Mircia Iliad was a contemporary of Zioland' Romanian cultural background, later than the famous Romanian sculptor Brancusi, but before the Romanian novelist Norman Manea. The Eliad and Ziolan experiences are somewhat similar, and both have learned the eruditional, multifaceted characteristics of the French literati tradition. He gained a foothold in The French academic community after World War II, thanks to the patronage of the religious scholar Georges Dumezier. But Iliad later went to the University of Chicago in the United States, and his scholarly works written in French have been translated into English in large quantities, becoming a model and a collection of works in the discipline of religious history with worldwide influence.
In fact, Iliad was famous for his novels during his Romanian period. In recent years, with the release of Francis Coppola's film Youth Without Youth, Eliade's original novel of the same name, the French version of "A Century of Time", has also become a hot topic. Other films of the same name based on his novels are Bengal Nights and Christina. Iliad's novels are full of religious fantasy. His academic research and literary creation seem to be two sides of the same coin. In this sense, his later academic research seems to be a continuation of his fiction writing, because both have a common theme, that is, to explore the mysteries of spiritual salvation, for example, using the terminology of Eliad, how to re-recognize the "super-historicity" of human life in modern society? Or, to put it more literally, how can mysterious and even divine revelations be obtained in everyday life? You know, the results are unpredictable and full of mysteries. In this respect, poets and religious scholars have similar interests. In the preface to Images and Symbols, Georges Dumezier says that the Iliad "is first and always a writer, a poet."
"Image and Symbolism", by Mircea Iliad, translated by Shen Ke, edition: Yilin Publishing House, April 2022
Nostalgia for the Garden of Eden
As a young man, Iliad studied Sanskrit and philosophy in India, was expelled from the school for having a crush on his mentor's daughter — inspirational in the novel Bengal Nights — and then meditated under the Himalayas and practiced yoga, a spiritual experience that undoubtedly influenced his understanding of religion. The male protagonist dominique in "Youth Without Youth" is bent on finding the origin of religion and the origin of language, and this retrospective process itself reflects the development of comparative religion and comparative linguistics, and he falls in love with Veronica, who looks the same as his first love and has psychic abilities, but the latter is rapidly aging due to channeling, so Dominic has to give up his obsession with the origin problem. Although he did not find the origin of the language, his encounter with Veronica was like a return to the Garden of Eden. Dominique has the shadow of the Iliad and projects the love fantasies and religious imaginations of the Iliad. The academic counterpart of Bengal Nights should be Immortality and Freedom: A Western Interpretation of Yoga Practice. Unlike Nietzsche's Buddhist-influenced concept of "eternal reincarnation," Iliad's concept of "eternal return" points to the constant repetition of the myth of human creation and its themes. This epitomizes nostalgia for paradise.
It is a religious nostalgia and an ontological nostalgia. Eliade's The Sacred and the Secular is immersed in such an atmosphere of Eden nostalgia. It is a study of religious typology and the historiography of religion, and in contrast to the Myth of the Eternal Return, it is also a work of historical philosophy. Undoubtedly, Christian mythology became the starting point for his observation of other religions, although he tried to get rid of Eurocentrism. He noticed the different ways in which the divine appeared, ranging from idolatry and fetishism to "the theological or incarnate supreme mysteries of India about incarnation," in other words, whether it could be a tree, a mountain, or a personal god like Jesus Christ. Thus, the concept of hieophany (i.e., divine manifestation) can exhaust all kinds of religious experiences and their forms, thus realizing the universalist claims of Iliad religious historiography.
In Divine Existence: A Paradigm of Comparative Religion, Eliyade discusses in detail the concept of the manifestation and its various forms. Divine apparitions or apparitions are: heaven, sun, moon, water, stone, earth, women, plants, holy places... In an extremely nominalistic way, they form the chapter content of the book. Each chapter is divided into several subsections, based solely on stones, and further divided into: funeral boulders, fruitful stones, "rubbing stones", "thunder stones", meteorites and stone pillars, sacred stones, etc., this classification is almost ridiculed by Borges, but it fully reflects the ambition of the Iliad to approach the eastern religions.
Iliad's three-volume History of Religious Thought is written in much the same way, but with more clues to historical evolution, and the fourth volume was intended to deal with "the expansion of Christianity, the religion of medieval China and Japan," but because of his advanced age and the destruction of the relevant documents by Zhu Rong, he had to give up. Eliade apparently noticed the difference or richness of the manifestation, like a cunning Proteus, where the pure oneness of the concept of the manifestation was lost in the multiplicity of apparitions. The concept of divine manifestation/manifestation finally emerges as a platonic concept of concept that corresponds to the "overflow of God" and even resembles a poet writing poems based on inspiration. In terms of his life's work, if you borrow the terminology of Isaiah Berlin, Iliad can be described as a hedgehog disguised as a fox.
