Mircea Eliade
Mircea Eliade | |
---|---|
Born | Bucharest, Kingdom of Romania | March 13, 1907
Died | April 22, 1986 Chicago, Illinois, United States | (aged 79)
Resting place | Oak Woods Cemetery |
Occupation | Historian, philosopher, short-story writer, journalist, essayist, novelist |
Language |
|
Nationality | Romanian |
Citizenship | Romania United States |
Education | |
Period | 1921–1986 |
Genre | Fantasy, autobiography, travel literature |
Subject | History of religion, philosophy of religion, cultural history, political history |
Literary movement | Modernism Criterion Trăirism |
Parents | Gheorghe Eliade Jeana née Vasilescu |
Mircea Eliade (Romanian:
Eliade's literary works belong to the
Early in his life, Eliade was a journalist and essayist, a disciple of Romanian philosopher and journalist Nae Ionescu, and a member of the literary society Criterion. In the 1940s, he served as cultural attaché of the Kingdom of Romania to the United Kingdom and Portugal. Several times during the late 1930s, Eliade publicly expressed his support for the Iron Guard, a Romanian Christian fascist terrorist[3] organization. His involvement with fascism at the time, as well as his other far-right connections, came under frequent criticism after World War II.
Noted for his vast erudition, Eliade had fluent command of five languages (
Biography
Childhood
Born in Bucharest, he was the son of Romanian Land Forces officer Gheorghe Eliade (whose original surname was Ieremia)[4][5] and Jeana née Vasilescu.[6] An Orthodox believer, Gheorghe Eliade registered his son's birth four days before the actual date, to coincide with the liturgical calendar feast of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste.[5] Mircea Eliade had a sister, Corina, the mother of semiologist Sorin Alexandrescu.[7][8] His family moved between Tecuci and Bucharest, ultimately settling in the capital in 1914,[4] and purchasing a house on Melodiei Street, near Piața Rosetti, where Mircea Eliade resided until late in his teens.[8]
Eliade kept a particularly fond memory of his childhood and, later in life, wrote about the impact various unusual episodes and encounters had on his mind. In one instance during the
He described this stage in his life as marked by an unrepeatable epiphany.[10][11] Recalling his entrance into a drawing room that an "eerie iridescent light" had turned into "a fairy-tale palace", he wrote,
I practiced for many years [the] exercise of recapturing that epiphanic moment, and I would always find again the same plenitude. I would slip into it as into a fragment of time devoid of duration—without beginning, middle, or end. During my last years of lycée, when I struggled with profound attacks of melancholy, I still succeeded at times in returning to the golden green light of that afternoon. [...] But even though the beatitude was the same, it was now impossible to bear because it aggravated my sadness too much. By this time I knew the world to which the drawing room belonged [...] was a world forever lost.[12]
Robert Ellwood, a professor of religion who did his graduate studies under Mircea Eliade,[13] saw this type of nostalgia as one of the most characteristic themes in Eliade's life and academic writings.[11]
Adolescence and literary debut
After completing his primary education at the school on Mântuleasa Street,[4] Eliade attended the Spiru Haret National College in the same class as Arșavir Acterian, Haig Acterian, and Petre Viforeanu (and several years the senior of Nicolae Steinhardt, who eventually became a close friend of Eliade's).[14] Among his other colleagues was future philosopher Constantin Noica[5] and Noica's friend, future art historian Barbu Brezianu.[15]
As a child, Eliade was fascinated with the natural world, which formed the setting of his very first literary attempts,
With a group of friends, he designed and sailed a boat on the Danube, from Tulcea to the Black Sea.[17] In parallel, Eliade grew estranged from the educational environment, becoming disenchanted with the discipline required and obsessed with the idea that he was uglier and less virile than his colleagues.[5] To cultivate his willpower, he would force himself to swallow insects[5] and only slept four to five hours a night.[9] At one point, Eliade was failing four subjects, among which was the study of the Romanian language.[5]
Instead, he became interested in natural science and chemistry, as well as the occult,[5] and wrote short pieces on entomological subjects.[9] Despite his father's concern that he was in danger of losing his already weak eyesight, Eliade read passionately.[5] One of his favorite authors was Honoré de Balzac, whose work he studied carefully.[5][9] Eliade also became acquainted with the modernist short stories of Giovanni Papini and social anthropology studies by James George Frazer.[9]
His interest in the two writers led him to learn Italian and English in private, and he also began studying
University studies and Indian sojourn
Between 1925 and 1928, he attended the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Philosophy and Letters in 1928, earning his diploma with a study on Early Modern Italian philosopher Tommaso Campanella.[4] In 1927, Eliade traveled to Italy, where he met Papini[4] and collaborated with the scholar Giuseppe Tucci.
It was during his student years that Eliade met Nae Ionescu, who lectured in Logic, becoming one of his disciples and friends.[5][8][18] He was especially attracted to Ionescu's radical ideas and his interest in religion, which signified a break with the rationalist tradition represented by senior academics such as Constantin Rădulescu-Motru, Dimitrie Gusti, and Tudor Vianu (all of whom owed inspiration to the defunct literary society Junimea, albeit in varying degrees).[5]
Eliade's scholarly works began after a long period of study in
He studied the basics of Indian philosophy, and, in parallel, learned Sanskrit, Pali and Bengali under Dasgupta's direction.[19] At the time, he also became interested in the actions of Mahatma Gandhi and the Satyagraha as a phenomenon; later, Eliade adapted Gandhian ideas in his discourse on spirituality and Romania.
In 1930, while living with Dasgupta, Eliade fell in love with his host's daughter,
Eliade received his PhD in 1933, with a thesis on Yoga practices.[5][8][22][23] The book, which was translated into French three years later,[19] had significant impact in academia, both in Romania and abroad.[8]
He later recalled that the book was an early step for understanding not just Indian religious practices, but also Romanian spirituality.[24] During the same period, Eliade began a correspondence with the Ceylonese-born philosopher Ananda Coomaraswamy.[25] In 1936–1937, he functioned as honorary assistant for Ionescu's course, lecturing in Metaphysics.[26]
In 1933, Mircea Eliade had a physical relationship with the actress Sorana Țopa, while falling in love with Nina Mareș, whom he ultimately married.[7][8][27] The latter, introduced to him by his new friend Mihail Sebastian, already had a daughter, Giza, from a man who had divorced her.[8] Eliade subsequently adopted Giza,[28] and the three of them moved to an apartment at 141 Dacia Boulevard.[8] He left his residence in 1936, during a trip he made to the United Kingdom and Germany, when he first visited London, Oxford and Berlin.[4]
Criterion and Cuvântul
After contributing various and generally polemical pieces in university magazines, Eliade came to the attention of journalist Pamfil Șeicaru, who invited him to collaborate on the nationalist paper Cuvântul, which was noted for its harsh tones.[5] By then, Cuvântul was also hosting articles by Nae Ionescu.[5]
As one of the figures in the Criterion literary society (1933–1934), Eliade's initial encounter with the traditional far right was polemical: the group's conferences were stormed by members of A. C. Cuza's National-Christian Defense League, who objected to what they viewed as pacifism and addressed antisemitic insults to several speakers, including Sebastian;[29][30] in 1933, he was among the signers of a manifesto opposing Nazi Germany's state-enforced racism.[31]
In 1934, at a time when Sebastian was publicly insulted by Nae Ionescu, who prefaced his book (De două mii de ani...) with thoughts on the "eternal damnation" of Jews, Mircea Eliade spoke out against this perspective, and commented that Ionescu's references to the verdict "Outside the Church there is no salvation" contradicted the notion of God's omnipotence.[32][33] However, he contended that Ionescu's text was not evidence of antisemitism.[34]
In 1936, reflecting on the early history of the Romanian Kingdom and its Jewish community, he deplored the expulsion of Jewish scholars from Romania, making specific references to Moses Gaster, Heimann Hariton Tiktin and Lazăr Șăineanu.[35] Eliade's views at the time focused on innovation—in the summer of 1933, he replied to an anti-modernist critique written by George Călinescu:
All I wish for is a deep change, a complete transformation. But, for God's sake, in any direction other than spirituality.[36]
He and friends Emil Cioran and Constantin Noica were by then under the influence of Trăirism, a school of thought that was formed around the ideals expressed by Ionescu. A form of existentialism, Trăirism was also the synthesis of traditional and newer right-wing beliefs.[37] Early on, a public polemic was sparked between Eliade and Camil Petrescu: the two eventually reconciled and later became good friends.[28]
Like Mihail Sebastian, who was himself becoming influenced by Ionescu, he maintained contacts with intellectuals from all sides of the political spectrum: their entourage included the right-wing Dan Botta and Mircea Vulcănescu, the non-political Petrescu and Ionel Jianu, and Belu Zilber, who was a member of the illegal Romanian Communist Party.[38]
The group also included Haig Acterian, Mihail Polihroniade, Petru Comarnescu, Marietta Sadova and Floria Capsali.[32]
He was also close to
Among the intellectuals who attended his lectures were
Eliade later recounted that he had himself enlisted Zilber as a Cuvântul contributor, for him to provide a
1930s political transition
Eliade's articles before and after his adherence to the principles of the Iron Guard (or, as it was usually known at the time, the Legionary Movement), beginning with his Itinerar spiritual ("Spiritual Itinerary", serialized in Cuvântul in 1927), center on several political ideals advocated by the far right.
They displayed his rejection of
Eliade was especially dissatisfied with the incidence of unemployment among intellectuals, whose careers in state-financed institutions had been rendered uncertain by the Great Depression.[47]
In 1936, Eliade was the focus of a campaign in the far right press, being targeted for having authored "pornography" in his Domnișoara Christina and Isabel și apele diavolului; similar accusations were aimed at other cultural figures, including Tudor Arghezi and Geo Bogza.[48] Assessments of Eliade's work were in sharp contrast to one another: also in 1936, Eliade accepted an award from the Romanian Writers' Society, of which he had been a member since 1934.[49] In summer 1937, through an official decision which came as a result of the accusations, and despite student protests, he was stripped of his position at the university.[50]
Eliade decided to sue the
Nevertheless, by 1937, he gave his intellectual support to the Iron Guard, in which he saw "a Christian revolution aimed at creating a new Romania",[52] and a group able "to reconcile Romania with God".[52] His articles of the time, published in Iron Guard-affiliated papers such as Sfarmă-Piatră and Buna Vestire, contain ample praises of the movement's leaders (Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Ion Moța, Vasile Marin, and Gheorghe Cantacuzino-Grănicerul).[53][54] The transition he went through was similar to that of his fellow generation members and close collaborators—among the notable exceptions to this rule were Petru Comarnescu, sociologist Henri H. Stahl and future dramatist Eugène Ionesco, as well as Sebastian.[55]
He eventually enrolled in the Totul pentru Țară ("Everything for the Fatherland" Party), the political expression of the Iron Guard,[5][56] and contributed to its 1937 electoral campaign in Prahova County—as indicated by his inclusion on a list of party members with county-level responsibilities (published in Buna Vestire).[56]
Internment and diplomatic service
The stance taken by Eliade resulted in his arrest on July 14, 1938, after a crackdown on the Iron Guard authorized by King Carol II. At the time of his arrest, he had just interrupted a column on Provincia și legionarismul ("The Province and Legionary Ideology") in Vremea, having been singled out by Prime Minister Armand Călinescu as an author of Iron Guard propaganda.[57]
Eliade was kept for three weeks in a cell at the
After leaving London he was assigned the office of Counsel and Press Officer (later Cultural Attaché) to the Romanian Embassy in Portugal,[27][59][60][61] where he was kept on as diplomat by the National Legionary State (the Iron Guard government) and, ultimately, by Ion Antonescu's regime. His office involved disseminating propaganda in favor of the Romanian state.[27] In 1941, during his time in Portugal, Eliade stayed in Estoril, at the Hotel Palácio. He would later find a house in Cascais, at Rua da Saudade.[62][63]
In February 1941, weeks after the bloody
In 1942, Eliade authored a volume in praise of the
In autumn 1943, he traveled to
Nina Eliade fell ill with
Early exile
At signs that the
Together with Emil Cioran and other Romanian expatriates, Eliade rallied with the former diplomat Alexandru Busuioceanu, helping him publicize anti-communist opinion to the Western European public.[71] He was also briefly involved in publishing a Romanian-language magazine, titled Luceafărul ("The Morning Star"),[71] and was again in contact with Mihai Șora, who had been granted a scholarship to study in France, and with Șora's wife Mariana.[28] In 1947, he was facing material constraints, and Ananda Coomaraswamy found him a job as a French-language teacher in the United States, at a school in Arizona; the arrangement ended upon Coomaraswamy's death in September.[25]
Beginning in 1948, he wrote for the journal Critique, edited by French philosopher
In October 1956, he moved to the United States, settling in Chicago the following year.[4][8] He had been invited by Joachim Wach to give a series of lectures at Wach's home institution, the University of Chicago.[73] Eliade and Wach are generally admitted to be the founders of the "Chicago school" that basically defined the study of religions for the second half of the 20th century.[74] Upon Wach's death before the lectures were delivered, Eliade was appointed as his successor, becoming, in 1964, the Sewell Avery Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions.[4] Beginning in 1954, with the first edition of his volume on Eternal Return, Eliade also enjoyed commercial success: the book went through several editions under different titles, and sold over 100,000 copies.[75]
In 1966, Mircea Eliade became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[4] He also worked as editor-in-chief of Macmillan Publishers' Encyclopedia of Religion, and, in 1968, lectured in religious history at the University of California, Santa Barbara.[76] It was also during that period that Mircea Eliade completed his voluminous and influential History of Religious Ideas, which grouped together the overviews of his main original interpretations of religious history.[8] He occasionally traveled out of the United States, attending the Congress for the History of Religions in Marburg (1960), and visiting Sweden and Norway in 1970.[4]
Final years and death
Initially, Eliade was attacked with virulence by the
He was slowly rehabilitated at home beginning in the early 1960s, under the rule of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej.[80] In the 1970s, Eliade was approached by the Nicolae Ceaușescu regime in several ways, to have him return.[8] The move was prompted by the officially sanctioned nationalism and Romania's claim to independence from the Eastern Bloc, as both phenomena came to see Eliade's prestige as an asset. An unprecedented event occurred with the interview that was granted by Mircea Eliade to poet Adrian Păunescu, during the latter's 1970 visit to Chicago; Eliade complimented both Păunescu's activism and his support for official tenets, expressing a belief that
the youth of Eastern Europe is clearly superior to that of Western Europe. [...] I am convinced that, within ten years, the young revolutionary generation shan't be behaving as does today the noisy minority of Western contesters. [...] Eastern youth have seen the abolition of traditional institutions, have accepted it [...] and are not yet content with the structures enforced, but rather seek to improve them.[81]
Păunescu's visit to Chicago was followed by those of the nationalist official writer
During his later years, Eliade's past was progressively exposed publicly, the stress of which probably contributed to the decline of his health.
