Eros, Mystery And Fantasy In Mircea Eliade’s Writings
Introduction
My research topic focuses on predominant elements: Eros, mystery, and fantasy in “Șarpele” and “Domnișoara Christina”. These three elements are characteristic of Mircea Eliade and they can remark of Mihai Eminescu, in the writing “Cezara”, which is similar to “Șarpele”. Eros is a central theme for Mircea Eliade's writings, and I will demonstrate through the two couples (Dorina-Andronic and Christina-Egor) of the small-scale romans that, it is an element characteristic of Mythology. The mystery appears in these two writings when they refer to the geographical area. Both places present in the works (the island and the cellar) characterize a mystical space, where everything is different from reality. The fantastic is inspired by the Romanian mythology, seen both in the predominant symbols and in the death of the female characters. So I want to prove that the Eros, mystery and fantasy show Eliade's inspiration from mythology.
Eros and Mythology in Relationships of Characters
Mircea Eliade’s writings are fantastic, but they have in their center a romantic story with or without happy end. “Domnișoara Christina” presents a love story between a ghost and a simple man. The first creeps of love appear when Egor looks at Christina's portrait. In that night, “Egor receives the visit of the beautiful lady”, where the girl addresses him with “my love”. The next day, Egor finds out that his future fiance is sick. So Christina has removed her rival from the conquest of Egor's heart. The end of their love is one dramatic. He makes the decision to kill her, then he seems to be sorry, and she cursed him not to find his love, for the pain she had suffered. This dead of Christina is seen as the modern myth of the vampire. In “Șarpele”, everything begins with the arrival of Andronic at the monastery and the famous game of gas in the forest: “the forest suddenly turns into an Eden of love”. With the appearance of the snake, Dorina feels she is her lost bride and decides to follow him on the island. Until she got there, she had to go through a liberation ritual (shown in her erotic dream). She gets to the island and stays with Andronic, embraced. For him, Dorina is the “Luceafărul” (of the Eminescu poem) and confesses to him that he does not want to lose her now when they were found. “Do not ever die, he said looking at the sky. Be that beautiful and immortal star”. The woman's idea on the island is also present in the myth of Dionysus, where he found his future wife, Ariadne.
The setting (in special - place) of action - a real mystery and also a mythological space. The two writings of Mircea Eliade are abundant in mystery and this thing makes the action of the story to be completely different from reality. The place of action, full of mystery, in “Domnișoara Christina”, is presented in two circumstances. The first one shows the cellar as the place of a meeting (between Egor and Simina). She tries to kiss Egor, but she rejects it because she does not know how she likes them. “She claims him to kiss her shoe, and Egor, worried, conforms”. The gesture puts him in a humble situation. Seeing that he is crying, Simina looks like a dominating, and she mistreats him. This moment presented “an authentic sadomasochistic scene”. A second circumstance refers to the place of death, where Egor ends this nightmare, and realizes at that moment that he has lost both dear women: Sanda and Christina. In the second writing, the action spent in a magic place, the island. This is described as a mythical area, where everything happens totally different from the real world. And here, there are two circumstances: in the first, the island appears to Dorina in a dream (an erotic dream), where she “anticipates what will happen” there. The second circumstance shows when “she arrives from the middle of the lake on the island”. There is expected by Andronic and so, her destiny was fulfilled, and the serpent's curse was broken.
Fantastic and Mythology
Mircea Eliade's writings are based on symbols, thus characterizing them as inspired by mythology. The most important symbol in the opera 'Șarpele' is even the serpent. In folk mythology, “the serpent associated with the underworld, with death and resurrection, is considered an incarnation of the souls of the dead”. For Eliade, the snake also has a fertilizer role. In the opera, the symbol appears as a spirit come from the underworld, to ask for a soul, in order to free himself from the curse. The writing presents the serpent as a groom in search of the bride, thus being considered a symbol of seduction. This we can see at the beginning of the book, where we have presented a popular spell. This symbol is associated with water (the place where the serpent comes) and the visitor (through the presence of Andronic). In 'Domnișoara Christina', the most represented symbol is the ghost. Romanian mythology sees the ghost as an 'evil spirit, who returns to the world of the living to harm people'. In the literary work of Eliade, the ghost, represented by Christina, returns and tries to conquer Egor. It becomes troubled by her presence, with the sight of her painting in her room. He knows that the relationship is not possible because, Christina, he is not coming back and remains the prisoner of his loneliness. The protagonist 'strikes the contact with Egor only after he enters the world of the dead' (Ruști 2005:167, my translation). Brought to the ballroom (from his dream), he gets lost and reaches the bridge that connects the world of the living and the world of the dead, where “he ends up to get beat by human fear”. As you can see, Eliade is in favour of the writings with mythological symbols and thus, it can be proved that his works fall within the realm of the fantastic.
The end of the writing 'Domnișoara Christina' is 'devoted to the victory of reason and purification by fire, which gives us a grand spectacle'. It is known that the fire has the power to destroy everything that is evil. Until the final moment, the narrative is linear, followed by a discontinuous one, in which 'the characters act separately’. Egor meets Christina, and then she disappears with a carriage and leaves a fire in the estate. He knows he has to stop all this and kill the girl by sticking an iron in her portrait, exactly where the man was seduced by Simina. As a result of this gesture, Egor remains heartbroken, Sanda dies, and Mrs. Moscu drives mad. At the end of the writing 'Șarpele' is presented to us the fulfillment of human destiny. Behind the taming of the serpent by Andronic, Dorina realizes that she is destined for it: 'She seems that the serpent is coming right towards her'. Dorina was supposed to be another man's bride, but everything changes with her erotic dream. It arrives on the island and thus, we have regiven the image of the Edenic couple Adam-Eva before the fatherland sin. She falls asleep in the arms of Andronic and is found the next day by her family. Being found naked, we can interpret this as a funeral ritual.
Conclusion
As I outlined above, Mircea Eliade's writings are based on mythology. I saw that Eros is not presented as in other interwar works, but much more externized; that the mystery also lasts beyond the real world, the world of the living, and that the fantastic is used both as a way of interpreting the symbols, as well as another representation of the idea of death. 'Domnișoara Christina' and 'Șarpele' remain the true masterpieces of Romanian literature and they are examples of works that are based by mythology.
Bibliography
- ELIADE, Mircea. 19991. Proză fantastică I – Dmnișoara Christina. Cu un cuvânt înainte al autorului. Eugen Simion (ed.). București: Editura Fundației Culturale Române.
- ELIADE, Mircea. 2013. Domnișoara Christina. Șarpele. Studiu introductiv de Sorin Alexandrescu. Fișă bibliografică și referințe critice de Lucian Pricop. București: Editura Cartex 2000.
- ALEXANDRESCU, Sorin. 1999. Privind înapoi, modernitatea. București: Univers.
- EVSEEV, Ivan. 1998. Dicționar de magie, demonologie și mitologie românească. Timișoara: Amarcord.
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- SIMION, Eugen. 2005. Mircea Eliade – Nodurile și semnele prozei. Ediția a-II-a revăzută și adăugită. București: Univers Enciclopedic.
