Monday, February 10, 2014

It's not Horror, it's Eliade. From the Dark Night of the Soul to The Death of the Ego

Since the self dubbed "first Romanian horror movie" appeared in cinemas, I was forced on several social occasions to defend in small talk words and thus somehow mire my relationship with Eliade's literature. It wasn't the first time my intended discourse hit head-on the wall of exotericism. Interacting with people in general has that effect on me.

What I should have said is: It's one thing to be scared out of your regular heartbeat through the hollywoodian profane element of surprising horror or gore. It's a whole other world to be expelled out of your self through the awe inducing, mythic supernatural of Eliade.

Unlike the self-absorbed Artist, who is unable to accept the Sufferance derived from the intersection between the profane and sacred, matter and spirit, imperfect existence and aspirations to perfection, who is unable to accept the Sufferance triggered by the human condition and constantly opts to evade it through artistic creation, becoming trapped into an eternal Nigredo, the selfless Eliade masterfully draws you in with him into the sacred truth of the cosmic human and you are, if willing and ready, plunged into the ultimate uncanny, blood chilling, spine shivering, awfully marvelous manifestation and experience of the supernatural within the natural. If you let it, Eliade's fiction acts as the cosmic psychoanalyst, the tzadik that draws you into his soul trip and shows you what you need to do to heal and transcend. He slyly immerses you into the Darkness of the Soul to horrify you out of your selfish, ego satiated, self.

No, this is not horror. No, this is not Art. This is The Great Art. This is attaining Albedo through Nigredo. This is Alchemy. This is the literary Eliade.

Well, at least Dan Pița seems to get me.