Mircea Eliade

Mircea Eliade (March 9, 1907 – April 22, 1986) was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. Historian of religions and man of letters, distinguished for his researches in the symbolic language used by various religious traditions and for his attempt to reduce their meaning to underlying primordial myths that provide the basis for mystical phenomena.

Biography

Eliade took an M.A. in philosophy from the University of Bucharest in 1928. He studied Sanskrit and Indian philosophy at the University of Calcutta (1928-31) and then lived for six months in the Ashram (hermitage) of Rishikesh, Himalaya. Returning to Romania, he earned his Ph.D. in 1933 with the dissertation Yoga: Essai sur les origines de la mystique indienne ("Yoga: Essay on the Origins of Indian Mysticism") and was named assistant professor at Bucharest, where he taught the history of religions and Indian philosophy (1933-39). In 1945 he went to Paris as a visiting professor at the École des Hautes Études of the Sorbonne. In 1956 he became professor of the history of religions at the University of Chicago, where he remained. In 1961 he founded the journal History of Religions.

Fundamentally, Eliade considered religious experience in traditional and contemporary societies as credible phenomena that he termed hierophanies (i.e., manifestations of the sacred in the world). His researches traced the forms that these hierophanies have taken throughout the world and through time. [1]

Works

((in Romanian unless noted))

Literary works

Novels

• Maitreyi ("La Nuit Bengali" or "Bengal Nights")
• Noaptea de Sânziene ("The Forbidden Forest")
• Isabel și apele diavolului ("Isabel and the Devil's Waters")
• Romanul Adolescentului Miop ("Novel of the Nearsighted Adolescent")

Novellas

• Domnișoara Christina ("Miss Christina")
• Tinereţe fără tinereţe ("Youth Without Youth"),

Short stories

• Secretul doctorului Honigberger ("The Secret of Dr. Honigberger"
• La ţigănci ("With the Gypsy Girls")

Academical works

Theses

• Yoga: Essai sur les origines de la mystique indienne ("Yoga: Essay on the Origins of Indian Mysticism"), 1933

Essays

• Images et Symboles. Essais sur le symbolisme magico-religieux, Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1952. (in French)
  • Imagini şi simboluri, trans. Alexandra Beldescu, Bucureşti: Humanitas, 1994. (in Romanian)
• Das Heilige und das Profane, original publish in: Emesto Grassi, Rowohlts Deutsche Enzyklopädie, Reinbek: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, 1957. (in German)
  • The Sacred and The profane, trans. Willard R. Trask, Harcourt, New York: Brace & World, 1963. (in English)
  • Le sacré et le profane, Paris: Galimard, 1965. (in French)
  • Sacrul şi profanul, trans. Brânduşa Prelipceanu, Bucureşti: Humanitas, 2000; 3rd edition, 2005. (in Romanian)
• Naissances mystiques. Essai sur quelques types d'initiation, Paris: Galleimard, 1959.
• Mephistopheles et l'androgyne, Paris: Gallimard, 1962.
• Aspects du mythe, Paris: Gallimard, 1963.
• The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion, Chicago & Illinois: The University of Chicago, 1969. (in English)
  • La nostalgie des origines. Methodologie et historie des religions, Paris: Gallimard, 1971. (in French)
• Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashion: Essays in Comparative Religion, 1976

Monographs

• Solilocvii, 1932
• Oceanografie, 1934
• Alchimia asiatică, 1935
• Yoga. Essai sur les origines de la mystique indienne, 1936 (book after his Thesis)
• Cosmologie şi alchimie babiloniană, 1937; 2nd edition, Iaşi: Editura Moldova, 1991.
• Fragmentarium, 1939
  • Fragmentarium, trans. Alain Paruit, L'herne, 1989. (in French)
• Mitul reintegrării, 1942
• Techniques du Yoga, Paris: Gallimard, 1948. (in French)
• Traité d'histoire des religions, 1949 (Patterns of Comparative Religion)
• Le Mythe de l'éternel retour. Archétypes et répétition, 1949 (in French)
  • Cosmos and History. The Myth of the Eternal Return'', trans. Willard R. Trask, New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1954. (in English)
  • El mito del eterno retorno. Arquetipos y repeticion, trans. Ricardo Anaya, Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 2001. (in Spanish)
• Le Chamanisme et les techniques archaďques de l'extase, 1951 (Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy)

Edited books

• A History of Religious Ideas (1978-85)
• Encyclopedia of Religion, 16 vols., MacMiliam
• Histoire des croyances el des idees reiigieuses, I, II vol., 1976; 3rd vol., 1983, Paris: Payot.

Miscellanea

• Salazar şi revoluţia în Portugalia',1942
• Insula lui Euthanasius, 1943
• Comentarii la legenda Meşterului Manole, 1943
• Os Romenos, Latinos Do OMente, 1943
• Briser le loit de la maison, 1986

Interviews

• L'Epreuve du Labyrinthe (entretiens avec CL.-H. Rocquet), Belfond, 1978. (in French)

Literature

Monographs

• Florin Ţurcanu, Mircea Eliade. Prizonierul istoriei, Bucureşti: Humanitas, 2005

Selected essays

• Christian K. Wedemeyer & Wendy Doniger, Hermeneutics, Politics, and the History of Religions: The Contested Legacies of Joachim Wach and Mircea Eliade, Oxford University Press, 2010

Journals

• Fragments d'un jounal I (1945-1969), trans. Luc Badesco, Paris: Gallimard, 1973.
• Les promesses de l'Equinoxe. Memorie, I (1907-1937), trans. Cosntantin N. Grigoresco, Paris: Gallimard, 1980.
• Fragments d'un journal II (1970-1978), trans. C. Grigoresco, Paris: Gallimard, 1973.
• Les moissons du solstice. Memores, II (1937-1960), trans. Alain Paruit, Paris: Gallimard, 1988.

Correspondence

• Jurnalul portughez şi alte scrieri (1941-1945) , 2 vols., Bucureşti: Humanitas, 2006 Review Review
  • Diario portoghese, trans. Cristina Fantechi, Milano: Jaca Book, 2009. (in Italian)
  • The Portugal Journal, trans. Mac Linscott Ricketts, New York: State University of New York, 2010. (in English)

Bibliographies

• on wikipedia

Documentaries

• Emil Cioran: Apocalipsa dupa Cioran [Apocalipse According to Cioran], Director: Gabriel Liiceanu, 1995. (in Romanian)

Links

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mircea_Eliade
• http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mircea_Eliade