Mircea Eliade

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Mircea Eliade bigraphy, stories - Romanian historian, philosopher, short story writer, journalist, essayist, novelist

Mircea Eliade : biography

March 13, 1907 – April 22, 1986

Mircea Eliade ( February 28 (March 13) 1907 – April 22, 1986) was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day. His theory that hierophanies form the basis of religion, splitting the human experience of reality into sacred and profane space and time, has proved influential.Wendy Doniger, "Foreword to the 2004 Edition", Eliade, Shamanism, p.xiii One of his most influential contributions to religious studies was his theory of Eternal Return, which holds that myths and rituals do not simply commemorate hierophanies, but, at least to the minds of the religious, actually participate in them.

His literary works belong to the fantastic and autobiographical genres. The best known are the novels Maitreyi ("La Nuit Bengali" or "Bengal Nights"), Noaptea de Sânziene ("The Forbidden Forest"), Isabel şi apele diavolului ("Isabel and the Devil’s Waters") and Romanul Adolescentului Miop ("Novel of the Nearsighted Adolescent"), the novellas Domnişoara Christina ("Miss Christina") and Tinereţe fără tinereţe ("Youth Without Youth"), and the short stories Secretul doctorului Honigberger ("The Secret of Dr. Honigberger") and La Ţigănci ("With the Gypsy Girls").

Early in his life, Eliade was a noted journalist and essayist, a disciple of Romanian far right philosopher and journalist Nae Ionescu, and member of the literary society Criterion. He also served as cultural attaché to the United Kingdom and Portugal. Several times during the late 1930s, Eliade publicly expressed his support for the Iron Guard, a fascist and antisemitic political organization. His political involvement at the time, as well as his other far right connections, were the frequent topic of criticism after World War II.

Noted for his vast erudition, Eliade had fluent command of five languages (Romanian, French, German, Italian, and English) and a reading knowledge of three others (Hebrew, Persian, and Sanskrit). He was elected a posthumous member of the Romanian Academy.

Biography

Childhood

Born in Bucharest, he was the son of Romanian Land Forces officer Gheorghe Eliade (whose original surname was Ieremia)Biografie, in HandocaSilviu Mihai, , in Cotidianul, February 6, 2006; retrieved July 31, 2007 and Jeana née Vasilescu.Călinescu, p.956 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. Mircea Eliade had a sister, Corina, the mother of semiologist Sorin Alexandrescu.Simona Chiţan, "Nostalgia după România" ("Nostalgia for Romania"), interview with Sorin Alexandrescu, in Evenimentul Zilei, June 24, 2006 His family moved between Tecuci and Bucharest, ultimately settling in the capital in 1914, and purchasing a house on Melodiei Street, near Piaţa Rosetti, where Mircea Eliade resided until late in his teens.Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, , in La Vanguardia, May 30, 2007 ; retrieved January 16, 2008

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 World War I Romanian Campaign, when Eliade was about ten years of age, he witnessed the bombing of Bucharest by German zeppelins and the patriotic fervor in the occupied capital at news that Romania was able to stop the Central Powers’ advance into Moldavia.Ion Hadârcă, , in Revista Sud-Est, 1/2007; retrieved January 21, 2008

He notably described this stage in his life as marked by an unrepeatable epiphany.Ioan P. Culianu, "Mahaparanirvana", in , Vol. IIEllwood, p.98–99 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.Eliade, Autobiography, in Ellwood, p.98–99