The Myth of the Eternal Return

On April 6, 1944, mere days after the World War II bombings of Bucharest, Eliade’s birthplace, the author wrote in his journal:

I’m thinking of writing a book, Teroarea Istoriei [The Terror of History], on this theme: that until a little while ago, any personal tragedy, any ethnic catastrophe had its justification in a cosmology or soteriology of some sort: cosmic rhythms, reabsorption into water, ekpyrosis or purification by fire, historical cycles, ‘our sins,’ etc. Now, history simply terrorizes, because the tragedies provoked by it no longer find justification and absolution (Eliade, Mircea. The Portugal Journal, translated by Mac Linscott Ricketts, State University New York Press, 2010).

The Myth of the Eternal Return—the “book” ideated in this journal—was written on the heels of World War II. This passage (along with other journal entries) contextualizes the book within not only the war but the author’s concomitant existential horror. Indeed, Western existentialism saw a revival after the war, partly because the historical tragedies were on such an incomprehensible scale that they marked a grim advent of unprecedented senselessness; the very essence of life seemed to give way to an abyss. While Eliade may not have committed himself to existentialism, he nevertheless intuited the threat of this abyss in the wake of a historical trauma.