The notion of archetype in Eliade's writings

Religion 38 (2008) 366–374

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The notion of archetype in Eliade’s writingsq Natale Spineto Dipartimento di Storia, Universita di Torino, Via S. Ottavio 20, 10124 Torino, Italy

a b s t r a c t Keywords: Eliade, History of Religions, Archetype, Morphology, Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Goethe, Husserl, Jung, ´nyi, Kere D’Ors

The notion of archetype is of crucial importance in Eliade’s historical-religious perspective, although he never provides a clear definition. The aim of this paper is to discuss the origins of the notion of archetype and clarify its meanings. Starting from the first occurrences of the term ‘archetype’ in 1937, and taking into account the issue of the relations of the Eliadean archetype with those of C.G. Jung, K. Kere´nyi, A.K. Coomaraswamy and E. D’Ors, three meanings of the notion of ‘archetype’ can be identified in his works, where it is used systematically since 1942. The first of these three meanings is the ‘descriptive’ meaning (the archetype as the expression of an ‘archaic ontology’, possessing a ‘Platonic structure’); the second is the ‘existential’ meaning (the archetype as a consequence of boundary situations that a human being discovers at the moment of reaching an awareness of his or her own position in the universe); the third is the ‘morphological’ meaning (the archetype as a structural and structuring element of the religious phenomenon). In order to understand the third concept, it is necessary to address the problem of the relation between Eliade’s concept, J.W. Goethe’s morphology and E. Husserl’s philosophical phenomenology. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The archetype in Eliade’s early writings  (Eliade, 1937, p. 91). Eliade states that, The term ‘archetype’ appears for the first time in Cosmologie s¸ i alchimie babiloniana in a magic-dominated universe, where heavens and earth are homologized, everything ‘partakes’ of an archetype. The archetype is considered a model, possessing both the qualities of being exemplary and sacred. Such characteristics are made evident in the two components of the word’s composition. In fact, if typos refers to the stampdthat is, what printsdand at the same time it refers to the resulting imprint, arche´ stands for a primeval, original nature, both in the chronological and axiological senses (Moon, 1987, p. 379). The archetype is therefore the original and sacred model to whichdaccording to the belief of ‘archaic’ civilizationsdall things in the world conform. The fact that the term is only used oncedand that Eliade does not even bother to explain its usagedsuggests that the scholar did not give the word any special value or particular significance in his works. It probably derives from his philosophical readings. Eliade uses the word ‘archetype’ twice in his essay Insula lui Euthanasius (Eliade, 1939; see Ricketts, 1988, p. 1148). Again rii, a collection of articles written in the years 1939–1940 and published in 1942. In an the word is used twice in Mitul reintegra essay about Balzac’s romantic novel Se´raphıˆta, Eliade claims that the French writer revisits the topic of ‘the Androgyne considered as a pattern of the perfect man, the ‘‘primordial archetype’’’ (Eliade, 1989, p. 59). The second occurrence of the term is found in the next chapter’s title, ‘The androgynous archetype’ (Eliade, 1989, p. 67); in both cases, ‘archetype’ stands for ‘model’. In another part of the same essay, Eliade addresses the question of the origin of the ‘primordial ideas’. The idea of the polarity and the ambivalence of the divine, he writes, is primeval and universal. But historical research cannot certify qualities

q This article is translated from the Italian by H. Olivera. It is an updated and revised version of a part of Spineto (2006, pp. 167–201), which, in its turn, is the result of the re-elaboration and the fusion of Spineto (1997, 1998). I would like to thank Brian Rennie for his reading and his comments on the article. E-mail address: [email protected] 0048-721X/$ – see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.religion.2008.07.001

