Eros, Magic, and the Murder of Professor Culianu [Paperback ed.] 0810129744, 9780810129740

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EROS, MAGIC, AND

THE MURDER OF PROFESSOR CULIANU

k

On May 21, 1991, popular University of Chicago Divinity

School Professor loan Culianu was murdered execution-style on CdfTipUS* terrified students,

The crime stunned the school,

and mystified the FBI. The

case remains unsolved. In Eros, Magic, and the

Murder of Professor Culianu, Ted Anton pieces together the evidence and shows that the murder is in fact

what Culianu's friends suspected

along: the

first political

all

assassination of a

professor on American soil.

Anton, who has served as an expert on the Culianu case for ABC, PBS, NPR, Radio France International, and Chicago and television, has

since

case

its is

Romanian

been investigating the murder

occurrence. (His research into the

being used by the FBI in

its

continuing

investigations.) This book traces Culianu's

life

from his privileged childhood in Romania,

through his days at the University of Bucharest,

where he

first

encountered the methods of

Securitate surveillance, to his time at the University of Chicago, where, as a handpicked

successor to Mircea Eliade, he was becoming a

renowned scholar

how Culianu

in his

own

— an expert on

right.

Anton shows

magic and the

I-

ehos, magic INI)

THE

MUKDtiU

PKOFESSOK CIJLIANU

'"""' ••';.

.-'

'- 1 .-

' "

: -

EROS, MAGIC,

& THE

OF PROFESSOR

CULIAM Northwestern University Press Evanston

;,•

'•:•"''?'.

Northwestern University Press Evanston, (

opvright

Illinois

©

60208-42 10

1996 by Ted Anton

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

iSBNO-8101-1396-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Anton, Ted. Eros, magic, and the p.

murder of Professor Culianu

/

Ted Anton,

cm.

isbn 0-8 101- 1 396-1

(alk.

paper)

2 Culianu, loan P. — Assassination. P. 3 Religion — Romania — — — historians Religion United States Biography. 4. historians 6. Occultism — Biography. 5 Murder victims — United States — Biography. — Study and teaching — History— 20th century. 7. Magic Study and 8. Religion — Study and teaching — teaching — History — 20th century. 1

.

Culianu, loan

.

.

.

History — 20th century. century.

I.

BL43.C84A3

9.

Romania — Politics and government — 20th

Title.

1996

2oo'.92— dc 20

96-9432 CIP

The paper used

in this publication

meets the

minimum

American National Standard for Information Sciences Printed Library Materials, ansi Z39.48-1984.

requirements of the

— Permanence 0/ Paper for

Imaginary universes are so

than

much more beautiful

this stupidly constructed

real one.

— G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Note on Method

ix

xiii

Prologue 5

book one: The Crime, May 1

Religion as a System 9

2

The Aftermath

21, 1991

22

book two: Youth, 1950-1972 3

The Art of Memory

4

University Days,

5

6

1

29

967- 1 97 1 41

"Dark People, Very Clever" 50

A Dream of Paradise book three:

58

Arriviste,

1972 -1986

7

The Myth of the West:

8

Chicago, Paris, and Mircea Eliade 81

9

Holland:

Italy,

1972-1975 ji

A Rising Young Intellectual,

10

1484 and 1984 106

11

Abuses of Interpretation 114

12

Pursuit, 1985 121

13

The Emerald Game, 1986

14

The Book of Life 138

1976- 1983

9-?

124

book four: "Like Being Famous," 1987-1991 1

"All in the

World

Is

Mystery Again," 1987 149

16

Religion and Science:

17

Divination, 1989 172

18

The Fourth Dimension, 1988

"Revolution," Christmas 1989 182

162

\i

ii

Contents

19

Free World, 1990 190

20

Scoptophilia 201

21

A Forking Path

22

Memories of the Future 214

23

24

210

"Dr. Faust: Great Sodomite and Necromancer" 222

Roses

at the

Door 255

book

five:

Games of the Mind, 1991-1996

25

After-death Journeys 245

26

Under the Sign of Capricorn: Suspects 256

27

The

28

Games

Investigation 267

of the

Mind 272

Endnote 279

Works by loan Culianu 281 Index 293

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

During nearly

of research

five years

among them was

people. First

incurred debts to countless

I

the family of loan Petru Culianu.

