میرچا الیاده
license
98
2192
100
معنی کلمه میرچا الیاده
معنی واژه میرچا الیاده
mircha eliade
|
میرچا الیاده
معنی:
میرچا الیاده (Mircea Eliade ) زاده ۱۹۰۷ در بخارست، درگذشته ۱۹۸۶ از اسطورهشناسان و دینپژوهان نامدار است. وی در رومانی به دنیا آمد. در دبیرستان به مطالعه شیمی و زیستشناسی علاقه نشان داد. در هفده سالگی برای مطالعه کتاب شاخه زرین اثر جیمز فریزر زبان انگلیسی را فراگرفت. سپس آموختن زبانهای ایتالیایی، عربی و فارسی را آغاز کرد. پس از دریافت مدرک کارشناسی از دانشگاه بخارست به هند عزیمت کرد و در دانشگاه کلکته به آموختن زبان سانسکریت و مطالعه آثار شرقی، دینشناسی و اسطوره مشغول شد. در آنجا مدرک دکترا گرفت و برای تدریس به دانشگاه سوربن دعوت شد. در سال ۱۹۵۲ میلادی مجموعه گفتگوهای خود با کارل یونگ منتشر کرد. الیاده در سال ۱۹۸۶ درگذشت.
محتویات
زندگی و تحصیل
میرچا الیاده در مارس ۱۹۰۷ در بخارست رومانی به دنیا آمد. بخشی از تحصیلات دانشگاهی خود را در همانجا گذارند. چهار سال در هند به مطالعه فلسفه، ادیان و فرهنگ هند، به ویژه یوگا و زبان سانسکریت پرداخت. سپس به رومانی بازگشت و تز دکترای خود را به عنوان تاریخ تطبیقی تکنیکهای یوگا در سال ۱۹۳۰ گذارند. الیاده پایان نامهاش را در ۱۹۳۶ منتشر کرد. وی به تدریس در دانشگاه بخارست پرداخت و مقالات بسیاری در زمینه تاریخ و تطبیق ادیان و فولکور و نیز چند داستان قابل توجه نوشت.
در ۱۹۴۰ وابسته فرهنگی در لندن شد و در ۱۹۴۱ به لیبسبون منتقل شد. بنا به دعوت پروفسور ژرژ دومزیل به تدریس تاریخ ادیان در کلاس آزاد مدرسه تتبعات عالیه در ۱۹۴۵ مشغول شد و در دسامبر همان سال به عضویت در انجمن آسیایی پاریس درآمد. الیاده طی همین سالها ملاقاتها و گفتوگوهای بسیاری با شخصیتهای رومانی مقیم پاریس از جمله: الناوکه رسکو، امیل چوران، اوژن یونسکو و جورجه انسکو داشت.
پس از جنگ جهانی دوم به پاریس رفت و به تدریس در سوربن و پس از آن در اغلب دانشگاههای اروپا پرداخت. در آنجا با مجلات نقد، تاریخ ادیان، کمپروندر، و پارو همکاری داشت. الیاده بنا به دعوت یواخیم واخ، استاد دانشگاه شیکاگو، برای تدریس در بخش تاریخ ادیان به امریکا رفت.
کنفرانسها
الیاده در کنفرانسهای متعددی شرکت و سخنرانی کرد. برخی از آنها عبارتند از: کنفرانس در کلژ فرانسه درباره ساختار اسطوره در دنیای مدرن ( ژانویه ۱۹۵۰)، کنفرانس در رم درباره شمنیزم و در انستیتو اورینتال بنا به دعوت توچی راجع به تانتریسم و شمنیزم (مارس ۱۹۵۰) کنفرانس ارانوس در آسکونا، شرکت در کنگره بینالمللی تاریخ ادیان در آمستردام (سپتامبر ۱۹۵۰)، شرکت در کنگره بینالمللی شرقشناسی مونیخ (۱۹۵۵)، کنفرانس دیدارهای بینالمللی در ژنو (۱۹۵۳)، شرکت در کنگره تاریخ ادیان در شیکاگو (آوریل ۱۹۵۵)، شرکت در کنگره تاریخ ادیان در توکیو (۱۹۵۸) و ماربورگ (۱۹۶۰).
افتخارات علمی
الیاده در ۱۹۶۴ از طرف دانشگاه شیکاگو به اعطای عنوان استاد خدمات ممتاز سیول ال. آیوری مفتخر شد و در ۱۹۶۶ دکترای افتخاری دانشگاه ییل را دریافت کرد. دریافت مدال طلای جایزه فرهنگ مسیحی از طرف دانشگاه ویندسور کانادا و دریافت دکترای افتخاری از ریپون کالج در ۱۹۶۹ و به عضویت درآمدن در آکادمی بریتانیا در سال ۱۹۷۰ از دیگر افتخارات علمی اوست. الیاده از ۱۹۷۰ به بعد دکترای افتخاری از دانشگاهها و مراکز معتبر علمی متعددی را دریافت کرد. برخی از آنها عبارتند از: کالج بوستون (۱۹۷۱)، کالج حقوق سیل فیلادلفیا (۱۹۷۲)، کالج اولبرین (۱۹۷۳)، آکادمی بلژیک (۱۹۷۵) و دانشگاه سوربن (۱۹۷۶) و دریافت کمن لوژیون دونور از سوربن (۱۹۸۴).
الیاده در دهه آخر عمرش، به طرحریزی و نظارت بر تألیف و تدوین دایرةالمعارف دین مشغول بود تا اینکه پس از تکمیل تدوین این دایرةالمعارف و درست یک ماه پس از نگارش پیشگفتار خود بر آن درگذشت. این دایرةالمعارف به زبان انگلیسی در ۱۶ مجلد و در حدود هشت هزار صفحه است که دارای ۲۷۵۰ مقاله و ۱۴۰۰ نفر از پژوهشگران پنجاه کشور جهان با آن همکاری کردهاند. میرچا الیاده سرانجام در ۱۴ آوریل ۱۹۸۶ دچار سکته مغزی شد و در ۲۲ آوریل درگذشت.
آثار
برخی از آثار الیاده عبارتند از:
سیاحت معنوی
تاریخ تطبیقی تکنیکهای یوگا
منشأ عرفان هندی
تاریخ ادیان
شمنیزم
یوگا
رویاها و رمزها
ولادت عارفانه
اسطوره و نماد
چشماندازهای اسطوره
باورها و عقاید دینی
سرویراستاری دایرةالمعارف دین
اندیشه
الیاده در تفسیر و تأویل پدیدههای دینی روش و نگرش تازهای داشت و بر آن بود که نمادپردازی دینی، بهترین جلوه پاسخ خلاقانهای است که انسان به هیبت هستی و حضور در کیهان ناپیدا کران میدهد. انسان نهایتا با کیهان همسو و همساخت (همان هماهنگی و همسانی جهان صغیر با جهان کبیر که ریشه در اندیشههای دینی و عرفانی کهن دارد) و اساطیر کهن که حکم صور ازلی یا اعیان ثابته را دارند، هنوز و همچنان در ذهن و زندگی انسان جدید نفوذ دارند. وی بر آن بود که تاریخ و تحقیق ادیان، همدلی و انساندوستی به بار میآورد که بسی فراتر و اصیلتر از اومانیسم غیردینی غربی است. روش و نگرش الیاده در اتمام آثارش، تلفیقی و کثرتگرایانه و همراه با وسعت مشرب است و آمیزهای است از مردمشناسی، پدیدارشناسی به شیوه هوسرل، ساختگرایی و تأویل و کشف معنای باطنی یا هرمنوتیک. این نکته هم به عنوان بخشی از نگرش او قابل ذکر است که او تقدس یا امر قدسی، یعنی جوهر مشترک همه جلوههای حیات و فرهنگی دینی را امری اصیل، بسیط، واحد و تحویلپذیر و غیرقابل تجزیه و تحویل به حقایق، امور، عناصر، تجارب و معارف دیگر میداند.
به اعتقاد الیاده، حوزه دین را باید به طور مستقل در نظر گرفت. دین را نباید به امور دیگری مانند جامعهشناسی، روانشناسی و فیزیولوژی، اقتصاد، زبان، هنر و غیره تحویل داد؛ یعنی ماهیت دین را نباید با این امور تبیین کرد. پدیده دین را باید حوزه مستقلی در نظر گرفت و آن را بدون فروکاستن به دیگر حوزههای معرفت بشری تبیین کرد. تبیین دین براساس مقولات دیگر نظیر آنچه ذکر شد، همان تحویلگرایی است.
تفاوت تحویلگرایی و نظر الیاده درباره دین، نگاه علی و معلولی است. اگر تحویلگرایی را بپذیریم، دین متغیر مستقلی نیست؛ تغییر دین معلول امور دیگری مانند روانشناسی و جامعهشناسی است، یعنی دیگر وجوه زندگی بشر، مانند بعد روانی و اجتماعی و غیره، عامل اصلی در تغییر و نیز تبیین دین خواهند بود. زندگی دینی را باید با این امور تبیین کرد. این همان دید معمولی درباره ماهیت دین است.
اما بنا به نظر الیاده، دین غیرقابل تحویل به این امور است، یعنی دین خود متغیر مستقلی است. دین نقش مستقلی در حیات بشر دارد. دین را باید علتی مستقل درنظر گرفت، نه معلول عوامل دیگر. نگاه علّی آنگاه جایگزین نگاه معلولی میشود که تحویلگرایی را نپذیریم.
پیشفرض دوم الیاده مربوط به روش بررسی دین است. در پیشفرض نخست دین را صرفاً براساس امور اجتماعی و روانی و غیره نمیتوان تبیین کرد. الیاده معتقد است که باید از دو منظر به دین نگریست و مطالعه و تبیین حقیقی دین باید براساس ترکیب این دو منظر صورت گیرد
در گام اول باید از منظر تاریخ به دین نگریست. دینپژوهان باید سیر تاریخی ادیان را بررسی کنند. از این نظر که دینپژوهان پیشینه ادیان و تحولات تاریخی آنها را بررسی میکنند، موضوع مورد بحث آنها تاریخ است.
گام دوم این است که از منظر «مقایسه و تطبیق» به ادیان بنگریم. الیاده میگوید: «بدون مقایسه، هیچ دانش حقیقیای وجود ندارد». در مورد ادیان باید باورها، مراسم و نمادهای هر دینی را با باورها و مراسم و نمادهای ادیان دیگر مقایسه کرد، و پس از آن میان آنها داوری کرد.
البته مورخان هم در بررسیهای تاریخی خود به مقایسه برخی امور میپردازند، ولی به نظر الیاده، پدیدههای متنوع دینی مانند باورها، اعمال، نمادها، اسطورهها، و... را باید بدون درنظر گرفتن مکان و زمان اصلی آنها سنجید. زمانها و مکانهای این مظاهر دینی فرق میکند، امّا همه آنها یکسانند و میتوان همه آنها را در آزمون قیاس نهاد.
مظاهر پدیدههای دینی نیز مکانها و زمانهای معینی برای خود دارند؛ مثلاً در هر دینی عبادت در زمان و مکان خاصی انجام میشود، ولی این عبادتها را بدون درنظر گرفتن زمان و مکان آنها میتوان مقایسه کرد. همچنین به عنوان مثال، زئوس (Zeus) خدای یونانیان بود و آنها زئوس را میپرستیدند. یونانیان به خدایان بیشماری اعتقاد داشتند؛ زئوس خدای مذکر و برتر بود، خدای آسمان بود، در زمانها و مکانهای گوناگونی ظاهر میشد و برای خود همسری داشت. زئوس به یونانیان اختصاص داشت و در ادیان دیگر ملل، وجود ندارد، امّا «خدای آسمان» به یونانیان اختصاصی ندارد و در دیگر ادیان هم میتوان چنین چیزی را یافت. ما با بررسی خدای آسمانی در فرهنگها و ادیان مختلف میتوانیم به حقایق کلی دست بیابیم. این روش بررسی را، الیاده پدیدارشناسی مینامد.