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such as universality and primordial nature; they are proven right by the fact that the ‘primordial idea’ responds to a fundamental need of the human being, and appears when humankind becomes aware of its position in the cosmos. This explanation, here associated with ‘primordial ideas’, can be considered an attempt to give reasons for the universal nature of the archetype: inextricably linked to the human condition, it can be regarded as a constant in every experience (Eliade, 1989, p. 52). The fact that the word ‘archetype’ first appeared in Eliade’s writings in 1937 is significant. This year represents a turning point in Eliade’s works; from then on, his writings seem to be richer and more articulated from the conceptual point of view. The issues that will be characteristic of the post-war writings made their appearancedor were developeddat that time; in particular, there is an establishment of the idea that all religious facts are of a symbolic nature, that their study implies a reference to ‘structures’ and that they respond to an existential need. Ricketts links this ‘turning point’ to the reading of Carl Hentze, Ananda Coomaraswamy and Paul Mus (Ricketts, 1988, pp. 800 ff.). Paola Pisi points out that, in Coomaraswamy, Eliade found the term ‘archetype’ in its ‘Platonic’ meaning of role model (Pisi, 1998; see also Ricketts, 1988, p. 853).1 However, until 1942, forms, structures and exemplary models are not systematically identified as archetypes. The situation changes in 1943 with Comentarii la legenda Mes¸ terului Manole. In this book, the concept of archetype seems to find a definite place in Eliade’s technical glossary (Ricketts, 1988, p. 1149): . it is impossible to make a history of women by comparing, at the same level, Madame Bovary with gynaecological exorcisms, etc. But it is not less true that, seen for what they are, all these documents, notwithstanding their disparity and different dating, converge towards the same theory and reveal the same archetype (Eliade, 1990a, p. 17).2 Eliade does not insist on a theoretical definition of archetype, but refers clearly to Plato, pointing out ‘the extent to which the archaic theory of the archetype and the participation bears a resemblance with Plato’s theory of ideas and participation’ (Eliade, 1990a, p. 107). This points to the topic of the ‘Platonic structure of archaic ontology’, which is, even in Eliade’s following works, the key to the interpretation of the religious ideas of ‘traditional’ civilizations. If we take into account Eliade’s previous works, we will see that there is nothing new about the concept of ‘exemplary model’ in the Comentarii; what is really new is the systematic usage of the term ‘archetype’ to refer to it. From where does this ¨ hrung in das Wesen der Mythologie, by Carl Gustav Jung and Ka´roly usage come? Here, Eliade quotes for the first time Einfu Kere´nyi, published in 1942: ‘the archetype of the ‘‘boy’’ is to be found not only in myths and legends but also in alchemy, gnosis and superstitions, and it reappears, as Jung remarks in a recent study, in certain neurotic visions, in certain dreams, etc.’ (Eliade, 1990a, p. 41). So the reading of Jung could have stimulated and encouraged Eliade to use the term ‘archetype’ (Culianu, 1978, p. 58). In the aforementioned excerpt, Eliade seems to deem it possible to integrate the results of Jungian research into his own system, without trying to differentiate it from his own approach. But, then as before, there was no psychological connotation in his concept of archetype. ¨ hrung was not written solely by Jung but also by Kere´nyi, and while the It is also important to remember that the Einfu reported excerpt refers to Jung, Eliade’s following quotation refers to the part written by the Hungarian scholar (Eliade, 1990a, p. 43, n. 13). Besides, we know that Eliade was an attentive reader of Kere´nyi’s works (Spineto, 2006, pp. 239–242). In the ¨ hrung, Kere´nyi does not use Jungian terminology, nor does he use the theories of analytic psychology; but the historicalEinfu religious perspective adopted is still compatible with Jung’s teachings, into which it could be integrated in more ways than one. He writes: ‘Living mythology [.] expands in infinite and yet shapely multiplicity, rather like the plant-world in comparison with Goethe’s ‘‘primal plant’’. We must always keep our eyes on both: the historical Many and the unitive principle that is nearest to the origin’ (Jung and Kere´nyi, 1969, p. 24). The term archetype is absent from these statements, while the concept already is present. In subsequent years, Kere´nyi also came to use the term ‘archetype’ regularly (see Magris, ¨ hrung, an example of how the Jungian 1975, pp. 105–113). In any case, Eliade had already found, in the Kere´nyi of the Einfu theses could be applieddwithout accepting all their implicationsdin an effort to grasp the elements of universality and uniqueness in the religious fact. It is in this period that Eliade finds the notion of archetype also in the works of another scholar whom he had previously met in person: Eugenio d’Ors. In 1959, he writes: ‘As I have said, I use the word ‘‘archetype’’ just as Eugenio d’Ors does, as a synonym for ‘‘exemplary model’’ or ‘‘paradigm’’’ (Eliade, 1959, p. ix). Eliade shared d’Ors’ anti-historicism as well as some features of the concept of knowledge, intended to overcome the contrast between eternal and historical. In particular, d’Ors criticized both rationalism, which, through abstraction, projects knowledge beyond reality, and intuitionism, which denies the distance between the knower and the known. Such distance constitutes a condition for the exercise of the cognitive action. Therefore, the idea is neither abstract nor a perceivable image, it is instead a ‘figure’, and the mental faculty able to grasp it is ‘figurative thinking’, which joins together ‘at the same time, the perceivable element, and within it, the rational element, the pattern, the order’ (Aranguren, 1953, p. 33). ‘The historical fact as such does not happen again, but the essences of the historical do; the ‘‘constants’’ reappear’ (Aranguren, 1953, p. 64); and the outcome is a historical science understood as ‘morphology’ (Aranguren, 1953, p. 66). The Spanish scholar and Eliade shared an interest in the problem of the reconciliation between historical facts and meta-historical constants, as well as the way they found to solve it: the concept of archetype as the meeting point between reality and ideal. The acquaintance between the two scholarsdwho met personally in 1941 and had the opportunity to share their ideasdgrew into mutual admiration. After reading Le mythe de l’e´ternel retour, d’Ors

1 2

Since there is no mention of the term ‘archetype’ in Plato, the adjective ‘Platonic’ is given in quotation marks. Here and in the following all translations of works so far not published in English were translated into English by H. Oliveira.

