Physics and Metaphysics of Sex in Mircea Eliade

Life is made of departuresJurnalul portughez, July 19, 1945In my original presentation in the magical ambience of Lago Maggiore, Ways of Eros meet in Ascona: A Catholic, a Protestant, and an Orthodox Perspective, I introduced the figures of three major twentieth-century scholars who were orators at the Eranos-Tagungen of Ascona and spread their ideas in that legendary atmosphere, subjecting them to a kind of comparative scrutiny.The Italian Ernesto Buonaiuti (1881-1946), the German Ernst Benz (19071978), and the Romanian Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) are in fact representatives of visions (and practices) of love which are an integral part of their Christian identity, forged in a Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox milieu, respectively. The elder of them, Buonaiuti, was one of the main spiritual mentors of the younger, Benz and Eliade. Buonaiuti came to Ascona in the 1930s at the very first meeting (1933, a regular participant until 1940-41, eight times), Eliade and Benz in the 1950s, Eliade in 1950 (a regular participant until 1961, and then, after the death of Olga FrobeKapteyn, only twice, in 1963 and 1967: thirteen times in the whole) and Benz in 1953 (a quasi-regular participant until 1978, sixteen times). On this occasion I will take in consideration only the Romanian, for the good reason that he is the most familiar to me.Mircea Eliade is a Faustian, odysseic and Dionysian character, marked in his destiny by the madness of omnipotence, by peregrination and contradiction. Mircea Eliade was born on March 13/9, 1907 (in the Orthodox calendar: February 28). He died on April 22, 1986, when he had just turned 79 years of age. He spent 3 years in India, almost a year in England, nearly 5 years in Portugal (Lisbon and Cascais), 1 1 years in France (Paris), 30 years in the States (Chicago), and, of course, 33 years in Romania, the years of his formation, during which he constantly made trips to Italy and Germany. While he was relatively stable for 30 years in Chicago, almost every summer he used to move to France, and during the stays there he used to make long vacation transfers first in the Swiss Tessin and then in Italy.He married twice (as alluded by an Italian proverb 4On Friday and Tuesday one does not marry or leave, marriage is like an embarkation for a very uncertain voyage). The first wife, Nina Marec (from 1934 to 1944), and the second, Christinel Cottescu (from 1950 to 1986), were extremely devoted lovers, housewives and secretaries. He had a dozen of significant pre-marital relationships (the most noteworthy, that with Maitreyi, for the oriental context and the book - actually two books - that followed, and that with Sorana, for the orgasmic exploit which I'll elaborate on later). And other various women: not as many as his peer Georges Simenon (1903-1989), that boasted to have used up a number of women superior to that of the pencils he used in his countless writings (more than four hundreds novels as well as thousands of articles) and who in an interview to the vitellone of Romagna Federico Fellini declared:Fellini, je crois que, dans ma vie, j'ai ete plus Casanova que vous! J'ai fait le calcul, il y a un an ou deux. J'ai eu dix mille femmes depuis l'âge de treize ans et demi. Ce n'est pas du tout un vice. Je n'ai aucun vice sexuel, mais j'avais besoin de communiquer!But even the books and articles one writes and then (not always) publishes are departures. A provisory list, probably not perfectly precise, could be as following:a) 15 long and short novelsb) 4 volumes of talesc) 5 diariesd) 2 volumes of memoirse) 4 playsf) 34 volumes with monographs or essays of history of religions. Philosophy and literary criticismg) 6 volumes of edited works: 2 vols. (Bogdan Hacdeu); 1 vol. (Nae Ionescu);4 vols. (From Primitives to Zen: sources of history of religions)h) Editor of the Encyclopedia of Religion (15 vols. …