به نظر الیاده در تمام ادیان، دینداران میان دو سطح مقدس و نامقدس فرق میگذارند.
نامقدس قلمرو اشیایی است که ما هر روز با آنها سروکار داریم؛ قلمرو اشیای معمولی و غیرمهم. مراد اشیایی است که اهمیت خاص دینی برای ما ندارند. مقدس مقابل چنین اموری است. مقدس فضای امور فوق طبیعی و اشیای غیرعادی است. نامقدس در معرض نابودی و زوال است، ولی مقدس همیشگی، اصیل و واقعی است. نامقدس صحنهای از حیات بشر را دربرمیگیرد که تغییر میپذیرد و کهنه میشود. ولی مقدس عرصهای است که زنده است، و ترتیب و کمال دارد. به نظر الیاده چشمه دین از همین تمایز نهادن میان مقدس و نامقدس میجوشد.
الیاده عنصر اساسی و مشترک میان ادیان را همان امر مقدس میداند. قلمرو دین، تمیز نهاده میان مقدس و نامقدس است، ولی الیاده بر خلاف اتو، امر مقدس را تنها در مواجهه با خداوند جستوجو نمیکند. امر مقدس عمومیترین پدیده مشترک میان همه ادیان است. در تمام امور دینی میتوان اثری از تکنیک مقدس و نامقدس یافت. برای فرد دیندار، مکان همگون و یکسان نیست، یعنی انسان دیندار همه مکانها را یکسان تجربه نمیکند. برخی مکانها برای او مقدسند. به عنوان مثال، برای فرد مسلمان، مساجد نسبت به اماکن عمومی تقدس خاصی دارند؛ پس مسلمان در مسجد، مکان مقدس را تجربه میکند. از این جهت، مکان برای دیندار نامتجانس است. تفکیک امر مقدس از نامقدس در مکان هم جاری است. همچنین دیندار، زمان را به نحو یکسان تجربه نمیکند. زمان از نظر دیندار نامتجانس است. برخی زمانها – بر خلاف دیگر زمانها – مقدسند و دیندار چنین زمانی را به نحو مقدس تجربه میکند.
با این تحلیل الیاده، تفکیک میان مقدس و نامقدس عمومیترین پدیده در تمام ادیان است، و محدودیتهای تحلیل اتو در رهیافت او وجود ندارد. اساساً از نظر الیاده این همین تکفیک نهادن میان مقدس و نامقدس است و تفاوت انسان دیندار و بیدین در همین امور است. برای فرد بیدین زمانها و مکانها متجانسند، ولی برای دیندار زمانها و مکانها نامتجانس و ناهمگونند.
الیاده مدعی است که روش او تطبیقی و جهانی است، یعنی عناصری را از ادیان مختلف جهان با هم مورد تطبیق قرار میدهد و به نتایجی نیز میرسد، ولی بررسی او جهانی نیست. به عنوان مثال ادیان چین و نیز اسلام را درنظر نگرفته است. به عنوان مثال، الیاده تاریخیگری انسان مدرن را معلول سنت یهودی – مسیحی میداند. به عبارت دیگر، خود یهودیت و مسیحیت را عامل پیدایش فلسفههای سکولار میداند. او میگوید: خود عقاید یهودی – مسیحی موجب شد که روند تفکر مدرن به تاریخیگری و سکولاریسم بینجامد. ولی اسلام هم به طور مشخص با یهودیت و مسیحیت در این نکته شریک است که امر مقدس را صرفاً بیرون از تاریخ نمیبیند، بلکه امر مقدس را در همه جا و همهٔ زمانها حاضر میداند. اگر نفس این تفکر موجب پیدایش سکولاریسم و تاریخیگری در غرب شد، چگونه است که در حوزه اسلام عکس این تحول رخ داد. مسلماً عوامل مهم دیگری باید در کار باشد که بررسی آنها از موضوع بحث ما خارج است. در واقع الیاده بدون بررسی اسلام و یا ادیان چینی، به تعمیمی شتابزده روی آورده است.
از این گذشته، الیاده در ادیان مختلف، نمادها و اسطورههایی را مییابد که نشان میدهند امر مقدس واقعیت دارد و سپس میان ادیان مختلف و دین با ادیان باستانی ارتباط برقرار میکند. امّا به کار بردن چنین روشی در ادیان آسان نیست. در هر یک از ادیان، نمادها و اساطیر فراوانی یافت میشوند که با تحلیل الیاده سرسازگاری ندارد. ارائه نظریهای جهانی درباره دین امر مشکلی است. همه ادیان از ماهیت و عناصر یکسانی برخوردار نیستند و تفاوتهای عمیقی میان آنهاست. لذا نمیتوان با یافتن چند عنصر مشابه، نظریهای کلی درباره همه ادیان ارائه داد و ساختار همه ادیان را از این طریق نمایاند.
پینوشت
↑ میرچا الیاده، باشگاه کتاب
کتابشناسی
دائرهالمعارف دین (در ۱۶ مجلد)
منبع
در ویکیانبار پروندههایی دربارهٔ میرچا الیاده موجود است.
نقد ادبی نوشته حمیدرضا شایگانفر، انتشارات دستان
میرچا الیاده، باشگاه کتاب
ردههای صفحه: استادان دانشگاه شیکاگواسطورهشناسان اهل رومانی اهالی بخارست افسانهنگاران درگذشتگان ۱۹۸۶ (میلادی)درگذشتگان به علت سکته دینپژوهان اهل رومانی زادگان ۱۹۰۷ (میلادی)شمنباوری فیلسوفان دی فیلسوفان سده ۲۰فیلسوفان مسیحی نمایشنامهنویسان اهل رومانی
از ویکی پدیا
قس عربی
میرتشا إلیاده (13 مارس 1907 - 22 أبریل 1986) (بالإنجلیزیة: Mircea Eliade) کاتب ومؤرخ أدیان وفیلسوف وروائی رومانی، شغل کرسی أستاذ تاریخ الأدیان فی جامعة شیکاغو، وله مؤلفات فی أدب الخیال وأدب الرحلات والسیر الذاتیة، وتاریخ الأدیان وفلسفة الأدیان.
هذه بذرة مقالة عن موضوع له علاقة برومانیا تحتاج للنمو والتحسین، ساهم فی إثرائها بالمشارکة فی تحریرها.
هذه بذرة مقالة عن شخصیات أو مصطلحات متعلقة بالفلسفة تحتاج للنمو والتحسین، فساهم فی إثرائها بالمشارکة فی تحریرها.
تصنیفات: وفیات بسبب سکتة دماغیةدبلوماسیون رومانیون موالید 1907وفیات 1986رومانیون
قس انگلیسی
Mircea Eliade (Romanian pronunciation: eliˈade; March 13 February 28 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. 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 fantasy 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 Devils Waters") and the 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.
Contents
1 Biography
1.1 Childhood
1.2 Adolescence and literary debut
1.3 University studies and Indian sojourn
1.4 Criterion and Cuvântul
1.5 1930s political transition
1.6 Internment and diplomatic service
1.7 Early exile
1.8 Final years and death
2 Work
2.1 The general nature of religion
2.1.1 Sacred and profane
2.1.2 Origin myths and sacred time
2.1.3 Eternal return and "Terror of history"
2.1.4 Coincidentia oppositorum
2.2 Exceptions to the general nature
2.3 Symbolism of the Center
2.4 The High God
2.5 Shamanism
2.5.1 Overview
2.5.2 Death, resurrection and secondary functions
3 Eliades philosophy
3.1 Early contributions
3.2 Philosopher of religion
3.2.1 Anti-reductionism and the "transconscious"
3.2.2 Platonism and "primitive ontology"
3.2.3 Existentialism and secularism
3.2.4 Religious survivals in the secular world
3.2.5 Modern man and the "Terror of history"
3.2.6 Inter-cultural dialogue and a "new humanism"
3.2.7 Christianity and the "salvation" of History
3.2.8 "Modern gnosticism", Romanticism and Eliades nostalgia
4 Criticism of Eliades scholarship
4.1 Overgeneralization
4.2 Lack of empirical support
4.3 Far right and nationalist influences
5 Literary works
5.1 Generic traits
5.2 Oriental themed novels
5.3 Portraits of a generation
5.4 Fantasy literature
5.5 Other writings
6 Controversy: antisemitism and links with the Iron Guard
6.1 Early statements
6.2 Polemics and exile
6.3 Posterity
6.4 Political symbolism in Eliades fiction
7 Cultural legacy
7.1 Tributes
7.2 Portrayals, filmography and dramatizations
8 See also
9 Notes
10 References
11 Further reading
11.1 English
11.2 Other languages
12 External links
Biography
Childhood
Born in Bucharest, he was the son of Romanian Land Forces officer Gheorghe Eliade (whose original surname was Ieremia) and Jeana née Vasilescu. An Orthodox believer, Gheorghe Eliade registered his sons 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. 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.
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.
He notably described this stage in his life as marked by an unrepeatable epiphany. 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 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.
Robert Ellwood, a professor of religion who did his graduate studies under Mircea Eliade, saw this type of nostalgia as one of the most characteristic themes in Eliades life and academic writings.
Adolescence and literary debut
After completing his primary education at the school on Mântuleasa Street, Eliade attended the Spiru Haret National College in the same class as Arşavir Acterian, Haig Acterian, and Petre Viforeanu (and several years the senior of Nicolae Steinhardt, who eventually became a close friend of Eliades). Among his other colleagues was future philosopher Constantin Noica and Noicas friend, future art historian Barbu Brezianu.
As a child, Eliade was fascinated with the natural world, which formed the setting of his very first literary attempts, as well as with Romanian folklore and the Christian faith as expressed by peasants. Growing up, he aimed to find and record what he believed was the common source of all religious traditions. The young Eliades interest in physical exercise and adventure led him to pursue mountaineering and sailing, and he also joined the Romanian Boy Scouts.
With a group of friends, he designed and sailed a boat on the Danube, from Tulcea to the Black Sea. In parallel, Eliade grew estranged from the educational environment, becoming disenchanted with the discipline required and obsessed with the idea that he was uglier and less virile than his colleagues. In order to cultivate his willpower, he would force himself to swallow insects and only slept four to five hours a night. At one point, Eliade was flunking four subjects, among which was the study of Romanian language.
Instead, he became interested in natural science and chemistry, as well as the occult, and wrote short pieces on entomological subjects. Despite his fathers concern that he was in danger of losing his already weak eyesight, Eliade read passionately. One of his favorite authors was Honoré de Balzac, whose work he studied carefully. Eliade also became acquainted with the modernist short stories of Giovanni Papini and social anthropology studies by James George Frazer.
His interest in the two writers led him to learn Italian and English in private, and he also began studying Persian and Hebrew. At the time, Eliade became acquainted with Saadis poems and the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. He was also interested in philosophy—studying, among others, Socrates, Vasile Conta, and the Stoics Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, and read works of history—the two Romanian historians who influenced him from early on were Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu and Nicolae Iorga. His first published work was the 1921 Inamicul viermelui de mătase ("The Silkworms Enemy"), followed by Cum am găsit piatra filosofală ("How I Found the Philosophers Stone"). Four years later, Eliade completed work on his debut volume, the autobiographical Novel of the Nearsighted Adolescent.
