Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Eliade and William W. Quinn

Thanks to LP for drawing my attention to William W. Quinn, Jr., "Mircea Eliade and the Sacred Tradition (A Personal Account)," Nova Religio 3, no. 1 (1999), pp. 147-153.

As mentioned in Against the Modern World, Quinn (who was Eliade's PhD student) remembers Eliade as a Traditionalist. This article gives more details of the relationship, generally confirming what is already written.

One interesting detail: Quinn reports that Eliade "instructed [him] to minimize [his] use of the principal figures and literature of modern theosophy during my tenure as a student." Rather as Eliade himself minimized his public use of Traditionalist litterature? For Quinn, this cautious approach was "more like a sublimation than a repudiation ... and [his] ultimate success at the university ... was the proof of its wisdom."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Eliade was a coward and a traitor. Why did he not confess the Tradition openly? There were 2 Eliades: the real Eliade, a fighter in Codreanu's Iron Guard, and the public Eliade: a soft-spoken, americanize, liberal blabbermouth. I know this from the edition of Evola's letters exchange with his old friend Eliade. Evola always told the truth. He was infinitely more courageous than Eliade.