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may be published without proper acknowledgement. Mircea Eliade : meanings (the apparent dichotomy: scientist/writer).

Popoaca-Giuran, Anca

Download date: 26. Sep. 2023

MIRCEA ELIADE -MEANINGS

THE APPARENT DICHOTOMY:sciENTisr/wR.iTER

ANCA POPOACA-GIURAN

PhD

THE DEPARTMENT OF THEOLOGY AND RELIGIOUS

STUDIES, KING'S COLLEGE

UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

MAY 1998

MIRCEA ELIADE -MEANINGS

THE APPARENT DICHOTOMY SCIENTIST I WRITER

3

ABSTRACT

This thesis represents a new 'tool' for a special hermeneutic of Mircea Eliade's writings. Its function is to analyse his fiction with the help of his academic studies, and it attempts to prove the influence of the latter upon the former. Although theoretical studies on this subject have been published, no real endeavour to prove this influence has been done. In a way, this thesis is a response to an academic need. On the other hand, the entire oeuvre of Eliade constitutes not only a vast field of research in itself, but an 'opener' of original paths and theories. This leads to the need to bring into play new terms (e.g. 'personal hierophanies', 'chronophanies', 'diastimophanies' etc.), new concepts (e.g. the quadrifold structure of the labyrinth: psychological, philosophical, metaphysical and mythical), theories (e.g. on the evolution of the symbolic language, on the linear or circular structure of the labyrinth) and parallels (e.g. between the myths of Orpheus and Dionysus; between the works of Nae lonescu and Mircea Eliade). During the whole thesis, our main aim was to preserve a balance between the scholarly writings of Eliade and his fiction. This accounts for ou'f' undertaking to keep critical references to the minimum. It is QU r hope that the present thesis proves that the dichotomy of the Eliadean oeuvre is only an apparent one, and his academic works put their imprint on his literary creations.

MIRCEA ELIADE -MEANINGS

THE APPARENT DICHOTOMY SCIENTIST I WRITER

........... 6 PRELIMINARY NOTES..................................................... 8

II RECURRENT ARCHETYPAL LINES AND ESSENTIAL

SYMBOLS

IN MIRCEA ELlADE'S LITERATURE.............. 10

I. Devil/Double; Magician; Witch; Vampire-Woman................... 18

2. Actor / Mask; Jester; the Blind / the One-Eyed. Military Man /

...................... 47

3. Water / Rain / Snow / Thirst; Mirror; Island; Cave.................... 75

4. Elements of bestiary: Snake, Bull............................................... 107

III MYTHS AND MOTIFS

ROMANIAN FOLKLORE

I. THE ROMANIA-COMPLEX..................................................... 121

1.1. The concept of 'Cosmic Christianity·..................................... 122

1.2. Folkloric elements................................................................

129

2. MYTHS

2.1. Zalmoxis................................................................

............. 138

2.2. Master Manole..................................................................

.. 153

2.3. Miorita................................................................................ 172

2.4. 'Youth without Old Age and Life without Death·................ 180

3. THEMES. SYMBOLS. IMAGES

3.1.. A plant called 'Mlltri1guna' ••••••••••••••••••

•••••••••••••••• 193

3 .. 2. -Sanziene' or Midsummer Night............................................ 198

3.3. -A Romanian cathartic dance................................ 207

INTERTWINING OF UNIVERSAL MYTHS AND MOTIFS IN

MIRCEA ELlADE'S FICTION

I. The artist and his reflections: Dionysus-Orpheus................ 213

2. Searching for perfection: the myth of the Androgyne.......... 234

3. Journey towards Centre. The labyrinth motif...................... 256

IV ELIADEAN CONCEPTS

THE HERMENEUTIC SACRED/PROFANE

I. Theories................................................................ ............ 287

2. The two qualities of Space and Time.................................. 293

3. Time and space in literature............................................... 296

4. The significance of forgetfulness......................................... 312

V A SPIRITUAL GUIDE: NAE IONESCU.......................... 315 I. Scientific ideas and literary paths........................................ 3 18

