by Ioana Stamatescu
A Great Man is one of the short stories that has haunted me since adolescence when I accidentally found it on one of the shelves in my bookcase, in a volume of short stories by Eliade. I was intrigued by the title and I chose to read it first. Its reading brought in front of my teenage eyes, and vivid imagination, all sorts of apocalyptic visions, mountains packed with endless grottos, seas with huge waves out of which a giant came out like a solitary god, forests with bent green trees and huge leaves, but most powerfully – it gave me a feeling of doom, of ineluctable calamity. Ever since, I have wanted to go back to that story, read it again, but I never did so until recently. The hope of finding other elements that might throw a different light, a less grim, more optimistic one, was overshadowed by the fear of experiencing again the dread in front of a man's tragedy, one that I empathetically considered the most painful: the loneliness which results from being excluded from society. The loneliness of an outcast, a pariah. However, more than a decade later, its reading does not bring nightmarish visions any longer, but it does still leave a strong impression. And the translation, which, as we all know, means interpretation, is a further proof that I could win the battle with the ghosts of adolescence and rise, as Neptune, with a trident in my hand, over the waves of emotional response. I don't know if this is a sign of maturity, but it definitely proves that one can always look back (and not in anger, rather – why not? – in jest, as a means of defying the ghosts of the unconscious and not be sorry, because a first sight is sometimes not enough, especially when we are talking about texts…A first question that comes to mind is: why is this great man great? Several interpretations have been proffered to this rather controversial short story and one of them in particular needs to be mentioned. Some critics (e.g. Ioan Petru Culianu, Matei Calinescu, Dan Petrescu) have argued that the text is a camouflaged allegory centred on the figure of the Iron Guard leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (also called Coco by his enemies – hence a first textual hint signalling that the name of the protagonist, Cucoanesh, might have some other resonance than the one strictly connected to the engineer in the story), and the macranthropy of the character followed by his disappearance from society represents in fact the macranthropy of the Iron Guard phenomenon, its ascension in 1933 (the year of the story, therefore a year which critics have regarded as illustrative for this interpretation) and subsequent decline. Moreover, Dan Petrescu suggests that it is the writer's attitude towards the times he was living and his own situation at that time, when he was writing the story, in 1945, that can be found in A Great Man: "The short story from 1945 faithfully reflects the transition phase which Eliade was going through during those years, which he richly documented in The Portuguese Diary, (…); in other words, we have to decipher in this short story the author's break-up with a period of his life that ended tragically for him and for his political choices, and his reorientation towards other possibilities of intellectual survival, according to a strategy that he was at that time conceiving (…)." (Dan Petrescu – Cucoanesh's Enigma, The Time, 4/2003, p.7). This historic-allegoric interpretation with tinges of autobiographical elements is an interpretation that has made this text be read, reread and still discussed today by critics. There is also, of course, a reading focusing on the portrayal of the genius in Eliade's perspective, an acceptation of Romantic origin, as a rather abnormal individual, doomed to loneliness and non-acceptance, trapped in his own incapacity to communicate with the world around him, an outcast from society because of his own extra-ordinary capacity, his overdeveloped senses and creativity. It is Cucoanesh's predicament in the story, when he starts hearing strange noises, a beat throbbing into all things at once, with a different rhythm, a phenomenon that at the same time diminishes his perception of the common sounds and noises, making him unable to hear the people around him. A transformation that opens him up towards another dimension, into the heart of things, reaching a state of utmost insight, and closes him to ephemeral activities, to the insignificant gestures. The macranthropy phenomenon represents a concern of Eliade the scholar as well, and is found in his academic treaties with the meaning of transformation, a transformation of the human body into a microcosm, a sort of sanctification of the man met in archaic theory and practice. In certain ascetic and spiritual practices the macranthropus reached the status when their senses were amplified, all-encompassing, attaining the status of the primordial being. It is what happens to Cucoanesh, not only regarding the intensification of his senses but also the words he utters, the messages he gives to his friend, from the 'height' of his perception: "It's good!" and "Everything is!". First he tells (shouts, actually) to his fiancé and his friend when they come to visit him