Thereza Culianu-Petrescu and Hillary Wiesner devoted long, pahours to

tient

tremendous

this project, offering

thank Elena Bogdan and

Dan

assistance. I also

Petrescu in Romania; Nikki Wiesner

and Dorothy and Kurt Hertzfeld

in the

United

States;

and Carmen

Georgescu and her son, Andrei Westerink, in Holland. In three

homes

in three countries, I

was welcomed not only

as a researcher

I am grateful. Among the people who helped me were those who read

but also as a friend, and for this support

the manuscript or portions thereof.

Mircea Sabau,

Norman Manea,

drafts of

They include Andrei Codrescu,

Vladimir Tismaneanu, Dumitru

Radu Popa, Mircea Raceanu, Sorin Antohi, Carlin Romano, Zarifopol-Johnston,

Mac

Linscott Ricketts,

Ken

Starck,

Ilinca

Jim

Fair-

hall,

Anne Calcagno, Ara Sismanian, Andrei Oisteanu, Greg Spin-

ner,

Michael Allocca, and Gwendolyn Barnes. They offered

icism, translation skills,

and encouragement. Others

time to this book include I

offer

phy and

who

Umberto Eco and John Crowley.

tremendous thanks to

my research

to several translators.

Mac

assistant Eileen

Stefan,

Anne Frangois-Nizou,

eanu, Alexander Cepeda,

while

I

was on

and the

offer a very special thanks to Jacqueline

my Romanian

and

as well as the

its

Stan,

students

late Virgil Stefanescu. I

Renowden.

For financial support, I want to thank the United tion Service

Marian

Cristina Bellu, Viurica Secel-

Clement Mirza,

my Fulbright grant,

Mur-

Linscott Ricketts translated

Culianu's political articles. Other translators included

Olga

crit-

gave their

States Informa-

Fulbright Program, particularly Raluca Vasiliu,

Fund

for Investigative Journalism,

and the DePaul

Summer Research Program. I give the deepest thanks to my friends at DePaul who expressed encouragement at every moUniversity

ment

it

was needed, especially Gerald Mulderig, Richard Jones,

Eileen Seifert, and Stan Damberger. In the distinguished circle of loan Culianu's friends,

I

wish to

\

kkmrwledgments

.

acknowledge Miron Bogdan, §erban Anghelescu,

Silviu Angelescu,

Gustavo Casadio, Elemire Zolla, Grazia Marchiano, Gianpaolo Romanato, David Brent, Jennifer Stevenson, Michel Meslin, and Stelian Plesoiu.

also

I

want to thank David Funderburk, Jonathan

Leon

Rickert, Matei Calinescu, Cristina Ilioia, Ivanovici,

Moshe

Idel,

Horia Patapeivici, Anca Giurescu, Peter

Noomen, Cicerone

Gross, Willem

Volovici, Victor

Poghirc, Nestor Ratesh, Vasilei

Boiluanu, Ion Coja, Petre Bacanu, Ion Pacepa, Liviu Cangeopol,

Alexander Ronnett, Mircea Marghescu, Jean Ancel, Gabriella

Adame§teanu, and Cornel Dumitrescu. Others who

Dan

cluded Petre Roman,

Petreanu,

assisted

me

in-

Dana Sismanian, Carmen

Sabau, Dorothy Margraf, and Sorin Avram.

Among

historians of religion,

chael Fishbane,

Wendy

John

Collins,

I

want

to thank Jerry Brauer,

Lawrence

Doniger, Franklin Gamwell, Clark Gilpin, Alan Segal, An-

thony Yu, and David Tracy. And in the very University of Chicago students,

anu's

Mi-

Sullivan, Carol Zaleski,

I

special

owe

a

world of Culi-

huge debt to

Nathaniel Deutsch, Joel Sweek, Karen Anderson, Jim Egge, Karen de

Leon

Jones, Margaret Arndt-Caddigan, Alexander Arguelles,

Stephanie Stamm, Liz Wilson, Elise La Rose, and others. I

want

telling

especially to thank

for

me of their memories.

In law enforcement,

McGuire, Stein,

Cathy O'Leary and Erika Schluntz

I

wish to thank police detective Robert A.

retired police captain Frederick Miller, the late

Robert

and FBI special agents Paul Dimura and especially John L.

Bertulis.

To

gratitude.

all

And

I

those

who

shared their time with me,

I

offer

remind the reader that any mistakes are purely

my my

own.

For support of

this project, I

thank the magazines Chicago and

Lingua Franca, including editors Gretchen Reynolds and Margaret Talbot.

