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

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Autobiography: Volume 1

1907-1937, Journey East, Journey West

The University of Chicago Press

Earliest Recollections

I WAS born in Bucharest on March 9, 1907. My brother Nicolaie ("Nicu") had been born the year before, and my sister Cornelia ("Corina") came four years later. Father was a Moldavian from Tecuci. Born Ieremia, he had changed his name to Eliade. His French-Romanian dictionary, which I carried throughout lycée, was signed "Gheorghe Ieremia." He was the eldest of four children. The second son, Costica, was—like my father—an army officer; but he had attended military school and had become a staff officer and later division-general, while my father, owing perhaps to less intelligence—or more—never rose above the rank of captain. The youngest of the brothers, Pavel, after some adventures the family never discussed, became an employee of the railroad. The last time we heard from him, he was a station master. I hardly ever saw him. He was dark, like Father, but he had not lost his hair and looked more handsome.

Their only sister had died not long after marrying a school teacher. I never knew what she had looked like, where she had lived, or what she had done. Once, around 1919 or 1920, when we were living on Strada Melodiei in Bucharest, a blond and rather awkward young man clad in the green uniform of the School of Forestry showed up at our door. My father introduced him to us as Cezar Cristea, his sister's son. I took an immediate liking to him because he had read some literature, used choice words, and was a poet.

Uncle Costica lived in Bucharest in a large, luxurious apartment on Bulevardul Pache Protopopescu. He had married Hariclia, a wealthy Greek woman from Galati, and they had two sons, Dinu and Gicu. Costica was blond, shorter than my father, but more handsome and—I thought—quite elegant, even coquettish, because he always smelled discreetly of cologne. No matter how deeply I descend into my memory, I always see him looking just the same: a portly army major, twisting and curling his moustaches, speaking with a trill, punctuating his sentences with short laughs.

I never knew for certain why Father and Uncle Costica had changed their names from Ieremia to Eliade, nor why the other brother insisted on remaining Pavel Ieremia. My father said that they did it out of admiration for the writer Eliade-Radulescu. I was quite young when I stayed for the last time with my paternal grandparents at their home in Tecuci, and it never occurred to me to ask them what they thought of the name change.

Of my grandparents and their home I still have very clear memories. Grandfather was tall, gaunt, stiff, and white-haired. Every afternoon he would take me along with him to the coffee shop to watch him play backgammon. I was allowed to eat candy and Turkish delights, and when Grandfather won a game I would get an extra piece of candy. Toward evening we would return home along Strada Mare.

I think that I was four or five years old, and was clinging to my grandfather's hand as we walked down Strada Mare one evening, when I noticed among the trousers and dresses that were passing us a girl about my own age, also holding her grandfather's hand. We gazed deeply into each other's eyes, and after she had passed I turned to look at her again and saw that she too had stopped and turned her head. For several seconds we stared at each other before our grandfathers pulled us on down the street. I didn't know what had happened to me; I felt only that something extraordinary and decisive had occurred. In fact, that very evening I discovered that it was enough for me to visualize the image from Strada Mare in order to feel myself slipping into a state of bliss I had never known, and which I was able to prolong indefinitely. During the months that followed, I would call up that image several times a day at least, especially before falling asleep. I would feel my whole body draw up into a warm shiver, then stiffen; and in the next moment everything around me would disappear. I would remain suspended, as in an unnatural sigh prolonged to infinity. For years the image of the girl on Strada Mare was a kind of secret talisman for me, because it allowed me to take refuge instantly in that fragment of incomparable time. Never have I forgotten the face of that girl: she had the largest eyes I have ever seen, black, with enormous pupils. Her face was pale brown and seemed paler still because of the black curls that fell to her shoulders. She was dressed according to the fashion for children of that time: a blouse of dark blue and a red skirt. Many years later I would still be startled whenever I chanced to see someone on the street wearing those two colors.

That year—1911 or 1912—1 believe I stayed in Tecuci for a whole month. I searched for that girl on every street that I walked with my grandfather, but in vain. I never saw her again.

Grandmother was slight, pale-eyed, and kept her ashen hair pulled back tightly from her temples. I remember her better from the second vacation I spent in Tecuci, which was during the summer of 1919. I was almost twelve then, and had recently rediscovered an appetite for reading. I would sit next to the window almost all the time, engrossed in my books. Whenever Grandmother would pass, she would ask me to read aloud to her. I tried to explain that she could not understand very much by hearing only disconnected fragments, but Grandmother insisted. "That's how Costica reads to me," she said. "He reads from any book he has in front of him, even if it's a physics or chemistry textbook." I had to give in. I remember that I read her pieces from The Travels of a Romanian Man on the Moon (whose author I have long since forgotten) and from llderim by Queen Marie.

