The Temptation to Exist

by Emil M. Cioran

For the minor peoples, how much more tragic the national problem becomes! No sudden expansion here, no gradual decadence either. Without a prop in the future or in the past, they weigh upon themselves: a long sterile meditation is the result. Their evolution cannot be abnormal, for they do not evolve. What is left to them? Resignation to themselves, since, outside, there is all of History from which, precisely, they are excluded. Their nationalism, which we take for a farce, is actually a mask by which they try to hide their own drama and to forget, in a frenzy of claims, their incapacity to graft themselves onto events: painful lies, an exasperated reaction against the scorn they fear to deserve, a way of conjuring away their secret obsession with themselves. In simpler terms: a people which is a torment to itself is a sick people. But whereas Spain suffers for having exited from History, and Russia for seeking, in spite of all opposition, to install herself there, the minor nations struggle in order to have none of these reasons to lose patience or to despair. Cursed with an original flaw, they cannot remedy it by disappointment, or by dreams. Hence they have no other resources than to be haunted by themselves. An obsession not lacking in beauty, since it leads to nothing and interests no one.