“Mircea Eliade,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Steven Serafin ed.

, Detroit:
Bruccoli, 2000, pp. 132-46.

Mircea Eliade
(7 March 1907 - 22 April 1986)

Aurelian Craiutu
Princeton University

BOOKS: Isabel si apele Diavolului (Bucharest: Nationala Ciornei, 1930);

Soliloquii (Bucharest: Carte cu Semne, 1932);
Maitreyi (Bucharest: Cultura Nationala, 1933);
India (Bucharest: Cugetarea, 1934; 2nd ed, with a new preface, 1935);
Intoarcerea din rai (Bucharest: Nationala Ciornei, 1934; 2nd revised edition Bucharest:
Cugetarea, 1934);
Lumina ce se stinge (Bucharest: Cartea Romaneasca, 1934);
Oceanografie (Bucharest: Cultura Poporului, 1934);
Alchimie Asiatica (Bucharest: Cultura Poporului, 1935);
Huliganii (Bucharest: Nationala Ciornei, 1935);
Santier (Bucharest: Cugetarea, 1935);
Domnisoara Christina (Bucharest: Cultura Nationala, 1936);
Yoga. Essai sur lea origines de la mystique indienne (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul
Geuthner/ Bucharest: Fundatia pentru Literatura si Arta "Regele Carol II," 1936);
Cosmologie si alchimie babiloniana (Bucharest: Vremea, 1937);
Sarpele (Bucharest: Nationala Ciornei, 1937);
Fragmentarium (Bucharest: Vremea, 1939);
Nunta in cer (Bucharest: Cugetarea, 1939);
Secretul Doctorului Honigberger (Bucharest: Socec, 1940). English translation: Two
Tales of the Occult (New York: Herder & Herder, 1970);
Mitul Reintegrarii (Bucharest: Vremea, 1942);
Salazar si revolutia in Portugalia (Bucharest: Gorjan, 1942);
Comentarii la legenda Mesterului Manole (Bucharest: Publicom, 1943);
Insula lui Euthanasius (Bucharest: Fundatia Regala pentru Literatura si Arta, 1943);
Techniques du Yoga (Paris: Gallimard, 1948);
Le Mythe de l'éternel retour: Archétypes et répétition (Paris: Gallimard, 1949). Revised
and enlarged English translation: The Myth of the Eternal Return (New York:
Pantheon Books/London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955);
Traité d'histoire des religions (Paris: Payot, 1949). Revised English translation:
Patterns in Comparative Religion (New York & London: Sheed & Ward 1958);
Le chamanisme et les techniques archaïques de l'extase (Paris: Payot, 1951). Revised
and enlarged English translation: Shamanism. Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy,
1964;
Images et symboles. Essais sur le symbolisme magico-religieux (Paris: Gallimard, 1952);
Le Yoga. Immortalité et liberté (Paris: Payot, 1954). English translation: Yoga.
Immortality and Freedom (New York: Pantheon Books/London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1958). Second revised and enlarged English edition,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.
 2

Fôret interdite (Paris: Gallimard, 1955). English translation: The Forbidden Forest
(Notre Dame & London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978). Romanian
edition: Noaptea de Sânziene (Paris: Ed. Ion Cusa, 1971);
Forgerons et alchimistes (Paris: Flammarion, 1956). English translation: The Forge
and the Crucible (New York: Harper & Brothers/London: Rider & Co., 1962);
Das Heilige und das Profane. Von Wesen des Religiösen (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1957).
Translation of the original French manuscript published as Le sacré et le profane,
Paris: Gallimard, 1965. English translation: The Sacred and the Profane (New
York: Harper & Row, 1959);
Mythes, rêves et mystères (Paris: Gallimard, 1957). English translation: Myths, Dreams
Mysteries (New York: Harper & Row/London: Harvill Press, 1960);
Birth and Rebirth. The Religious Meaning of Initiation in Human Culture (New York:
Harper and Brothers/ London: Harvill Press, 1958). Translation of Naissances
mystiques (Paris: Gallimard, 1959);
Méphistophèlés et l'Androgyne (Paris: Gallimard, 1962). English translation:
Mephistopheles and the Androgyne (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965);
Patañjali et le Yoga (Paris: Seuil, 1962). English translation: Patanjali and Yoga (New
York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1969);
Aspects du mythe (Paris: Gallimard, 1963). English translation: Myth and Reality (New
York: Harper & Row, 1963);
Nuvele (Madrid: Destin, 1963);
Shamanism. Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (New York: Pantheon Books/London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964). Revised and enlarged translation of Le
chamanisme;
Amintiri: I. Mansarda (Madrid: Destin, 1966);
From Primitives to Zen. A Thematic Sourcebook of the History of Religions (New
York: Harper and Row/London: Collins, 1967);
Pe strada Mântuleasa (Paris: Caietele Inorogului, II, 1968). French translation: Le Vieil
Homme et l'Officier (Paris: Gallimard, 1977). English translation: The Old Man
and the Bureaucrats (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979);
La Tiganci si alte povestiri (Bucharest: Editura pentru Literatura, 1969);
The Quest. History and Meaning in Religion (Chigaco & London: University of Chicago
Press, 1969). French publication: La Nostalgie des origines. Méthodologie et
histoire des religions (Paris: Gallimard, 1971);
De Zalmoxis à Gengis-Khan. Études comparatives sur les religions et le folklore de la
Dacie et de l'Europe Orientale (Paris: Payot, 1970). English translation: Zalmoxis.
The Vanishing God (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1972);
Australians Religions. An Introduction (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press,
1973);
Fragments d'un journal (Paris: Gallimard, 1973). English translation: No Souvenirs:
Journal, 1957-1969 (New York: Harper & Row, 1977);
Histoire des croyances et des idées religieuses. 1. De l'âge de la pierre aux mystères
d'Eleusis (Paris: Payot, 1976). English translation: A History of Religious Ideas.
I. From the Stone Age to the Eleusionian Mysteries (Chicago & London:
University of Chicago Press, 1978).
Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions. Essays in Comparative Religions
(Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1976);
In curte la Dionis (Paris: Caietele Inorogului, 1977);
 3

Le Vieil Homme et l'Officier (Paris: Gallimard, 1977);

