Radio România Internațional

Tag: eliade

  • Mircea Eliade: unpublished documents

    Mircea Eliade: unpublished documents


    In the summer of 1942, the writer, journalist and historian of religion Mircea Eliade was briefly in Bucharest, between leaving his diplomatic post in London and taking over the one at the Romanian Embassy in Lisbon. This was the last time the author, then aged 35, saw his home country and, more importantly, his birth city, Bucharest, which he gave a mythical aura in his prose. This was also when he left his entire personal archive, with manuscripts, documents and scientific writings, in the care of his family, until his return which, in 1942, seemed not only possible, but simply natural. As we know, this never happened, and Eliade died abroad in 1986.



    The archive in Bucharest was kept by his sister, Corina, until her own death in 1989. Unfortunately, since then Eliades documents were neglected, and to this day they have not been properly accounted for and studied by experts. However, the Romanian Academys Institute for the History of Religions has recently managed to obtain an important part of this archive and to organise an exhibition entitled “Mircea Eliade: unpublished documents.” Historian Eugen Ciurtin, head of the Institute for the History of Religions, told us the troubled story of the efforts to recover Eliades manuscripts:



    Eugen Ciurtin: “We were able to prove, and we hope this will be included in the forthcoming months in a first volume of the complete collection of Mircea Eliades scientific work, that he picked some pages from the works he was preparing at the time and he took them with him in Portugal. But it was only a few pages. The archive he left in Romania contains tens of thousands of pages. As he says in a diary entry dating from August 1952, when he was already in Ascona, his entire youth was there. In his diary, Eliade is heartbroken to realise that his entire youth, everything he had lived, written, thought, read until the age of 33, including in India, might be lost forever. The horrors of the post-war period, his image as a fascist supporter and his inability to return prevented access to his manuscripts, which fortunately were protected by his family. Thanks to Constantin Noica, Sergiu Al-George and Arion Roșu, some of his Indology books, around 130 volumes, ended up in the “Eliade” Collection of the library of the Institute for the History of Religions. But the manuscripts themselves were not opened until 1981. It was Constantin Noica who did this in 1981, together with a young literary historian and high school teacher, Mircea Handoca, who got the familys permission to research the archive.”



    For many years, Mircea Handoca exchanged letters with Mircea Eliade, who in 1981 told him, “I persuaded my sister to allow you to research my manuscripts.”Mircea Handoca did this, and he also took part in the editing of several religious history books whose publication was permitted by the Communist regime. After Eliades sister died in 1989, her son, professor Sorin Alexandrescu, who lived in the Netherlands, gave the entire archive to Handoca for safekeeping. Eugen Ciurtin told us what happened next:



    Eugen Ciurtin: “Unfortunately, in March 1989, when Eliades sister died in an empty house, as Mr. Sorin Alexandrescu recounted, these manuscripts were appropriated by Mircea Handoca. Between March 1989 and September 2015, they could not be seen. Thousands and thousands of pages. So far only a few hundred pages, maybe a few hundred manuscripts have been auctioned, and only some of them could be recovered, and only some of them could be donated to the Institute for the History of Religions.”



    Although no rights on the archive had been transferred, Mircea Handoca never returned the documents to the rightful owners, and after his death in 2015, his heirs took them over. This is why, instead of being studied for academic purposes by experts, fragments of Eliades archive were auctioned in the past 2-3 years. Fortunately, they were purchased and then offered to the Institute by generous anonymous donors. Shortly after, the Institute started to research and organise them and put together the exhibition at the Museum of Romanian Literature in Bucharest. Visitors can find here the seeds of the comprehensive studies published by Mircea Eliade in the post-war years he spent in Paris and later on in Chigaco.



