Autobiography, Volume 1: 1907-1937, Journey East, Journey West

by Mircea Eliade

Book Overview

"Here finally are Eliade's memoirs of the first thirty years of his life in Mac Linscott Rickett's crisp and lucid English translation. They present a fascinating account of the early development of a Renaissance talent, expressed in everything from daily and periodical journalism, realistic and fantastic fiction, and general nonfiction works to distinguished contributions to the history of religions. Autobiography follows an apparently amazingly...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226204073
• ISBN13: 9780226204079
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 347 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Some information about Mircea's first love in India

Mircea's first love in India (Amrita/Amruta, penname "maitrayi devi"--who died on January 4, 1990) had published her own memoir in Bengali (her mothertongue and one of the principal language of India). The title of her book is "Na Hanyate" which means "It does not die". It is a fairly intense memoir showing her impression and the spiritual implication. I am not sure if the book is translated in English or not. I was impressed by her candor and honesty. In 1976, her book received an award from the "sahitya academy" (academy for litrature) in India. I have tried to supply some information that was missing from Mircea'a autobiography. I hope the readers will find this information useful.

About both volumes of the autobiography

Mircea Eliade is a maniac: He read about a book each night. He trained himself to sleep less and less, so that he could learn in the night. That paid well in terms of producing a knowledge which has seldomly been reached by a historian of religion. He especially knew about similar things in very different religions, so that he saw parallels, where nobody thought about it before. He wrote novels as well as religios history books, including the well known "Yoga, Immortality and Freedom".This autobiography covers the most interesting part of his life, but does not make it to the end, which has the effect, that no one knows, what happend, when the woman, he loved in India visited him later in life in Chicago. That's quite a story, because of who the woman was and because of the shaking novel about the affair. The biography covers his Romanian time and the time in India. He writes very openly not hiding unpleasant things. He tried both, to understand indian religions and to live it. The science he did, but trying to live it with Dasgupta and within the Shivananda ashram, both ended in stories with women. With Dasgupta he was to study, but also he wanted to live like a hindu and in the ashram he wanted to practice yoga. Later he became a professor of history of religion at the university of Chicago. It's now some time, since I read this biography and my comments are not propperly weighted, but I can still say, that Eliade was a fascinating person and did good writing and he knew nearly everything. (Just to say: English is a foreign language to me, so please forgive mistakes)