The young Eliade's interest in physical exercise and adventure led him to pursue mountaineering and sailing, and he also joined the Romanian Boy Scouts.

Assessments of Eliade's work were in sharp contrast to one another: also in 1936, Eliade accepted an award from the Romanian Writers ' Society, of which he had been a member since 1934.

Writing in 2007, Romanian anthropologist Andrei Oişteanu recounted how, around 1984, the Securitate unsuccessfully pressured to become an agent of influence in Eliade's Chicagoan circle.

In Ellwood's view, Eliade's nostalgia was only enhanced by his exile from Romania: " In later years Eliade felt about his own Romanian past as did primal folk about mythic time.

French researcher Daniel Dubuisson places doubt on Eliade's scholarship and its scientific character, citing the Romanian academic's alleged refusal to accept the treatment of religions in their historical and cultural context, and proposing that Eliade's notion of hierophany refers to the actual existence of a supernatural level.

Daniel Dubuisson singled out Eliade's concept of homo religiosus as a reflection of fascist elitism, and argued that the Romanian scholar's views of Judaism and the Old Testament, which depicted Hebrews as the enemies of an ancient cosmic religion, were ultimately the preservation of an antisemitic discourse.

Polemically, Călinescu proposed that Mircea Eliade's supposed focus on " aggressive youth " and served to instill his interwar Romanian writers with the idea that they had a common destiny as a generation apart.

He also commented that, when set in Romania, Mircea Eliade's stories lacked the " perception of immediate reality ", and, analyzing the non-traditional names the writer tended to ascribe to his Romanian characters, that they did not depict " specificity ".

The same commentator, who deemed Un om mare " perhaps Eliade's most memorable short story ", connected it with the uriaşi characters present in Romanian folklore.

Paul Cernat notes that Eliade's statement includes an admission that he " counted on support, in order to get back into Romanian life and culture ", and proposes that Eliade may have expected his friend to vouch for him in front of hostile authorities.

Three years later, Eliade's political activities were brought into discussion as he was getting ready to publish a translation of his Techniques du Yoga with the left-leaning Italian company Giulio Einaudi Editore — the denunciation was probably orchestrated by Romanian officials.

Eliade's student Ioan Petru Culianu noted that journalists had come to refer to the Romanian scholar as " the great recluse ".

Eliade's other Romanian disciple, Andrei Oişteanu, noted that, in the years following Eliade's death, conversations with various people who had known the scholar had made Culianu less certain of his earlier stances, and had led him to declare: " Mr. Eliade was never antisemitic, a member of the Iron Guard, or pro-Nazi.

Romanian scholar Mircea Handoca, editor of Eliade's writings, argues that the controversy surrounding Eliade was encouraged by a group of exiled writers, of whom Manea was a main representative, and believes that Eliade's association with the Guard was a conjectural one, determined by the young author's Christian values and conservative stance, as well as by his belief that a Legionary Romania could mirror Portugal's Estado Novo.

" Ornea commented that this was the only instance where the Romanian academic spoke of his political involvement with a dose of self-criticism, and contrasted the statement with Eliade's usual refusal to discuss his stances " pertinently ".

Various critics have traced links between Eliade's fiction works and his political views, or Romanian politics in general.

In March 2007, on Eliade's 100th birthday, the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company hosted the Mircea Eliade Week, during which radio drama adaptations of several works were broadcast.

During the final years of Mircea Eliade's life, his disciple Culianu exposed and publicly criticized his 1930s pro-Iron Guard activities ; relations between the two soured as a result.

* Some see in Zalmoxis a Christ figure who dies and resurrects ; this position was also defended by Jean ( Ioan ) Coman, a professor of patristics and orthodox priest, who was a friend of Eliade and published in Eliade's journal " Zalmoxis ", which appeared in the 1930s.

As part of his criticism of the Iron Guard, Culianu had come to expose Mircea Eliade's connections with the latter movement during the interwar years ( because of this, relations between the two academics had soured for the final years of Eliade's life ).

Robert Ellwood, a professor of religion who did his graduate studies under Mircea Eliade, saw this type of nostalgia as one of the most characteristic themes in Eliade's life and academic writings.

After completing his primary education at the school on Mântuleasa Street, Eliade attended the Spiru Haret National College in the same class as Arşavir Acterian, Haig Acterian, and Petre Viforeanu ( and several years the senior of Nicolae Steinhardt, who eventually became a close friend of Eliade's ).

