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Polemici: Mac Linscott Ricketts. LES OUBLIS D'ALEXANDRA LAIGNEL-LAVASTINE- I
Scris la Friday, December 11 @ 16:54:03 CET de catre asymetria |
Mac Linscott Ricketts. LES OUBLIS D'ALEXANDRA LAIGNEL-LAVASTINE
CONCERNING MIRCEA ELIADE
1 PART I
The volume, Cioran, Eliade, Ionesco: L'oubli du fascisme, by
Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine, Ph. D., published in April 2002 by
Presses Universitaires de France (Paris), created a flood of
responses, beginning almost immediately, both in France and
Romania. It was a book purporting to show, with massive
supporting evidence based on meticulous and original research
(“in previously unexploited archives”), that the three men named
in the title had all been tainted by collaboration with the
Romanian government allied with the Third Reich in the Second
World War, and that the first two, Cioran and Eliade, had even
held and promoted the anti-Semitic doctrines of the Iron Guard,
Romania's “fascist” movement. In other words, these men had
“pasts” which they wanted to forget, and which they sought to
conceal from the public after they became famous (only Cioran had
repented openly). A
Many of the first reviews, written almost certainly by
persons who had not read the 550-page book but were naturally
impressed by the size and scope of the tome, or who lacked the
scholarly expertise to evaluate it, were favorable. Journalists,
taking as fact the publisher's publicity printed on the back
cover and the author's own claims in the opening pages, praised
Mme Laignel-Lavastine's “meticulous scholarship” and the lengths
to which she had gone in carrying out her “original research.”
Mac Linscott Ricketts
LES OUBLIS D'ALEXANDRA LAIGNEL-LAVASTINE CONCERNING MIRCEA ELIADE
1 PART I
The volume, Cioran, Eliade, Ionesco: L'oubli du fascisme, by
Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine, Ph. D., published in April 2002 by
Presses Universitaires de France (Paris), created a flood of
responses, beginning almost immediately, both in France and
Romania. It was a book purporting to show, with massive
supporting evidence based on meticulous and original research
(“in previously unexploited archives”), that the three men named
in the title had all been tainted by collaboration with the
Romanian government allied with the Third Reich in the Second
World War, and that the first two, Cioran and Eliade, had even
held and promoted the anti-Semitic doctrines of the Iron Guard,
Romania's “fascist” movement. In other words, these men had
“pasts” which they wanted to forget, and which they sought to
conceal from the public after they became famous (only Cioran had
repented openly).
A many of the first reviews, written almost certainly by
persons who had not read the 550-page book but were naturally
impressed by the size and scope of the tome, or who lacked the
scholarly expertise to evaluate it, were favorable. Journalists,
taking as fact the publisher's publicity printed on the back
cover and the author's own claims in the opening pages, praised
Mme Laignel-Lavastine's “meticulous scholarship” and the lengths
to which she had gone in carrying out her “original research.”
But as time passed and specialists in Romanian studies had had
time to read carefully and evaluate the whole work, the reviews
became increasingly critical. One of the first critics was the
man who had translated more than a score of Eliade's books, Alain
Paruit, who called L'oubli a “very superficial work,” a “false
book,” and one “full of errors. Edgar Reichmann, a reviewer
for Le Monde, who often has been critical of Eliade, dismissed
the volume as “a knot of contradictions” that “starts from a
false a priori . . . A Romanian, Florian Manolescu, declared
it “. . . a book almost entirely erroneous. Several
commentators pointed out that the author lacks objectivity,
despite her claim to the contrary: “Our intention . . . is not
inquisitorial” (p. 31). In fact, however, like D. Dubuisson,
Radu Ioanid, Leon Volovici, Steven Wasserstrom, and certain
others, this author can find nothing good to say about Eliade and
almost nothing non-critical about Cioran. “Her attitude is
fundamentally that of a prosecutor,” as Mircea Iorgulescu rightly
asserts.5 Or in the words of Nicolae Manolescu, “The inquest, as
she herself calls it, is transformed inevitably into a political
lawsuit.
Laignel-Lavastine calls herself one of “a new generation of
researchers” at the Biblioteca Academiei Române, whose work is
both “serious and dispassionate” (p. 127). Dispassionate it is
not; on the contrary, nothing is admitted into her pages that
would cast a shadow of doubt on her predetermined viewpoint.Her
work resembles, in fact, nothing so much as a Stalinist “show-
trial,” where the judgment was decided before the proceedings
began. Moreover, her “original research” is much overrated.
