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Από τα πλατωνικά κείμενα και τα νεοπλατωνικά στα ινδικά, τα ιουδαϊκά, τα σουφικά, από το όραμα του Παύλου στις ησυχαστικές εμπειρίες της θέας του Θαβωρίου φωτός, στην πνευματική ζωή των ανθρώπων συναντούμε το φαινόμενο της εμπειρίας του θεϊκού φωτός, που με τη σειρά του πιστοποιεί την ενεργό παρουσία του φωτός στην ζωή του ανθρώπου και συγχρόνως δηλώνει το άνοιγμα του ανθρώπου από τον κόσμο του σκότους και της άγνοιας σε έναν κόσμο πνευματικό.
124 pages
First published January 1, 1934
7 people are currently reading
238 people want to read
About the author
Mircea Eliade
561 books2,714 followersRomanian-born historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, professor at the University of Chicago, and one of the pre-eminent interpreters of world religion in the last century. Eliade was an intensely prolific author of fiction and non-fiction alike, publishing over 1,300 pieces over 60 years. He earned international fame with LE MYTHE DE L'ÉTERNAL RETOUR (1949, The Myth of the Eternal Return), an interpretation of religious symbols and imagery. Eliade was much interested in the world of the unconscious. The central theme in his novels was erotic love.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 3, 2018
Σχόλιο: Πρόκειται για μία πολύ καλή ανάλυση πάμπολλων θρησκευτικών εμπειριών του μυστικού Φωτός, από τον πατέρα της συγκριτικής θρησκειολογίας, σε μια εποχή που ελάχιστοι θα τολμούσαν ή θα σκέπτοντο να πράξουν κάτι παρόμοιο. Εντυπωσιάζουν η προσεγμένη, αναλυτική, λόγια και ταυτόχρονα άμεση γλώσσα, τα άφθονα παραδείγματα, η κριτική θεώρηση, μια ονειρική διάθεση και ο σεβασμός του πρωτογενούς υλικού. Ο Ελιάντε (Ηλιάδης) φαίνεται να έχει προσωπικό και όχι μόνο ψυχρό επιστημονικό ενδιαφέρον για το θέμα, όπως φαίνεται από τον τρόπο που το προσεγγίζει: αναζητά τόσο την υποκειμενικότητα της εμπειρίας όσο και την αντικειμενική απήχησή της. Δεν λείπει και η εκτενής αναφορά στον παλαμισμό και τον ησυχασμό του 14ου αιώνα της βυζαντινής θεολογίας, που επιτυγχάνεται με εμβρίθεια, αποκαλύπτοντας τη δυναμική της.
March 9, 2021
Lost in Translation
Best known today as the leading historian of religions of the second half of the twentieth century, Mircea Eliade (1907–86) was, in the Thirties, the leading light of Romania’s interwar cultural renaissance – one, albeit, which would soon fall prey to the terrors of history!
Already known as a prolific journalist and essayist, the ‘short-sighted adolescent’ would pen two semi-autobiographical novels before setting off for India to study its philosophy and practise yoga (which would eventually become the subject of one of his most famous, ground-breaking books, like those on alchemy and shamanism). After several months of intense study, a case of sunstroke led Eliade to take a break and dash off a novel about a rather unpleasant Doctor and his sexual misadventures. Isabel și apele diavolului, to give it its original Romanian title, was published in Bucharest in 1930, while the author was still in India. It was first published in France as Isabel et les eaux du diable, but has never been translated into English; and the same fate has awaited its successor, Lumina ce ce stinge (The Light that Fails).
The book begins with a mystery: Cesare, a librarian, working late one night, stumbles on a weird sex magic ritual being performed by an elderly professor, a young journalist and occultist called Manuel and a beautiful naked woman, Melania. Whatever the nature of the ritual, it seems to have caused a fire to break out (Tantric heat?); and, in rescuing Melania, Cesare is injured. As a result, he learns that he will eventually lose his sight.
What follows only gets stranger; and the narrative elements which could have developed into an engrossing occult thriller get subsumed into passages of Joycean stream-of-consciousness, inner monologues and unlikely conversations between unlikeable characters. This is magical realism carrying the philosophic burden of Nietzschean esotericism. Cesare is a conscientious, mediocre realist – leading a “meaningless and artificial existence” – whose world has been turned upside down by a magical act: At one point he is called a Perceval clothed in the armour of indifference, a Grail Seeker malgré lui who finds himself, like the Maimed King of the legends, suspended between two worlds: light and dark, land and sea, life and suicide.
At the end of the novel, Cesare recognises Manuel as his dark brother, his shadow-self; and it is this realisation which the author suggested should lead the “wise reader” to re-read the book from the beginning, in the light (pun intended) of the “key” which he has now provided to interpret the previous three hundred pages. Unfortunately, like the majority of its readers when it was first published in 1934, I was baffled by it; and agree with those who found it nigh unreadable. Even with the key, I won’t be re-reading it unless there’s a new English translation, hopefully directly from the original Romanian and not, as is unfortunately the case with Bengal Nights (his most famous novel), at two removes (translated, like some of his journals, into English from a French translation).