Histoire des croyances et des idées religieuses. 2. De Gautama Bouddha au triomphe
du christianisme (Paris: Payot, 1978);
Les promesses de l'équinoxe. Mémoires I (Paris: Gallimard, 1980);
Fragments d'un Journal, II (1970-1978) (Paris: Gallimard, 1981);
Uniformes de général (Paris: Gallimard, 1981);
Le temps d'un centenaire suivi de Dayan (Paris: Gallimard, 1981):
Les dix-neuf roses (Paris: Gallimard, 1982);
Histoire des croyances et des idées religieuses, III. De Mahomet à l'âge des Réformes
(Paris: Payot, 1983). English translation: A History of Religious Ideas, 3. From
Muhammad to the Age of Reforms (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985);
Les Trois Grâces (Paris: Gallimard, 1984);
A l'ombre d'une fleur de lys (Paris: Gallimard, 1985);
Briser le toit de la maison: la créativité et ses symbols (Paris: Gallimard, 1986);
Autobiography. Vol 2: Exile's Odyssey, 1937-1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1988);
Youth Without Youth and Other Novellas, ed. Matei Calinescu (Columbus: Ohio State
University Press, 1988);
OTHER:
Nae Ionescu, Roza Vânturilor. Edited with an afterword by Mircea Eliade
(Bucharest: Cultura Nationala, 1936);
B. P. Hasdeu. Scrieri literare, morale si politice. Edited with an introduction and notes by
Mircea Eliade (Bucharest: Fundatia Regala pentru Literatura si Arta, 1937,
2 vols);
Zalmoxis. Revue des Études Religieuses (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1938
to 1942, 3 vols. Journal founded and edited by Mircea Eliade;
Luceafarul. Revista Scriitorilor Români în Exil founded and edited by Mircea Eliade
(Paris: 1948-);
Antaios. Zeitschrift für eine freie Welt (Stuttgart: Klett Verlag, 1959- ). Journal founded
and edited with Ernst Jünger;
History of Religions. An International Journal for Comparative Historical Studies.
(University of Chicago Press, 1961- ). Journal founded and edited with J.
Kitagawa and C. Long;
Mircea Eliade, ed., The Encyclopedia of Religion (New York, 1987), 16 vols.
SELECTED PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS.
DRAMA.
"Iphigenia, drama." Universul Literar, 48, no. 51, (1939), pp. 3, 8;
"1241." Caiete de Dor, 4, (1951), pp. 4-10;
"Coloana nesfirsita." Revista Scriitorilor Români, no. 9, (1970), pp. 3-49;
SELECTED NONFICTION:
"Itinerariu spiritual, I-XII." Cuvântul, 3, nos. 857, 860, 862, 867, 874, 885, 889, 903
911, 915, 924, 928, (1927);
"Impotriva Moldovei." Cuvântul, 4, no. 1021, (1928), pp. 1-2;
"Apologia virilitatii." Gândirea, 8, no. 8-9, (1928), pp. 352-59;
"Phénoménologie de la religion et sociologie religieuse." Critique, no. 39, (1949), pp.
713-720;
"Actualité de la mythologie." Critique, no. 43, (1950), pp. 236-43;
"Psychologie et histoire des religions: à propos du symbolisme du 'Centre.'" Eranos
 4

Jahrbuch, no. 19, (1951), pp. 247-282;

"Rencontre avec Jung." Combat, Oct. 9, (1952);
"Le temps et l'éternité dans la penseé indienne." Eranos Jahrbuch, no. 20, (1952),
pp. 25-55;
"Mythologie et histoire des religions." Diogène, no. 9, (1955), pp. 99-116;
"Littérature orale." Histoire des Littératures. I: Littératures anciennes orientales et
orales. Encyclopédie de la Pléiade. Ed. by R. Queneau (Paris: Gallimard, 1956,
pp. 3-26);
"Centre du monde, temple, maison." In: Le symbolisme cosmique des monuments
religieux. Ed. by Giuseppe Tucci (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo
Oriente, 1957, pp. 57-82);
"Le symbolisme des ténèbres dans les religions archaïques." Polarités du symbole,
Études carmélitaines, no. 39, (1960), pp. 15-28;
"History of Religions and a New Humanism." History of Religions, no. 1, (1961), pp. 1-8;
"Notes sur le journal d'Ernst Jünger." Antaios, no. 6, (1964), pp. 488-92;
"The Sacred and the Modern Artist." Criterion, no. 4, (1965), pp. 22-24;
"Crisis and Renewal in History of Religions." History of Religions, no. 5, (1965), pp. 1-17
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ed. by P. Edwards (New York: Macmillan, 1967,
8 vols). Articles: "Blaga, Lucian"; "Ionescu, Nae"; "Radulescu-Motru,
Constantin"; "Romanian Philosophy;"
"The Sacred in the Secular World." Cultural Hermeneutics, no. 1, (1973): pp. 101-13;
"Myth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries." In: Dictionary of the History of Ideas (New
York: Scribners, 1973, vol. 3, pp. 307-18);
"Myths and Mythical Thought." In: Myths. By A. Eliot, with contributions by M. Eliade
and J. Campbell (New York and Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill, 1976, pp. 12-29);
"Literary Imagination and Religious Structure." Criterion, no. 2, (1978), pp. 30-34.

Mircea Eliade, a leading scholar of religions and an acclaimed novelist, belonged to

a cultural tradition which did not see any incompatibility between scientific investigation
and literary activity. Eliade was a prominent member of the generation of 1927 that
became active in Romania in the late 1920s and dominated the cultural scene in the 1930s
and most of the 1940s. This was the first generation to receive their education in the
"Greater Romania" that emerged from the World War I.
Eliade was born in Bucharest, Romania, on March 9, 1907, to a family that had
strong Romanian roots. His father was an army officer and a native of Moldavia (in
Romanian culture, this region represented the emotional side, melancholy, an interest in
philosophy and poetry) while his mother was a native of western region of Oltenia
(Oltenians were considered ambitious, pragmatic, and energetic people). Given his origin,
Eliade considered himself as a synthesis of contemplation and action; he attributed his
moods of deep melancholy to his Moldavian heritage against which he later rebelled in a
famous article "Impotriva Moldovei" ("Against Moldavia") published in 1927.
The Eliades had to move twice before settling finally in Bucharest in the house on
Melodiei Street whose attic was going to play an almost mythical role in the writer's life.
In 1914, Mircea Eliade entered the elementary school on Mântuleasa Street (described in
the novel The Old Man and the Bureaucrats) and was admitted at the prestigious Spiru-
Haret High School in Bucharest in September 1917. At about ten, he began reading novels
and detective stories and was passionately interested in natural sciences, chemistry,
zoology and entomology. In the spring of 1921, Eliade's first article, "The Enemy of the
 5