    Eugen Ciurtin: “We can see, for the first time, several very important essays from his Indian period and his Ph.D. thesis, in various stages of progress. Not only the text dated November 1932, but also the volume published in May 1936, “Yoga. Essay sur lorigine de la mystique indienne”. Then we have manuscripts of books for which we had not imagined we would ever see all the authors hesitations, amendments and changes operated until printing. There is the manuscript of “Borobudur: the Symbolic Temple” published in September 1937 in the Royal Foundations Magazine and included as such in the volume “The Island of Euthanasius” in 1943. We have the manuscript of the 1942 “Myth of Reintegration”, hand-written studies and reviews written for Zalmoxis magazine. And, interestingly, there is a previously unseen essay dated late 1930 – early 1931 and titled “What is wrong with Europe”. The media of 1930 announced this essay, but nobody knew anything about it until my colleagues found it. All these details will be included in this planned complete collection, because our goal is precisely to show an outline of what Eliade was planning to achieve.”



    Another fascinating find among the documents recovered by the Institute are pages handwritten by Mircea Eliade in Sanskrit when he was studying this language.



    Unfortunately, the full archive is still not available, and without an inventory of the documents, its content remains unknown.



    The exhibition at the National Museum of Romanian Literature is open until March, and was completed thanks to the work of the researchers Andreea Apostu, Ionuț Băncilă, Eugen Ciurtin, Daniela Dumbravă, Octavian Negoiță, Cătălin Pavel, Vlad Șovărel and Bogdan Tătaru-Cazaban. (AMP)


  • Arion Roșu (1924-2007)

    Arion Roșu (1924-2007)

    Le premier en fut Mircea Eliade, né en 1907, écrivain et historien des religions dont la vaste carrière scientifique et pédagogique s’est construite en Occident. La génération des indianistes des années 1920 inclut Sergiu Al-George, Anton et Eliza Zigmund-Cerbu, Marcel Leibovici et Arion Roșu, les quatre derniers étant issus de la communauté juive bucarestoise.Arion Roșu naquit le 1er février 1924 à Bucarest et décéda le 4 avril 2007 à Versailles, en France, à l’âge de 83 ans. Il étudia les lettres classiques à l’Université de Bucarest, choisissant de se spécialiser en études indiennes, l’Ayurveda et l’histoire de la médecine indienne classique. En 1964, il émigra en France, où il continua ses études à la Sorbonne, où il obtint un doctorat ès lettres avec une thèse sur les conceptions psychologiques dans les textes médicaux indiens. Durant sa carrière, il signa de nombreux articles scientifiques et ouvrages sur l’Inde et la culture indienne classique.À Bucarest, l’Institut d’histoire des religions, de l’Académie roumaine, a rendu hommage à Arion Roșu, en donnant son nom à l’une des salles d’étude. Pour l’indianiste Eugen Ciurtin, directeur de l’Institut, Arion Roșu avait été un mentor et un savant universel : « Arion Roșu n’est pas quelqu’un que l’on puisse confiner quelque part ; il est un savant, au pire, européen, au mieux, planétaire. Prenons, par exemple, le Pr David Gordon-White, professeur d’histoire des religions à l’Université de Californie ; il a étudié avec deux auteurs aux dimensions mondiales, qui ont contribué à sa formation. L’un, un certain Mircea Eliade, a publié ses ouvrages aux États-Unis, l’autre, un certain Arion Roșu, a fait la même chose en Europe. Le fait qu’ils soient tous les deux roumains représente tout simplement notre angle d’approche de l’évolution des études indiennes, de la culture humaniste, à la fin du XXe siècle. Arion Roșu est une grande personnalité, auteur d’une œuvre à la fiabilité extraordinaire et seul indianiste et orientaliste d’origine roumaine à avoir reçu, lors de son décès, l’honneur exceptionnel d’un éloge funèbre signé par Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat dans le « Journal asiatique », le périodique d’études orientales générales le plus ancien d’Europe, publié sans interruption depuis deux siècles. »

    L’Ayurveda ou la médecine classique indienne fascine, depuis toujours, des tas de gens du monde entier. Arion Roșu n’a pas non plus échappé à la magie de ses mystères, raconte Eugen Ciurtin : « Arion Roșu s’est distingué en tant qu’historien des religions et notamment des sciences indiennes, avec un penchant particulier pour la pensée classique sanscrite en médecine. En quoi est-ce important ? Eh bien, parmi les cultures antiques, seules quelques-unes ont un système de médecine original. Autrement dit, seulement quelques civilisations, comme l’égyptienne, la chinoise, l’indienne et la grecque, ont étudié le corps humain avec toutes ses beautés et ses maladies. Se consacrer à l’Ayurveda classique est synonyme de restituer à la culture indienne antique sa dimension scientifique et rationnelle. A te consacra ayurvedei clasice însemna a restitui științificitatea și raționalitatea culturii indiene antice. »

