Isabela Vasiliu-Scraba
NAE
IONESCU AND MIRCEA ELIADE
"Nae
Ionescu was one of Romania's most proeminent minds, the most original Romanian
figure in our contemporary history"
Vasile
Bãncilã
Mircea Eliade dedicates
his doctor's degree work -prepared in India and sustained in the Bucharest
University -to the memory of the maharaj Maindra Chandra Nandy who granted him
the scholarship in India, as well as to professor Nae Ionescu and Surandranath
Dasgupta, the only professors he considered to be his gurus, as he noted in his
Memories.
Dasgupta, a professor
of the University of Calcutta and author of reference books about Patanjali was
a great specialist in classical yoga. "To have the great opportunity to
work with Dasgupta when you are 22" - the Italian indologist, Giuseppe
Tucci had told Mircea Eliade -, "I wished I were, at your age, in the
company of such a great man!" (Mircea Eliade, Memorii, I, Ed. Humanitas,
Bucuresti, 1991, pg. 189).
Mircea Eliade had easily
convinced his mentor, Nae Ionescu, about the necessity to go to India after
graduating Faculty of Letters and Philosophy so much the more as Nae Ionescu
himself considered that "nowhere else could one understand better a philosophy
but where it was moulded" (Ibid., p. 162).
As a student, Mircea
Eliade worked as an editor with "Cuvîntul" ("The Word"). The
three years he spent in India(1928-1931) were not only a period of intensive
studies on the Indian spirituality, but also a period in which young Eliade was
a permanent presence in the Romanian culture with his articles dedicated to the
Indian culture. Mircea Eliade was sending articles from India and Nae Ionescu,
in exchange, sent back his salary, thus allowing the former to buy the books he
needed for his studies. On Eliade's departure to India, professor Nae Ionescu
had promised his protégé to get a scholarship from the Romanian government. And
he got it.
Mircea Eliade sustained
his thesis on yoga, which he had
prepared during his the three years spent in India, in front of a committee
composed of Dimitrie Gusti, Constantin Radulescu-Motru and Petre.P. Negulescu,
all of them rationalistic philosophers. Retrospectively considered, these
biographical details of Mircea Eliade seem almost boring.
The fact that things
were different, that a thesis on yoga
was a great novelty that also generated adverse reactions at the time is
clearly seen today when, after the 1989 revolution, Nae Ionescu's works were
published, after being forbidden for 45 years.
Even at the time he
published his studies about the Indian philosophy in the Romanian papers and
later - after his return from India -, Mircea Eliade's preoccupations aroused
the hostile reaction of the rationalistic philosophers. Young Eliade, who was
working on his doctorate thesis about "the origin of the Indian mysticism" was not attacked directly.
At that time he was too
insignificant to become the target of the university personalities' attacks. Only
his master, famous professor Nae Ionescu(1890-1940), was attacked, as he was
also suspected of "mysticism", not only of the "guilt" of
having protected and encouraged Mircea Eliade, the first propagator - in the
Romanian culture- of the Indian spirituality. I called him "the
first" because, later on, Sergiu Al-George(1922-1981) -the owner of Mircea
Eliade's indology library that was left in Romania after his exile- was to
become another great specialist in the Indian spirituality.
Mircea
Vulcanescu(1904-1952), the philosopher, offers interesting details abuot the
polemics carried on between the university professor backing up the
rationalistic positions and Nae Ionescu. This is what we learn from Mircea
Vulcanescu regarding the attacks against Nae Ionescu: "it is known that a
cultural polemics has been going on in the University since professor
Radulescu-Motru inaugurated his psychology course this year with a direct
attack against the so-called "mystical, Oriental, Asian and
obscurantistic" trends lately manifested in the Romanian culture and "fostered"
by the University itself.
Aware of the attack,
Nae Ionescu responded in his inaugural lecture of the metaphysics course by
defining his attitude. He also emphasized the success in full swing of the
spiritualist orientation among the philosophers of the young generation." (See
Mircea Vulcanescu, "Nae Ionescu's
Philosophical Thought", article published in "Epoca"
newspaper, 30-th January 1931).
It is said that the
inaugural lesson in which Nae Ionescu had responded to the rationalist
philosopher Constantin Radulescu-Motru would have been about "the fashion
in philosophy". In my opinion, this famous inaugural lesson is not
exclusively on "fashion" in philosophy.
As insignificant as the
"fashion" in philosophy is, in my opinion, the presence of the
polemics itself, since beyond what some people thought to be the impersonation
of superficiality, professor Nae Ionescu talked about serious things of great
interest such as, in this case, the way to understand the relation of time and
metaphysics despite the absolute character of each metaphysical solution.
Here are Nae Ionescu's
statements made at the beginning of his second lesson: "Those who were
attended our first disscussion might have thought my lecture was intentionally
polemical. I must confess that it was not. The form might have been polemical,
but, in fact I want to tell what is on my mind...I wanted to mention the fact
that, in principle, there can exist a number of philosophies, and they do
exist. As a matter of fact, this is the fundamental fact on which, generally
speaking, the possibility of a history of philosophy relies." (See Nae
Ionescu, The History of the Metaphysics,
1930-1931, p. 24).
The polemical
appearance had been conferred by the hints made by Nae Ionescu to the attack of
the "reason exclusivists" against him or against the doctorate thesis
on "the origin of the Indian mysticism" which was to be sustained by
Mircea Eliade who had returned from India in December 1931.
Irrespective of its
polemical appearances, the first lecture of the course of history of
metaphysics in 1930-1931 cannot be reduced to the collateral subject of
"the fashion in philosophy", which was itself wrongly understood.