Silkworm," was published in the Journal of Popular Sciences; it was followed soon by a
scientific story called "How I Discovered the Philosopher's Stone" which was awarded the
first prize in a competition sponsored by the same journal. Encouraged by the publication
of these articles, Eliade wanted to work in the field of science while feeling simultaneously
a strong vocation for imaginative literature. This was the first intimation of the duality that
constituted his personality as man of science (the diurnal voice of reason) and fiction
writer (the nocturnal creativity). The first years in high school also taught him another
lesson. Driven by an insatiable thirst for knowledge, Eliade discovered soon that he had
hard time learning something on demand. Instead, he enjoyed discovering alone and was
attracted to subjects or authors that weren't taught in school.
His attic in the house on Melodiei Street soon began to be filled with books and
magazines and became a place for intellectual reveries and hard work. The attic was his
exclusive place where he could read with impunity as long as he pleased. It is at this age
that, influenced by Jules Payot's The Education of the Will, Eliade developed a Faustian
ambition and started waging his famous war against sleep. Through this process of self-
discipline, he managed to get only three or four hours per night and read thousands of
books. Thus, he discovered alchemy and the history of religions, read Frazer (in order to
learn English) and Schuré, Lautréamont and Léon Bloy, Voltaire and B. P. Hasdeu (the
breadth of their knowledge fascinated Eliade). He also developed a special inclination for
Balzac whose books he devoured at the pace of approximately one a day. The greatest
discovery of the teenage Eliade was, however, Papini's L'Uomo finito ("seldom have there
been books that impressed me more ... it struck like a bolt of lightning," wrote Eliade
later). This book strongly resonated with Eliade's drive toward encyclopedism as well as
with his will to self-perfection. A few years later, while visiting Italy in 1927, he had the
chance to meet Papini with whom he remained in correspondence until the death of the
Florentine writer.
In 1923, Eliade started writing an important autobiographical piece, The Novel of
the Nearsighted Adolescent (partly published in 1926-27). Combining notes from his
diaries with outbursts of Papinian voluntarism, it aimed at being more than an
autobiographical novel; it purported to be a paradigmatic narrative exemplifying a
teenager's life. The novel describes Eliade's circle of friends and professors, his rampant
bouts of melancholy, and his scouting adventures along with his innermost feelings and
thoughts. It is at this age that Eliade also started keeping a journal, a habit he preserved
until his death. For him, the specific function of a diary was to save and preserve time; in
other words, by writing a journal one could capture the tone of a particular moment, the
spirit of a place, or the perfume of a book which he could relive when rereading it.
A couple of years later, Eliade used the same technique of the autobiographical
journal-novel inspired by the ideal of authenticity in his unpublished novel, Gaudeamus,
which was conceived as a sequel to The Novel of the Nearsighted Adolescent. This time it
described his circle of friends at the University of Bucharest where he was admitted in
1925. Writing this novel which centers on a passionate love tale of the author must have
had a cathartic significance for the young Eliade. He developed later his philosophy of
masculinity and living dangerously in a famous article, "Apology for Virility," a Papinian
manifesto published in 1928 and in a series of "Letters to a Provincial" (1927-29).
By 1928, Eliade had already acquired the reputation of an astute essayist. He
wrote regularly for the influential Bucharest-based Cuvântul directed by his professor Nae
Ionescu, one of the most influential interwar personalities of the country. Eliade became
interested in articulating problems related to his own generation (a hot topic in the late
 6

1920s in Romania) and was unanimously hailed as its spokesman and chief. He addressed
the issues of his generation in an important series of twelve essays, "Spiritual Itinerary,"
published in Cuvântul in the fall of 1927. Written with the belief that everything lay within
the powers of the young writers, these essays offered a courageous and well-articulated
statement of Eliade's ideas about the task and destiny of his generation that was going to
become truly unique in the Romanian cultural history. In Eliade's view, the young writers
had to look for meaningful equilibrium and synthesis that went beyond a historically bound
type of humanism and expressed themselves in a plurality of spiritual and cultural
experiences. Eliade and his fellows --"impassionate mystics," as an older Romanian writer
called them-- were influenced by Berdiaev and Gide, Keyserling and Ortega y Gasset,
Bergson and Proust, and emphasized spirituality and inner equilibrium. The strong ethos of
authenticity which permeates these essays can also be found in Eliade's best novels
written in the 1930s.
In many respects, for Eliade 1928 was a year of destiny. In the spring, he visited
again Italy where he did research for his thesis Contributions to Renaissance Philosophy;
he defended it and graduated magna cum laude from the University of Bucharest in the
fall of the same year. In Rome, he also became familiar with the work of Surendranath
Dasgupta, a famous Cambridge educated Yoga scholar, and started toying with the idea of
studying in India (in fact, he wrote a letter to the Maharaja Mahindra Chandra Nandy of
Kassimbazar asking for financial help). While studying Renaissance philosophy, Eliade
became persuaded that he had to broaden his cultural horizon and dig deeper in order to
arrive at a more comprehensive humanism --i.e. a new understanding or vision of man--
that would embrace both the Orient and the Western world. He realized that the Orient
represented for him more than a fairy-tale landscape or an object of study; it was a part of
the world that held a strange attraction and was going to become an essential part of his
destiny.
In August 1928, Eliade received a letter from the Maharaja Nandy informing him
that he was awarded a five-year grant to study Indian philosophy with Dasgupta in
Calcutta. On November 20, 1928 he started his journey to India that was going to
substantially enrich his life and broaden his spiritual horizon. As he recalled years later,
besides making him politically aware, the Indian experience taught him three main lessons:
(1) the spiritual dimension of India (human life can be transfigured by performing certain
rituals); (2) the meaning of religious symbolism in traditional cultures; (3) the
manifestation of the sacred in objects or cosmic rhythms that pointed to the cultural unity
of all traditional agrarian societies, a theme that was going to be a recurrent pattern in
Eliade's understanding of the history of religions. In India, Eliade spent three years
studying Sanskrit, familiarizing himself with the Indian philosophy and writing articles and
novels for his Romanian readers. His first published novel, Isabel and the Devil's Waters
was composed in 1929; immersed in his Sanskrit studies, Eliade almost felt "compelled" to
write literature in order to regain control over himself. His second book, The Light That
Failed was finished in 1930 and published four years later. Thirsting to know and
experience all, Eliade also attended religious festivals and visited temples and holy cities.
An account of this experience can be found in India (1934), a collection of articles that
described Eliade's travel impressions as well his meetings with Rabindranath Tagore at
Shantiniketan. After falling in love with Dasgupta's daughter, Maitreyi (en episode that
was going to be the subject of his later novel Maitreyi, published in 1939), he left Calcutta
for Hardwar and the ashram (monastery) of Rishikesh in Himalayas where he remained for
a few months and was initiated into the practice of classical Yoga. Searching for
 7