That year I saw both my grandparents for the last time. I never returned to Tecuci again. The grandparents from Moldavia (as I used to call them) passed away a few years later. Grandfather was almost ninety when he died.

* * *

I was born in Bucharest, but that same year my father was moved with his garrison to Rîmnicu-Sarat, and my first memories are of that town. We lived in a large house with many rooms, and there were willow trees opposite the windows in front. In the back was a courtyard and a park-like garden that seemed huge to me, overshadowed as it was by prune, peach, and quince trees. My earliest memory (I believe I was less than three) is of being in the garden with my brother and our big white dog, Picu. All three of us are rolling in the grass. Next to us on a stool is Mother, talking with a neighbor. Right after this image, another: I am on the platform at the train station, in the evening, waiting for an aunt from Bucharest. There are many people. I have a crescent roll, which I had not dared to eat because it seemed so enormous. I hold it in my hand, contemplating it, displaying it, congratulating myself for having it. When the train arrives at the station our group begins to move, and I am left alone for a second. Out of nowhere there emerges a little boy of about five or six who snatches away my roll! He watches me for a second with a mischievous smile, then thrusts the roll into his mouth and disappears. I am so startled that I can neither speak nor move. That event revealed to me the terrible power of skill and daring.

Other memories from the age of three or four include the carriage rides to the forest and to the vineyards around the Rîmnic. When the carriage would stop in the middle of the road under the heavily laden trees, I would climb up on the box and gather the silvery-gray prunes. Once, in the forest, creeping on all fours through the grass, I unexpectedly found myself in front of a glittering blue-green lizard. Both of us were dumbfounded, and we just stared at each other. I was not afraid and yet my heart was throbbing. I was overwhelmed by the joy of having encountered, for the first time, a creature of such strange beauty.

But I remember especially a summer afternoon when the whole household was sleeping. I left the room my brother and I shared, creeping so as not to make any noise, and headed toward the drawing room. I hardly knew how it looked, for we were not allowed to go in except on special occasions or when we had guests. Besides, I believe that the rest of the time the door was locked. But this time I found it open and entered, still crawling. The next moment I was transfixed with emotion. It was as if I had entered a fairy-tale palace. The roller blinds and the heavy curtains of green velvet were drawn. The room was pervaded by an eerie iridescent light. It was as though I were suddenly enclosed within a huge grape. I don't know how long I stayed there on the carpet, breathing heavily. When I came to my senses, I crept carefully across the floor, detouring around the furniture, looking greedily at the little tables and shelves on which all kinds of statuettes had been carefully placed along with cowry shells, little crystal vials, and small silver boxes. I gazed into the large Venetian mirrors in whose deep and clear waters I found myself looking very different—more grown-up, more handsome, as if ennobled by that light from another world.

I never told anyone about this discovery. Actually, I think I should not have known what to tell. Had I been able to use adult vocabulary, I might have said that I had discovered a mystery. As was true also of the image of the little girl from Strada Mare, I could later evoke at will that green fairyland. When I did so I would remain motionless, almost not daring to breathe, and I would rediscover that beatitude all over again; I would relive with the same intensity the moment when I had stumbled into that paradise of incomparable light. I practiced for many years this exercise of recapturing the epiphanic moment, and I would always find again the same plenitude. I would slip into it as into a fragment of time devoid of duration—without beginning and without end. During my last years of lycée, when I struggled with prolonged attacks of melancholy, I still succeeded at times in returning to the golden green light of that afternoon in Rîmnicu-Sarat. But even though the beatitude was the same, it was now impossible to bear because it aggravated my sadness too much; by this time I knew the world to which the drawing room belonged—with the green velvet curtain, the carpet on which I had crept on hands and knees, and the matchless light—was a world forever lost.

* * *

In 1912, when I was five, Father was moved with his garrison to Cernavod?. We stayed there two years. In my memory, that time spent there between the Danube and the brick-colored calcinated hills, where wild roses and tiny flowers with pale dry petals grew, is always lighted with sunshine. When we arrived, we were housed for a few months in one of the regimental barracks. This was the only place where there were other trees than willows. I remember prowling among the pines and the maritime fir trees, and I remember the lawns with blue flowers. As I recall it was only there, in the regimental park, that there was really any shade. The rest of Cernavod? was always bathed in sunshine.