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enthusiastically praised the way in which Eliade highlighted ‘the Platonic structure of archaic and traditional (‘‘folk’’) ontologies’ (Eliade, 1990b, p. 98 and Eliade, 1988, p. 134, n. 2). The Jungian meaning of archetype It is now possible to attempt a classification of the meanings given to the term ‘archetype’. The term became common in the intellectual lexicon of modern times thanks to Carl Gustav Jung, and it is possible that Eliade had started to use it more frequently after reading the works of the Swiss psychiatrist. But Eliade had already talked about archetypes, when discussing Babylonian alchemy, and he had not made any reference to Jung. Mac Linscott Ricketts claims that, at the beginning, Eliade was not aware of the distance between his conception and that of Jung, but after he had met Jung personally and joined the Eranos circle, he found himself in need of clarifying the differences that separated him from the psychologist (Ricketts, 1988, p. 1153). In an unpublished diary entry of August 21st 1951, Eliade writes: ‘Jung’s archetypes horrify me’ (Ricketts, 2002b, p. 76), and the correspondence between the two scholars shows how different their positions were, and how easily the use of a common terminology could lead to misunderstandings (Eliade, 1999, pp. 341–346). Actually, his dissociation from Jung’s position happened before the establishment of a personal relationship between the two men, which took place in 1950 (Eliade, 1990b, p. 113). Soon after finishing Le mythe de l’e´ternel retourdthe subtitle of which was precisely Arche´types et re´pe´titiondEliade wrote to Raffaele Pettazzoni, on May 19th 1947: ‘I have just finished my little book Archetypes and Repetition (not in the Jungian sense, etc.)’ (Eliade and Pettazzoni, 1994, p. 155). What was clear for Eliadedclear enough to be told to Pettazzoni in a few words in parentheses, as if it was obviousdwas not yet evident for many readers who regarded him as a Jungian. Therefore, an explicit clarification of his differences from Jung became a necessity, and a footnote in the English edition of the book (1959) includes the following warning: ‘I neglected to specify that I was not referring to the archetypes described by Professor C.G. Jung. This was a regrettable error. For to use in an entirely different meaning the term that plays a role of primary importance in Jung’s psychology could lead to confusion’ (Eliade, 1959, p. viii). Eliade also makes reference to Eugenio d’Ors, and explains that he uses the word, in the last analysis, in an Augustinian sense (Eliade, 1959, p. ix). The concept of ‘archetype’, that in d’Ors’ thought is ‘none other than a key concept’, does not have the same meaning in the context of Eliade’s worksda point that the Spanish scholar had taken care to make. Francisco Diez de Velasco, who analyses the issue in great detail, suggests that, in this period, Eliade could have used d’Ors’ name in order to make reference to a well-known scholar, a protagonist of the modern intellectual debate who had just passed away (in 1954), at the height of his career, to show how the term ‘archetype’ could be used without the Jungian echo. Possibly, Eliade ‘used’ d’Ors ‘in order to get rid of Jung: a master sets him free from another’ (Diez de Velasco, 2007, pp. 110–112). In 1978, in an interview conducted by Claude-Henri Rocquet, Eliade came to say that he even regretted the fact of having included the word ‘archetype’ in his book’s subtitle, and explains: ‘I was using the term with reference to Plato and Saint Augustine. I give it the sense of ‘‘exemplary model’’, revealed in myth and reactualized though ritual. I should have said ‘‘paradigms and repetition’’’ (Eliade, 1982, p. 164). The same thing is said in his memoirs, in this case with reference to the term’s ‘original, Neoplatonic sense of paradigm, exemplary model’ (Eliade, 1988, p. 162). The reference to the ‘original sense’ of the archetype, however, is not enough to express the difference between Eliade’s position and that of Jung, since the Swiss psychologist refers explicitly to the same tradition when he reconstructs the history of the usage of the word ‘archetype’: he mentions Philo, who linked the archetype to God’s image present in man, Irenaeus, for whom the archetypes were the models of creation, the Corpus hermeticum, in which God is called ‘archetypical light’, Dionysius the Areopagite, who often used the word, and Augustine, in whose works the term does not appear, while the correspondent concept does. Generally, ‘Archetype’ is an explanatory paraphrase of the Platonic eidos. For our purposes this term is apposite and helpful, because it tells us that so far as the collective unconscious contents are concerned we are dealing with archaic ordI would saydprimordial types, that is, with universal images that have existed since the remotest times (Jung, 1969, pp. 4–5). These were ideas that Eliade could share, but for Jung, the archetype was a conceptual instrument within his metapsychology, and therefore it involved a technical aspect. Eliade makes no comment about this technical meaning: ‘in my book, I nowhere touch upon the problems of deep psychology, nor do I use the concept of the collective unconscious’ (Eliade, 1959, p. ix). In other words, Eliade’s interest in Jung’s personality, works and conceptual apparatus did not imply utter adherence. Ioan Petru Culianu states that three concepts of ‘archetype’ are to be found in Eliade’s writings (Culianu, 1978, pp. 56–57). One of them would be the ‘Jungian’ one (the other two being the ‘phenomenological’ one in the sense of ‘prototype’ and the ‘a-historical pre-formal and performative category’ in terms of the ‘history of religions’). According to the Romanian author: The archetypes have an objective side, inasmuch as they are deduced from different religious and folkloric traditions, and a subjective side, as they are autochthonous, self-contained productions of the transpersonal unconscious. When Eliade talks about archetypes in a psychological sense, he almost invariably refers to their objective form. It could be said, in this case, that the difference between the meanings of ‘archetype’ in Eliade and Jung is negligible (Culianu, 1978, p. 57, n. 17). However, there are doubts about the legitimacy of the distinction between the two ‘aspects’ of the Jungian archetype, that is to say, it is doubtful that Jung’s archetype will still be Jung’s archetype once the side that Culianu calls ‘subjective’ has been bracketed off.