Mircea Eliade died at the
Work
The general nature of religion
In his work on the history of religion, Eliade is most highly regarded for his writings on
Eliade is known for his attempt to find broad, cross-cultural parallels and unities in religion, particularly in myths. Wendy Doniger, Eliade's colleague from 1978 until his death, has observed that "Eliade argued boldly for universals where he might more safely have argued for widely prevalent patterns."[87] His Treatise on the History of Religions was praised by French philologist Georges Dumézil for its coherence and ability to synthesize diverse and distinct mythologies.[88]
Robert Ellwood describes Eliade's approach to religion as follows. Eliade approaches religion by imagining an ideally "religious" person, whom he calls homo religiosus in his writings. Eliade's theories basically describe how this homo religiosus would view the world.[89] This does not mean that all religious practitioners actually think and act like homo religiosus. Instead, it means that religious behavior "says through its own language" that the world is as homo religiosus would see it, whether or not the real-life participants in religious behavior are aware of it.[90] However, Ellwood writes that Eliade "tends to slide over that last qualification", implying that traditional societies actually thought like homo religiosus.[90]
Sacred and profane
Eliade argues that "Yahweh is both kind and wrathful; the God of the Christian mystics and theologians is terrible and gentle at once."[91] He also thought that the Indian and Chinese mystic tried to attain "a state of perfect indifference and neutrality" that resulted in a coincidence of opposites in which "pleasure and pain, desire and repulsion, cold and heat [...] are expunged from his awareness."[91]
Eliade's understanding of religion centers on his concept of hierophany (manifestation of the Sacred)—a concept that includes, but is not limited to, the older and more restrictive concept of theophany (manifestation of a god).[92] From the perspective of religious thought, Eliade argues, hierophanies give structure and orientation to the world, establishing a sacred order. The "profane" space of nonreligious experience can only be divided up geometrically: it has no "qualitative differentiation and, hence, no orientation [is] given by virtue of its inherent structure."[93] Thus, profane space gives man no pattern for his behavior. In contrast to profane space, the site of a hierophany has a sacred structure to which religious man conforms himself. A hierophany amounts to a "revelation of an absolute reality, opposed to the non-reality of the vast surrounding expanse."[94] As an example of "sacred space" demanding a certain response from man, Eliade gives the story of Moses halting before Yahweh's manifestation as a burning bush (Exodus 3:5) and taking off his shoes.[95]
Origin myths and sacred time
Eliade notes that, in traditional societies, myth represents the absolute truth about primordial time.[96] According to the myths, this was the time when the Sacred first appeared, establishing the world's structure—myths claim to describe the primordial events that made society and the natural world be that which they are. Eliade argues that all myths are, in that sense, origin myths: "myth, then, is always an account of a creation."[97]
Many traditional societies believe that the power of a thing lies in its origin.[98] If origin is equivalent to power, then "it is the first manifestation of a thing that is significant and valid"[99] (a thing's reality and value therefore lies only in its first appearance).
According to Eliade's theory, only the Sacred has value, only a thing's first appearance has value and, therefore, only the Sacred's first appearance has value. Myth describes the Sacred's first appearance; therefore, the mythical age is sacred time,[96] the only time of value: "primitive man was interested only in the beginnings [...] to him it mattered little what had happened to himself, or to others like him, in more or less distant times."[100] Eliade postulated this as the reason for the "nostalgia for origins" that appears in many religions, the desire to return to a primordial Paradise.[100]
Eternal return and "Terror of history"
Eliade argues that traditional man attributes no value to the linear march of historical events: only the events of the mythical age have value. To give his own life value, traditional man performs myths and rituals. Because the Sacred's essence lies only in the mythical age, only in the Sacred's first appearance, any later appearance is actually the first appearance; by recounting or re-enacting mythical events, myths and rituals "re-actualize" those events.
Thus, argues Eliade, religious behavior does not only commemorate, but also participates in, sacred events:
In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythical hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time.[96]
Eliade called this concept the "eternal return" (distinguished from the philosophical concept of "eternal return"). Wendy Doniger noted that Eliade's theory of the eternal return "has become a truism in the study of religions."[2]
Eliade attributes the well-known "cyclic" vision of time in ancient thought to belief in the eternal return. For instance, the New Year ceremonies among the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, and other Near Eastern peoples re-enacted their cosmogonic myths. Therefore, by the logic of the eternal return, each New Year ceremony was the beginning of the world for these peoples. According to Eliade, these peoples felt a need to return to the Beginning at regular intervals, turning time into a circle.[103]
Eliade argues that yearning to remain in the mythical age causes a "terror of history": traditional man desires to escape the linear succession of events (which, Eliade indicated, he viewed as empty of any inherent value or sacrality). Eliade suggests that the abandonment of mythical thought and the full acceptance of linear, historical time, with its "terror", is one of the reasons for modern man's anxieties.[104] Traditional societies escape this anxiety to an extent, as they refuse to completely acknowledge historical time. But the return to the sources involved an apocalyptic experience. Doina Ruști, analyzing the storyThe Old Man and The Bureaucrats (Pe strada Mântuleasa), says The memories[105] create the chaos, because "the myth makes irruption in a world in tormented birth, without memory, and transform all in a labyrinth".
Coincidentia oppositorum
Eliade claims that many myths, rituals, and mystical experiences involve a "coincidence of opposites," or
they express on the one hand the diametrical opposition of two divine figures sprung from one and the same principle and destined, in many versions, to be reconciled at some illud tempus of eschatology, and on the other, the coincidentia oppositorum in the very nature of the divinity, which shows itself, by turns or even simultaneously, benevolent and terrible, creative and destructive, solar and serpentine, and so on (in other words, actual and potential).[107]
Eliade argues that "Yahweh is both kind and wrathful; the God of the Christian mystics and theologians is terrible and gentle at once."[91] He also thought that the Indian and Chinese mystic tried to attain "a state of perfect indifference and neutrality" that resulted in a coincidence of opposites in which "pleasure and pain, desire and repulsion, cold and heat [...] are expunged from his awareness".[91]
According to Eliade, the coincidentia oppositorum's appeal lies in "man's deep dissatisfaction with his actual situation, with what is called the human condition".[108] In many mythologies, the end of the mythical age involves a "fall", a fundamental "ontological change in the structure of the World".[109] Because the coincidentia oppositorum is a contradiction, it represents a denial of the world's current logical structure, a reversal of the "fall".
Also, traditional man's dissatisfaction with the post-mythical age expresses itself as a feeling of being "torn and separate".[108] In many mythologies, the lost mythical age was a Paradise, "a paradoxical state in which the contraries exist side by side without conflict, and the multiplications form aspects of a mysterious Unity".[109] The coincidentia oppositorum expresses a wish to recover the lost unity of the mythical Paradise, for it presents a reconciliation of opposites and the unification of diversity:
On the level of pre-systematic thought, the mystery of totality embodies man's endeavor to reach a perspective in which the contraries are abolished, the Spirit of Evil reveals itself as a stimulant of Good, and Demons appear as the night aspect of the Gods.[109]
Exceptions to the general nature
Eliade acknowledges that not all religious behavior has all the attributes described in his theory of sacred time and the eternal return. The
Because they contain rituals, Judaism and Christianity necessarily—Eliade argues—retain a sense of cyclic time:
by the very fact that it is a religion, Christianity had to keep at least one mythical aspect—liturgical Time, that is, the periodic rediscovery of the illud tempus of the beginnings [and] an imitation of the Christ as exemplary pattern.[110]
However, Judaism and Christianity do not see time as a circle endlessly turning on itself; nor do they see such a cycle as desirable, as a way to participate in the Sacred. Instead, these religions embrace the concept of linear history progressing toward the Messianic Age or the Last Judgment, thus initiating the idea of "progress" (humans are to work for a Paradise in the future).[111] However, Eliade's understanding of Judaeo-Christian eschatology can also be understood as cyclical in that the "end of time" is a return to God: "The final catastrophe will put an end to history, hence will restore man to eternity and beatitude."[112]
The pre-
The
Symbolism of the Center
A recurrent theme in Eliade's myth analysis is the axis mundi, the Center of the World. According to Eliade, the Cosmic Center is a necessary corollary to the division of reality into the Sacred and the profane. The Sacred contains all value, and the world gains purpose and meaning only through hierophanies:
In the homogeneous and infinite expanse, in which no point of reference is possible and hence no orientation is established, the hierophany reveals an absolute fixed point, a center.[94]
Because profane space gives man no orientation for his life, the Sacred must manifest itself in a hierophany, thereby establishing a sacred site around which man can orient himself. The site of a hierophany establishes a "fixed point, a center".[94] This Center abolishes the "homogeneity and relativity of profane space",[93] for it becomes "the central axis for all future orientation".[94]
A manifestation of the Sacred in profane space is, by definition, an example of something breaking through from one plane of existence to another. Therefore, the initial hierophany that establishes the Center must be a point at which there is contact between different planes—this, Eliade argues, explains the frequent mythical imagery of a
Eliade noted that, when traditional societies found a new territory, they often perform consecrating rituals that reenact the hierophany that established the center and founded the world.[118] In addition, the designs of traditional buildings, especially temples, usually imitate the mythical image of the axis mundi joining the different cosmic levels. For instance, the Babylonian ziggurats were built to resemble cosmic mountains passing through the heavenly spheres, and the rock of the Temple in Jerusalem was supposed to reach deep into the tehom, or primordial waters.[119]
According to the logic of the eternal return, the site of each such symbolic Center will actually be the Center of the World:
It may be said, in general, that the majority of the sacred and ritual trees that we meet with in the history of religions are only replicas, imperfect copies of this exemplary archetype, the Cosmic Tree. Thus, all these sacred trees are thought of as situated at the Centre of the World, and all the ritual trees or posts [...] are, as it were, magically projected into the Centre of the World.[120]
According to Eliade's interpretation, religious man apparently feels the need to live not only near, but at, the mythical Center as much as possible, given that the center is the point of communication with the Sacred.[121]
Thus, Eliade argues, many traditional societies share common outlines in their mythical geographies. In the middle of the known world is the sacred Center, "a place that is sacred above all";[122] this Center anchors the established order.[93] Around the sacred Center lies the known world, the realm of established order; and beyond the known world is a chaotic and dangerous realm, "peopled by ghosts, demons, [and] 'foreigners' (who are [identified with] demons and the souls of the dead)".[123] According to Eliade, traditional societies place their known world at the Center because (from their perspective) their known world is the realm that obeys a recognizable order, and it therefore must be the realm in which the Sacred manifests itself; the regions beyond the known world, which seem strange and foreign, must lie far from the center, outside the order established by the Sacred.[124]
The High God
According to some "evolutionistic" theories of religion, especially that of Edward Burnett Tylor, cultures naturally progress from animism and polytheism to monotheism.[125] According to this view, more advanced cultures should be more monotheistic, and more primitive cultures should be more polytheistic. However, many of the most "primitive", pre-agricultural societies believe in a supreme sky-god.[126] Thus, according to Eliade, post-19th-century scholars have rejected Tylor's theory of evolution from animism.[127] Based on the discovery of supreme sky-gods among "primitives", Eliade suspects that the earliest humans worshiped a heavenly Supreme Being.[128] In Patterns in Comparative Religion, he writes, "The most popular prayer in the world is addressed to 'Our Father who art in heaven.' It is possible that man's earliest prayers were addressed to the same heavenly father."[129]
However, Eliade disagrees with Wilhelm Schmidt, who thought the earliest form of religion was a strict monotheism. Eliade dismisses this theory of "primordial monotheism" (Urmonotheismus) as "rigid" and unworkable.[130] "At most," he writes, "this schema [Schmidt's theory] renders an account of human [religious] evolution since the Paleolithic era".[131] If an Urmonotheismus did exist, Eliade adds, it probably differed in many ways from the conceptions of God in many modern monotheistic faiths: for instance, the primordial High God could manifest himself as an animal without losing his status as a celestial Supreme Being.[132]
According to Eliade, heavenly Supreme Beings are actually less common in more advanced cultures.