    Tous les orientalistes roumains ont subi l’influence de Mircea Eliade, un spiritus rector pour les jeunes désireux de déchiffrer les secrets de l’Inde. Parmi eux, des disciples juifs se sont vus obliger à comprendre les options fascistes de leur maître. Eugen Ciurtin a expliqué la réaction d’Arion Roșu à la biographie d’Eliade : « J’ai eu plusieurs conversations avec Monsieur Roșu à Versailles, où il avait élu domicile après ses 70 ans, et j’ai pensé qu’il fallait le mettre au courant de la parution, en 1996, de l’extraordinaire et déchirant « Jurnal/Journal » de Mihail Sebastian. Lui-même, il m’envoyait des articles qu’il trouvait dans les publications françaises importantes. Des articles sur le penchant sordide pour la droite montré par Mircea Eliade, dans le contexte bucarestois des années de jeunesse d’Arion Roșu. Roșu avait été inspiré par monseigneur Vladimir Ghyka, sous l’influence duquel il s’était converti au catholicisme, après la persécution d’État infligée à la communauté juive de Roumanie. Ce fut incompréhensible pour lui qu’une personne du niveau intellectuel et humain de Mircea Eliade soit captive tellement longtemps des phantasmes toxiques des extrêmes-droites européennes. Il existe des documents dans lesquels Arion Roșu déplore cette situation. Mais, puisqu’il s’est senti lié à Mircea Eliade par la force du destin Dar pentru faptul că s-a simțit legat destinal de Mircea Eliade, parce qu’il a toujours admiré l’intelligence qui avait conquis la planète, Arion Roșu a voulu absolument être juste et séparer l’œuvre scientifique du reste. En même temps, il a fait preuve d’une grande sévérité, lorsque d’autres confrères ne comprenaient pas la catastrophe dans laquelle les avait poussés un certain professeur Nae. »

    Arion Roșu est une référence roumaine des études indiennes à l’échelle mondiale. (Trad. Ileana Ţăroi)

  • Mircea Eliade

    Mircea Eliade


    A complex
    author whose interests varied from the history of religions to literature, Mircea
    Eliade was also known internationally, especially in the US, where he taught,
    at the Chicago University, from 1956 until his death in 1986. Eliade was born
    on 9th March 1907 in Bucharest into a family originating from Moldavia,
    Romania’s eastern province. His father was an army officer while his mother looked
    after the family. Eliade studied in the same high school as other important
    Romanian cultural figures such as the writer and journalist Arșavir Acterian,
    the poet, writer and director Haig Acterian, the philosopher Constantin Noica
    and the art critic Barbu Brezianu.




    As a
    teenager, apart from literature, philosophy and history, Eliade was also
    interested in natural science, chemistry and the occult. His favourite writers
    at this time included Honore de Balzac and Giovanni Papini. Eliade studied
    letters and philosophy at the Bucharest University and graduated with a thesis
    on the Italian utopian thinker Tommaso Campanella.




    Mircea
    Eliade’s work is extremely large and diverse and includes more than 80 books of
    literature and the history of religions, being one of the most influential historians
    of religions in his day. In this field alone, he authored around 30 books that
    went on to be translated into 18 different languages. His literary output
    includes 12 novels, the most popular being Diary of a Short-Sighted
    Adolescent, Bengal Nights and The Forbidden Forest, which you
    can find in English, as well as novellas like Miss Christina, With
    the Gypsy Girls, The Secret of Dr. Honigberger and The Snake.




    Mircea
    Eliade was one of the first Romanian orientalists who immersed himself in the
    culture of India. In love with India, he travelled there in 1928 to study in
    Calcutta, where he learnt Sanskrit and became familiar with Indian spirituality.
    His novel Bengal Nights is in fact dedicated to the daughter of his Indian
    landlord. He fell in love with her but couldn’t marry her because of her father’s
    opposition. In 1933 when he returned to Romania, Eliade wrote a doctoral thesis
    on yoga practices.




