GP: Steve, it’s such a pleasure for me to interview someone who met and talked with Emil Cioran. Reading your book “
The Forbidden Stories”, I was a little bit puzzled by the detachment with which you approach your younger life. Beautiful and intriguing, your literature seems a casual expedition in a past assigned to you, rather than the past that you lived. It is therefore quite fascinating to see that you find solace in someone like
Emil Cioran, who lived so intimately close to abyss and despair every second of his life. Is it because, as they say, opposites attract?
STEVE SILKIN: Cioran was more of a challenge than a solace. He had studied Bergson, but gave up on him because he said that Bergson “hadn’t seen the tragic aspect of life.” That sentence was a big influence on my first book, “
The Telescope Builder.” I could’ve posted it on the wall above my desk, but I didn’t need to – it was constantly in my mind. I think you can find his influence in “The Forbidden Stories” t…