Mircea Iliad (1907–1986) was a Romanian historian of religion, philosopher, and science fiction writer, considered one of the founders of modern religious historiography.
Poetic character
Aristotle had the assumption of a political man, Adam Smith had an economic man hypothesis, and Iliad had a religious man's hypothesis. Iliad opposed religious reductionism to social or psychological factors, arguing that religious phenomena could only be understood in a religious way, but in practice he often fell into synonymous repetition. He invented the "dialectic of divine manifestation" to deal with opposition, trying to declare once and for all: "The divine manifests itself in some worldly thing." (Divine Existence: The Paradigm of Comparative Religion). The concept of the divine itself is indeed universal, beyond the scope of Christianity. Thus, his imperial magnum opus has great ambitions in time and space, and the results seem to be more than laid out and insufficiently argued, but this does not detract from his charm. They are themselves descriptive rather than normative knowledge, a naturalistic collection and typological analysis of all "divine" phenomena on Earth, and a philosophical understanding of the depths on which they seek to be achieved. He seemed to believe that the plane of the diamond of the human religious mind could mirror each other infinitely. Most of his books are written in fragmentary form, constituting an encyclopedia of religion. Those small works are more perfect, and this is the case with Images and Symbols.
Eliade rejected religious phenomenology and marked the historiography of religion, but in fact he benefited a lot from religious phenomenology. On the whole, he seems to be farther away from phenomenology and closer to hermeneutics. It was hermeneutics that had the greatest influence on him, and was not his writings full of that essentially intuitive element, especially his analysis of religious images and symbols? Having said that, hermeneutics seems to have become the dominant method of the humanities, and in turn has defended the dignity of the humanities. No wonder Eliade argues that the study of the history of religion is in fact a new humanism. It implies a post-religious human desire for the sacred, as well as an integration of the human psyche and spirit. In this sense, Iliad continued carl Jung's line of thought. Iliad's writings on the history of religion are moving and unrelated to their psychological and spiritual depth. He intended to rebuild the Tower of Babel of human religion.
If Iliad's divine manifestation still has an essentialist attachment to concepts, his incomparably broad historical vision makes up for this regret. Of course, he also elevates the analysis of dizzying materials to the level of "principles.". "Image and Symbol" is a portrayal of a series of divine manifestations of the "principle" level, which is a highly beautiful formalistic showmanship interpretation. As Dumezier puts it: "In fact, the theme of symbolism has become popular in religious thought, and indeed in the whole world of thought. Eliade's symbolic analysis of religion clearly went beyond Jung. It also has a poetic character, as literary and beautiful as a mandala. As Iliad had hoped, it would also have an impact on literature and psychology. For Iliad, it was also a work of religious history that made the greatest concessions to literature and psychology, semiotics, and iconography.
Poster of "Youth Without Youth".
Literature as a method
Speaking of mystic studies, Iliad said: "The revolution in literature and art (i.e., the shift in aesthetic values) foreshadows what will happen in a larger part of society in a generation or two. (See Mysticism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Customs). His literary career has foreseen and led the academic career. Iliad's influence on Chinese academia in the last century is rather in line with the ideological atmosphere of civilization comparison and cultural exploration since the 1980s. Zhu Dake's newly completed "Ancient Chinese Gods" actually uses the Iliad method, but I don't know if it is self-conscious. Ye Shuxian's mythological series also incorporated Iliad's alchemical research. By the way, the shared interest in alchemy once again demonstrates the spiritual kinship of Eliade and Jung, both of whom saw alchemy as an adventure of spiritual sublimation rather than the pursuit of material wealth by King Midas, whom Ovid mocked in The Metamorphosis.
Chinese mythology and religion have always been within the vision of the Iliad, such as his belief that the salvation of the mother is another form of Orpheus story. The Jianmu in the Classic of Mountains and Seas is undoubtedly what the Iliade called the "cosmic tree"; However, Neo-Confucianism is more concerned with the rationalization after the "Jedi Heavenly Pass", and even Li Zehou has discussed this process. Between the ancient style of religion and the academic project of reason, it is certain that the study of Chinese mythology, classics and even folk literature still needs to be promoted. As Iliad's work is more translated into Chinese — his novels haven't been translated yet — he is expected to have a greater impact and gain more fans in China.
Text/Wang Dongdong
Edit/Zhang Jin
Proofreading/Xue Jingning