Referring to the
position of the rationalistic philosophers who denied the intellective
intuition in metaphysics, Nae Ionescu had stessed that metaphysics does not
exclusively resort to reason. This was clear to those who had read his courses
of metaphysics.
Things were different
with his "opponents" -as he called the rationalistic philosophers -
who kept on criticizing him either for not having published his doctorate
thesis sustained in Germany (1919), or for not having published books, or for
the fact that in their opinion a "healthy" philosophy is the one
based only on rationalistic positions.
Nae Ionescu points to
the change of fashion in philosophy, starting from the historical reality of
metaphysics and taking as example the impact the Oriental spirituality had on
the European culture even since the beginning of the 20 -th century. In
compliance with this fashion, the Oriental trend in the Romanian culture was
not different from the European culture.
About the Oriental
trend in Romania, "fostered" - in Radulescu-Motru's opinion -, by the
Bucharest University -as if it were a fraud -, Nae Ionescu stated that such a trend would not be
unusual as it was in accordance with the spirit of the time.
In other words, Nae
Ionescu had stated, allusively, of course, that Mircea Eliade, with his thesis
about "the origin of the Indian
mysticism" did nothing but kept abreast of the times he lived what,
after all, did not represent so big a catastrophe that the forum of the
University could feel disturbed and adopt a hostile attitude.
After Mircea Eliade had
sustained his doctorate thesis in 1933, Nae Ionescu took the necessary steps in
order that Mircea Eliade could become his assistant to the Chair of
metaphysics. "Nae Ionescu had struggled to appoint me his assistant",
write Eliade in his Memories (pg.
237).
Years later, when
Mircea Eliade had already become an authority in the field of history of
religions, he will not forget professor Nae Ionescu and will speak and often
write about him (even in Encyclopaedia
Britannica).
In some interviews,
published later in a book entitled "The
Attempt of the Labyrinth", Mircea Eliade remembered that Nae Ionescu -
professor of logics, metaphysics and history of metaphysics -, not only let him
teach the course of history of metaphysics and a seminar of history of logics,
but Nae Ionescu also advised him to start first with teaching the course of
history of religions and then the history of metaphysics.
Speaking freely in
front of his students, as Nae Ionescu used to do, Mircea Eliade notes down in
his diary that, in spite of the
numerous audience to his courses, he lacked Nae Ionescu's genius of building
the lesson like a symphony, without any superfluous things and resuming in the
last five minute all the topics mentioned during the lesson and clearing them
up in the light of the whole (pg. 305).
At the age of 20, when
he was an editor with "Cuvîntul", Mircea Eliade had his spiritual
portrait made by Nae Ionescu -a highly refined spiritual portrait: "For
you, -Nae Ionescu had told his protégé at that time-, existence means, in the
first place, a series of spiritual adventures; I think you are wrong, but it
doesn't matter. The important thing is what you will do, what you will create,
before and after you realize you are wrong." (See Mircea Eliade, Memories. I, Ed. Humanitas, Bucuresti, 1991, pg. 146).
The exiled Mircea
Eliade will consider later that "creation is the answer we can give to the
terror of history" (See Mircea Eliade, The Attempt of the Labyrinth,
Ed. Dacia, 1990, pg. 85).
The existence
transfigured through a long series of
spiritual adventures will be defined by Nae Ionescu in his last course of
metaphysics in 1936-1937 as "the way of the accepted suffering". It
might be one of the two faces of the metaphysics I have got used to call "Ullises' metaphysics" (See,
Isabela Vasiliu-Scraba, Nae Ionescu's
metaphysics, in its sole and in its double form, Ed. Starr Tipp, 2000).
God wanted Nae Ionescu
to pass away when he was not 50 yet. He did not have the opportunity to find
out what happened, later on, with Mircea Eliade. But he did have the intuition
about the success Eliade was to have as a historian of religions and as a
university professor even since the time when he avoided to advise his protégé
to write less literature, as he knew that his disciple would do what his own
destiny would advise him to.
After the publication
of the short novel "Young lady
Christine" (1936), Mircea Eliade was sued. During the trial, Mariana
Sora, a student at that time, came to professor Nae Ionescu "as a Walkiria
in distress" as Mircea Eliade noted in his Memories, to ask him to save his protégé. Nae Ionescu told Mircea
Eliade at the time: "If you have succeeded to arise such devotion in your
students, then I am quite certain about your future" (pg. 356).
The academic year of
1936-1937, when tried to fire Mircea Eliade from University, happened to be the
year of professor Nae Ionescu's last course of metaphysics. It was the period
he needed to expose his own vision of the world, after he had presented in
1928-1929 and in 1929-1930 the metaphysical knowledge, and in 1930-1931 he had
introduced a new perspective over the history of metaphysics.
In the last course of
metaphysics (1936-1937), in a splendid arborescence, there will be contoured
Nae Ionescu's metaphysics in its sole feature -as metaphysics of being - and in
its double form - the so-called Achilles'
metaphysics and Uysses' metaphysics.
Ulysses' myth will
later on fascinate Nae Ionescu's protégé. Mircea Eliade, the famous historian
of religions, now at an age that could offer him a good perspective over the
spiritual adventures he had experienced, will consider Ulysses "the
prototype not only of the modern man, but also of the man tied to his future,
as he is the type of the hunted for traveller. His journey is directed to the
center, to Ithaca, in other words, to his own self". But, continues
Eliade, "as in the labyrinth, in any other journey is a risk of losing
your own self" (Mircea Eliade, "The
Attempt of the Labyrinth", pg. 86).