Most of the material on Eliade, supposedly found by her in
obscure sources, is in fact lifted from books (including my own)
without citation,7 and whenever French translations of Romanian
writings exist, these are used rather than the original Romanian.
What she means by “serious” is unclear, since the book is
peppered with insinuations, snide remarks, and allusive
sobriquets, intended to be darkly humorous. It is not a work of
accurate scholarship, since it teems with errors, minor and
major: from page numbers in references and historical dates to
confusions of names and misinterpretations of whole articles.
Neither is it one of honest scholarship, since the author's
method of citing truncated quotations and passages out of context
enables her to make them mean whatever she wants, even the
opposite of what their author intended.8
Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine has titled her book, L'oubli du
fascisme (a title probably suggested by Daniel Dubuisson's
article, “Mircea Eliade ou l'oubli de la Shoah, meaning by this
that the three subjects of her book, as I have said, had “pasts”
concerning their relationships with fascism that they sought to
“forget,” or to keep concealed from the the world in which they
attained fame and honor after the Second World War. I have
entitled my article as I have, because, the more I read Mme
Lavastine's book, the more evident it became to me that she
herself was guilty of the “forgetfulness” of which she accused
Eliade and the others. That is, she undoubtedly had read many
things in her research (however deficient) that contradicted or
called into question her theses, but she conveniently “forgot”
them, trusting that her readers, being persuaded by her “meticulous research” and the “overwhelming” quantity of her evidence, would not check her references or challenge her conclusions. And, indeed, there are relatively few individuals who would take the time or have the means to examine her sources, and all too many who are eager to applaud the character-assassins of these once-popular figures.
This review will be about only those sections of the book having to do
with Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), since my knowledge of the life and
works of Emil Cioran and Eugène Ionesco is much less extensive than in
Eliade's case. Professor Eliade was my teacher and doctoral advisor in
1961-64, and afterward a colleague (on several translation projects)
and friend. Moreover, I have in my possession copies of all his books
and several hundred articles written by him, from all periods of his
life, plus unpublished manuscripts and letters. While Alexandra
Laignel-Lavastine's research is far from being as “complete” as she
represents it, I must admit that she has apparently read very
extensively-more so than most persons who boldly venture to comment on
what Eliade taught and believed. But she has read with a jaundiced eye
(why?), which has led her to “overlook” or “forget” a great many things
she read. In this article I propose to call attention to some of the
most flagrant instances of her “forgettings”-things she has “repressed”
because to recall them would have discredited her theses and
invalidated her arguments.
One thing she forgets to do frequently, I believe, although
I can prove it in only a few of the suspicious instances, is to
cite the true sources of the materials used. For example, on pp.
51-52 she describes a visit Mircea Eliade made at age fifteen
with his Boy Scout troop to Cernau_i (Czernowitz) in Bukovinia, a
territory recently annexed from the Hapsburg Empire. He
published an account of it in a school newspaper (22 November
1922). As Laignel-Lavastine describes the visit, it was made to
promote friendship with the youth of the new Romanian province.
However, he is offended at the people on the street speaking
German, and on learning that only 2% of the population is
ethnically Romanian. Seeing that nearly all the stores display
Jewish names, in Gothic or Hebrew characters, he is dismayed.
Although the source given in her footnote is the school
newspaper,10 to me it is obvious that Laignel-Lavastine never set
eyes on that paper. The account is plagiarized from my biography
of Eliade.11 Of this I am certain, since the newspaper article
says nothing about the trip's being designed to promote
friendship (I suggested this as a possibility), and the ethnic
Romanian population of the city was not 2%, as I wrote-that was
an error on my part, due to a faulty translation. The closest
she comes to giving me credit is in note 1, p. 51, where, for
information on Eliade's earliest youth, she refers readers to my
book, which she says is “minutieusement” documented, although
“conceived as a hagiography.” Actually, the article could have
been found easily in a collection edited by Mircea Handoca in
1996, containing all of Eliade's articles published from 1921
through 1925.12
Another passage evidently lifted from my book describes
Eliade's departure for India, as reported in the newspaper
Vremea, 29 November 1928. There are many other instances for
which the only reference given is the original source, even
though it seems much more likely that the author read the text in
a volume of collected articles. For example, nearly all the
articles of the 1920s and 1934-36 to which she makes reference
are found in the two-volume anthology, Profetism românesc, edited
by Dan Zamfirescu.13
*
An ever-present theme of L'oubli is anti-Semitism. However,
the author forgets to define what she means by the term, or what
it meant in Romania in the period between the two great wars,
leaving the reader open to possible misunderstandings. Since the
Hitler era, anti-Semitism is usually understood in “racial”
terms, as a matter of “blood.” (These terms, too, are ambiguous,
of course.) The term is derived from “Semite,” the name,
properly speaking, for a group of languages, but which had come
in nineteenth century Europe to designate the Jews as a race,
like the Chinese, Negro, Amerindian, and Aryan. Jews had been
widely persecuted by Christians down through the centuries on
religious grounds: for rejecting the Messiah (Jesus Christ) and
for putting him to death (often called “deicide,” the killing of
God incarnate). However, the curse of having been born into this
“race” (and thus inheriting its guilt) could be removed by
baptism, and in the liberal climate of much of nineteenth-century
Europe, Jews often opted for this choice and became
“assimilated.”