In belief systems that involve a deus otiosus, the distant High God is believed to have been closer to humans during the mythical age. After finishing his works of creation, the High God "forsook the earth and withdrew into the highest heaven".
Shamanism
Eliade's scholarly work includes a study of shamanism, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, a survey of shamanistic practices in different areas. His Myths, Dreams and Mysteries also addresses shamanism in some detail.
In Shamanism, Eliade argues for a restrictive use of the word shaman: it should not apply to just any
he is believed to cure, like all doctors, and to perform miracles of the fakir type, like all magicians [...] But beyond this, he is a psychopomp, and he may also be a priest, mystic, and poet.[141]
If we define shamanism this way, Eliade claims, we find that the term covers a collection of phenomena that share a common and unique "structure" and "history."[141] (When thus defined, shamanism tends to occur in its purest forms in hunting and pastoral societies like those of Siberia and Central Asia, which revere a celestial High God "on the way to becoming a deus otiosus."[142] Eliade takes the shamanism of those regions as his most representative example.)
In his examinations of shamanism, Eliade emphasizes the shaman's attribute of regaining man's condition before the "Fall" out of sacred time: "The most representative mystical experience of the archaic societies, that of shamanism, betrays the Nostalgia for Paradise, the desire to recover the state of freedom and beatitude before 'the Fall'."[139] This concern—which, by itself, is the concern of almost all religious behavior, according to Eliade—manifests itself in specific ways in shamanism.
Death, resurrection and secondary functions
According to Eliade, one of the most common shamanistic themes is the shaman's supposed death and resurrection. This occurs in particular during his initiation.[143] Often, the procedure is supposed to be performed by spirits who dismember the shaman and strip the flesh from his bones, then put him back together and revive him. In more than one way, this death and resurrection represents the shaman's elevation above human nature.
First, the shaman dies so that he can rise above human nature on a quite literal level. After he has been dismembered by the initiatory spirits, they often replace his old organs with new, magical ones (the shaman dies to his profane self so that he can rise again as a new, sanctified, being).[144] Second, by being reduced to his bones, the shaman experiences rebirth on a more symbolic level: in many hunting and herding societies, the bone represents the source of life, so reduction to a skeleton "is equivalent to re-entering the womb of this primordial life, that is, to a complete renewal, a mystical rebirth".[145] Eliade considers this return to the source of life essentially equivalent to the eternal return.[146]
Third, the shamanistic phenomenon of repeated death and resurrection also represents a transfiguration in other ways. The shaman dies not once but many times: having died during initiation and risen again with new powers, the shaman can send his spirit out of his body on errands; thus, his whole career consists of repeated deaths and resurrections. The shaman's new ability to die and return to life shows that he is no longer bound by the laws of profane time, particularly the law of death: "the ability to 'die' and come to life again [...] denotes that [the shaman] has surpassed the human condition."[147]
Having risen above the human condition, the shaman is not bound by the flow of history. Therefore, he enjoys the conditions of the mythical age. In many myths, humans can speak with animals; and, after their initiations, many shamans claim to be able to communicate with animals. According to Eliade, this is one manifestation of the shaman's return to "the illud tempus described to us by the paradisiac myths."[148]
The shaman can descend to the underworld or ascend to heaven, often by climbing the
Because of his ability to communicate with the gods and descend to the land of the dead, the shaman frequently functions as a psychopomp and a medicine man.[141]
Philosophy
Early contributions
In addition to his political essays, the young Mircea Eliade authored others, philosophical in content. Connected with the ideology of
One of Eliade's noted contributions in this respect was the 1932 Soliloquii ('Soliloquies'), which explored
The young writer was however careful to clarify that the existence he took into consideration was not the life of "instincts and personal idiosyncrasies", which he believed determined the lives of many humans, but that of a distinct set comprising "personalities".[152] He described "personalities" as characterized by both "purpose" and "a much more complicated and dangerous alchemy."[152] This differentiation, George Călinescu believed, echoed Ionescu's metaphor of man, seen as "the only animal who can fail at living", and the duck, who "shall remain a duck no matter what it does".[153] According to Eliade, the purpose of personalities is infinity: "consciously and gloriously bringing [existence] to waste, into as many skies as possible, continuously fulfilling and polishing oneself, seeking ascent and not circumference."[152]
In Eliade's view, two roads await man in this process. One is glory, determined by either work or procreation, and the other the
Philosopher of religion
Anti-reductionism and the "transconscious"
By profession, Eliade was a historian of religion. However, his scholarly works draw heavily on philosophical and psychological terminology. In addition, they contain a number of philosophical arguments about religion. In particular, Eliade often implies the existence of a universal psychological or spiritual "essence" behind all religious phenomena.[154] Because of these arguments, some have accused Eliade of overgeneralization and "essentialism," or even of promoting a theological agenda under the guise of historical scholarship. However, others argue that Eliade is better understood as a scholar who is willing to openly discuss sacred experience and its consequences.[note 1]
In studying religion, Eliade rejects certain "reductionist" approaches.[155] Eliade thinks a religious phenomenon cannot be reduced to a product of culture and history. He insists that, although religion involves "the social man, the economic man, and so forth", nonetheless "all these conditioning factors together do not, of themselves, add up to the life of the spirit."[156]
Using this anti-reductionist position, Eliade argues against those who accuse him of overgeneralizing, of looking for universals at the expense of particulars. Eliade admits that every religious phenomenon is shaped by the particular culture and history that produced it:
When the Son of God incarnated and became the Christ, he had to speak
Aramaic; he could only conduct himself as a Hebrew of his times [...] His religious message, however universal it might be, was conditioned by the past and present history of the Hebrew people. If the Son of God had been born in India, his spoken language would have had to conform itself to the structure of the Indian languages.[156]
However, Eliade argues against those he calls "historicist or existentialist philosophers" who do not recognize "man in general" behind particular men produced by particular situations[156] (Eliade cites Immanuel Kant as the likely forerunner of this kind of "historicism".)[156] He adds that human consciousness transcends (is not reducible to) its historical and cultural conditioning,[157] and even suggests the possibility of a "transconscious".[158] By this, Eliade does not necessarily mean anything supernatural or mystical: within the "transconscious," he places religious motifs, symbols, images, and nostalgias that are supposedly universal and whose causes therefore cannot be reduced to historical and cultural conditioning.[159]
Platonism and "primitive ontology"
According to Eliade, traditional man feels that things "acquire their reality, their identity, only to the extent of their participation in a transcendent reality".[160] To traditional man, the profane world is "meaningless", and a thing rises out of the profane world only by conforming to an ideal, mythical model.[161]
Eliade describes this view of reality as a fundamental part of "primitive ontology" (the study of "existence" or "reality").[161] Here he sees a similarity with the philosophy of Plato, who believed that physical phenomena are pale and transient imitations of eternal models or "Forms" (see Theory of forms). He argued:
Plato could be regarded as the outstanding philosopher of 'primitive mentality,' that is, as the thinker who succeeded in giving philosophic currency and validity to the modes of life and behavior of archaic humanity.[161]
Eliade thinks the
In The Structure of Religious Knowing: Encountering the Sacred in Eliade and Lonergan, John Daniel Dadosky argues that, by making this statement, Eliade was acknowledging "indebtedness to Greek philosophy in general, and to Plato's theory of forms specifically, for his own theory of archetypes and repetition".[163] However, Dadosky also states that "one should be cautious when trying to assess Eliade's indebtedness to Plato".[164] Dadosky quotes Robert Segal, a professor of religion, who draws a distinction between Platonism and Eliade's "primitive ontology": for Eliade, the ideal models are patterns that a person or object may or may not imitate; for Plato, there is a Form for everything, and everything imitates a Form by the very fact that it exists.[165]
Existentialism and secularism
Behind the diverse cultural forms of different religions, Eliade proposes a universal: traditional man, he claims, "always believes that there is an absolute reality, the sacred, which transcends this world but manifests itself in this world, thereby sanctifying it and making it real."[166] Furthermore, traditional man's behavior gains purpose and meaning through the Sacred: "By imitating divine behavior, man puts and keeps himself close to the gods—that is, in the real and the significant."[166] According to Eliade, "modern nonreligious man assumes a new existential situation."[166] For traditional man, historical events gain significance by imitating sacred, transcendent events. In contrast, nonreligious man lacks sacred models for how history or human behavior should be, so he must decide on his own how history should proceed—he "regards himself solely as the subject and agent of history, and refuses all appeal to transcendence".[167]
From the standpoint of religious thought, the world has an objective purpose established by mythical events, to which man should conform himself: "Myth teaches [religious man] the primordial 'stories' that have constituted him existentially."[168] From the standpoint of secular thought, any purpose must be invented and imposed on the world by man. Because of this new "existential situation," Eliade argues, the Sacred becomes the primary obstacle to nonreligious man's "freedom". In viewing himself as the proper maker of history, nonreligious man resists all notions of an externally (for instance, divinely) imposed order or model he must obey: modern man "makes himself, and he only makes himself completely in proportion as he desacralizes himself and the world. [...] He will not truly be free until he has killed the last god."[167]
Religious survivals in the secular world
Eliade says that secular man cannot escape his bondage to religious thought. By its very nature, secularism depends on religion for its sense of identity: by resisting sacred models, by insisting that man make history on his own, secular man identifies himself only through opposition to religious thought: "He [secular man] recognizes himself in proportion as he 'frees' and 'purifies' himself from the 'superstitions' of his ancestors."[169] Furthermore, modern man "still retains a large stock of camouflaged myths and degenerated rituals".[170] For example, modern social events still have similarities to traditional initiation rituals, and modern novels feature mythical motifs and themes.[171] Finally, secular man still participates in something like the eternal return: by reading modern literature, "modern man succeeds in obtaining an 'escape from time' comparable to the 'emergence from time' effected by myths".[172]
Eliade sees traces of religious thought even in secular academia. He thinks modern scientists are motivated by the religious desire to return to the sacred time of origins:
One could say that the anxious search for the origins of Life and Mind; the fascination in the 'mysteries of Nature'; the urge to penetrate and decipher the inner structure of Matter—all these longings and drives denote a sort of nostalgia for the primordial, for the original universal matrix. Matter, Substance, represents the absolute origin, the beginning of all things.[173]
Eliade believes the rise of materialism in the 19th century forced the religious nostalgia for "origins" to express itself in science. He mentions his own field of History of Religions as one of the fields that was obsessed with origins during the 19th century:
The new discipline of History of Religions developed rapidly in this cultural context. And, of course, it followed a like pattern: the positivistic approach to the facts and the search for origins, for the very beginning of religion.