The

biggest note of appreciation goes to

Harris, with a very special thanks to Angela Ray.

Nicholas Weir- Williams,

I

offer fondest gratitude.

my agent,

acknowledgment

to

longtime mentor,

Sam Vaughan.

At home dents

who

I

my editor Susan To my publisher,

want to thank

I

offer deepest

Ellen Levine, her associates, and to a

my DePaul

read parts of the manuscript.

University graduate stu-

Acknowledgments

Most of all,

I

want

to thank the people

ing these past five years.

came felt

to

My

who put up with me

parents, Bertha

xi

dur-

and Gus Anton,

my home and helped when I left for Romania. With heartI thank my

love for her understanding, criticism, and support,

wife, Maja.

NOTE ON METHOD

I

began work on the story of loan Culianu

half years

views in

I

in July

1

991. In four and

tape-recorded more than 150 conversations and inter-

five different countries,

and conducted many more.

memories and quotes conversations

that uses participants'

the author was not present naturally evokes questions:

you know what conversation

I

at

which

How

could

person was thinking, or what someone said in a

a

more than twenty years before

many

Relying in

A work

cases

on personal

the interview?

interviews,

I

checked what

heard against statements of other participants and published

Though

sources.

individual recollections can be affected

garies of perception or the passage of time,

by the va-

my best response was to

many different people as I could — from government officials to family members — and to address con-

try to talk again

and again to

flicting versions

of any single event.

the memories of different people, or accounts of historical

Still,

events, conflicted

on occasion. In such

random coincidences cance,

as

I

to

cases, or of the

seeming

which Culianu or others attached

signifi-

have attempted to present here more than one possible

interpretation of an event's meaning.

I

have also changed the names

of two minor figures and some details of their lives to protect their privacy.

What

follows

is

historical, intellectual,

my

and personal forces so

mately address the question:

swer that question.

attempt to explain the intersection of

It can,

What

is

intricate they ulti-

truth? This

book cannot an-

however, invite readers to explore a story

of religion, politics, and passion and draw their

own conclusions.

There was one notable exception to my goal of speaking to everyone, that of loan Culianu himself. his

While he

left a detailed

record of

thoughts and feelings from adolescence until his death, he also

language constructs a

cautioned students to understand that,

if

world, then any story

and

my portrait

I

relied

is

on

in part

an

artifice

a seduction.

To draw

his letters, journals, scholarly writings,

autobiographical stories, as well as on the testimony of people

and

who

knew him. Such material has its strengths and its limits, but it helped that

up

to his last days loan Culianu

was writing notes he did not

xiv

Note on Method

expect others to read. of his and our

lives.

almost as clearly as I

I

He

did so playfully, to test his understanding

These writings illuminated

never met loan Culianu.

tape, listened to

his inner

journey

might speak of my own. I

watched him on video, heard him on

hundreds of accounts of him, read countless

critical

analyses of his scholarship and teaching, and read and reread his

work.

My distance from a man who seemed so different to people at

different times lens,

meant that I did not view him through one

but rather through as

ing a composite portrait I

particular

many different lenses as I found. Compilfilled

with ambiguity and contradiction,

turned to a theory of science or history called complexity that

Culianu advocated for new scholars. While a traditionalist works backward, knowing the ending and that explains

it,

a

fitting

each piece into a puzzle

complexity scholar weighs different versions from

the viewpoints of

many

different players,

working forward to see

each action as a product of chance and constantly shifting choices.

This book veals truth,

is

about the ways perceptions shape history, time re-

and forgeries can become

self-fulfilling.

loan Culianu

spent a lifetime exploring the degree to which truth and fiction can

be the opposite of what questions about

him

we

think.

My goal

here

as faithfully as I illuminate

is

to preserve the

my answers.

EROS, MAGIC,

AND THE MURDER OF PROFESSOR CIJUANIJ

PROLOGUE

October, 1989. Chicago Prince's "Dirty

Mind" played on

and wine hung in the

rettes

air.

the stereo, and the smell of ciga-

The

room

apartment's living

fea-

tured dark oak paneling in what was once a luxury building in Chi-

Hyde

cago's

Park,

now

given over to gloom and shadow.

mirror flanked by wooden

A

large

pillars reflected the partygoers' faces.

few students stood in a small knot around Professor Culianu. specialized in divination practices.

him

to

tell

their futures.

working on him.

