Mircea Eliade

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Mircea Eliade (March 9 1907, Bucharest - April 22 1986, Chicago, Illinois) was a Romanian historian of religions and novelist (fantasy and autobiographical). He had fluent command of eight languages (Romanian, French, German, Italian, English, Hebrew, Persian and Sanskrit).

In 1928, at the University of Bucharest, he met Emil Cioran and Eugène Ionesco, and the three became, with short interruptions, lifelong friends. Since the 1970s he has been criticized for his pre-war sympathies for the Iron Guard, a far right, fascist-inspired political organization.

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Life

Eliade graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy in Bucharest, gaining his diploma with a study on the Italian Renaissance. He subsequently traveled to Italy, where he collaborated with scholar Giuseppe Tucci.

His scholarly works began after a long period of study in India at the University of Calcutta. Finding that the Maharaja of Kassimbazar sponsored European scholars to study in India, Eliade applied and was granted an allowance for four years. In 1928 he sailed for Calcutta to study Sanskrit and philosophy under Surendranath Dasgupta (1885-1952), a University of Cambridge-educated Bengali professor at the University of Calcutta and author of a five volume History of Indian Philosophy.

While a professor at the University of Bucharest, Eliade became active in nationalist politics, eventually running for Parliament in December 1937 on the platform of Totul pentru Ţară ("Everything for the Fatherland" Party), the political expression of the Iron Guard. He contributed to the movement's press, writing in such papers as Sfarmă Piatră and Buna Vestire. He and Cioran were by then under the influence of Trăirism, a school of thought that was formed around the ideals expressed by Romanian philosopher Nae Ionescu. A form of Existentialism, Trăirism was also the synthesis of traditional and newer right-wing beliefs.

Jewish writer Mihail Sebastian claimed in his Journal that Eliade's actions show him to be an anti-Semite. According to Sebastian Eliade had shown himself friendly to him until the start of his political commitments, after which he severed all ties.Template:Ref Eugène Ionesco himself rejected the momentary attitudes of Eliade and Cioran, and described the metamorphosis of intellectuals under the spell of Fascist ideals in his Rhinocéros. There is more criticism of Eliade's political involvement by Adriana Berger, Leon Volovici, Daniel Dubuisson and others, who have attempted to trace Eliade's hypothetical anti-Semitism throughout his oeuvre. At the same time other scholars, like Bryan S. Rennie, claimed that there is to date no evidence of actual membership, of active services rendered, or of any real involvement with any fascist or totalitarian movements or ideals, nor that there would be any evidence of continued support for nationalist ideals after their inheretently violent nature was revealed, or of an imprint of such ideals in Eliade's scholarship; they also believe Eliade's critics to be following political agendasTemplate:Ref.

The pro-Iron Guard stance taken by Eliade resulted in his arrest on the July 14 1938 after a crackdown authorized by King Carol II. Eliade was kept for three weeks in a permanently lighted cell at the Siguranţa Statului Headquarters, in an attempt to have him sign a "declaration of dissociation" with the Iron Guard, but he refused to do so. In the first week of August he was transferred to a makeshift camp at Miercurea-Ciuc. When Eliade began coughing blood in October 1938, he was taken to a clinic in Moroeni, because the death of a popular young writer in custody was a potential scandal. Eliade was simply released on November 12 and, with the help of Alexandru Rosetti, even became the cultural ambassador to the United Kingdom and, later, Portugal (in the latter capacity, he implicitly functioned as diplomat for the National Legionary State - the brief interval when the Iron Guard formed Romania's government).

At signs that the Romanian communist regime was about to take hold, Eliade opted not to return to the country, living in France (where he taught at the École Pratique des Hautes Études) and, from 1957, in the United States. He lectured at the University of Chicago.

In the 1970s, Eliade was approached by the Nicolae Ceauşescu regime in several ways, in order to have him return. The move was prompted by the officially-sanctioned nationalism and Romania's claim to independence from the Eastern Bloc, which had come 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 visit to Chicago (in 1970).

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The scholar

In his euhemeristic work on the history of religion, he is most regarded for his writings on Shamanism, Yoga and cosmological myths.

Eliade's thinking has been partly influenced by Rudolf Otto, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Nae Ionescu and the work of the Traditionalist School. Although his work was never subordinated to his early political beliefs, the school of thought he adhered to was, to a certain extent, in line with the esoterical preocupations of Fascism (connections were also established in the works of traditionalist scholar Julius Evola). At the same time, the Iron Guard stood out among Fascist movements for its mystical character - prevalent themes that were investigated by Eliade during, as well as after, his political activities (notably, the preocupation for Zalmoxis' cult and its supposed monotheism). These are more likely the characteristics which initially attracted Eliade to Fascism, rather than a pattern he would have followed throughout his life.