The sense of dislocation (of being lost in translation) that arises when reading a book in a language which is native neither to the author nor to the reader is echoed by Eliade’s own concerns, as expressed in his memoirs (Autobiography, Volume 1: 1907-1937, Journey East, Journey West), that Lumina was set in a Nowhere land: “Was it perhaps an exemplary Europe with synthetic landscapes, cities and characters, imposing itself upon me without my realising it, out of my repressed longings and nostalgias – trying to make its way into my consciousness, which had been wholly conquered by India, in order to defend me from the enchantment of Asia, to hold onto me? Or, on the contrary, did those exemplary European landscapes and faces mask my own drama, which I did not yet suspect, but which was presaged by the ‘mystery’ of Lumina ce se stinge?
“Because, exactly as in the novel, the drama in which I unknowingly found myself involved also began in a library.” This drama is the story of Eliade’s forbidden love for the daughter of his Indian philosophy teacher. Like the story of Cesare, it is the tragedy of a man suspended between two worlds; but, unlike the story of Cesare, it is only too real.
There is more on Eliade, literature, mythology and symbolism in my Goodreads blog: Myth Dancing (incorporating the Twenty Third Letter)
Best known today as the leading historian of religions of the second half of the twentieth century, Mircea Eliade (1907–86) was, in the Thirties, the leading light of Romania’s interwar cultural renaissance – one, albeit, which would soon fall prey to the terrors of history!
Already known as a prolific journalist and essayist, the ‘short-sighted adolescent’ would pen two semi-autobiographical novels before setting off for India to study its philosophy and practise yoga (which would eventually become the subject of one of his most famous, ground-breaking books, like those on alchemy and shamanism). After several months of intense study, a case of sunstroke led Eliade to take a break and dash off a novel about a rather unpleasant Doctor and his sexual misadventures. Isabel și apele diavolului, to give it its original Romanian title, was published in Bucharest in 1930, while the author was still in India. It was first published in France as Isabel et les eaux du diable, but has never been translated into English; and the same fate has awaited its successor, Lumina ce ce stinge (The Light that Fails).
The book begins with a mystery: Cesare, a librarian, working late one night, stumbles on a weird sex magic ritual being performed by an elderly professor, a young journalist and occultist called Manuel and a beautiful naked woman, Melania. Whatever the nature of the ritual, it seems to have caused a fire to break out (Tantric heat?); and, in rescuing Melania, Cesare is injured. As a result, he learns that he will eventually lose his sight.
What follows only gets stranger; and the narrative elements which could have developed into an engrossing occult thriller get subsumed into passages of Joycean stream-of-consciousness, inner monologues and unlikely conversations between unlikeable characters. This is magical realism carrying the philosophic burden of Nietzschean esotericism. Cesare is a conscientious, mediocre realist – leading a “meaningless and artificial existence” – whose world has been turned upside down by a magical act: At one point he is called a Perceval clothed in the armour of indifference, a Grail Seeker malgré lui who finds himself, like the Maimed King of the legends, suspended between two worlds: light and dark, land and sea, life and suicide.
At the end of the novel, Cesare recognises Manuel as his dark brother, his shadow-self; and it is this realisation which the author suggested should lead the “wise reader” to re-read the book from the beginning, in the light (pun intended) of the “key” which he has now provided to interpret the previous three hundred pages. Unfortunately, like the majority of its readers when it was first published in 1934, I was baffled by it; and agree with those who found it nigh unreadable. Even with the key, I won’t be re-reading it unless there’s a new English translation, hopefully directly from the original Romanian and not, as is unfortunately the case with Bengal Nights (his most famous novel), at two removes (translated, like some of his journals, into English from a French translation).
The sense of dislocation (of being lost in translation) that arises when reading a book in a language which is native neither to the author nor to the reader is echoed by Eliade’s own concerns, as expressed in his memoirs (Autobiography, Volume 1: 1907-1937, Journey East, Journey West), that Lumina was set in a Nowhere land: “Was it perhaps an exemplary Europe with synthetic landscapes, cities and characters, imposing itself upon me without my realising it, out of my repressed longings and nostalgias – trying to make its way into my consciousness, which had been wholly conquered by India, in order to defend me from the enchantment of Asia, to hold onto me? Or, on the contrary, did those exemplary European landscapes and faces mask my own drama, which I did not yet suspect, but which was presaged by the ‘mystery’ of Lumina ce se stinge?
“Because, exactly as in the novel, the drama in which I unknowingly found myself involved also began in a library.” This drama is the story of Eliade’s forbidden love for the daughter of his Indian philosophy teacher. Like the story of Cesare, it is the tragedy of a man suspended between two worlds; but, unlike the story of Cesare, it is only too real.
There is more on Eliade, literature, mythology and symbolism in my Goodreads blog: Myth Dancing (incorporating the Twenty Third Letter)
July 5, 2017
"Înec" a fost super.