University studies and Indian sojourn
Between 1925 and 1928, he attended the University of Bucharests Faculty of Philosophy and Letters in 1928, earning his diploma with a study on Early Modern Italian philosopher Tommaso Campanella. In 1927, Eliade traveled to Italy, where he met Papini and collaborated with the scholar Giuseppe Tucci.
It was during his student years that Eliade met Nae Ionescu, who lectured in Logic, becoming one of his disciples and friends. He was especially attracted to Ionescus radical ideas and his interest in religion, which signified a break with the rationalist tradition represented by senior academics such as Constantin Rădulescu-Motru, Dimitrie Gusti, and Tudor Vianu (all of whom owed inspiration to the defunct literary society Junimea, albeit in varying degrees).
Eliades scholarly works began after a long period of study in British India, at the University of Calcutta. Finding that the Maharaja of Kassimbazar sponsored European scholars to study in India, Eliade applied and was granted an allowance for four years, which was later doubled by a Romanian scholarship. In autumn 1928, he sailed for Calcutta to study Sanskrit and philosophy under Surendranath Dasgupta, a Bengali Cambridge alumnus and professor at Calcutta University, the author of a five volume History of Indian Philosophy. Before reaching the Indian subcontinent, Eliade also made a brief visit to Egypt. Once there, he visited large areas of the region, and spent a short period at a Himalayan ashram.
He studied the basics of Indian philosophy, and, in parallel, learned Sanskrit, Pali and Bengali under Dasguptas direction. At the time, he also became interested in the actions of Mahatma Gandhi, whom he met personally, and the Satyagraha as a phenomenon; later, Eliade adapted Gandhian ideas in his discourse on spirituality and Romania.
In 1930, while living with Dasgupta, Eliade fell in love with his hosts daughter, Maitreyi Devi, later writing a barely disguised autobiographical novel Maitreyi (also known as "La Nuit Bengali" or "Bengal Nights"), in which he claimed that he carried on a physical relationship with her.
Eliade received his PhD in 1933, with a thesis on Yoga practices. The book, which was translated into French three years later, had significant impact in academia, both in Romania and abroad.
He later recalled that the book was an early step for understanding not just Indian religious practices, but also Romanian spirituality. During the same period, Eliade began a correspondence with the Ceylonese-born philosopher Ananda Coomaraswamy. In 1936–1937, he functioned as honorary assistant for Ionescus course, lecturing in Metaphysics.
In 1933, Mircea Eliade had a physical relationship with the actress Sorana Ţopa, while falling in love with Nina Mareş, whom he ultimately married. The latter, introduced to him by his new friend Mihail Sebastian, already had a daughter, Giza, from a man who had divorced her. Eliade subsequently adopted Giza, and the three of them moved to an apartment at 141 Dacia Boulevard. He left his residence in 1936, during a trip he made to the United Kingdom and Nazi Germany, when he first visited London, Oxford and Berlin.
Criterion and Cuvântul
Eliades home in Bucharest (1934-1940)
After contributing various and generally polemical pieces in university magazines, Eliade came to the attention of journalist Pamfil Şeicaru, who invited him to collaborate on the nationalist paper Cuvântul, which was noted for its harsh tones. By then, Cuvântul was also hosting articles by Ionescu.
As one of the figures in the Criterion literary society (1933–1934), Eliades initial encounter with the traditional far right was polemical: the groups conferences were stormed by members of A. C. Cuzas National-Christian Defense League, who objected to what they viewed as pacifism and addressed antisemitic insults to several speakers, including Sebastian; in 1933, he was among the signers of a manifesto opposing Nazi Germanys state-enforced racism.
In 1934, at a time when Sebastian was publicly insulted by Nae Ionescu, who prefaced his book (De două mii de ani...) with thoughts on the "eternal damnation" of Jews, Mircea Eliade spoke out against this perspective, and commented that Ionescus references to the verdict "Outside the Church there is no salvation" contradicted the notion of Gods omnipotence. However, he contended that Ionescus text was not evidence of antisemitism.
In 1936, reflecting on the early history of the Romanian Kingdom and its Jewish community, he deplored the expulsion of Jewish savants from Romanian soil, making specific references to Moses Gaster, Heimann Hariton Tiktin and Lazăr Şăineanu. Eliades views at the time focused on innovation—in the summer of 1933, he replied to an anti-modernist critique written by George Călinescu:
All I wish for is a deep change, a complete transformation. But, for Gods sake, in any direction other than spirituality.
He and friends Emil Cioran and Constantin Noica were by then under the influence of Trăirism, a school of thought that was formed around the ideals expressed by Ionescu. A form of existentialism, Trăirism was also the synthesis of traditional and newer right-wing beliefs. Early on, a public polemic was sparked between Eliade and Camil Petrescu: the two eventually reconciled and later became good friends.
Like Mihail Sebastian, who was himself becoming influenced by Ionescu, he maintained contacts with intellectuals from all sides of the political spectrum: their entourage included the right-wing Dan Botta and Mircea Vulcănescu, the non-political Petrescu and Ionel Jianu, and Belu Zilber, who was a member of the illegal Romanian Communist Party.
The group also included Haig Acterian, Mihail Polihroniade, Petru Comarnescu, Marietta Sadova and Floria Capsali.
He was also close to Marcel Avramescu, a former Surrealist writer whom he introduced to the works of René Guénon. A doctor in the Kabbalah and future Romanian Orthodox cleric, Avramescu joined Eliade in editing the short-lived esoteric magazine Memra (the only one of its kind in Romania).
Among the intellectuals who attended his lectures were Mihail Şora (whom he deemed his favorite student), Eugen Schileru and Miron Constantinescu—known later as, respectively, a philosopher, an art critic, and a sociologist and political figure of the communist regime. Mariana Klein, who became Şoras wife, was one of Eliades female students, and later authored works on his scholarship.
Eliade later recounted that he had himself enlisted Zilber as a Cuvântul contributor, in order for him to provide a Marxist perspective on the issues discussed by the journal. Their relation soured in 1935, when the latter publicly accused Eliade of serving as an agent for the secret police, Siguranţa Statului (Sebastian answered to the statement by alleging that Zilber was himself a secret agent, and the latter eventually retracted his claim).
1930s political transition
Eliades articles before and after his adherence to the principles of the Iron Guard (or, as it was usually known at the time, the Legionary Movement), beginning with his famous Itinerar spiritual ("Spiritual Itinerary", serialized in Cuvântul in 1927), center on several political ideals advocated by the far right.
They displayed his rejection of liberalism and the modernizing goals of the 1848 Wallachian revolution (perceived as "an abstract apology of Mankind" and "ape-like imitation of Europe"), as well as for democracy itself (accusing it of "managing to crush all attempts at national renaissance", and later praising Benito Mussolinis Fascist Italy on the grounds that, according to Eliade, "Italy, he who thinks for himself is promoted to the highest office in the shortest of times"). He approved of an ethnic nationalist state centered on the Orthodox Church (in 1927, despite his still-vivid interest in Theosophy, he recommended young intellectuals "the return to the Church"), which he opposed to, among others, the secular nationalism of Constantin Rădulescu-Motru; referring to this particular ideal as "Romanianism", Eliade was, in 1934, still viewing it as "neither fascism, nor chauvinism".
Eliade was especially dissatisfied with the incidence of unemployment among intellectuals, whose careers in state-financed institutions had been rendered uncertain by the Great Depression.
In 1936, Eliade was the focus of a campaign in the far right press, being targeted for having authored "pornography" in his Domnişoara Christina and Isabel şi apele diavolului (similar accusations were aimed at other cultural figures, including Tudor Arghezi and Geo Bogza). Assessments of Eliades work were in sharp contrast to one another: also in 1936, Eliade accepted an award from the Romanian Writers Society, of which he had been a member since 1934. In summer 1937, through an official decision which came as a result of the accusations, and despite student protests, he was stripped of his position at the University.
Eliade decided to sue the Ministry of Education, asking for a symbolic compensation of 1 leu. He won the trial, and regained his position as Nae Ionescus assistant.
Nevertheless, by 1937, he gave his intellectual support to the Iron Guard, in which he saw "a Christian revolution aimed at creating a new Romania", and a group able "to reconcile Romania with God". His articles of the time, published in Iron Guard papers such as Sfarmă Piatră and Buna Vestire, contain ample praises of the movements leaders (Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Ion Moţa, Vasile Marin, and Gheorghe Cantacuzino-Grănicerul). The transition he went through was similar to that of his fellow generation members and close collaborators—among the notable exceptions to this rule were Petru Comarnescu, sociologist Henri H. Stahl and future dramatist Eugène Ionesco, as well as Sebastian.
He eventually enrolled in the Totul pentru Ţară ("Everything for the Fatherland" Party), the political expression of the Iron Guard, and contributed to its 1937 electoral campaign in Prahova County—as indicated by his inclusion on a list of party members with county-level responsibilities (published in Buna Vestire).
Internment and diplomatic service
The stance taken by Eliade resulted in his arrest on July 14, 1938 after a crackdown on the Iron Guard authorized by King Carol II. At the time of his arrest, he had just interrupted a column on Provincia şi legionarismul ("The Province and Legionary Ideology") in Vremea, having been singled out by Prime Minister Armand Călinescu as an author of Iron Guard propaganda.
Eliade was kept for three weeks in a cell at the Siguranţa Statului Headquarters, in an attempt to have him sign a "declaration of dissociation" with the Iron Guard, but he refused to do so. In the first week of August he was transferred to a makeshift camp at Miercurea-Ciuc. When Eliade began coughing blood in October 1938, he was taken to a clinic in Moroeni. Eliade was simply released on November 12, and subsequently spent his time writing his play Iphigenia (also known as Ifigenia). In April 1940, with the help of Alexandru Rosetti, became the Cultural Attaché to the United Kingdom, a posting cut short when Romanian-British foreign relations were broken.
After leaving London he was assigned the office of Counsel and Press Officer (later Cultural Attaché) to the Romanian Embassy in Portugal, where he was kept on as diplomat by the National Legionary State (the Iron Guard government) and, ultimately, by Ion Antonescus regime. His office involved disseminating propaganda in favor of the Romanian state. In February 1941, weeks after the bloody Legionary Rebellion was crushed by Antonescu, Iphigenia was staged by the National Theater Bucharest—the play soon raised doubts that it owed inspiration to the Iron Guards ideology, and even that its inclusion in the program was a Legionary attempt at subversion.
In 1942, Eliade authored a volume in praise of the Estado Novo, established in Portugal by António de Oliveira Salazar, claiming that "The Salazarian state, a Christian and totalitarian one, is first and foremost based on love". On July 7 of the same year, he was received by Salazar himself, who assigned Eliade the task of warning Antonescu to withdraw the Romanian Army from the Eastern Front ("his place, I would not be grinding it in Russia"). Eliade also claimed that such contacts with the leader of a neutral country had made him the target for Gestapo surveillance, but that he had managed to communicate Salazars advice to Mihai Antonescu, Romanias Foreign Minister.
In autumn 1943, he traveled to occupied France, where he rejoined Emil Cioran, also meeting with scholar Georges Dumézil and the collaborationist writer Paul Morand. At the same time, he applied for a position of lecturer at the University of Bucharest, but withdrew from the race, leaving Constantin Noica and Ion Zamfirescu to dispute the position, in front of a panel of academics comprising Lucian Blaga and Dimitrie Gusti (Zamfirescus eventual selection, going against Blagas recommendation, was to be the topic of a controversy). In his private notes, Eliade wrote that he took no further interest in the office, because his visits abroad had convinced him that he had "something great to say", and that he could not function within the confines of "a minor culture". Also during the war, Eliade traveled to Berlin, where he met and conversed with controversial political theorist Carl Schmitt, and frequently visited Francoist Spain, where he notably attended the 1944 Lusitano-Spanish scientific congress in Córdoba. It was during his trips to Spain that Eliade met philosophers José Ortega y Gasset and Eugeni dOrs. He maintained a friendship with dOrs, and met him again on several occasions after the war.