It is hard to grasp what was meant by “race” in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Bernard Lewis, a
recognized authority on the subject of anti-Semitism, points out
that when the term “race” was used, it was often equivalent to
what would be called an “ethnic group”: a mixture of physical
characteristics, linguistic classification, aesthetic
preferences, and historical, cultural, and political identities.14
As another scholar puts it: “Nineteenth-century Romanian anti-
Semites employed the term 'rasa' (race) as the rough equivalent
of 'nationality.' In eastern Europe, especially, great
importance was attached to nationality and to “race,” in this
sense.
Anti-Semitism did not become a major issue in what is now
Romania until after the Romanian lands gained their independence
from the Ottomans in 1848. During the Middle Ages, the region
was known for its tolerance, and Jews from areas of Europe where
they were persecuted or being expelled, notably Spain and Poland,
emigrated there in significant numbers. Often they entered at
the invitation of the boyars (large landholders).
With independence from the Turks, a powerful nationalistic
spirit came to the fore in Romania. Some of the principal
proponents of anti-Semitism in the late nineteenth century were
B. P. Hasdeu (1883-1907), Mihai Eminescu (1850-1899-Romania's
sainted poet), and Vasile Conta (1845-1882). The last, for
example, wrote, “The Jews constitute a nation, distinct from all
other nations, and hostile to them. In the twentieth century,
these ideas would be carried forward by the great historian,
Nicolae Iorga (1871-1940), and a host of others. To be a
Romanian “nationalist” meant to be also anti-Semitic . . . but in
a sense other than racial.
Another type of anti-Semitism, the theological or
“religious” one, was not prominent in Romania. More important
was an economic and social type, that is, opposition to Jews on
the grounds that they were forcing the peasants off their lands
and turning the towns into Jewish population centers, whose
economic life they dominated. Jewish immigration from Poland,
Galicia, the Ukraine, and Russia in the northwestern regions was
particularly alarming to the native Romanian populace. We shall
hear much more about these matters later in this essay.
By forgetting to make any explanation of what “anti-
Semitism” meant in Romania in the twenties and thirties of this
century, Laignel-Lavastine leaves to reader to assume it
signified the same thing it did for those responsible for the
Holocaust.
*
Mme Lavastine is somewhat confused about Eliade's
relationship to the nationalistic and anti-Semitic student
movement that was in full flower during his lycée and university
years. The radical rightist students, led by Corneliu Z.
Codreanu, law student at Iaçi, and A. C. Cuza, professor of
political economy at Iaçi University, had been agitating since
1921-22 against the new liberal constitution being imposed on the
nation by the Allied Powers. The chief feature of it they
opposed was Article 7, granting full citizenship to Jews and
other minorities.17 Opposition was often expressed in acts of
physical violence against “Bolshevik Yids” and Jewish property.
One of the goals of the nationalist students was “numerus
clausus,” that is, the limited enrollment of Jews in the
universities, where they typically were represented in much
higher percentages than in the population. Spreading beyond the
universities, they formed the League of National Christian
Defense (LANC), which was to remain a force in Romanian society
and politics until well into the thirties.
After Parliament adopted the new constitution in March 1923,
the agitation continued. Both within the student population and
in society at large, the anti-Semitic activities of the
nationalists tended to be approved. In the fall of 1924 Codreanu
shot and killed the prefect at Iaçi, a man whose prolonged
persecution of the students had earned him their hatred. The
following spring, the assassin was acquitted-by a jury all of
whose members wore swastikas (the LANC emblem).18
What Laignel-Lavastine has “forgotten,” it seems, is that
Eliade took no part in this nationalistic, anti-Semitic movement.