2. Points of contact.................................................................

332
VI SCHOLAR VERSUS WRITER........................................ 335 ........... 340 6

FOREWORD

This thesis was written with the intent of not only putting a specific body of materials at the specialist's disposal (a textual comparison of the academic and the literary writings of Eliade had not yet been done because part of his fiction had not been translated from Romanian), but also to answer certain questions that his oeuvre raises. The structure of the thesis presents itself as an 'initiatory' journey through the labyrinth of Eliade's writings. This is the reason why we have tried to maintain throughout a balance between his two main modes of expression. The path is strewn not with dangers (like the one of the archaic hero) but with varied themes: archetypal lines and symbols, Romanian reference points, universal myths and motifs, academic concepts. Eliade's entire work is an opera aperta, and consequently one cannot claim to be exhaustive. \,Y/e have just endeavoured to propose to the reader a short journey through religions, psychology, politics, literature and philosophy, under Eliade's guidance. This periplus is also envisaged by us as having the function of a homage to the multilateral personality of Mircea Eliade. We would like to express our greatest gratitude to our supervisors, Dr Julian Baldick and Dr Vanessa L. Davies, without whose help, encouragement and invaluable observations we would not have completed the present work. w.fJ-are particularly grateful to Dr Julian Baldick for the materials he gave us and for his continuous support, and to Dr Vanessa L. Davies for her enthusiasm, which prompted the undertaking of our project in the first place. \iie also offer our most sincere thanks to Mrs Heide Whyte and the library team of Middlesex University, Enfield, who enabled us to consult material from the British

Library.

We are indebted to all those who. at different stages. revised 7 our English and especially to Duncan and Gina Milroy and Mihai Ion Giuran who devoted much time to help us finish the thesis in its present form. We should also mention here the constant support of our former Romanian teacher, Maria Cogalniceanu, and 00 r former colleague, Adam Michaelson for his assistance in the field of information technology. To all of them, our warmest gratitude. 8

PRELIMINARY NOTES

Anyone immersed in the vastness of the Eliadean oeuvre can remark the relationship uniting his volumes. Mircea Eliade himself always insisted upon the consideration of his work as a whole. Some compositions are relevant to others in either a direct way or a general way, while recurrent characters or very similar ones appear in distinct literary pieces. The book titled The Quest -History and Meaning in Religion, which highlights the identity between two literary key characters: 'Ia Yedova' (from 'At Dionysus' Court') and Madonna Intelligenza (from 'Dayan'), is an example of the influence exerted in a direct way. Eliade's studies in From Zalmoxis to Genghis Khan (e.g. the chapters about Zalmoxis and Miorita) are pivotal in understanding certain episodes from the novel The Forbidden Forest, while certain analyses from Myth and Reality (e.g. that of the amnesia of Matsyendranath) are responsible for the meaning of the central theme in Nineteen Roses. In a general way Eliade's writings on eschatology are essential for comprehending the novella 'Dayan', while those on yoga shed light upon stories like: 'Nights at Serampore' and' The Secret of Dr Honigberger'.

Sometimes questions

from one book are answered in another one, such as, to give but one example, the famous riddle from 'With the Gypsy

Girls' which

is solved in 'At Dionysus' Court'. Apart from recurrent characters in disparate works (e.g.: Albini, leronim Thanase, Maria Da

Maria),

there appear what we shall call 'mirrored characters', symbolically identical pairs:

Oana (The Old Man and the Bureaucrats"

and Cucoanes ('A Great Man'); Dayan ('Dayan') and Dominic Matei ('Youth without Youth'); Ileana (The Forbidden Forest) and Euridice (Nineteen Roses); Gavrilescu ('With the Gypsy Girls') and lancu Gore (,Twelve Thousand Head of Cattle'); Mavrodin (,Stone Diviner') 9 and Doftorul ('The Old Man and the Bureaucrats'); Leana (,At

Dionysus'

Court') and Niculina (Nineteen Roses).

