Mircea Eliade: From Magic to Myth

by Moshe Idel

Mircea Eliade: From Magic to Myth addresses a series of topics that have been neglected in scholarship. First and foremost, the book looks at the early Romanian background of some of Eliade's ideas, especially his magical universe, which took on a more mythical nature with his arrival in the West. Other chapters deal with Eliade's attitude toward Judaism, which is crucial for his phenomenology of religion, and the influences of Kabbalah on his early work. Later chapters address his association with the Romanian extreme right movement known as the Iron Guard and the reverberation of some of the images in the post-war Eliade as well as with the status of Romanian culture in his eyes after World War II. The volume concludes by assessing the impact of Eliade's personal experiences on the manner in which he presented religion. The book will be useful in classes in the history of religion and the history of Eastern European intellectuals."

284 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Esma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fist off, a comment about how I got my hands on this book: I quite literally stumbled upon is it while reviewing my uncle's library. With no particular interest in the scholarship on religion, I haven't heard of Moshe Idel before, and only knew briefly about Eliade. I thought it was a good opportunity to get my introduction to Eliade through a secondary source if only because European theorists can have a dry language (a disadvantage doubled by my non familiarity with the field). I am immensely glad that I have come across this book because it gives a well rounded, infinitely interesting and inclusive account of Eliade's scholarship, politics, personal life and literature. It is also difficult to write an 8 chaptered book with no redundancy, so well done.

The first five chapters of this book deals with some major themes in Eliade's scholarship after it moves to Eliade's politics and place in the intellectual milieus in which he navigated (Interwar Romanian nationalist intellectuals and secular Chicago academicians). The writer agrees that there is no shortage of secondary literature on Eliade yet his main contribution is his access to Eliade's earlier writings in Romanian language (unpublished journals and published political feuilletons). The overall style of the book is to demonstrate parallels in Eliade's personal writings, literature and scholarship from different eras to sometimes challenge and sometimes yield to Eliade's narrative about his own life (as sociologists are well aware, retrospective stories of our lives are not always very accurate descriptions of reality). The critical tone slowly builds up in the book until Idel judges Eliade not for being an anti-Jew or fascist like people before him did, but for the weaknesses in his scholarship which is a more devastating assault, in my opinion.

My notes on the particulars on Eliade's scholarship are too long to count here, but a few remarks on his hermeneutics are worth sharing. Idel claims that Eliade's hermeneutic pursuit is less about textual interpretation and more about the interpretation of personal and social history: 'The world is understood as if speaking to a person with words that should be deciphered' which makes hermeneutics a salvation activity.

The book is a nice, practical introduction to Eliade's thought, working as a nice, extended wikipedia article. From my reading, Eliade can be summed up as being: against monotheism(the Judeo-Christian tradition), against Hegelian progressive approach to history, in fact against history itself(which is a terror), against the banal, against social morals. Pro reversible processes, pro a cosmic religion with repetitive rites and orgies to perpetuate a cyclical history, pro myth, pro peasant and pro Romania, no qualms with violence, pro-totalization and integration (of the man in the universe).

[Karla Huebner]

I requested this book after noticing it reviewed in the Slavic Review (it has since won an award); I had had the impression for a long time that I should become better acquainted with Eliade's work.

This could perhaps best be described as an intellectual biography, although that's not precisely what it is. Eliade was a major scholar of religion and Idel is also a well-known scholar in that field, specifically of Jewish mysticism. Both were born in Romania. What Idel does in this book is to examine the development of some of Eliade's ideas in the context of Eliade's early adulthood in (mainly) interwar Romania. It's my understanding that western European/anglophone scholarship has not previously incorporated very much information on this period in Eliade's career, for the obvious reason that few non-Romanians read Romanian and that there was not easy access to most of the sources until after the fall of the country's Communist regime.

Idel examines several threads in Eliade's scholarly oeuvre in relation to Eliade's fiction (I had had no idea Eliade wrote novels and short stories), his teachers and friends, certain aspects of his love life, and ultimately his intense Romanian nationalism and connections to the violent ultra-right Iron Guard group. Throughout, Idel carefully and even minutely analyzes details of Eliade's scholarly writing in relation both to these influences and to Eliade's known, likely, and ignored scholarly sources. While at times the book can be slow going for the reader not familiar with religious studies, it is not dull. On the contrary, it piques one's interest in both Eliade the man and in his work, while at the same time delivering devastating critiques of both man and work. Idel does not dismiss all of Eliade's scholarship, and notes that Eliade made a major contribution to religious studies in helping expand it beyond a focus on the Judaeo-Christian tradition, but he makes clear that Eliade could often be slipshod and at times employed faulty reasoning. It is remarkable that despite the damning things Idel brings to light, I still want to read Eliade (but am not very interested in his writings on Judaism); his life and thought seem complex and flawed but fascinating.

[Socrate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aceasta situatie foarte promitatoare, ca universitar, scriitor si intelectual de frunte, care a fost evidenta pana in 1938, s-a deteriorat in elita politica romaneasca din cauza aderarii sale, spirituala si — pana la un anumit punct — politica, la opiniile Miscarii Legionare, cunoscuta si sub numele de Garda de Fier, o organizatie de extrema dreapta, ultranationalista si antisemita. Aceasta aderare a fost, in 1938, cauza arestarii sale si a unei detentii timp de patru luni, impreuna cu unii dintre liderii Garzii de Fier, in lagarul de la Miercurea Ciuc. Dupa eliberarea din lagar, situatia i s-a inrautatit, atat din punct de vedere financiar, cat si social. Din acest motiv a preferat sa paraseasca Romania la sfarsitul anului 1940, ca reprezentant al tarii sale la Londra, apoi la Lisabona.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

yup, he was pretty much a Nazi.