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As the cited documents indicate, there was no such thing as a simple transmission of the concept of archetype from Jung to Eliade. The question of the analogy of meaning that the archetype can acquire in the thought of both authors still remains a problem. In this case though, the problem is transferred from the historical level to the methodological/philosophical one, and has to do with the general relations between the two scholars. In any case, it is possible to point out that the ‘hermeneutics’ put forth by both Jung and Eliade often follow parallel lines, although they do not (and cannot) overlap (see Spineto, 1992). Thus we cannot agree with the claim that Eliade makes use of the Jungian concept of archetype. In the following, I will distinguish three further meanings of the term that occur in Eliade’s works. The archetype as a descriptive concept First, archetype is a descriptive concept. Eliade uses it with the purpose of reconstructing and interpreting a certain historical situation, that of the so-called ‘archaic’ societies. In the Encyclopaedia of Religion, the author of the entry ‘Archetype’ writes in her article: ‘For the member of tribal and traditional cultures, the archetypes provide the models of his institutions and the norms of his various categories of behaviour’ (Moon, 1987, p. 379). In this sense, archetype is a ‘synonym of prototype, original category, primordial act, as a component of the archaic mental universe’ (Scagno, 1993, p. 51). The archetype is at the basis of the ‘archaic ontology’, which features a ‘Platonic structure’. The Comentarii begin in the following way: ‘for the archaic man, a thing or an action possess significance as long as they partake in a prototype, or repeat a primeval act’ (Eliade, 1990a, p. 7). For the archaic man, that is, not for man tout-court, nor for homo religiosus in general, nor for the historian, nor for Eliade himself. Undoubtedly, they all hold particular beliefs and have their own preferences regarding religiosity, but they are not necessarily attached to an ‘archaic’ vision of things. This notion of archetype is also consistent with perspectives other than Eliade’s: the correspondence between Pettazzoni and Eliade shows that this first concept of archetype was relatively in accord with the Italian scholardat that time the main supporter of the ‘historicist’ perspective. ‘Relatively’, because Pettazzoni accepts it only to the extent to which Eliade would clearly relate it to the historical context. In his work L’Onniscienza di Dio (1955), the Italian scholar uses the expression ‘archetypical projection’; the usage of the term ‘archetype’ demonstrates that he did not take exception to Eliade’s studies, although at the same time he intends to draw a definite distinction between his position and that of Eliade. In his Ultimi appunti he will clarify his conception of the archetypes’ ‘historicity’. In his opinion, the archetypes are historical for two reasons: firstly, ‘the ideology of the eternal return, of the cyclical repetition of the archetypes is historically conditioned, inasmuch as it depends on an agricultural world’ (Pettazzoni, 1960, p. 31). Secondly, ‘the archetypes are themselves a construction of man (and therefore they are also culturally conditioned)’ (Pettazzoni, 1960, p. 36). Which human construction? Not the construction of the scholar who studies the history of religions, but that of the human being who lives in a world ruled by agriculture. The existential value of the archetype The archetype is not only the exemplary model that an archaic society ‘reactualizes’ through rites and expresses through myths. It possesses a universal and primeval character, inasmuch as it is linked to human existence. In the conclusion of the Comentarii, Eliade writes: ‘Man could escape from anything, except for the archetypical intuitions, created at the very moment in which he has become aware of his position in the Cosmos’ (Eliade, 1990a, p. 111). This topic, already present in Mitul rii (Eliade, 1989, p. 52), represents a constant element in Eliade’s works: ‘Myths and rites [.] always disclose reintegra a boundary situation of mandnot only an historical situation. A boundary situation is one which man discovers in becoming conscious of his place in the universe’ (Eliade, 1961, p. 34). Here, the archetype is not a descriptive concept, linked to a certain type of civilization, but a component of human existence. A dialogue with the theories of Pettazzoni’s school was also possible in relation to this second notion of archetype, since the ‘existential’ meaning of archetype is also consistent with an historicist point of view, as long as man’s ‘awareness’ of his situation within the cosmos can be considered as ‘the historical moment of becoming men’ (Brelich, 1953–1954, p. 239). Just like Pettazzoni, in the 1950s Angelo Brelich tried to make a contribution to a ‘dialogue [.] between Italian historicism and certain foreign methodological approaches (mostly defined as ‘‘psychologistic’’)’ (Brelich, 1953–1954, p. 237). In reference to those ‘images that [Eliade] considers universal and perennial’ (Brelich, 1953–1954, p. 238), Brelich points out that: Not even the most integral historicism could deny the existence of certain universally human, structural bases, such as language, the use of tools, etc. It could be also conceivable that certain foundations of the imagination could be part of the spiritual wealth conquered at the very ‘moment’ of becoming men (Brelich, 1953–1954, p. 239). This is the sense that can be recognized in the notion of archetype from a historicist perspective. As for certain archetypes, adds Brelich, ‘not even Eliade would deny that [.] they are historically conditioned already, even in another sense, for example, by the actual fact of the existence of agriculture’. This is valid, for instance, for the myths of Kore-Hainuvele (Eliade, 1961, p. 173). Brelich’s article was published in the 1953–1954 issue of Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni. Two years later, ¨ ttlichem. The example of the scholar revisited the problem of the archetypes in his review of Kere´nyi’s book Umgang mit Go Hainuvele’s myth is used on this occasion to show that the archetypes ‘are culturally determined and therefore, rather than acting as natural laws about the human creative activity, they depend on it, they are its historical products’ (Brelich, 1956, p. 24). Again Brelich wonders, ‘could historicism deny the existence [.] of universally human characters as coefficients of history?’ (Brelich, 1956, p. 25). A natural fact becomes human when it provokes a psychological reaction in human beings. ‘It is

