Graţiela BENGA
Institutul de studii banatice „Titu Maiorescu”, Timişoara
Abstract
The text tries to emphasize the link between the way in which the Romanian scientist and writer Mircea Eliade conceived exile and his literary themes. Eliade did not see the exile as an incidental event, but as an essential experience, reminding of the ancient myth of Ulysses. Thus, the exile would be a subtle initiation revealing the hidden part of the world ; even obstacles may be clues for the quest for the origins.
The short-stories Mircea Eliade wrote after World War II develop some important themes, such as mythical space, escaping from time/history, sacred biology and regeneration, mythical aspects of narration and theatre etc. All these literary themes descend from the complex relation between the sacred and the profane – one of Eliade’s most important ideas. Epiphany, temporal paradox, mythical paradise and eternal youth, human nature, coverings and uncoverings are some of the elements that manage to define a specific type of fiction, differring from Edgar Allan Poe’s short-stories, for instance.
Eliade’s short-stories offer an alternative of surviving and a pattern of redemption as well. His literary work must be read as a whole, because the short-stories are easily absorbed into a coherent totality. This one belongs to the Universal Text whose archaeologist and explorer is the narrator himself.
Key words: space, time, signs, epiphany, soteriology.
Cuvinte-cheie: spaţiu, timp, semne, epifanie, soteriologie