Mircea Eliade has had a decisive influence on many scholars, for instance Ioan Petru Culianu. In Romania, Eliade's legacy in the field of history of religions is mirrored by the journal Archaeus (founded 1997).

The History of Religions section of the University of Chicago bears Mircea Eliade's name in recognition of his wide contribution to the research on this subject.

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Selected scholarly works

  • Cosmos and History:The Myth of the Eternal Return, translated: W.R. Trask. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954. Perhaps Eliade's most crucial and approachable short work. Contains his analysis of time as heterogeneous for the religious and homogeneous for the non-religious and his conception of the 'terror of history' and the ability to 'reactualize' religious time. Originally published as Le Mythe de l'eternel retour: archétypes et répetition, 1949.
  • Yoga, Immortality and Freedom, translated: W.R. Trask. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958. First published in French as Yoga: Essai sur l'origine de la mystique Indienne in 1933, this informative and scholarly work analyses yoga as a concrete search for freedom from human limitations.
  • Rites and Symbols of Initiation (Birth and Rebirth), translated: W. Trask, London: Harvill Press, 1958. The publication of Eliade's 1956 Haskell Lectures at the University of Chicago, Patterns of Initiation.
  • Patterns in Comparative Religion, translated: R. Sheed, London: Sheed and Ward, 1958.
  • The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, translated from French: W.R. Trask, Harvest/HBJ Publishers, 1957 ISBN 015679201X. Building on Rudolf Otto's 1917 work, The Idea of the Holy, and his own previous work, Eliade shows how religion emerges from the experience of the sacred, and myths of time and nature.
  • Myths, Dreams and Mysteries: the Encounter between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities, translated: P. Mairet, London: Harvill Press, 1959.
  • Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism, translated: P. Mairet, London: Harvill Press, 1961.
  • Myth and Reality, translated: W. Trask, New York: Harper and Row, 1963.
  • Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, translated: W.R. Trask. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964. Long a standard work in the study of Shamanism, a detailed and valuable source of information on the phenomenon. Originally published Le Chamanisme, 1951.
  • The Two and the One, translated: J.M. Cohen, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1965.
  • The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion, London: University of Chicago Press, 1969.
  • Zalmoxis, The Vanishing God, The University of Chicago Press, 1972.
  • A History of Religious Ideas, vol. I, From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries, translated: W. Trask, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1978.
  • A History of Religious Ideas, vol. II, From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity, translated: W. Trask, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
  • The History of Religious Ideas, vol. III, From Muhammad to the Age of the Reforms, translated: A. Hiltebeitel and D. Apostolos-Cappadona, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
  • Symbolism, the Sacred, and the Arts, edited by Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, The Crossroad Publishing Company, N.Y., 1986. ISBN 0824507231
  • Encyclopedia of Religion (editor-in-chief), New York: Macmillan, 1987.
  • From Primitives to Zen (full text).
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Selected fiction

  • Bengal Nights. Translated by Catherine Spencer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Originally published in Romanian as Maitreyi, 1933.
  • The Old Man and The Bureaucrats. Translated by Mary Park Stevenson. University of Notre Dame Press, 1979. Originally published in Romanian as Pe strada Mântuleasa, 1968.
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Critical works about Eliade

  • Davíd Carrasco and Jane Marie Law (eds.), Waiting for the Dawn
  • John D. Dadosky, The Structure of Religious Knowing
  • Guilford Dudley, Religion on Trial: Mircea Eliade & His Critics
  • Robert S. Ellwood, The Politics of Myth: A Study of C. G. Jung, Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell
  • Russell T. McCutcheon, Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia
  • Carl Olson, The Theology and Philosophy of Eliade: A Search for the Centre
  • Bryan S. Rennie, Reconstructing Eliade: Making Sense of Religion
  • Bryan S. Rennie (ed.), Changing Religious Worlds: The Meaning and End of Mirce Eliade
  • Eugen Simion, Mircea Eliade: A Spirit of Amplitude
  • Ivan Strenski, Four Theories of Myth in Twentieth-Century History: Cassirer, Eliade, Levi Strauss and Malinowski
  • Steven M. Wasserstrom, Religion after Religion
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Eliade in cinema

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References

  1. Template:Note Mihail Sebastian Journal, 1935-1944: The Fascist Years
  2. Template:Note Bryan S. Rennie Reconstructing Eliade: making sense of religion, 1996 State University of New York, ISBN 0791427633, pp. 149—177.
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See also

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External links

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