Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) was a Romanian-born historian of religions and a novelist whose works were known in translation the world over.

Mircea Eliade began his life in Bucharest March 9, 1907. While still studying in the lycée he wrote numerous articles in a popular vein on entomology, the history of alchemy, Orientalism, the history of religions, impressions of his travels, stories, and literary criticism. In 1925 he entered the University of Bucharest, where he pursued the study of Renaissance philosophy. Thus began a life-long preoccupation with the great creative epochs in Western history and with the puzzle of human, especially literary, creativity itself. Eliade had seen, for example, how the Rumanian poets, writers, and historians he admired had drawn material and inspiration from folk sources, and he was fascinated to see an analogous process at work in the Italian Renaissance.

For Eliade, the rediscovery of Greek philosophy, exemplified in...