What do you think?
Rate this book
Journal III, 1970-1978
More an eloquent chronicle of the mind's life than a recital of daily routine, this volume of Mircea Eliade's journal offers a remarkably candid portrait of a renowned scholar and his work. The entries—full of marvelous ideas, outlines for works never written, responses to the works of others, and much more—reveal many rarely glimpsed sides of the private, as well as public, man. What did he really think of the students who came to him for instruction in black magic? What were his private reflections on feminism, student drug use, the sexual revolution, the nature of American scholars and scholarship? Who were his best friends, why did he enjoy their company, and why did he shun the company of others?
Quite apart from the personal, biographical interest the journal holds, it is a document of cultural and intellectual significance. Eliade remarks on such colleagues and friends as Jung, Dumézil, Ricoeur, Bellow, and Ionesco. Moreover, the period covered encompasses Eliade's most active years as a teacher, and the journal beautifully reflects his developing views on religion, history, and the nature of academic culture. Bits and pieces of Eliade's past life are juxtaposed with thoughts about ongoing projects and work yet to be undertaken as well as with anecdotes of his travels and comments on world events.
A genuine treat for Eliade readers and those interested in history of religions, Journal III provides new perspectives on many of Eliade's other works—the History of Religious Ideas, Ordeal by Labyrinth, the Autobiography . At the same time the journal is a mature scholar's record of the aftermath of the 1960s, a turbulent period that profoundly affected American university life. As such, these writings hold valuable insights into not only the life and work of one man but also the cultural history of an entire era.
Quite apart from the personal, biographical interest the journal holds, it is a document of cultural and intellectual significance. Eliade remarks on such colleagues and friends as Jung, Dumézil, Ricoeur, Bellow, and Ionesco. Moreover, the period covered encompasses Eliade's most active years as a teacher, and the journal beautifully reflects his developing views on religion, history, and the nature of academic culture. Bits and pieces of Eliade's past life are juxtaposed with thoughts about ongoing projects and work yet to be undertaken as well as with anecdotes of his travels and comments on world events.
A genuine treat for Eliade readers and those interested in history of religions, Journal III provides new perspectives on many of Eliade's other works—the History of Religious Ideas, Ordeal by Labyrinth, the Autobiography . At the same time the journal is a mature scholar's record of the aftermath of the 1960s, a turbulent period that profoundly affected American university life. As such, these writings hold valuable insights into not only the life and work of one man but also the cultural history of an entire era.
- GenresRomanian Literature
376 pages, Hardcover
First published June 29, 1989
50 people want to read
About the author
Mircea Eliade
564 books2,729 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 31, 2022
Mircea Eliade kept detailed diaries throughout his adult life, although The Portugal Journal (of 1941-5) is the earliest to survive. Fortunately, along with two volumes of Autobiography, we have copious records of his life and thoughts in Paris after WWII and in Chicago from the late Fifties onwards, where we see him establishing himself as the leading historian of religions of his generation.
His Journal for the years 1970 to 78, translated here by Teresa Lavender Fagan – somewhat circuitously, from a French translation of the Romanian original (he always wrote his journals, novels and short stories in his native language) – shows his growing disillusionment with the hippie phenomenon, which had cast a spell on him in the late Sixties (as attested in Journal II, 1957-1969). Although he can see the use of hallucinogenic drugs as a desperate attempt to penetrate “invisible worlds”, he cannot accept that such “ridiculous, artificial, mechanical, ecstasies” can have much to do with an “authentic” initiation, like those he studied among shamanic cultures. But he is not surprised when a lecture series on Shamanism and Hallucinogens proves to be extremely popular with “this admirable American youth culture”.
