LÉON BLOY AND MIRCEA ELIADE : PROCESS OF EUROPEAN CHRISTIANISMS Cover Image

LEON BLOY ET MIRCEA ELIADE : PROCES DES CHRISTIANISMES EUROPEENS
LÉON BLOY AND MIRCEA ELIADE : PROCESS OF EUROPEAN CHRISTIANISMS

Author(s): JEAN-MICHEL LEMONNIER
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Universitatea »1 Decembrie 1918« Alba Iulia
Keywords: Léon Bloy; Mircea Eliade; Christianity; Europe; modernity; literature; pamphlet

Summary/Abstract: One is French, Roman Catholic Christian, the other Romanian and grew up in the Romanian Orthodox tradition. Although belonging to two European cultural areas but also at two different times Léon Bloy (1846-1917) and Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) meet them beyond time and space on a criticism of Christianity, which is coupled with a critic of modernity. Through a selection of significant excerpts from their respective works, we will show which kind of critics each author addresses to Christianity (Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant faith). We will show how the lampoonist literature of Bloy against what became Catholicism in his day - the culmination of a process initiated since the great Renaissance of the fifteenth century - meets one each other a few years or decades away the writings of Mircea Eliade about Orthodoxy. Both authors have in common to have led a criticism of Christianity, one in Catholic European cultural area, in the late nineteenth century, in the particular context of secularism forced march of the French society, the other by focusing on forms of popular religiosity in central and eastern Europe. If the work of Eliade, both literary and scientific, unlike that of Bloy is not centered on the "Christian question", it remains that by forging, in particular, the notion of cosmic Christianity, the Romanian produces a studious examination of the evolution of Christianity which brings him to criticize his moral and historical aspects. Moreover, the critical glance at Christianity of these two authors took so particular forms, that a superficial reading of their works could pass them off as anti-Christians. Accused of blasphemy, even "Luciferianism", Léon Bloy's work is all the more badly perceived as his writing style shocked the literary conventions at that time. On the other hand, Mircea Eliade, apologist of myth and cosmic religions has seemed reduce Christianity to a religion of fallen man. We must know that Eliade, as Leon Bloy, has granted fundamental importance to mysticism and symbolism. Despite these similarities, we will see, however, that the nature of the reproaches of the French and the Romanian toward Christianity diverges deeply enough. The first blames the Catholic Church, supposed to represent Christ on earth, accused of having abandoned the poor people and denounces the mediocrity of the believers while the second blames the churches to have desecrated the cosmos under the influence of Jewish monotheism. However, instead of opposing them, we can see that these criticisms are joined in a kind of coincidentia oppositorum reconciling Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

  • Issue Year: 17/2016
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 7-28
  • Page Count: 22
  • Language: French