He

Some

A

He

of them were trying to get

kept shaking his head no.

No no, he said. You won't like

They

kept

it.

Finally he agreed to demonstrate the ancient Islamic art called

geomancy.

A few

students followed

him

into the

bedroom, where

they sat on the floor or on a platform bed where people had thrown

Everyone

their coats.

cards

from

floor.

He

ing that

his

felt a little giddy.

Culianu pulled

European-cut sport jacket and

took off his

loafers.

a

deck of

sat crosslegged

on the

At the party he had been so unassum-

many of them had not realized he was

a professor.

He had found the cards in a back stall in Paris, he said, explaining that normally

geomancy was

practiced by drawing dots and lines

in the sand. Originating in the

Middle

East, the art

had been re-

discovered late in the Middle Ages and flourished during the Renaissance in

Italy.

The

cards were four inches high. Stars flickered

against a deep blue background a single black

On the front was either When the thinking behind

on the back.

dot or two black dots.

geomancy's modernist wisdom — that the cosmos was connected by invisible patterns

and human events could be predicted based on

simple, repeated mathematical steps

phers in Renaissance Florence,

it

— was

absorbed by philoso-

sparked a flowering of magic that

paralleled the rise of science.

Culianu was a shy quiet about his

life,

man

with a funny accent

who was

although he was one of the only teachers

was ready to chat with students about

their lives.

He

smile and dark eyes that seemed to look beyond you

He

unusually

had pale skin and high cheekbones and

had

a

who

dimpled

when he

spoke.

a gentle, enthusiastic,

4 Prologue

open manner. In

his lectures

members prepared

he digressed too much; other faculty

students better for exams. But to

Culianu, author of thirteen books and translations in

who

was the only scholar they knew

many five

students

languages,

studied religion as a real entity,

a driving force, in people's lives.

Once he had given a "What is

Religions Club.

people all

still

times,

buy into

show

talk to the Divinity School's

religion?" he had asked.

Why

it?

do

all

History of

"Why do rational

religions of

striking similarities to each other?"

humankind,

at

Most modern

scholars avoided such sweeping questions, seeking instead the cultural differences that influenced specific faiths.

Yet he claimed that

these broad questions "had practically called the discipline of the history of religions into being."

He said the reason for the similarity

many beliefs lay in the "unity of the operations of the human mind." One implication of his theory was that any "change in the in

system of religion would immediately affect that create history."

grammed

The mind shaped

all

the other systems

action,

and religion pro-

the mind.

Flanking him in the apartment bedroom were Greg Spinner, in shoulder-length hair, and Michael Allocca, with his beard and long black curls.

They had

on divination

asked Culianu to teach them a reading course

that quarter.

To

their surprise he

only one condition: he expected them to finish the course.

So they

thing accurate tonight.

It

in particular

tell

had agreed, setting

the future in order to

hoped he would say some-

would make the

party.

He began with the party host, who was intrigued. He asked her to concentrate on one question that was most on her mind, and to pick

out her cards. Slowly he laid out her cards on the

floor.

He

paused,

studying them. "You're concerned that someone with some power in

your

about

life is

going to hurt you," he

said.

"You don't have

to

worry

it."

Her

heart leaped. She

felt

she

knew

exactly

which professor he

was talking about. Culianu "I

need

said.

a cigarette," she said.

He read some other people's cards, some impressively, some not. When he uncovered another student's concealed panic over his graduate studies, for instance, no one was surprised. Anyone could

Prologue 5

have told you

that.

When the party was in hill swing, a new student

who had been hanging back asked him

to try for her.

Again he told

her to concentrate on the question that was most on her mind.

Spinner and Allocca as

he

laid

sat

behind him, each watching over

out her cards.

He

studied them. "You're sure

others to hear this?" he asked. She "I think

we should send

a shoulder

you want

shrugged and laughed nervously.

the others out," he said.

my life's an open book," she said. right, close the door." He turned to

"No, no, "All

Michael Allocca,

a

them: Greg Spinner,

few others. "What is said here does not leave

this

room." They smiled uncertainly. "You're humiliating yourself," he said. "It's really painful,

and

it's

getting worse."

"Whoa." "You're involved in a love triangle, and

coloring your

it's

life.

You've got to get out of it."

Her

face

went white. She looked around

"knocked the wind out of me," she

ward

to check the cards.

in panic.

later said.

His accuracy

Greg leaned

for-

But loan cut him off before he could say

anything.