authenticity, Eliade entertained the idea of becoming a monk in Himalayas in order to

achieve the liberation promised by Yoga practices.
His restless spirit was, however, made for culture, not sainthood, for he was
condemned to discover the path to salvation through culture and books. Eliade interpreted
his failure to integrate into the Indian universe as an initiatory ordeal he had to go through
in order to fulfill his own true vocation. Summoned by a letter of his father back home to
perform his military service, Eliade returned to Romania on Christmas Eve, 1931. By that
time, he had already learned that the sacred is to be found in the midst of the profane, not
in withdrawal from it.
For Eliade who had returned from India thirsting for relativities, joining his group
of friends in Bucharest meant a new and rich episode in his life. This time, he was poised
to become famous as a fiction writer while being indefatigably engaged in the rich
Romanian cultural life of the interwar period. He published various articles (mostly) in
Cuvântul and Vremea, gave radio conferences at Radio Bucharest, and strengthened his
friendship ties with leading representatives of his generation such as Mircea Vulcanescu,
Petru Comarnescu, Mihail Sebastian, and Constantin Noica. As Eliade recalled in his
Autobiography (I, 309), near all of the ideas expounded in the books published in French
and English after 1946 can be found in nuce in his Romanian essays written between 1932
and 1943.
The novels Eliade published in the 1930s drew on his fascinating Indian
experience. The main theme of Isabel and the Devil's Waters (1930), a partly
autobiographical novel, was overcoming sterility (the inability to create) and achieving
immortality by preserving one's own freedom. It received many positive reviews in the
Romanian journals while its author was hailed as "the most thoroughgoing embodiment of
Gidism" in Romanian literature. Eliade's second published book was a collection of essays,
Soliloquii (1932), a piece of religious existentialism that conveyed faithfully the author's
fascination with sincerity, authenticity and lived experience. This small book --along with
later essays-- is also indicative of the extent to which Eliade felt alienated from much of
the literature of that time which was excessively obsessed with style and originality. His
preference went, instead, toward private diaries and autobiographical novels that
employed the interior monologue or the stream of consciousness. Eliade's love story with
Maitreyi, based on his journal notes (with changed names), became the subject matter of
the widely acclaimed novel, Maitreyi (1933). Hailed as a "revolution" in Romanian literary
history (it was awarded the national prize of the year), this book was one of Eliade's most
successful works that gained him recognition as a major literary writer in Romania. Most
of the reviewers of the book praised its exoticism and its mythology of voluptuousness.
In the fall of 1932, Eliade and his friends founded in Bucharest "The Criterion
Association for Arts, Literature and Philosophy," a cultural organization that held a series
of public lectures and sponsored various other cultural events. Considered by many as the
most original collective manifestation of Eliade's generation, Criterion represented an
existentialist manifestation avant-la-lettre (though considerably different from the later
Parisian movement), whose members were interested in authenticity and immediate
experience and wanted to overcome the Romanian cultural provincialism. They delivered
public lectures, wrote articles in various publications, and published essays and novels.
The Criterion conferences usually triggered free and heated discussions on various,
unorthodox topics in a spirit of toleration and enthusiasm. Eliade himself inaugurated the
public lectures series with a speech on Freud (he later lectured on Gandhi), that was
followed by conferences on Lenin and Chaplin, Orient and Occident, Valéry and Bergson,
 8

James Joyce and Krishnamurti, Gide and Greta Garbo. The activities organized by
Criterion ceased eventually toward the end of 1933 as a wave of political extremism began
to sweep the whole country.
In 1932, Eliade met Nina Mares whom he married two years later. The marriage
surprised his friends as well as his family, for Eliade had dated another women (a famous
actress) and Nina did not belong to his milieu of artists and writers. In fact, Eliade felt
almost compelled to make her happy at last, since she had had a previous unhappy
marriage. In June 1933, he was awarded the Ph.D. in philosophy and became a few
months later assistant to Nae Ionescu, his beloved professor of logic and metaphysics and
mentor of the whole generation. Eliade's thesis on Yoga was the outcome of many years of
research. The French version of the thesis, Yoga. Essai sur les origines de la mystique
indienne (published in Paris in 1936) was in fact a revised version of the thesis accepted
by the University of Bucharest in 1933.
The year 1934 marked a serious deterioration of the political climate of the
country; Eliade's professor and director of Cuvântul, Nae Ionescu, became proscribed in
the aftermath of a quarrel with King Carol II. Eliade had already started his lectures at the
University of Bucharest and contributed to various journals and newspapers. In August, he
traveled to Berlin to complete the recent bibliography related to his thesis. Four new
books bearing his name reached the bookstores that year (two of them were novels):
India, The Return from Paradise, The Light that Fails, and Oceanography. Written in a
personal prose liberated from the constraints of the academic canon, Oceanography was a
collection of essays whose main topic was the sacred camouflaged in the profane and
living in the present, here and now, an idea which was going to also be developed in his
later fiction prose. In The Return from Paradise, Eliade returned to the issue of his
generation and deplored the loss of the paradise in which he and his fellows had lived
before being thrown into history (the theme of the terror of history was also going to loom
large in his later writings and novels). Eliade felt then that the time given to him and his
generation would soon come to an end. Hence, his obsession that he must write at least
one "great book" and his fear that external circumstances might prevent him from writing
his oeuvre in its entirety (by that time he had plans for some twenty books). Both The
Return and The Light that Fails were considered as overly sophisticated and intoxicated
with authenticity; some reviewers were also puzzled by the great number of characters and
literary techniques (among them, the famous stream of consciousness reminiscent of
Joyce) employed by Eliade in these books that marked a sharp departure from Maitreyi.
In 1935, the year when Eliade became a member of the Society of Romanian
writers, he offered his readers three new books: Asiatic Alchemy, his first scientific
published book that advanced a radically new interpretation of alchemy as a traditional
technique implying a cosmology and soteriology; Work in Progress, an indirect novel and
companion to India describing lived and intimate experiences; and The Hooligans, a
sequel to The Return from Paradise (the third part of the trilogy, New Life, was never
completed) that stirred major controversies and was awarded the prize for the best novel
of the year. The title of the book is slightly misleading: Eliade's hooligans were young
people full of exuberance and belief in their own powers, disrespectful of rigid conventions
and concerned with inner freedom and creativity that would make them triumph in history.
This book expressed, in fact, Eliade's belief that nothing can make a truly creative person
fail, short of his loss of freedom. The major literary critics praised the book while lovers of
conventional literature were distressed by those passages in which Eliade's characters
behaved "immorally" while trying to live freely and creatively.
 9

