Download - Mircea Eliade and Master Manole
LT208: Approaches To Myth
Tutor: Tony Wood
Student: Stefania Suciu
Wordcount: 2760
UP:16/01/2013-09:42:42 WM:16/01/2013-09:42:45 M:LT208-5-FY A:12a1 R:1103755 C:7B57C9E358CCFB00B197C9AF203FF5D76813F7DF
Mircea Eliade and The Legend of Master Manole
Transcendendence of History and Space
There is a special connection between Mircea Eliade and The Legend
of Master Manole; much like his theory of the eternal return, this
connection is based in history but transcends it. By this is meant that, his
interest in the ballad may well have originated in his being Romanian, or
having particular political views at a certain point in time as shall be seen
later on; but it has later on contributed to the development of the concept
of the eternal return itself, concept used and explored throughout this
essay as a means of understanding the content of this construction myth
through Mircea Eliade’s theories and special connection.
When defining hierophany, Mircea Eliade states that the mundane
both hides and reveals the sacred at the same time. This duality can be
traced not only in his religious history works, but throughout the writer’s
own life as well, as Bryan Rennie pointed out: ‘One factor that has
occasioned suspicions about Eliade is this mythologization or
fictionalization of his autobiography, the dividing line between his
biography and his fiction is not always easy to draw’ 1. This
mythologisation of his own biography is in more ways than one connected
1 Bryan Rennie, Mircea Eliade : a critical reader, London : Equinox Pub., 2006, p.7
UP:16/01/2013-09:42:42 WM:16/01/2013-09:42:45 M:LT208-5-FY A:12a1 R:1103755 C:7B57C9E358CCFB00B197C9AF203FF5D76813F7DF
to the Legend this essay is about to analyse; Mircea Eliade was, after all,
more than just a historian of religions and this needs be taken into
account when discussing his perspective on any myth, but especially in
this particular case: a Romanian that lived more than half of his life away
from his country, a novelist- as he is most widely known in his native
country- that used literature as a way of exploring the connections
between the spiritual and the secular, as well as politically involved- and
thus historically- with an extreme right movement with a strong anti-
Semitic agenda- therefore religiously biased, as critics have argued.
It is this latter aspect of Mircea Eliade’s biography that links his
work in a peculiar way to the Legend of Master Manole, this well known
ballad being considered representative of the Romanian spirit by the Iron
Guard members, and most often opposed to another locally famous
ballad- Mioritza- because of its portrayal of sacrifice. As Cristiano
Grotanelli pointed out-
In describing the sacrificial ideal of the Iron Guard as a passive, almost
pacifist attitude, and in accusing the murderers of Iorga and Magdearu of betraying that ideal, Eliade appeared to misunderstand the very nature of
that religious and political ideology, consisting of a combination of Orthodox Christian self-sacrifice - modelled upon the redeeming death of
the Saviour and upon the archaic, pre-Christian view of the fruitful death of willing victims - and the warlike behaviour of members of a military
elite.... Thus, sacrifice (of course, the sacrifice of members of the Legion) was inextricably blended with revenge2.
Eliade’s affiliation has long been a source of controversy, raising the
question if he was sent to London to work at the embassy as a result of
being pardoned, or in order to keep him away from the happenings at
home; this has only increased the mythological dimension of his
biography, in any case. Nevertheless, it is during this period, between
1935 and 1938, that he wrote Comentarii la Legenda Mesterului Manole,
although this was only published 6 years later, while he was already in
Portugal and the Legionary movement had been long stifled; according to
22
Cristiano Grottanelli, Fruitful Death: Mircea Eliade and Ernst Jünger on Human Sacrifice, Numen, Vol. 52, No. 1, Religion and Violence (2005), p.124-125
UP:16/01/2013-09:42:42 WM:16/01/2013-09:42:45 M:LT208-5-FY A:12a1 R:1103755 C:7B57C9E358CCFB00B197C9AF203FF5D76813F7DF
Jonathan Smith, it is shortly following the publishing of this volume that
‘Eliade appears to have begun thinking about this book [The Myth of the
Eternal Return] in 1944.’ Yet, Andrei Oisteanu claims that Eliade
‘managed to maintain the equidistance of an atheist’3 in his religious
studies. In this sense he could be compared to Manole himself, in his
capacity of sacrificing, putting aside the personal dimension of his
existence for the sake of his work.
Eliade speaks of a “Cosmic Christianity”, typical of the Eastern
European space, which did not assimilate the ‘historical elements of
Christianity, insisting instead on the liturgical dimension of man’s
existence in the world’4. This mixture of Christian and pre-Christian can
be found in the ballad itself, although its traces having nothing to do with
the extremist ideology mentioned above, but rather in a way more
representative of Eliade himself, as well as more in accordance to his
opinions on Christianity.. The first and most noticeable manifestation of
the Christian nature of the legend consists in the purpose stated in its
very beginning- the building of a ‘monastery worthy to be remembered’.