    The
    archives of Radio Romania’s Oral History Centre contain an exceptional recording
    of an interview given by Eliade to literary critic Monica Lovinescu in the
    1970s on Radio Free Europe. In this interview, Eliade described his Indian
    experience as a time that helped him understand the course of history as the
    dialogue between cultures. His study of religious beliefs and ideas helped him
    make a step forward and opened up a universe that had been inaccessible to him
    until then. Mircea Eliade:




    When
    I came back from India I realised the limitations of western cultural
    provincialism; I realised that after WWII we must find a bridge between
    different cultures, between western culture, oriental culture and archaic cultures;
    that the simplest and most convincing introduction into a given culture is understanding
    its tradition, which is always religious in origin and structure. It seemed to
    me that a history of religions was the first step, the first stage in trying to
    understand other cultures on an equal basis, through dialogue. So I was sure
    that these books would be received well and that they would interest people,
    because historical reality was proving me right.




    Mircea
    Eliade saw himself as both an academic and a writer. His academic work earned
    him a career at the Chicago University, where, together with the German academic
    Joachim Wach, he founded Divinity School. But he also couldn’t forget his native
    Romanian language and literature helped him return to his roots, as he
    explained:




    By
    writing literature I return to my roots, which is normal. It’s the language I never
    wanted to lose and I need this dreaming and working in my language for the
    health of my soul. I can easily translate certain literary texts into French or
    English. I can, perhaps, write them directly into English or French, but for me
    it is important to maintain this desire not to lose contact with my own history,
    which is obviously the history of a Romanian who worked both in Romania and
    abroad.




    To those
    who said that the influence of religion was waning, Eliade responded that the
    desacralisation of contemporary world is in fact a process of camouflaging the
    sacred, which people still need:




    This
    need to listen to a story, at first mythical, about how the world came to be,
    how man came to be, how society was formed, etc., is a need that I believe is
    fundamental. It is a layer of consciousness, not another stage in the history of
    consciousness. I don’t believe man can exist as a man without being told his
    history and the history of the world in which he exists and which continues to
    exist.






    Mircea
    Eliade lived in exile in the West since 1945, when the communist regime came to
    power in Romania. He died in Chicago on 22nd April 1986, leaving
    behind an impressive body of work. He was made a member of the Romanian Academy
    posthumously, in 1990. (CM)



  • Mircea Eliade

    Mircea Eliade


    A complex
    author whose interests varied from the history of religions to literature, Mircea
    Eliade was also known internationally, especially in the US, where he taught,
    at the Chicago University, from 1956 until his death in 1986. Eliade was born
    on 9th March 1907 in Bucharest into a family originating from Moldavia,
    Romania’s eastern province. His father was an army officer while his mother looked
    after the family. Eliade studied in the same high school as other important
    Romanian cultural figures such as the writer and journalist Arșavir Acterian,
    the poet, writer and director Haig Acterian, the philosopher Constantin Noica
    and the art critic Barbu Brezianu.




    As a
    teenager, apart from literature, philosophy and history, Eliade was also
    interested in natural science, chemistry and the occult. His favourite writers
    at this time included Honore de Balzac and Giovanni Papini. Eliade studied
    letters and philosophy at the Bucharest University and graduated with a thesis
    on the Italian utopian thinker Tommaso Campanella.




    Mircea
    Eliade’s work is extremely large and diverse and includes more than 80 books of
    literature and the history of religions, being one of the most influential historians
    of religions in his day. In this field alone, he authored around 30 books that
    went on to be translated into 18 different languages. His literary output
    includes 12 novels, the most popular being Diary of a Short-Sighted
    Adolescent, Bengal Nights and The Forbidden Forest, which you
    can find in English, as well as novellas like Miss Christina, With
    the Gypsy Girls, The Secret of Dr. Honigberger and The Snake.




