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Aurel Codoban, Ontologies archaďques et philosophie existentielle, p. 3
- Abstract - Archaic Ontologies and Existential Philosophy - The author identifies in the work of Mircea Eliade the presence of a (meta)philosophy based upon religiousness and upon the religious experience and opposed to the post-Hegelian, modern and con temporary philosophy, which had spent itself in stillborn syntheses (systems) or in the generalization of partial truths. The positive meaning of Eliade’s (meta)philosophical project—convergent with Heidegger’s meditations and even with postmodernism—is that of an existential philosophy seen as a method suitable for a singular destiny and itinerary, skillfully concealing the sacred behind the profane.
- Keywords: Mircea Eliade, existential approach, sacred and profane
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Marta Petreu, Eliade par lui-męme, p. 10
- Abstract - Eliade par lui-męme - In the autobiographic literature of Mircea Eliade (with a special focus on the Portuguese Journal), we find the presence of two types of logic, of two authorial voices: one abides by the rules of causali ty and of Cartesian rationality, while the other is self-fictional, self-mythicizing (and sometimes self-mystifying), a voice of destiny, of the trials of initiation, of the journey though the labyrinth towards a vita nova. This second logic, described as “fantastic” or “oneiric,” fictionalizes the experiences and the past history of the subject (including the prior involvement with the Legion of Archangel Michael) and exempts Eliade from the rules of responsibility and ethics. The constant self-fictionalization helps him leave behind a guilty past, through ritual oblivion and artistic amorality.
- Keywords: Mircea Eliade, Portuguese Journal, logic of self-mythicization, destiny, Legion of Archangel Michael
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Stefan Borbely, Mircea Eliade: The Portuguese Journal, p. 39
- Abstract - Mircea Eliade, The Portuguese Journal - Mircea Eliade’s Portuguese Journal (1941–1945) was published in Romanian only in 2006, a long time after it was written, and six years after a pioneering Spanish version was issued by the Editorial Kairós Publishing House of Barcelona (Diario Portugués 1941–1945, 2000). Another controversial book written by Mircea Eliade in 1942, his political essay dedicated to Salazar, the former dictator of Portugal, and to his allegedly peaceful, national and spiritual “revolution,” was also banned by censorship due to its political biases and misinterpretations, being also integrated for the first time after WWII in the second volume of the Portuguese Journal and Other Writings (Jurnalul portughez şi alte scrieri, Bucharest: Humanitas Publishing House, 2006). In two complementary sections the paper investigates the unfriendly diplomatic milieu Mircea Eliade was obliged to work for as a press attaché to the Romanian Legacy in Lisbon, and the main personal event of his Portuguese sojourn: the tragic death of his first wife, Nina, who was suffering from cancer. Both circumstances—his life as a diplomatic underdog and the hectic mourning for his wife—show the author’s determination to filter the events through the mythical pattern of an initiation rite, marked by Nina’s altruistic “sacrifice” which liberates her husband from his regressive Romanian bonds, easing his way towards universal recognition as a historian of religion and great interpreter of forgotten myths.
- Keywords: Mircea Eliade, Portugal, Salazar, history of religions, mythology, symbolic sacrifice, Romanian literature, diplomatic diary
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Gianpaolo Romanato, Ioan Petru Culianu: L’esperienza dell’esilio in Italia, p.52
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Abstract - Ioan Petru Culianu: The Experience of the Italian Exile - Gianpaolo Romanato worked together with I. P. Culianu on a book about Religion and Power (1981), became personally acquainted with the historian of religions during the latter’s exile to Milan (approximately four years) and therefore, on the basis of a number of letters sent to him by Culianu, proceeded to piece together the dramatic and eventually tragic experience of an exile that lasted for nearly two decades (1972–1991). An incurable anti-communist, Culianu left his native Romania at the age of 22, spending his life in five countries (Romania, Italy, Holland, France, and the us) and in five distinct language communities. His legal status long uncertain, Culianu developed an ambiguous relation with the Western world, which he saw as drifting into nihilism and mercantilism (“one gigantic trading machine”).
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Keywords: exile, power, communism, Western world, nihilism