Remembrance is the word that sets the content on the limits of
Christianity and preceding religious cults, in accordance with Eliade’s
views-
For the first time, we find affirmed, and increasingly accepted, the idea that historical events have a value in themselves, insofar as they are
determined by the will of God.... Historical facts thus become situations of man in respect to God, and as such they acquire a religious value that
nothing had previously been able to confer to them5.(104)
The monumental building is literally set in stone, a landmark
mentioned in historical documents. Moreover, even its being founded on
3 Andrei Oisteanu, Mircea Eliade, intre ortodoxism si zalmoxism, as published on
http://www.observatorcultural.ro/Mircea-Eliade-intre-ortodoxism-si-zalmoxism*articleID_3963-articles_details.html (seen 14.01. 2013) 4 Mircea Eliade, De la Zalmoxis la Genghis-Han, Bucuresti: Editura Stiintifica si Enciclopedica, 1980, p. 246
5 Mircea Eliade, The myth of the eternal return : cosmos and history / introduction by Jonathan Z. Smith,
Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2005 p.104 Subsequent references within text
UP:16/01/2013-09:42:42 WM:16/01/2013-09:42:45 M:LT208-5-FY A:12a1 R:1103755 C:7B57C9E358CCFB00B197C9AF203FF5D76813F7DF
the remains of a previous building is based on historical facts6. At the
same time, it is through remembrance, as a first step towards imitation
and repetition, that archaic Homo Religiosus sets himself outside of time,
the ruin thus serving the purpose of linking the construction to a mythical
past since it was believed that ‘hierophanies recur in a place where the
sacred has once appeared.... These rituals of construction and foundation
ensure that the site will perpetuate the presence of a hierophany that first
appeared within the bounds of a similarly structured location and
event.’(p. 90-91) Moreover, as Eliade states, it is a basic characteristic of
the manifestation of the sacred in the profane that it is at its origins an
historical event, while at the same time universal. (43)
Another way in which Mircea Eliade’s take on Christianity can be
traced within the ballad appears in its ending, through the Icarus fall of
the master and the rest of the builders, if we assimilate it as a metaphor
of the idea that “Çhristianity incontestably proves to be the religion of the
‘fallen man’” (pp161, 162) as well as of it translating ‘the periodic
regeneration of the world into a regeneration of the human individual’
(p.129-130). These two apparently opposing ideas are reconciled in the
Romanian poem’s ending, firstly because, as examples of ‘the fallen man’,
the builders deny the contribution of the divine, the importance of ritual
and sacrifice when stating that they could build a second such monastery;
secondly, through Manole’s metamorphosis his own being becomes a
manifestation of the sacred. In addition to this, his death becomes ‘ritual
death, the only death that is creative’7 through its breach of secular
geography, aspect celebrated as well as signified by the apparition of the
well.
In his disapproval of the historicist perspective, Mircea Eliade does
not focus on the possible place of origin of the legend, but notes that it is
only in Eastern Europe that it has attained a literary form, following ‘the 6 Alexandru D. Xenopol, Istoria românilor din Dacia Traiană, București: Editura Elf, 2006
7 MIRCEA ELIADE, Comentarii la Legenda Meşterului Manole, Bucuresti: Editura Humanitas, 2004, p.7
Subsequent references within text
UP:16/01/2013-09:42:42 WM:16/01/2013-09:42:45 M:LT208-5-FY A:12a1 R:1103755 C:7B57C9E358CCFB00B197C9AF203FF5D76813F7DF
sequence: construction ritual- legend of the sacrificial victims- ballad. On
the other hand, the construction ritual is itself a consequence of a
cosmogony which states that nothing ‘soulless’ can last. The sequence
therefore stretches from cosmogony to folk literary product.’ (p.21) In his
argumentation of folklorist Dumitru Caracostea’s claim that the legend
had fulfilled its ‘esthetic destiny’, Eliade gives a few examples of other
ritual building legends, such as the bridge from Arta, or the city of Deva,
for example; he then focuses on the way the victims are chosen, treated
and how they react to their fate, noting that it is only in the Romanian
form of the myth that the wife accepts what is happening with
resignation, as well as the fact that, while in most other versions, the
myth starts with the collapse of the walls, in this version, the search for a
building space is mentioned, as well as a constant focus being on Manole
unlike in other texts where it is shifting. This is relevant to the literary
critic just as much as to the religious scholar because of its circular form.