She insinuates, however, in footnote 1, p. 52, that he wrote
articles supporting the cause because he contributed “regularly”
to a student paper, Curentul studentesc, which she describes as
“close to the League for National Christian Defense (LANC). I
seriously doubt that she ever saw a copy of that periodical (as I
did in 1981). It was, in fact, a newspaper published by an
“independent” group of university students at Bucharest, from 16
March 1925 to 17 February 1927 (very irregularly after the first
year). A theology student headed the staff and Eliade's brother
filled the number-two position. Contributors included “moderate”
university professors such as C. Rådulescu-Motru and Simion
Mehedinñi (1868-1963). The paper's stated purposes centered on
enlightening the peasantry and bringing culture to the villages.
This work is seen as an urgent need, since “Foreigners in the
country constitute a present and real peril to the vitality of
our political unity.” In short, the editors state, “Our
objective is the same as that of all good Romanians: National
Security.” Obviously, these goals are “nationalistic,” and as
such, comparable to those preached by Prof. Iorga or even to
those of C.Z. Cuza and Codreanu,20 but what is missing here is the
rabid anti-Semitism of the LANC propaganda.
Eliade contributed just five articles to this organ, all in
the spring of 1925 when he was still a lycean: “Science in the
Culture of the People” (I, 2); “Our Friends, Books” (I, 4);
“Creative Nationalism-the Works of Hasdeu” (I, 5); “Tinerimea
român_” (about an annual spring youth gathering in Bucharest; I,
10); and “Panait Muçoiu” (I, 10).21 While some of these follow
the nationalistic line of the newspaper-that is, the need for the
enlightenment of the peasantry in order to strengthen the
nation-Laignel-Lavastine forgets to mention that none of them
contains a hint of anti-Semitism. The essay about Hasdeu's
nationalism might arouse suspicion, since this nineteenth-century
publicist, author, historian, statesman, and all-around genius
was one of the anti-Semitic founding fathers of the nation.
Eliade, who was to write about this man often in the years to
come, in this article passes quickly over his “objective anti-
Semitism” and emphasizes his nationalism which, in contrast,
“never attained objectivity.” Hasdeu's nationalism, the young
Eliade wrote, “must be an example for us today . . . He could
not limit himself to vain words, tricolored standards, or noisy
demonstrations. Our nationalism must be creative: our duty is to
work . . . In other words, nationalism must strive for the
cultivation of the ethnic element in the whole country, because
by enlightening the consciousness of the many, the Romanian
civilization which the West awaits from us will be determined.”
Also in line with the paper's stated purpose of lifting the
cultural level of the peasants, is Eliade's article, “Science in
the Culture of the People.” It is an essay about Victor Anestin
(d. 1918), an able Romanian scientist who sacrificed his career
in astronomy to write articles of a popular-science type for the
benefit of the masses.22 This sort of thing, Eliade asserts, is
the task of our generation, of the students who are the
forerunners of the “cultural renaissance” that will follow us.
The most surprising article in the group is the one about
Panait Musoiu (1864-1944). This piece was written after Eliade
had been taken to meet the “anarchist or socialist, who eked
out a living translating unpopular political books. Eliade, ever
an admirer of a bibliophile and “workaholic,” has only words of
praise for him. “We don't care about the man's social creed or
the political party to which he belongs. We admire the Man
himself and the miracle accomplished by this idealist who molds
the world to his ideas instead of letting himself be molded by
the world's realities.” Then, bearing in mind his readers'
viewpoint, he asserts: “We must not judge Mu_oiu from the
standpoint of the doctrine he propagates, but we must admire him
for the honesty with which he propagates it.” In view of the
contents of these articles, it is not too surprising that no
reference to them is made in L'oubli du fascisme. From the
author's point of view, they were better forgotten.
Eliade wrote only once, almost certainly by special
invitation, for Cuvântul studentesc, the organ of the National
Union of Romanian Christian Students-and Laignel-Lavastine does
not forget to mention this fact (p.70). Entitled “A Generation,
the article is essentially a summary of some major themes of the
famous “Spiritual Itinerary” series25 which Eliade had just
finished publishing, especially the alienation between the new
(or young) generation and the older generations (the one that
went to war, and the one preceding that). The the two tiny
fragments cited from it by our “historian” shed little light on
the article's main theme-especially since she mistranslates a
word, reading batjocurit (“mocked”) for båtåtorit (“tread”)! The
sentence from which she quotes, rightly translated, reads: “They
[the war generation] walked, with borrowed steps, to the Western
rhythm-and thus they tread on our poor Romanian soil like
Westerners.” This statement shows, as Mme Lavastine implies,
Eliade's hostility to ideas introduced from Western Europe, but
the one truly “nationalistic” sentence, which Laignel-Lavastine
somehow overlooked, is this: “Now, our Romanianism [românism] has
suffered in the past ten years the most terrible crisis that
history can recall from 1848 on”-meaning, in the context of the
article, the influence of Western European ideas such as
positivism and “neospiritualism.” The war generation produced
nothing of value (i.e., in the way of literature), but now, he
continues, its influence has diminished. It is a historical fact,
he states, that after such a crisis there follows a renaissance.