Nina Eliade fell ill with uterine cancer and died during their stay in Lisbon, in late 1944. As the widower later wrote, the disease was probably caused by an abortion procedure she had undergone at an early stage of their relationship. He came to suffer with clinical depression, which increased as Romania and her Axis allies suffered major defeats on the Eastern Front. Contemplating a return to Romania as a soldier or a monk, he was on a continuous search for effective antidepressants, medicating himself with passion flower extract, and, eventually, with methamphetamine. This was probably not his first experience with drugs: vague mentions in his notebooks have been read as indication that Mircea Eliade was taking opium during his travels to Calcutta. Later, discussing the works of Aldous Huxley, Eliade wrote that the British authors use of mescaline as a source of inspiration had something in common with his own experience, indicating 1945 as a date of reference and adding that it was "needless to explain why that is".
Early exile
At signs that the Romanian communist regime was about to take hold, Eliade opted not to return to the country. On September 16, 1945, he moved to France with his adopted daughter Giza. Once there, he resumed contacts with Dumézil, who helped him recover his position in academia. On Dumézils recommendation, he taught at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. It was estimated that, at the time, it was not uncommon for him to work 15 hours a day. Eliade married a second time, to the Romanian exile Christinel Cotescu. His second wife, the descendant of boyars, was the sister-in-law of prestigious conductor Ionel Perlea.
Together with Emil Cioran and other Romanian expatriates, Eliade rallied with the former diplomat Alexandru Busuioceanu, helping him publicize anti-communist opinion to the Western European public. He was also briefly involved in publishing a Romanian-language magazine, titled Luceafărul ("The Morning Star"), and was again in contact with Mihail Şora, who had been granted a scholarship to study in France, and by Şoras wife Mariana. In 1947, he was facing material constraints, and Ananda Coomaraswamy found him a job as a French-language teacher in the United States, at a school in Arizona; the arrangement ended upon Coomaraswamys death in September.
Beginning in 1948, he wrote for the journal Critique, edited by French thinker Georges Bataille. The following year, he went on a visit to Italy, where he wrote the first 300 pages of his novel Noaptea de Sânziene (he visited the country a third time in 1952). He collaborated with Carl Jung and the Eranos circle after Henry Corbin recommended him in 1949, and wrote for the Antaios magazine (edited by Ernst Jünger). In 1950, Eliade began attending Eranos conferences, meeting Jung, Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, Gershom Scholem and Paul Radin. He described Eranos as "one of the most creative cultural experiences of the modern Western world."
In October 1956, he moved to the United States, settling in Chicago the following year. He had been invited by Joachim Wach to give a series of lectures at Wachs home institution, the University of Chicago. Eliade and Wach are generally admitted to be the founders of the "Chicago school" that basically defined the study of religions for the second half of the 20th century. Upon Wachs death before the lectures were delivered, Eliade was appointed as his replacement, becoming, in 1964, the Sewell Avery Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions. Beginning in 1954, with the first edition of his volume on Eternal Return, Eliade also enjoyed commercial success: the book went through several editions under different titles, which sold over 100,000 copies.
In 1966, Mircea Eliade became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also worked as editor-in-chief of Macmillan Publishers Encyclopedia of Religion, and, in 1968, lectured in religious history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It was also during that period that Mircea Eliade completed his voluminous and influential History of Religious Ideas, which grouped together the overviews of his main original interpretations of religious history. He occasionally traveled out of the United States, notably attending the Congress for the History of Religions in Marburg (1960) and visiting Sweden and Norway (1970).
Final years and death
Initially, Eliade was attacked with virulence by the Romanian Communist Party press, chiefly by România Liberă—which described him as "the Iron Guards ideologue, enemy of the working class, apologist of Salazars dictatorship". However, the regime also made secretive attempts to enlist his and Ciorans support: Haig Acterians widow, theater director Marietta Sadova, was sent to Paris in order to re-establish contacts with the two. Although the move was planned by Romanian officials, her encounters were to be used as evidence incriminating her at a February 1960 trial for treason (where Constantin Noica and Dinu Pillat were the main defendants). Romanias secret police, the Securitate, also portrayed Eliade as a spy for the British Secret Intelligence Service and a former agent of the Gestapo.
He was slowly rehabilitated at home beginning in the early 1960s, under the rule of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. In the 1970s, Eliade was approached by the Nicolae Ceauşescu regime in several ways, in order to have him return. The move was prompted by the officially sanctioned nationalism and Romanias claim to independence from the Eastern Bloc, as both phenomena came to see Eliades prestige as an asset. An unprecedented event occurred with the interview that was granted by Mircea Eliade to poet Adrian Păunescu, during the latters 1970 visit to Chicago; Eliade complimented both Păunescus activism and his support for official tenets, expressing a belief that
the youth of Eastern Europe is clearly superior to that of Western Europe. I am convinced that, within ten years, the young revolutionary generation shant be behaving as does today the noisy minority of Western contesters. Eastern youth have seen the abolition of traditional institutions, have accepted it and are not yet content with the structures enforced, but rather seek to improve them.
Păunescus visit to Chicago was followed by those of the nationalist official writer Eugen Barbu and by Eliades friend Constantin Noica (who had since been released from jail). At the time, Eliade contemplated returning to Romania, but was eventually persuaded by fellow Romanian intellectuals in exile (including Radio Free Europes Virgil Ierunca and Monica Lovinescu) to reject Communist proposals. In 1977, he joined other exiled Romanian intellectuals in signing a telegram protesting the repressive measures newly enforced by the Ceauşescu regime. Writing in 2007, Romanian anthropologist Andrei Oişteanu recounted how, around 1984, the Securitate unsuccessfully pressured to become an agent of influence in Eliades Chicagoan circle.
During his later years, Eliades fascist past was progressively exposed publicly, the stress of which probably contributed to the decline of his health. By then, his writing career was hampered by severe arthritis. The last academic honors bestowed upon him were the French Academys Bordin Prize (1977) and the title of Doctor Honoris Causa, granted by the University of Washington (1985).
Mircea Eliade died at the Bernard Mitchell Hospital in April 1986. Eight days previously, he suffered a stroke while reading Emil Ciorans Exercises of Admiration, and had subsequently lost his speech function. Four months before, a fire had destroyed part of his office at the Meadville Lombard Theological School (an event which he had interpreted as an omen). Eliades Romanian disciple Ioan Petru Culianu, who recalled the scientific communitys reaction to the news, described Eliades death as "a mahaparanirvana", thus comparing it to the passing of Gautama Buddha. His body was cremated in Chicago, and the funeral ceremony was held on University grounds, at the Rockefeller Chapel. It was attended by 1,200 people, and included a public reading of Eliades text in which he recalled the epiphany of his childhood—the lecture was given by novelist Saul Bellow, Eliades colleague at the University.
Work
The general nature of religion
In his work on the history of religion, Eliade is most highly regarded for his writings on Alchemy, Shamanism, Yoga and what he called the eternal return—the implicit belief, supposedly present in religious thought in general, that religious behavior is not only an imitation of, but also a participation in, sacred events, and thus restores the mythical time of origins. Eliades thinking was in part influenced by Rudolf Otto, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Nae Ionescu and the writings of the Traditionalist School (René Guénon and Julius Evola). For instance, Eliades The Sacred and the Profane partially builds on Ottos The Idea of the Holy to show how religion emerges from the experience of the sacred, and myths of time and nature.
Eliade is noted for his attempt to find broad, cross-cultural parallels and unities in religion, particularly in myths. Wendy Doniger, Eliades colleague from 1978 until his death, notes that "Eliade argued boldly for universals where he might more safely have argued for widely prevalent patterns". His Treatise on the History of Religions was praised by French philologist Georges Dumézil for its coherence and ability to synthesize diverse and distinct mythologies.
Robert Ellwood describes Eliades approach to religion as follows. Eliade approaches religion by imagining an ideally "religious" person, whom he calls homo religiosus in his writings. Eliades theories basically describe how this homo religiosus would view the world. This does not mean that all religious practitioners actually think and act like homo religiosus. Instead, it means that religious behavior "says through its own language" that the world is as homo religiosus would see it, whether or not the real-life participants in religious behavior are aware of it. However, Ellwood notes that Eliade "tends to slide over that last qualification", implying that traditional societies actually thought like homo religiosus.
Sacred and profane
Moses taking off his shoes in front of the burning bush (illustration from a 16th century edition of the Speculum Humanae Salvationis).
Eliade argues that religious thought in general rests on a sharp distinction between the Sacred and the profane; whether it takes the form of God, gods, or mythical Ancestors, the Sacred contains all "reality", or value, and other things acquire "reality" only to the extent that they participate in the sacred.
Eliades understanding of religion centers on his concept of hierophany (manifestation of the Sacred)—a concept that includes, but is not limited to, the older and more restrictive concept of theophany (manifestation of a god). From the perspective of religious thought, Eliade argues, hierophanies give structure and orientation to the world, establishing a sacred order. The "profane" space of nonreligious experience can only be divided up geometrically: it has no "qualitative differentiation and, hence, no orientation given by virtue of its inherent structure". Thus, profane space gives man no pattern for his behavior. In contrast to profane space, the site of a hierophany has a sacred structure to which religious man conforms himself. A hierophany amounts to a "revelation of an absolute reality, opposed to the non-reality of the vast surrounding expanse". As an example of "sacred space" demanding a certain response from man, Eliade gives the story of Moses halting before Yahwehs manifestation as a burning bush (Exodus 3:5) and taking off his shoes.
Origin myths and sacred time
Eliade notes that, in traditional societies, myth represents the absolute truth about primordial time. According to the myths, this was the time when the Sacred first appeared, establishing the worlds structure—myths claim to describe the primordial events that made society and the natural world be that which they are. Eliade argues that all myths are, in that sense, origin myths: "myth, then, is always an account of a creation".
Many traditional societies believe that the power of a thing lies in its origin. If origin is equivalent to power, then "it is the first manifestation of a thing that is significant and valid" (a things reality and value therefore lies only in its first appearance).
According to Eliades theory, only the Sacred has value, only a things first appearance has value and, therefore, only the Sacreds first appearance has value. Myth describes the Sacreds first appearance; therefore, the mythical age is sacred time, the only time of value: "primitive man was interested only in the beginnings to him it mattered little what had happened to himself, or to others like him, in more or less distant times". Eliade postulated this as the reason for the "nostalgia for origins" that appears in many religions, the desire to return to a primordial Paradise.
Eternal return and "Terror of history"
Main article: Eternal return (Eliade)
Eliade argues that traditional man attributes no value to the linear march of historical events: only the events of the mythical age have value. To give his own life value, traditional man performs myths and rituals. Because the Sacreds essence lies only in the mythical age, only in the Sacreds first appearance, any later appearance is actually the first appearance
mircha eliade
ميرسيا إليادي
محتویات
زندگی و تحصیل
میرچا الیاده در مارس ۱۹۰۷ در بخارست رومانی به دنیا آمد. بخشی از تحصیلات دانشگاهی خود را در همانجا گذارند. چهار سال در هند به مطالعه فلسفه، ادیان و فرهنگ هند، به ویژه یوگا و زبان سانسکریت پرداخت. سپس به رومانی بازگشت و تز دکترای خود را به عنوان تاریخ تطبیقی تکنیکهای یوگا در سال ۱۹۳۰ گذارند. الیاده پایان نامهاش را در ۱۹۳۶ منتشر کرد. وی به تدریس در دانشگاه بخارست پرداخت و مقالات بسیاری در زمینه تاریخ و تطبیق ادیان و فولکور و نیز چند داستان قابل توجه نوشت.
