Eliade and Coppola
Eliade and Coppola

Summary/Abstract: Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) is a historian of religions and a novelist with a legendary multilingual and multicultural formation. He is one of the most distinguished philosophers of the 20th century and a great humanist figure. His theoretical books and literary works are still widely read and discussed worldwide. Youth Without Youth is a slightly autobiographical novella of Eliade, written in 1976 and it’s also a Dr. Faust's story variation. Francis Ford Coppola adapted to cinema this novella in 2007 and it is an exceptional example of the multilingual film genre. The novel and also movie protagonist, Dominic Matei, an elderly professor of Latin and Italian from Piatra Neamț is struck by lightning on Easter night of 1938 in Bucharest before World War II and miraculously regains eternal youth, physically and mentally. Dominic Matei is a polymath and “an always young witness” of the 20th-century world and Romanian History. In this study, the film Youth Without Youth will be analyzed using a descriptive method, focusing especially on Eliade’s humanism, his terminology, and Coppola's postmodern interpretation.

• Details
• Contents