Our generation, “animated by the Spirit,” is the fruit of that
crisis. We are destined to be “true creators,” he declares,
referring to what he had said in the “Spiritual Itinerary”
articles and would say, he promised, in a forthcoming volume,
Cartea cu semne [The Book with Signs]-a book which was, however,
never published.
*
Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine has quite forgotten to make use
of an invaluable source, Eliade's autobiographical “novel” of his
student years, Gaudeamus, readily available in a volume published
in 1989.26 When he entered the University of Bucharest in the
fall of 1925, he joined a “student circle” or club, just then in
the process of being organized by a senior medical student (“Dr.”
Zissu) who had been promised money for a cåmin (dormitory and
canteen) if he could organize a group. For several weeks the
circle met in Eliade's garret, where they practiced Christmas
carols, since caroling was to be their first activity. In his
autobiography,27 he avows that he was indifferent to the
nationalistic student movement in his university years, and all
contemporary evidence I have found supports this statement. The
circle Eliade joined was one of the rare ones that was
nonpolitical. According to Gaudeamus, the president had made it
a strict rule that members were not to discuss politics, even
informally, at their meetings. Once, when some boys became
engaged in a heated conversation about the student strike (to
protest the government's refusal to impose numerus clausus), the
president promptly ruled them out of order.28 The author (i.e.,
Eliade), when asked his opinion, refused to take a position on
the matter. Later, when some of the author's friends found out
about his involvement in a circle, they assumed that it was a
typical nationalistic, anti-Semitic group. A close friend from
lycée days, a Jewish boy called “Marcu” (Mircea Marculescu),29
stops coming to call at Eliade's garret. When the two chance to
meet on the street, Marcu says, “Radu told me that you'd turned
anti-Semitic and that your attic had become the meeting place of
a Christian circle . . . ” The author laughs. “It's true that
for two months my garret was the meeting place of the Circle.
Many of the students are anti-Semitic, but you know me, I've
never been an anti-Semite.
The president put the author in charge of publishing a
paper, Revista universitar_., which was distributed through
newsstands. However, it did not sell well: “Being neither anti-
Semitic or philo-Semitic, it didn't interest people. When a
friend insists that the author can't be a Christian without being
an anti-Semite, he replies, “That's stupid. I can't become a
supporter of a solution so long as I haven't studied the
problem.” The other retorts, “Who's stopping you from studying
it?” And the author answers, “The anti-Semites. Do you think I
can be objective when heads are being cracked, when Jewish
classmates are beaten, when Christian classmates are locked up. .
. ? The country's not perishing because five students avoid the
Jewish question, preferring to find first themselves, to create
criteria of values.
In his second year at the university he attended a congress
of student societies at Iaçi in November. Among the large number
attending were some thirty persons from Eliade's circle alone.
He went to the opening session of the three-day meeting, but was
unimpressed by the cheering throngs or the orations. “I didn't
listen to a single speech in its entirety. I couldn't pay
attention. The problems were unfamiliar to me and I was
unwilling to accept the conclusions of the references without
examining closely their starting points.33 He and his girlfriend
spent most of the time touring the old city, and he wrote no
article about it for Cuvântul (to which he was now contributing)
when he returned.
*
It is important to see what Eliade wrote in these years
about B. P. Hasdeu, one of the “founding fathers” of the nation,
known for his anti-Semitism. Eliade had first written about him,
as we have seen, in the spring of 1925. That fall he published
an important two-part article on the man, which Laignel-Lavastine
has forgotten to include among her references.34 The article,
which summarizes the scholar and publicist's life and works,
includes references to his nationalistic articles, especially
those dealing with the Jews: The Talmud, and National Industry
and Jewish [evreiasc_] Industry, as Related to the Principle of
Competition. In these, Eliade states, “are seen his anti-Semitic
ideas, based, however on historical facts and not on passions and
hatred.” In another book, The History of Tolerance in Romania,
Eliade reports, Hasdeu maintained and demonstrated that the
Romanian rulers have had a long history of religious tolerance
for all faiths, including Hussites, Lutherans, Evangelicals,
Armenians, Muslims, and Jews. These last he divided into three
categories: those who arrived in early Roman times, those
expelled from Spain in 1490, and those from Poland. These last
had experienced some persecution, he confessed, but compared to
the Inquisition of Western Europe, it was “child's play.” Before
writing these “works of his maturity,” Eliade admits that he had
published a “tendentious pamphlet,” Three Jews [ovrei] in which
he had classified Jews into three types, based on literary
characters: Shylock, Gosbec (from Balzac), and Moise (from
Alecsandri, a Romanian writer).
