Mircea Eliade was an exceptional Romanian thinker and writer, with a significant influence all over the world.
He made yoga and Eastern spirituality known at a significant level at that time and theoretically in the West. Philosopher and historian of religions, Eliade has been a professor at the University of Chicago since 1957, holder of the Sewell L. Avery Chair since 1962, naturalized American citizen in 1966, honored with the title of Distinguished Service Professor.
Author of 30 scientific volumes, literary works and philosophical essays translated into 18 languages and of about 1200 articles and reviews with an extremely varied theme, very well documented.
Mircea Eliade’s complete work would occupy over 80 volumes, not taking into account his diaries and unpublished manuscripts.
<>
Mircea Eliade was born on February 28 (old style) 1907 in Bucharest and died on April 22, 1986 in Chicago. Born in Bucharest, he was the son of Gheorghe Eliade. The family moved between Tecuci and Bucharest, as a last resort, settling in the capital in 1914 and purchased a house on Melodiei Street, near Rosetti Square, where Mircea Eliade lived until late into adolescence. After finishing primary education at the school on Mantuleasa Street, Eliade became a student of the Spiru Haret College, being a colleague of Constantin Noica.
He became interested in the natural sciences and chemistry, as well as in the occult.
Despite his father who was worried that he was endangering his already poor eyesight, Eliade reads with passion.
One of his favorite authors is Honoré de Balzac.
Eliade became acquainted with the short stories of Giovanni Papini and the social-anthropological studies of James George Frazer. His interest in the two writers led him to learn Italian and English; In particular, he began to study Persian and Hebrew.
He was interested in philosophy and studied the works of Vasile Conta, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, read works on history and especially Nicolae Iorga and B.P Hasdeu.
His first work was published in 1921 “The Enemy of the SilkWorm” followed by “How I Found the Philosopher’s Stone”.
Four years later, Eliade finished work on his debut volume, an autobiographical volume, “The Novel of the Myopic Teenager”.
Mircea Eliade had a serious philosophical background even in Romania. After a difficult puberty of intense solitary study, since 1925 the teenager is almost unanimously recognized as the “head of his generation”. The novel Gaudeamus, completed in 1928, the second part of The Novel of the Myopic Adolescent, contains interesting autobiographical information about his first meeting with his future professor of logic and metaphysics, Nae Ionescu, who was to have a decisive influence on his career. Recognizing Mircea Eliade’s talent and knowledge, Nae Ionescu gave him a job in the editorial office of the newspaper Cuvântul. Although the opinions of posterity are divided, Nae Ionescu had the undeniable merit of having supported young talents like Mihail Sebastian. Wishing to broaden his intellectual horizon beyond the French culture, then dominant in Romania, Eliade learned the Italian language and on the occasion of some trips to Italy he personally met Giovanni Papini and Vittorio Macchioro, who had publications in the field of the history of religions. An indiscretion of the young Eliade, who published an interview with Macchioro, mentioning some of his bitter remarks on Mussolini’s regime, caused him inconvenience. In 1929 he received his degree with a thesis on Italian philosophy during the Renaissance.
India’s secret
After the Italian culture, Indian philosophy becomes the second passion of Mircea Eliade. Obtaining a private scholarship, he began to study Sanskrit and Yoga with Surendranath Dasgupta in Calcutta. Back in Bucharest, he received his doctorate in philosophy with a dissertation on Yoga. In 1933, the novel Maitreyi, based on the experience in India and autobiographical data, gained great popularity. Between 1932 and 1943 he published several volumes of literary prose, essays and scientific works.
About his novel Maitreyi
Few works in world literature deal with the same facts in the view of two writers who were, at the same time, their protagonists. For us, Romanians, Mircea Eliade’s novel Maitreyi has been, for generations, a real delight. However, few know that the prototype of the main character of the book really lived, until 1990, in the land of the Vedas and the Upanishads. She was the daughter of Surendranath Dasgupta, India’s greatest philosopher, and her name was Maitreyi Devi. The young Mircea Eliade was, when he met her, 23 years old, and she was 16. The teenager wrote lyrics, appreciated by Rabindranath Tagore, and would become a well-known Indian poet. The meeting between Maitreyi Devi and our renowned Sanskritologist, Sergiu Al. George, in Calcutta, in 1972, “triggered” the writing of a new book. The disturbing love story of the ’30s thus received a masterful response from its heroine herself, Maitreyi (in the book, Amrita), after 42 years. The answer novel “Love Never Dies”, first written in Bengali, was translated and published in English in 1976. During the reading, we immerse ourselves in the Indian landscape and mentality, with its wonderful world of myths, rituals and symbols. The backbone of this book, however, is the authentic and, I would say, genius account of the greatest wonder of the world: the birth of the feeling of love, the happiness of shared love and its disintegration. Mircea and Amrita (from Love Doesn’t Die), as well as Allan and Maitreyi (from “Maitreyi”), can sit next to the immortal couples Paul and Virginia, Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet. Love Doesn’t Die (1976), although the book published so far in Bengali, English, German and Romanian, does not yet have the planetary notoriety of the novel “Maitreyi” (1933). But it advances triumphantly on the same path of universal consecration. Eliade and the Romanian far right From the mid-1930s, Eliade embraced the ideology of the Legionary Movement, in which he became a well-known activist. This was manifested in several articles he wrote for various publications, including the official newspaper of the Movement, “The Annunciation”, but also in the electoral campaign for the December 1937 elections. Eliade later distanced himself from this attitude, but always avoided referring to this critical period in his youth. While writing anti-Semitic articles, he took a stand against the expatriation of great Jewish intellectuals and maintained his friendship with Jews such as Mihail Sebastian. Certain exegetes of his work have commented on the fact that Eliade, in fact, never renounced the legionary ideology, preferring to later deny that he was the author of some of the articles that bore his signature and that some mystical-totalitarian or anti-Semitic ideas could be found in his scientific works. As for the literary work, Iphigenia seems to be an allegory of Codreanu’s death.