All Western historiography was during that time obsessed with the quest of origins. [...] This search for the origins of human institutions and cultural creations prolongs and completes the naturalist's quest for the origin of species, the biologist's dream of grasping the origin of life, the geologist's and the astronomer's endeavor to understand the origin of the Earth and the Universe. From a psychological point of view, one can decipher here the same nostalgia for the 'primordial' and the 'original'.[174]
In some of his writings, Eliade describes modern political ideologies as secularized mythology. According to Eliade,
Likewise, Eliade notes that Nazism involved a
In comparison with the vigorous optimism of the communist myth, the mythology propagated by the national socialists seems particularly inept; and this is not only because of the limitations of the racial myth (how could one imagine that the rest of Europe would voluntarily accept submission to the master-race?), but above all because of the fundamental pessimism of the Germanic mythology. [...] For the eschaton prophesied and expected by the ancient Germans was the
ragnarok—that is, a catastrophic end of the world.[176]
Modern man and the "terror of history"
According to Eliade, modern man displays "traces" of "mythological behavior" because he intensely needs sacred time and the eternal return.[177] Despite modern man's claims to be nonreligious, he ultimately cannot find value in the linear progression of historical events; even modern man feels the "terror of history": "Here too [...] there is always the struggle against Time, the hope to be freed from the weight of 'dead Time,' of the Time that crushes and kills."[178]
This "terror of history" becomes especially acute when violent and threatening historical events confront modern man—the mere fact that a terrible event has happened, that it is part of history, is of little comfort to those who suffer from it. Eliade asks rhetorically how modern man can "tolerate the catastrophes and horrors of history—from collective deportations and massacres to atomic bombings—if beyond them he can glimpse no sign, no transhistorical meaning".[179] He indicates that, if repetitions of mythical events provided sacred value and meaning for history in the eyes of ancient man, modern man has denied the Sacred and must therefore invent value and purpose on his own. Without the Sacred to confer an absolute, objective value upon historical events, modern man is left with "a relativistic or nihilistic view of history" and a resulting "spiritual aridity".[180] In chapter 4 ("The Terror of History") of The Myth of the Eternal Return and chapter 9 ("Religious Symbolism and the Modern Man's Anxiety") of Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, Eliade argues at length that the rejection of religious thought is a primary cause of modern man's anxieties.
Inter-cultural dialogue and a "new humanism"
Eliade argues that modern man may escape the "Terror of history" by learning from traditional cultures. For example, Eliade thinks
Eliade notes that a Western or Continental philosopher might feel suspicious toward this Hindu view of history:
One can easily guess what a European historical and existentialist philosopher might reply [...] You ask me, he would say, to 'die to History'; but man is not, and he cannot be anything else but History, for his very essence is temporality. You are asking me, then, to give up my authentic existence and to take refuge in an abstraction, in pure Being, in the atman: I am to sacrifice my dignity as a creator of History to live an a-historic, inauthentic existence, empty of all human content. Well, I prefer to put up with my anxiety: at least, it cannot deprive me of a certain heroic grandeur, that of becoming conscious of, and accepting, the human condition.[182]
However, Eliade argues that the Hindu approach to history does not necessarily lead to a rejection of history. On the contrary, in Hinduism historical human existence is not the "absurdity" that many Continental philosophers see it as.[182] According to Hinduism, history is a divine creation, and one may live contentedly within it as long as one maintains a certain degree of detachment from it: "One is devoured by Time, by History, not because one lives in them, but because one thinks them real and, in consequence, one forgets or undervalues eternity."[183] Furthermore, Eliade argues that Westerners can learn from non-Western cultures to see something besides absurdity in suffering and death. Traditional cultures see suffering and death as a rite of passage. In fact, their initiation rituals often involve a symbolic death and resurrection, or symbolic ordeals followed by relief. Thus, Eliade argues, modern man can learn to see his historical ordeals, even death, as necessary initiations into the next stage of one's existence.[184]
Eliade even suggests that traditional thought offers relief from the vague anxiety caused by "our obscure presentiment of the end of the world, or more exactly of the end of our world, our own civilization".[184] Many traditional cultures have myths about the end of their world or civilization; however, these myths do not succeed "in paralysing either Life or Culture".[184] These traditional cultures emphasize cyclic time and, therefore, the inevitable rise of a new world or civilization on the ruins of the old. Thus, they feel comforted even in contemplating the end times.[185]
Eliade argues that a Western spiritual rebirth can happen within the framework of Western spiritual traditions.[186] However, he says, to start this rebirth, Westerners may need to be stimulated by ideas from non-Western cultures. In his Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, Eliade claims that a "genuine encounter" between cultures "might well constitute the point of departure for a new humanism, upon a world scale".[187]
Christianity and the "salvation" of History
Mircea Eliade sees the
From Eliade's perspective, Christianity's "trans-historical message" may be the most important help that modern man could have in confronting the terror of history. In his book Mito ("Myth"), Italian researcher Furio Jesi argues that Eliade denies man the position of a true protagonist in history: for Eliade, true human experience lies not in intellectually "making history", but in man's experiences of joy and grief. Thus, from Eliade's perspective, the Christ story becomes the perfect myth for modern man.[191] In Christianity, God willingly entered historical time by being born as Christ, and accepted the suffering that followed. By identifying with Christ, modern man can learn to confront painful historical events.[191] Ultimately, according to Jesi, Eliade sees Christianity as the only religion that can save man from the "Terror of history".[192]
In Eliade's view, traditional man sees time as an endless repetition of mythical archetypes. In contrast, modern man has abandoned mythical archetypes and entered linear, historical time—in this context, unlike many other religions, Christianity attributes value to historical time. Thus, Eliade concludes, "Christianity incontestably proves to be the religion of 'fallen man'", of modern man who has lost "the paradise of archetypes and repetition".[193]
"Modern gnosticism", Romanticism and Eliade's nostalgia
In analyzing the similarities between the "mythologists" Eliade, Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung, Robert Ellwood concluded that the three modern mythologists, all of whom believed that myths reveal "timeless truth",[194] fulfilled the role "gnostics" had in antiquity. The diverse religious movements covered by the term "gnosticism" share the basic doctrines that the surrounding world is fundamentally evil or inhospitable, that we are trapped in the world through no fault of our own, and that we can be saved from the world only through secret knowledge (gnosis).[195] Ellwood claimed that the three mythologists were "modern gnostics through and through",[196] remarking,
Whether in Augustan Rome or modern Europe, democracy all too easily gave way to totalitarianism, technology was as readily used for battle as for comfort, and immense wealth lay alongside abysmal poverty. [...] Gnostics past and present sought answers not in the course of outward human events, but in knowledge of the world's beginning, of what lies above and beyond the world, and of the secret places of the human soul. To all this the mythologists spoke, and they acquired large and loyal followings.[197]
According to Ellwood, the mythologists believed in gnosticism's basic doctrines (even if in a secularized form). Ellwood also believes that Romanticism, which stimulated the modern study of mythology,[198] strongly influenced the mythologists. Because Romantics stress that emotion and imagination have the same dignity as reason, Ellwood argues, they tend to think political truth "is known less by rational considerations than by its capacity to fire the passions" and, therefore, that political truth is "very apt to be found [...] in the distant past".[198]
As modern gnostics, Ellwood argues, the three mythologists felt alienated from the surrounding modern world. As scholars, they knew of primordial societies that had operated differently from modern ones. And as people influenced by Romanticism, they saw myths as a saving gnosis that offered "avenues of eternal return to simpler primordial ages when the values that rule the world were forged".[199] In addition, Ellwood identifies Eliade's personal sense of nostalgia as a source for his interest in, or even his theories about, traditional societies.[200] He cites Eliade himself claiming to desire an "eternal return" like that by which traditional man returns to the mythical paradise: "My essential preoccupation is precisely the means of escaping History, of saving myself through symbol, myth, rite, archetypes".[201]
In Ellwood's view, Eliade's nostalgia was only enhanced by his exile from Romania: "In later years Eliade felt about his own Romanian past as did primal folk about mythic time. He was drawn back to it, yet he knew he could not live there, and that all was not well with it."[202] He suggests that this nostalgia, along with Eliade's sense that "exile is among the profoundest metaphors for all human life",[203] influenced Eliade's theories. Ellwood sees evidence of this in Eliade's concept of the "Terror of history" from which modern man is no longer shielded.[204] In this concept, Ellwood sees an "element of nostalgia" for earlier times "when the sacred was strong and the terror of history had barely raised its head".[205]
Criticism of Eliade's scholarship
Overgeneralization
Eliade cites a wide variety of myths and rituals to support his theories. However, he has been accused of making overgeneralizations: many scholars think he lacks sufficient evidence to put forth his ideas as universal, or even general, principles of religious thought. According to one scholar, "Eliade may have been the most popular and influential contemporary historian of religion", but "many, if not most, specialists in anthropology, sociology, and even history of religions have either ignored or quickly dismissed" Eliade's works.[206]
The classicist
Even Wendy Doniger, Eliade's successor at the University of Chicago, claims (in an introduction to Eliade's own Shamanism) that the eternal return does not apply to all myths and rituals, although it may apply to many of them.[2] However, although Doniger agrees that Eliade made overgeneralizations, she notes that his willingness to "argue boldly for universals" allowed him to see patterns "that spanned the entire globe and the whole of human history".[210] Whether they were true or not, she argues, Eliade's theories are still useful "as starting points for the comparative study of religion". She also argues that Eliade's theories have been able to accommodate "new data to which Eliade did not have access".[2]
Lack of empirical support
Several researchers have criticized Eliade's work as having no
In contrast, Professor Kees W. Bolle of the University of California, Los Angeles argues that "Professor Eliade's approach, in all his works, is empirical":[214] Bolle sets Eliade apart for what he sees as Eliade's particularly close "attention to the various particular motifs" of different myths.[214] French researcher Daniel Dubuisson places doubt on Eliade's scholarship and its scientific character, citing the Romanian academic's alleged refusal to accept the treatment of religions in their historical and cultural context, and proposing that Eliade's notion of hierophany refers to the actual existence of a supernatural level.[61]
Ronald Inden, a historian of India and University of Chicago professor, criticized Mircea Eliade, alongside other intellectual figures (Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell among them), for encouraging a "romantic view" of Hinduism.[215] He argued that their approach to the subject relied mainly on an Orientalist approach, and made Hinduism seem like "a private realm of the imagination and the religious which modern, Western man lacks but needs."[215]
Far-right and nationalist influences
Although his scholarly work was never subordinated to his early political beliefs, the school of thought he was associated with in
A piece authored in 1930 saw Eliade defining Julius Evola as a great thinker and offering praise to the controversial intellectuals
Notably, Eliade was also preoccupied with the cult of
In his study of Eliade, Jung, and Campbell, Ellwood also discusses the connection between academic theories and controversial political involvements, noting that all three mythologists have been accused of reactionary political positions. Ellwood notes the obvious parallel between the conservatism of myth, which speaks of a primordial golden age, and the conservatism of far right politics.[222] However, Ellwood argues that the explanation is more complex than that. Wherever their political sympathies may have sometimes been, he claims, the three mythologists were often "apolitical if not antipolitical, scorning any this-worldly salvation".[223] Moreover, the connection between mythology and politics differs for each of the mythologists in question: in Eliade's case, Ellwood believes, a strong sense of nostalgia ("for childhood, for historical times past, for cosmic religion, for paradise"),[89] influenced not only the scholar's academic interests, but also his political views.