In this article, as well as the earlier one, Eliade seems to
be going out of his way to show that Hasdeu, although a
nationalist, was not an anti-Semite-and to hold him up as an
example for his generation-this, at a time when Jew-hating was
very much in vogue among “Christian” university students. By
taking account of these writings unfortunately “forgotten” by Mme
Laignel-Lavastine, a very different, richer, and, in my opinion,
more accurate portrait of the young Mircea Eliade emerges.
*
In the spring of 1927, Eliade participated in a three-week
tour of Italy sponsored by his former lycée. Among the articles
he sent back for publication in Cuvântul is one that describes
the rude treatment the group received from members of a Romanian
student canteen in Pisa. Although it had been arranged for them
to dine there, the majority of the canteen's members (who were
Jews) refused to vacate the tables to make room for them. One
Jewish student, whom Eliade repeatedly praises, by name, in the
article, stood up for them, however, and with his efforts plus
those of one Christian student and some Italian professors, the
visitors finally were able to eat. The next day, their defenders
were expelled from the “Fascist Student Circle” (as it was
called). Eliade calls the student who befriended the group “the
most sincere and enthusiastic Romanian citizen. It will be
recalled that only a few years before, students and others had
violently opposed granting citizenship to Jews. Again, Laignel-
Lavastine, Ph. D., has forgotten to mention and comment on this
very interesting article.
On this same trip he interviewed the historian of religions,
Vittorio Macchioro, a man with whom he had been corresponding for
years.36 Neither Catholic nor Fascist, he held a modest post as
director of the National Museum of Antiquities at Naples, with
some teaching duties. After the two had discussed mystery
religions (Macchioro's speciality), the Italian began speaking of
life under Fascism. “. . . In Fascist Italy freedom of thought
and of publication has not existed for a long time,” he said.
Yet Italian intellectuals, he continued, are not “revolted” by
this, but flattered. “They are happy to be slaves to the
government.” He spoke critically of Giovanni Gentile (since he
had become a Fascist), and said he wanted to leave Italy. But he
warned Eliade, “If you were to entrust to a Fascist what we've
been talking about, I'm sure I'd be fired from the university and
the museum.” Nevertheless, naively, Eliade published these
statements in his interview article, with the result that
Macchioro lost his job, and was interrogated by the police.
Eliade remembered the whole episode when he wrote his memoirs,
commenting, “At that time I did not know what a dictatorship
means.
Mme Laignel-Lavastine mentions that Eliade was “fascinated”
by Giovanni Papini's idea of “spiritual virility” (p. 53), and
took an interview with him on the 1927 Italian trip. This man,
she says, was one his “passions” in these years. These
statements are true, but the researcher again forgets to give any
details, being content to have joined Eliade's name to that of a
man known to have been an ardent Fascist. By this time, however,
Papini had converted to Catholicism (in 1920), and had modified
greatly his rhetoric, becoming an “orthodox reactionary,”
identifying the cause of Fascism with that of the Church.38
Eliade had “discovered” Papini in lycée, finding himself in the
latter's autobiographical volume, Un uomo finito (1912). The
adolescent, struggling to overcome his melancholic “Moldavian
heritage” and attain a more virile will, responded
enthusiastically to Papini's early writings. A whole chapter of
his Novel of the Nearsighted Adolescent was devoted to Papini.39
Since the two had been in correspondence for several months
before their meeting, the interview was conducted on a very
personal level. For instance, a major subject was what each
understood by “mysticism.” Nothing was said about Fascism-or even
about “virility.” Mme Lavastine forgets, however, to tell her
readers these things.
Making reference to his article on Julius Evola written in
1927, “The Value of Occultism in Contemporary Culture, Laignel-
Lavastine observes that Eliade shows himself “very knowledgeable”
of the works of this man, who, in later years, would (she says),
like Eliade and Papini, endeavor to “fuse Fascism with religion”
(p. 53). Again, the author presumes to demonstrate a “guilt by
association,” without offering any proof. In fact, in this
article Eliade criticizes Evola for not being religious and thus
not knowing a “Christic experience.”