At the end of the

party,

Greg spotted Culianu putting on

shoes to leave. "loan!" he called.

his

"Come on, how does it work?"

"It works because it works."

"That's not what

were

I

mean. You read those cards exactly

as

they

laid out."

"It's

mind.

It's all

in the mind."

Greg Spinner could never accept often heard

it.

His

teacher always said

that answer, it

though he had

with a smile of irony. Once,

driving with Culianu, Spinner had stumbled onto the bluntest

way

would

that

to ask his question: "Look, loan, if I shot you in the head,

be in the mind too?"

He smiled.

"Well, yes and no," he said.

They never knew when he was

playing and

what he normally was — a serious scholar ing divinity schools.

He

began

at

when he was being

one of the world's lead-

his career as a follower of school

legend Mircea Eliade, one of the world's premier historians of religions of the twentieth century. Culianu was bidding to

seminal

if

controversial thinker in his

books a paradigm

shift in the

own

right,

become

a

proposing in his

study of history and ideas. Some,

6

Prologue

especially in Europe,

proach.

)thers,

(

thought he offered an important new ap-

even on the

faculty, criticized his

vised students not to take his courses. that

no one commented on

it,

The

methods and ad-

tension was so obvious

observed one student. But

if

you

wanted to position yourself well, students learned, you did not work with Culianu.

To a

select

group of students and scholars, though, loan Culianu

was what higher education was he

you had

said,

because to him tionally.

He

it

to practice

all

about.

it.

He

To understand a field truly,

was interested

in the occult

worked more often than could be explained

wanted

to understand why, but that

part of what he wanted.

He wanted

behind prophecy and religious

its

a small

to understand the logic systems

movements and the reason

hold on believers and influence over events. that science was, in

was only

ra-

He

for their

reminded students

beginning, considered an occult

art.

In

fact, it

was the Renaissance magicians' image of the universe, that events could be manipulated by theorems, that set the stage for Galileo.

"He was on

a quest,"

"Not an academic But did he

was

it all,

was

quest, but

how

student Karen Anderson put

really believe in that stuff?

really, just a

game?

it.

a real quest."

That was their question.

Or

/ expected

to

wake up and see my good mother

bending protectively over my bed at home.

and I will expect her cool and soft

will be to the end,

hand to

dispel evil even at the

— LP.

Culianu and H.

"The Emerald

And so it

hour of my death.

S. Wiesner,

Game"

RELIGION AS A SYSTEM

Every once in mica-bright,

warm

a

gift

while a Chicago spring offers one perfectly

of a day.

The

air will

be cool and fragrant

with smells of cotton wood, prairie wind, and whitefish off the inland sea of

Lake Michigan. The sun

will glint off the lake

with a hint of

immortality, casting such sharply geometric shadows

on the dra-

matic skyline that the city will look surreally emerald, as ing

itself

again to reclaim the great romance

it

if

rous-

once offered — of

"

III

10

nature

CRIMI

I

new

metropolis, gangsters, and

s

schools of

art, literature,

and economics. If there

was

reclaimed in

1

a place

991,

it

where one might look

was the campus of the University of Chicago.

Founded one hundred years laureates,

alumni

1

1

who

earlier, the

school boasted 64 Nobel

American Academy of Arts and Sciences members,

3

included Philip Glass and Susan Sontag, and teachers

the late Enrico Fermi and

like

for that promise to be

Leon Lederman.

Isolated

on the

city's

South Side, the campus neighborhood featured the most seminaries per square mile of any spot in the world.

The

reason for the clustering of seminaries around campus was

the university's Divinity School,

who

home

of scholars

like

Paul Tillich,

popularized a vision of Christian faith in the atomic era; Paul

Ricoeur, the French thinker Eliade, the

New

Romanian

"exile

on theological philosophy; and Mircea from

eternity," as

No one thinker had

York Times.

power of the "sacred" or the deeper

he was dubbed by the

so profoundly studied the lost level

of life in modern times as

the author of such widely read books as The Sacred and the Profane

and The Myth of the Eternal Return.

May

2

1

the annual

at the Divinity

School was marked by the excitement of

book sale and the

anticipation of term's end. Outside the

gothic Swift Hall, graduate students chatted in groups or lounged

on the stone

Leafy oak trees shaded a tour guide

steps.

cussed campus

who

dis-

safety with a group of high school juniors and their

parents.

