title: Mircea Eliade

text: In Eliade's view, traditional man sees time as an endless repetition of mythical archetypes. In contrast, modern man has abandoned mythical archetypes and entered linear, historical time—in this context, unlike many other religions, Christianity attributes value to historical time. Thus, Eliade concludes, "Christianity incontestably proves to be the religion of 'fallen man'", of modern man who has lost "the paradise of archetypes and repetition".


title: Mircea Eliade

text: In analyzing the similarities between the "mythologists" Eliade, Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung, Robert Ellwood concluded that the three modern mythologists, all of whom believed that myths reveal "timeless truth", fulfilled the role "gnostics" had in antiquity. The diverse religious movements covered by the term "gnosticism" share the basic doctrines that the surrounding world is fundamentally evil or inhospitable, that we are trapped in the world through no fault of our own, and that we can be saved from the world only through secret knowledge ("gnosis"). Ellwood claimed that the three mythologists were "modern gnostics through and through", remarking,


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Whether in Augustan Rome or modern Europe, democracy all too easily gave way to totalitarianism, technology was as readily used for battle as for comfort, and immense wealth lay alongside abysmal poverty. [...] Gnostics past and present sought answers not in the course of outward human events, but in knowledge of the world's beginning, of what lies above and beyond the world, and of the secret places of the human soul. To all this the mythologists spoke, and they acquired large and loyal followings.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: According to Ellwood, the mythologists believed in gnosticism's basic doctrines (even if in a secularized form). Ellwood also believes that Romanticism, which stimulated the modern study of mythology, strongly influenced the mythologists. Because Romantics stress that emotion and imagination have the same dignity as reason, Ellwood argues, they tend to think political truth "is known less by rational considerations than by its capacity to fire the passions" and, therefore, that political truth is "very apt to be found [...] in the distant past".


title: Mircea Eliade

text: As modern gnostics, Ellwood argues, the three mythologists felt alienated from the surrounding modern world. As scholars, they knew of primordial societies that had operated differently from modern ones. And as people influenced by Romanticism, they saw myths as a saving "gnosis" that offered "avenues of eternal return to simpler primordial ages when the values that rule the world were forged". In addition, Ellwood identifies Eliade's personal sense of nostalgia as a source for his interest in, or even his theories about, traditional societies. He cites Eliade himself claiming to desire an "eternal return" like that by which traditional man returns to the mythical paradise: "My essential preoccupation is precisely the means of escaping History, of saving myself through symbol, myth, rite, archetypes".


title: Mircea Eliade

text: In Ellwood's view, Eliade's nostalgia was only enhanced by his exile from Romania: "In later years Eliade felt about his own Romanian past as did primal folk about mythic time. He was drawn back to it, yet he knew he could not live there, and that all was not well with it." He suggests that this nostalgia, along with Eliade's sense that "exile is among the profoundest metaphors for all human life", influenced Eliade's theories. Ellwood sees evidence of this in Eliade's concept of the "Terror of history" from which modern man is no longer shielded. In this concept, Ellwood sees an "element of nostalgia" for earlier times "when the sacred was strong and the terror of history had barely raised its head".


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Eliade cites a wide variety of myths and rituals to support his theories. However, he has been accused of making overgeneralizations: many scholars think he lacks sufficient evidence to put forth his ideas as universal, or even general, principles of religious thought. According to one scholar, "Eliade may have been the most popular and influential contemporary historian of religion", but "many, if not most, specialists in anthropology, sociology, and even history of religions have either ignored or quickly dismissed" Eliade's works.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: The classicist G. S. Kirk criticizes Eliade's insistence that Australian Aborigines and ancient Mesopotamians had concepts of "being", "non-being", "real", and "becoming", although they lacked words for them. Kirk also believes that Eliade overextends his theories: for example, Eliade claims that the modern myth of the "noble savage" results from the religious tendency to idealize the primordial, mythical age. According to Kirk, "such extravagances, together with a marked repetitiousness, have made Eliade unpopular with many anthropologists and sociologists". In Kirk's view, Eliade derived his theory of eternal return from the functions of Australian Aboriginal mythology and then proceeded to apply the theory to other mythologies to which it did not apply. For example, Kirk argues that the eternal return does not accurately describe the functions of Native American or Greek mythology. Kirk concludes, "Eliade's idea is a valuable perception about certain myths, not a guide to the proper understanding of all of them".


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Even Wendy Doniger, Eliade's successor at the University of Chicago, claims (in an introduction to Eliade's own "Shamanism") that the eternal return does not apply to all myths and rituals, although it may apply to many of them. However, although Doniger agrees that Eliade made overgeneralizations, she notes that his willingness to "argue boldly for universals" allowed him to see patterns "that spanned the entire globe and the whole of human history". Whether they were true or not, she argues, Eliade's theories are still useful "as starting points for the comparative study of religion". She also argues that Eliade's theories have been able to accommodate "new data to which Eliade did not have access".


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Several researchers have criticized Eliade's work as having no empirical support. Thus, he is said to have "failed to provide an adequate methodology for the history of religions and to establish this discipline as an empirical science", though the same critics admit that "the history of religions should not aim at being an empirical science anyway". Specifically, his claim that the sacred is a structure of human consciousness is distrusted as not being empirically provable: "no one has yet turned up the basic category "sacred"". Also, there has been mention of his tendency to ignore the social aspects of religion. Anthropologist Alice Kehoe is highly critical of Eliade's work on Shamanism, namely because he was not an anthropologist but a historian. She contends that Eliade never did any field work or contacted any indigenous groups that practiced Shamanism, and that his work was synthesized from various sources without being supported by direct field research.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: In contrast, Professor Kees W. Bolle of the University of California, Los Angeles argues that "Professor Eliade's approach, in all his works, is empirical": Bolle sets Eliade apart for what he sees as Eliade's particularly close "attention to the various particular motifs" of different myths. French researcher Daniel Dubuisson places doubt on Eliade's scholarship and its scientific character, citing the Romanian academic's alleged refusal to accept the treatment of religions in their historical and cultural context, and proposing that Eliade's notion of "hierophany" refers to the actual existence of a supernatural level.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Ronald Inden, a historian of India and University of Chicago professor, criticized Mircea Eliade, alongside other intellectual figures (Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell among them), for encouraging a "romantic view" of Hinduism. He argued that their approach to the subject relied mainly on an Orientalist approach, and made Hinduism seem like "a private realm of the imagination and the religious which modern, Western man lacks but needs."


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Although his scholarly work was never subordinated to his early political beliefs, the school of thought he was associated with in interwar Romania, namely "Trăirism", as well as the works of Julius Evola he continued to draw inspiration from, have thematic links to fascism. Writer and academic Marcel Tolcea has argued that, through Evola's particular interpretation of Guénon's works, Eliade kept a traceable connection with far right ideologies in his academic contributions. Daniel Dubuisson singled out Eliade's concept of "homo religiosus" as a reflection of fascist elitism, and argued that the Romanian scholar's views of Judaism and the Old Testament, which depicted Hebrews as the enemies of an ancient cosmic religion, were ultimately the preservation of an antisemitic discourse.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: A piece authored in 1930 saw Eliade defining Julius Evola as a great thinker and offering praise to the controversial intellectuals Oswald Spengler, Arthur de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain and the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg. Evola, who continued to defend the core principles of mystical fascism, once protested to Eliade about the latter's failure to cite him and Guénon. Eliade replied that his works were written for a contemporary public, and not to initiates of esoteric circles. After the 1960s, he, together with Evola, Louis Rougier, and other intellectuals, offered support to Alain de Benoist's controversial "Groupement de recherche et d'études pour la civilisation européenne", part of the "Nouvelle Droite" intellectual trend.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Notably, Eliade was also preoccupied with the cult of Thracian deity Zalmoxis and its supposed monotheism. This, like his conclusion that Romanization had been superficial inside Roman Dacia, was a view celebrated by contemporary partisans of protochronist nationalism. According to historian Sorin Antohi, Eliade may have actually encouraged protochronists such as Edgar Papu to carry out research which resulted in the claim that medieval Romanians had anticipated the Renaissance.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: In his study of Eliade, Jung, and Campbell, Ellwood also discusses the connection between academic theories and controversial political involvements, noting that all three mythologists have been accused of reactionary political positions. Ellwood notes the obvious parallel between the conservatism of myth, which speaks of a primordial golden age, and the conservatism of far right politics. However, Ellwood argues that the explanation is more complex than that. Wherever their political sympathies may have sometimes been, he claims, the three mythologists were often "apolitical if not antipolitical, scorning any this-worldly salvation". Moreover, the connection between mythology and politics differs for each of the mythologists in question: in Eliade's case, Ellwood believes, a strong sense of nostalgia ("for childhood, for historical times past, for cosmic religion, for paradise"), influenced not only the scholar's academic interests, but also his political views.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Because Eliade stayed out of politics during his later life, Ellwood tries to extract an implicit political philosophy from Eliade's scholarly works. Ellwood argues that the later Eliade's nostalgia for ancient traditions did not make him a political reactionary, even a quiet one. He concludes that the later Eliade was, in fact, a "radical modernist". According to Ellwood,


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Those who see Eliade's fascination with the primordial as merely reactionary in the ordinary political or religious sense of the word do not understand the mature Eliade in a sufficiently radical way. [...] Tradition was not for him exactly Burkean 'prescription' or sacred trust to be kept alive generation after generation, for Eliade was fully aware that tradition, like men and nations, lives only by changing and even occultation. The tack is not to try fruitlessly to keep it unchanging, but to discover where it is hiding.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: According to Eliade, religious elements survive in secular culture, but in new, "camouflaged" forms. Thus, Ellwood believes that the later Eliade probably thought modern man should preserve elements of the past, but should not try to restore their original form through reactionary politics. He suspects that Eliade would have favored "a minimal rather than a maximalist state" that would allow personal spiritual transformation without enforcing it.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Many scholars have accused Eliade of "essentialism", a type of overgeneralization in which one incorrectly attributes a common "essence" to a whole group—in this case, all "religious" or "traditional" societies. Furthermore, some see a connection between Eliade's essentialism with regard to religion and fascist essentialism with regard to races and nations. To Ellwood, this connection "seems rather tortured, in the end amounting to little more than an "ad hominem" argument which attempts to tar Eliade's entire [scholarly] work with the ill-repute all decent people feel for storm troopers and the Iron Guard". However, Ellwood admits that common tendencies in "mythological thinking" may have caused Eliade, as well as Jung and Campbell, to view certain groups in an "essentialist" way, and that this may explain their purported antisemitism: "A tendency to think in generic terms of peoples, races, religions, or parties, which as we shall see is undoubtedly the profoundest flaw in mythological thinking, including that of such modern mythologists as our three, can connect with nascent anti-Semitism, or the connection can be the other way."