The next spring (1928) Eliade was in Italy again, this time
to study for his baccalaureate thesis on the Renaissance. On
this visit, he managed to interview Prof. Giovanni Gentile, after
attending one of his class lectures.41 “The man made a very
strong impression on Eliade, as the reading of their interview
published in Cuvântul testifies,” Laignel-Lavastine asserts,
without proffering any details.42 The interview, as published, is
mainly about contemporary Italian philosophy and philosophers.
As for Fascism, Gentile is quoted as saying, “Naturally, Fascism
has points of contact with philosophy. The Fascist doctrine
itself, having religious, cultural, and educational attitudes,
has a philosophical substance.” No doubt Eliade was “impressed”
with the whole experience, though not because the man was a
Fascist, as our researcher intimates, but because he, a very
young man, was able to hear, and to speak face to face for more
than half an hour, with Italy's leading philosopher.
*
In summarizing Eliade's activities and writings prior to his
leaving for India in November 1928,43 I would emphasize, in
contrast to the allegations and insinuations of the French
researcher, the following important facts which she “forgets”:
Eliade did not, in any of the more than three hundred articles he
wrote in these years, advocate limitation of enrollment of Jews
or other minorities in the universities (numerus clausus); he
did not belong to any nationalistic student group or participate
in any anti-Semitic act of violence commonplace among members of
these groups; he did not refer to Jews by the pejorative term
“Yids” (Jidani); he went out of his way to attempt to minimize
Hasdeu's known anti-Semitism; and he did not “militate” in favor
of fascism or in opposition to democracy.
_______________________________
1.
2. “Cioran, Eliade, Ionescu: uitarea fascismului de Alexandra
Laignel-Lavastine. Dezbatere RFI,” Revista 22 (Bucharest, 18-24
Jun 02); cf. “Comment critiquer Eliade, Cioran et Ionesco?”
Esprit, Aug-Sep 02, pp. 227-39.
3. Revista 22 (18-24 Jun 02).
4. “Eliade, Cioran, Ionescu si pipa lui Magritte,” Litere,
arte, idei (LAI), Supliment de Cotidanul, 30 (17 Jun 02).
5. “Portret artistului cu delincvent politic, I,” first of a
four-part article, Revista 22, no. 21, (21-27 May 02).
6. “Editorial: Istoria ca proces politic,” România literarå,
21 (29 May-4 June 02)
7. Marta Petreu found the author had plagiarized her works on
Cioran also: “Laignel-Lavastine, metoda 'franceza,'” Revista 22,
VIII, 26 Jun - 30 Jul 02 (five-part article).
8. A. Paruit, in Esprit, op. cit, p. 23.
9. In Gradhiva, 28 (2000), pp. 61-66.
10. “Cernauñi,” Ziarul çtiinñelor populare, 21 Nov 22.
11 Mac Linscott Ricketts, Mircea Eliade, The Romanian Roots:
1901-1945. Boulder: East European Monographs, 1988, p. 33.
12. Mircea Eliade, Cum am gasit piatra filozofala, Bucharest:
Humanitas, 1996.
13. Mircea Eliade, Profetism românesc, Bucharest: Ed. Roza
Vânturilor.
14 Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites, New York and
London: W.W.Norton & Co., 1986, pp. 95-96; see all of Chapter 4.
15. William O. Oldson, A Providential Anti-Semitism.
Nationalism and Polity in Nineteenth-Century Romania,
Philadelphia: The National Philosophical Society, 1991, p. 30
16. Tesu Solomovici, România judaica, o istorie
neconventionala a evreilor din România, Bucharest: Editura Tesu,
2001, I, p. 88; cf. Chapters IV and V.
17. This was the same Article-and the same issue-that had been
fiercely debated in the late 1870s when Romania was seeking
recognition of its independence by other European nations. A
compromise had been reached then, which-while seeming to open the
way to Jewish emancipation-allowed the government to continue, in
effect, to exclude virtually all Jews from citizenship. See
William D. Oldson, op. cit., pp. 47-97.
18. See Irina Livezeanu, Culture and Politics in Greater
Romania. Regionalism, Nation Building, and Ethnic Struggle, 1918-
1930, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995, Chapter
7, especially pp. 256-287. Cf. Ricketts, Romanian Roots, pp. 129-
131.
19. See her lively account of the activities of LANC members,
implying a kind of guilt by association to Eliade for his writing
for a paper that was “close” to it!
20. Cf. Codreanu, Pentru Legionari, I, Miami Beach: Traian
Golea, 1990 (7th ed.; orig. 1937), p. 14.
