Mircea Eliade

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Mircea Eliade was born in Bucharest, Romania, as the son of Georghe (Ieremia) Eliade, an army officer. He had changed, according to Eliade, his name from Ieremia to Eliade due to his admiration for the writer Eliade-Radulescu. The family moved from Bucharest to Rimnicu-Sarat and later to Cernavoda. "In my memory," Eliade wrote in his autobiography, "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." At school he was interested in biology and chemistry, and he had his own small laboratory. He read much, and increased this time reading books by sleeping only five-six hours. While collecting material in Italy for his study on Renaissance philosophers, he read Surendranath Dasgupta's work A History of Indian Philosophy, which impressed him deeply. After graduating in philosophy at Bucharest in 1928, he studied in India under Dasgupta at the University of Calcutta. Eliade was a talented student, but his relationship with Dasgupta became strained when he fell in love with Dasgupta's daughter Maitreya. During this period he wrote the erotic novel ISABEL SI APELE DIAVOLULUI (1930). His experiences in the Himalayas, at Swami Shivananda's ashram, where he went to meditate, Eliade depicted in the novel MAITREYI (1933), which became a success. Eliade considered his tantric experiments in the Himalayas with the South African Jenny a proof that he had not understoo

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