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Many of Mircea Eliade's literary works, in particular his earliest ones, are noted for their eroticism and their focus on subjective experience. Modernist in style, they have drawn comparisons to the contemporary writings of Mihail Sebastian, I. Valerian, and Ion Biberi. Alongside Honoré de Balzac and Giovanni Papini, his literary passions included Aldous Huxley and Miguel de Unamuno, as well as André Gide. Eliade also read with interest the prose of Romain Rolland, Henrik Ibsen, and the Enlightenment thinkers Voltaire and Denis Diderot. As a youth, he read the works of Romanian authors such as Liviu Rebreanu and Panait Istrati; initially, he was also interested in Ionel Teodoreanu's prose works, but later rejected them and criticized their author.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Investigating the works' main characteristics, George Călinescu stressed that Eliade owed much of his style to the direct influence of French author André Gide, concluding that, alongside Camil Petrescu and a few others, Eliade was among Gide's leading disciples in Romanian literature. He commented that, like Gide, Eliade believed that the artist "does not take a stand, but experiences good and evil while setting himself free from both, maintaining an intact curiosity." A specific aspect of this focus on experience is sexual experimentation—Călinescu notes that Eliade's fiction works tend to depict a male figure "possessing all practicable women in [a given] family". He also considered that, as a rule, Eliade depicts woman as "a basic means for a sexual experience and repudiated with harsh egotism."


title: Mircea Eliade

text: For Călinescu, such a perspective on life culminated in "banality," leaving authors gripped by the "cult of the self" and "a contempt for literature". Polemically, Călinescu proposed that Mircea Eliade's supposed focus on "aggressive youth" served to instill his interwar Romanian writers with the idea that they had a common destiny as a generation apart. He also commented that, when set in Romania, Mircea Eliade's stories lacked the "perception of immediate reality", and, analyzing the non-traditional names the writer tended to ascribe to his Romanian characters, that they did not depict "specificity". Additionally, in Călinescu's view, Eliade's stories were often "sensationalist compositions of the illustrated magazine kind." Mircea Eliade's assessment of his own pre-1940 literary contributions oscillated between expressions of pride and the bitter verdict that they were written for "an audience of little ladies and high school students".


title: Mircea Eliade

text: A secondary but unifying feature present in most of Eliade's stories is their setting, a magical and part-fictional Bucharest. In part, they also serve to illustrate or allude to Eliade's own research in the field of religion, as well as to the concepts he introduced. Thus, commentators such as Matei Călinescu and Carmen Mușat have also argued that a main characteristic of Eliade's fantasy prose is a substitution between the supernatural and the mundane: in this interpretation, Eliade turns the daily world into an incomprehensible place, while the intrusive supernatural aspect promises to offer the sense of life. The notion was in turn linked to Eliade's own thoughts on transcendence, and in particular his idea that, once "camouflaged" in life or history, miracles become "unrecognizable".


title: Mircea Eliade

text: One of Eliade's earliest fiction writings, the controversial first-person narrative Isabel şi apele diavolului ('Isabel and the Devil's Waters'), focused on the figure of a young and brilliant academic, whose self-declared fear is that of "being common." The hero's experience is recorded in "notebooks", which are compiled to form the actual narrative, and which serve to record his unusual, mostly sexual, experiences in British India—the narrator describes himself as dominated by "a devilish indifference" towards "all things having to do with art or metaphysics", focusing instead on eroticism. The guest of a pastor, the scholar ponders sexual adventures with his host's wife, servant girl, and finally with his daughter Isabel. Persuading the pastor's adolescent son to run away from home, becoming the sexual initiator of a twelve-year-old girl and the lover of a much older woman, the character also attempts to seduce Isabel. Although she falls in love, the young woman does not give in to his pressures, but eventually allows herself to be abused and impregnated by another character, letting the object of her affection know that she had thought of him all along.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: One of Eliade's best-known works, the novel "Maitreyi", dwells on Eliade's own experience, comprising camouflaged details of his relationships with Surendranath Dasgupta and Dasgupta's daughter Maitreyi Devi. The main character, Allan, is an Englishman who visits the Indian engineer Narendra Sen and courts his daughter, herself known as Maitreyi. The narrative is again built on "notebooks" to which Allan adds his comments. This technique Călinescu describes as "boring", and its result "cynical".


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Allan himself stands alongside Eliade's male characters, whose focus is on action, sensation and experience—his chaste contacts with Maitreyi are encouraged by Sen, who hopes for a marriage which is nonetheless abhorred by his would-be European son-in-law. Instead, Allan is fascinated to discover Maitreyi's Oriental version of Platonic love, marked by spiritual attachment more than by physical contact. However, their affair soon after turns physical, and she decides to attach herself to Allan as one would to a husband, in what is an informal and intimate wedding ceremony (which sees her vowing her love and invoking an earth goddess as the seal of union). Upon discovering this, Narendra Sen becomes enraged, rejecting their guest and keeping Maitreyi in confinement. As a result, his daughter decides to have intercourse with a lowly stranger, becoming pregnant in the hope that her parents would consequently allow her to marry her lover. However, the story also casts doubt on her earlier actions, reflecting rumors that Maitreyi was not a virgin at the time she and Allan first met, which also seems to expose her father as a hypocrite.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: George Călinescu objected to the narrative, arguing that both the physical affair and the father's rage seemed artificial, while commenting that Eliade placing doubt on his Indian characters' honesty had turned the plot into a piece of "ethnological humor". Noting that the work developed on a classical theme of miscegenation, which recalled the prose of François-René de Chateaubriand and Pierre Loti, the critic proposed that its main merit was in introducing the exotic novel to local literature.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Mircea Eliade's other early works include Șantier ('Building Site'), a part-novel, part-diary account of his Indian sojourn. George Călinescu objected to its "monotony", and, noting that it featured a set of "intelligent observations," criticized the "banality of its ideological conversations." "Șantier" was also noted for its portrayal of drug addiction and intoxication with opium, both of which could have referred to Eliade's actual travel experience.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: In his earliest novel, titled "Novel of the Nearsighted Adolescent" and written in the first person, Eliade depicts his experience through high school. It is proof of the influence exercised on him by the literature of Giovanni Papini, and in particular by Papini's story "Un uomo finito". Each of its chapters reads like an independent novella, and, in all, the work experiments with the limits traced between novel and diary. Literary critic Eugen Simion called it "the most valuable" among Eliade's earliest literary attempts, but noted that, being "ambitious", the book had failed to achieve "an aesthetically satisfactory format". According to Simion, the innovative intent of the "Novel..." was provided by its technique, by its goal of providing authenticity in depicting experiences, and by its insight into adolescent psychology. The novel notably shows its narrator practicing self-flagellation.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Eliade's 1934 novel Întoarcerea din rai ('Return from Paradise') centers on Pavel Anicet, a young man who seeks knowledge through what Călinescu defined as "sexual excess". His search leaves him with a reduced sensitivity: right after being confronted with his father's death, Anicet breaks out in tears only after sitting through an entire dinner.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: The other characters, standing for Eliade's generation, all seek knowledge through violence or retreat from the world—nonetheless, unlike Anicet, they ultimately fail at imposing rigors upon themselves. Pavel himself eventually abandons his belief in sex as a means for enlightenment, and commits suicide in hopes of reaching the level of primordial unity. The solution, George Călinescu noted, mirrored the strange murder in Gide's "Lafcadio's Adventures". Eliade himself indicated that the book dealt with the "loss of the beatitude, illusions, and optimism that had dominated the first twenty years of 'Greater Romania'." Robert Ellwood connected the work to Eliade's recurring sense of loss in respect to the "atmosphere of euphoria and faith" of his adolescence. Călinescu criticizes "Întoarcerea din rai", describing its dialog sequences as "awkward", its narrative as "void", and its artistic interest as "non-existent", proposing that the reader could however find it relevant as the "document of a mentality".


title: Mircea Eliade

text: The lengthy novel Huliganii ('The Hooligans') is intended as the fresco of a family, and, through it, that of an entire generation. The book's main protagonist, Petru Anicet, is a composer who places value in experiments; other characters include Dragu, who considers "a hooligan's experience" as "the only fertile debut into life", and the totalitarian Alexandru Pleşa, who is on the search for "the heroic life" by enlisting youth in "perfect regiments, equally intoxicated by a collective myth."


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Călinescu thought that the young male characters all owed inspiration to Fyodor Dostoevsky's Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov ("see Crime and Punishment"). Anicet, who partly shares Pleșa's vision for a collective experiment, is also prone to sexual adventures, and seduces the women of the Lecca family (who have hired him as a piano teacher). Romanian-born novelist Norman Manea called Anicet's experiment: "the paraded defiance of bourgeois conventions, in which venereal disease and lubricity dwell together." In one episode of the book, Anicet convinces Anișoara Lecca to gratuitously steal from her parents—an outrage which leads her mother to moral decay and, eventually, to suicide. George Călinescu criticized the book for inconsistencies and "excesses in Dostoyevskianism," but noted that the Lecca family portrayal was "suggestive", and that the dramatic scenes were written with "a remarkable poetic calm."


title: Mircea Eliade

text: The novel "Marriage in Heaven" depicts the correspondence between two male friends, an artist and a common man, who complain to each other about their failures in love: the former complains about a lover who wanted his children when he did not, while the other recalls being abandoned by a woman who, despite his intentions, did not want to become pregnant by him. Eliade lets the reader understand that they are in fact talking about the same woman.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Mircea Eliade's earliest works, most of which were published at later stages, belong to the fantasy genre. One of the first such literary exercises to be printed, the 1921 "Cum am găsit piatra filosofală", showed its adolescent author's interest in themes that he was to explore throughout his career, in particular esotericism and alchemy. Written in the first person, it depicts an experiment which, for a moment, seems to be the discovery of the philosophers' stone. These early writings also include two sketches for novels: "Minunata călătorie a celor cinci cărăbuși in țara furnicilor roșii" ('The Wonderful Journey of the Five Beetles into the Land of the Red Ants') and "Memoriile unui soldat de plumb" ('The Memoirs of a Lead Soldier'). In the former, a company of beetle spies is sent among the red ants—their travel offers a setting for satirical commentary. Eliade himself explained that "Memoriile unui soldat de plumb" was an ambitious project, designed as a fresco to include the birth of the Universe, abiogenesis, human evolution, and the entire world history.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Eliade's fantasy novel "Domnișoara Christina", was, on its own, the topic of a scandal. The novel deals with the fate of an eccentric family, the Moscus, who are haunted by the ghost of a murdered young woman, known as Christina. The apparition shares characteristics with vampires and with "strigoi": she is believed to be drinking the blood of cattle and that of a young family member. The young man Egor becomes the object of Christina's desire, and is shown to have intercourse with her. Noting that the plot and setting reminded one of horror fiction works by the German author Hanns Heinz Ewers, and defending "Domnişoara Christina" in front of harsher criticism, Călinescu nonetheless argued that the "international environment" in which it took place was "upsetting". He also depicted the plot as focused on "major impurity", summarizing the story's references to necrophilia, menstrual fetish and ephebophilia.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Eliade's short story Șarpele ('The Snake') was described by George Călinescu as "hermetic". While on a trip to the forest, several persons witness a feat of magic performed by the male character Andronic, who summons a snake from the bottom of a river and places it on an island. At the end of the story, Andronic and the female character Dorina are found on the island, naked and locked in a sensual embrace. Călinescu saw the piece as an allusion to Gnosticism, to the Kabbalah, and to Babylonian mythology, while linking the snake to the Greek mythological figure and major serpent symbol Ophion. He was however dissatisfied with this introduction of iconic images, describing it as "languishing".


title: Mircea Eliade

text: In the relation between history and culture, „the memory acts from the event toward the creation, so that the cultural memory is the prisoner of history.” When it will liberate itself, the human will escape the labyrinth, according to a character of the "In Dionysus’ Court", of which ideal is the cultural memory; but, for him, the amnesia becomes a torment because, although he forgot details of his own existence, he kept the vague impression of a decisive meeting and with the obsession that he is not knowing his place in the universe: he had forgotten the message that he had to transmit to the world.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: The short story Un om mare ('A Big Man'), which Eliade authored during his stay in Portugal, shows a common person, the engineer Cucoanes, who grows steadily and uncontrollably, reaching immense proportions and ultimately disappearing into the wilderness of the Bucegi Mountains. Eliade himself referenced the story and Aldous Huxley's experiments in the same section of his private notes, a matter which allowed Matei Călinescu to propose that "Un om mare" was a direct product of its author's experience with drugs. The same commentator, who deemed "Un om mare" "perhaps Eliade's most memorable short story", connected it with the "uriași" characters present in Romanian folklore.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Eliade reinterpreted the Greek mythological figure Iphigeneia in his eponymous 1941 play. Here, the maiden falls in love with Achilles, and accepts to be sacrificed on the pyre as a means to ensure both her lover's happiness (as predicted by an oracle) and her father Agamemnon's victory in the Trojan War. Discussing the association Iphigenia's character makes between love and death, Romanian theater critic Radu Albala noted that it was a possible echo of "Meşterul Manole" legend, in which a builder of the Curtea de Argeș Monastery has to sacrifice his wife in exchange for permission to complete work. In contrast with early renditions of the myth by authors such as Euripides and Jean Racine, Eliade's version ends with the sacrifice being carried out in full.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: In addition to his fiction, the exiled Eliade authored several volumes of memoirs and diaries and travel writings. They were published sporadically, and covered various stages of his life. One of the earliest such pieces was "India", grouping accounts of the travels he made through the Indian subcontinent. Writing for the Spanish journal "La Vanguardia", commentator Sergio Vila-Sanjuán described the first volume of Eliade's "Autobiography" (covering the years 1907 to 1937) as "a great book", while noting that the other main volume was "more conventional and insincere." In Vila-Sanjuán's view, the texts reveal Mircea Eliade himself as "a Dostoyevskyian character", as well as "an accomplished person, a Goethian figure".


title: Mircea Eliade

text: A work that drew particular interest was his "Jurnal portughez" ('Portuguese Diary'), completed during his stay in Lisbon and published only after its author's death. A portion of it dealing with his stay in Romania is believed to have been lost. The travels to Spain, partly recorded in "Jurnal portughez", also led to a separate volume, "Jurnal cordobez" ('Cordoban Diary'), which Eliade compiled from various independent notebooks. "Jurnal portughez" shows Eliade coping with clinical depression and political crisis, and has been described by Andrei Oișteanu as "an overwhelming [read], through the immense suffering it exhales." Literary historian Paul Cernat argued that part of the volume is "a masterpiece of its time," while concluding that some 700 pages were passable for the "among others" section of Eliade's bibliography. Noting that the book featured parts where Eliade spoke of himself in eulogistic terms, notably comparing himself favorably to Goethe and Romania's national poet Mihai Eminescu, Cernat accused the writer of "egolatry", and deduced that Eliade was "ready to step over dead bodies for the sake of his spiritual 'mission' ". The same passages led philosopher and journalist Cătălin Avramescu to argue that Eliade's behavior was evidence of "megalomania".


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Eliade also wrote various essays of literary criticism. In his youth, alongside his study on Julius Evola, he published essays which introduced the Romanian public to representatives of modern Spanish literature and philosophy, among them Adolfo Bonilla San Martín, Miguel de Unamuno, José Ortega y Gasset, Eugeni d'Ors, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez and Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo. He also wrote an essay on the works of James Joyce, connecting it with his own theories on the eternal return ("[Joyce's literature is] saturated with nostalgia for the myth of the eternal repetition"), and deeming Joyce himself an anti-historicist "archaic" figure among the modernists. In the 1930s, Eliade edited the collected works of Romanian historian Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: M. L. Ricketts discovered and translated into English a previously unpublished play written by Mircea Eliade in Paris 1946 "Aventura Spirituală" ('A Spiritual Adventure'). It was published by for the first time in "Theory in Action" -the journal of the Transformative Studies Institute, vol. 5 (2012): 2–58.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: The early years in Eliade's public career show him to have been highly tolerant of Jews in general, and of the Jewish minority in Romania in particular. His early condemnation of Nazi antisemitic policies was accompanied by his caution and moderation in regard to Nae Ionescu's various anti-Jewish attacks.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Late in the 1930s, Mihail Sebastian was marginalized by Romania's antisemitic policies, and came to reflect on his Romanian friend's association with the far right. The subsequent ideological break between him and Eliade has been compared by writer Gabriela Adameşteanu with that between Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. In his "Journal", published long after his 1945 death, Sebastian claimed that Eliade's actions during the 1930s show him to be an antisemite. According to Sebastian, Eliade had been friendly to him until the start of his political commitments, after which he severed all ties. Before their friendship came apart, however, Sebastian claimed that he took notes on their conversations (which he later published) during which Eliade was supposed to have expressed antisemitic views. According to Sebastian, Eliade said in 1939:


title: Mircea Eliade

text: The Poles' resistance in Warsaw is a Jewish resistance. Only yids are capable of the blackmail of putting women and children in the front line, to take advantage of the Germans' sense of scruple. The Germans have no interest in the destruction of Romania. Only a pro-German government can save us... What is happening on the frontier with Bukovina is a scandal, because new waves of Jews are flooding into the country. Rather than a Romania again invaded by kikes, it would be better to have a German protectorate.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: The friendship between Eliade and Sebastian drastically declined during the war: the latter writer, fearing for his security during the pro-Nazi Ion Antonescu regime ("see Romania during World War II"), hoped that Eliade, by then a diplomat, could intervene in his favor; however, upon his brief return to Romania, Eliade did not see or approach Sebastian.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Later, Mircea Eliade expressed his regret at not having had the chance to redeem his friendship with Sebastian before the latter was killed in a car accident. Paul Cernat notes that Eliade's statement includes an admission that he "counted on [Sebastian's] support, in order to get back into Romanian life and culture", and proposes that Eliade may have expected his friend to vouch for him in front of hostile authorities. Some of Sebastian's late recordings in his diary show that their author was reflecting with nostalgia on his relationship with Eliade, and that he deplored the outcome.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Eliade provided two distinct explanations for not having met with Sebastian: one was related to his claim of being followed around by the Gestapo, and the other, expressed in his diaries, was that the shame of representing a regime that humiliated Jews had made him avoid facing his former friend. Another take on the matter was advanced in 1972 by the Israeli magazine "Toladot", which claimed that, as an official representative, Eliade was aware of Antonescu's agreement to implement the Final Solution in Romania and of how this could affect Sebastian ("see Holocaust in Romania"). In addition, rumors were sparked that Sebastian and Nina Mareş had a physical relationship, one which could have contributed to the clash between the two literary figures.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Beyond his involvement with a movement known for its antisemitism, Eliade did not usually comment on Jewish issues. However, an article titled "Piloţii orbi" ("The Blind Pilots"), contributed to the journal "Vremea" in 1936, showed that he supported at least some Iron Guard accusations against the Jewish community:


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Since the war [that is, World War I], Jews have occupied the villages of Maramureş and Bukovina, and gained the absolute majority in the towns and cities in Bessarabia. [...] It would be absurd to expect Jews to resign themselves in order to become a minority with certain rights and very many duties—after they have tasted the honey of power and conquered as many command positions as they have. Jews are currently fighting with all forces to maintain their positions, expecting a future offensive—and, as far as I am concerned, I understand their fight and admire their vitality, tenacity, genius.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: One year later, a text, accompanied by his picture, was featured as answer to an inquiry by the Iron Guard's "Buna Vestire" about the reasons he had for supporting the movement. A short section of it summarizes an anti-Jewish attitude:


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Can the Romanian nation end its life in the saddest decay witnessed by history, undermined by misery and syphilis, conquered by Jews and torn to pieces by foreigners, demoralized, betrayed, sold for a few million lei?


title: Mircea Eliade

text: According to the literary critic Z. Ornea, in the 1980s Eliade denied authorship of the text. He explained the use of his signature, his picture, and the picture's caption, as having been applied by the magazine's editor, Mihail Polihroniade, to a piece the latter had written after having failed to obtain Eliade's contribution; he also claimed that, given his respect for Polihroniade, he had not wished to publicize this matter previously.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Dumitru G. Danielopol, a fellow diplomat present in London during Eliade's stay in the city, later stated that the latter had identified himself as "a guiding light of [the Iron Guard] movement" and victim of Carol II's repression. In October 1940, as the National Legionary State came into existence, the British Foreign Office blacklisted Mircea Eliade, alongside five other Romanians, due to his Iron Guard connections and suspicions that he was prepared to spy in favor of Nazi Germany. According to various sources, while in Portugal, the diplomat was also preparing to disseminate propaganda in favor of the Iron Guard. In "Jurnal portughez", Eliade defines himself as "a Legionary", and speaks of his own "Legionary climax" as a stage he had gone through during the early 1940s.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: The depolitisation of Eliade after the start of his diplomatic career was also mistrusted by his former close friend Eugène Ionesco, who indicated that, upon the close of World War II, Eliade's personal beliefs as communicated to his friends amounted to "all is over now that Communism has won". This forms part of Ionesco's severe and succinct review of the careers of Legionary-inspired intellectuals, many of them his friends and former friends, in a letter he sent to Tudor Vianu. In 1946, Ionesco indicated to Petru Comarnescu that he did not want to see either Eliade or Cioran, and that he considered the two of them "Legionaries for ever"—adding "we are hyenas to one another".


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Eliade's former friend, the communist Belu Zilber, who was attending the Paris Conference in 1946, refused to see Eliade, arguing that, as an Iron Guard affiliate, the latter had "denounced left-wingers", and contrasting him with Cioran ("They are both Legionaries, but [Cioran] is honest"). Three years later, Eliade's political activities were brought into discussion as he was getting ready to publish a translation of his "Techniques du Yoga" with the left-leaning Italian company "Giulio Einaudi Editore"—the denunciation was probably orchestrated by Romanian officials.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: In August 1954, when Horia Sima, who led the Iron Guard during its exile, was rejected by a faction inside the movement, Mircea Eliade's name was included on a list of persons who supported the latter—although this may have happened without his consent. According to exiled dissident and novelist Dumitru Ţepeneag, around that date, Eliade expressed his sympathy for Iron Guard members in general, whom he viewed as "courageous". However, according to Robert Ellwood, the Eliade he met in the 1960s was entirely apolitical, remained aloof from "the passionate politics of that era in the United States", and "[r]eportedly [...] never read newspapers" (an assessment shared by Sorin Alexandrescu). Eliade's student Ioan Petru Culianu noted that journalists had come to refer to the Romanian scholar as "the great recluse". Despite Eliade's withdrawal from radical politics, Ellwood indicates, he still remained concerned with Romania's welfare. He saw himself and other exiled Romanian intellectuals as members of a circle who worked to "maintain the culture of a free Romania and, above all, to publish texts that had become unpublishable in Romania itself".


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Beginning in 1969, Eliade's past became the subject of public debate in Israel. At the time, historian Gershom Scholem asked Eliade to explain his attitudes, which the latter did using vague terms. As a result of this exchange, Scholem declared his dissatisfaction, and argued that Israel could not extend a welcome to the Romanian academic. During the final years of Eliade's life, his disciple Culianu exposed and publicly criticized his 1930s pro-Iron Guard activities; relations between the two soured as a result. Eliade's other Romanian disciple, Andrei Oişteanu, noted that, in the years following Eliade's death, conversations with various people who had known the scholar had made Culianu less certain of his earlier stances, and had led him to declare: "Mr. Eliade was never antisemitic, a member of the Iron Guard, or pro-Nazi. But, in any case, I am led to believe that he was closer to the Iron Guard than I would have liked to believe."


title: Mircea Eliade

text: At an early stage of his polemic with Culianu, Eliade complained in writing that "it is not possible to write an objective history" of the Iron Guard and its leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. Arguing that people "would only accept apologetics [...] or executions", he contended: "After Buchenwald and Auschwitz, even honest people cannot afford being objective".


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Alongside the arguments introduced by Daniel Dubuisson, criticism of Mircea Eliade's political involvement with antisemitism and fascism came from Adriana Berger, Leon Volovici, Alexandra Lagniel-Lavastine, Florin Țurcanu and others, who have attempted to trace Eliade's antisemitism throughout his work and through his associations with contemporary antisemites, such as the Italian fascist occultist Julius Evola. Volovici, for example, is critical of Eliade not only because of his support for the Iron Guard, but also for spreading antisemitism and anti-Masonry in 1930s Romania. In 1991, exiled novelist Norman Manea published an essay firmly condemning Eliade's attachment to the Iron Guard.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Other scholars, like Bryan S. Rennie, have claimed that there is, to date, no evidence of Eliade's membership, active services rendered, or of any real involvement with any fascist or totalitarian movements or membership organizations, nor that there is any evidence of his continued support for nationalist ideals after their inherently violent nature was revealed. They further assert that there is no imprint of overt political beliefs in Eliade's scholarship, and also claim that Eliade's critics are following political agendas. Romanian scholar Mircea Handoca, editor of Eliade's writings, argues that the controversy surrounding Eliade was encouraged by a group of exiled writers, of whom Manea was a main representative, and believes that Eliade's association with the Guard was a conjectural one, determined by the young author's Christian values and conservative stance, as well as by his belief that a Legionary Romania could mirror Portugal's "Estado Novo". Handoca opined that Eliade changed his stance after discovering that the Legionaries had turned violent, and argued that there was no evidence of Eliade's actual affiliation with the Iron Guard as a political movement. Additionally, Joaquín Garrigós, who translated Eliade's works into Spanish, claimed that none of Eliade's texts he ever encountered show him to be an antisemite. Mircea Eliade's nephew and commentator Sorin Alexandrescu himself proposed that Eliade's politics were essentially conservative and patriotic, in part motivated by a fear of the Soviet Union which he shared with many other young intellectuals. Based on Mircea Eliade's admiration for Gandhi, various other authors assess that Eliade remained committed to nonviolence.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Robert Ellwood also places Eliade's involvement with the Iron Guard in relation to scholar's conservatism, and connects this aspect of Eliade's life with both his nostalgia and his study of primal societies. According to Ellwood, the part of Eliade that felt attracted to the "freedom of new beginnings suggested by primal myths" is the same part that felt attracted to the Guard, with its almost mythological notion of a new beginning through a "national resurrection". On a more basic level, Ellwood describes Eliade as an "instinctively spiritual" person who saw the Iron Guard as a spiritual movement. In Ellwood's view, Eliade was aware that the "golden age" of antiquity was no longer accessible to secular man, that it could be recalled but not re-established. Thus, a "more accessible" object for nostalgia was a "secondary silver age within the last few hundred years"—the Kingdom of Romania's 19th century cultural renaissance. To the young Eliade, the Iron Guard seemed like a path for returning to the silver age of Romania's glory, being a movement "dedicated to the cultural and national renewal of the Romanian people by appeal to their spiritual roots". Ellwood describes the young Eliade as someone "capable of being fired up by mythological archetypes and with no awareness of the evil that was to be unleashed".


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Because of Eliade's withdrawal from politics, and also because the later Eliade's religiosity was very personal and idiosyncratic, Ellwood believes the later Eliade probably would have rejected the "corporate sacred" of the Iron Guard. According to Ellwood, the later Eliade had the same desire for a Romanian "resurrection" that had motivated the early Eliade to support the Iron Guard, but he now channeled it apolitically through his efforts to "maintain the culture of a free Romania" abroad. In one of his writings, Eliade says, "Against the terror of History there are only two possibilities of defense: action or contemplation." According to Ellwood, the young Eliade took the former option, trying to reform the world through action, whereas the older Eliade tried to resist the terror of history intellectually.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Eliade's own version of events, presenting his involvement in far right politics as marginal, was judged to contain several inaccuracies and unverifiable claims. For instance, Eliade depicted his arrest as having been solely caused by his friendship with Nae Ionescu. On another occasion, answering Gershom Scholem's query, he is known to have explicitly denied ever having contributed to "Buna Vestire". According to Sorin Antohi, "Eliade died without ever clearly expressing regret for his Iron Guard sympathies". Z. Ornea noted that, in a short section of his "Autobiography" where he discusses the "Einaudi" incident, Eliade speaks of "my imprudent acts and errors committed in youth", as "a series of malentendus that would follow me all my life." Ornea commented that this was the only instance where the Romanian academic spoke of his political involvement with a dose of self-criticism, and contrasted the statement with Eliade's usual refusal to discuss his stances "pertinently". Reviewing the arguments brought in support of Eliade, Sergio Vila-Sanjuán concluded: "Nevertheless, Eliade's pro-Legionary columns endure in the newspaper libraries, he never showed his regret for this connection [with the Iron Guard] and always, right up to his final writings, he invoked the figure of his teacher Nae Ionescu."


title: Mircea Eliade

text: In his "Felix Culpa", Manea directly accused Eliade of having embellished his memoirs in order to minimize an embarrassing past. A secondary debate surrounding Eliade's alleged unwillingness to dissociate with the Guard took place after "Jurnalul portughez" saw print. Sorin Alexandrescu expressed a belief that notes in the diary show Eliade's "break with his far right past". Cătălin Avramescu defined this conclusion as "whitewashing", and, answering to Alexandrescu's claim that his uncle's support for the Guard was always superficial, argued that "Jurnal portughez" and other writings of the time showed Eliade's disenchantment with the Legionaries' Christian stance in tandem with his growing sympathy for Nazism and its pagan messages. Paul Cernat, who stressed that it was the only one of Eliade's autobiographical works not to have been reworked by its author, concluded that the book documented Eliade's own efforts to "camouflage" his political sympathies without rejecting them altogether.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Oișteanu argued that, in old age, Eliade moved away from his earlier stances and even came to sympathize with the non-Marxist Left and the hippie youth movement. He noted that Eliade initially felt apprehensive about the consequences of hippie activism, but that the interests they shared, as well as their advocacy of communalism and free love had made him argue that hippies were "a quasi-religious movement" that was "rediscovering the sacrality of Life". Andrei Oișteanu, who proposed that Eliade's critics were divided into a "maximalist" and a "minimalist" camp (trying to, respectively, enhance or shadow the impact Legionary ideas had on Eliade), argued in favor of moderation, and indicated that Eliade's fascism needed to be correlated to the political choices of his generation.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Various critics have traced links between Eliade's fiction works and his political views, or Romanian politics in general. Early on, George Călinescu argued that the totalitarian model outlined in "Huliganii" was: "An allusion to certain bygone political movements [...], sublimated in the ever so abstruse philosophy of death as a path to knowledge." By contrast, "Întoarcerea din rai" partly focuses on a failed communist rebellion, which enlists the participation of its main characters.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: "Iphigenia"'s story of self-sacrifice, turned voluntary in Eliade's version, was taken by various commentators, beginning with Mihail Sebastian, as a favorable allusion to the Iron Guard's beliefs on commitment and death, as well as to the bloody outcome of the 1941 Legionary Rebellion. Ten years after its premiere, the play was reprinted by Legionary refugees in Argentina: on the occasion, the text was reviewed for publishing by Eliade himself. Reading "Iphigenia" was what partly sparked Culianu's investigation of his mentor's early political affiliations.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: A special debate was sparked by "Un om mare". Culianu viewed it as a direct reference to Corneliu Zelea Codreanu and his rise in popularity, an interpretation partly based on the similarity between, on one hand, two monikers ascribed to the Legionary leader (by, respectively, his adversaries and his followers), and, on the other, the main character's name ("Cucoanes"). Matei Călinescu did not reject Culianu's version, but argued that, on its own, the piece was beyond political interpretations. Commenting on this dialog, literary historian and essayist Mircea Iorgulescu objected to the original verdict, indicating his belief that there was no historical evidence to substantiate Culianu's point of view.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Alongside Eliade's main works, his attempted novel of youth, "Minunata călătorie a celor cinci cărăbuși in țara furnicilor roșii", which depicts a population of red ants living in a totalitarian society and forming bands to harass the beetles, was seen as a potential allusion to the Soviet Union and to communism. Despite Eliade's ultimate reception in Communist Romania, this writing could not be published during the period, after censors singled out fragments which they saw as especially problematic.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: An endowed chair in the History of Religions at the University of Chicago Divinity School was named after Eliade in recognition of his wide contribution to the research on this subject; the current (and first incumbent) holder of this chair is Wendy Doniger.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: To evaluate the legacy of Eliade and Joachim Wach within the discipline of the history of religions, the University of Chicago chose 2006 (the intermediate year between the 50th anniversary of Wach's death and the 100th anniversary of Eliade's birth), to hold a two-day conference in order to reflect upon their academic contributions and their political lives in their social and historical contexts, as well as the relationship between their works and their lives.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: In 1990, after the Romanian Revolution, Eliade was elected posthumously to the Romanian Academy. In Romania, Mircea Eliade's legacy in the field of the history of religions is mirrored by the journal "Archaeus" (founded 1997, and affiliated with the University of Bucharest Faculty of History). The 6th European Association for the Study of Religion and International Association for the History of Religions Special Conference on "Religious History of Europe and Asia" took place from September 20 to September 23, 2006, in Bucharest. An important section of the Congress was dedicated to the memory of Mircea Eliade, whose legacy in the field of history of religions was scrutinized by various scholars, some of whom were his direct students at the University of Chicago.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: As Antohi noted, Eliade, Emil Cioran and Constantin Noica "represent in Romanian culture ultimate expressions of excellence, [Eliade and Cioran] being regarded as proof that Romania's interwar culture (and, by extension, Romanian culture as a whole) was able to reach the ultimate levels of depth, sophistication and creativity." A Romanian Television 1 poll carried out in 2006 nominated Mircea Eliade as the 7th Greatest Romanian in history; his case was argued by the journalist Dragoş Bucurenci ("see 100 greatest Romanians"). His name was given to a boulevard in the northern Bucharest area of Primăverii, to a street in Cluj-Napoca, and to high schools in Bucharest, Sighişoara, and Reşiţa. The Eliades' house on Melodiei Street was torn down during the communist regime, and an apartment block was raised in its place; his second residence, on Dacia Boulevard, features a memorial plaque in his honor.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Eliade's image in contemporary culture also has political implications. Historian Irina Livezeanu proposed that the respect he enjoys in Romania is matched by that of other "nationalist thinkers and politicians" who "have reentered the contemporary scene largely as heroes of a pre- and anticommunist past", including Nae Ionescu and Cioran, but also Ion Antonescu and Nichifor Crainic. In parallel, according to Oişteanu (who relied his assessment on Eliade's own personal notes), Eliade's interest in the American hippie community was reciprocated by members of the latter, some of whom reportedly viewed Eliade as "a guru".


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Eliade has also been hailed as an inspiration by German representatives of the "Neue Rechte", claiming legacy from the Conservative Revolutionary movement (among them is the controversial magazine "Junge Freiheit" and the essayist Karlheinz Weißmann). In 2007, Florin Ţurcanu's biographical volume on Eliade was issued in a German translation by the Antaios publishing house, which is mouthpiece for the "Neue Rechte". The edition was not reviewed by the mainstream German press. Other sections of the European far right also claim Eliade as an inspiration, and consider his contacts with the Iron Guard to be a merit—among their representatives are the Italian neofascist Claudio Mutti and Romanian groups who trace their origin to the Legionary Movement.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Early on, Mircea Eliade's novels were the subject of satire: before the two of them became friends, Nicolae Steinhardt, using the pen name "Antisthius", authored and published parodies of them. Maitreyi Devi, who strongly objected to Eliade's account of their encounter and relationship, wrote her own novel as a reply to his "Maitreyi"; written in Bengali, it was titled "Na Hanyate" ('It Does Not Die').


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Several authors, including Ioan Petru Culianu, have drawn a parallel between Eugène Ionesco's Absurdist play of 1959, "Rhinoceros", which depicts the population of a small town falling victim to a mass metamorphosis, and the impact fascism had on Ionesco's closest friends (Eliade included).


title: Mircea Eliade

text: In 2000, Saul Bellow published his controversial "Ravelstein" novel. Having for its setting the University of Chicago, it had among its characters Radu Grielescu, who was identified by several critics as Eliade. The latter's portrayal, accomplished through statements made by the eponymous character, is polemical: Grielescu, who is identified as a disciple of Nae Ionescu, took part in the Bucharest Pogrom, and is in Chicago as a refugee scholar, searching for the friendship of a Jewish colleague as a means to rehabilitate himself. In 2005, the Romanian literary critic and translator Antoaneta Ralian, who was an acquaintance of Bellow's, argued that much of the negative portrayal was owed to a personal choice Bellow made (after having divorced from Alexandra Bagdasar, his Romanian wife and Eliade disciple). She also mentioned that, during a 1979 interview, Bellow had expressed admiration for Eliade.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: The film "Mircea Eliade et la redécouverte du Sacré" (1987), and part of the television series "Architecture et Géographie sacrées" by Paul Barbă Neagră, discuss Eliade's works.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: "The Bengali Night", a 1988 film directed by Nicolas Klotz and based upon the French translation of "Maitreyi", stars British actor Hugh Grant as Allan, the European character based on Eliade, while Supriya Pathak is Gayatri, a character based on Maitreyi Devi (who had refused to be mentioned by name). The film, considered "pornographic" by Hindu activists, was only shown once in India.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: Eliade's "Iphigenia" was again included in theater programs during the late years of the Nicolae Ceauşescu regime: in January 1982, a new version, directed by Ion Cojar, premiered at the National Theater Bucharest, starring Mircea Albulescu, Tania Filip and Adrian Pintea in some of the main roles.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: In March 2007, on Eliade's 100th birthday, the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company hosted the "Mircea Eliade Week", during which radio drama adaptations of several works were broadcast. In September of that year, director and dramatist Cezarina Udrescu staged a multimedia performance based on a number of works Mircea Eliade wrote during his stay in Portugal; titled "Apocalipsa după Mircea Eliade" ('The Apocalypse According to Mircea Eliade'), and shown as part of a Romanian Radio cultural campaign, it starred Ion Caramitru, Oana Pellea and Răzvan Vasilescu.


title: Mircea Eliade

text: "Domnișoara Christina" has been the subject of two operas: the first, carrying the same Romanian title, was authored by Romanian composer Șerban Nichifor and premiered in 1981 at the Romanian Radio; the second, titled "La señorita Cristina", was written by Spanish composer Luis de Pablo and premiered in 2000 at the Teatro Real in Madrid.


title: Steve Harris (actor)

text: Steve Harris (born December 3, 1965) is an American actor. He has played Eugene Young on the legal drama "The Practice", Detective Isaiah "Bird" Freeman on the NBC drama "Awake" and Charles McCarter in Tyler Perry’s "Diary of a Mad Black Woman".


title: Steve Harris (actor)

text: Harris was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of John Harris, a bus driver and Mattie Harris, a housewife. He is the older brother of actor Wood Harris. He attended St. Joseph High School in Westchester, IL, a private school with a reputation for developing star athletes. Harris was a running back, and later played linebacker for Northern Illinois University, where he studied drama. His athletic career was cut short due to a torn ligament in his ankle. After graduating from Northern Illinois University in 1989, Harris obtained a master's degree in acting at the University of Delaware.


title: Steve Harris (actor)

text: Harris appeared on "Law & Order" and earlier had a role in "'s" pilot. In 2006, he appeared in the now-cancelled TV series "Heist". He also appeared in an episode of "Grey's Anatomy". He appeared in several episodes of New York Undercover. He has appeared in a number of films including; "Quarantine", Tyler Perry's "Diary of a Mad Black Woman", "Bringing Down The House", "The Rock", "The Mod Squad", Takers", "and Minority Report


title: Steve Harris (actor)

text: Harris starred in actress Regina King's directorial debut "Let The Church Say Amen" which was adapted from ReShonda Tate Billingsley's 2005 best selling novel. The film premiered on Black Entertainment Television (BET) in 2013. He appeared in the TNT show "Legends", which aired on TNT from August 13, 2014 to December 28, 2015, playing Nelson Gates, the boss of troubled FBI agent Martin Odum (Sean Bean).


title: Steve Harris (actor)

text: Harris was nominated six times for an NAACP Image Award for his work on The Practice and won in 2004.


title: 2 Good 2 Be True

text: 2 Good 2 Be True is a Philippine drama romantic comedy television series broadcast by Kapamilya Channel. Directed by Mae Cruz-Alviar, it stars Kathryn Bernardo and Daniel Padilla. The series premiered on the Kapamilya Channel's "Primetime Bida" evening block, A2Z, TV5, and worldwide via The Filipino Channel on May 16, 2022, to November 11, 2022, replacing "Viral Scandal" and was replaced by "The Iron Heart".


title: 2 Good 2 Be True

text: The drama marked the return of Bernardo and Padilla in primetime television five years after they previously starred together in the 2017 series "La Luna Sangre" by Star Creatives.


title: 2 Good 2 Be True

text: Car mechanic Eloy (Daniel Padilla) makes a terrible first impression on Ali (Kathryn Bernardo), who works for a real estate magnate. Both of them are hiding their true personas.


title: 2 Good 2 Be True

text: Working title for the project was "Tanging Mahal". Pre-production began on August 30, 2021. The series is produced by RGE Drama Unit, the creators of "Nang Ngumiti ang Langit", "Pamilya Ko" and "Bagong Umaga". On September 27, 2021, the drama has been officially announced as "Too Good to Be True". Principal photography commenced in October 2021.


title: 2 Good 2 Be True

text: "2 Good 2 Be True" immediately became the number-one most watched TV series on Netflix nationwide, consistently. The pilot episode drew over 130,000 live concurrent viewers on ABS-CBN's YouTube channel. According to AGB Nielsen Philippines, the series premiered with an impressive 8.0% rating, securing the sixth spot of the rating board, despite having only limited reach on Free TV.


title: 2 Good 2 Be True

text: "2 Good 2 Be True" streamed advanced episodes first on Netflix on May 13, 2022, before releasing on other platforms. The series consists of 130 episodes.


The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), also known as TPP11 or TPP-11, is a trade agreement among Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. It evolved from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which was never ratified due to the withdrawal of the United States. The eleven signatories have combined economies representing 13.4 percent of global gross domestic product, at approximately trillion, making the CPTPP one of the world's largest free-trade areas by GDP, along with the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement, the European Single Market, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.


title: Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership

text: The TPP had been signed on 4 February 2016 but never entered into force, as the U.S. withdrew from the agreement soon after the election of president Donald Trump. All other TPP signatories agreed in May 2017 to revive the agreement, with Shinzo Abe's administration in Japan widely reported as taking the leading role in place of the U.S. In January 2018, the CPTPP was created as a succeeding agreement, retaining two-thirds of its predecessor's provisions; 22 measures favored by the U.S. but contested by other signatories were suspended, while the threshold for enactment was lowered so as not to require U.S. accession.


text: The formal signing ceremony was held on 8 March 2018 in Santiago, Chile. The agreement specifies that its provisions enter into effect 60 days after ratification by at least half the signatories (six of the eleven participating countries). On 31 October 2018, Australia was the sixth nation to ratify the agreement; it subsequently came into force for the initial six ratifying countries on 30 December 2018.


text: The chapter on state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is unchanged, requiring signatories to share information about SOEs with each other, with the intent of engaging with the issue of state intervention in markets. It includes the most detailed standards for intellectual property of any trade agreement, as well as protections against intellectual property theft against corporations operating abroad.


text: During the round of negotiations held concurrently with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Vietnam in November 2017, the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau refused to sign the agreement in principle, stating reservations about the provisions on culture and automotives. Media outlets in Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, which strongly supported quick movement on a deal, strongly criticized what they portrayed as Canadian sabotage.


text: Canada insisted that cultural and language rights, specifically related to its French-speaking minority, be protected.


text: However, Canada's major reservation was a conflict between the percentage of a vehicle that must originate in a CPTPP member nation to enter tariff-free, which was 45% under the original TPP language and 62.5% under the NAFTA agreement. Japan, which is a major automobile part exporter, strongly supports lower requirements. In January 2018, Canada announced that it would sign the CPTPP after obtaining binding side letters on culture with every other CPTPP member country, as well as bilateral agreements with Japan, Malaysia, and Australia related to non-tariff barriers. Canada's Auto Parts Manufacturers' Association sharply criticized increasing the percentages of automobile parts that may be imported tariff-free, noting that the United States was moving in the opposite direction by demanding stricter importation standards in the ongoing NAFTA renegotiation.


text: In February 2019, Canada's Jim Carr, Minister of International Trade Diversification, delivered a keynote address at a seminar concerning CPTPP - Expanding Your Business Horizons, reaching out to businesses stating the utilisation of the agreement provides a bridge that will enable people, goods and services to be shared more easily.


text: The final text of CPTPP was mostly identical to the original TPP, except for some provisions advanced by the US under the TPP, but not supported by the other members. In the intellectual property chapter, copyright and patent terms were shortened relative to TPP, and standards for digital IP protections were eliminated. Provisions allowing use of investor–state dispute settlements for investment agreements and authorizations were also rescinded.


text: On 28 June 2018, Mexico became the first country to finish its domestic ratification procedure of the CPTPP, with President Enrique Peña Nieto stating, "With this new generation agreement, Mexico diversifies its economic relations with the world and demonstrates its commitment to openness and free trade."


text: On 19 July 2018, Singapore became the third country to ratify the agreement and deposit its instrument of ratification.


text: On 17 October 2018, the Australian Federal Parliament passed relevant legislation through the Senate. The official ratification was deposited on 31 October 2018. This two-week gap made Australia the sixth signatory to deposit its ratification of the agreement, and it came into force 60 days later.


text: On 25 October 2018, New Zealand ratified the CPTPP, increasing the number of countries that had formally ratified the agreement to four.


text: Also on 25 October 2018, Canada passed and was granted royal assent on the enabling legislation. The official ratification was deposited on 29 October 2018.


text: On 2 November 2018, the CPTPP and related documents were submitted to the National Assembly of Vietnam for ratification. On 12 November 2018, the National Assembly passed a resolution unanimously ratifying the CPTPP. The Vietnamese government officially notified New Zealand of its ratification on 15 November 2018.


text: On 14 July 2021, the CPTPP was approved by the Congress of the Republic of Peru. The official ratification was deposited on 21 July 2021.


text: Of the original signatories, Chile is one of two yet to ratify the CPTPP. On 17 April 2019, the CPTPP was approved by the Chamber of Deputies of Chile. The final round of approval in the Senate was scheduled for November 2019, after being approved by its Commission of Constitution. However, due to a series of massive protests against the government of Sebastián Piñera, the ratification process was paused. Only in 2022, the ratification process was resumed after a new Congress and a new President were elected. Despite the public opposition of Gabriel Boric to the treaty before his election as President, the new administration didn't interfere in the voting. The CPTPP was approved in the Senate with 27 votes in favor (mainly from the right-wing opposition and some center-left politicians) and 10 against, mostly by members of the ruling coalition. The treaty, however, has not been deposited yet; the Boric administration has announced they will do it once several side letters are negotiated with the other signatories in specific topics considered harmful by the Chilean government.


text: The agreement came into effect 60 days after ratification and deposit of accession documents by at least half the signatories (six of the eleven signatories). Australia was the sixth country to ratify the agreement, which was deposited with New Zealand on 31 October 2018, and consequently the agreement came into force between Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, and Singapore on 30 December 2018.


text: On 1 January 2019, Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, and Singapore implemented a second round of tariff cuts. Japan's second tariff cut took place on 1 April 2019.


text: On 15 November 2018, Vietnam deposited the accession documents, and the agreement entered into force in Vietnam on 14 January 2019.


text: On 21 July 2021, Peru deposited the accession documents, and the agreement entered into force in Peru on 19 September 2021.


text: On 30 September 2022, Malaysia deposited the accession documents, and the agreement entered into force in Malaysia on 29 November 2022.


text: The CPTPP Commission is the decision-making body of the CPTPP, which was established when the CPTPP entered into force on 30 December 2018.


text: Representatives from the eleven CPTPP signatories participated in the 1st CPTPP Commission meeting held in Tokyo on 19 January 2019, which decided:


text: 2nd CPTPP Commission meeting was held on 9 October 2019 in Auckland, New Zealand. Alongside the commission, the following Committees met for the first time in Auckland: Trade in Goods; Rules of Origin; Agricultural Trade; Technical Barriers to Trade; Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures; Small and Medium Sized Enterprises; State Owned Enterprises; Development; Cooperation and Capacity Building; Competitiveness and Business Facilitation; Environment; and the Labour Council. The Commission adopted two formal decisions, (i) on its Rules of Procedure under Article 27.4 and (ii) to establish a Roster of Panel Chairs as provided for under Article 28.11.


text: 4th CPTPP Commission meeting was held virtually and hosted by Japan on 2 June 2021. The Commission decided to move forward with the application of the United Kingdom as an aspirant economy.


text: 5th CPTPP Commission meeting was held virtually and hosted by Japan on 1 September 2021. The Commission decided to establish a Committee on Electronic Commerce composed of government representatives of each Party.


text: In January 2018, the government of the United Kingdom stated it was exploring membership of the CPTPP to stimulate exports after Brexit and has held informal discussions with several of the members. The country has a small overseas territory, the Pitcairn Islands, in the Pacific Ocean. In October 2018, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he would welcome the United Kingdom joining the partnership post-Brexit. In a joint Telegraph article with Simon Birmingham, David Parker, and Chan Chun Sing, the trade ministers of Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore, U.K. Secretary of State for Trade, Liz Truss, expressed the United Kingdom's intent to join the CPTPP.


text: The U.K. Department for Trade's chief negotiator Crawford Falconer helped lead the New Zealand negotiations for the predecessor Trans-Pacific Partnership before leaving the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 2012.


text: In June 2020, the government of the United Kingdom issued a policy paper reaffirming the U.K.'s position on accession to the CPTPP. There were three reasons given:


text: Furthermore, the U.K. government stated that in 2019, each region and nation of the U.K. exported at least £1 billion ($1.25 billion) worth of goods to CPTPP member countries. The U.K. government also highlighted that U.K. companies held close to £98 billion worth of investments in CPTPP countries in 2018 and that in 2019, the U.K. did more than £110 billion ($137 billion) worth of trade with countries in the CPTPP free trade area. In December 2020 the U.K.'s Secretary of State for Trade Liz Truss further expressed her desire for the U.K. to formally apply in early 2021. In a speech, held on January 20, 2021, Truss announced the U.K. planned to submit an application for participation "shortly". In October 2020 the United Kingdom and Japan already signed the UK–Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement which was a roll over of the agreement between the EU and Japan.


text: The U.K. government has not produced an impact assessment that explains or quantifies the benefits it expects for the U.K. economy from accession to CPTPP. As such, it is a matter of dispute in U.K. as to whether accession is worth pursuing for economic reasons. Farmer, environmental and consumer groups have all raised concerns that the U.K. government will need to agree to lowering standards on pesticides, pig welfare and food labelling. These concerns have also been raised by the Scottish government.


text: On 1 February 2021, the United Kingdom formally applied to join CPTPP. The U.K. is the first non-founding country to apply to join the CPTPP. If successful, the U.K. would become the second largest CPTPP economy, after Japan.


text: and as 4th CPTPP Commission (2021) chair, Japan's minister in charge of negotiations on the trade pact, Yasutoshi Nishimura, expressed hope on Twitter that Britain will "demonstrate its strong determination to fully comply with high-standard obligations" of the free trade accord, and mentioned that "I believe that the U.K.’s accession request will have a great potential to expand the high-standard rules beyond the Asia-Pacific."


text: In June 2021, the CPTPP states agreed to open accession talks. A working group is expected to be established to discuss tariffs and rules governing investment and trade. The U.K. is not expected to accede to the CPTPP until 2022 at the earliest.


text: On 18 February 2022, confirmation came from the Japanese government, as Chair of the UK’s Accession Working Group on behalf of the CPTPP members, that the UK has moved into the second (and final) ‘market access’ phase of negotiations with the CPTPP.


text: In May 2020, China's Premier Li Keqiang said that China was willing to consider joining CPTPP. Meanwhile, China's leader Xi Jinping said at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in November 2020 that China would “actively consider” joining CPTPP.


text: In December 2020, Japan Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi has said that "TPP-11 sets high standards for regulations on e-commerce, intellectual property and state-owned enterprises", suggesting the amount of government intervention in the Chinese economy will not meet CPTPP requirements.


text: China's application to CPTPP is unlikely to gain traction. Although not a member of CPTPP, the U.S. can exercise the "poison pill" within the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement that prevents Canada and Mexico from voting in favor of the Chinese application.


text: On 16 September 2021, China formally applied to join CPTPP. Reactions from CPTPP members after the Chinese application:


text: Japan Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura was quoted by Reuters; "Japan believes that it's necessary to determine whether China, which submitted a request to join the TPP-11, is ready to meet its extremely high standards"; indicating that Japan will not support the Chinese application under the current circumstances.


text: Former Australian Trade Minister Dan Tehan indicated that Australia would oppose China's application until China halts trade strikes against Australian exports and resumes minister-to-minister contacts with the Australian government. Also, Australia has lodged disputes against China in the WTO on restrictions imposed by China on exports of barley and wine.


text: It had previously expressed interest to join TPP in 2016. After TPP's evolution to CPTPP in 2018, Taiwan indicated its will to continue efforts to join CPTPP. In December 2020, the Taiwanese government stated that it would submit an application to join CPTPP following the conclusion of informal consultations with existing members.


text: In February 2021 again, Taiwan indicated its will to apply to join CPTPP at an appropriate time. A few days after China submitted its request to join the CPTPP, Taiwan sent its own request to join the CPTPP, a move that has been one of the main policy objectives of Tsai Ing-wen's government.


text: Ecuador has filed its application to join the CPTPP trade pact as the country moves to reduce its reliance on oil and diversify its economy through exports.


text: In January 2021, South Korea’s Moon administration announced it would seek to join CPTPP. The country will examine sanitary and phytosanitary measures, fisheries subsidies, digital trade and guidelines related to state-run enterprises to meet the requirements that CPTPP has suggested. The South Korean government formally announced it will begin its application to join CPTPP in December 2021.


text: Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai is expected to submit a letter of intent soon for the country to apply to join the pact to the cabinet for its approval. A campaign against joining the pact called "#NoCPTPP" which has gathered 400,000 signatures has demanded the prime minister to not consider joining the pact.


text: The Philippines previously wanted to join the TPP in 2016 under Benigno Aquino, who said that the country stood to gain from becoming a member of the trade pact.


text: On 25 January 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump in an interview announced his interest in possibly rejoining the TPP if it were a "substantially better deal" for the United States. He had withdrawn the U.S. from the original agreement in January 2017. On 12 April 2018, he told the White House National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to look into joining CPTPP. U.S. Wheat Associates President Vince Peterson had said in December 2018 that American wheat exporters could face an “imminent collapse” in their 53% market share in Japan due to exclusion from CPTPP. Peterson added, “Our competitors in Australia and Canada will now benefit from those [CPTPP] provisions, as U.S. farmers watch helplessly.” The National Cattlemen's Beef Association stated that exports of beef to Japan, America's largest export market, would be at a serious disadvantage to Australian exporters as their tariffs on exports to Japan would be cut by 27.5% during the first year of CPTPP.


text: In December 2020, a bipartisan group of U.S. policy experts, Richard L. Armitage and Joseph S. Nye Jr., called for Washington to join the CPTPP, but this call was rejected by Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo when meeting Japanese government leaders on 15 November 2021. Raimondo stated that the Biden administration will not be joining CPTPP but is instead planning to create a new trade framework to surpass CPTPP in nearly the whole Indo-Pacific region.


text: Economist José Gabriel Palma has criticized the treaty for severely restricting the sovereignty of the signatories. Signatories are subject to international courts and have restrictions on what their state-owned enterprises can do. According to Palma the treaty makes it difficult for countries to implement policies aimed to diversify exports thus becoming a so-called middle income trap. Palma also accuses that the treaty is reinforcing unequal relations by being drafted to reflect the laws of the United States.


text: In the case of Chile, Palma holds the treaty is redundant regarding the possibilities of trade as Chile has already trade treaties with ten of its members. On the contrary, economist Klaus Schmidt–Hebbel consider that the CPTPP "deepening" of already existing trade relations of Chile is a point in favour of it. In the view of Schmidt-Hebbel approving the treaty is important for the post-Covid economic recovery of Chile and wholly in line with the economic policies of Chile since the 1990s.


title: Miguel Bernardeau

text: Miguel Ángel Bernardeau Duato was born on 12 December 1996 in Valencia, Spain. He is the son of television producer, Miguel Ángel Bernardeau Maestro and the actress, Ana Duato. He has a younger sister, named María Bernardeau Duato. He studied Dramatic Art in the United States, at Santa Monica College and acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles, California.


title: Miguel Bernardeau

text: In 2018, Miguel Bernardeau started a relationship with Spanish singer Aitana, which they confirmed in August 2019 through their Instagram accounts. They posed together for the first time in February 2020 at Milan Fashion Week, where they attended the show as guests. They lived together from September 2021 to December 2022, when he reportedly moved out after the end of the relationship.


title: Phil Ochs

text: Philip David Ochs (; December 19, 1940 – April 9, 1976) was an American songwriter and protest singer (or, as he preferred, a topical singer). Ochs was known for his sharp wit, sardonic humor, political activism, often alliterative lyrics, and distinctive voice. He wrote hundreds of songs in the 1960s and 1970s and released eight albums.


title: Phil Ochs

text: Ochs performed at many political events during the 1960s counterculture era, including anti-Vietnam War and civil rights rallies, student events, and organized labor events over the course of his career, in addition to many concert appearances at such venues as New York City's Town Hall and Carnegie Hall. Politically, Ochs described himself as a "left social democrat" who became an "early revolutionary" after the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago led to a police riot, which had a profound effect on his state of mind.


title: Phil Ochs

text: After years of prolific writing in the 1960s, Ochs's mental stability declined in the 1970s. He had a number of personal problems, including bipolar disorder and alcoholism, and died by suicide in 1976.


title: Phil Ochs

text: Ochs's influences included Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Bob Gibson, Faron Young, and Merle Haggard. His best-known songs include "I Ain't Marching Anymore", "When I'm Gone", "Changes", "Crucifixion", "Draft Dodger Rag", "Love Me, I'm a Liberal", "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends", "Power and the Glory", "There but for Fortune", "The War Is Over", and "No More Songs".


title: Phil Ochs

text: Phil Ochs was born on December 19, 1940, in El Paso, Texas, to Jacob "Jack" Ochs (1910-1963), a physician who was born in New York , and Gertrude Phin Ochs (1912-1994), who was from Scotland. His father was of Polish Jewish descent. His parents met and married in Edinburgh where Jack was attending medical school. After their marriage, they moved to the United States. Jack, drafted into the army, was sent overseas near the end of World War II, where he treated soldiers at the Battle of the Bulge. His war experiences affected his mental health and he received an honorable medical discharge in November 1945. Suffering from bipolar disorder and depression on his return home, Jack was unable to establish a successful medical practice and instead worked at a series of hospitals around the country. As a result, the Ochs family moved frequently: to Far Rockaway, New York, when Ochs was a teenager; then to Perrysburg in western New York, where he first studied music; and then to Columbus, Ohio. Ochs grew up with an older sister, Sonia (known as Sonny, born 1937), and a younger brother, Michael (born 1943). The Ochs family was middle class and Jewish, but not religious. His father was distant from his wife and children, and was hospitalized for depression; he died on April 30, 1963, from a cerebral hemorrhage. His mother died on March 9, 1994.


title: Phil Ochs

text: As a teenager, Ochs was recognized as a talented clarinet player; in an evaluation, one music instructor wrote: "You have exceptional musical feeling and the ability to transfer it on your instrument is abundant." His musical skills allowed him to play clarinet with the orchestra at the Capital University Conservatory of Music in Ohio, where he rose to the status of principal soloist before he was 16. Although Ochs played classical music, he soon became interested in other sounds he heard on the radio, such as early rock icons Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley and country music artists including Faron Young, Ernest Tubb, Hank Williams Sr., and Johnny Cash. Ochs also spent a lot of time at the movies. He especially liked big screen heroes such as John Wayne and Audie Murphy. Later on, he developed an interest in movie rebels, including Marlon Brando and James Dean.


title: Phil Ochs

text: From 1956 to 1958, Ochs was a student at the Staunton Military Academy in rural Virginia, and when he graduated he returned to Columbus and enrolled in the Ohio State University. Unhappy after his first quarter, he took a leave of absence and went to Florida. While in Miami, the 18-year-old Ochs was jailed for two weeks for sleeping on a park bench, an incident he would later recall:


title: Phil Ochs

text: Somewhere during the course of those fifteen days I decided to become a writer. My primary thought was journalism ... so in a flash, I decided—I'll be a writer and a major in journalism.


title: Phil Ochs

text: Ochs returned to Ohio State to study journalism and developed an interest in politics, with a particular interest in the Cuban Revolution of 1959. At Ohio State, he met Jim Glover, a fellow student who was a devotee of folk music. Glover introduced Ochs to the music of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and The Weavers. Glover taught Ochs how to play guitar, and they debated politics. Ochs began writing newspaper articles, often on radical themes. When the student paper refused to publish some of his more radical articles, he started his own underground newspaper called "The Word". His two main interests, politics and music, soon merged, and Ochs began writing topical political songs. Ochs and Glover formed a duet called "The Singing Socialists", later renamed "The Sundowners", but the duo broke up before their first professional performance and Glover went to New York City to become a folksinger.


title: Phil Ochs

text: Ochs's parents and brother had moved from Columbus to Cleveland, and Ochs started to spend more time there, performing professionally at a local folk club called Farragher's Back Room. He was the opening act for a number of musicians in the summer of 1961, including the Smothers Brothers. Ochs met folksinger Bob Gibson that summer as well, and according to Dave Van Ronk, Gibson became ""the" seminal influence" on Ochs's writing. Ochs continued at Ohio State into his senior year, but was bitterly disappointed at not being appointed editor-in-chief of the college newspaper, and dropped out in his last quarter without graduating. He left for New York, as Glover had, to become a folksinger.


title: Phil Ochs

text: Ochs arrived in New York City in 1962 and began performing in numerous small folk nightclubs, eventually becoming an integral part of the Greenwich Village folk music scene. He emerged as an unpolished but passionate vocalist who wrote pointed songs about current events: war, civil rights, labor struggles and other topics. While others described his music as "protest songs", Ochs preferred the term "topical songs".


title: Phil Ochs

text: Ochs described himself as a "singing journalist", saying he built his songs from stories he read in "Newsweek". By the summer of 1963, he was sufficiently well known in folk circles to be invited to sing at the Newport Folk Festival, where he performed "Too Many Martyrs" (co-written with Bob Gibson), "Talking Birmingham Jam", and "Power and the Glory"—his patriotic Guthrie-esque anthem that brought the audience to its feet. Other performers at the 1963 folk festival included Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Tom Paxton. Ochs's return appearance at Newport in 1964, when he performed "Draft Dodger Rag" and other songs, was widely praised. However, he was not invited to appear in 1965, the festival when Dylan infamously performed "Maggie's Farm" with an electric guitar. Although many in the folk world decried Dylan's choice, Ochs was amused, and admired Dylan's courage in defying the folk establishment.


title: Phil Ochs

text: In 1963, Ochs performed at New York's Carnegie Hall and Town Hall in hootenannies. He made his first solo appearance at Carnegie Hall in 1966. Throughout his career, Ochs would perform at a wide range of venues, including civil rights rallies, anti-war demonstrations, and concert halls.


title: Phil Ochs

text: Ochs contributed many songs and articles to the influential "Broadside Magazine". He recorded his first three albums for Elektra Records: "All the News That's Fit to Sing" (1964), "I Ain't Marching Anymore" (1965), and "Phil Ochs in Concert" (1966). Critics wrote that each album was better than its predecessors, and fans seemed to agree; record sales increased with each new release.


title: Phil Ochs

text: On these records, Ochs was accompanied only by an acoustic guitar. The albums contain many of Ochs's topical songs, such as "Too Many Martyrs", "I Ain't Marching Anymore", and "Draft Dodger Rag"; and some musical reinterpretation of older poetry, such as "The Highwayman" (poem by Alfred Noyes) and "The Bells" (poem by Edgar Allan Poe). "Phil Ochs in Concert" includes some more introspective songs, such as "Changes" and "When I'm Gone".


title: Phil Ochs

text: During the early period of his career, Ochs and Bob Dylan had a friendly rivalry. Dylan said of Ochs, "I just can't keep up with Phil. And he just keeps getting better and better and better". On another occasion, when Ochs criticized either "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" or "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" (sources differ), Dylan threw him out of his limousine, saying, "You're not a folksinger. You're a journalist."


title: Phil Ochs

text: In 1962, Ochs married Alice Skinner, who was pregnant with their daughter Meegan, in a City Hall ceremony with Jim Glover as best man and Jean Ray as bridesmaid, and witnessed by Dylan's sometime girlfriend, Suze Rotolo. Phil and Alice separated in 1965, but they never divorced.


title: Phil Ochs

text: Like many people of his generation, Ochs deeply admired President John F. Kennedy, even though he disagreed with the president on issues such as the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the growing involvement of the United States in the Vietnamese civil war. When Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, Ochs wept. He told his wife that he thought he was going to die that night. It was the only time she ever saw Ochs cry.


title: Phil Ochs

text: Ochs's managers during this part of his career were Albert Grossman (who also managed Dylan and Peter, Paul, and Mary) followed by Arthur Gorson. Gorson had close ties with such groups as Americans For Democratic Action, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Students for a Democratic Society.


title: Phil Ochs

text: Ochs was writing songs at a fast pace. Some of the songs he wrote during this period were held back and recorded on his later albums.


title: Phil Ochs

text: In 1967, Ochs – now managed by his brother Michael—left Elektra Records for A&M Records and moved to Los Angeles, California. He recorded four studio albums for A&M: "Pleasures of the Harbor" (1967), "Tape from California" (1968), "Rehearsals for Retirement" (1969), and the ironically titled "Greatest Hits" (1970) (which actually consisted of all new material). For his A&M albums, Ochs moved away from simply produced solo acoustic guitar performances and experimented with ensemble and even orchestral instrumentation, "baroque-folk", in the hopes of producing a pop-folk hybrid that would be a hit.


title: Phil Ochs

text: Critic Robert Christgau, writing in "Esquire" of "Pleasures of the Harbor" in May 1968, did not consider this new direction a good turn. While describing Ochs as "unquestionably a nice guy", he went on to say, "too bad his voice shows an effective range of about half an octave [and] his guitar playing would not suffer much if his right hand were webbed." ""Pleasures of the Harbor"", Christgau continued, "epitomizes the decadence that has infected pop since "Sgt. Pepper". [The] gaudy musical settings ... inspire nostalgia for the three-chord strum." With an ironic sense of humor, Ochs included Christgau's "webbed hand" comment in his 1968 songbook "The War is Over" on a page titled "The Critics Raved", opposite a full-page picture of Ochs standing in a large metal garbage can. Despite his sense of humor, Ochs was unhappy that his work was not receiving the critical acclaim and popular success he had hoped to achieve. Still, Ochs would joke on the back cover of "Greatest Hits" that there were 50 Phil Ochs fans ("50 fans can't be wrong!"), a sarcastic reference to an Elvis Presley album that bragged of 50 million Elvis fans.


title: Phil Ochs

text: None of Ochs's songs became hits, although "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends" received a good deal of airplay. It reached No. 119 on "Billboard"'s national "Hot Prospect" listing before being pulled from some radio stations because of its lyrics, which sarcastically suggested that "smoking marijuana is more fun than drinking beer". It was the closest Ochs ever came to the Top 40. Joan Baez, however, did have a Top Ten hit in the U.K. in August 1965, reaching No. 8 with her cover of Ochs's song "There but for Fortune", which was also nominated for a Grammy Award for "Best Folk Recording". In the U.S. it peaked at No. 50 on the "Billboard" charts—a good showing, but not a hit.


title: Phil Ochs

text: Although he was trying new things musically, Ochs did not abandon his protest roots. He was profoundly concerned with the escalation of the Vietnam War, performing tirelessly at anti-war rallies across the country. In 1967 he organized two rallies to declare that "The War Is Over"—"Is everybody sick of this stinking war? In that case, friends, do what I and thousands of other Americans have done—declare the war over."—one in Los Angeles in June, the other in New York in November. He continued to write and record anti-war songs, such as "The War Is Over" and "White Boots Marching in a Yellow Land". Other topical songs of this period include "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends", inspired by the murder of Kitty Genovese, who was stabbed to death outside of her New York City apartment building while dozens of her neighbors reportedly ignored her cries for help, and "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed", about the despair he felt in the aftermath of the Chicago 1968 Democratic National Convention police riot.