Years of maturity
Starting in 1957, Mircea Eliade settled in Chicago, as a professor of comparative history of religions at “Loyola” University. His reputation grew with each year and with each new work published, he became a member of illustrious institutions, he received several honorary doctorates. As a historian of religions, Mircea Eliade emphasized the concept of sacred space and time. Sacred space is in Eliade’s conception the center of the universe, while sacred time is a repetition of the elements from the origin of the world, the world considered as the “horizon” of a certain religious group. In this conception, archaic human beings were oriented in time and space, modern ones would be disoriented. But even in modern man there would be a hidden, subconscious dimension, governed by the secret presence of deep religious symbols. The Department of History of Religions at the University of Chicago is named after him, as evidence of his vast contribution to the specialized literature in this field. He was succeeded by his assistant, Ioan Petru Culianu, another Romanian scientist of international stature. In the last years of his life, despite serious health problems, he continued to remain committed with the same unique, unlimited curiosity and enthusiasm.
Mircea Eliade died at the age of 79, on April 22, 1986, in Chicago.
Eliade, the artist
His literary work and a fresco of the existential problems in the era he lived in. The Return from Heaven (1934) and The Hooligans (1935) are semi-fantastic novels in which Eliade accepts the existence of an extrasensory reality. Man is in search of his own hidden forces, he is the instrument of these forces that he cannot control. This personal philosophy is expressed by Mircea Eliade both in his memorable short stories, such as La țigănci (1959), and in the novel Noaptea de Sânziene (1971). * Yoga: Essai sur les origines de la mystique indienne (1936)
* Cosmologie şi alchimie babiloniană (1937)
* Comentarii la legenda meșterului Manole (1943)
* Traité d’histoire des religions (1949)
* Le Sacré et le Profane (1956)
* Aspects du mythe (1963)
* Le mythe de l’éternel retour (1969)
* Le Chamanisme et les Techniques archaïques de l’extase (1974)
Literary
* Maitreyi (1933)
* The Return from Heaven (1934)
* The Hooligans (1935)
* Miss Christina (1936)
* Wedding in Heaven (1938)
* On Mantuleasa Street (1968)
* The Gypsies (1969)
* The Night of Sânziene (1971)
* The Old Man and the Bureaucrat (1974)
* The Myopic Teenager’s Novel
Works published in Romanian
* The Myopic Adolescent’s Novel, written in 1927, published by Mircea Handoca only in 1989, current edition, Humanitas, 2004 * Gaudeamus, 1929 current edition, Humanitas, 2004 * Isabel and the Devil’s Waters, 1929, current edition, Humanitas, 2003
* Soliloqués, 1932
* Maitreyi, 1933, Indian novel
* Oceanography, 1934,
* The Return from Heaven, 1934, current edition Humanitas, 2003 * The Light That Goes Out, 1934, current edition Humanitas, 2003
* Asian Alchemy, 1935 full text in the anthology The Road to the Center, Universe, 1991
* India, 1934, current edition Humanitas, 2003 * Notebooks of the Maharajah, 1934, current edition Humanitas, 2003 * Hooligans, 1935, current edition Humanitas, 2003 * Construction Site, Indirect Novel, 1935, current edition Humanitas, 2003 * Miss Christina, 1936 current edition Humanitas, 2003 * Cosmology and Babylonian Alchemy, 1937 full text in the anthology Road to the Center, Universe, 1991
* The Serpent, 1937
* Fragmentarium, 1938
* Wedding in heaven, 1938
* The Secret of Dr. Honigberger, 1940, current edition Humanitas, 2003 * Nights at Serampore, 1940 current edition Humanitas, 2003
* The Myth of Reintegration, 1942
* Salazar and the Revolution in Portugal, 1942
* Portuguese Diary, written in 1942, edited 2006
* Euthanasius’ Island, 1943, current edition Humanitas, 2003 * Commentaries on the Legend of Master Manole, 1943 in the anthology The Road to the Center, Universe, 1991 * On Mantuleasa Street, 1968, current edition Humanitas, 2004
* Noaptea de Sânziene, 1971
* In the Courtyard at Dionis, 1977, current edition Humanitas, 2004 * Youth without Youth, Nineteen Roses, 1980, current edition Humanitas, 2004
Papers published in foreign languages
* Os Romenos, latinos do Oriente, 1943, Despre Români, latinii orientului, appears in Portuguese
* Yoga, 1936, appears simultaneously in French and Romanian
* Tehnici ale Yoga, 1948
* Yoga. Immortality and Freedom, 1954
* Smiths and Alchemists, 1956
* Treatise on the History of Religions, 1949, second ed., 1966
* The Myth of the Eternal Return, 1949
* Shamanism and the Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951
* Images and Symbols, 1952
* Births and Rebirths, 1958
* Mephistopheles and the Androgyne, 1962
* From Zalmoxis to Genghis Khan, 1970
* Myths, Dreams, Mysteries, 1957
* History of Religious Beliefs and Ideas, 1976-1983
* Briser le toit de la maison, 1986
* The Quest (French version title is La Nostalgie des Origines), 1969
Memorial works
* Diary, two volumes (the Romanian version was restored by Mircea Handoca starting directly from the manuscript)
* Memoirs, two volumes, 1991 (his autobiography)
* Portuguese Journal and Other Writings, Humanitas, 2006
* The Labyrinth Trial, ed. I, Dacia, 2000, ed. II, Humanitas, 2006.