Sever Voinescu: Mircea Eliade, again...

It has recently been 40 years since the death of Mircea Eliade and, whether by coincidence or not, shortly thereafter, hundreds of scholars in the field of the history of religions will gather in Bucharest for a worldwide assembly, on the occasion of the Annual Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions and the Regional Conference of the International Association for the History of Religions. Such a gathering of specialists in the history of religions in Bucharest is, first and foremost, a confirmation of the well-deserved international profile of Romanian specialists from and around the Institute of the History of Religions, one of the most high-performing institutes of our Academy. Dilemma is pleased to applaud the achievements of this institute all the more so as we have the same blessed founder. I remind you that the anticipated gathering of specialists in the history of religions in Bucharest is not a premiere. I remember well the fervor with which a similar event was organized in Bucharest twenty years ago. One of the anchors through which, at that time, the symbolic connection of the gathering of specialists in the history of religions from all over the world to the city of Bucharest was made was the figure/memory of Mircea Eliade. At that time, it was two decades since his death, and the centenary of his birth was to follow in a year. In 2006, as now, Mircea Eliade was a controversial figure. As he is today. Or perhaps today, at a time when more and more indignant people have discovered the pleasure of hunting for "fascists" among the great names of culture, he is even more controversial.

What has happened to the memory of Mircea Eliade in the last twenty years? In a sense, much. Documents and accounts have entered the broader cultural circuit, not necessarily newly discovered, but known until recently only in expert circles. Several truly serious books about Mircea Eliade have also entered the broader cultural circuit. From the excellent Mircea Eliade – Prisoner of History by Florin Țurcanu (the Romanian edition appeared in 2005-2006, a few years after the French edition) to the recent Secrets, Lies, and Consequences. The Hidden Past of a Great Scholar and the Assassination of His Disciple by Bruce Lincoln, noting that this book is fully convincing when it speaks about Mircea Eliade, but hard to accept when it speaks about the assassination of Professor Culianu. The scenario in which Christinel Eliade is a kind of clan legionary-security mamacita and subtly conveys the assassination order (as in movies, the boss never explicitly orders an assassination, but just glances in a certain way or sighs in a certain way and the clan understands what to do) seems to me at least extravagant. Even because – I can personally testify – the old legionaries in Chicago rather disliked the widow of Mircea Eliade, on the grounds that she was a fierce monarchist.

Doubts regarding Mircea Eliade's youthful legionary commitment today raise only the ignorance and political scoundrels. There are many of these kinds among us, it is true. Also, doubts regarding the immeasurable cultural value of his work are raised only by a handful of radical activists without importance. As far as Eliade is concerned, these would be, I believe, the certain landmarks for any balanced and open mind of our days: a man of immense value with a legionary commitment. From here begins the discussion. Did Eliade change his political beliefs from his youth after the 1950s? Some say yes, others say no. Is there a connection between his scientific and literary concerns, on the one hand, and the guilty political conviction? Some say yes, others say no. Is this connection so strong that the guilty political conviction definitively vitiates, not only morally but also epistemically, through ideological pre-orientation, his scientific research and literary production? Some say yes, others say no.

I also add the fact that we are trying to answer this kind of questions in a strangely similar era to the one we are judging through Eliade. At a time when the intensity of ideological confrontations is increasing and radicalism is becoming more pervasive in the intellectual environment, we are judging an extremist commitment made by a Romanian intellectual exactly in times like those we live in, when a bunch of intellectuals are doing the same thing, some of whom are even among those who seriously engage in judging the author of Night of Sânziene. Does this help us or not to have a judgment that is at least useful to us in the long term? Maybe yes, maybe no.

As a person passionate about the subject, I see things from another angle. Mircea Eliade lived for 79 years. He spent the last 30 years in America, being a professor at a major university. All these 30 years, the man lived as on a thin layer of ice. Day by day. He knew well what he had done in his youth and he knew well that if the truth about his legionary youth were to be fully discovered, the layer would break and everything, from prestige and laurels to the security of the next day, would vanish. To live 30 years with this unease or, rather, according to this unease, elaborating strategies of dissimulation and weaving lies, thinking that someone, somewhere, could at any moment bring those texts to light, is not at all easy. He would have evaluated, in his mind, probably, the option of a public, expiatory regret, as his friend Cioran had done. Only that such a thing worked well for the socio-cultural role of a solitary and inaccessible attic author who wanders to the canteen and laments the existence of the universe. For the role of a university professor, with enormous influence in the entire American academic field, with disciples and doctoral students, with conferences and congresses, but also with the ambiance of a literary Nobel, such a regret does not work. Nevertheless, Eliade did not want to end up, like Carl Schmitt or Heidegger, on the margins.

Did Mircea Eliade conceal or change his beliefs during his American years? Absolutely all his students describe him as an admirable and friendly professor, absolutely not anti-Semitic and absolutely not radical. I don’t know, I can’t say that I know his soul, although so many seem to be sure they know it. But the fact that he skillfully concealed parts of his biography, passing them over in silence, manipulating the affection of those around him or, at other times, outright lying, is certain. Now, here is my point of view: was it worth it?

Mircea Eliade left behind not only an impressive body of work as a historian of religions and a vast literature, but also a school of the history of religions that, in the mid-1980s, when Eliade died, was the most prestigious school of its kind in America. The career he made on merit and which he protected, protecting himself through false statements about his youth, remains an intellectual example for many Romanians. For the young Romanians who followed him, whether in the years of communism (the case of I.P. Culianu), or immediately after the fall of communism (the case of almost all researchers of religions in Romania formed in the first twenty years after 1989, they being the ones who give prestige to the aforementioned institute today), the figure of Mircea Eliade was a true magnetic pole of destiny, the motivation for which they embarked on this path and their first model of intellectual performance. I add to the major role that Eliade played long after his death in mobilizing many young intellectuals, of course, his vast work. I know that there are challenges to its value – some like his literature, others do not; some say that the way Eliade did the history of religions is irrelevant today, others say that some of his ideas, such as the camouflage of the sacred in the profane, or some of the analyses of the religious phenomenon, such as the analysis of shamanism, remain fundamental. The fact is that none of this would have existed if Eliade had confronted during his lifetime the accusations and evidence that contest his memory now. He would have been, I am sure, crushed, driven from the chair, avoided by the elite of his profession, perhaps even expelled from America. But fate flowed as it flowed, it is neither anyone's merit nor fault, and I would not say that it flowed unfavorably. Eliade "unloaded" into the world the good he was capable of: he wrote, guided students, supported careers, inspired many. These are consolidated. Now, for some time, we are also looking at the bad. Forty years after his death and after his glory has been firmly built, it is time to know everything about Mircea Eliade without being anxious that someone will take him down from his pedestal, snatch him from us, or even ban him. Even if there are some nobodies who call for Eliade's prohibition, I do not believe that this should scare us. It will not happen precisely because the respect for his name is already a national cultural phenomenon.

I cannot conclude these lines without saying something extremely important, in context. The greatest disservice that can be done to the memory of Mircea Eliade in these times of contestation is not the attack of some failures who have found a purpose in life to hunt "fascists" through newspapers or on social media. The greatest disservice is the assumption of Eliade's defense by political parties like AUR. Nothing worse for the memory of Mircea Eliade than to be defended by a party that cannot hide its admiration for legionaries.

https://www.dilema.ro/tilc-show/mircea-eliade-iarasi