âWhen I meet friends or people I know who are going through a difficult period, I usually have this advice for them: âGo for twenty minutes in a cemetery and youâll see that, though your worry wonât disappear, youâll almost forget about it and youâll feel better.â Just a few days ago I told a young woman who was suffering fearfully from an unhappy love, âSince you donât live far from Montparnasse, take a walk through the cemetery, just half an hour, and you will see that your misery will appear bearable.â In such a situation, it is much better to do that than to go to a doctor; there is no medicine that can help. To visit a cemetery in such a situation is a lesson, a lesson in wisdom! I have always practiced such methods, or recommended them, although it may not seem altogether serious, but it has been effective in every case. What can one say that is meaningful to someone in despair? Absolutely nothing, or almost nothing. My advice shows immediate result.â
Emil Cioran, Wakefulness and Obsession: An Interview with E.M. Cioran
The last time I was in Paris was in December 2016. I remember that it was cold and grey and that much of the time I spent on my own was spent in bookstores or at Montparnasse Cemetery. I visited Sartreâs and de Beauvoirâs graves (next to each other for all eternity, and littered with ticket stubs from the metro), then I wandered over to Baudelaireâs (covered in flowers and worn lipstick), and then I managed to find Cioranâs (farther from all the rest, with a letterbox labeled âLettres pour Emil Cioranâ).
Cioran was absolutely right about the comfort we can find in cemeteries. Not because our suffering pales in comparison to that of the dead but because, for those who suffer existentially, the aisles of dead are, above all, familiar to us. In a poem I wrote afterward, reflecting on this visit, I called Montparnasse a âgarden of foreigners calling us home,â and I still believe that is the best explanation I can give for the comfort Cioran (and I) saw in it.