[The] literary work of Mircea Eliade presents itself to us open to a global understanding, through the well-armed and lucid critical spirit of its author. We misjudge the creative personality of this Romanian author if we place the accent exclusively on his vast and solid scientific work. The fundamental elements of his complex subject in the field of scholarship, the search for and comprehension of homo religiosus, are present in his literary creation: Mythos, Eros, Thanatos, and Logos are the fundamental ...

One feels confident that additional translations … of Eliade's literary oeuvre will be recognized as imperative in the English speaking world for understanding the relationship between the scientific and artistic motivations of the man who has in a special way reopened access for modern sensibility to the mythic and the religious. (p. 717) As [examples of the genre littérature fantastique], they are excellent stories, affording moments of delicious horripilation. Particularly, "T...

I think it will be evident to any attentive reader [of Tales of the Occult] that I wanted to relate some yogic techniques, and particularly yogic folklore, to a series of events narrated in the literary genre of a mystery story. In both novelettes ["The Secret of Dr. Honigberger" and "Nights at Serampore"] a number of important personages are real. (p. ix) However, throughout these two tales I have carefully introduced a number of imaginary details, in order to awaken in any caut...

Mircea Eliade's novel Forêt Interdite [The Forbidden Forest], whose mythic signification is evident,… belongs to the current inspired by the depth psychology of Jung. Eliade's book can be defined as the meditation of a man upon the thousand-year history of his people, with all the risks and calamities that this implies. (p. 390) I find it logical to relate [his] "prohibited forest," the symbol of a definitive realization in the beyond, in what Eliade himself called ...

Auf der Mântuleasa-Strasse is a genuine "fantastic story" in the best hair-raising tradition; but the incredible, the bizarre, is firmly supported here by the ingenious frame of acute actuality: the reality of terror—that ingredient of our times—the reality of the human being under lock and key in a police state…. Is Auf der Mântuleasa-Strasse a satire of the police state? A roman à clef? In the brutality of the inquisitors, contrasting to the hallucin...

In Der Hundertjährige (The Centogenarian), which deals with the problem of rejuvenation and also offers a final speculation on the Übermensch, Mircea Eliade … again balances technical expertise with mythological thinking. Unlike his other tales, centrifuges of virtuosity, Der Hundertjährige is tightly structured, with a beginning, a middle and a sudden, inevitable end. His new character Dominic has less definition but more bulk. Eliade pursues his doddering prey with tiny twists ...

Delusional thought processes leading to bizarre conduct and scenes of pathological suspicion are described with Voltairean irony [in Die Pelerine (The Cape)]. There are plenty of conversational acids, and the author prodigally provides for the reader's delectation absurd dialogues that call to mind Samarakis's The Flaw. The accent is on suspense rather than violence and shows Eliade's technique at its most wizardly. His writing is fast, intelligent and wryly funny. He has earlier proved...

[No Souvenirs: Journal 1957–1969] is packed with the jottings of an overflowing mind: dreams too good to lose; insights to be refined later; sad thoughts on the degeneracy of orientalists…. The journal can be hard going. As a travelogue it disappoints, but as a record of the cerebral life in the early jet age it has its niche. We leave the professor grappling with Chicago hippies, persuading himself that the uninhibited sexuality they praise is 'part of the (unconscious) process of the ...

Obviously there is far too much material [in Die drei Grazien (The Three Graces)] for a conventional story. As was the case in most of his other stories or novels …, Eliade offers very little romanesque plotting. But as always, the real subject of his writing is the flow of his scientific erudition. Die drei Grazien is so deeply plunged in thought that, despite attractive characters and immaculately executed scenes, it all often seems less like a story than one of the author's admirable essays...