The Specifics of Mircea Eliade's Fantastic Novels *

Abstract

One of the world's most famous historian of religions, as Mircea Eliade's reputation goes, is maybe less known outside his Romanian cultural origin area as one of the most skilful and talented novelist of fantastic prose. Oriental type of fantastic (typical for Eliade) takes a deeper glance at the meaning of the real life things. In the Romanian writer's fantastic prose, we can find a world that looks simple but is full of mysteries, privileged places and exceptional moments invested with the double capacity to allow access into the superior knowledge and also to many enigmas and key mysteries of life. The novelty and the originality of his literary works consist mostly in the specific of the definition of fantastic. One cannot look into his literary works without proper understanding that the author valued a great deal the implication of fantastic into daily reality, as a hidden sign, not an exterior reality, but part of the same reality that everybody is sharing.