Emil Cioran: On Individual and Cosmic Loneliness and the Weariness of Being Human
Written on 03/03/2026
Poetic Outlaws
By: Emil Cioran
Photo: David Ingraham
One can experience loneliness in two ways: by feeling lonely in the world or by feeling the loneliness of the world.
Individual loneliness is a personal drama; one can feel lonely even in the midst of great natural beauty. An outcast in the world, indifferent to its being dazzling or dismal, self-consumed with triumphs and failures, engrossed in inner drama — such is the fate of the solitary.
The feeling of cosmic loneliness, on the other hand, stems not so much from man's subjective agony as from an awareness of the world's isolation, of objective nothingness.