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the duty of the psychologist to decide whether the reactions to the fundamental forms of human existence and to the universally human ‘‘qualities’’ are regulated by universal natural laws [.] if so, the Kere´nyian concept of archetype would be entirely justified’ (Brelich, 1956, p. 27). But, even admitting all this, it is only here when history comes into play, as it analyses the ‘cultural’ reactions to the facts of nature. So ‘could historicism deny the ‘‘universally human’’ within these boundaries? Could psychologism take it beyond these borders?’ (Brelich, 1956, p. 28). Brelich even wonders whether ‘the foundations of religiondthat is, all the characteristics that religions have in common and allow us to conceive the abstract concept of ‘‘religion’’dare not to be actually identified within the field of the ‘‘archetypical’’’ (Brelich, 1956, p. 28). My intention is neither to claim that Kere´nyi and Eliade’s perspectives can be assimilated, nor that both scholars used the same concept of ‘archetype’. Brelich, in his turn, was well aware of the methodological differences that separated his two interlocutors. It is still true that, regarding the issue of the archetypes, there is a certain analogy between the positions of the two scholars. An analogy that Brelich identifies and underlines, in an effort to find a common measure, or a ‘common language’ to discuss with the ‘psychologistic’ perspectives. The ‘morphological’ notion of archetype It is possible to identify a third concept of archetype in Eliade’s works: the archetype as a structural and structuring element of the religious fact. It swings between two poles: it seems to have, on one side, a methodological functiondbeing an auxiliary concept that accounts for the similarities among several religious forms; on the other side, it seems to be an effective structure of reality. The implications of such a notion of archetype have been noticed, for example, by Ernesto de Martino, who pointed out that in Eliade’s works ‘every distinction between science and science’s object of study; between religious historiography and religious vision of the world, is lost’ (de Martino, 1951–1952, p. 152). But, if, according to this third meaning, archetype is no longer a useful word to describe the religious reality of ‘archaic’ civilizations and becomes the very structure of the phenomena, as well as the conceptual net with which we apprehend it, the ‘Platonic structure’ of the ‘archaic ontology’ expressed by the archetypes becomes a ‘Platonic’ structure of a tout-court reality. This explains why Eliade’s work has been referred to as ‘Platonic’ by many critics. The employment of the archetypes has been seen as a reference to a metaphysical quality with which all religious phenomena are tinged.3 This interpretation is the result of overlapping the first (descriptive) concept of archetype with the third (rather methodological), while a solution for the problem with Eliade’s Platonism could be, precisely, to make a rigorous distinction between the two concepts, so as to avoid the projection of the ‘Platonic’ nature of one of them onto the other. If understood in this sense, the archetype would not necessarily be based on a metaphysical foundation. But then, the problem remains to justify the notion of archetype on a theoretical level; an answer could be provided with reference to the concept of morphology. The notion of ‘morphology’ is linked to Goethe’s works. Goethe has used it in his writings in order to explain his method of study of the science of nature. Eliade is acquainted with the works of the German thinker, and in three cases he explicitly links Goethe’s position with his own. On a visit to the public gardens at Palermo, on April 5th 1951, Eliade recalls Goethe’s quest for the original plant, the Urpflanze. He says: Seldom in the history of science has it been more difficult to recognize the importance of a method [.] But when the history of the idea of morphology as Goethe understood it shall be written, it will be seen how fecund it has been, not only in the natural sciences but also in the classification, analysis, and interpretation of creations of the spirit (Eliade, 1990b, p. 126). In the following lines, he remembers the importance of Goethian morphology in the work of authors such as Vladimir Propp and Lucian Blaga, and regrets the fact that their works have had a limited circulation. Propp’s Morphology of the Folk Tale became widely known only after it had been translated into English, and yet it had been published without including the epigraphs that, in the original edition, quoted Goethe’s words. Eliade wonders whether the reason for this lies in the difficulty of accessing these books, or in the ‘Zeitgeist of the era between the wars which opposed this method of delineating structures by reducing phenomena to ‘‘archetypes’’’ (Eliade, 1990b, p. 126). Thus, Eliade admires the fecundity of Goethian morphology that he correlates with the works of Blaga and Propp. He does not say that this is his methodology as well, but, in general, he describes it as a quest for structures that implies the reduction of the phenomena into archetypes: an approach which he can recognize in himself. In 1977, Culianu devoted a book to the analysis of Eliade’s works. Before its publication, he sent the draft to Eliade. The former wrote back, saying that he had read with great interest the part regarding the notion of archetype. In the same letter, Eliade points out: ‘I am very pleased that you have underlined the importance of Goethian morphology. I discovered Propp later, but Goethe’s morphologic and alchemistic obsessions were known to me since high school’ (Culianu, 2004, p. 97). The following year he made reference to Goethe once again in the aforementioned interview with Rocquet: I accept structuralism as it is propounded by Dume´zil, by Proppdand by Goethe. As you know, when Goethe was studying the morphology of plants, he came to the conclusion that it was possible to trace all vegetable forms back to

3 To take just two examples, according to Pettazzoni, the archetype has ‘an ontological reality per se’ (Pettazzoni, 1960, p. 38); Michelini Tocci reckons that ‘the concept of archetype oscillates between a metaphysical stage, essentially alien to Jung, and a psychological stage in which Jung’s influence is evident’ (Michelini Tocci, 1989, p. 159).