Soon we moved into a little house on the hillside. We had a garden with archways and grape arbors. One day the boxes of furniture from Rîmnicu-Sarat began to arrive, and I studied with fascination how my father, with the help of the orderly, opened each one. He would lift up the cover with great care, touch the straw hesitantly, and reach for the mysterious objects enveloped in newspapers. He would remove each one slowly while we all held our breath till we saw if it had arrived intact. One by one there appeared glasses of all colors, plates, cups, teapots. Periodically, my father would frown and swear at length in a whisper, biting his moustache, then place the broken object in a nearby box as if he did not have the heart to throw it away.

That autumn I entered kindergarten. I was proud when I put on the gray uniform, and I went to school alone. I had already learned the alphabet, but still I did not know what its use might be. Neither did it seem very interesting when I could syllabize o-u, ou; bo-u, bou, nor even when I could read "Our country is called Romania," without pronouncing it syllable by syllable. But once I stumbled upon my brother's Primary Reader, and after the first page I could not put it down. I was fascinated, as if having found a new game. For with each line I read I discovered unknown and unexpected things. I learned the names of districts, rivers, and towns, and many, many other things that overwhelmed me with their vastness and mystery. But after a week, when I had finished Nicu's book, I suddenly discovered that things were not as simple as I had expected—for there was no other book available for me to take up next. My father had about one or two hundred books beautifully bound in leather, but they were locked in a case with glass windows. I could read only the titles, and even those I did not always understand. There were some volumes entitled "Novel," and my parents had a long discussion about whether or not they should explain the meaning of this word to me. For many years, my father forbade me to read novels. For him, the novel was somehow an immoral book, since it involved either adultery or adventures in a world one could only talk about in whispers. He did not even allow me to read short stories. The only books he permitted me were those bearing the title or subtitle "tales."

I had been allowed to read Fairy-tales by Ispirescu, and the tales and childhood memories of Creanga, when an episode occurred that cast gloom over my entire childhood. I had entered the first grade, and my father had invited the teacher to consult him about the books I could read. We were all three standing in front of the bookcase. The teacher seemed enthusiastic about the books, and especially about their leather bindings. Leafing through a volume by N. Iorga—I can still see it, it was Pe drumuri departate (On Distant Roads)—he said, pointing at me: "But don't let him read too much or he'll tire his eyes. He doesn't have very good sight. I put him in the front desk, and he still doesn't always see what I'm writing on the blackboard." "I can see if I squint my eyes!" I interrupted. "That means you have weak eyes and you'll be nearsighted," the teacher replied.

This discovery was a real catastrophe. Father decided that I must not strain my eyes reading books other than school texts, so I was no longer allowed to read during my leisure time. The source of my extracurricular readings had dried up anyway: my father closed the glass-windowed bookcase and no longer allowed me to browse through those beautifully bound volumes. Later, I realized that those years that followed were truly wasted. My thirst for reading had to be quenched at random. I read whatever fell to hand: serial novels, mystery stories, the Psalm Book, The Key to Dreams. I read in secret, far back in the garden, in the attic, or in the basement (as I also did in Bucharest, after 1914). With "the passage of time, this random reading began to bore me. One day I discovered that street games could be just as exciting as adventure stories, and I began spending all my free time roaming the streets and vacant lots of Bucharest. The Townhall Tract, the Old Market, the hill of the Metropolitan Cathedral, the Cemetery of Oatu—I knew them all, and I had friends among all the ruffians and urchins from every lower-class neighborhood in town. But this was to happen later, after 1916, when my father had encamped with his regiment in Moldavia.

* * *

I remember the hills around Cernavod?. Father sometimes took us with him on hikes there. We climbed the parched, dusty paths, winding through thistles and wormwood, until we reached the top. From there the Danube could be seen in the distance, lying amidst thickets of willows and bluish haze. My father was not a very articulate person. While he could be very tedious, boring us with his lengthy "moralizing" (as he liked to call it), he became speechless whenever we found ourselves in new and unfamiliar situations outside the context of family relationships. We would sit on a flat rock and Father would remove his cap, wipe his forehead with a handkerchief, and begin to twist his moustaches. When we could tell by his smile that he was content, we would ask him all sorts of questions. Sometimes we asked him things we knew he was expecting from his sons. We knew he considered us intelligent and gifted with all sorts of talents. (He believed, for instance, that we both were musicians—near prodigies with great futures.) He was happy when our questions seemed to verify once more his faith in our intelligence. Nevertheless he answered succinctly, almost monosyllabically, and sometimes rather awkwardly.

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Excerpted from Autobiography: Volume 1 by Mircea Eliade, Mac Linscott Ricketts. Copyright © 1981 Mircea Eliade. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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