Because Eliade stayed out of politics during his later life, Ellwood tries to extract an implicit political philosophy from Eliade's scholarly works. Ellwood argues that the later Eliade's nostalgia for ancient traditions did not make him a political reactionary, even a quiet one. He concludes that the later Eliade was, in fact, a "radical modernist".[224] According to Ellwood,
Those who see Eliade's fascination with the primordial as merely reactionary in the ordinary political or religious sense of the word do not understand the mature Eliade in a sufficiently radical way. [...] Tradition was not for him exactly Burkean 'prescription' or sacred trust to be kept alive generation after generation, for Eliade was fully aware that tradition, like men and nations, lives only by changing and even occultation. The tack is not to try fruitlessly to keep it unchanging, but to discover where it is hiding.[224]
According to Eliade, religious elements survive in secular culture, but in new, "camouflaged" forms.[225] Thus, Ellwood believes that the later Eliade probably thought modern man should preserve elements of the past, but should not try to restore their original form through reactionary politics.[226] He suspects that Eliade would have favored "a minimal rather than a maximalist state" that would allow personal spiritual transformation without enforcing it.[227]
Many scholars have accused Eliade of "essentialism", a type of overgeneralization in which one incorrectly attributes a common "essence" to a whole group—in this case, all "religious" or "traditional" societies. Furthermore, some see a connection between Eliade's essentialism with regard to religion and fascist essentialism with regard to races and nations.[228] To Ellwood, this connection "seems rather tortured, in the end amounting to little more than an ad hominem argument which attempts to tar Eliade's entire [scholarly] work with the ill-repute all decent people feel for storm troopers and the Iron Guard".[228] However, Ellwood admits that common tendencies in "mythological thinking" may have caused Eliade, as well as Jung and Campbell, to view certain groups in an "essentialist" way, and that this may explain their purported antisemitism: "A tendency to think in generic terms of peoples, races, religions, or parties, which as we shall see is undoubtedly the profoundest flaw in mythological thinking, including that of such modern mythologists as our three, can connect with nascent anti-Semitism, or the connection can be the other way."[229]
Literary works
Generic traits
Many of Mircea Eliade's literary works, in particular his earliest ones, are noted for their eroticism and their focus on subjective experience. Modernist in style, they have drawn comparisons to the contemporary writings of Mihail Sebastian,[230] I. Valerian,[231] and Ion Biberi.[232] Alongside Honoré de Balzac and Giovanni Papini, his literary passions included Aldous Huxley and Miguel de Unamuno,[28] as well as André Gide.[9] Eliade also read with interest the prose of Romain Rolland, Henrik Ibsen, and the Enlightenment thinkers Voltaire and Denis Diderot.[9] As a youth, he read the works of Romanian authors such as Liviu Rebreanu and Panait Istrati; initially, he was also interested in Ionel Teodoreanu's prose works, but later rejected them and criticized their author.[9]
Investigating the works' main characteristics,
For Călinescu, such a perspective on life culminated in "banality," leaving authors gripped by the "cult of the self" and "a contempt for literature".[6] Polemically, Călinescu proposed that Mircea Eliade's supposed focus on "aggressive youth" served to instill his interwar Romanian writers with the idea that they had a common destiny as a generation apart.[6] He also commented that, when set in Romania, Mircea Eliade's stories lacked the "perception of immediate reality", and, analyzing the non-traditional names the writer tended to ascribe to his Romanian characters, that they did not depict "specificity".[234] Additionally, in Călinescu's view, Eliade's stories were often "sensationalist compositions of the illustrated magazine kind."[235] Mircea Eliade's assessment of his own pre-1940 literary contributions oscillated between expressions of pride[27] and the bitter verdict that they were written for "an audience of little ladies and high school students".[60]
A secondary but unifying feature present in most of Eliade's stories is their setting, a magical and part-fictional Bucharest.[8] In part, they also serve to illustrate or allude to Eliade's own research in the field of religion, as well as to the concepts he introduced.[8] Thus, commentators such as Matei Călinescu and Carmen Mușat have also argued that a main characteristic of Eliade's fantasy prose is a substitution between the supernatural and the mundane: in this interpretation, Eliade turns the daily world into an incomprehensible place, while the intrusive supernatural aspect promises to offer the sense of life.[236] The notion was in turn linked to Eliade's own thoughts on transcendence, and in particular his idea that, once "camouflaged" in life or history, miracles become "unrecognizable".[236]
Oriental-themed novels
Isabel și apele diavolului
One of Eliade's earliest fiction writings, the controversial
Maitreyi
One of Eliade's best-known works, the novel
Allan himself stands alongside Eliade's male characters, whose focus is on action, sensation and experience—his chaste contacts with Maitreyi are encouraged by Sen, who hopes for a marriage which is nonetheless abhorred by his would-be European son-in-law.[238] Instead, Allan is fascinated to discover Maitreyi's Oriental version of Platonic love, marked by spiritual attachment more than by physical contact.[239] However, their affair soon after turns physical, and she decides to attach herself to Allan as one would to a husband, in what is an informal and intimate wedding ceremony (which sees her vowing her love and invoking an earth goddess as the seal of union).[234] Upon discovering this, Narendra Sen becomes enraged, rejecting their guest and keeping Maitreyi in confinement. As a result, his daughter decides to have intercourse with a lowly stranger, becoming pregnant in the hope that her parents would consequently allow her to marry her lover. However, the story also casts doubt on her earlier actions, reflecting rumors that Maitreyi was not a virgin at the time she and Allan first met, which also seems to expose her father as a hypocrite.[234]
George Călinescu objected to the narrative, arguing that both the physical affair and the father's rage seemed artificial, while commenting that Eliade placing doubt on his Indian characters' honesty had turned the plot into a piece of "ethnological humor".[234] Noting that the work developed on a classical theme of miscegenation, which recalled the prose of François-René de Chateaubriand and Pierre Loti,[238] the critic proposed that its main merit was in introducing the exotic novel to local literature.[234]
Șantier
Mircea Eliade's other early works include Șantier ('Building Site'), a part-novel, part-diary account of his Indian sojourn. George Călinescu objected to its "monotony", and, noting that it featured a set of "intelligent observations," criticized the "banality of its ideological conversations."
Portraits of a generation
Novel of the Nearsighted Adolescent
In his earliest novel, titled
Întoarcerea din rai
Eliade's 1934 novel Întoarcerea din rai ('Return from Paradise') centers on Pavel Anicet, a young man who seeks knowledge through what Călinescu defined as "sexual excess".[234] His search leaves him with a reduced sensitivity: right after being confronted with his father's death, Anicet breaks out in tears only after sitting through an entire dinner.[234]
The other characters, standing for Eliade's generation, all seek knowledge through violence or retreat from the world—nonetheless, unlike Anicet, they ultimately fail at imposing rigors upon themselves.[234] Pavel himself eventually abandons his belief in sex as a means for enlightenment, and commits suicide in hopes of reaching the level of primordial unity. The solution, George Călinescu noted, mirrored the strange murder in Gide's Lafcadio's Adventures.[234] Eliade himself indicated that the book dealt with the "loss of the beatitude, illusions, and optimism that had dominated the first twenty years of 'Greater Romania'."[240] Robert Ellwood connected the work to Eliade's recurring sense of loss in respect to the "atmosphere of euphoria and faith" of his adolescence.[202] Călinescu criticizes Întoarcerea din rai, describing its dialog sequences as "awkward", its narrative as "void", and its artistic interest as "non-existent", proposing that the reader could however find it relevant as the "document of a mentality".[234]
Huliganii
The novel Huliganii ('The Hooligans') is intended as the fresco of a family, and, through it, that of an entire generation. The book's main protagonist, Petru Anicet, is a composer who places value in experiments; other characters include Dragu, who considers "a hooligan's experience" as "the only fertile debut into life", and the totalitarian Alexandru Pleşa, who is on the search for "the heroic life" by enlisting youth in "perfect regiments, equally intoxicated by a collective myth."[241][242]
Călinescu thought that the young male characters all owed inspiration to
Marriage in Heaven
The novel Marriage in Heaven depicts the correspondence between two male friends, an artist and a common man, who complain to each other about their failures in love: the former complains about a lover who wanted his children when he did not, while the other recalls being abandoned by a woman who, despite his intentions, did not want to become pregnant by him. Eliade lets the reader understand that they are in fact talking about the same woman.[235]
Fantastic and fantasy literature
Mircea Eliade's earliest works, most of which were published at later stages, belong to the fantasy genre. One of the first such literary exercises to be printed, the 1921 Cum am găsit piatra filosofală, showed its adolescent author's interest in themes that he was to explore throughout his career, in particular
Eliade's fantasy novel
Șarpele
Eliade's short story Șarpele ('The Snake') was described by George Călinescu as "
In Curte la Dionis
In the relation between history and culture, „the memory acts from the event toward the creation, so that the cultural memory is the prisoner of history."[243] When it will liberate itself, the human will escape the labyrinth, according to a character of the In Dionysus’ Court, of which ideal is the cultural memory; but, for him, the amnesia becomes a torment because, although he forgot details of his own existence, he kept the vague impression of a decisive meeting and with the obsession that he is not knowing his place in the universe: he had forgotten the message that he had to transmit to the world.
Un om mare
The short story Un om mare ('A Big Man'), which Eliade authored during his stay in Portugal, shows a common person, the engineer Cucoanes, who grows steadily and uncontrollably, reaching immense proportions and ultimately disappearing into the wilderness of the
Other writings
Eliade reinterpreted the Greek mythological figure
In addition to his fiction, the exiled Eliade authored several volumes of memoirs and diaries and travel writings. They were published sporadically, and covered various stages of his life. One of the earliest such pieces was India, grouping accounts of the travels he made through the Indian subcontinent.[68] Writing for the Spanish journal La Vanguardia, commentator Sergio Vila-Sanjuán described the first volume of Eliade's Autobiography (covering the years 1907 to 1937) as "a great book", while noting that the other main volume was "more conventional and insincere."[8] In Vila-Sanjuán's view, the texts reveal Mircea Eliade himself as "a Dostoyevskyian character", as well as "an accomplished person, a Goethian figure".[8]
A work that drew particular interest was his Jurnal portughez ('Portuguese Diary'), completed during his stay in
Eliade also wrote various essays of literary criticism. In his youth, alongside his study on Julius Evola, he published essays which introduced the Romanian public to representatives of modern Spanish literature and philosophy, among them Adolfo Bonilla San Martín, Miguel de Unamuno, José Ortega y Gasset, Eugenio d'Ors, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez and Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo.[68] He also wrote an essay on the works of James Joyce, connecting it with his own theories on the eternal return ("[Joyce's literature is] saturated with nostalgia for the myth of the eternal repetition"), and deeming Joyce himself an anti-historicist "archaic" figure among the modernists.[246] In the 1930s, Eliade edited the collected works of Romanian historian Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu.[9]
M. L. Ricketts discovered and translated into English a previously unpublished play written by Mircea Eliade in Paris 1946 Aventura Spirituală ('A Spiritual Adventure'). It was published first in
Controversy: antisemitism and links with the Iron Guard
Early statements
The early years in Eliade's public career show him to have been highly tolerant of Jews in general, and of the Jewish minority in Romania in particular. His early condemnation of Nazi antisemitic policies was accompanied by his caution and moderation in regard to Nae Ionescu's various anti-Jewish attacks.[32][248]
Late in the 1930s, Mihail Sebastian was marginalized by Romania's antisemitic policies, and came to reflect on his Romanian friend's association with the far right. The subsequent ideological break between him and Eliade has been compared by writer
The Poles' resistance in Warsaw is a Jewish resistance. Only yids are capable of the blackmail of putting women and children in the front line, to take advantage of the Germans' sense of scruple. The Germans have no interest in the destruction of Romania. Only a pro-German government can save us... What is happening on the frontier with Bukovina is a scandal, because new waves of Jews are flooding into the country. Rather than a Romania again invaded by kikes, it would be better to have a German protectorate.[250]
The friendship between Eliade and Sebastian drastically declined during the war: the latter writer, fearing for his security during the pro-Nazi
Later, Mircea Eliade expressed his regret at not having had the chance to redeem his friendship with Sebastian before the latter was killed in a car accident.[27][66] Paul Cernat notes that Eliade's statement includes an admission that he "counted on [Sebastian's] support, in order to get back into Romanian life and culture", and proposes that Eliade may have expected his friend to vouch for him in front of hostile authorities.[27] Some of Sebastian's late recordings in his diary show that their author was reflecting with nostalgia on his relationship with Eliade, and that he deplored the outcome.[8][32]
Eliade provided two distinct explanations for not having met with Sebastian: one was related to his claim of being followed around by the
Beyond his involvement with a movement known for its antisemitism, Eliade did not usually comment on Jewish issues. However, an article titled Piloții orbi ("The Blind Pilots"), contributed to the journal Vremea in 1936, showed that he supported at least some Iron Guard accusations against the Jewish community:
Since the war [that is,
Maramureș and Bukovina, and gained the absolute majority in the towns and cities in Bessarabia.[note 2] [...] It would be absurd to expect Jews to resign themselves to become a minority with certain rights and very many duties—after they have tasted the honey of power and conquered as many command positions as they have. Jews are currently fighting with all forces to maintain their positions, expecting a future offensive—and, as far as I am concerned, I understand their fight and admire their vitality, tenacity, genius.[251]
One year later, a text, accompanied by his picture, was featured as answer to an inquiry by the Iron Guard's Buna Vestire about the reasons he had for supporting the movement. A short section of it summarizes an anti-Jewish attitude:
Can the Romanian nation end its life in the saddest decay witnessed by history, undermined by misery and syphilis, conquered by Jews and torn to pieces by foreigners, demoralized, betrayed, sold for a few million lei?[32][252]
According to the literary critic
Polemics and exile
Dumitru G. Danielopol, a fellow diplomat present in London during Eliade's stay in the city, later stated that the latter had identified himself as "a guiding light of [the Iron Guard] movement" and victim of
The depolitisation of Eliade after the start of his diplomatic career was also mistrusted by his former close friend Eugène Ionesco, who indicated that, upon the close of World War II, Eliade's personal beliefs as communicated to his friends amounted to "all is over now that Communism has won".[254] This forms part of Ionesco's severe and succinct review of the careers of Legionary-inspired intellectuals, many of them his friends and former friends, in a letter he sent to Tudor Vianu.[54][255] In 1946, Ionesco indicated to Petru Comarnescu that he did not want to see either Eliade or Cioran, and that he considered the two of them "Legionaries for ever"—adding "we are hyenas to one another".[256]
Eliade's former friend, the communist
In August 1954, when
Beginning in 1969, Eliade's past became the subject of public debate in Israel. At the time, historian
At an early stage of his polemic with Culianu, Eliade complained in writing that "it is not possible to write an objective history" of the Iron Guard and its leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu.[265] Arguing that people "would only accept apologetics [...] or executions", he contended: "After Buchenwald and Auschwitz, even honest people cannot afford being objective".[265]
Posterity
Alongside the arguments introduced by Daniel Dubuisson, criticism of Mircea Eliade's political involvement with antisemitism and fascism came from Adriana Berger,
Other scholars, like
Robert Ellwood also places Eliade's involvement with the Iron Guard in relation to scholar's conservatism, and connects this aspect of Eliade's life with both his nostalgia and his study of primal societies. According to Ellwood, the part of Eliade that felt attracted to the "freedom of new beginnings suggested by primal myths" is the same part that felt attracted to the Guard, with its almost mythological notion of a new beginning through a "national resurrection".