در ۱۹۴۰ وابسته فرهنگی در لندن شد و در ۱۹۴۱ به لیبسبون منتقل شد. بنا به دعوت پروفسور ژرژ دومزیل به تدریس تاریخ ادیان در کلاس آزاد مدرسه تتبعات عالیه در ۱۹۴۵ مشغول شد و در دسامبر همان سال به عضویت در انجمن آسیایی پاریس درآمد. الیاده طی همین سالها ملاقاتها و گفتوگوهای بسیاری با شخصیتهای رومانی مقیم پاریس از جمله: الناوکه رسکو، امیل چوران، اوژن یونسکو و جورجه انسکو داشت.
پس از جنگ جهانی دوم به پاریس رفت و به تدریس در سوربن و پس از آن در اغلب دانشگاههای اروپا پرداخت. در آنجا با مجلات نقد، تاریخ ادیان، کمپروندر، و پارو همکاری داشت. الیاده بنا به دعوت یواخیم واخ، استاد دانشگاه شیکاگو، برای تدریس در بخش تاریخ ادیان به امریکا رفت.
کنفرانسها
الیاده در کنفرانسهای متعددی شرکت و سخنرانی کرد. برخی از آنها عبارتند از: کنفرانس در کلژ فرانسه درباره ساختار اسطوره در دنیای مدرن ( ژانویه ۱۹۵۰)، کنفرانس در رم درباره شمنیزم و در انستیتو اورینتال بنا به دعوت توچی راجع به تانتریسم و شمنیزم (مارس ۱۹۵۰) کنفرانس ارانوس در آسکونا، شرکت در کنگره بینالمللی تاریخ ادیان در آمستردام (سپتامبر ۱۹۵۰)، شرکت در کنگره بینالمللی شرقشناسی مونیخ (۱۹۵۵)، کنفرانس دیدارهای بینالمللی در ژنو (۱۹۵۳)، شرکت در کنگره تاریخ ادیان در شیکاگو (آوریل ۱۹۵۵)، شرکت در کنگره تاریخ ادیان در توکیو (۱۹۵۸) و ماربورگ (۱۹۶۰).
افتخارات علمی
الیاده در ۱۹۶۴ از طرف دانشگاه شیکاگو به اعطای عنوان استاد خدمات ممتاز سیول ال. آیوری مفتخر شد و در ۱۹۶۶ دکترای افتخاری دانشگاه ییل را دریافت کرد. دریافت مدال طلای جایزه فرهنگ مسیحی از طرف دانشگاه ویندسور کانادا و دریافت دکترای افتخاری از ریپون کالج در ۱۹۶۹ و به عضویت درآمدن در آکادمی بریتانیا در سال ۱۹۷۰ از دیگر افتخارات علمی اوست. الیاده از ۱۹۷۰ به بعد دکترای افتخاری از دانشگاهها و مراکز معتبر علمی متعددی را دریافت کرد. برخی از آنها عبارتند از: کالج بوستون (۱۹۷۱)، کالج حقوق سیل فیلادلفیا (۱۹۷۲)، کالج اولبرین (۱۹۷۳)، آکادمی بلژیک (۱۹۷۵) و دانشگاه سوربن (۱۹۷۶) و دریافت کمن لوژیون دونور از سوربن (۱۹۸۴).
الیاده در دهه آخر عمرش، به طرحریزی و نظارت بر تألیف و تدوین دایرةالمعارف دین مشغول بود تا اینکه پس از تکمیل تدوین این دایرةالمعارف و درست یک ماه پس از نگارش پیشگفتار خود بر آن درگذشت. این دایرةالمعارف به زبان انگلیسی در ۱۶ مجلد و در حدود هشت هزار صفحه است که دارای ۲۷۵۰ مقاله و ۱۴۰۰ نفر از پژوهشگران پنجاه کشور جهان با آن همکاری کردهاند. میرچا الیاده سرانجام در ۱۴ آوریل ۱۹۸۶ دچار سکته مغزی شد و در ۲۲ آوریل درگذشت.
آثار
برخی از آثار الیاده عبارتند از:
سیاحت معنوی
تاریخ تطبیقی تکنیکهای یوگا
منشأ عرفان هندی
تاریخ ادیان
شمنیزم
یوگا
رویاها و رمزها
ولادت عارفانه
اسطوره و نماد
چشماندازهای اسطوره
باورها و عقاید دینی
سرویراستاری دایرةالمعارف دین
اندیشه
الیاده در تفسیر و تأویل پدیدههای دینی روش و نگرش تازهای داشت و بر آن بود که نمادپردازی دینی، بهترین جلوه پاسخ خلاقانهای است که انسان به هیبت هستی و حضور در کیهان ناپیدا کران میدهد. انسان نهایتا با کیهان همسو و همساخت (همان هماهنگی و همسانی جهان صغیر با جهان کبیر که ریشه در اندیشههای دینی و عرفانی کهن دارد) و اساطیر کهن که حکم صور ازلی یا اعیان ثابته را دارند، هنوز و همچنان در ذهن و زندگی انسان جدید نفوذ دارند. وی بر آن بود که تاریخ و تحقیق ادیان، همدلی و انساندوستی به بار میآورد که بسی فراتر و اصیلتر از اومانیسم غیردینی غربی است. روش و نگرش الیاده در اتمام آثارش، تلفیقی و کثرتگرایانه و همراه با وسعت مشرب است و آمیزهای است از مردمشناسی، پدیدارشناسی به شیوه هوسرل، ساختگرایی و تأویل و کشف معنای باطنی یا هرمنوتیک. این نکته هم به عنوان بخشی از نگرش او قابل ذکر است که او تقدس یا امر قدسی، یعنی جوهر مشترک همه جلوههای حیات و فرهنگی دینی را امری اصیل، بسیط، واحد و تحویلپذیر و غیرقابل تجزیه و تحویل به حقایق، امور، عناصر، تجارب و معارف دیگر میداند.
به اعتقاد الیاده، حوزه دین را باید به طور مستقل در نظر گرفت. دین را نباید به امور دیگری مانند جامعهشناسی، روانشناسی و فیزیولوژی، اقتصاد، زبان، هنر و غیره تحویل داد؛ یعنی ماهیت دین را نباید با این امور تبیین کرد. پدیده دین را باید حوزه مستقلی در نظر گرفت و آن را بدون فروکاستن به دیگر حوزههای معرفت بشری تبیین کرد. تبیین دین براساس مقولات دیگر نظیر آنچه ذکر شد، همان تحویلگرایی است.
تفاوت تحویلگرایی و نظر الیاده درباره دین، نگاه علی و معلولی است. اگر تحویلگرایی را بپذیریم، دین متغیر مستقلی نیست؛ تغییر دین معلول امور دیگری مانند روانشناسی و جامعهشناسی است، یعنی دیگر وجوه زندگی بشر، مانند بعد روانی و اجتماعی و غیره، عامل اصلی در تغییر و نیز تبیین دین خواهند بود. زندگی دینی را باید با این امور تبیین کرد. این همان دید معمولی درباره ماهیت دین است.
اما بنا به نظر الیاده، دین غیرقابل تحویل به این امور است، یعنی دین خود متغیر مستقلی است. دین نقش مستقلی در حیات بشر دارد. دین را باید علتی مستقل درنظر گرفت، نه معلول عوامل دیگر. نگاه علّی آنگاه جایگزین نگاه معلولی میشود که تحویلگرایی را نپذیریم.
پیشفرض دوم الیاده مربوط به روش بررسی دین است. در پیشفرض نخست دین را صرفاً براساس امور اجتماعی و روانی و غیره نمیتوان تبیین کرد. الیاده معتقد است که باید از دو منظر به دین نگریست و مطالعه و تبیین حقیقی دین باید براساس ترکیب این دو منظر صورت گیرد
در گام اول باید از منظر تاریخ به دین نگریست. دینپژوهان باید سیر تاریخی ادیان را بررسی کنند. از این نظر که دینپژوهان پیشینه ادیان و تحولات تاریخی آنها را بررسی میکنند، موضوع مورد بحث آنها تاریخ است.
گام دوم این است که از منظر «مقایسه و تطبیق» به ادیان بنگریم. الیاده میگوید: «بدون مقایسه، هیچ دانش حقیقیای وجود ندارد». در مورد ادیان باید باورها، مراسم و نمادهای هر دینی را با باورها و مراسم و نمادهای ادیان دیگر مقایسه کرد، و پس از آن میان آنها داوری کرد.
البته مورخان هم در بررسیهای تاریخی خود به مقایسه برخی امور میپردازند، ولی به نظر الیاده، پدیدههای متنوع دینی مانند باورها، اعمال، نمادها، اسطورهها، و... را باید بدون درنظر گرفتن مکان و زمان اصلی آنها سنجید. زمانها و مکانهای این مظاهر دینی فرق میکند، امّا همه آنها یکسانند و میتوان همه آنها را در آزمون قیاس نهاد.
مظاهر پدیدههای دینی نیز مکانها و زمانهای معینی برای خود دارند؛ مثلاً در هر دینی عبادت در زمان و مکان خاصی انجام میشود، ولی این عبادتها را بدون درنظر گرفتن زمان و مکان آنها میتوان مقایسه کرد. همچنین به عنوان مثال، زئوس (Zeus) خدای یونانیان بود و آنها زئوس را میپرستیدند. یونانیان به خدایان بیشماری اعتقاد داشتند؛ زئوس خدای مذکر و برتر بود، خدای آسمان بود، در زمانها و مکانهای گوناگونی ظاهر میشد و برای خود همسری داشت. زئوس به یونانیان اختصاص داشت و در ادیان دیگر ملل، وجود ندارد، امّا «خدای آسمان» به یونانیان اختصاصی ندارد و در دیگر ادیان هم میتوان چنین چیزی را یافت. ما با بررسی خدای آسمانی در فرهنگها و ادیان مختلف میتوانیم به حقایق کلی دست بیابیم. این روش بررسی را، الیاده پدیدارشناسی مینامد.
به نظر الیاده در تمام ادیان، دینداران میان دو سطح مقدس و نامقدس فرق میگذارند.
نامقدس قلمرو اشیایی است که ما هر روز با آنها سروکار داریم؛ قلمرو اشیای معمولی و غیرمهم. مراد اشیایی است که اهمیت خاص دینی برای ما ندارند. مقدس مقابل چنین اموری است. مقدس فضای امور فوق طبیعی و اشیای غیرعادی است. نامقدس در معرض نابودی و زوال است، ولی مقدس همیشگی، اصیل و واقعی است. نامقدس صحنهای از حیات بشر را دربرمیگیرد که تغییر میپذیرد و کهنه میشود. ولی مقدس عرصهای است که زنده است، و ترتیب و کمال دارد. به نظر الیاده چشمه دین از همین تمایز نهادن میان مقدس و نامقدس میجوشد.