As one of the figures in the Criterion literary society ( 1933 – 1934 ), Eliade's initial encounter with the traditional far right was polemical: the group's conferences were stormed by members of A. C. Cuza's National-Christian Defense League, who objected to what they viewed as pacifism and addressed antisemitic insults to several speakers, including Sebastian ; in 1933, he was among the signers of a manifesto opposing Nazi Germany's state-enforced racism.

Mariana Klein, who became Şora's wife, was one of Eliade's female students, and later authored works on his scholarship.

Păunescu's visit to Chicago was followed by those of the nationalist official writer Eugen Barbu and by Eliade's friend Constantin Noica ( who had since been released from jail ).

Dadosky quotes Robert Segal, a professor of religion, who draws a distinction between Platonism and Eliade's " primitive ontology ": for Eliade, the ideal models are patterns that a person or object may or may not imitate ; for Plato, there is a Form for everything, and everything imitates a Form by the very fact that it exists.

Those who see Eliade's fascination with the primordial as merely reactionary in the ordinary political or religious sense of the word do not understand the mature Eliade in a sufficiently radical way.

Allan himself stands alongside Eliade's male characters, whose focus is on action, sensation and experience — his chaste contacts with Maitreyi are encouraged by Sen, who hopes for a marriage which is nonetheless abhorred by his would-be European son-in-law.

Eliade's 1934 novel Întoarcerea din rai (" Return from Paradise ") centers on Pavel Anicet, a young man who seeks knowledge through what Călinescu defined as " sexual excess ".

The depolitisation of Eliade after the start of his diplomatic career was also mistrusted by his former close friend Eugène Ionesco, who indicated that, upon the close of World War II, Eliade's personal beliefs as communicated to his friends amounted to " all is over now that Communism has won ".

Eliade's former friend, the communist Belu Zilber, who was attending the Paris Conference in 1946, refused to see Eliade, arguing that, as an Iron Guard affiliate, the latter had " denounced left-wingers ", and contrasting him with Cioran (" They are both Legionaries, but is honest ").

In August 1954, when Horia Sima, who led the Iron Guard during its exile, was rejected by a faction inside the movement, Mircea Eliade's name was included on a list of persons who supported the latter — although this may have happened without his consent.

Alongside the arguments introduced by Daniel Dubuisson, criticism of Mircea Eliade's political involvement with antisemitism and fascism came from Adriana Berger, Leon Volovici, Alexandra Lagniel-Lavastine, Florin Ţurcanu and others, who have attempted to trace Eliade's antisemitism throughout his work and through his associations with contemporary antisemites, such as the Italian fascist occultist Julius Evola.

Additionally, Joaquín Garrigós, who translated Eliade's works into Spanish, claimed that none of Eliade's texts he ever encountered show him to be an antisemite.

Paul Cernat, who stressed that it was the only one of Eliade's autobiographical works not to have been reworked by its author, concluded that the book documented Eliade's own efforts to " camouflage " his political sympathies without rejecting them altogether.

It was attended by 1, 200 people, and included a public reading of Eliade's text in which he recalled the epiphany of his childhood — the lecture was given by novelist Saul Bellow, Eliade's colleague at the University.

Eliade's short story Şarpele (" The Snake ") was described by George Călinescu as " hermetic ".

Writing for the Spanish journal La Vanguardia, commentator Sergio Vila-Sanjuán described the first volume of Eliade's Autobiography ( covering the years 1907 to 1937 ) as " a great book ", while noting that the other main volume was " more conventional and insincere.

Wendy Doniger, Eliade's colleague from 1978 until his death, notes that " Eliade argued boldly for universals where he might more safely have argued for widely prevalent patterns ".

In his Journal, published long after his 1945 death, Sebastian claimed that Eliade's actions during the 1930s show him to be an antisemite.

Iphigenia's story of self-sacrifice, turned voluntary in Eliade's version, was taken by various commentators, beginning with Mihail Sebastian, as a favorable allusion to the Iron Guard's beliefs on commitment and death, as well as to the bloody outcome of the 1941 Legionary Rebellion.

To evaluate the legacy of Eliade and Joachim Wach within the discipline of the history of religions, the University of Chicago chose 2006 ( the intermediate year between the 50th anniversary of Wach's death and the 100th anniversary of Eliade's birth ), to hold a two-day conference in order to reflect upon their academic contributions and their political lives in their social and historical contexts, as well as the relationship between their works and their lives.