: L’Herne, 2015). The original was written in Romanian in 1941.
Countries – unfortunately – exist. Each one crystallizes a sum of errors called values, which it cultivates and combines, and which it circulates and gives currency towards. Their totality constitutes the individuality of each country and its implicit pride – but also its tyranny, because it weighs unconsciously on the individual. (more…)
2,942 words
Emil Cioran
De la France
Paris: L’Herne, 2015
This is a strange, vile little book as only Emil Cioran knew how to produce. It was only recently published, in both the original Romanian and in French translation,[1] having been written in 1941 and left to languish for decades in some cardboard box in the Cioran archives. (more…)
1,761 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note: The following are excerpts from the preface to a collection of early articles by Emil Cioran translated from Romanian into French. I found this very interesting concerning the young Cioran’s embrace of fascism as embodying the “barbarism” he considered necessary to halt decadence. I have broken up some of the paragraphs. (more…)
1,468 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note: This has been retranslated from a French translation. I have improved the paragraphing. The title is editorial. Source: Emil Cioran, Apologie de la barbarie: Berlin-Bucarest 1932–1941 (Paris: L’Herne, 2015), “L’Italie est-elle une grande puissance ?,” pp. 203-209. Originally published in Vremea, May 31, 1936.
552 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note: I discovered these reflections nestled between some pornographic scenes in Michel Houellebecq’s recently published novel, Sérotonine (Paris: Flammarion, 2019), pp. 70-72.
It is perhaps necessary at this point to provide a few clarifications on love, largely aimed at women, because women don’t really understand what love is for men. (more…)
2,446 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note:
This text is drawn from Dominique Venner, Un samouraï d’Occident: Le Bréviaire des insoumis (Paris: Pierre-Guillaume de Roux, 2013), 101-15.. I have previously reviewed this work at The Occidental Observer.
Emil Cioran
495 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note:
The following is Alain Soral’s negative assessment of Emil Cioran, as contained in his “dictionary” of aphorisms. While this appraisal is not exactly fair, the text expresses some understandable frustration with the nihilist Cioran and gives one a sense of the oppressive atmosphere, for Right-wingers, of the postwar French literary scene. (more…)
153 words / 2:07:25
John Morgan and Guillaume Durocher join Fróði Midjord on the latest Guide to Kulchur to talk about Francis Ford Coppola’s classic Vietnam War film, Apocalypse Now. They do a scene-by-scene analysis of it, and discuss the differences between the director’s cut and the original version of the film and its relationship to other films, as well as Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and also its relevance for politics and the Right. Available on both YouTube and Spreaker.
873 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note: The following are some rare more-or-less political comments from the post-war Emil Cioran, more in keeping with his pessimistic outlook. These are translated from Emil Cioran, De l’inconvénient d’être né (Paris: Gallimard, 1973). The title is editorial.
1,097 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note: Emil Cioran is notorious as perhaps the most pessimistic philosopher of all time. Nonetheless, I was able to find some aphorisms of his which I would consider inspiring. These are translated from Emil Cioran, De l’inconvénient d’être né (Paris: Gallimard, 1973).
Jean-Marie Le Pen as an MP in 1957.
1,128 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note: The following is a translation from the concluding chapter of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Mémoires: Fils de la nation (Paris: Muller, 2018), pp. 389-391. The title is editorial.
When I began to write these Memoirs in 2016, I decided to divide them into two volumes covering equal periods of forty-four years, the first going from my birth to that of the Front National, the second telling the history of the Front National as I had experienced it. (more…)
87 words / 1:31:40
Counter-Currents contributor Guillaume Durocher joins Fróði Midjord on the latest episode of the new podcast series, Guide to Kulchur, to discuss Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 film Starship Troopers, which is based on a novel by renowned science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein and portrays a fascist future society embroiled in a war of extermination against a civilization of intelligent bugs. Both the book and the film reveal political insights that are not often seen in today’s popular culture. The episode is available on both YouTube and Spreaker (see below).
Jean-Marie Le Pen
750 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note: The following is a translation of the final paragraphs of the first volume of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Mémoires: Fils de la nation (Paris: Muller, 2018), pp. 402-403.
. . . in the end, the Second World War is a detail of history and a detail in the use of history for ideological ends.
1,613 words
I walked up the escalator, placed my card on the scanner, and walked through the barrier.
“Follow the piano music,” he had texted me. I saw Justin waiting several meters away. We made eye contact and kind of stared at each other for a moment. (more…)
775 words
I am always astounded by how bad the films playing in mainstream cinemas look and, when I occasionally go to see them, I often find that my initial impressions based on the ads or a synopsis were fully justified. So when I enjoy a fairly recent film, it is noteworthy. (more…)