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what he called ‘the original plant’ [.]. For my own part, in my early days at least, I thought that in order to keep sight of the forest among so many treesdfacts, figures, and ritualsdthe historian of religions would do well to search for the ‘original plant’ in his own field, for the primal image; in other words, for what happens when man confronts the sacred (Eliade, 1982, p. 142). He claims to agree with this form of structuralism that questions the ‘essence of a set of phenomena’, searching for ‘the primordial order that is the basis of their meaning’ (Eliade, 1982, p. 142).4 The scholar says that he has known Goethe from his high school years, and talks about the ‘beginnings’ of his career. Ricketts wonders who could have introduced Eliade to the works of the German poet, but he comes to the conclusion that, most probably, his first contact with Goethe was due to the simple fact that any young man of his timedwho had access to a good educationdhad the chance to read Goethe’s works, especially if, like Eliade, he happened to be an avid reader (Ricketts, 2002a, pp. 285–286). This is likely to be true in the case of Faust, but it seems not to be so obvious in the case of the writings about natural science. Regarding the latter, a plausible explanation would be that, since Rudolf Steiner was the editor of the part of the texts regarding natural science in an edition of Goethe’s complete works, and Eliade had admired Steiner since the 1920s, it is possible that he had came to know these writings through Steiner’s works.5 In any case, ideas such as form and structure had been suggested to the young Eliade in Ionescu’s courses and through the writings of the philosopher Lucian Blaga (Culianu, 1978, p. 114). Blaga was particularly interested in the construction of a ‘philosophy of culture’, making reference to Goethian morphology. From Goethe in particular, he had drawn the concept of the ‘original phenomenon’. In the spring of 1926, when he sat before Ionescu for his Logic exam, Eliade had just finished reading ‘a book by Lucian Blaga, called Fenomenul originar’. In this book he had found a notion of structure that Ionescu shared, and that allowed him to successfully , 2004, p. 122–123). Later on, Eliade referred to the concept of ‘cultural style’ that pass the exam (Eliade, 1981, p. 112; see Danca Blaga had introduced: ‘style reveals essentially a unity of forms, of accents and dominant attitudes [.]. Morphology and the phenomenon of ‘‘style’’ have, to a great extent, harmonious relations,’ but, as it is reduced to the study of forms, morphology is not enough to constitute a thorough analysis of ‘style’ (Blaga, 1995, pp. 19–20). Eliade seems to accept the concept of ‘cultural style’, while he entertains the opposite idea of a common tradition that underlies the different civilizations (Eliade, 2006, p. 26). Thus we know that since his high school days, Eliade had understood the notion of ‘structure’ in terms similar to those of the Goethian morphology. We can now add that, as we have already observed, he had started to use the word ‘archetype’ in ¨ hrung in das Wesen der Mythologie, where Kere´nyi referred to Goethe’s idea of the a systematic fashion only after reading Einfu Urpflanze. Interestingly, Kere´nyi had referred to this idea in order to address a problem that also was essential for Eliade, namely the relation between the historical multiplicity of reality and the unity of its forms and structures. As J.Z. Smith emphasizes, Eliade had also found the idea of the ‘original plant’ in the works of biologists (Smith, 2000, p. 327). At the same time, he feels close to the thought of Eugenio d’Ors (Eliade, 1988, p. 102), who sees history as ‘morphology’. As a matter of fact, ‘morphology’ is the name that Eliade will choose as the one that more adequately fits his position.6 The link between Eliade’s ideas and those of Goethe, as well as the reference to Goethe for an interpretation of the Eliadean methodology, was underlined for the first time by J.Z. Smith, followed by a series of authorsdincluding myself (Ricketts, 2002a, p. 305, n. 70). Smith has developed it the most, and on this basis he has conducted all of his reading of Patterns in Comparative Religion. Ricketts, however, points out that the German philosopher has a limited presence in Eliade’s early production. The Romanian scholar dedicated just one article to Goethe’s work, in which he highlights the contradictory aspects, dwelling in particular on the importance of the notion of ‘analogy’, linked to the idea of the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm as the ‘magic function par excellence’. He often uses the concepts of ‘form’ and ‘universal type’, but he does not mention either the ‘morphology’ or the ‘archetypes’ (Ricketts, 2002a, pp. 287–288). The references to Goethe are rii, all of them in relation to the issue of the union of the opposites, while the term ‘morphology’ is numerous in Mitul reintegra absent and there are no references to Goethe’s scientific writings (Ricketts, 2002a, pp. 289–292). Eliade’s implementation of a morphologic method first became noticeable around 1936, although the word ‘morphology’ was not yet used and the works of the scholar were, in that period, influenced by Coomaraswamy and the traditionalists rather than by Goethe. In the preface to Patterns in Comparative Religion, Eliade writes: ‘A great part of the morphological analyses and methodological conclusions of this book was given as lectures in my courses on history of religions at the University of Bucharest’ (Eliade, 1958, p. xv). But according to Ricketts, this would be a retrospective reconstruction that finds no correspondence in the actual contents of the Eliadean teachings (Ricketts, 2002a, p. 302). An analysis of the allusions to Goethe found in the diaries led Ricketts to claim that Eliade did not feel that he owed anything to Goethe, but that his intention was to show his own methodology as an original discovery, and to identify some analogies between Goethe’s work and his own system of analysis. Besides, the