These comparative aspects form only one of the thesis' frameworks, which is organized as a double periplus (scholarly/literary) through different aspects of Eliade's oeuvre: recurrent archetypal lines and symbols, myths and motifs (Romanian and universal), essential concepts (the 'degradation' of myths, the Sacred/Profane relationship), parallels (Nae lonescu -Mircea Eliade). Several parts of the present work explain particular aspects dealing with the Romanian background of the author (e.g. the importance given by Eliade to the myth from the fairy tale 'Youth without Old Age and Life without Death'). We also tried to open different doors for future researchers, doors that could lead to specific paths (e.g. the chapter dealing with Symbolism) or enrich the cognitive levels of the Eliadean compositions. For the sake of clarity we have introduced new concepts and terms and we fexpressed personal theories (e.g. the 'evolution' of the 'symbolic' language). Making evident the religious structure of a writer's literary imagination could be, in the last instance, an analysis that enters the psychological domain, but also places the artistic texts concerned within the sphere of universal values. 10

RECURRENT ARCHETYPAL LINES AND

ESSENTIAL SYMBOLS IN ELIADE'S LITERATURE

Motto: Symbolic thought makes the immediate reality 'shine', but without diminishing or devaluating it in its perspective the Universe is not closed, no object is isolated in its own existential ness; everything holds together in a closed system of correspondences and assimilations. (Mircea Eliade, Symbolism, the Sacred, and the Arts, p.6) Given the fact that Eliade's oeuvre, in its entirety, is situated on co-ordinates that suppose at least a symbolical element (with a mythological frame), the need to decipher and establish the order of the respective elements is a natural product of the central place held by the symbols. Analysing some of the most frequent archetypal lines that appear in Eliade's literary writings, we shall look at the interpretations given by different researchers, expressing -where appropriate -our own point of view. Ultimately, in the critique of Eliade's fiction, we favour the particularaccertatiol1that the historian of religions himself ascribed to certain symbols/archetypal lines in his scientific works. It is our belief that, consciously or not, Eliade provided the reader of his literary books with a 'decoder' in his own academic writings. Rene Guenon notices I that as language itself is nothing other than symbolism, there can be no opposition, therefore, between the use of words and the use of figurative symbols. He showed that these two modes of expression should be complementary one to another. In his narrative, Eliade did precisely that: he brought to the 'surface' the hidden, symbolical meaning of the words, integrating the concept expressed by I Rene Guenon, Fundamental Symbols _ The Universal Language of Sacred Science (Cambridge,

Quinta Essentia, 1995), p.13.

II them in a whole system of connotations. For example, the 'initiated' reader could perceive the symbolic quality even of a simple word like 'coffee'. As the symbol is 'open'2, 'coffee' could signify: black magic, occult powers, the 'profane' equivalent of a divine drink (e.g. soma or ambrosia; inferno -if hot; transcendency or death -if cold). It is the context and the reader's level of understanding that bestow different meanings to the same word-symbol. And, as with any symbol, underneath the different layers of interpretation there is an ultimate, immutable signification that transcends space and time. The role of symbolism is considered by Rene Guenon useful for all people, as it helps them to understand the truths in question 'more or less completely and more or lass profoundly, each according to the nature of his intellectual possibilities'3. For him the highest truths can be communicated only by their incorporation into symbols 'which will hide them from many, no doubt, but which will manifest them in all their splendour to the eyes of those who can see'4. This is precisely what

Eliade does: through

his whole literature he first teaches his readers to 'see' (that is understand) inside the words, in order to broaden their

SInce.

perception of the world, hidden in the profane appearances -V-nature 'put the mask of the visible over the invisible' 01. Hugo). If the 'world is like a divine language for those who know how to understand it'S, Eliade re-constructed the 'divine' role of the language by giving back to the words their 'open' function, that is their full symbolic quality. In order to illustrate the mechanism used by Eliade we took as an example the Japanese language, which still preserves an intermediary

2 •••• the symbol makes a concrete object "explode" by disclosing dimensions which are

not given in immediate experience'. Mircea Eliade, Symbolism, the Sacred, and the Arts, ed. by Diane Apostolos-Cappadona (New York, Crossroad, 1985), p.13. 3Rene

Guenon, Fundamental Symbols ... , p.14.

4ibid., p.14.

5ibid., p.15.

12 phase of development between its archaic organisation and a newer, more explicit one. The split between the primordial role of the language and its contemporary use could clearly be shown. The 'degradation' of Japanese language is evident in the use of five or six different words employed to express the same reality/concept (according to various degrees of formality) while the word-symbol from which the significations emerged is missing. A comparison between the archaic structurequotesdbs_dbs29.pdfusesText_35

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