Inside class

Room

202 of Swift Hall, loan Culianu was finishing up his

Fundamentals of Comparative Religion, in which the

subject was gnosticism.

discovered in the

He

modern

story, these scrolls

discussed the

Nag Hammadi

day's

texts, re-

era in 1945. "As if in a classic detective

had been hidden for centuries because they

of-

fered variations of the Bible, challenging the Christian church's idea

of truth," he

said.

The

gnostics saw

escape from the ignorant gods

who

life as

sabotage, rebellion, and

ruled the world.

gnostic knowledge," he concluded, "was to use

change the world." "

He

it.

It

"The point of was meant to

read aloud from the prologue of one

text:

'These are an offering to an ideal order that completely transcends

life

will

as

we know it

Whoever finds the interpretation of these

not experience death.'

texts

n

Religion as a System

After class Culianu and

book sale.

It

was

some of his

Hyde Park event,

a

bers, retired professors, scholars,

down

to the

attracting students, staff mem-

who toiled in or lived The crowd filed into the

and others

near the great university's offices and Swift

students headed

labs.

Common room, lined with oppressive oak wainscoting, where

cas toffs like

Kenneth

Clark's

The Nude or Herbert Marcuse's One-

Dimensional Man lay stacked on tables and chairs, and on the

On

floor.

stereo speakers Ice-T blared, rattling the dust off portraits of

past deans.

At the Culianu.

graduate student Alexander Arguelles approached

sale

That afternoon Arguelles was from

the faculty, so he sought advice professors. "I'm nervous about "It's just a rite

back.

"It's

this,"

do

fear. You'll

Arguelles watched

him walk to

Culianu bounded up the main a

first thesis talk

his closest friend

he

among

to

the

said.

of passage." Culianu smiled and patted him on the

nothing to

been juggling

to give his

dozen different

fine.

the

See you in a couple hours."

stairs,

stairwell.

trying to feel reassured.

For several weeks he had

projects. Earlier in the

week he had

sponsored an international scholarly conference on "after-death journeys," the

first

religion conference

on campus in years. Entitled

Other Realms: Death, Ecstasy, and Otherworldly Journeys cent Scholarship,

it

featured speakers

from Barnard College, He-

brew University, Princeton, Notre Dame, and other talks

had

titles

Re-

in

schools.

The

such as "The Ascent of the Visionary" and "Tran-

scendence of Death." His students Greg Spinner and Michael Al-

"He demonstrated

locca catered the final dinner.

continuities in reports of otherworldly journeys

explanation," said a reviewer of Culianu's later

the worldwide

and demanded an

book on the

subject.

A university press wanted to publish the conference papers. He

had three books in press

journeys, another

at

once — the book on otherworldly

on gnosticism, and

a dictionary of religions.

He

had several more close to contract, including

a

clopedia of magic for Oxford University Press.

He was teaching two

courses, Otherworldly Journeys

multivolume ency-

and Out-of-Body Experiences and

Fundamentals of Comparative Religions, supervising several doctoral students,

his

and planning

his first trip in nineteen years

back to

home country of Romania. He was also planning to get married.

:

1

1

CRIME

I

1

His fiancee was I

larvard.

Ills

Hilary Wiesner, a graduate divinity student at

I

Quiet and

distant, she

had blossomed

in their relationship.

two of the forthcoming books and

coauthor on

of short fiction, she was planning to travel with

summer and have such

about the

a party!" trip.

where

Ia§i,

meet

to

his

numerous pieces

him

his family for the first time.

Europe

to

that

"We're going to

he would exclaim when he was feeling good

They would

see Transylvania

and

hometown of

his

grandfather and great-grandfather had directed the

country's oldest university. loan and Hillary had discussed such a trip often since the country's

1989 revolution.

Culianu made long telephone

him

pressed

to return.

before, he told her he

He

calls to his sister late at night.

She

kept changing his mind. Three days

was being threatened by

a far rightist

group

with which a former professor of his was closely associated. She

downplayed the danger: people were threatened kept his plane tickets.

"We

concluding remarks

said in his

still

mistake the space of the

we

inative realms. is

and

let on.

is

at the conference.

"Although we

in these tales for the space out-

no

historical truth

less

powerful than the

latter.

have their roots in these imag-

Every individual thinks part of a tradition and there-

thought by

history

mind

are learning the former

Identity, power,

fore

the time. So he

cannot say where these after-death journeys take place," he

had

side,

all

But he was more worried than he

it,

allowing us to perceive the obscure roots of

which go back to the dawn of Homo

exploration of our

mind space

is

sapiens.