4 In 1932, Eliade wrote an article about Goethe (Eliade, 1932). In 1971, on the occasion of the publication of an article in which J.Z. Smith wrote: ‘Goethe’s influence [.] clearly underlies Eliade’s use of such terms as morphology and homology’ (Smith, 1971, p. 81, n. 41), Eliade praised this approach (Smith, 2000, p. 322). 5 This hypothesis, which I have put forward in Spineto (1998), has also been formulated by Smith (2000, p. 322). M.L. Ricketts confirms its reliability, recalling Eliade’s reference, in 1926, to two volumes about Goethe written by Steiner, and quoting an entry in Eliade’s diary, in which he states that the works of the anthroposophist, with which he was acquainted since his high school days, had been for him an object of interest throughout college, inasmuch as Steiner was a naturalist and a great admirer of Goethe (Ricketts, 2002a, p. 285). 6 About the concept of ‘morphology’ and its development, see Smith (2000, pp. 319–321); regarding Eliade’s rather belated usage of the notion, see Ricketts (2002a, p. 294).

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concepts of ‘sacred’ and ‘hierophany’, crucial for the elaboration of the notion of ‘archetype’, are alien to the Goethian vocabulary; therefore Eliade ‘was unwilling to concede that his methodology was simply an ‘‘adaptation’’ of Goethe’sdbecause, in his mind, it was his own creation’ (Ricketts, 2002a, p. 311). I agree with Ricketts’ view that Eliade’s perspective goes beyond a mere adaptation of Goethe’s ideas, as well as with his claim that it is not possible to reduce it to a recyclingdunder false pretencesdof the traditionalists’ conceptions, notwithstanding the determinant influence thatdas we have tried to showdthey had exerted on him (Spineto, 2007, pp. 131–147). However, Eliade’s above-mentioned statements and the circumstances of his education demonstrate that the Romanian scholar had always drawn on the Goethian model, and, convinced as he was that his own approach was an original discovery, he was still aware of the analogy between his research method and the German writer’s morphology. Eliade, who never explains his philosophical choices, does not refrain from recognizing, every so often, the similarities between his own procedures and those of other scholars. Now, taking into account these limitations, it is possible to take the argument about the Goethian morphology two steps beyond Smith’s interpretation. During his journey to Italy, Goethe scouted around the vegetation for the ‘original plant’, the Urpflanze. As time went by, he gradually dropped the term, although he kept its methodological function. For Goethe, the original phenomenon was ‘a model or image that synthesizes the ideal and the perceivable [.]. It synthesizes a perceivable series as an ideal, and it enablesdwith reference to the concrete phenomenada grasp of the most elementary phenomenon in relation to its own regular system’ (Zecchi, 1983, p. 17). Stefano Zecchi has pointed out that this method contains analogies with that of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, in particular with the German philosopher’s sixth Logical investigation. Husserl claims that a perceptible experience is not visible per se, and that the connections between experiences have to be ordered so as to allow for a structure, an image. This structure, in its turn, becomes the means to observe the appearance of the perceptible experiences (Zecchi, 1983, pp. 17–18). Eliade was probably aware of Husserl’s ideas. His teacher, Nae Ionescu, had studied in Munich, where several members of the faculty were followers of Husserl (Ricketts, 1988, p. 94); Ionescu himself considered the Logical investigations ‘an epoch-making book’ (Vulcanescu, 1992, p. 24).7 In his opinion, we can know the ‘essences’ of things following either a logical or a mystical way. The logical way works with categories; the mystical way works through general forms, independent from time and space. Contrary to Henri Bergson, whose thought was at that time very popular amongst the students in Bucharest, Ionescu insisted on the stability of such forms (Ricketts, 1988, p. 106). The phenomenological method, according to Ionescu, looks for the ‘immutable essence’ of phenomena, separated from time and space (Ionescu, 1994, p. 134). In this quest for the ‘immutable essence’ of phenomena, Ionescu could not have overlooked Husserl’s work. Eliade does not clarify his philosophical choices, nor does he manifest an explicit will to find the foundations for his method in Husserl’s philosophy. However, the cultural tradition to which Husserl’s work belongs is present in the elaboration of Eliade’s thought, especially through Ionescu’s mediation. Thus, in 1969, responding to philosophical criticism regarding his approach, Eliade found theoretical support precisely in Husserl. In fact, to the ‘historicists’ who accused him of having adopted a metaphysical perspective, he answered: ‘For the historicists [.] to seek for ‘‘essences’’ is tantamount to falling back into the old Platonic error’ and added in parentheses: ‘the historicists have, of course, neglected Husserl’ (Eliade, 1969, p. 36).8 Here, Eliade found a way to respond to the criticism to which he was subjected by making two important statements: he talks about the ‘Platonic error’, which suggests that he rejects the metaphysical reading of his work, and he mentions Husserl’s essences. He thus connects a central concept in his thoughtdthat of essence, tightly linked to the concept of archetypedwith the studies of an author whom he knew from Nae Ionescu’s lessons. He also proposed a solution for the problem of the archetype, the form or the structure, so consistently posed by his critics: the archetype seems to concern, simultaneously, the method of interpretation and the object to be interpreted (Bianchi, 1970, p. 156); this is a problem that Van der Leeuw had stated in the following terms: Structure is reality significantly organized. But the significance, in its own turn, belongs in part to reality itself, and in part to the ‘someone’ who attempts to understand it . it can never be asserted with any certainty what is my own understanding, and what is the intelligibility of that which is understood (Van der Leeuw, 1986, p. 672). At this point, it is possible to go one step further, by acknowledging the extent to which Husserl’s thought constitutes a point of reference for the hermeneutic philosophies. There is a fundamental coherence amongst the morphology that Eliade finds in Goethe, Husserl’s phenomenology and the hermeneutics to which he often refers (especially towards the end of his life) and which he sees reflected in Paul Ricoeur (see Spineto, 2006, pp. 73–78). Eliade’s interpretative system cannot be identified with any of these philosophical perspectives, and it can be easily noticed that the young scholar’s allusions to