There is also a warning to the curious in Eliade’s account of one of his female students undergoing a magical initiation on a Balearic Island after going to a party while high on hashish and LSD. Her recollection, although understandably unclear, was that she was undressed and “made love to” as a “ritual sacrifice” in order to be admitted into a coven. “She came to imagine”, Eliade writes, “that this gathering of hippies was in reality a ceremony uniting sorcerers and witches” – and it would be interesting to know to what extent stories like this that Eliade heard from his students influenced his own studies on European witchcraft. For three years later, he gave a lecture (published in Occultism, Witchcraft & Cultural Fashions: Essays in Comparative Religion) in which he said that the orgiastic practices attributed to witches, whether real or imaginary, were, like the “ritual nudity” and “uninhibited sexual spontaneity” of Seventies youth culture, an attempt at “the rediscovery of ‘cosmic religion’ and the sacramental dimension of human existence…”
Nevertheless, by 1973 Eliade is expressing his impatience with “the young Americans of today who proclaim themselves to be fervent followers of diverse schools of Zen or yoga, but who in practice devote themselves to perpetual and monotonous orgies and combine in total aberration alcohol, sex, and drugs.” They are attempting, Eliade believes, to justify “licentiousness” as “spirituality.” Eliade recounts that when he and his wife were visited one morning in 1956 by Alan Watts, the great ambassador of Zen wisdom to the counter-culture, they offered him coffee, but he asked for vodka instead; Eliade took this as indicating that he “had not understood his ‘message’ very well.”
The ‘message’ which Eliade has, however, understood very well – and which he very much wants us also to get – is “the mystery of the camouflaging of the sacred in the profane.” Our inability to grasp this results in the triumph of “the desacralisation of the world, of life, and of history,” and of the “sacralising” of “brute matter” in modern art, where all matter, even excrement, “can serve as a basis for artistic expression.” As a result, “religious experience has become unrecognisable, for it is camouflaged in its contrary – in materialism, anti-religion, etc…”
But Eliade contrasts such modern aberrations with authentic Zen spirituality, which insists on “the necessity of accepting Nature, Life, and History, such as we find them, and thus of looking for our own accomplishment – or our salvation, or our deliverance, or our beatitude – in this world.”
I was reminded, reading this, of what Henry Corbin, one of Eliade’s colleagues at the Eranos conferences in the 1960s, once said: that salvation does not come from “denying and doing away with the manifest world”, for this world is a theophany – a revelation of “essential divine reality” – which can be apprehended through imagination. Eliade also frequently stressed the role of imagination as a counter to desacralisation, especially in the consciousness of modern, profane man; but he did not always agree with Corbin as to where the true, spiritual imagination manifested creatively. Thus, he found Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (which was so popular then on university campuses) unreadable, commenting in February 1975: “I don’t understand at all how this book has been so successful … Its ‘fantastic’ universe is only a pile of medieval legends that have been laboriously disguised.” By contrast, Corbin sees it as “an epic at once heroic, mystic and gnostic” in which is narrated a test of fitness for Grail initiation.
Eliade would also collaborate with Corbin in founding the University of St John of Jerusalem, a Hermetic circle of scholars, theologians and philosophers dedicated to the inner harmony of the Abrahamic religions. He is deeply saddened by news of Corbin’s death from cancer: “I feel a great sadness overwhelm me … Henry wasn’t only a friend, he was above all a witness.” Such deep, spiritual friendship can overcome the ravages of time and memory. As Eliade writes a few months later: “I’m writing these lines without the least bitterness. Everything that truly matters to me, I’ve been able to keep. Nothing has been lost.”
There is more on Eliade and religious symbolism in my Goodreads blog: Myth Dancing (Incorporating the Twenty Third Letter). A series of posts on Eliade begins here: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
His Journal for the years 1970 to 78, translated here by Teresa Lavender Fagan – somewhat circuitously, from a French translation of the Romanian original (he always wrote his journals, novels and short stories in his native language) – shows his growing disillusionment with the hippie phenomenon, which had cast a spell on him in the late Sixties (as attested in Journal II, 1957-1969). Although he can see the use of hallucinogenic drugs as a desperate attempt to penetrate “invisible worlds”, he cannot accept that such “ridiculous, artificial, mechanical, ecstasies” can have much to do with an “authentic” initiation, like those he studied among shamanic cultures. But he is not surprised when a lecture series on Shamanism and Hallucinogens proves to be extremely popular with “this admirable American youth culture”.