الیاده عنصر اساسی و مشترک میان ادیان را همان امر مقدس میداند. قلمرو دین، تمیز نهاده میان مقدس و نامقدس است، ولی الیاده بر خلاف اتو، امر مقدس را تنها در مواجهه با خداوند جستوجو نمیکند. امر مقدس عمومیترین پدیده مشترک میان همه ادیان است. در تمام امور دینی میتوان اثری از تکنیک مقدس و نامقدس یافت. برای فرد دیندار، مکان همگون و یکسان نیست، یعنی انسان دیندار همه مکانها را یکسان تجربه نمیکند. برخی مکانها برای او مقدسند. به عنوان مثال، برای فرد مسلمان، مساجد نسبت به اماکن عمومی تقدس خاصی دارند؛ پس مسلمان در مسجد، مکان مقدس را تجربه میکند. از این جهت، مکان برای دیندار نامتجانس است. تفکیک امر مقدس از نامقدس در مکان هم جاری است. همچنین دیندار، زمان را به نحو یکسان تجربه نمیکند. زمان از نظر دیندار نامتجانس است. برخی زمانها – بر خلاف دیگر زمانها – مقدسند و دیندار چنین زمانی را به نحو مقدس تجربه میکند.
با این تحلیل الیاده، تفکیک میان مقدس و نامقدس عمومیترین پدیده در تمام ادیان است، و محدودیتهای تحلیل اتو در رهیافت او وجود ندارد. اساساً از نظر الیاده این همین تکفیک نهادن میان مقدس و نامقدس است و تفاوت انسان دیندار و بیدین در همین امور است. برای فرد بیدین زمانها و مکانها متجانسند، ولی برای دیندار زمانها و مکانها نامتجانس و ناهمگونند.
الیاده مدعی است که روش او تطبیقی و جهانی است، یعنی عناصری را از ادیان مختلف جهان با هم مورد تطبیق قرار میدهد و به نتایجی نیز میرسد، ولی بررسی او جهانی نیست. به عنوان مثال ادیان چین و نیز اسلام را درنظر نگرفته است. به عنوان مثال، الیاده تاریخیگری انسان مدرن را معلول سنت یهودی – مسیحی میداند. به عبارت دیگر، خود یهودیت و مسیحیت را عامل پیدایش فلسفههای سکولار میداند. او میگوید: خود عقاید یهودی – مسیحی موجب شد که روند تفکر مدرن به تاریخیگری و سکولاریسم بینجامد. ولی اسلام هم به طور مشخص با یهودیت و مسیحیت در این نکته شریک است که امر مقدس را صرفاً بیرون از تاریخ نمیبیند، بلکه امر مقدس را در همه جا و همهٔ زمانها حاضر میداند. اگر نفس این تفکر موجب پیدایش سکولاریسم و تاریخیگری در غرب شد، چگونه است که در حوزه اسلام عکس این تحول رخ داد. مسلماً عوامل مهم دیگری باید در کار باشد که بررسی آنها از موضوع بحث ما خارج است. در واقع الیاده بدون بررسی اسلام و یا ادیان چینی، به تعمیمی شتابزده روی آورده است.
از این گذشته، الیاده در ادیان مختلف، نمادها و اسطورههایی را مییابد که نشان میدهند امر مقدس واقعیت دارد و سپس میان ادیان مختلف و دین با ادیان باستانی ارتباط برقرار میکند. امّا به کار بردن چنین روشی در ادیان آسان نیست. در هر یک از ادیان، نمادها و اساطیر فراوانی یافت میشوند که با تحلیل الیاده سرسازگاری ندارد. ارائه نظریهای جهانی درباره دین امر مشکلی است. همه ادیان از ماهیت و عناصر یکسانی برخوردار نیستند و تفاوتهای عمیقی میان آنهاست. لذا نمیتوان با یافتن چند عنصر مشابه، نظریهای کلی درباره همه ادیان ارائه داد و ساختار همه ادیان را از این طریق نمایاند.
پینوشت
↑ میرچا الیاده، باشگاه کتاب
کتابشناسی
دائرهالمعارف دین (در ۱۶ مجلد)
منبع
در ویکیانبار پروندههایی دربارهٔ میرچا الیاده موجود است.
نقد ادبی نوشته حمیدرضا شایگانفر، انتشارات دستان
میرچا الیاده، باشگاه کتاب
ردههای صفحه: استادان دانشگاه شیکاگواسطورهشناسان اهل رومانی اهالی بخارست افسانهنگاران درگذشتگان ۱۹۸۶ (میلادی)درگذشتگان به علت سکته دینپژوهان اهل رومانی زادگان ۱۹۰۷ (میلادی)شمنباوری فیلسوفان دی فیلسوفان سده ۲۰فیلسوفان مسیحی نمایشنامهنویسان اهل رومانی
از ویکی پدیا
قس عربی
میرتشا إلیاده (13 مارس 1907 - 22 أبریل 1986) (بالإنجلیزیة: Mircea Eliade) کاتب ومؤرخ أدیان وفیلسوف وروائی رومانی، شغل کرسی أستاذ تاریخ الأدیان فی جامعة شیکاغو، وله مؤلفات فی أدب الخیال وأدب الرحلات والسیر الذاتیة، وتاریخ الأدیان وفلسفة الأدیان.
هذه بذرة مقالة عن موضوع له علاقة برومانیا تحتاج للنمو والتحسین، ساهم فی إثرائها بالمشارکة فی تحریرها.
هذه بذرة مقالة عن شخصیات أو مصطلحات متعلقة بالفلسفة تحتاج للنمو والتحسین، فساهم فی إثرائها بالمشارکة فی تحریرها.
تصنیفات: وفیات بسبب سکتة دماغیةدبلوماسیون رومانیون موالید 1907وفیات 1986رومانیون
قس انگلیسی
Mircea Eliade (Romanian pronunciation: eliˈade; March 13 February 28 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. 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 fantasy 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 Devils Waters") and the 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.
Contents
1 Biography
1.1 Childhood
1.2 Adolescence and literary debut
1.3 University studies and Indian sojourn
1.4 Criterion and Cuvântul
1.5 1930s political transition
1.6 Internment and diplomatic service
1.7 Early exile
1.8 Final years and death
2 Work
2.1 The general nature of religion
2.1.1 Sacred and profane
2.1.2 Origin myths and sacred time
2.1.3 Eternal return and "Terror of history"
2.1.4 Coincidentia oppositorum
2.2 Exceptions to the general nature
2.3 Symbolism of the Center
2.4 The High God
2.5 Shamanism
2.5.1 Overview
2.5.2 Death, resurrection and secondary functions
3 Eliades philosophy
3.1 Early contributions
3.2 Philosopher of religion
3.2.1 Anti-reductionism and the "transconscious"
3.2.2 Platonism and "primitive ontology"
3.2.3 Existentialism and secularism
3.2.4 Religious survivals in the secular world
3.2.5 Modern man and the "Terror of history"
3.2.6 Inter-cultural dialogue and a "new humanism"
3.2.7 Christianity and the "salvation" of History
3.2.8 "Modern gnosticism", Romanticism and Eliades nostalgia
4 Criticism of Eliades scholarship
4.1 Overgeneralization
4.2 Lack of empirical support
4.3 Far right and nationalist influences
5 Literary works
5.1 Generic traits
5.2 Oriental themed novels
5.3 Portraits of a generation
5.4 Fantasy literature
5.5 Other writings
6 Controversy: antisemitism and links with the Iron Guard
6.1 Early statements
6.2 Polemics and exile
6.3 Posterity
6.4 Political symbolism in Eliades fiction
7 Cultural legacy
7.1 Tributes
7.2 Portrayals, filmography and dramatizations
8 See also
9 Notes
10 References
11 Further reading
11.1 English
11.2 Other languages
12 External links
Biography
Childhood
Born in Bucharest, he was the son of Romanian Land Forces officer Gheorghe Eliade (whose original surname was Ieremia) and Jeana née Vasilescu. An Orthodox believer, Gheorghe Eliade registered his sons 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. 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.
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.
He notably described this stage in his life as marked by an unrepeatable epiphany. 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 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.
Robert Ellwood, a professor of religion who did his graduate studies under Mircea Eliade, saw this type of nostalgia as one of the most characteristic themes in Eliades life and academic writings.
Adolescence and literary debut
After completing his primary education at the school on Mântuleasa Street, Eliade attended the Spiru Haret National College in the same class as Arşavir Acterian, Haig Acterian, and Petre Viforeanu (and several years the senior of Nicolae Steinhardt, who eventually became a close friend of Eliades). Among his other colleagues was future philosopher Constantin Noica and Noicas friend, future art historian Barbu Brezianu.
As a child, Eliade was fascinated with the natural world, which formed the setting of his very first literary attempts, as well as with Romanian folklore and the Christian faith as expressed by peasants. Growing up, he aimed to find and record what he believed was the common source of all religious traditions. The young Eliades interest in physical exercise and adventure led him to pursue mountaineering and sailing, and he also joined the Romanian Boy Scouts.
With a group of friends, he designed and sailed a boat on the Danube, from Tulcea to the Black Sea. In parallel, Eliade grew estranged from the educational environment, becoming disenchanted with the discipline required and obsessed with the idea that he was uglier and less virile than his colleagues. In order to cultivate his willpower, he would force himself to swallow insects and only slept four to five hours a night. At one point, Eliade was flunking four subjects, among which was the study of Romanian language.
Instead, he became interested in natural science and chemistry, as well as the occult, and wrote short pieces on entomological subjects. Despite his fathers concern that he was in danger of losing his already weak eyesight, Eliade read passionately. One of his favorite authors was Honoré de Balzac, whose work he studied carefully. Eliade also became acquainted with the modernist short stories of Giovanni Papini and social anthropology studies by James George Frazer.
His interest in the two writers led him to learn Italian and English in private, and he also began studying Persian and Hebrew. At the time, Eliade became acquainted with Saadis poems and the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. He was also interested in philosophy—studying, among others, Socrates, Vasile Conta, and the Stoics Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, and read works of history—the two Romanian historians who influenced him from early on were Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu and Nicolae Iorga. His first published work was the 1921 Inamicul viermelui de mătase ("The Silkworms Enemy"), followed by Cum am găsit piatra filosofală ("How I Found the Philosophers Stone"). Four years later, Eliade completed work on his debut volume, the autobiographical Novel of the Nearsighted Adolescent.
University studies and Indian sojourn
Between 1925 and 1928, he attended the University of Bucharests Faculty of Philosophy and Letters in 1928, earning his diploma with a study on Early Modern Italian philosopher Tommaso Campanella. In 1927, Eliade traveled to Italy, where he met Papini and collaborated with the scholar Giuseppe Tucci.
It was during his student years that Eliade met Nae Ionescu, who lectured in Logic, becoming one of his disciples and friends. He was especially attracted to Ionescus radical ideas and his interest in religion, which signified a break with the rationalist tradition represented by senior academics such as Constantin Rădulescu-Motru, Dimitrie Gusti, and Tudor Vianu (all of whom owed inspiration to the defunct literary society Junimea, albeit in varying degrees).
Eliades scholarly works began after a long period of study in British India, at the University of Calcutta. Finding that the Maharaja of Kassimbazar sponsored European scholars to study in India, Eliade applied and was granted an allowance for four years, which was later doubled by a Romanian scholarship. In autumn 1928, he sailed for Calcutta to study Sanskrit and philosophy under Surendranath Dasgupta, a Bengali Cambridge alumnus and professor at Calcutta University, the author of a five volume History of Indian Philosophy. Before reaching the Indian subcontinent, Eliade also made a brief visit to Egypt. Once there, he visited large areas of the region, and spent a short period at a Himalayan ashram.
He studied the basics of Indian philosophy, and, in parallel, learned Sanskrit, Pali and Bengali under Dasguptas direction. At the time, he also became interested in the actions of Mahatma Gandhi, whom he met personally, and the Satyagraha as a phenomenon; later, Eliade adapted Gandhian ideas in his discourse on spirituality and Romania.