August 5, 2024
Ich bin ein Eliade-Fan und genau deswegen habe ich den Roman gelesen. Hat der Roman mir gefallen? Eher nicht… Würde ich ihn empfehlen? Unter gewissen Bedingungen absolut.
Der Anfang ist sehr interessant und beschreibt ein Mysterium: Cesare, der Bibliothekar, beobachtet ein sexuelles Ritual, das dazu führt (ohne zu viel vorwegzunehmen), dass er in der nahen Zukunft blind wird.
Was folgt, sollte für eine interessante Geschichte sorgen, tut das aber nicht. Die Ereignisse werden schnell langweilig und sogar langwierig. Die Diskussionen zwischen den Figuren finden in einer schwer zu begreifenden Sprache statt. Eliades Duktus wirkt auf mich künstlich und manchmal unbegreifbar. Er benutzt viele narrative Techniken, u. a. den Bewusstseinsstrom und sehr häufige Perspektivwechsel. Wenn ich ehrlich bin, ist das kein angenehmes Leseerlebnis.
Ich habe mich sogar dabei ertappt, wie ich beim Lesen manchmal das Opfer meines eigenen Bewusstseinsstroms geworden bin, was mir bei der Lektüre eines Eliade-Textes normalerweise nicht passiert. Alles in allem ist das kein einfach zu lesender Roman. Deswegen musste ich einige Passagen erneut lesen.
Habe ich den Roman genossen? Eigentlich, wenn ich darüber nachdenke… ja! Hier beobachtet man, wie die großen Themen der eliadischen Literatur entstehen: die Zeit, wie man der persönlichen oder historischen Zeit entfliehen kann (oder nicht), die Stadt ohne Namen, die Figuren mit zu oft mit „M“ anfangenden Namen (im Rumänischen von „mântuire“ – Absolution), die Zwiespältigkeit zwischen der Realität und Irrealität, vertane Chancen zur Erlösung usw.
Zwischen den Zeilen kann man den Samen dessen erkennen, was das Wesen eliadischen Literatur sein wird. Deswegen, wenn man ein echter Eliade-Fan ist, sollte man unbedingt dieses Buch lesen. Wer noch nicht fast alles, was er geschrieben hat, gelesen hat, sollte vielleicht das Lesen dieses Buches aufschieben.
Der Anfang ist sehr interessant und beschreibt ein Mysterium: Cesare, der Bibliothekar, beobachtet ein sexuelles Ritual, das dazu führt (ohne zu viel vorwegzunehmen), dass er in der nahen Zukunft blind wird.
Was folgt, sollte für eine interessante Geschichte sorgen, tut das aber nicht. Die Ereignisse werden schnell langweilig und sogar langwierig. Die Diskussionen zwischen den Figuren finden in einer schwer zu begreifenden Sprache statt. Eliades Duktus wirkt auf mich künstlich und manchmal unbegreifbar. Er benutzt viele narrative Techniken, u. a. den Bewusstseinsstrom und sehr häufige Perspektivwechsel. Wenn ich ehrlich bin, ist das kein angenehmes Leseerlebnis.
Ich habe mich sogar dabei ertappt, wie ich beim Lesen manchmal das Opfer meines eigenen Bewusstseinsstroms geworden bin, was mir bei der Lektüre eines Eliade-Textes normalerweise nicht passiert. Alles in allem ist das kein einfach zu lesender Roman. Deswegen musste ich einige Passagen erneut lesen.
Habe ich den Roman genossen? Eigentlich, wenn ich darüber nachdenke… ja! Hier beobachtet man, wie die großen Themen der eliadischen Literatur entstehen: die Zeit, wie man der persönlichen oder historischen Zeit entfliehen kann (oder nicht), die Stadt ohne Namen, die Figuren mit zu oft mit „M“ anfangenden Namen (im Rumänischen von „mântuire“ – Absolution), die Zwiespältigkeit zwischen der Realität und Irrealität, vertane Chancen zur Erlösung usw.
Zwischen den Zeilen kann man den Samen dessen erkennen, was das Wesen eliadischen Literatur sein wird. Deswegen, wenn man ein echter Eliade-Fan ist, sollte man unbedingt dieses Buch lesen. Wer noch nicht fast alles, was er geschrieben hat, gelesen hat, sollte vielleicht das Lesen dieses Buches aufschieben.
August 31, 2017
Sinnlose Plage. Dabei waren mir "Cesares Geheimnisse, Herrn Georges Krisen, Melanias Sünde, Iacobs Wahnsinn, Manoils Rätsel, Martas Begeisterung" von Anfang an so was von egal. Oder wie der Autor schreibt: "lediglich amorphe, sinnlose, uninteressante und tote Mischung"
June 11, 2021
Capitolul XIII - Memoriile lui Manoil - sclipitor, intens; aduce a Marele Inchizitor al lui Dostoiesvki dar din alta perspectiva religioasa
September 3, 2024
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 29, 2021
O carte rea.Sunt dezamagit.E prea pretentioasa
September 17, 2015
Ambele volume
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews