how did romanian writer Mircea Eliade die(1986 in Chicago)?

Question

he also was a professor in University of Chicago. I know he did some expensive treatments with something(gold??! platinum?!). what disease could this be?cancer? please help!!

Answer 1

Perhaps this title prompted your question. Read more about it.
See the links below about the death of author.


It Does Not Die

The title comes from the line Mircea says to Maitreyi in Sanskrit near the end of the novel: “it does not die, when the body dies” (256). It Does Not Die was first published in 1976.

The book is divided up into 4 books. Book 1 covers the story; Book 2 about after Eliade left and an update on her family; Book 3, her past attempts to make contact with Mircea; and Book 4, her meeting with him.

The story takes place in “present” time, which is 1972, and weaves in flashbacks from the first time Maitreyi met Mircea to the time she finally meets him again, 42 years later, in 1973. The story starts on her birthday in September 1972. By this time, she is married and has grandkids. She is 58 years old.

It Does Not Die takes place in the village, Chittagong, & in Calcutta when it reverts to the past, and in settles in the present in Maitreyi’s Bhowanipur house & in Wood Land, France, where she finally reunites with Eliade.

Maitreyi provides more detail in her story; she tells beyond the romance and explains herself. For example, she really drives home that she is happy with her current life, and she realizes that her life would have been completely different if she did marry Mircea. She loves her husband; they have a very deep mutual understand of each other. She is more aware of the cultural repercussions than Mircea is about their “affair”. Maitreyi is also very philosophical. She refers back to poems and behaves very properly.

Some discrepancies in the story are: she calls Eliade Euclid in the story and she claims to have never slept with him.

The book also has a very helpful glossary of terms in the back.

Maitreyi Devi

Maitreyi Devi was born on September 1, 1914 in Calcutta. She died in 1990, at 76. Her father was the philosopher, Dr. S. N. Das Gupta. She graduated from Calcutta University in 1936. She memorized poems of Rabindranath, her guru, and published her first book of poems, Udita, when she was 15 years old. In 1934, she married Dr. M. Sen, D.Sc.; who’s last name is used by Eliade in his version of the story as a fictional last name. She has written a few books of poetry and of Tagore’s works. In 1953, she toured the United Kingdom and Western Europe, which she mentions in her book. Maitreyi also lectured and gave radio talks in Bengali on Tagore and his writings. It Does Not Die is perhaps her most famous work.

Good luck

Answer 2

1

Answer 3

Bengal Nights Mircea Eliade

Answer 4

2

Answer 5

Meercha Elee ah dey

Answer 6

This has been answered many times before

Answer 7

Wow, thankyou! I was wondering the same question yesterday

Answer 8

Born: March 13, 1907
Bucharest
Died: April 22, 1986
Chicago
Occupation: historian, philosopher, short story writer, journalist, essayist, novelist
Nationality: Romanian
Writing period: 1921–1986
Genres: fantasy, autobiography, travel literature
Subjects: history of religion, philosophy of religion, cultural history, political history
Literary movement: Modernism
Criterion
Trăirism
Debut works: *** am găsit piatra filosofală (short story)
Novel of the Nearsighted Adolescent (novel)
The Comparative History of Yoga Techniques (essay)

Influences: Surendranath Dasgupta, Julius Evola, René Guénon, Nae Ionescu, Carl Jung, Rudolf Otto, Giovanni Papini, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Joachim Wach
Influenced: Ioan Petru Culianu, Wendy Doniger
Mircea Eliade (March 13 [O.S. February 28] 1907 – April 22, 1986) was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day. As a tool for interpreting religion, his theory that hierophanies form the basis of religion, splitting the human experience of reality into sacred and profane space and time, has proved a far more widely applicable than the older term theophany, which denotes the manifestation of a god.His most enduring and influential contribution to religious studies was possibly his theory of Eternal Return, which holds that myths and rituals do not simply record or imitate hierophanies, but, at least to the minds of the religious, actually participate in them. In academia, the Eternal Return has become one of the most widely accepted ways of understanding the purpose of myth and ritual. His literary works belong to the fantasy and autobiographical genre; the best known are the autobiographical novels Maitreyi (La Nuit Bengali or Bengal Nights), the novella Domnişoara Christina (Miss Christina), and the short stories Secretul doctorului Honigberger (The Secret of Dr. Honigberger) and La Ţigănci (With the Gypsy Girls).

Early in his life, Eliade was a noted journalist and essayist, a disciple of Romanian far right philosopher and journalist Nae Ionescu, and member of the literary society Criterion. He also served as cultural attaché to the United Kingdom and Portugal.

Several times during the late 1930s, Eliade publicly expressed his support for the Iron Guard, a fascist and antisemitic political organization; since the 1970s, his position at the time was the frequent topic of criticism.

Remarkable for his vast erudition, Eliade had fluent command of five languages (Romanian, French, German, Italian, and English) and less command of three others (Hebrew, Persian, and Sanskrit). He was elected postmortem member of the Romanian Academy.

Biography

Early life
Born in Bucharest, Eliade attended the Spiru Haret National College in the same class as Arşavir Acterian, Haig Acterian, and Petre Viforeanu (and several years the senior of Nicolae Steinhardt, who was to satirize his novels under the pen name Antisthius, and who became a close friend of Eliade's); while in high school, he wrote his debut work, the autobiographical Novel of the Nearsighted Adolescent (influenced by the literature of Giovanni Papini, particularly his Un uomo finito). It was completed in 1925 (his first work to be published, however, was *** am găsit piatra filosofală, "How I Found the Philosophers' Stone", printed in 1921, when he was aged 14).

He became interested in natural sciences at an early age, and taught himself French and English, the latter so he could read James Frazer's Golden Bough in the original.[4] He graduated from the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Philosophy and Letters in 1928, earning his diploma with a study on Italian Philosophy from Marsilio Ficino to Giordano Bruno, and subsequently traveled to Italy, where he met Papini and collaborated with the scholar Giuseppe Tucci. It was during his student years that Eliade would meet Nae Ionescu and become one of his disciples and friends.

His scholarly works began after a long period of study in India at the University of Calcutta. Finding that the Maharaja of Kassimbazar sponsored European scholars to study in India, Eliade applied and was granted an allowance for four years. In 1928 he sailed for Calcutta to study Sanskrit and philosophy under Surendranath Dasgupta, a Bengali Cambridge alumnus and professor at the University of Calcutta, the author of a five volume History of Indian Philosophy. While living with Dasgupta, Eliade fell in love with his daughter, Maitreyi Devi, later writing a barely-disguised autobiographical novel Maitreyi (also known as La Nuit Bengali or Bengal Nights), in which he claimed that he carried on a physical relationship with her.[5] When she became aware of this account, she contested it in her own novel Na Hanyate, written in Bengali (the title in English is It Does Not Die).

At the time, he became interested in the actions of Mahatma Gandhi, whom he met personally,and the Satyagraha as a phenomenon; later, Eliade adapted Gandhist ideas in his discourse on spirituality and Romania.[8]


Interwar activities
As one of the figures in the Criterion literary society (1933-1934), his initial encounter with the traditional far right was polemical: the group's conferences were stormed by members of A. C. Cuza's National-Christian Defense League, who objected to what they viewed as pacifism and addressed anti-Semitic insults to several speakers, including Mihail Sebastian; in 1933, he was among the signers of a manifesto opposing Nazi Germany's state-enforced racism.Eliade's views at the time focused on innovation — in the summer of 1933, he replied to an anti-modernist critique written by George Călinescu:

"All I wish for is a deep change, a complete transformation. But, for God's sake, in any direction other than spirituality".
In 1936, Eliade was the focus of a press campaign in the far right press, being targeted for having authored "pornography" in his Domnişoara Christina and Isabel şi apele diavolului (similar accusations were aimed at other cultural figures, including Tudor Arghezi and Geo Bogza).

However, while a professor at the University of Bucharest (1933-1939), Eliade became active in nationalist politics. He and friends Emil Cioran and Constantin Noica were by then under the influence of Trăirism, a school of thought that was formed around the ideals expressed by Romanian philosopher Nae Ionescu. A form of existentialism, Trăirism was also the synthesis of traditional and newer right-wing beliefs.

Eliade's articles before and after his adherence to the principles of the Iron Guard (or, as it was usually known at the time, the Legionary Movement), beginning with his famous Itinerar spiritual ("Spiritual itinerary", serialized in Cuvântul in 1927) center on several political ideals advocated by the far right. They displayed his rejection of liberalism and the modernizing goals of the 1848 Wallachian revolution (perceived as "an abstract apology of Mankind"[14] and "ape-like imitation of [Western] Europe"),[15] as well as for democracy itself (accusing it of "managing to crush all attempts at national renaissance",[16] and later praising Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy on the grounds that, according to Eliade, "[in Italy,] he who thinks for himself is promoted to the highest office in the shortest of times").[17] He approved of an ethnic nationalist state centered on the Romanian Orthodox Church (in 1927, despite his still-vivid interest in Theosophy, he recommended young intellectuals "the return to the Church"), which he opposed to, among others, the secular nationalism of Constantin Rădulescu-Motru;referring to this particular ideal as "Romanianism", Eliade was, in 1934, still viewing it as "neither fascism, nor chauvinism".A major dissatifaction with the state focused on the unemployment of intellectuals, whose careers in state-financed institutions had been rendered uncertain by the Great Depression.

By 1937, he gave his intellectual support to the Iron Guard, in which he saw "a Christian revolution aimed at creating a new Romania", and a group able "to reconcile Romania with God". His articles of the time, published in Iron Guard papers such as Sfarmă Piatră and Buna Vestire, contain ample praises of the movement's leaders (Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Ion Moţa, Vasile Marin, and Gheorghe Cantacuzino-Grănicerul). He eventually enrolled in the Totul pentru Ţară ("Everything for the Fatherland" Party), the political expression of the Iron Guard, and contributed to its 1937 electoral campaign in Prahova County — as indicated by his inclusion on a list of party members with county-level responsibilities (published in Buna Vestire).


Internment and diplomatic service
The stance taken by Eliade resulted in his arrest on July 14, 1938 after a crackdown on the Iron Guard authorized by King Carol II. At the time of his arrest, he had just interrupted a column on Provincia şi legionarismul ("The Province and the Iron Guard's ideology") in Vremea, having been singled out by Prime Minister Armand Călinescu as an author of Iron Guard propaganda.

Eliade was kept for three weeks in a cell at the Siguranţa Statului Headquarters, in an attempt to have him sign a "declaration of dissociation" with the Iron Guard, but he refused to do so. In the first week of August he was transferred to a makeshift camp at Miercurea-Ciuc. When Eliade began coughing blood in October 1938, he was taken to a clinic in Moroeni Eliade was simply released on November 12 and, with the help of Alexandru Rosetti, became the cultural attaché to the United Kingdom, a posting cut short when Romanian-British foreign relations were broken.

After leaving London he retained the same position in Portugal, where he was kept on as diplomat by the National Legionary State (the Iron Guard government) and, ultimately, by Ion Antonescu's regime. In 1942, Eliade authored a volume in praise of the Estado Novo, established in Portugal by António de Oliveira Salazar, alleging that "The Salazarian state, a Christian and totalitarian one, is first and foremost based on love". On July 7 of the same year, he was received by Salazar himself, who asked assigned Eliade the task of warning Antonescu to withdraw the Romanian Army from the Eastern Front ("[In his place], I would not be grinding it in Russia"). Eliade also claimed that such contacts with the leader of a neutral country had made him the target for Gestapo surveillance, but that he had managed to communicate Salazar's advice to Mihai Antonescu, Romania's Foreign Minister.


Exile
At signs that the Romanian communist regime was about to take hold, Eliade opted not to return to the country. He lived in France, where, recommended by Georges Dumézil, he taught at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris; it was estimated that, at the time, it was not uncommon for him to work 15 hours a day.
In 1957, he moved to the United States. He was invited by Joachim Wach to give a series of lectures at Wach's home institution, the University of Chicago, and settled in Chicago. The two scholars are generally admitted to be the founders of the "Chicago school" that basically defined the study of religions for the second half of the 20th century.Upon Wach's untimely death before the lectures were delivered, Eliade was appointed as his replacement, becoming the Sewell Avery Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions. He also worked as editor-in-chief of Macmillan Publishers' Encyclopedia of Religion, collaborated with Carl Jung and the Eranos circle, and wrote for the Antaios magazine (edited by Ernst Jünger).

Initially attacked with virulence by the Romanian Communist Party press, chiefly by România Liberă (which described him as "the Iron Guard's ideologue, enemy of the working class, apologist of Salzar's dictatorship"), he was slowly rehabilitated beginning in the early 1960s (under the rule of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej). In the 1970s, Eliade was approached by the Nicolae Ceauşescu regime in several ways, in order to have him return. The move was prompted by the officially-sanctioned nationalism and Romania's claim to independence from the Eastern Bloc, as both phenomena came to see Eliade's prestige as an asset. An unprecedented event occurred with the interview that was granted by Mircea Eliade to poet Adrian Păunescu, during the latter's 1970 visit to Chicago; Eliade complimented both Păunescu's activism and his support for official tenets, expressing a belief that

"the youth of Eastern Europe is clearly superior to that of Western Europe. [...] I am convinced that, within ten years, the young revolutionary generation shan't be behaving as does today the noisy minority of Western contesters. [...] Eastern youth have seen the abolition of traditional institutions, have accepted it [...] and are not yet content with the structures enforced, but rather seek to improve them".
Păunescu's visit to Chicago was followed by those of the nationalist official poet Eugen Barbu and by Eliade's friend Constantin Noica. At the time, Eliade contemplated returning to Romania, but was eventually persuaded by fellow Romanian intellectuals in exile (including Radio Free Europe's Virgil Ierunca and Monica Lovinescu) to reject Communist proposals.

In 1990, after the Romanian Revolution, Eliade was elected post-mortem to the Romanian Academy.


The scholar
In his work on the history of religion, Eliade is most highly regarded for his writings on Shamanism, Yoga and what he called the eternal return—the implicit belief, supposedly present in religious thought in general, that religious behavior is not only an imitation of, but also a participation in, sacred events.

Eliade's thinking was in part influenced by Rudolf Otto, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Nae Ionescu and the writings of the Traditionalist School (René Guénon and Julius Evola).For instance, Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane partially builds on Otto's The Idea of the Holy to show how religion emerges from the experience of the sacred, and myths of time and nature.

He has had a decisive influence on many scholars, for instance Ioan Petru Culianu. In Romania, Eliade's legacy in the field of the history of religions is mirrored by the journal Archaeus (founded 1997). 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, Eliade's colleague from 1978 until his dead.

The General nature of religion
Eliade is noted for his attempt to find broad, cross-cultural parallels and unities in religion, particularly in myths. Wendy Doniger notes that "Eliade argued boldly for universals where he might more safely have argued for widely prevalent patterns".His Treatise on the History of Religions was praised by French philologist Georges Dumézil for its coherence and ability to synthesize diverse and distinct mythologies.


Sacred and profane
Eliade argues that religious thought in general rests on a sharp distinction between the Sacred and the profane;whether it takes the form of God, gods, or mythical Ancestors, the Sacred contains all "reality", or value, and other things acquire "reality" only to the extent that they participate in the Sacred.

In Eliade's opinion, hierophanies (the manifestations of the Sacred) give structure and orientation to the world as perceived by the religious mind, establishing a sacred order within the world. Thus, the "profane" space of nonreligious experience can only be divided up geometrically: it has no "qualitative differentiation and, hence, no orientation [is] given by virtue of its inherent structure". In other words, profane space gives man no pattern for his behavior. In contrast to profane space, the site of a hierophany has a sacred structure to which religious man conforms himself. A hierophany amounts to a "revelation of an absolute reality, opposed to the nonreality of the vast surrounding expanse".As an example of "sacred space" demanding a certain response from man, Eliade gives the story of Moses halting before Yahweh's manifestation in Exodus 3:5 and taking off his shoes.


Origin myths and sacred time
Eliade notes that, in traditional societies, myth represents the absolute truth about primordial time.According to the myths, this was the time when the Sacred first appeared, establishing the world's structure — myths claim to describe the primordial events that made society and the natural world be that which they are. Eliade argues that all myths are, in that sense, origin myths: "myth, then, is always an account of a 'creation'".

