/lit/ - Literature

Where do I start with Mircea Eliade?

Let's say I want to get the gist of the general ideas of his in maybe up to 3 books, which ones should I get?

July 1942, Berlin

>Gorneanu [a member of the Legation] takes me today to Carl Schmitt, who has wanted for a long time to know the true story about Nae Ionescu’s philosophy. A house in Dahlem, with very un-Germanic furniture, several modern paintings, and a library rich in old books. Carl Schmitt is a small man with a face not very impressive but luminous, animated. He speaks fluent French. I tell him that of his books I know only Die romantische Politik, which influenced Nae Ionescu, Ţuţea, and others very much. But instead of beginning a discussion about Nae, he asks me about Salazar, about Portugal, about maritime cultures—and we talk for three hours. He is writing a book about “land and sea,” and he has read enormously concerning aquatic art, culture, and symbol- ism. He says that Moby-Dick is the greatest creation of the maritime spirit after the Odyssey. He shows me several curious paintings by a modern German artist whose name I promptly forget: underwater, cosmological visions.

>He offers us a bottle of Rhine wine. He is delighted to have met me and he regrets that I’m leaving tomorrow for Madrid. He says the most interesting man alive today is René Guénon [and he is happy that I agree]. He escorts us as far as the metro station, talking about aviation as a “terrestrial” symbol.

December 1942, Lisbon

>Goruneanu writes me from Berlin that Ernst Jünger, en route to the Russian front, stopped two days at Carl Schmitt’s place, and there he read Zalmoxis, “deeply impressed,” making numerous notes. Schmitt sends me his little book Land und Meer [Land and Sea], about which he spoke to me last summer, with the following dedication: “Mircea Eliade, als kleine Gegengabe für seinen grossen Zalmoxis” [To M. E., as a little gift in return for his great Zalmoxis].

December 11, 1941

> My capacity for understanding and feeling culture, in all its forms, is unlimited. If only I were able to express even a hundredth part of all I think and know differently from the way others know it! I don’t believe I’ve ever met a genius of such complexity—in any case, my intellectual horizons are broader than those of Goethe. I realize, for example, that I could write, easily, a book about Portuguese poetry of the nineteenth century. I’m not a scholar, or not only a scholar. Undoubtedly, there are others who know better than I the his- tory of nineteenth-century Portuguese poetry. But I’m sure that I understand it and feel it more profoundly, more originally, more systematically.

>Consciousness of this unity of the spiritual history of humanity is a recent discovery, which has not yet been sufficiently assimilated. Its importance for the future of our discipline will become manifest in the last chapter of the third volume. It is also in this final chapter, in the course of a discussion of the crises brought on by the masters of reductionism-from Marx and Nietzsche to Freud-and of the contributions made by anthropology, the history of religions, phenomenology, and the new hermeneutics, that the reader will be able to judge the sole, but important, religious creation of the modern Western world. I refer to the ultimate stage of desacralization. The process is of considerable interest to the historian of religions, for it illustrates the complete camouflage of the "sacred "-more precisely, its identification with the "profane."
I'm new to Eliade. Aside from the last chapter he talks about above, is there any other book where he focuses on this last stage of desacralization in the modern West?

>>18399161
ignore jung and campbell posters, eliade is the answer you're looking for
start with myth of the eternal return and follow it up with myth and reality
>>18399518
>I've thought of Junger, but isn't he a rather advanced thinker?
I can't tell if this is bait, but junger had a better grasp of the western canon than jung, definitely a more respectable thinker
everyone should read eumeswil

Thoughts and opinions of this man?
I'm having trouble narrowing down his stance on psychoanalysis and theosophy, as he seems to be in conversations with those ideas.
Also recommendations on where to start with his fiction would be appreciated, because orientalist adventures are based.

>>17644808
You two NIGGERS should stop it with the reductionism and atheism in religious studies classes.
FUCK OFF, WE'RE FULL.

Why did his entire field turn on him? Seems based.

Should I read his books if I want to understand the difference between mythology and theology?

Guys, enlighten me on Mircea Eliade. Is he /lit/?

Exhibit B

Tell me about him, /tradlit/.

So far I have read "The Sacred and The Profane" and "The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion".
I have "Patterns in comparative religion", but I saved it for later.

What are you doing if not philosophizing? Can you justify your daily actions, or your belief system? Why are you doing whatever you are doing then?
Its really fanscinating how most people fail to grasp the utter necessity of philosophical anlysis in ones life and always ask you for the "use" of it.

>muh eternal return!

So apparently a while back a translation of Diary of a Short-Sighted Adolescent by Mircea Eliade came out recently. Anyone bother to read it? For that matter any Eliade fans? I've just starting reading him a while back. I'm not religious but I find him interesting.

Do you read and enjoy authors that you disagree with?

I have recently taken an interest in Mircea Eliade, but don't know if he's worth reading or not. For example: Is "The Sacred and the Profane" worth my time?

Any recommendations? - Both in terms of fictional works and his research.

If your gonna like some mystical fascist at least like the one that was good.

Romanian Literature thread ?