In 1930, while living with Dasgupta, Eliade fell in love with his hosts daughter, Maitreyi Devi, later writing a barely disguised autobiographical novel Maitreyi (also known as "La Nuit Bengali" or "Bengal Nights"), in which he claimed that he carried on a physical relationship with her.
Eliade received his PhD in 1933, with a thesis on Yoga practices. The book, which was translated into French three years later, had significant impact in academia, both in Romania and abroad.
He later recalled that the book was an early step for understanding not just Indian religious practices, but also Romanian spirituality. During the same period, Eliade began a correspondence with the Ceylonese-born philosopher Ananda Coomaraswamy. In 1936–1937, he functioned as honorary assistant for Ionescus course, lecturing in Metaphysics.
In 1933, Mircea Eliade had a physical relationship with the actress Sorana Ţopa, while falling in love with Nina Mareş, whom he ultimately married. The latter, introduced to him by his new friend Mihail Sebastian, already had a daughter, Giza, from a man who had divorced her. Eliade subsequently adopted Giza, and the three of them moved to an apartment at 141 Dacia Boulevard. He left his residence in 1936, during a trip he made to the United Kingdom and Nazi Germany, when he first visited London, Oxford and Berlin.
Criterion and Cuvântul
Eliades home in Bucharest (1934-1940)
After contributing various and generally polemical pieces in university magazines, Eliade came to the attention of journalist Pamfil Şeicaru, who invited him to collaborate on the nationalist paper Cuvântul, which was noted for its harsh tones. By then, Cuvântul was also hosting articles by Ionescu.
As one of the figures in the Criterion literary society (1933–1934), Eliades initial encounter with the traditional far right was polemical: the groups conferences were stormed by members of A. C. Cuzas National-Christian Defense League, who objected to what they viewed as pacifism and addressed antisemitic insults to several speakers, including Sebastian; in 1933, he was among the signers of a manifesto opposing Nazi Germanys state-enforced racism.
In 1934, at a time when Sebastian was publicly insulted by Nae Ionescu, who prefaced his book (De două mii de ani...) with thoughts on the "eternal damnation" of Jews, Mircea Eliade spoke out against this perspective, and commented that Ionescus references to the verdict "Outside the Church there is no salvation" contradicted the notion of Gods omnipotence. However, he contended that Ionescus text was not evidence of antisemitism.
In 1936, reflecting on the early history of the Romanian Kingdom and its Jewish community, he deplored the expulsion of Jewish savants from Romanian soil, making specific references to Moses Gaster, Heimann Hariton Tiktin and Lazăr Şăineanu. Eliades views at the time focused on innovation—in the summer of 1933, he replied to an anti-modernist critique written by George Călinescu:
All I wish for is a deep change, a complete transformation. But, for Gods sake, in any direction other than spirituality.
He and friends Emil Cioran and Constantin Noica were by then under the influence of Trăirism, a school of thought that was formed around the ideals expressed by Ionescu. A form of existentialism, Trăirism was also the synthesis of traditional and newer right-wing beliefs. Early on, a public polemic was sparked between Eliade and Camil Petrescu: the two eventually reconciled and later became good friends.
Like Mihail Sebastian, who was himself becoming influenced by Ionescu, he maintained contacts with intellectuals from all sides of the political spectrum: their entourage included the right-wing Dan Botta and Mircea Vulcănescu, the non-political Petrescu and Ionel Jianu, and Belu Zilber, who was a member of the illegal Romanian Communist Party.
The group also included Haig Acterian, Mihail Polihroniade, Petru Comarnescu, Marietta Sadova and Floria Capsali.
He was also close to Marcel Avramescu, a former Surrealist writer whom he introduced to the works of René Guénon. A doctor in the Kabbalah and future Romanian Orthodox cleric, Avramescu joined Eliade in editing the short-lived esoteric magazine Memra (the only one of its kind in Romania).
Among the intellectuals who attended his lectures were Mihail Şora (whom he deemed his favorite student), Eugen Schileru and Miron Constantinescu—known later as, respectively, a philosopher, an art critic, and a sociologist and political figure of the communist regime. Mariana Klein, who became Şoras wife, was one of Eliades female students, and later authored works on his scholarship.
Eliade later recounted that he had himself enlisted Zilber as a Cuvântul contributor, in order for him to provide a Marxist perspective on the issues discussed by the journal. Their relation soured in 1935, when the latter publicly accused Eliade of serving as an agent for the secret police, Siguranţa Statului (Sebastian answered to the statement by alleging that Zilber was himself a secret agent, and the latter eventually retracted his claim).
1930s political transition
Eliades articles before and after his adherence to the principles of the Iron Guard (or, as it was usually known at the time, the Legionary Movement), beginning with his famous Itinerar spiritual ("Spiritual Itinerary", serialized in Cuvântul in 1927), center on several political ideals advocated by the far right.
They displayed his rejection of liberalism and the modernizing goals of the 1848 Wallachian revolution (perceived as "an abstract apology of Mankind" and "ape-like imitation of Europe"), as well as for democracy itself (accusing it of "managing to crush all attempts at national renaissance", and later praising Benito Mussolinis Fascist Italy on the grounds that, according to Eliade, "Italy, he who thinks for himself is promoted to the highest office in the shortest of times"). He approved of an ethnic nationalist state centered on the Orthodox Church (in 1927, despite his still-vivid interest in Theosophy, he recommended young intellectuals "the return to the Church"), which he opposed to, among others, the secular nationalism of Constantin Rădulescu-Motru; referring to this particular ideal as "Romanianism", Eliade was, in 1934, still viewing it as "neither fascism, nor chauvinism".
Eliade was especially dissatisfied with the incidence of unemployment among intellectuals, whose careers in state-financed institutions had been rendered uncertain by the Great Depression.
In 1936, Eliade was the focus of a campaign in the far right press, being targeted for having authored "pornography" in his Domnişoara Christina and Isabel şi apele diavolului (similar accusations were aimed at other cultural figures, including Tudor Arghezi and Geo Bogza). Assessments of Eliades work were in sharp contrast to one another: also in 1936, Eliade accepted an award from the Romanian Writers Society, of which he had been a member since 1934. In summer 1937, through an official decision which came as a result of the accusations, and despite student protests, he was stripped of his position at the University.
Eliade decided to sue the Ministry of Education, asking for a symbolic compensation of 1 leu. He won the trial, and regained his position as Nae Ionescus assistant.
Nevertheless, by 1937, he gave his intellectual support to the Iron Guard, in which he saw "a Christian revolution aimed at creating a new Romania", and a group able "to reconcile Romania with God". His articles of the time, published in Iron Guard papers such as Sfarmă Piatră and Buna Vestire, contain ample praises of the movements leaders (Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Ion Moţa, Vasile Marin, and Gheorghe Cantacuzino-Grănicerul). The transition he went through was similar to that of his fellow generation members and close collaborators—among the notable exceptions to this rule were Petru Comarnescu, sociologist Henri H. Stahl and future dramatist Eugène Ionesco, as well as Sebastian.
He eventually enrolled in the Totul pentru Ţară ("Everything for the Fatherland" Party), the political expression of the Iron Guard, and contributed to its 1937 electoral campaign in Prahova County—as indicated by his inclusion on a list of party members with county-level responsibilities (published in Buna Vestire).
Internment and diplomatic service
The stance taken by Eliade resulted in his arrest on July 14, 1938 after a crackdown on the Iron Guard authorized by King Carol II. At the time of his arrest, he had just interrupted a column on Provincia şi legionarismul ("The Province and Legionary Ideology") in Vremea, having been singled out by Prime Minister Armand Călinescu as an author of Iron Guard propaganda.
Eliade was kept for three weeks in a cell at the Siguranţa Statului Headquarters, in an attempt to have him sign a "declaration of dissociation" with the Iron Guard, but he refused to do so. In the first week of August he was transferred to a makeshift camp at Miercurea-Ciuc. When Eliade began coughing blood in October 1938, he was taken to a clinic in Moroeni. Eliade was simply released on November 12, and subsequently spent his time writing his play Iphigenia (also known as Ifigenia). In April 1940, with the help of Alexandru Rosetti, became the Cultural Attaché to the United Kingdom, a posting cut short when Romanian-British foreign relations were broken.
After leaving London he was assigned the office of Counsel and Press Officer (later Cultural Attaché) to the Romanian Embassy in Portugal, where he was kept on as diplomat by the National Legionary State (the Iron Guard government) and, ultimately, by Ion Antonescus regime. His office involved disseminating propaganda in favor of the Romanian state. In February 1941, weeks after the bloody Legionary Rebellion was crushed by Antonescu, Iphigenia was staged by the National Theater Bucharest—the play soon raised doubts that it owed inspiration to the Iron Guards ideology, and even that its inclusion in the program was a Legionary attempt at subversion.
In 1942, Eliade authored a volume in praise of the Estado Novo, established in Portugal by António de Oliveira Salazar, claiming that "The Salazarian state, a Christian and totalitarian one, is first and foremost based on love". On July 7 of the same year, he was received by Salazar himself, who assigned Eliade the task of warning Antonescu to withdraw the Romanian Army from the Eastern Front ("his place, I would not be grinding it in Russia"). Eliade also claimed that such contacts with the leader of a neutral country had made him the target for Gestapo surveillance, but that he had managed to communicate Salazars advice to Mihai Antonescu, Romanias Foreign Minister.
In autumn 1943, he traveled to occupied France, where he rejoined Emil Cioran, also meeting with scholar Georges Dumézil and the collaborationist writer Paul Morand. At the same time, he applied for a position of lecturer at the University of Bucharest, but withdrew from the race, leaving Constantin Noica and Ion Zamfirescu to dispute the position, in front of a panel of academics comprising Lucian Blaga and Dimitrie Gusti (Zamfirescus eventual selection, going against Blagas recommendation, was to be the topic of a controversy). In his private notes, Eliade wrote that he took no further interest in the office, because his visits abroad had convinced him that he had "something great to say", and that he could not function within the confines of "a minor culture". Also during the war, Eliade traveled to Berlin, where he met and conversed with controversial political theorist Carl Schmitt, and frequently visited Francoist Spain, where he notably attended the 1944 Lusitano-Spanish scientific congress in Córdoba. It was during his trips to Spain that Eliade met philosophers José Ortega y Gasset and Eugeni dOrs. He maintained a friendship with dOrs, and met him again on several occasions after the war.
Nina Eliade fell ill with uterine cancer and died during their stay in Lisbon, in late 1944. As the widower later wrote, the disease was probably caused by an abortion procedure she had undergone at an early stage of their relationship. He came to suffer with clinical depression, which increased as Romania and her Axis allies suffered major defeats on the Eastern Front. Contemplating a return to Romania as a soldier or a monk, he was on a continuous search for effective antidepressants, medicating himself with passion flower extract, and, eventually, with methamphetamine. This was probably not his first experience with drugs: vague mentions in his notebooks have been read as indication that Mircea Eliade was taking opium during his travels to Calcutta. Later, discussing the works of Aldous Huxley, Eliade wrote that the British authors use of mescaline as a source of inspiration had something in common with his own experience, indicating 1945 as a date of reference and adding that it was "needless to explain why that is".
Early exile
At signs that the Romanian communist regime was about to take hold, Eliade opted not to return to the country. On September 16, 1945, he moved to France with his adopted daughter Giza. Once there, he resumed contacts with Dumézil, who helped him recover his position in academia. On Dumézils recommendation, he taught at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. It was estimated that, at the time, it was not uncommon for him to work 15 hours a day. Eliade married a second time, to the Romanian exile Christinel Cotescu. His second wife, the descendant of boyars, was the sister-in-law of prestigious conductor Ionel Perlea.