Many traditional societies believe that the power of a thing lies in its origin. If origin is equivalent to power, then "it is the first manifestation of a thing that is significant and valid"(a thing's reality and value therefore lies only in its first appearance).

According to Eliade's theory, only the Sacred has value, only a thing's first appearance has value and, therefore, only the Sacred's first appearance has value. Myth describes the Sacred's first appearance, and the mythical age is sacred time,the only time of value: "primitive man was interested only in the beginnings [...] to him it mattered little what had happened to himself, or to others like him, in more or less distant times". Eliade postulated this as the reason for the "nostalgia for origins" that appears in many religions, the desire to return to a primordial Paradise.


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.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 expressed to his friends amounted to "all is over now that «Communism has won»" (this forms part of Ionesco's harsh 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 August 1954, when Horia Sima, who led the Iron Guard during its exile, was rejected by a faction inside the movement, his name was included on a list of persons who supported the latter (although this may have happened without Eliade's consent).During the final years of Eliade's life, his disciple Ioan Petru Culianu exposed and publicly criticized his 1930s pro-Iron Guard activities; relations between the two soured as a result.

Further criticism of his political involvement with anti-Semitism and fascism came from Adriana Berger, Leon Volovici, Daniel Dubuisson, Florin Ţurcanu and others, who have attempted to trace Eliade's anti-Semitism throughout his work and through his associations with contemporary anti-Semites, 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 anti-Semitism and anti-Masonry in 1930s Romania.

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.



[edit] Eliade as fictional character
In the 1988 film The Bengali Night, the European man based on Eliade is played by British actor Hugh Grant; Supriya Pathak is Gayatri, a character based on Maitreyi Devi (who had refused to be mentioned by name).[118] The film, considered "pornographic" by Hindu activists, was only shown once in India.

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 indicated by several critics as Eliade. The latter's portrayal 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).[122] She also mentioned that, during a 1979 interview, Bellow had expressed admiration for Eliade.


Critical works about Mircea Eliade
Allen, Douglas. 2002. Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade. London: Routledge.
Carrasco, David and Law, Jane Marie (eds.). 1985. Waiting for the Dawn. Boulder: Westview Press.
Culianu, Ioan Petru. 1978. Mircea Eliade. Assisi: Citadela Editrice
Dadosky, John D. 2004. The Structure of Religious Knowing: Encountering the Sacred in Eliade and Lonergan. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Dudley, Guilford. 1977. Religion on Trial: Mircea Eliade & His Critics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Ellwood, Robert S. 1999. The Politics of Myth: A Study of C. G. Jung, Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell. Albany: State University of New York Press.
McCutcheon, Russell T. 1997. Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia. New York: Oxford University Press.
Olson, Carl. 1992. The Theology and Philosophy of Eliade: A Search for the Centre. New York: St Martins Press.
Pals, Daniel L. 1996. Seven Theories of Religion. USA: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-508725-9
Posada, Mihai. 2006. Opera publicistică a lui Mircea Eliade. Bucharest: Editura Criterion. ISBN 978-973-8982-14-7
Rennie, Bryan S. 1996. Reconstructing Eliade: Making Sense of Religion. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Rennie, Bryan S. (ed.). 2001. Changing Religious Worlds: The Meaning and End of Mircea Eliade. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Simion, Eugen. 2001. Mircea Eliade: A Spirit of Amplitude. Boulder: East European Monographs.
Strenski, Ivan. 1987. Four Theories of Myth in Twentieth-Century History: Cassirer, Eliade, Levi Strauss and Malinowski. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
Tolcea, Marcel. 2002. Eliade, ezotericul. Timişoara: Editura Mirton.
Ţurcanu, Florin. 2003. Mircea Eliade. Le prisonnier de l'histoire. Paris: Editions La Découverte.
Wasserstrom, Steven M. 1999. Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

mircea Eliade is one of my favorite writers.Here are some site about him...

http://www.westminster.edu/staff/brennie/eliade/mebio.htm
www.wikipedia.com
www.friesian.com/eliade.htm
www.angelfire.com/electronic/bodhidharma/mircea.html
good luck!:)