Because of Eliade's withdrawal from politics, and also because the later Eliade's religiosity was very personal and idiosyncratic,[227] Ellwood believes the later Eliade probably would have rejected the "corporate sacred" of the Iron Guard.[227] According to Ellwood, the later Eliade had the same desire for a Romanian "resurrection" that had motivated the early Eliade to support the Iron Guard, but he now channeled it apolitically through his efforts to "maintain the culture of a free Romania" abroad.[272] In one of his writings, Eliade says, "Against the terror of History there are only two possibilities of defense: action or contemplation."[273] According to Ellwood, the young Eliade took the former option, trying to reform the world through action, whereas the older Eliade tried to resist the terror of history intellectually.[202]
Eliade's own version of events, presenting his involvement in far right politics as marginal, was judged to contain several inaccuracies and unverifiable claims.
In his Felix Culpa, Manea directly accused Eliade of having embellished his memoirs to minimize an embarrassing past.
Oișteanu argued that, in old age, Eliade moved away from his earlier stances and even came to sympathize with the non-
Political symbolism in Eliade's fiction
Various critics have traced links between Eliade's fiction works and his political views, or Romanian politics in general. Early on, George Călinescu argued that the totalitarian model outlined in Huliganii was: "An allusion to certain bygone political movements [...], sublimated in the ever so abstruse philosophy of death as a path to knowledge."[233] By contrast, Întoarcerea din rai partly focuses on a failed communist rebellion, which enlists the participation of its main characters.[234]
Iphigenia's story of self-sacrifice, turned voluntary in Eliade's version, was taken by various commentators, beginning with Mihail Sebastian, as a favorable allusion to the Iron Guard's beliefs on commitment and death, as well as to the bloody outcome of the 1941 Legionary Rebellion.[32] Ten years after its premiere, the play was reprinted by Legionary refugees in Argentina: on the occasion, the text was reviewed for publishing by Eliade himself.[32] Reading Iphigenia was what partly sparked Culianu's investigation of his mentor's early political affiliations.[32]
A special debate was sparked by Un om mare. Culianu viewed it as a direct reference to Corneliu Zelea Codreanu and his rise in popularity, an interpretation partly based on the similarity between, on one hand, two monikers ascribed to the Legionary leader (by, respectively, his adversaries and his followers), and, on the other, the main character's name (Cucoanes).[244] Matei Călinescu did not reject Culianu's version, but argued that, on its own, the piece was beyond political interpretations.[244] Commenting on this dialog, literary historian and essayist Mircea Iorgulescu objected to the original verdict, indicating his belief that there was no historical evidence to substantiate Culianu's point of view.[244]
Alongside Eliade's main works, his attempted novel of youth, Minunata călătorie a celor cinci cărăbuși in țara furnicilor roșii, which depicts a population of red ants living in a totalitarian society and forming bands to harass the beetles, was seen as a potential allusion to the
Cultural legacy
Tributes
An endowed chair in the History of Religions at the University of Chicago Divinity School was named after Eliade in recognition of his wide contribution to the research on this subject; the first holder of this chair is Wendy Doniger, who was succeeded by Brook Ziporyn in 2020.[279]
To evaluate the legacy of Eliade and Joachim Wach within the discipline of the history of religions, the University of Chicago chose 2006 (the intermediate year between the 50th anniversary of Wach's death and the 100th anniversary of Eliade's birth), to hold a two-day conference to reflect upon their academic contributions and their political lives in their social and historical contexts, as well as the relationship between their works and their lives.[74]
In 1990, after the
As Antohi noted, Eliade,
Eliade's image in contemporary culture also has political implications. Historian Irina Livezeanu proposed that the respect he enjoys in Romania is matched by that of other "nationalist thinkers and politicians" who "have reentered the contemporary scene largely as heroes of a pre- and anticommunist past", including Nae Ionescu and Cioran, but also Ion Antonescu and Nichifor Crainic.[281] In parallel, according to Oişteanu (who relied his assessment on Eliade's own personal notes), Eliade's interest in the American hippie community was reciprocated by members of the latter, some of whom reportedly viewed Eliade as "a guru".[76]
Eliade has also been hailed as an inspiration by German representatives of the
Portrayals, filmography and dramatizations
Early on, Mircea Eliade's novels were the subject of satire: before the two of them became friends,
Several authors, including
In 2000,
The film Mircea Eliade et la redécouverte du Sacré (1987), and part of the television series Architecture et Géographie sacrées by Paul Barbă Neagră, discuss Eliade's works.
Film adaptations
- The Bengali Night (1988), directed by Nicolas Klotz
- Domnişoara Christina ('Miss Christina', 1992), directed by Viorel Sergovici
- Șarpele ('The Snake', 1996)
- Eu sunt Adam! (1996), directed by Dan Pița
- Youth Without Youth (2007), directed by Francis Ford Coppola
- Domnişoara Christina (2013)
The Bengali Night, a 1988 film directed by Nicolas Klotz and based upon the French translation of Maitreyi, stars British actor Hugh Grant as Allan, the European character based on Eliade, while Supriya Pathak is Gayatri, a character based on Maitreyi Devi (who had refused to be mentioned by name).[21] The film, considered "simply" by Hindu activists, was only shown once in India.[21]
Live adaptations
- Domnișoara Christina (1981), opera at the Romanian Radio[286]
- Iphigenia (1982), play at the National Theater Bucharest[245]
- La señorita Cristina (2000), opera at the Teatro Real, Madrid[68]
- Cazul Gavrilescu ('The Gavrilescu Case', 2001), play at the Nottara Theater[287]
- La Țigănci (2003), play at the Odeon Theater[288]
- Apocalipsa după Mircea Eliade ('The Apocalypse According to Mircea Eliade', 2007)[289]
Eliade's Iphigenia was again included in theater programs during the late years of the
La Țigănci has been the basis for two theater adaptations: Cazul Gavrilescu ('The Gavrilescu Case'), directed by Gelu Colceag and hosted by the Nottara Theater;[287] and an eponymous play by director Alexandru Hausvater, first staged by the Odeon Theater in 2003, starring, among others, Adriana Trandafir, Florin Zamfirescu, and Carmen Tănase.[288]
In March 2007, on Eliade's 100th birthday, the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company hosted the Mircea Eliade Week, during which radio drama adaptations of several works were broadcast.[290] In September of that year, director and dramatist Cezarina Udrescu staged a multimedia performance based on a number of works Mircea Eliade wrote during his stay in Portugal; titled Apocalipsa după Mircea Eliade ('The Apocalypse According to Mircea Eliade'), and shown as part of a Romanian Radio cultural campaign, it starred Ion Caramitru, Oana Pellea and Răzvan Vasilescu.[289]
Domnișoara Christina has been the subject of two operas: the first, carrying the same Romanian title, was authored by Romanian composer Șerban Nichifor and premiered in 1981 at the Romanian Radio;[286] the second, titled La señorita Cristina, was written by Spanish composer Luis de Pablo and premiered in 2000 at the Teatro Real in Madrid.[68]
Selected bibliography
- A History of Religious Ideas. Vol. 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries. Trans. Willard R. Trask. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1978. (Histoire des croyances et des idées religieuses. 3 vols. 1976–83.)
- Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism (trans. Philip Mairet), Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1991
- Myth and Reality (trans. Willard R. Trask), Harper & Row, New York, 1963
- Myths, Dreams and Mysteries (trans. Philip Mairet), Harper & Row, New York, 1967
- Myths, Rites, Symbols: A Mircea Eliade Reader, Vol. 2, Ed. Wendell C. Beane and William G. Doty, Harper Colophon, New York, 1976
- Patterns in Comparative Religion, Sheed & Ward, New York, 1958
- Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2004
- The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History (trans. Willard R. Trask), Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1971
- "The Quest for the 'Origins' of Religion", in History of Religions 4.1 (1964), p. 154–169
- The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (trans. Willard R. Trask), Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1961
- ‘’Hypermnésie et évasion. Doina Ruști, „Philologica Jassyensia", An III, Nr. 1, 2007, p. 235–241
- Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (trans. Willard R. Trask), Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2009
- Isabela Vasiliu-Scraba, Harismele Duhului Sfânt si fotografia "de 14 ani" (Mircea Eliade), în rev. "Acolada", Satu Mare, annul XIV, nr. 12 (157), decembrie 2020, pp. 12–13
See also
- Sântoaderi, supernatural entities found in Romanian folklore
Notes
- ^ For example, according to Wendy Doniger (Doniger, "Foreword to the 2004 Edition", Eliade, Shamanism, p. xv.), Eliade has been accused "of being a crypto-theologian"; however, Doniger argues that Eliade is better characterized as "an open hierogian". Likewise, Robert Ellwood (Ellwood, p. 111) denies that Eliade practiced "covert theology".
- Maramureş and Bukovina. In 1938, this accusation served as an excuse for the Octavian Goga-A. C. Cuza government to suspend and review all Jewish citizenship guaranteed after 1923, rendering it very difficult to regain (Ornea, p.391). Eliade's mention of Bessarabia probably refers to an earlier period, being his interpretation of a pre-Greater Romaniaprocess.
References
Citations
- ISBN 978-0-7914-4729-1.
- ^ a b c d e Wendy Doniger, "Foreword to the 2004 Edition", Eliade, Shamanism, p. xiii
- ^
ISBN 9783111382449. Retrieved October 15, 2023.
The Rumanian Iron Guard and the Croat Ustasha practiced widely all kinds of violence, including individual terror.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Biografie, in Handoca
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Silviu Mihai, "A doua viaţă a lui Mircea Eliade" ("Mircea Eliade's Second Life"), in Cotidianul, February 6, 2006; retrieved July 31, 2007 (in Romanian)
- ^ a b c d e Călinescu, p. 956
- ^ a b c d e Simona Chiţan, "Nostalgia după România" ("Nostalgia for Romania"), interview with Sorin Alexandrescu, in Evenimentul Zilei, June 24, 2006
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, "Paseo por el Bucarest de Mircea Eliade" ("Passing through Mircea Eliade's Bucharest"), in La Vanguardia, May 30, 2007 (in Spanish); retrieved January 16, 2008
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae Ion Hadârcă, "Mircea Eliade la începuturi" ("Mircea Eliade at His Beginnings") Archived 2007-11-08 at the Wayback Machine, in Revista Sud-Est, 1/2007; retrieved January 21, 2008 (in Romanian)
- ^ Ioan P. Culianu, "Mahaparanirvana", in El Hilo de Ariadna Archived 2007-12-30 at the Wayback Machine, Vol. II
- ^ a b Ellwood, pp. 98–99
- ^ Eliade, Autobiography, in Ellwood, pp. 98–99
- ^ Ellwood, p. 5
- ^ a b Steinhardt, in Handoca
- ^ Veronica Marinescu, " 'Am luat din întâmplările vieții tot ce este mai frumos', spune cercetătorul operei brâncușiene" (" 'I Took the Best Out of Life's Occurrences', Says Researcher of Brâncuși's Work") Archived 2018-05-26 at the Wayback Machine, interview with Barbu Brezianu, in Curierul Național, March 13, 2004; retrieved February 22, 2008 (in Romanian)
- ^ Maria Vlădescu, "100 de ani de cercetaşi" ("100 Years of Scouting"), in Evenimentul Zilei, August 2, 2007
- ISBN 0-7503-0686-6
- ^ Călinescu, pp. 954, 955; Nastasă, p. 76
- ^ a b c Nastasă, p. 237
- ^ McGuire, p. 150; Nastasă, p. 237
- ^ a b c d Ginu Kamani, "A Terrible Hurt: The Untold Story behind the Publishing of Maitreyi Devi", at the University of Chicago Press website; retrieved July 16, 2007
- ^ Biografie, in Handoca; Nastasă, p. 237
- ^ a b c Albert Ribas, "Mircea Eliade, historiador de las religiones" ("Mircea Eliade, Historian of Religions"), in El Ciervo. Revista de pensamiento y cultura, Año 49, Núm. 588 (Marzo 2000), pp. 35–38
- ^ Eliade, in Nastasă, p. 238
- ^ a b c McGuire, p. 150
- ^ Nastasă, p. 442; Ornea, p. 452
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Paul Cernat, "Jurnalul unui om mare" ("The Diary of A Big Man") Archived June 3, 2015, at the Wayback Machine, in Observator Cultural, Nr. 338, September 2006; retrieved January 23, 2008 (in Romanian)
- ^ a b c d e f g h Șora, in Handoca
- ISBN 978-3-030-20164-7.