In a sense, the legend describes each stage in the process of creation and
destruction; both cosmos and chaos are present in any cosmogony, the
transformation of the latter into the first being the process described. The
text not only starts in the vicinity of a river, in the chaos of a forest, but
also ends symmetrically with Manole himself becoming a source of water
and instead of the forrest containing the remains of a church, it is now the
monastery that possesses, in a sense, the remains of the couple. Yet, in
this case, unlike the river in the beginning, the water has a divine,
miraculous source, transforming the spontaneous and chaotic into
orderly, simultaneously historic and transcending history; just as in the
case of the monastery, creation replaced the chaos of the forest. Eliade
considers that ‘death in some sort restores to him the wife he had just
sacrificed’8, but this restoration goes beyond the initial, historical
marriage situation, could be argued; it is through death that the couple
attain androgyny once again, a state of divinity that can only fleetingly be
8 Mircea Eliade, Zalmoxis, the vanishing God : comparative studies in the religions and folklore of Dacia and
Eastern Europe , Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1972, p.177
UP:16/01/2013-09:42:42 WM:16/01/2013-09:42:45 M:LT208-5-FY A:12a1 R:1103755 C:7B57C9E358CCFB00B197C9AF203FF5D76813F7DF
realised during lifetime through love, “for in love each sex attains the
‘characteristics’ of the opposite sex”.9 Just as Eliade himself notes, ‘this
myth of divine androgyny- which reveals the paradox of divine existence
more clearly than any of the other formulae for the coincidentia
oppositorum’(p.165)- this aspect of the legend illustrates another concept
introduced by the scholar, ‘the simultaneous occurrence of apparently
opposing elements to form a coherent and empowered whole’, as
according to Bryan Rennie (p.162).
An important variation to the usual content of construction myths is
in this case the child. Most women that are built up ask for a small crack
to be left, through which they could still breastfeed their newborn even
after death. In the case of Ana alone, she is pregnant and the future child
obviously gets built up alongside its mother. It could be argued, in
accordance with the above concept of androgyny as example of
coincidentia oppositorum, that the child represents exactly this state of
androgyny contained in creation. The ‘soul of the building’ is not only
feminine or masculine, but neutral, as of the still developing child; its
birth becomes the realisation of the monastery, the Romanian ballad
portraying a rare case in which a ritual death is creative in a very
traditional sense, that of a birth. In the child is made visible the hermetic
concept of ‘as above so below’ contained within Eliade’s religious
conception (Smith, p. XIV)
In connection to this cosmic birth, God’s compliance to Manole’s
prayers and the natural phenomenona could also be compared to the
puberty initiation rituals practiced in numerous cultures, followin which
the girl becomes a woman, i.e. is considered prepared to bare children10.
This initiation of the wife would be necessary in order because, according
to the historian of religions, ‘all the negative valuations of defilement
result from this ambivalence of hierophanies and kratophanies. It is 9 Mircea Eliade, Polarity and the Coincidentia Oppositorum, ed. Bryan Rennie, Mircea Eliade : a critical reader,
p.167 Subsequent Subsequent page references in text. 10
Mircea Eliade, Imagini şi simboluri, Bucureşti, Editura Humanitas, 1994, pp. 136-138
UP:16/01/2013-09:42:42 WM:16/01/2013-09:42:45 M:LT208-5-FY A:12a1 R:1103755 C:7B57C9E358CCFB00B197C9AF203FF5D76813F7DF
dangerous to come near any defiled or consecrated object in a profane
state- without, that is, proper ritual preparation’. (Myth of the Eternal
Return, p.48) In other words, it is this divine intervention that draws the
fine line between murder and ritual sacrifice- if Ana were deemed
unsuitable, she would have been successfully deterred, or, better said,
she would have failed the initiatory trials.
Another notable element of the myth is that master Manole must
climb up a ladder before building up his wife, an interesting detail since it
can be paralleled with the ladder being associated with shamans and their
attainment of divine knowledge found in the works of the historian of
religions. Through this, the constructor assumes his role of creator. 11 It is
also the premonitory dream that leads one to draw comparison with
shamanic practices, but of course, it need not be a shamanic initiation
involved in this particular case, especially since Eliade insists that it is
improbable that there are any traces of shamanism among Romanian
locals (Eliade, Zalmoxis, p.203); on the other hand, he mentions a form
of initiation practiced among masons and builders in Eastern Europe,
Aromanian builders most probably being responsible of the spread of the
legend (Eliade, Comentarii, p.27). The initiation rituals are not known, yet
the secrets of the guild were transmitted from father to son and only
members knew them. Such rituals were necessary because of the belief of
in the imitation, the return to ilo tempore- the original, mythical time-
through any form of repetitive practice- work, food preparation, dances-
to repeat the initial, cosmogonist act of the deity (Eliade, Zalmoxis,
p.185).
