Content area
Full Text
The difficult encounter in Rome.
Mircea Eliade's post-war relation with Julius Evola - new letters and data -
Liviu BORDAS
New Europe College, Bucharest
Abstract: Our knowledge of the post-war relationship between Eliade (1907-1986) and Evola (1898-1974) was based mainly on fifteen letters of Evola, and on two recollections from Eliade's journal and memoirs. The article presents and discusses new data supplied by eight inedited letters of Evola and four entries from Eliade's unpublished journal. This data is corroborated with Evola's reviews of Eliade's books, with the reciprocal quotations in their works, as well as with various mentions from their correspondence with other persons. The new information helps to draw a clearer picture of their epistolary relation, re-established in September 1949, of their two encounters in Rome (May 1952 and April 1955), as well as of the successive moments of fracture between them (1955 and 1964). It also brings into discussion topics such as yoga, esotericism, racism or fascism, which provide seed for further inquiry.
Keywords: Mircea Eliade, Julius Evola, inedited letters, unpublished journal, visits to Rome, book reviews and translations, yoga, esotericism, fascism, racism.
1. From the five journal entries in which he mentions Julius Evola, Eliade selected in his Fragments d'un journal (Paris, 1973, 1981, 1991) only the last one.1 It dates from July 1974, after he learned about the Italian writer's death, but even this one was not entirely published.2 The longest and probably the most interesting of all, it evokes the story of his relationship with Evola. Eliade recalls the first letter received from him after the war and the visit to his house in Rome, which he thought to have happened in August 1949/ The date of this first visit was already questioned on various grounds. But, the most categorical and final rejection is brought by the first mention of Evola in Eliade' s post-war journal. On 3 October 1949, he wrote: 44J. Evola has written to me. He obtained my address from René Guénon... How on earth can that be?!"4 It is evident from here that he couldn't have met the Italian writer on the summer of 1949.
Eliade' s first visit to Rome after the war took place in the month of July 1949, with a return...