    Mircea
    Eliade was one of the first Romanian orientalists who immersed himself in the
    culture of India. In love with India, he travelled there in 1928 to study in
    Calcutta, where he learnt Sanskrit and became familiar with Indian spirituality.
    His novel Bengal Nights is in fact dedicated to the daughter of his Indian
    landlord. He fell in love with her but couldn’t marry her because of her father’s
    opposition. In 1933 when he returned to Romania, Eliade wrote a doctoral thesis
    on yoga practices.




    The
    archives of Radio Romania’s Oral History Centre contain an exceptional recording
    of an interview given by Eliade to literary critic Monica Lovinescu in the
    1970s on Radio Free Europe. In this interview, Eliade described his Indian
    experience as a time that helped him understand the course of history as the
    dialogue between cultures. His study of religious beliefs and ideas helped him
    make a step forward and opened up a universe that had been inaccessible to him
    until then. Mircea Eliade:




    When
    I came back from India I realised the limitations of western cultural
    provincialism; I realised that after WWII we must find a bridge between
    different cultures, between western culture, oriental culture and archaic cultures;
    that the simplest and most convincing introduction into a given culture is understanding
    its tradition, which is always religious in origin and structure. It seemed to
    me that a history of religions was the first step, the first stage in trying to
    understand other cultures on an equal basis, through dialogue. So I was sure
    that these books would be received well and that they would interest people,
    because historical reality was proving me right.




    Mircea
    Eliade saw himself as both an academic and a writer. His academic work earned
    him a career at the Chicago University, where, together with the German academic
    Joachim Wach, he founded Divinity School. But he also couldn’t forget his native
    Romanian language and literature helped him return to his roots, as he
    explained:




    By
    writing literature I return to my roots, which is normal. It’s the language I never
    wanted to lose and I need this dreaming and working in my language for the
    health of my soul. I can easily translate certain literary texts into French or
    English. I can, perhaps, write them directly into English or French, but for me
    it is important to maintain this desire not to lose contact with my own history,
    which is obviously the history of a Romanian who worked both in Romania and
    abroad.




    To those
    who said that the influence of religion was waning, Eliade responded that the
    desacralisation of contemporary world is in fact a process of camouflaging the
    sacred, which people still need:




    This
    need to listen to a story, at first mythical, about how the world came to be,
    how man came to be, how society was formed, etc., is a need that I believe is
    fundamental. It is a layer of consciousness, not another stage in the history of
    consciousness. I don’t believe man can exist as a man without being told his
    history and the history of the world in which he exists and which continues to
    exist.






    Mircea
    Eliade lived in exile in the West since 1945, when the communist regime came to
    power in Romania. He died in Chicago on 22nd April 1986, leaving
    behind an impressive body of work. He was made a member of the Romanian Academy
    posthumously, in 1990. (CM)



  • Architecture and family histories

    Architecture and family histories

    Bucharest saw the emergence of the first modernist buildings in the 1920s, more precisely in 1926, when architect Marcel Iancu designed his first building: the Herman Iancu construction located in the former Jewish quarter in Bucharest. The building has stood the test of time, defying the period of Communist demolitions when the area was massively modified. It is a storey building of the block-house type, which the architect built for his father.



    It is the first project showing Marcel Iancu’s modernist preoccupations, which is not at all surprising for a young man who, in 1916, at the Voltaire cabaret in Zurich, together with the poets Tristan Tzara and Hugo Ball and the fine artist Hans Arp, founded the Dada movement. The Dada movement was actually the trigger for all the avant-garde and novel artistic movements of the 20th century.



    Marcel Iancu had gone to study in Switzerland in 1914 together with his brother Iuliu. He first studied mathematics and chemistry at the University of Zurich and in 1915 enrolled with the architecture department of the Polytechnic School. A complex artist who stood out, within the Dada movement, as a graphic artist and illustrator of the avant-garde publications, Marcel Iancu was also a painter and a sculptor.



    He returned to Bucharest in the 1920s and designed a series of modernist buildings commissioned by the elite of the new inter-war bourgeoisie. In a capital city that was then dominated by the eclectic architectural style, Marcel Iancu’s buildings represented a first step towards renewal and modernity.