This is particularly relevant since ‘the symbolism of the church-
monastery was still perceived and culturally valorized by eastern
European Chritendom, the heir of Byzantum.... until the most recent
times the people of the Balkano-Danubian area were conscious that a 11
Mircea Eliade, Shamanism : archaic techniques of ecstasy, Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 2004, pp. 259- 272
UP:16/01/2013-09:42:42 WM:16/01/2013-09:42:45 M:LT208-5-FY A:12a1 R:1103755 C:7B57C9E358CCFB00B197C9AF203FF5D76813F7DF
church or monastery represented both the Cosmos and the Heavenly
Jerusalem or Paradise’ (Eliade, Zalmoxis, p.179) In other words, the
anonymous authors of this ballad might have been aware of the
monastery’s role as a ‘Centre’, to follow Eliade’s terminology. Any spiritual
place or object can signal the Centre through its breach of secular
meaning, of secular space and time, representing ‘the meeting point of
the three cosmic regions: heaven, earth, and hell.’ (Eliade, The Myth of
the Eternal Return, p.15) If the monastery represents Paradise, the
heavens, then both the choice of the place where to build the monastery
and the sacrifice have an additional meaning and importance. Ana’s
human nature comes into play by representing the earthly dimension
mentioned above. In this context, the fact that ‘the dogs rush to it,
hawling dismally’ (Eliade, Zalmoxis, p.166) comes to suggest that ruins
used to be chosen as a starting place for monasteries because of their
supposed connection to the underworld. Moreover, as he later points in
The Myth of the Eternal Return, ‘a thing becomes sacred in so far as it
embodies (that is, reveals) something other than itself... what matters is
that a hierophany implies a choice, a clear-cut separation of the thing
which manifests the sacred from everything else around it’ (Eliade, Myth
of the Eternal Return, p.15) The ruins were therefore fit to become the
foundation of a sacred construction because they already possessed, or
rather were attributed, a sacred, albeit negative, dimension long before
the construction started; in addition to this, the monastery literally
embodies something other than itself, in the persons of Ana and her child,
as well as figuratively representing the heavens.
The Legend of Master Manole and Mircea Eliade’s connection to it
have created a special situation in which, by applying the theoretical
concepts of the historian to the ballad, one actually ends up discovering
as much about the critic and his views, as about the folk text itself; just
as in the case of the legend, the constructor of meanings ends up
assimilated into his work.
UP:16/01/2013-09:42:42 WM:16/01/2013-09:42:45 M:LT208-5-FY A:12a1 R:1103755 C:7B57C9E358CCFB00B197C9AF203FF5D76813F7DF
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Eliade, Mircea, Comentarii la Legenda Meşterului Manole, Bucuresti:
Editura Humanitas, 2004
Eliade, Mircea, Imagini şi simboluri, Bucureşti, Editura Humanitas, 1994
Eliade, Mircea, Shamanism : archaic techniques of ecstasy, Princeton, N.J.
: Princeton University Press, 2004
Eliade, Mircea, The myth of the eternal return : cosmos and history /
introduction by Jonathan Z. Smith, Princeton, NJ : Princeton University
Press, 2005
Eliade, Mircea, Zalmoxis, the vanishing God : comparative studies in the
religions and folklore of Dacia and Eastern Europe , Chicago : University
of Chicago Press, 1972
Rennie Bryan, Mircea Eliade : a critical reader, London : Equinox Pub.,
2006
Xenopol, Alexandru D., Istoria românilor din Dacia Traiană, Bucureș ti:
Editura Elf, 2006
Article:
Grottanelli, Cristiano, Fruitful Death: Mircea Eliade and Ernst Jünger on
Human Sacrifice, Numen, Vol. 52, No. 1, Religion and Violence (2005)
UP:16/01/2013-09:42:42 WM:16/01/2013-09:42:45 M:LT208-5-FY A:12a1 R:1103755 C:7B57C9E358CCFB00B197C9AF203FF5D76813F7DF
Web:
Oisteanu, Mircea, Mircea Eliade, intre ortodoxism si zalmoxism,
http://www.observatorcultural.ro/Mircea-Eliade-intre-ortodoxism-si-
zalmoxism*articleID_3963-articles_details.html
UP:16/01/2013-09:42:42 WM:16/01/2013-09:42:45 M:LT208-5-FY A:12a1 R:1103755 C:7B57C9E358CCFB00B197C9AF203FF5D76813F7DF