- ^ Ornea, pp. 150–151, 153
- ^ Ornea, pp. 174–175
- ^ 22, Nr. 926, December 2007; retrieved January 18, 2008 (in Romanian)
- ^ Eliade, 1934, in Ornea, p. 408; see also Ellwood, p. 85
- ^ Eliade, 1934, in Ornea, pp. 408–409
- ^ Eliade, 1936, in Ornea, p. 410
- ^ Eliade, 1933, in Ornea, p. 167
- ^ Ornea, Chapter IV
- ^ 22, Nr. 701, August 2003; retrieved October 4, 2007 (in Romanian)
- ^ a b c d Paul Cernat, "Eliade în cheie ezoterică" ("Eliade in Esoterical Key") Archived September 12, 2015, at the Wayback Machine, review of Marcel Tolcea, Eliade, ezotericul ("Eliade, the Esoteric"), in Observator Cultural, Nr. 175, July 2003; retrieved July 16, 2007 (in Romanian)
- ^ Paul Cernat, "Recuperarea lui Ionathan X. Uranus" ("The Recuperation of Ionathan X. Uranus"), in Observator Cultural, Nr. 299, December 2005; retrieved November 22, 2007 (in Romanian)
- ^ Eliade, 1933, in Ornea, p. 32.
- ^ Eliade, 1936, in Ornea, p. 32.
- ^ a b Eliade, 1937, in Ornea, p. 53
- ^ Eliade, 1927, in Ornea, p. 147
- ^ Eliade, 1935, in Ornea, p. 128.
- ^ Eliade, 1934, in Ornea, p. 136
- ^ Eliade, 1933, in Ornea, pp. 178, 186.
- ^ Ornea, pp. 445–455.
- ^ Nastasă, pp. 525–526.
- ^ Nastasă, p. 86; Ornea, pp. 452–453; Şora, in Handoca
- ^ a b Ornea, p. 453.
- ^ a b Eliade, 1937, in Ornea, p. 203
- ^ Ornea, pp. 202–206
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Ovidiu Şimonca, "Mircea Eliade şi 'căderea în lume'" ("Mircea Eliade and 'the Descent into the World'") Archived 2012-12-22 at archive.today, review of Florin Ţurcanu, Mircea Eliade. Le prisonnier de l'histoire ("Mircea Eliade. The Prisoner of History"), in Observator Cultural, Nr. 305, January–February 2006; retrieved July 16, 2007 (in Romanian)
- ^ Ornea, p. 180
- ^ a b Ornea, p. 207
- ^ Ornea, pp. 208–209
- ^ a b c Ornea, p. 209
- ^ Biografie, in Handoca; Nastasă, p. 442
- ^ Dilema Veche, Vol. III, August 2006; retrieved January 28, 2008 (in Romanian)
- ^ a b c d e f Michael Löwy, Review of Daniel Dubuisson, Impostures et pseudo-science. L'œuvre de Mircea Eliade, in Archives de Science Sociale et Religion, 132 (2005) (in French); retrieved January 22, 2008
- ^ Exiles Memorial Center.
- ^ Pimentel, I. (2014) Cascais 650 anos:território, história, memória : 1364–2014, Câmara Municipal de Cascais.
- ^ a b Eliade, Salazar, in "Eliade despre Salazar" ("Eliade on Salazar"), Evenimentul Zilei, October 13, 2002
- ^ Ellwood, p. 90
- ^ a b c Eliade, in Handoca
- ^ Nastasă, pp. 442–443
- ^ Dilema Veche, Vol. IV, October 2007; retrieved January 21, 2008 (in Romanian)
- ^ 22, Nr. 896, May 2007; retrieved January 17, 2008 (in Romanian)
- ^ a b Mihai Sorin Rădulescu, "Cotteştii: familia soţiei lui Mircea Eliade" ("The Cottescus: the Family of Mircea Eliade's Wife") Archived 2008-08-03 at the Wayback Machine, in Ziarul Financiar, June 30, 2006; retrieved January 22, 2008 (in Romanian)
- ^ a b Dan Gulea, "O perspectivă sintetică" ("A Syncretic Perspective"), in Observator Cultural, Nr. 242, October 2004; retrieved October 4, 2007 (in Romanian)
- ^ McGuire, pp. 150–151
- ^ a b McGuire, p. 151
- ^ a b Conference on Hermeneutics in History: Mircea Eliade, Joachim Wach, and the Science of Religions Archived 2006-12-11 at the Wayback Machine, at the University of Chicago Martin Marty Center. Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion Archived 2008-09-05 at the Wayback Machine; retrieved July 29, 2007
- ^ McGuire, pp. 151–152
- ^ a b c Oişteanu, "Mircea Eliade şi mişcarea hippie"
- ^ România Liberă, passim September–October 1944, in Frunză, p. 251
- ^ ISBN 973-681-899-3
- ^ a b Alexandru Popescu, "Scriitorii şi spionajul" ("Writers and Spying") Archived 2008-02-15 at the Wayback Machine, in Ziarul Financiar, January 26, 2007; retrieved November 8, 2007 (in Romanian)
- ^ Frunză, pp. 448–449
- ^ Eliade, 1970, in Paul Cernat, "Îmblânzitorul României Socialiste. De la Bîrca la Chicago şi înapoi" ("The Tamer of Socialist Romania. From Bîrca to Chicago and Back"), part of Paul Cernat, Ion Manolescu, Angelo Mitchievici, Ioan Stanomir, Explorări în comunismul românesc ("Forays into Romanian Communism"), Polirom, Iaşi, 2004, p. 346
- ^ a b Cristian Teodorescu, "Eliade şi Culianu prin ocheanul lui Oişteanu" ("Eliade and Culianu through Oişteanu's Lens"), in Cotidianul, June 14, 2007; retrieved November 7, 2007 (in Romanian)
- ^ "Guide to the Mircea Eliade Papers 1926–1998". www.lib.uchicago.edu. Retrieved November 8, 2019.
- ^ Davíd Carrasco, "Codex Charles Long / The Scholar Who Traveled to Many Places to Understand Others," in With This Root About My Person: Charles H. Long and New Directions in the Study of Religion, ed. Jennifer Reid and Davíd Carrasco (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2020), 306.
- ^ "MAE: Repatrierea lui Cioran, Eliade și Brâncuși în România ar diminua semnificativ afluxul de turiști" ("Foreign Affairs Ministry: Repatriation to Romania of Cioran, Eliade and Brâncuși Would Significantly Diminish Tourist Arrivals"), in Adevărul, April 11, 2011; retrieved May 21, 2014 (in Romanian)
- ^ Calian, George Florin (2010). Alkimia Operativa and Alkimia Speculativa. Some Modern Controversies on the Historiography of Alchemy. Budapest: Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU. p. 169.
Eliade offers a theoretical background for understanding alchemy from the perspective of the history of religion. Alchemy is a spiritual technique and can be understood not as an important moment in the history of science but rather as a kind of religious phenomenon with its own particular rules.
- ^ Doniger's foreword to Eliade's Shamanism (Princeton University Press edition, 1972, p. xii)
- Humanitas, Bucharest, 1992
- ^ a b Ellwood, p. 99
- ^ a b Ellwood, p. 104
- ^ a b c d Eliade, Myths, Rites, Symbols, p. 450
- ^ Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, pp. 20–22; Shamanism, p. xiii
- ^ a b c Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, p. 22
- ^ a b c d Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, p. 21
- ^ Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, p. 20
- ^ a b c Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, p. 23
- ^ Eliade, Myth and Reality, p. 6
- ^ Eliade, Myth and Reality, p. 15
- ^ Eliade, Myth and Reality, p. 34
- ^ a b Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, p. 44
- ^ Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, pp. 68–69
- ^ Leeming, "Archetypes"
- ^ Eliade, Myth and Reality, pp. 47–49
- ^ Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, Chapter 4; Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, pp. 231–245
- ^ Doina, Ruști (1997). Dicționar de simboluri din opera lui Mircea Eliade (in Romanian). Bucuresti: Corint. p. 90.
- ^ In Patterns in Comparative Religion (p. 419), Eliade gives a section about the coincidentia oppositorum the title "Coincidentia Oppositorum—THE MYTHICAL PATTERN". Beane and Doty chose to retain this title when excerpting this section in Myths, Rites, Symbols (p. 449).
- ^ Eliade, Myths, Rites, Symbols, p. 449
- ^ a b Eliade, Myths, Rites, Symbols, p. 439
- ^ a b c Eliade, Myths, Rites, Symbols, p. 440
- ^ Eliade, Myth and Reality, p. 169
- ^ Eliade, Myth and Reality, pp. 64–65, 169
- ^ Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, p. 124
- ^ a b c Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, vol. 1, p. 302
- ^ Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, vol. 1, p. 356
- ^ Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, p. 109
- ^ Eliade, Myths, Rites, Symbols, Volume 2, pp. 312–314
- ^ Eliade, Shamanism, pp. 259–260
- ^ Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, pp. 32–36
- ^ Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, pp. 40, 42
- ^ Eliade, Images and Symbols, p. 44
- ^ Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, p. 43
- ^ Eliade, Images and Symbols, p. 39
- ^ Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, p. 29
- ^ Eliade, Images and Symbols, pp. 39–40; Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, p. 30
- ^ Eliade, "The Quest for the 'Origins' of Religion", pp. 157, 161
- ^ Eliade, Myth and Reality, p. 93; Patterns in Comparative Religion, pp. 38–40, 54–58
- ^ Eliade, "The Quest for the 'Origins' of Religion", p. 161
- ^ Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, pp. 38, 54; Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, p. 176
- ^ Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, p. 38
- ^ Eliade, "The Quest for the 'Origins' of Religion", p. 162; see also Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, pp. 54–58
- ^ Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, p. 176
- ^ Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, pp. 176–177
- ^ Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, pp. 54–55
- ^ Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, p. 138
- ^ See Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, pp. 54–56
- ^ Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, pp. 134–136; The Myth of the Eternal Return, p. 97
- ^ Eliade, Myth and Reality, pp. 93–94
- ^ Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, p. 134
- ^ a b c Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, p. 66
- ^ Eliade, Shamanism, pp. 3–4
- ^ a b c Eliade, Shamanism, p. 4
- ^ Eliade, Shamanism, pp. 6, 8–9
- ^ See, for example, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, pp. 82–83
- ^ Eliade, Shamanism, p. 43
- ^ Eliade, Shamanism, p. 63
- ^ Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, p. 84
- ^ Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, p. 102
- ^ Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, p. 63
- ^ Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, p. 64
- ^ a b c d e Călinescu, p. 954
- ^ Călinescu, p. 955
- ^ a b c d Eliade, in Călinescu, p. 954
- ^ Ionescu, in Călinescu, pp. 953, 954
- ^ Ellwood, pp. 110–111.
- ^ Douglas Allen, Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade, Routledge, London, 2002, pp. 45–46; Adrian Marino, L'Herméneutique de Mircea Eliade, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 1981, p. 60.
- ^ a b c d Eliade, Images and Symbols, p. 32.
- ^ Eliade, Images and Symbols, p. 33.
- ^ Eliade, Images and Symbols, p. 17.
- ^ Eliade, Images and Symbols, pp. 16–17.
- ^ Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, p. 5
- ^ a b c Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, p. 34
- ^ Eliade, in Dadosky, p. 105
- ^ Dadosky, p. 105
- ^ Dadosky, p. 106
- ^ Segal, in Dadosky, pp. 105–106
- ^ a b c Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, p. 202
- ^ a b Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, p. 203
- ^ Eliade, Myth and Reality, p. 12; see also Eliade, Myth and Reality, pp. 20, 145.
