20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

578 Simona Galaţchiwere taken over, processed and used by I.P. Culianu, makes the verypurpose of this study.Culianu’s Orient is not a world of mystery and poetry, of romanticnights with sweet words and vows of eternal love, or a land troubled bythoughts of cruel revenge, it is therefore not an Orient of flaming passions,violent feelings, glorious extinct civilizations or spectacular monuments.It is more likely a hard-version Orient, visited by the author more likea home, in order to draw the very essence of religions, philosophies, ofmost profound knowledge, and then to turn them into good account bymeans of literary transfigurations. Culianu re-discovers an Orient ableto serve to his main literary purpose, namely to provide him with highlyinitiated characters, through which the reader might have access to ametaphysical world of truth and revelations, meant to finally change him.With Culianu, Orient is not a land of moralistic allegory, boasting ofthe wisdom of old men who would speak doctrines, parables and fabulousstories. His masters will rather live in a particular way, respectively in thestrong air of fundamental experiences, of exceptional destinies and totalself-fulfilment.The most important Oriental element which relates Ioan PetruCulianu to Mihai Eminescu (another passion of the writer of Iassy,to whom Culianu devoted several serious and interesting studies ofliterary hermeneutics) is the idea of metensomatosis, according to whichthe human soul passes through various bodies in order to reach perfection.But unlike Eminescu, who had taken over from the Orient the idea ofmetempsychosis 1 , since what was important to him was the purification andunderstanding of one’s real identity (all the poetry of Eminescu showingthe poet’s obsession for the search of the profound ego), with Culianuthe interest falls upon the evolution and improvement of human beings topure perfection, as he appropriated the mechanisms and stages of the man’sbecoming in the world. The illustration of this idea may be pursued in thestories included in Pergamentul diafan (The Transparent Parchment), such1Our recent literary exegesis (Dan-Silviu Boerescu and Paul Cernat whotakes over the idea of the first one) is wrong when extending the idea of metempsychosis(known from Mihai Eminescu, the Romanian national poet) over Ioan Petru Culianu,as well. Unlike metensomatosis, metempsychosis involves the idea of soul reincarnationinto animals, plants and humans (my underline/ S.G.), for purification purposes. Or,metempsychosis is valid with Mihai Eminescu, yet not with Ioan Petru Culianu.The latter usually speaks of metensomatosis, defined through the incarnation of a preexistingsoul into new (human, my underline – S.G.) bodies, and takes over this idea fromthe traditional Hinduism and Buddhism (where is identified with saṁsāra).