And

yet, the

only at the beginning."

Culianu was also having some fun. Earlier in the month he had

been the featured scholar

at a national science fiction

the Hilton in Schaumburg, Illinois.

and participated in bad magic?"

He

disorder," he said.

conference at

He lectured on the

a panel exploring questions

such

Renaissance

as "Is all

defended magical practice: "Magic

is

"On the contrary, it reestablishes a peaceful coex-

istence

between the conscious and unconscious when

tence

under

is

The

magic

not about

this coexis-

attack."

conference's featured author, science fiction writer

John

Crowley, had asked Culianu to be the Special Scholar Guest. Crowley

had read Culianu's Eros and Magic in

eager to meet

its

author.

the Renaissance

The book was

dense and

and had been

difficult,

but

it

Religion as a System

"He

captured Crowley's imagination. nosis was possible, call

13

suggested a kind of mass hyp-

by means the Renaissance

called magical but

we

psychological, through the use of erotically charged images,"

Crowley

said.

friends. "I

Crowley

The two had met

a year earlier,

becoming

never had such an intense, sudden friendship in

said.

close

my life,"

For Culianu, who secretly wanted most of all to be

a

fantasy writer, the conference was a great inspiration. Participants in his conference sessions felt the

same way about him. Conference

organizer Jennifer Stevenson said that Culianu "hit you with such

somehow much richer and more

an impact, he made the world seem

mysterious than you ever imagined."

On

the last night of the conference, Culianu read his fiction for

time in America to a packed audience in a suite nicknamed

the

first

the

Dharma Buns Cafe. Cowritten with Hillary,

"The Language of Creation" and was

the story was called

to be published in National

Public Radio columnist Andrei Codrescu's magazine, Exquisite Corpse. It describes a scholar very

much

a "grey

on

a Lake," teaching at

whom many

and renowned Midwestern University," to

strange coincidences occur, almost real life.

Culianu, "forty years

like

old, living in a high-rise security building

The

story's

all

of which were based on his

main character comes

to possess an ancient

music box, which he believes contains a key to the language spoken

by God: the Language of Creation. Yet the three former owners of the box each

met with murder.

Although the narrator ually,

tries to

however, he begins to

break the code, he cannot. Grad-

feel

threatened by the strange oc-

currences or "charismata" he associates with the box, wondering

whether they signal some greater meaning than he

realizes.

The

"charisms" included the ability to divine events, but only petty ones like

whether

his

love charism,"

doorman will shave

his

mustache, and a "misplaced

which caused certain female students to develop un-

wanted crushes on him. Culianu read: "After

a certain

moment my

conviction of an occult connection between the charismata and the

box had become so powers against a I

solid that I

was tempted to make

distasteful political

might imminently resume the

fate

regime

a test of

its

The hypothesis that

of [the former owners] came to

haunt me." After much indecision, the narrator leaves the music box

THE CRIME

14

at a

yard sale and escapes to freedom from what had become an

intellectual prison

posed by

its

secret.

At the end of the conference, Hillary Wiesner noticed that her fiance

seemed

He

locked the keys in their rented

running.

He could not remember when

terribly distracted.

red Toyota while

it

was

still

they were to see each other next.

When

return to Cambridge.

He kept pressing her to stay, not to

he saw her

off"

at

O'Hare

airport,

he

looked sadder than she had ever seen him, as though he carried the

What

weight of the world on his shoulders.

he desperately needed,

she thought, was a good vacation.

At about quarter to one on

— a small,

Hall canteen

May

crowded, stuffy basement coffee shop with

Danish but good Kona

plastic-sealed

Culianu was in the Swift

21,

coffee, falafel,

and

a

buzz of

heated conversation. There he chatted with students, then took the

main

stairwell

He

up two

steps at a time back to the third floor.

stopped in his secretary's office at the end of the

quieter

up here. Classes were

He

were closed.

and walked to

asked

if

his office a

hall. It

and seminar room doors

in session,

he had any messages, picked up

Sitting at her desk, secretary

Gwen

member

Barnes listened to the dron-

dictating his

book chapter on

her headphones. She often worked through lunch because only way to stay ahead of her assignments. served, loan Culianu

black South Side Chicago, she had

him when they bright league.

first

met.

