Anathemas and Admirations (55 page)

It was during this same period that he began teaching at the Faculty of Letters in Bucharest. I attended his lectures whenever I could. The fervor he lavished on his articles was fortunately recognizable in his lectures, the most animated, the most vibrant I have ever heard. Without notes, without anything, swept on by a vertigo of lyric erudition, he was a fountain of convulsed yet coherent words, underlined by the spasmodic movements of his hands. An hour of tension, after which, miraculously, he did not seem tired and perhaps, indeed, was not. It was as if he possessed the art of indefinitely postponing fatigue. Everything
negative
, everything that incites to self-destruction on the physical as well as the spiritual plane, was then, and is now, alien to him — whence his inaptitude for resignation, for remorse, for all the sentiments that imply impasse, stagnation, non-future. Once again I may be speaking out of turn, but I believe that if he has a perfect comprehension of sin, he has no sense of it: he is too febrile for that, too dynamic, too hurried, too full of projects, too intoxicated by the possible. Only those have such a sense who endlessly ruminate upon their past, who fasten themselves to it and are unable to tear themselves away, who invent defects out of a need for moral torment and delight in the memory of any shameful or irreparable action they have committed or, above all, wanted to commit. Obsessives, to speak of them further. They alone have time to descend into the abysses of remorse, to sojourn there, to wallow there; they alone are kneaded of that substance out of which the authentic Christian is made — that is, someone ravaged, corroded from within, suffering the morbid desire to be a reprobate and ending all the same by overcoming that desire, such a victory, never complete, being what he calls “having faith.” Since Pascal and Kierkegaard, we can no longer conceive of “salvation” without a procession of infirmities, and without the secret pleasures of the interior drama. Today especially, since “malediction” is in vogue — it is literature we are discussing — we would have everyone live in anguish and anathema. But can a man of learning be
accursed?
And why should he be? Does he not know too much to condescend to hell and its narrow circles? It is virtually certain that only the dark aspects of Christianity still rouse a certain echo in us. Perhaps Christianity, if we would regain its essence, must be seen, in fact,
en noir
. If this image, this vision, is correct, Eliade is from all appearances marginal to this religion. But perhaps he is marginal to
all
religions, as much by profession as by conviction: is he not one of the most brilliant representatives of a new Alexandrianism that, after the fashion of the old, puts all beliefs on the same level, without being able to adopt any? Once we refuse to hierarchize them, which are we to prefer, which adopt, and which divinity invoke? One does not imagine a specialist in the history of religions
at prayer
. Or if indeed he does pray, then he belies his teaching, contradicts himself, ruins his
Treatises
, in which no
true
god figures, in which all gods are on equal footing. Though he describes and discusses them with all the talent in the world, he cannot inspire them with life; he will have extracted all their sap, he will have compared them to each other, scoured them against each other, to their great detriment, and what will be left of them is anemic symbols with which a believer can do nothing — if at this stage of erudition, of disillusion and of irony, there can still be someone who truly believes. We are all, Eliade first of all,
ci-devant
believers; we are all religious spirits without religion.

11

That Fatal Perspicacity

E
ACH EVENT is only one more bad sign, Occasionally, though, an exception does occur — which the chronicler exaggerates to create the illusion of the unexpected.

That envy is universal is best proved by the fact that it breaks out among the mad themselves in their brief intervals of lucidity.

Every anomaly seduces us, Life in the first place, that anomaly par excellence.

Standing
, one readily admits that every passing moment vanishes forever;
prone
, this obvious point seems so inadmissible that we long never to get up again.

Progress and the Eternal Return: two meaningless things. What remains? Resignation to becoming, to surprises that are no such things to calamities that pretend to be uncommon.

If we began by doing away with all those who can breathe only on a platform!

Vehement by nature, vacillating by choice. Which way to tend? With
whom
to side? What
self
to join?

Our virtues and our vices must be tenacious to keep themselves on the surface, to safeguard that enterprising style we need in order to resist the glamour of destruction or despair.

“You speak of God frequently. It is a word I no longer use,” an ex-nun writes me. Not everyone has the good fortune to be disgusted by it!