in the woods: "it's good". Is it an attempt to reassure them or is it more? Is it a plain answer, or is it a statement about the status he was invested with? It's probably more, and this is what the narrator suspected when he strove to ask some more questions: "What do you mean by "good"?" I shouted. "Do you feel more peaceful? Do you see the world with different eyes? Can you see things that we can't?..." To all his friend's desperate questions Cucoanesh answers by showing him the sky, "with an arm raised in a dreamlike manner", suggesting that he attained a status of contemplation which revealed the essence, that went beyond plain appearance. The row of questions and requests which follows shows that he is already seen as a man who went beyond the boundaries of human knowledge and perception, bordering on to a god-like figure. A kind of oracle aura shines above him and he slowly seems to depart from the terrestrial in his continuous, vertical ascension. To his friend's questions, he answers with an explosion of happiness, as he is beyond words, having reached a stage where everything is overt, clear, explicit, revealing. When he nevertheless resorts to words, his friends are stunned, as his language is different, incomprehensible to them, a language of nature: "The valleys resounded at his words. It was like the approach of a thunderstorm, the trees were quivering and their branches were bending." His consubstantiality with nature becomes apparent. It is to this great man that the narrator addresses when he asks "what is there?" Hence, the answer ("Everything is!") shows the self-revealing quality of the world/the realm he stepped into. "Everything is" is the linguistic equivalent of the "outburst of happiness". "Everything is" means that the sacred was revealed, out of its profane camouflage (which represents an old and frequently met theory in Eliade's philosophy) and that Cucoanesh was elevated to the primordial state - the aim of macranthropy. Therefore, following this reading, we might assume that the transformation was completed. It's not the death of a leader and of a political faction, but the spiritual elevation of a man. The interpretation I mentioned at the beginning is valid and possible, however it is quite restrictive. There are many more interpretations that a text could generate, and this is always the beauty of fiction, and its breathing reservoir. Eliade himself was keen on the distinction between him as the man of science, striving to be objective, and the fiction writer, trying to preserve and express the spontaneity of the dream, the nostalgia of childhood, of the beginnings, of the most creative part of life. There is another thing that makes Cucoanesh a great man, and which in my opinion gives a totally different meaning to the story, transforming it into a modern tragedy. When he decides to disappear in the woods and asks his friend to help him, he explains the decision and says that putting an end to his sufferance, thus committing suicide, would have been only too easy, an easy way out of the predicament. However, his choice was to live and see the limit of macranthropy: "After all, I do have this right at least: to see what mother-nature is capable of doing to me, how far she can go. I will keep on growing, and growing again, but how much? At least I want to see this: the limit of macranthropy. And that's why I won't kill myself."Cucoanesh chooses to live because he wants to see how far the disease can go, how much further it can infiltrate and consume him. He wants to see the limit of the disease, namely when it stops, when it ceases to exist, this obviously implying its subject's total consumption. Seeing the limit of the illness means actually defeating it, witnessing its end, even if this means his own death. Witnessing the limit of the disease implies subjecting himself to a steady attrition with only the desperate reward of seeing its death guaranteed as well. By doing this he somehow embarks on a battle with the disease, with death as the sole prize for the winner. Victory over the disease, over the perversity of nature, means self sacrifice: letting himself be eaten up slowly and steadily. Cocoanesh's choice to experience the disease up to the end represents a symbolic defeat over it. Analysing, examining the path of the illness, means keeping a distance from it, being the subject of its destruction, but not allowing it to merge with him, to take control. It somehow brings an escape from its firm grip. Thus, experiencing it is a way of symbolically defeating it, of rising above and contemplating its death. Even if this brings the protagonist's death as well. From this point of view, the story becomes a modern tragedy, in a world where man has lost the sense of the tragic and where tragedy is disguised by ordinary events. It is this vocation for self-sacrifice, which he accepts in a resigned manner, transcending his fate at the same time, which makes Cucoanesh a great man, similar to the awareness of the ancient tragic heroes. It is this resigned acceptance of his fate that makes him a truly noble character that, according to Aristotle, arouses pity and fear in the soul of the spectator…
by Ioana Stamatescu
by Ioana Stamatescu