Journal IV, 1979–1985: v. 4 - Hardcover

Eliade

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226204146 ISBN 13: 9780226204147

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1989

Synopsis

Journal IV is the first publication, in a translation from the Romanian manuscript, of the journal that Mircea Eliade kept during the last seven years of his life. In this period, Eliade is ensconced as a famous scholar--his works are being translated into many languages and books about him arrive regularly in the mail. His encounters with scholars of like repute are recorded in the journal; after a party in Paris, Eliade shares a taxi with Claude L vi-Strauss and inadvertently makes off with his raincoat. Running like a fault line through the peak of his success, however, is Eliade's painful awareness of his physical decline--failing vision, arthritic hands, and continual fatigue. Again and again he repeats how little time he has to finish the projects he is working on--his autobiography, the third and fourth volumes of his History of Religious Ideas, and the duties associated with his editorship of the Encyclopedia of Religion. He poignantly recounts the sharpest blow: the disorganization and eventual destruction by fire of his personal library. Within the scope of Journal IV Eliade and his world go to ruin. What does not decline is the vivid and persistent voice of Eliade the writer, an unbreaking voice that--with death only months away--plans a reply to critics, plots out an article, and ruminates on characters to people another novella.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

'This is an extraordinarily vivid and touching book about old age, a totally unstructured, almost surreal portrait of the disintegrating world of a great intellectual, the Indian summer of a great man of letters. The Elide that we encounter in this book is a man who tries in vain to stop the inevitable advance of death's glacier by throwing in its path words, words, words: papers, books, articles, about books, reviews, responses to reviews, encyclopedias about books and on and on and on.'

About the Author:

Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) was the Sewell L. Avery Distinguished Service Professor at the Divinity School and professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He was one of the most influential scholars of religion of the 20th century and one of the world's foremost interpreters of religious symbolism and myth. Eliade was the author of many works of scholarship and fiction, including A History of Religious Ideas and ten novels.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0226204146
• ISBN 13: 9780226204147
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 176