Auto-calunnia e maschera: Cioran nel Diario di Dracula di Marin Mincu

This essay examines the intellectual and existential relationship between Emil Cioran and Marin Mincu as it emerges from their correspondence (1987–1989), arguing that this late and apparently marginal dialogue constitutes a decisive moment both for Cioran’s final selfunderstanding and for the genesis of Diary of Dracula. The analysis advances the hypothesis that Mincu’s novel does not simply appropriate Cioranian themes but performs a genuine narrative translation of them, adopting as its formal and anthropological horizon what Cioran, in his final years, defines as “post-illusionism”. Set against an asymmetrical biographical backdrop – Mincu on the threshold of exile, Cioran immersed in a radical reassessment of his intellectual and political past – the correspondence enables a transmission that is not merely theoretical but existential. Through close reading of the letters, the essay reconstructs three central elements of Cioran’s mature thought: the acknowledgment of his Romanian matrix of nihilism, the explicit retraction of his youthful antisemitism, and the elaboration of post-illusionism as the condition of one who has abandoned every form of belief. These motifs find narrative embodiment in Diary of Dracula, where the figure of Vlad Țepeș functions as a post-illusionist mask rather than an allegorical portrait, transforming nihilism from philosophical discourse into literary enactment.