    All in all, Marcel Iancu designed 26 buildings in Bucharest of which only 20 are still standing. One of his buildings can still be found in Bucharest’s old town area, near Foisorul de Foc — the Watch Tower, which used to be the city’s tallest building.



    The building was also the result of the friendship between the architect and the future historian of religions, Mircea Eliade, who, in the interwar period, was the leader of the young generation of writers and artists who were to revolutionize the Romanian culture after the Union of 1918. Marcel Iancu designed the building for Mircea Eliade’s sister, Corina Alexandrescu, shortly after her marriage.



    Today it belongs to her son, Sorin Alexandrescu, a semiotician and university professor who has recently given an interview in this very house: “The house belonged to my parents. It is a two-storey house. I was born in this house. The space of the house was re-organized, because during the Communist regime, the authorities imposed my parents to receive tenants. In those years of Communism, one person was entitled to a residence space of only 8 square meters. If your house was bigger, you had to receive tenants. Some of tenants had to pass through my room to go to the bathroom or the kitchen. We had two families of tenants. When I first got married, I had to move out. Soon after, my parents left too.”



    Sorin Alexandrescu immigrated in 1970 to the Netherlands where, until his retirement, he was a teacher at the Romanian language department of the Amsterdam University. After the 1989 revolution, he returned to Romania and managed to recuperate his property which had been nationalized by the Communist regime.



    Here is Sorin Alexandrescu back at the microphone: “I hadn’t had any knowledge of this house until the 1989 revolution, when I retuned home. I found out that one could recuperate one’s property if one filed a well documented application. Following a very fast legal proceeding, I won the house back. I told the tenants that they could continue to live there against the same small rent they used to pay to the state. Eventually they all moved out without being obliged to. Then, I renovated the entire house and rented the rooms upstairs. Later I had some more repair works done, the latest being completed recently. At present, for the semi-basement and the ground floor, where I lived, I have concluded a free loan agreement with the Bucharest University, where courses are held as part of the Center of Excellence in the study of image. Besides the hall we have at the Faculty of Letters, we also have this space. Therefore, I am very happy not only for getting the house back but also for being able to offer it to the students, through this cooperation with the University which always needs more spaces, given the increasing number of students.”



    Although the value of the building designed by Marcel Iancu is well known by the authorities, the building has not yet been declared a heritage building. But this is going to happen soon, says Sorin Alexandrescu: “I have not submitted any request to obtain the title of heritage building for my house, simply because I had to finish the repair works first. I hope now I will be able to obtain the recognition of the building, which is a symbolic heritage left by Marcel Iancu. My mother commissioned Marcel Iancu to design the house because he was recommended to her by Mircea Eliade who was friends with Marcel Iancu. My mother was very young back then, and she did not know any architect to do the job, therefore her brother recommended a colleague of his generation. Soon a plaque with the name of Marcel Iancu will be attached to the building.”



    In the 1940s, when anti-Semitic persecutions intensified in Romania, Marcel Iancu decided to emigrate. As the years passed by, he became a famous architect in Israel where he founded the Ein Hod artist colony in Haifa and where he received the highest cultural distinction of the country: Israel Prize. Marcel Iancu died in 1984 aged 88. (translation by L. Simion)

  • Dans Bucarest, sur les traces de Mircea Eliade

    Dans Bucarest, sur les traces de Mircea Eliade

    Pour marquer le 110e anniversaire de la naissance de l’écrivain et philosophe Mircea Eliade, nous vous proposons aujourd’hui un itinéraire culturel qui vous fera découvrir des rues bucarestoises dont l’auteur parle dans ses romans. A compter du 30 mars dernier, les itinéraires culturels « A travers le Bucarest de Mircea Eliade » se poursuivront pendant tous les week-ends jusqu’au 27 avril. En 2015, ce projet a attiré plus de 5 mille participants pendant seulement quelques week-ends de promenade à travers la ville.