This astonishing rhythm of publication was never matched in the subsequent years
when Eliade devoted most of his time to consolidating his reputation as an academic. The
book that contains in nuce all of Eliade's later famous interpretations of the symbolism of
the center of the world, Babylonian Cosmology and Alchemy, appeared in the fall of
1937. A few months later, Eliade started editing the international journal Zalmoxis (only
three volumes were published) in the hope that thereby he would encourage the study of
the history of religions in Romania. Eliade also edited collections of writings of Nae
Ionescu and B. P. Hasdeu, both with substantial introductions by him. Meanwhile, he
visited England (where he attended the session of the Oxford Group Movement),
Germany (where he resumed his usual summer study at Berlin Stadt-Bibliothek) and
Switzerland (where he met the prominent Romanian poet and philosopher Lucian Blaga).
Miss Christina was the only novel published by Eliade in 1936. It stirred
passionate controversies and led to a public scandal, the young writer being accused of
pornography (his enemies also requested his expulsion from the university). By writing a
novel in which the fantastic is integrated into the real, he sought to create a new genre that
would draw on the rich Romanian folklore. At the heart of the story lies the belief that the
miraculous breaks into our ordinary life without any warning (no wonder that Eliade was a
great admirer of Chesterton). This theme was developed later in The Snake (1937), a
fantastic novel with banal characters that become involved in a series of strange
happenings. By using some symbols such as the snake, the moon, the forest, and the
water, Eliade described the way in which the fantastic permeates the everyday life without
disrupting it. The main ideal of the novel is the unrecognizability of miracle; along with the
theme of the sacred camouflaged in the profane it will be the key to all of Eliade's later
major writings, including his essays in the history of religions.
1938 marked the entry in what Eliade believed to be the time when he and his
friends would no longer be free to do what they wish. The royal dictatorship was imposed
in the spring of 1938. Corneliu Codreanu, the head of the right-wing Legionary
movement, was arrested and its publications banned; those who were suspected of
sympathizing with the Iron Guard were put under close supervision. The watchful eye of
the Secret Services did not spare Eliade who had written a few right-wing articles. After
escaping a night search at his domicile, Eliade was arrested a few weeks later and charged
with having suspect foreign contacts. Asked to sign a declaration of dissociation from the
Legionary movement, Eliade refused because he had never been a member of that
organization. Following his staunch refusal, he was sent to a detention camp at Miercurea
Ciuc (Transylvania) where he joined his professor, Nae Ionescu. Eliade remained there
only a few weeks and managed in fact to write Marriage in Heaven, a literary expression
of the metaphysics of love that was published one year later. Suspected of tuberculosis
(further analyses did not confirm, however, the initial diagnosis), he was transferred to a
sanatorium further south to be released only three weeks later. He recovered the joy of
living but already knew that an era was drawing to an end and history was going to
unleash its dark forces upon Europe.
Back in Bucharest at the end of 1938 and facing the problem of earning a living for
his family (he had lost his position at the University of Bucharest), Eliade started
contributing to the prestigious Revista Fundatiilor Regale and was elected secretary of
the Society of Romanian Writers in 1939. He managed to publish a collection of essays,
Fragmentarium, and wrote his first play, Iphigenia that was staged two years later in
1941. In the winter of 1940, Eliade also wrote two important fantastic novellas, The
Secret of Doctor Honigberger and Nights at Serampore that were published together as a
 10

book. Drawing on Eliade's Indian experience and knowledge of Indian philosophy, these
novellas were a mixture of reality and fiction, combining techniques of mystery stories
with philosophical ideas focusing on the issue of time and the sacred camouflaged in the
profane. At the same time, Eliade became interested in exploring the symbolism of the
androgyny and the dialectics of the integration of opposites. His essays on the theme
coincidentia oppositorium were collected in an important book, The Myth of
Reintegration published in 1942.
After Nae Ionescu's death in March 1940, Eliade was sent as cultural attaché to the
Romanian Legation in England. Leaving for London saved in fact his life and freedom
insofar as it allowed him to continue writing and thinking freely, something that would
have been impossible in his native country which succumbed to a wave of dictatorships.
Eliade was able to meet with many British writers and do some research in the archives of
British Museum. The experience of the frequent air attacks and of the famous Blitz of
September 1941 left a deep impression on Eliade (the event was described in The
Forbidden Forest). In February 1941, on the very day when Britain announced the
severing of diplomatic ties with Romania (which had joined the Axis camp), Eliade was
appointed cultural secretary (and from 1942, cultural counselor) at the Romanian embassy
in Lisbon where he remained until September 1945. Eliade greatly enjoyed Lisbon which
was for him a true haven where he could live and work safely. He quickly learned
Portuguese and began familiarizing himself with the Portuguese history and literature
(Camoëns, above all), an opportunity for him to reflect on the similarities between
Romanian and Portuguese as Latin languages. In the summer of 1942, Eliade traveled to
Bucharest where he visited his friends and family. This was the last time he would set foot
on the Romanian soil. In a way, he sensed that the creative era in Romanian history was
over; history had reserved a cruel destiny to his beloved country that eventually sunk into
the Soviet sphere of influence.
Two new collection of Eliade's essays were published in Bucharest in 1943:
Commentaries on the Legend of Master Manole (which contained important studies on
the theme of sacrificial death in literature) and The Island of Euthanasius (it includes,
among others, the important essay "Folklore as an Instrument of Knowledge" as well as
other important essays on literary subjects). The year 1944 was a dark one for Eliade: his
wife, Nina died of cancer a few months after the capitulation of Romania on August 23.
He then moved to Cascaes, a picturesque fishing village near Estoril where he began
drafting Le mythe de l'eternel retour which addressed the issue of the terror of history (it
was later translated into English as Cosmos and History). He also wrote a fantastic short
story, A Big Man that presents the rapid transformation of a sick man into a giant that
symbolized, in fact, his reintegration into Cosmos and the regression to the archetypal
Man.
Isolated from his homeland, alone after so many years, Eliade tried to find a
meaning to all the initiatory tortures he had to go through. Given his past, returning to the
Communist-led Romania would have been for him a suicide; he had to start a new life
elsewhere. Having obtained a French visa, Eliade left for Paris in September 1945 where
he met his old friends Emil Cioran, Eugène Ionesco, and Mihai Sora. The rediscovery of
Paris was, as he recalled in his Autobiography, "a series of unexpected delights."
(Autobiography II, 113). He wandered through art museums and parks, concerts and cafés
and started meeting with famous French historians of religions like Dumézil and Masson-
Oursel. Nonetheless, life in Paris proved soon to be a difficult test for Eliade. His
reputation as a specialist in the history of religions had yet to be consolidated. Moreover,
 11