21. All of these can be found in Eliade, Cum am gåsit piatra
filozofalå, cited above.
22. Cf. Eliade, “Victor Anestin,” in Cuvântul, 15 Nov 26.
23. Eliade, Autobiography, vol. I, New York: Harper & Row,
1981, p. 111.
24. “O genera_ie,” Cuvântul studentesc, 4 Dec 27. Laignel-
Lavastine, I am sure, found this in a book, Ideea care ucide,
Dimensiunile ideologisei legionare, edited by Alexandru Florian,
Radu Florian, et. al., Bucharest: Editura Noua Alternativa, 1994,
pp. 186-88-a fact she forgets to mention. The article appeared
originally in Dec 27. (Eliade published one other article in
this paper [“Cultura si creatie,” 15 Feb 36] which is not
mentioned in L'oubli du fascisme.)
25 Laignel-Lavastine gives little attention to these
articles, forgetting their importance for Eliade at this time and
largely missing their point. Cf. pp. 66, 68, 70-72.
26 Eliade, Romanul adolescentului miop (with Gaudeamus), ed.
by Mircea Handoca, Bucharest: Ed. Minerva, 1989.
27 Autobiography, II, 1937-1960, Exile's Odyssey, Chicago and
London: University of Chicago Press, 1988, p. 13.
28 Gaudeamus, p. 225.
29 Eliade, Autobiography, I, pp. 74-76. “Thanks to him
[Mårculescu] I came to know firsthand the life of the poor Jews
of Dudeçti. We got into the habit of spending holidays together;
the Christian ones at my home, the Jewish ones with his family.”
Later he became an important agent of the Secret Sercive, working
at the Library of the Romanian Academy. (See Alexandru George,
“Câte un necunoscut,” Adevårul literar çi artistic, 8 Aug 2002.
30. Gaudeamus, pp. 292-93.
31. Ibid, p. 256. There were only three issues, Jan, Feb, Mar
1926. Cf. Mircea Handoca, Mircea Eliade, Biobibliografie,
Bucharest: Editura “Jurnalul Literar,” 1997: Eliade's 16
contributions are listed between nos. 575 and 601, pp. 130-32.
See Autobiography, I, pp. 1l3-l5.
32. Gaudeamus, p. 295.
33. Ibid, p. 330.
34. “Bogdan-Petreceicu Hasdeu,” Foia tinerimii, 15 Oct and 15
Nov 25; repr. in Eliade, Cum am descoperat piatra filosofalå, pp.
302-07, 323-28.
35. Eliade, “Studenñii 'români' la Pisa,” Cuvântul, 21 May 27.
36. Eliade, “Note de drum: Napoli,” Cuvântul, 8 Jun 27.
37. Eliade, Autobiography, vol. I, p. 126. Unfortunately,
this episode was not enough to persuade him of the evils of
dictatorship, as we shall see.
38. Adrian Lyttelton, Italian Fascisms, from Pareto to
Gentile, London: Jonathan Cape, 1973, pp. 97-98.
39. Eliade, Romanul adolescentului miop, pp. 183-86. Cf.
Autobiography, I, pp. 82-84.
40. Eliade, “Ocultismul în cultura contemporanå,” Cuvântul, 1 Dec 27. It is a review of an article Evola had recently
published.
41. Eliade, “De vorba cu Giovanni Gentile,” Cuvântul, 27 May
28; Autobiography I, p. 123.
42. Probably she is quoting me here, where I was referring to
Eliade's reaction to hearing Gentile lecture. See Ricketts,
Mircea Eliade, The Romanian Roots, 1907-1945, p. 311 (see pp. 311-
12). Laignel-Lavastine is not interested in the article per se,
but only in the fact that Eliade had interviewed a Fascist.
Hence she “forgets” to summarize the article.
43. Lavastine becomes confused about the date of his
departure, although she copies from my book a newspaper account
(without credit) which plainly states that it was 22 November
1928. She is equally confused about the time he spent there: she
says from December 1929 to November 1931-two years! (p. 53).a
Nota: Republicăm o sumă de texte care au rămas în versiunes html a revistei Asymetria. Această versiune este încă disponibilă în unele arhive internaționale și publice, dar textele care au fost publicate înainte de 2006 au încă o actiualitate potențială, măcar pentru cercetători sau studioșii mai tineri. Incepem cu textul polemic scris de Mac Linscott Ricketts, un autentic specialist al operei lui Mircea Eliade, nici aservit, nici cumpărat, nici vândut unor interese de clan.
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