There is also a warning to the curious in Eliade’s account of one of his female students undergoing a magical initiation on a Balearic Island after going to a party while high on hashish and LSD. Her recollection, although understandably unclear, was that she was undressed and “made love to” as a “ritual sacrifice” in order to be admitted into a coven. “She came to imagine”, Eliade writes, “that this gathering of hippies was in reality a ceremony uniting sorcerers and witches” – and it would be interesting to know to what extent stories like this that Eliade heard from his students influenced his own studies on European witchcraft. For three years later, he gave a lecture (published in Occultism, Witchcraft & Cultural Fashions: Essays in Comparative Religion) in which he said that the orgiastic practices attributed to witches, whether real or imaginary, were, like the “ritual nudity” and “uninhibited sexual spontaneity” of Seventies youth culture, an attempt at “the rediscovery of ‘cosmic religion’ and the sacramental dimension of human existence…”
Nevertheless, by 1973 Eliade is expressing his impatience with “the young Americans of today who proclaim themselves to be fervent followers of diverse schools of Zen or yoga, but who in practice devote themselves to perpetual and monotonous orgies and combine in total aberration alcohol, sex, and drugs.” They are attempting, Eliade believes, to justify “licentiousness” as “spirituality.” Eliade recounts that when he and his wife were visited one morning in 1956 by Alan Watts, the great ambassador of Zen wisdom to the counter-culture, they offered him coffee, but he asked for vodka instead; Eliade took this as indicating that he “had not understood his ‘message’ very well.”
The ‘message’ which Eliade has, however, understood very well – and which he very much wants us also to get – is “the mystery of the camouflaging of the sacred in the profane.” Our inability to grasp this results in the triumph of “the desacralisation of the world, of life, and of history,” and of the “sacralising” of “brute matter” in modern art, where all matter, even excrement, “can serve as a basis for artistic expression.” As a result, “religious experience has become unrecognisable, for it is camouflaged in its contrary – in materialism, anti-religion, etc…”
But Eliade contrasts such modern aberrations with authentic Zen spirituality, which insists on “the necessity of accepting Nature, Life, and History, such as we find them, and thus of looking for our own accomplishment – or our salvation, or our deliverance, or our beatitude – in this world.”
I was reminded, reading this, of what Henry Corbin, one of Eliade’s colleagues at the Eranos conferences in the 1960s, once said: that salvation does not come from “denying and doing away with the manifest world”, for this world is a theophany – a revelation of “essential divine reality” – which can be apprehended through imagination. Eliade also frequently stressed the role of imagination as a counter to desacralisation, especially in the consciousness of modern, profane man; but he did not always agree with Corbin as to where the true, spiritual imagination manifested creatively. Thus, he found Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (which was so popular then on university campuses) unreadable, commenting in February 1975: “I don’t understand at all how this book has been so successful … Its ‘fantastic’ universe is only a pile of medieval legends that have been laboriously disguised.” By contrast, Corbin sees it as “an epic at once heroic, mystic and gnostic” in which is narrated a test of fitness for Grail initiation.
Eliade would also collaborate with Corbin in founding the University of St John of Jerusalem, a Hermetic circle of scholars, theologians and philosophers dedicated to the inner harmony of the Abrahamic religions. He is deeply saddened by news of Corbin’s death from cancer: “I feel a great sadness overwhelm me … Henry wasn’t only a friend, he was above all a witness.” Such deep, spiritual friendship can overcome the ravages of time and memory. As Eliade writes a few months later: “I’m writing these lines without the least bitterness. Everything that truly matters to me, I’ve been able to keep. Nothing has been lost.”
There is more on Eliade and religious symbolism in my Goodreads blog: Myth Dancing (Incorporating the Twenty Third Letter). A series of posts on Eliade begins here: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
Displaying 1 of 1 review