most of his studies --like his fiction prose-- were written in Romanian and his intense
scholarly activity prevented him from devoting time to his literary work. Eliade tried hard
to obtain a permanent position in Paris only to find that his political past made him suspect
in the eyes of many Marxist Parisian circles. Encouraged by Ananda Coomaraswamy,
Eliade began seriously thinking of emigrating to the United States, but the untimely death
of his outstanding friend discouraged him to do so for the time being. Beginning February
1946, Eliade gave a series of lectures on comparative mythology at l'Ecole des Hautes
Études in Paris. Still facing material insecurity, Eliade resumed his work at Techniques du
Yoga, Traité, and Le mythe de l'eternel retour which were published later by the
prestigious Gallimard and Payot (1948-49). In the spring of 1948, Eliade met Christinel
Cottesco whom he married in January, 1950; at about the same time, he also started
editing Luceafarul, a magazine for and by Romanian émigrés.
In the summer of 1949, while working hard on his book on shamanism, Eliade
suddenly succumbed to the temptation of writing a new novel --The Forbidden Forest--
that was going to occupy him for the next five years. The Forbidden Forest was for him
much more than a new title added to his bibliography; it also meant a boundary stone
between past and future. Though fluent in French, Eliade decided to write his literary
pieces only in Romanian: "the homeland, for every exile, he once said, is the mother
tongue he still continues to speak ... the homeland, for me, is the language in which I
dream and also write my journal" (Ordeal by Labyrinth, p. 100). The Forbidden Forest
conveyed Eliade's nostalgia for his homeland and reiterated his belief that literature
represented an instrument of knowledge insofar as literary imagination is capable of
revealing new dimensions of the human condition. As in his later novellas --for example, in
The Old Man and the Bureaucrats-- Bucharest, the city of his childhood and adolescence,
became almost a mythical place, "the heart of an inexhaustible mythology" (Ordeal by
Labyrinth, p. 31). Though The Forbidden Forest did not have the success expected by its
author, it was his best novel that still awaits to be discovered. Combining a certain
historical realism with a narrative scenario saturated by symbols (the forest, the summer
solstice, the car), it describes a series of initiatory ordeals at the end of which the principal
character, Stefan Viziru transcends the human condition and is liberated from the terror of
history. The pages in Eliade's journal describing the birth of this work are a unique
testimony of the interplay between literary creativity and scientific research, between the
nocturnal universe of imagination and the diurnal world of intellect. While writing The
Forbidden Forest, Eliade realized again that he was never going to be able to give up
literature since, for him, fiction was more than a violon d'Ingres; it was his very own way
of preserving his spiritual and mental health. Persuaded of the organic need of man to
dream, i.e. the need for mythology or narration, Eliade discovered an intimate connection
between fiction and mythology. Deriving etymologically from imago (representation,
imitation), the imagination, he noted, imitates exemplary models or images and
reactualizes them.
For Eliade, the 1950s were a successful decade, the years of lectures, papers, and
conferences that would bring him the long deserved international recognition as a scholar
(at the expense of Eliade the writer). Indeed, the publication of his scientific books
consolidated Eliade's reputation as a leading historian of religions. Invited by Olga Froebe-
Kapteyn to lecture at the famous Eranos Conferences in Ascona, Italy, in the summer of
1950, Eliade became soon a prominent member of that circle --in fact, a multidisciplinary
symposium held annually-- dominated by the majestic figure of C. G. Jung. Eliade also
became a regular attendant of the most important conferences and congresses on the
 12

history of religions and was often invited to lecture abroad (Rome, Munich, Freiburg,
Lund, Uppsala). In 1951, a research grant awarded by Bollingen Foundation of New York
delivered Eliade from the nightmare of poverty in which he had been living since his arrival
in Paris in 1945. Two of his most important scientific books, Chamanisme (1951) and
Yoga (1954), were published by Payot and Gallimard. Furthermore, The Myth of Eternal
Return was Eliade's first major academic work to appear in English in 1954. One year later
came out the French version of the Romanian manuscript of The Forbidden Forest which
received few and reserved reviews in France.
In 1956, Eliade was appointed visiting professor of history of religions at the
University of Chicago where he was invited to give the Haskell Lectures published later as
Birth and Rebirth, a thorough meditation on the role of initiation in primitive cultures.
Moving to the United States meant for him a second exile, even though it gave him new
research opportunities and eventually brought him international recognition. To be sure,
Eliade left Paris consoled by the thought that he would return there in less than a year. Yet,
in March 1957, he accepted the post of professor and chairman of the history of religions
department at Chicago where he would find a collegial atmosphere and have unique
research opportunities. A year later, he joined the famous Committee on Social Thought
that had just been created and whose main aim was to overcome the narrow specialization
by broadening the students' cultural horizon. Discovering the New World and the
American university system proved soon to be a fascinating experience for Eliade who
could pursue his own research agenda in a tolerant and free environment. He did not
remain confined within the quiet environment of the Hyde Park campus in the Windy City;
he continued to be a "wandering scholar" traveling abroad and spending a few months
each year in Europe (France, Italy). His extensive travels and reading notes are accounted
for in his Journal which contains numerous details about his teaching, his views on
modern art and novel, and so forth. Eliade was interested in almost everything, from the
Japanese artistic and religious genius (which he admired for its theology of momentary
incarnations of the Spirit) to Goethe, hippies, and politics. In 1960, he started co-editing
the leading journal History of Religions and, one year later, Antaios in collaboration with
Ernst Jünger. Some of his most important books --Patterns in Comparative Religions,
Yoga, The Sacred and the Profane, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, Images and Symbols,
Shamanism, and The Forge and the Crucible-- were translated into English, sometimes in
revised and enlarged editions, with new introductions. Appointed Sewell L. Avery
Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago in 1964, Eliade received
several honorary degrees from distinguished universities and was elected member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1966). At the same time, the first critical
interpretations of his works started coming out, culminating with a Festschrift, Myths and
Symbols: Studies in Honor of Mircea Eliade (1969).
The English-speaking world was, thus, presented with a fully-fledged methodology
of the sacred that revealed Eliade's originality as a historian of religions. As the Canadian
critic Northrop Frye once said, the most impressive thing about Eliade's works was not the
breadth of his erudition, but its unity and the consistency with which he made yoga,
literature, primitive religions, and alchemy form a pattern together. Eliade examined
different religions through a morphological and phenomenological analysis of the
manifestations of the sacred and put a great emphasis on the irreducibility of the sacred
that reveals itself through symbols and hierophanies. By reevaluating various aboriginal
cults and practices, shamanism, alchemy, and folklore, he revealed their profound
meanings and proved the error of those scholars who saw in them mere superstitions.
 13

Concerned with the limitations of contemporary secular existence and confident that, in
restrospect, the cardinal phenomenon of the twentieth century would be the discovery of
the spiritual universe of non-European peoples, Eliade also stressed the need to avoid
Europocentrism by fostering an encounter between the traditional and modern mentality.
In his view, by pointing to traditional values and religious models as well as to forgotten
modes of being, history of religions should become a synthetic, integrative, and creative
discipline that could lay the foundations for a new humanism and help modern man
overcome the terror of history under which he lives. If studied properly, history of
religions understood as creative hermeneutics would then result in a spiritual renewal. "I
feel as though I am a precursor, Eliade once noted; I am aware of being somewhere in the
avant-garde of the humanity of tomorrow or after" (Journal, 15 September 1959).
Still believing in the future of the fantastic novel as a new mythology, Eliade was
tempted to return to fiction prose as he became worried that his exegetical, scientific work
would prevent him from writing his most "personal" books which would reflect best his
Weltanschauung. On June 13, 1959, he wrote in his Journal: "I am constantly tempted to
write the short story 'With the Gypsy Girls,' he notes, but I hesitate to begin. I have so
many other things to finish." A few days later, Eliade gave in to the temptation fascinated
by the delight he experienced in writing literature again. With the Gypsy Girls, one of the
best known of Eliade's novellas, was published in a collection of other short stories,
Nuvele (Madrid, 1963) that also included A Big Man, The Man Who Could Read Stones,
and A Fourteen Year Old Photography. They were all fantastic stories, narrations that
began in a banal atmosphere and with apparently mediocre characters; Eliade's
fundamental belief in the sacred camouflaged in the profane was based on the thesis of the
incognizability of the miracle. The same themes are present in other important literary
works such as Pe strada Mântuleasa (published in Romanian in Paris in 1968 and
translated later into English as The Old Man and the Officer), the "freest" work of Eliade,
which illustrates the liberating, soteriological function of myth by staging a confrontation
between two mythologies (that of folklore and modern technology). They are a testimony
of the interplay between Eliade's scientific and literary work that demonstrates once again
Eliade's belief in the power of narration that allows one to create imaginary universes.
Eliade also started writing his autobiography, the only book he believed he "had" to write
at any price. A first fragment covering the period 1907-1928 was published in Romanian in
1966 under the title Recollections: I. The Attic). The end of this decade marked Eliade's
literary comeback in Romania (then enjoying a short period of liberalization) where two of
his fiction books were published in 1969: Maitreyi and La tiganci, a collection of short
stories that contained two new pieces in addition to the Madrid edition (The Bridge and
Good-bye!). In most of these pieces, the gradual revelation of the fantastic that is
concealed beneath the banality of daily events highlights the old idea of the ambivalence of
every event; as in The Bridge, an apparently banal happening can sometimes reveal
unexpected meanings.
During the 1970s, Eliade continued pursuing his scholarship with renewed stamina
and enthusiasm. A staunch traveler --his fascination with travel stemmed from its
anamnetic function insofar as it allowed one to recover forgotten fragments of personal
history-- he moved from one place to another to meet with other scholars and receive
various distinctions and honorary degrees (Yale, Loyola etc.). Most of the books he
published during this decade were academic, culminating with the first two volumes of the
monumental History of Religious Ideas (the original French editions came out in 1976 and
1978). Underlying these works based on the methodology developed in The Quest (1969)
 14

was the belief that the sacred is an element in the structure of consciousness, not a stage in
the history of the latter. Equally important was the publication of the French translation of
Eliade's journal under the title Fragments d'un journal at Gallimard in 1973 (it was only
partly translated into English in 1977 as No Souvenirs). The significance of the publication
of Eliade's journal cannot be overestimated, since it allows one to grasp the
complementarity between his scientific and literary works and reveals his views on various
issues ranging from his meetings with Jung and Tillich to his notes about Romanian exile,
hippies in America, and modern art. His literary production of these years includes In
curte la Dionis (Madrid, 1977), a collection of new short stories that shift back and forth
between the daily world and an imaginary universe. The translations of Pe strada
Mântuleasa (The Old Man and the Bureaucrats) into French (1977) and of The
Forbidden Forest into English (1978) revived his old hope that one day he would succeed
in being known as author of a multifarious oeuvre, and not just as a historian of religions,
an exegete of myth, or a mere novelist. Finally, in 1978 two other important documents
about Eliade the man and the writer reached the bookstores. The prestigious collection
Cahiers de l'Herne devoted a special issue to Mircea Eliade that contained outstanding
articles and commentaries on his scientific and literary work written, among others, by
Georges Dumézil, Gilbert Durand, Paul Ricoeur, E. M. Cioran and Eugène Ionesco. At
the same time, Claude-Henri Roquet published a superb book of conversations with
Eliade, L'Epreuve du labyrinthe (Ordeal by Labyrinth), which shows us a candid Eliade
meditating at his intellectual and spiritual journey. Along with Eliade's Autobiography
whose first part was finished in 1978, it is the best introduction to his fascinating life and
work.
Despite his declining health, Eliade's last years were dedicated as usual to travel
(he kept his apartment in Paris where he returned regularly), scholarship and literature. His
Journal of these years (1980-1985) shows us a man who lucidly attempted to use his
energy as much as possible in order to complete his oeuvre. Praised by the entire academic
community --an important Festschrift in three volumes (with about fifty collaborators)
was published in 1983-84 by Hans Peter Duerr in Germany-- he was not spared, however,
of mounting criticism that was leveled against his method as well as his controversial
right-wing sympathies of his youth. Eliade found, however, enough time to receive visits
from admirers, friends and Romanian exiles. In Romania, the interest in Eliade the writer
was revived by the publication of In Curte la Dionis (1981) which offered a good
selection of Eliade's best fiction prose. In 1982, he started working on the second volume
of Autobiography which will appear posthumously in 1988 covering the first years in exile
and the move to the United States. The best known fiction novels and short stories
translated into French and published in the 1980s included short stories and novels like
Dayan (1981), Nineteen Roses (1982), The Three Graces (1984), Youth Without Youth
(1978) In the Shade of the Lily (1985). Their skillfully camouflaged messages are
conveyed through stories and myths addressing various themes ranging from man's
biological regeneration (Youth Without Youth) to theater as spiritual exercise (Nineteen
roses).
In 1983, Eliade retired from the University of Chicago. Hailed as one of the
founding founders of the history of religions in the United States, he completed the
volume three of his History of Religious Beliefs which concluded with a general
meditation on the religious experiences and spiritual crisis of the modern world. He also
supervised the editing of the monumental The Encyclopedia of Religion (sixteen volumes)
and worked at a guide to world religions published in collaboration with his disciple I. P.
 15

Coulianu at Chicago. In 1985, the Trustees of the University of Chicago established a new
chair in Eliade's honor as a sign of recognition of his exceptional contribution to the world
of scholarship. The fire that destroyed his office in Chicago in December 1985 deeply
saddened him, for he saw in it a sign of his imminent departure. It came only a few months
later, in April 1986.
Some critics of Eliade's works have rightly suggested that his literary works
represent perhaps the best introduction to his thought. As Mac Linscott Ricketts, the
author of an impressive biography on Eliade, once wrote, "it is there, above all, that we
find the man and his message." (Mircea Eliade, II, 1216). It may very well be the case that
Eliade's most enduring influence will be spread through his fantastic literature in which he
saw an instrument of knowledge revealing unknown dimensions or aspects of the human
condition. To be sure, Eliade successfully defended the value of imagination and the free
play of mind. By pointing out that literature is the offspring of mythology and by
rediscovering the forgotten sources of literary imagination, he opposed the academic
superstition which had tended to dismiss it as non-scientific. While being keenly aware that
he did not write a book that represented him totally, Eliade was never wary of stressing
the unity of his oeuvre. "If anyone wants to judge what I've written up till now, he once
said, then my books should be viewed as a whole. It is only the totality of my writings that
can reveal the meaning of my work" (emphasis added, Ordeal by Labyrinth, pp. 186-7).

Interviews:
Mircea Eliade. L'épreuve du labyrinthe. Entretiens avec Claude-Henri Rocquet
(Paris: Belfond, 1978). English translation: Ordeal by Labyrinth (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1982).

Bibliographies:
Douglas Allen & Dennis Doeing. Mircea Eliade: An Annotated Bibliography (New
York & London: Garland Publishing, 1980).

Biographies:
Mac Linscott Ricketts, Mircea Eliade: The Romanian Roots, 1907-1945 (Boulder, Co.:
East European Monographs, 1988), 2 vols;
Mircea Handoca, Mircea Eliade (Bucharest: Minerva, 1991).

Selected References:
Sorin Alexandrescu, "Dialectica fantasticului." Introduction to La Tiganci (Bucharest:
Editura pentru Literatura, 1969), pp. v-1;
Douglas Allen, Structure and Creativity in Religion. Hermeneutics in Mircea Eliade's
Phenomenology and New Directions (Hague: Mouton, 1978);
___________, Mircea Eliade et le phénomène de la religion (Paris: Payot, 1978);
T. J. Altizer, Mircea Eliade and the Dialectics of the Sacred (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1963);
Matei Calinescu, "The Disguises of Miracle: Notes on Mircea Eliade's Fiction."
World Literature Today, 52, 4 (1978): 558-64;
David Carrasco & Jane Marie Swanberg, eds., Waiting for the Dawn: Mircea Eliade in
Perspective (Boulder & London: Westview Press, 1985);
David Cave, Mircea Eliade's Vision for a New Humanism (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1993);
 16

I. P. Culianu, Mircea Eliade (Assisi: Cittadella Editrice, 1978);

Hans Peter Duerr, ed., Sehnsucht nach dem Ursprung zu Mircea Eliade (Syndikat, 1983);
Hans Peter Duerr, ed., Alcheringa oder die beginnende Zeit (Qumran Verlag, 1983);
Hans Peter Duerr, ed., Die Mitte der Welt (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1984);
Norman J. Girardot & Mac Linscott Ricketts, eds., Imagination and Meaning: The
Scholarly and Literary Worlds of Mircea Eliade (New York: The Seabury
Press, 1982);
J. Kitagawa & C. Long, eds., Myths and Symbols. Studies in Honor of Mircea Eliade
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969);
Adrian Marino, L'herméneutique de Mircea Eliade (Paris: Gallimard, 1981);
Dumitru Micu, "Introducere." Introduction to: Maitreyi (Bucharest: Editura pentru
Literatura, 1969), pp: v-xliv;
Ion Negoitescu, "Mircea Eliade - sau de la fantastic la oniric." Viata Romaneasca,
2 (1970): 71-77;
Virgil Nemoianu, "Das Aussprechen des Geheimnisse. Phantastische und politische
Dimensionen der Romane von Charles Williams und Mircea Eliade." In:
Hans Peter Duerr, ed., Die Mitte der Welt (Frankfurt: Suhrhamp, 1984),
pp. 345-357.
Sergiu Pavel Dan, "Mircea Eliade." In: S. P. Dan, ed., Proza fantastica romaneasca
(Bucharest: Minerva, 1975), pp. 235-47;
Andrei Plesu, "Mircea Eliade si hermeneutica artelor." Secolul 20, 205-6 (1978): 59-64;
Eugen Simion, "Mircea Eliade." In: Simion, Scriitori romani de azi, II (Bucharest: Cartea
Romaneasca, 1976), pp. 319-36;
___________, "Postfata." Afterword to: Mircea Eliade, Proza fantastica, V (Bucharest:
Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane, 1992), pp. 207-255;
N. Steinhardt, "Fantasticul lui Mircea Eliade." Steaua, 28, 4 (1977): 18-19;
C. Tacou, ed., Mircea Eliade. Cahiers de l'Herne (Paris: L'Herne, 1978);