Together with Emil Cioran and other Romanian expatriates, Eliade rallied with the former diplomat Alexandru Busuioceanu, helping him publicize anti-communist opinion to the Western European public. He was also briefly involved in publishing a Romanian-language magazine, titled Luceafărul ("The Morning Star"), and was again in contact with Mihail Şora, who had been granted a scholarship to study in France, and by Şoras wife Mariana. In 1947, he was facing material constraints, and Ananda Coomaraswamy found him a job as a French-language teacher in the United States, at a school in Arizona; the arrangement ended upon Coomaraswamys death in September.
Beginning in 1948, he wrote for the journal Critique, edited by French thinker Georges Bataille. The following year, he went on a visit to Italy, where he wrote the first 300 pages of his novel Noaptea de Sânziene (he visited the country a third time in 1952). He collaborated with Carl Jung and the Eranos circle after Henry Corbin recommended him in 1949, and wrote for the Antaios magazine (edited by Ernst Jünger). In 1950, Eliade began attending Eranos conferences, meeting Jung, Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, Gershom Scholem and Paul Radin. He described Eranos as "one of the most creative cultural experiences of the modern Western world."
In October 1956, he moved to the United States, settling in Chicago the following year. He had been invited by Joachim Wach to give a series of lectures at Wachs home institution, the University of Chicago. Eliade and Wach are generally admitted to be the founders of the "Chicago school" that basically defined the study of religions for the second half of the 20th century. Upon Wachs death before the lectures were delivered, Eliade was appointed as his replacement, becoming, in 1964, the Sewell Avery Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions. Beginning in 1954, with the first edition of his volume on Eternal Return, Eliade also enjoyed commercial success: the book went through several editions under different titles, which sold over 100,000 copies.
In 1966, Mircea Eliade became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also worked as editor-in-chief of Macmillan Publishers Encyclopedia of Religion, and, in 1968, lectured in religious history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It was also during that period that Mircea Eliade completed his voluminous and influential History of Religious Ideas, which grouped together the overviews of his main original interpretations of religious history. He occasionally traveled out of the United States, notably attending the Congress for the History of Religions in Marburg (1960) and visiting Sweden and Norway (1970).
Final years and death
Initially, Eliade was attacked with virulence by the Romanian Communist Party press, chiefly by România Liberă—which described him as "the Iron Guards ideologue, enemy of the working class, apologist of Salazars dictatorship". However, the regime also made secretive attempts to enlist his and Ciorans support: Haig Acterians widow, theater director Marietta Sadova, was sent to Paris in order to re-establish contacts with the two. Although the move was planned by Romanian officials, her encounters were to be used as evidence incriminating her at a February 1960 trial for treason (where Constantin Noica and Dinu Pillat were the main defendants). Romanias secret police, the Securitate, also portrayed Eliade as a spy for the British Secret Intelligence Service and a former agent of the Gestapo.
He was slowly rehabilitated at home beginning in the early 1960s, under the rule of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. In the 1970s, Eliade was approached by the Nicolae Ceauşescu regime in several ways, in order to have him return. The move was prompted by the officially sanctioned nationalism and Romanias claim to independence from the Eastern Bloc, as both phenomena came to see Eliades prestige as an asset. An unprecedented event occurred with the interview that was granted by Mircea Eliade to poet Adrian Păunescu, during the latters 1970 visit to Chicago; Eliade complimented both Păunescus activism and his support for official tenets, expressing a belief that
the youth of Eastern Europe is clearly superior to that of Western Europe. I am convinced that, within ten years, the young revolutionary generation shant be behaving as does today the noisy minority of Western contesters. Eastern youth have seen the abolition of traditional institutions, have accepted it and are not yet content with the structures enforced, but rather seek to improve them.
Păunescus visit to Chicago was followed by those of the nationalist official writer Eugen Barbu and by Eliades friend Constantin Noica (who had since been released from jail). At the time, Eliade contemplated returning to Romania, but was eventually persuaded by fellow Romanian intellectuals in exile (including Radio Free Europes Virgil Ierunca and Monica Lovinescu) to reject Communist proposals. In 1977, he joined other exiled Romanian intellectuals in signing a telegram protesting the repressive measures newly enforced by the Ceauşescu regime. Writing in 2007, Romanian anthropologist Andrei Oişteanu recounted how, around 1984, the Securitate unsuccessfully pressured to become an agent of influence in Eliades Chicagoan circle.
During his later years, Eliades fascist past was progressively exposed publicly, the stress of which probably contributed to the decline of his health. By then, his writing career was hampered by severe arthritis. The last academic honors bestowed upon him were the French Academys Bordin Prize (1977) and the title of Doctor Honoris Causa, granted by the University of Washington (1985).
Mircea Eliade died at the Bernard Mitchell Hospital in April 1986. Eight days previously, he suffered a stroke while reading Emil Ciorans Exercises of Admiration, and had subsequently lost his speech function. Four months before, a fire had destroyed part of his office at the Meadville Lombard Theological School (an event which he had interpreted as an omen). Eliades Romanian disciple Ioan Petru Culianu, who recalled the scientific communitys reaction to the news, described Eliades death as "a mahaparanirvana", thus comparing it to the passing of Gautama Buddha. His body was cremated in Chicago, and the funeral ceremony was held on University grounds, at the Rockefeller Chapel. It was attended by 1,200 people, and included a public reading of Eliades text in which he recalled the epiphany of his childhood—the lecture was given by novelist Saul Bellow, Eliades colleague at the University.
Work
The general nature of religion
In his work on the history of religion, Eliade is most highly regarded for his writings on Alchemy, Shamanism, Yoga and what he called the eternal return—the implicit belief, supposedly present in religious thought in general, that religious behavior is not only an imitation of, but also a participation in, sacred events, and thus restores the mythical time of origins. Eliades thinking was in part influenced by Rudolf Otto, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Nae Ionescu and the writings of the Traditionalist School (René Guénon and Julius Evola). For instance, Eliades The Sacred and the Profane partially builds on Ottos The Idea of the Holy to show how religion emerges from the experience of the sacred, and myths of time and nature.
Eliade is noted for his attempt to find broad, cross-cultural parallels and unities in religion, particularly in myths. Wendy Doniger, Eliades colleague from 1978 until his death, notes that "Eliade argued boldly for universals where he might more safely have argued for widely prevalent patterns". His Treatise on the History of Religions was praised by French philologist Georges Dumézil for its coherence and ability to synthesize diverse and distinct mythologies.
Robert Ellwood describes Eliades approach to religion as follows. Eliade approaches religion by imagining an ideally "religious" person, whom he calls homo religiosus in his writings. Eliades theories basically describe how this homo religiosus would view the world. This does not mean that all religious practitioners actually think and act like homo religiosus. Instead, it means that religious behavior "says through its own language" that the world is as homo religiosus would see it, whether or not the real-life participants in religious behavior are aware of it. However, Ellwood notes that Eliade "tends to slide over that last qualification", implying that traditional societies actually thought like homo religiosus.
Sacred and profane
Moses taking off his shoes in front of the burning bush (illustration from a 16th century edition of the Speculum Humanae Salvationis).
Eliade argues that religious thought in general rests on a sharp distinction between the Sacred and the profane; whether it takes the form of God, gods, or mythical Ancestors, the Sacred contains all "reality", or value, and other things acquire "reality" only to the extent that they participate in the sacred.
Eliades understanding of religion centers on his concept of hierophany (manifestation of the Sacred)—a concept that includes, but is not limited to, the older and more restrictive concept of theophany (manifestation of a god). From the perspective of religious thought, Eliade argues, hierophanies give structure and orientation to the world, establishing a sacred order. The "profane" space of nonreligious experience can only be divided up geometrically: it has no "qualitative differentiation and, hence, no orientation given by virtue of its inherent structure". Thus, profane space gives man no pattern for his behavior. In contrast to profane space, the site of a hierophany has a sacred structure to which religious man conforms himself. A hierophany amounts to a "revelation of an absolute reality, opposed to the non-reality of the vast surrounding expanse". As an example of "sacred space" demanding a certain response from man, Eliade gives the story of Moses halting before Yahwehs manifestation as a burning bush (Exodus 3:5) and taking off his shoes.
Origin myths and sacred time
Eliade notes that, in traditional societies, myth represents the absolute truth about primordial time. According to the myths, this was the time when the Sacred first appeared, establishing the worlds structure—myths claim to describe the primordial events that made society and the natural world be that which they are. Eliade argues that all myths are, in that sense, origin myths: "myth, then, is always an account of a creation".
Many traditional societies believe that the power of a thing lies in its origin. If origin is equivalent to power, then "it is the first manifestation of a thing that is significant and valid" (a things reality and value therefore lies only in its first appearance).
According to Eliades theory, only the Sacred has value, only a things first appearance has value and, therefore, only the Sacreds first appearance has value. Myth describes the Sacreds first appearance; therefore, the mythical age is sacred time, the only time of value: "primitive man was interested only in the beginnings to him it mattered little what had happened to himself, or to others like him, in more or less distant times". Eliade postulated this as the reason for the "nostalgia for origins" that appears in many religions, the desire to return to a primordial Paradise.
Eternal return and "Terror of history"
Main article: Eternal return (Eliade)
Eliade argues that traditional man attributes no value to the linear march of historical events: only the events of the mythical age have value. To give his own life value, traditional man performs myths and rituals. Because the Sacreds essence lies only in the mythical age, only in the Sacreds first appearance, any later appearance is actually the first appearance
mircha eliade
ميرسيا إليادي
نمایش تصویر
اطلاعات بیشتر واژه
آواشناسی:
منبع:
واژهنامه آزاد
معادل ابجد:
305
شمارگان هجا:
دیگر زبان ها
انگلیسی
mircha eliade
عربی
ميرسيا إليادي
تشریح نگارش (هوش مصنوعی)
"میرچا الیاده" یک شخصیت برجسته در حوزه فلسفه و تاریخ ادیان است. برای نوشتن این نام به زبان فارسی و رعایت قواعد نگارشی، نکات زیر را در نظر بگیرید:
-
نحوه نگارش: نام و نام خانوادگی به طور جداگانه و با حروف فارسی نوشته میشوند. در مورد "میرچا الیاده"، از حروف فارسی استفاده کنید و به نوع تلفظ دقت کنید.
-
حروف بزرگ: در نگارش اسامی افراد، معمولاً اولین حرف هر کلمه با حرف بزرگ نوشته میشود. بنابراین، «میرچا» و «الیاده» هر دو با حرف بزرگ آغاز میشوند.
-
تلفظ صحیح: اگر قصد دارید این نام را برای یک خواننده فارسیزبان بیان کنید، میتوانید توضیحاتی درباره تلفظ صحیح آن ارائه دهید، به ویژه اگر شامل حروفی باشد که در فارسی متداول نیست.
-
منابع: در صورت ذکر آثار یا بحث درباره میرچا الیاده، حتماً به منابع معتبر و متنی که به شرح زندگی و آثار او پرداختهاند، ارجاع دهید.
- اصلاحات تلفظی: در برخی متون، ممکن است با تلفظها و نگارشهای متفاوتی از نامها برخورد کنید. سعی کنید به معتبرترین شکل آن پایبند باشید.
به طور کلی، برای نگارش نام "میرچا الیاده" در متن فارسی از این نکات پیروی کنید تا نوشتهتان از نظر نگارشی صحیح و قابل فهم باشد.