Ramona Matei, Motive gnostice în volumul „Arta fugii“ de Ioan Petru Culianu
Gnostic motives in „Arta fugii“ by Ioan Petru Culianu
The constant interest that Ioan Petru Culianu had on studying the Gnosticism has “existential roots” according to the writer himself in the Preface of thanking to the volume The tree of Gnosis. Feeling painfully the condition of the “exiled” of the man in the world, Ioan Petru Culianu focuses – both in the scientific and the literary work – on ways of escaping this “prison” we are “thrown in”. Our paper deals with analyzing some motives of the Gnostic imaginary (the world – imperfect creation of the demiurge, “the Gnostic sleep”, the hypostases of Sophia, the liberation of human being) from Ioan Petru Culianu literature even from his first reunited fictions in the volume Arta fugii. The literary “fugues” of this historian of religions, who made into fiction his topics of the scientific research, do not stop on a single solution of escape out of the world (the certainty of such a “recipe” would definitely mean the entrance to a new captivity), but they record a search of the searching, the process all the time recommenced of identifying the possible ways of salvation.
Keywords: Gnosticism, out of the world, initiation, other worlds, the liberation of human being.
- Culianu, Ioan Petru. Arta fugii [The Art of Fugue], Prefaţă de Dan C. Mihăilescu, Iaşi, Editura Polirom, 2002, 256 p.
- Idem. Arborele gnozei. Mitologia gnostică de la creştinismul timpuriu la nihilismul modern [The Tree of Gnosis. Gnostic Mythology from Early Christianity to Modern Nihilism], Ediţia a II a, traducere de Corina Popescu, Iaşi, Editura Polirom, 2005, 383 p.
- Idem. Gnosticism şi gândire modernă: Hans Jonas [Gnosticism and Modern Thinking: Hans Jonas], traducere de Maria-Magdalena Anghelescu şi Şerban Anghelescu, Postfaţă de Eduard Iricinschi, Iaşi, Editura Polirom, 2006, 240 p.
- Idem. Răzbunarea gnosticilor [The Gnostic Revenge]. În: Studii româneşti I. Fantasmele nihilismului. Secretul doctorului Eliade [Romanian Studies I. The Phantasma of Nihilism. The Secrets of Doctor Eliade], Ediţia a II-a, traduceri de Corina Popescu şi Dan Petrescu, Iaşi, Editura Polirom, 2006, p. 163-209.
- Patapievici, Horia – Roman. Ultimul Culianu [The Last Culianu]. În: Ioan Petru Culianu. Omul şi opera [Ioan Petru Culianu. The Man and His Work], coordonator Sorin Antohi, ed. cit., p. 618-640.