    Edmond Niculuşcă, président de l’Association roumaine pour la culture, l’éducation et la normalité (ARCEN) nous parle de ce projet: « Nous venons de fêter le 110e anniversaire de la naissance de Mircea Eliade, ce qui nous a incité à un retour sur son œuvre littéraire, pour la regarder, pourquoi pas, sous un nouvel angle. Notre projet — « Eliade 110 » comporte deux conférences et 6 itinéraires culturels, « A travers le Bucarest de Mircea Eliade », comme nous les avons appelés.



    La première conférence, déjà tenue à l’Institut français de Bucarest, a porté sur 7 endroits dont Eliade parle dans ses romans et qui sont à retrouver presque tous dans la capitale roumaine d’aujourd’hui. La dernière conférence portera sur un personnage féminin: Ileana — qui apparaît parfois sous les noms dérivés de Leana, Lena, Elena, mais qui est la même représentante de la féminité. Elle porte également d’autres noms dans ses nouvelles fantastiques et dans ses romans « La nuit bengali » et « Forêt interdite »



    Les « Promenades à travers le Bucarest de Mircea Eliade » réunissent des histoires sur les anciens faubourgs et sur l’architecture de la ville, sur l’enfance de Mircea Eliade et des fragments de prose fantastique datant de la période de son exil. Le point de départ en est à chaque fois le même : 20, rue Mântuleasa, tout près de l’église Mântuleasa. Nous avons demandé à Edmond Niculuşcă si les rues de Bucarest gardaient encore leur charme pittoresque d’autrefois : « Il y a des maisons qui gardent encore leur ancienne peinture. Ce sont des veilles maisons, bâties avant la première guerre mondiale et qui ont une cour profonde, plantée de vigne et d’arbres fruitiers.



    D’autres parties de cette zone ont été mutilées, comme toutes les zones historiques de la capitale, d’ailleurs. Nous avons choisi à dessein, pour ces promenades, des rues qui gardent encore de nombreux endroits précieux, où le paysage culturel et l’identité du quartier restent assez proches du Bucarest tranquille d’autrefois, du Bucarest des faubourgs et des quartiers résidentiels du début du 20e siècle. »



    Ce projet est une invitation à mieux connaître la ville et, en même temps, une invitation à la lecture : « C’est une invitation à regarder la ville sous un autre angle. Les personnages de Mircea Eliade ont tous une relation affective avec la ville. C’est pourquoi, lors de nos promenades, nous souhaitons justement découvrir comment on peut vivre la ville et comment la ville peut vivre à travers nous.



    Et c’est aussi une invitation à la lecture, car tout l’itinéraire, toutes les haltes correspondent à un passage d’un récit ou d’un roman de Mircea Eliade. C’est aussi une invitation à se rapprocher davantage de la ville. Car, de nos jours, la relation entre les Bucarestois et leur ville n’est pas saine. Or, cette relation toxique se reflète dans ce qui se passe dans les rues anciennes de la capitale, soit les mutilations de la ville et la perte de son identité ou de sa mémoire. »



    Au-delà des détails concernant les particularités de la zone où Eliade a passé son enfance, les deux guides, Alberto Groşescu et Edmond Niculuşcă, ont enchanté les participants en leur présentant des histoires, des mémoires, en évoquant des concepts propres à l’époque et en dressant un portrait de l’habitant des faubourgs d’antan.



    Et puisque le projet s’achève fin avril, Edmond Niculuşcă lance une dernière invitation: « Nous attendons les Bucarestois samedi et dimanche, 20, rue Mântuleasa, pour une promenade d’une heure à travers le Bucarest de l’enfance de Mircea Eliade. Enfant, il allait à l’école Mântuleasa, il se rendait chez ses grands-parents, dont la maison se trouvait dans l’impasse Mătăsari, il allait voir sa sœur, rue Traian. C’est là tout un espace de l’enfance, un espace mythique, qui se retrouvera plus tard dans ses écrits fantastiques. »



    La série d’événements « Eliade 110 » est organisée en collaboration avec l’Institut français de Bucarest, car la France a joué un rôle décisif dans la vie de Mircea Eliade: elle a été son premier pays d’adoption, c’est là qu’il a enseigné à l’École pratique des hautes études, c’est elle qui lui a frayé la voie de l’universalité, qui a traduit et publié ses livres. (trad. : Dominique)