7 In his Curs de istoria logicii (1929–1930), Ionescu discusses Bolzano’s and Husserl’s concepts of ‘intentionality’ (Ionescu, 1993, p. 227), and quotes Husserl, along with Brentano (Ionescu, 1993, p. 231). 8 J.Z. Smith proposes a general interpretation of Patterns in Comparative Religion based on a re-elaboration of the Goethian concept of ‘morphology’. In his opinion, Eliade has joined together morphology and history, at the cost of including both of them in a ‘metaphysical hierarchy’, or an ‘onto-theological hierarchy’ (Smith, 2000, pp. 346 and 348). His argument, which draws heavily on Eliade’s writings, does not take into account either the possible Husserlian reading of Goethe’s morphology or Eliade’s explicit reference to the German philosopher in a context in which metaphysics is featured as an error (the ‘Platonic error’). It can be also noticed that, from the very moment in which Eliade declares his identification with the hermeneutical perspectives, he clearly refers to philosophical currents that, far from being qualified as metaphysical, spring precisely from a crisis in metaphysics, a crisis to which they intend to provide an answer (See Spineto, 1992, pp. 16–18; see also Spineto, 1996, pp. 94–95).

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Goethian morphology were very few in the 20s, 30s and 40s, and those to Husserl’s philosophy were nonexistent. It stands out as obvious that the dialogue with the contemporary hermeneutical constructions could not have taken place, due to chronological reasons, since the foundations of Eliade’s approach acquired their definite shape before the war and in its aftermath. However, it is a significant fact that Eliade, on certain occasions, refers to such positions, pointing out their continuity with his own. Not only are they regarded as familiar, but they are entirely homogeneous with some of the elements that characterize his education. Eliade never wanted to explain his philosophical options, fearing that this would involve straying from the precision of history and, even more likely, weakening his work by anchoring it to a particular speculative school. However, maybe he failed to realize that the type of history of religions that he defended called for strong theoretical choices, and by not making them explicit, he opened a door to the most varied interpretative readings, many of them of a kind he would have never accepted. The web of references that has been here reconstructed is meant to be a suggestion regarding the way that could be followed in order to identify the philosophical categories that might provide a theoretical coherence to Eliade’s methodological choices.

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Natale Spineto holds a Ph.D. in Religious History (University of Rome, La Sapienza) and a Ph.D. in History of Religions and Religious Anthropology (University of Paris IV, Sorbonne). He is a Professor of History of Religions at the University of Turin. His main fields of research are the Religions of Classical Antiquity and the methodology and historiography of the History of Religions. His main works include: Dionysos a teatro. Il contesto festivo del dramma greco (L’‘‘Erma’’ di Bretschneider, Rome 2005), Mircea Eliade storico delle religioni (Morcelliana, Brescia 2006dRomanian and French translations forthcoming) and a work for the general reader, I simboli nella storia dell’uomo, Jaca Book, Milan 2002 (published in six languages). He has also edited M. Eliade–R. Pettazzoni, L’Histoire des religions a-t-elle un sens? (E´ditions du Cerf, Paris 1994), Esploratori del pensiero umano. Georges Dume´zil e Mircea Eliade (with Julien Ries, Jaca Book, Milan 2000, French edition Brepols, Turnhout 2003), La storia comparata delle religioni (with Giovanni Filoramo, IEPI, Pisa-Rome 2002), Interrompere il quotidiano. La costruzione del tempo nell’esperienza religiosa (Jaca Book, Milan 2005), Le temps et la destine´e humaine a` la lumie`re des religions et des cultures (with Julien Ries, Brepols, Turnhout 2007).