- ^ Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, p. 204
- ^ Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, p. 205
- ^ Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, p. 205; Myth and Reality, p. 191
- ^ Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, p. 205; see also Eliade, Myth and Reality, p. 192
- ^ Eliade, "The Quest for the 'Origins' of Religion", p. 158
- ^ Eliade, "The Quest for the 'Origins' of Religion", p. 160
- ^ Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries 1960, pp. 25–26, in Ellwood, pp. 91–92
- ^ a b c Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries 1960, pp. 25–26, in Ellwood, p. 92
- ^ Eliade, Myth and Reality, p. 192
- ^ Eliade, Myth and Reality, p. 193
- ^ Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, p. 151
- ^ Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, p. 152
- ^ Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, pp. 240–241
- ^ a b Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, p. 241
- ^ Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, p. 242
- ^ a b c Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, p. 243
- ^ Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, pp. 243–244
- ^ Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, p. 244
- ^ Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, p. 245
- ^ Eliade, Myth and Reality, p. 65
- ^ Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, p. 153
- ^ a b Eliade, Images and Symbols, p. 170
- ^ a b Jesi, pp. 66–67
- ^ Jesi, pp. 66–70
- ^ Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, p. 162
- ^ Ellwood, p. 6
- ^ Ellwood, p. 9
- ^ Ellwood, p. 15
- ^ Ellwood, p. 2
- ^ a b Ellwood, p. 19
- ^ Ellwood, p. 1
- ^ Ellwood, pp. 99, 117
- ^ Eliade, quoted by Virgil Ierunca, The Literary Work of Mircea Eliade, in Ellwood, p. 117
- ^ a b c Ellwood, p. 101
- ^ Ellwood, p. 97
- ^ Ellwood, p. 102
- ^ Ellwood, p. 103
- ^ Douglas Allen, "Eliade and History", in Journal of Religion, 52:2 (1988), p. 545
- ^ a b Kirk, Myth..., footnote, p. 255
- ^ Kirk, The Nature of Greek Myths, pp. 64–66
- ^ Kirk, The Nature of Greek Myths, p. 66
- ^ Wendy Doniger, "Foreword to the 2004 Edition", Eliade, Shamanism, p. xii
- ^ a b Mac Linscott Ricketts, "Review of Religion on Trial: Mircea Eliade and His Critics by Guilford Dudley III", in Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 46, No. 3 (September 1978), pp. 400–402
- ^ Gregory D. Alles, "Review of Changing Religious Worlds: The Meaning and End of Mircea Eliade by Brian Rennie", in Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 71, pp. 466–469 (Alles' italics)
- ISBN 1-57766-162-1
- ^ ISBN 0-8265-1248-8
- ^ ISBN 0-415-21536-6
- ^ Griffin, passim
- ^ Eliade, Fragments d'un Journal 11, 1970–1978, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 1981, p. 194
- ^ Griffin, p. 173; Douglas R. Holmes, Integral Europe: Fast-Capitalism, Multiculturalism, Neofascism, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2000, p. 78
- ^ Central European University Press, Budapest, 2001), p. 152
- ^ Eliade, "Zalmoxis, The Vanishing God", in Slavic Review, Vol. 33, No. 4 (December 1974), pp. 807–809
- ^ Antohi, preface to Liiceanu, p. xx
- ^ Ellwood, pp. xiii–xiv
- ^ Ellwood, p. 13
- ^ a b Ellwood, p. 119
- ^ Ellwood, p. 118
- ^ Ellwood, pp. 119–120
- ^ a b c Ellwood, p. 120
- ^ a b Ellwood, p. 111
- ^ Ellwood, p. x
- ^ Călinescu, p. 963
- ^ Călinescu, p. 843
- ^ Călinescu, p. 967
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Călinescu, p. 959
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Călinescu, p. 958
- ^ a b c Călinescu, p. 960
- ^ a b Carmen Muşat, "Despre fantastica alcătuire a realului" ("On the Fantastic Shape of Reality") Archived April 23, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, in Observator Cultural, Nr. 131, August–September 2002; retrieved January 17, 2008(in Romanian)
- ^ a b Eliade, in Călinescu, p. 956
- ^ a b c d Călinescu, p. 957
- ^ Călinescu, pp. 957–958
- ^ Eliade, in Ellwood, p. 101
- ^ Gabriela Adameşteanu, "Cum suportă individul şocurile Istoriei. Dialog cu Norman Manea" ("How the Individual Bears the Shocks of History. A Dialog with Norman Manea"), in Observator Cultural, Nr. 304, January 2006; retrieved January 16, 2008 (in Romanian)
- ^ Eliade, in Călinescu, pp. 958–959
- ^ Doina, Ruști (1997). Dicționar de simboluri din opera lui Mircea Eliade (in Romanian). București: Coresi. p. 89.
- ^ 22, Nr. 636, May 2002; retrieved January 17, 2008 (in Romanian)
- ^ a b c d e Radu Albala, "Teatrul Naţional din București. Ifigenia de Mircea Eliade" ("National Theater Bucharest. Ifigenia by Mircea Eliade"), in Teatru Archived September 11, 2018, at the Wayback Machine, Vol. XXVII, Nr. 2, February 1982 – text facsimile Archived 2008-12-02 at the Wayback Machine republished by the Institute for Cultural Memory Archived 2010-09-19 at the Wayback Machine; retrieved January 19, 2008 (in Romanian)
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- ^ "Volume 5, Number 1, January 2012 | Transformative Studies Institute".
- ^ Ornea, pp. 408–409, 412.
- ^ Sebastian, passim
- ^ Sebastian, p. 238.
- ^ Eliade, 1936, in Ornea, pp. 412–413; partially in the Final Report, p. 49.
- ^ Eliade, 1937, in Ornea, p. 413; in the Final Report, p. 49
- ^ Ornea, p. 206; Ornea is skeptical of these explanations, given the long period of time spent before Eliade gave them, and especially the fact that the article itself, despite the haste in which it must have been written, has remarkably detailed references to many articles written by Eliade in various papers over a period of time.
- ^ Ionesco, 1945, in Ornea, p. 184
- ^ Ornea, pp. 184–185
- ^ Ionesco, 1946, in Ornea, p. 211
- 22, Nr.702, August 2003; retrieved October 4, 2007 (in Romanian)
- ^ a b c Ornea, p. 210
- ^ Constantin Coroiu, "Un român la Paris", in Evenimentul, August 31, 2006; retrieved October 4, 2007 (in Romanian)
- ^ a b Ellwood, p. 83
- ^ Eliade, Ordeal by Labyrinth, in Ellwood, p. 115
- ^ a b c Oişteanu, "Angajamentul..."
- ^ Sorin Antohi, "Exploring the Legacy of Ioan Petru Culianu", in the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen Post, Newsletter 72, Spring 2001; retrieved July 16, 2007; Ted Anton, "The Killing of Professor Culianu", in Lingua Franca, Volume 2, No. 6, September/October 1992; retrieved July 29, 2007; Oişteanu, "Angajamentul..."
- ^ Culianu, in Oişteanu, "Angajamentul..."
- ^ a b Eliade, in Ellwood, p. 91; in Oişteanu, "Angajamentul..."
- ^ Leon Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1991, pp. 104–105, 110–111, 120–126, 134
- ISBN 0-7914-2763-3
- ^ Ellwood, pp. 100–101
- ^ Ellwood, p. 86
- ^ Ellwood, p. xiv
- ^ Ellwood, p. 91
- ^ Ellwood, p. 115
- ^ Eliade, The Forbidden Forest, in Ellwood, p. 101
- ^ Ornea, pp. 202, 208–211, 239–240
- ^ Ornea, pp. 202, 209
- ^ a b Antohi, preface to Liiceanu, p. xxiii
- ^ Eliade, in Ornea, p. 210
- ^ Eliade, in Oişteanu, "Mircea Eliade şi mişcarea hippie"
- ^ "Brook A. Ziporyn Lecture". divinity.uchicago.edu. Retrieved April 4, 2023.
- ^ "The Sixth EASR and IAHR Special Conference". Archived from the original on October 11, 2006. Retrieved July 13, 2009.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link); retrieved July 29, 2007 - ISBN 0-8014-8688-2
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- ^ a b "Scrieri de Eliade şi Vişniec, în cadrul festivalului Enescu" ("Texts by Eliade and Vişniec, as Part of the Enescu Festival") Archived 2007-09-22 at the Wayback Machine, in Gândul, September 12, 2007; retrieved December 4, 2007 (in Romanian)
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- State University of New York Press, Albany, 2004.
- Robert Ellwood, The Politics of Myth: A Study of C. G. Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1999.
- Victor Frunză, Istoria stalinismului în România ("The History of Stalinism in Romania"), Humanitas, Bucharest, 1990
- Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism, Routledge, London, 1993.
- Mircea Handoca, Convorbiri cu şi despre Mircea Eliade ("Conversations with and about Mircea Eliade") on Autori ("Published Authors") page of the Humanitas publishing house (in Romanian)
- Mondadori, Milan, 1980.
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- Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1973.
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- William McGuire, Bollingen: An Adventure in Collecting the Past, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1982. ISBN 0-691-01885-5.
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- David Leeming. "Archetypes". The Oxford Companion to World Mythology. Oxford University Press, 2004. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. UC—Irvine. 30 May 2011 [1]
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Further reading
English
- Carrasco, David and Law, Jane Marie (eds.). 1985. Waiting for the Dawn. Boulder: Westview Press.
- Dudley, Guilford. 1977. Religion on Trial: Mircea Eliade & His Critics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
- Idinopulos, Thomas A., Yonan, Edward A. (eds.) 1994. Religion and Reductionism: Essays on Eliade, Segal, and the Challenge of the Social Sciences for the Study of Religion, Leiden: Brill Publishers. ISBN 90-04-06788-4
- Lincoln, Bruce. 2024. Secrets, Lies, and Consequences: A Great Scholar's Hidden Past and His Protégé's Unsolved Murder. New York: Oxford University Press.
- McCutcheon, Russell T. 1997. Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Olson, Carl. 1992. The Theology and Philosophy of Eliade: A Search for the Centre. New York: St Martins Press.
- Pals, Daniel L. 1996. Seven Theories of Religion. USA: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-508725-9
- Rennie, Bryan S. 1996. Reconstructing Eliade: Making Sense of Religion. Albany: State University of New York Press.
- ———, ed. (2001), Changing Religious Worlds: The Meaning and End of Mircea Eliade, Albany: State University of New York Press.
- ——— (2007), The International Eliade, Albany: State University of New York Press, ISBN 978-0-7914-7087-9.
- Simion, Eugen. 2001. Mircea Eliade: A Spirit of Amplitude. Boulder: East European Monographs.
- Strenski, Ivan. 1987. Four Theories of Myth in Twentieth-Century History: Cassirer, Eliade, Levi Strauss and Malinowski. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
- Wasserstrom, Steven M. 1999. Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos. Princeton: Princeton University Press
- Wedemeyer, Christian; Doniger, Wendy (eds.). 2010. Hermeneutics, Politics, and the History of Religions: The Contested Legacies of Joachim Wach and Mircea Eliade. Oxford etc.: Oxford University Press
Other languages
- ISBN 973-50-1220-0
- Băicuș, Iulian, 2009, Mircea Eliade. Literator și mitodolog. În căutarea Centrului pierdut. Bucharest: Editura Universității București
- ISBN 973-681-064-X
- Culianu, Ioan Petru. 1978. Mircea Eliade. Assisi: Cittadella Editrice; 2008 Roma: Settimo Sigillo.
- David, Dorin. 2010. De la Eliade la Culianu (I). București: Eikon.
- David, Dorin. 2014. Mircea Eliade: la marginea labirintului: corespondențe între opera științifică și proza fantastică. București: Eikon.
- De Martino, Marcello. 2008. Mircea Eliade esoterico. Roma: Settimo Sigillo.
- Dubuisson, Daniel. 2005. Impostures et pseudo-science. L'œuvre de Mircea Eliade. Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion
- Gorshunova, Olga. 2008. Terra Incognita of Ioan Culianu, in Ètnografičeskoe obozrenie. N° 6, pp. 94–110. ISSN 0869-5415.(in Russian).
- Laignel-Lavastine, Alexandra. 2002. Cioran, Eliade, Ionesco – L'oubli du fascisme. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France-Perspectives critiques.
- Oișteanu, Andrei. 2007. Religie, politică și mit. Texte despre Mircea Eliade și Ioan Petru Culianu. Iași: Polirom.
- Posada, Mihai. 2006. Opera publicistică a lui Mircea Eliade. Bucharest: Editura Criterion. ISBN 978-973-8982-14-7
- Ruști, Doina. 1997. Dicționar de simboluri din opera lui Mircea Eliade. Bucharest: Editura Coresi. E-book
- Tacou, Constantin (ed.). 1977. Cahier Eliade. Paris: L'Herne.
- Tolcea, Marcel. 2002. Eliade, ezotericul. Timișoara: Editura Mirton.
- Țurcanu, Florin. 2003. Mircea Eliade. Le prisonnier de l'histoire. Paris: Editions La Découverte.
External links
- Biography of Mircea Eliade Archived February 5, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
- Petri Liukkonen. "Mircea Eliade". Books and Writers.
- Mircea Eliade, From Primitives to Zen
- Bryan S. Rennie on Mircea Eliade
- Joseph G. Muthuraj, The Significance of Mircea Eliade for Christian Theology
- Mircea Eliade presentation on the "100 Greatest Romanians" site (in Romanian)
- Archaeus magazine (in Romanian)
- Eliade and symbols
- Claudia Guggenbühl, Mircea Eliade and Surendranath Dasgupta. The History Of Their Encounter
- Mircea Eliade at Library of Congress, with 199 library catalogue records
- Guide to the Mircea Eliade Papers 1926–1998 at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center