He

was by felt

far

had made her an

Of

it

was the

the three faculty

her favorite. Raised in

an instinctive empathy with

greeted her in the morning with

"Good morning, Gwendolyn!" and

He

his mail,

few yards away.

ing voice of another faculty

members she

was

a

treated her as a col-

editorial associate

on

his scholarly

quarterly, Incognita: International Journal for Cognitive Studies in the

Humanities.

He took her to lunch and remembered her birthday. He

encouraged her to earn her masters' degree. for twelve years, she

A university secretary

knew the academic world well enough to recog-

nize that his attitude toward his secretary

was not

typical.

Across from her another secretary was mouthing something at her.

Gwen

Barnes looked up and pulled off the headphones.

Religion as a System

15

"What?" "Did you hear that?" "Car backfiring," "It

sounded

room.

said the third secretary in the

Only more high-pitched."

like a firecracker.

Professor Jerry Brauer sat in his corner office, wearing his trade-

mark bow tie

he prepared for

windows

lead glass

and

as

his seminar.

to look out over the

a specialist in Puritanism,

he had

that he

was going to have to go to the

A former dean

sunny quad.

his

out and was reviewing it, concentrating.

He had opened his tall,

yellowed lecture outline

He gradually became aware men's room. He decided to

finish what he was working on.

was

It

a little after

one o'clock when he heard the loud pop.

kept working, but a part of his mind went off on

its

couldn't wait.

No. Can't

Gunshot? No. Can't be. Swift Hall, one

was not more than

It

He tried to

own.

decide what could cause such a sound: Car backfire? road's too far away.

five

minutes

later

He be,

o'clock.

when he decided he

He had to use the men's room. He headed up through

the swinging doors, taking the steep service

The

stairs.

steps

echoed. Downstairs an overflowing dumpster stood beside a door that

opened into the lobby; up above was another

doors.

The

stairs

were deserted.

He came

directly opposite the men's room.

A tall,

set of

swinging

out on the third

lanky young

floor,

man whom

Brauer did not recognize stood out in front. Brauer pushed the

bathroom door. The student grabbed

his arm.

"Don't go

in,

Pro-

fessor Brauer."

Brauer had already pushed in tory with

its

blue

stalls,

peered at the second

yellow

stall

hand dangled beneath the

far

enough

tile,

fluorescent lights.

from the window. stall

ing out from a turquoise shirt

to see the familiar lava-

It

A

was deathly

student quiet.

A

door, with curled white fingers pokcuff.

Blood made

a small pool

on the

floor.

"Something terrible's happened," "I

can see

that!

said the student.

We gotta help!" Brauer said.

"We already called for help." The student turned toward Brauer. He was short, blond, and very

THE CRIME

16

was Jim Egge.

scared. It

he

He

looked white as a sheet. "Dr. Brauer!"

"He's dead."

said.

"Who?

Who's dead?

"I'm not sure."

Suddenly

congregation of firemen, campus security

a

and paramedics came running down the

hall.

At

first

officers,

there were per-

haps five people, followed quickly by another group that included a

Chicago police sergeant and two beat cops. Everything happened

Within minutes

quickly. a

moment two Chicago

a

melee

in the hall.

"Jerry!" he said.

a

paramedic wheeled

in a stretcher. After

detectives stepped in.

By then

"What is

it?"

Brauer pushed him toward the detective. "This said.

there was

Clark Gilpin, the current dean, had arrived.

"What's going on?

is

our dean," he

We have to know who it is."

"Sure, but not right now. We're too busy."

Following them out came the paramedics with the stretcher.

oxygen mask covered the victim's the face.

The

The paramedic removed

victim's face

like a fifty-

wound

face.

the mask. Gilpin peered down.

had swollen gray and expressionless.

or sixty-year-old man.

He

looked

No blood-soaked cavity or glaring

revealed the violence of the death. Gilpin turned to Brauer.

"I don't

know him," he

"Well then,

said.

who does?" Brauer asked.

Jerry Brauer returned to the seminar waited, but

no one wanted

to discuss

room where

American

his students

revivalism.

kept hearing footsteps moving outside and a low hubbub. sale continued.

Afterward Brauer would think:

come running when the shot was fired? long to cordon off the building's

complete

his review

Why

They

The book

had no one

Why did it take the police so

exits? If

only he had not waited to

of his notes, he might have seen the

could not stop thinking about

Gwen

An

Clark Gilpin asked to look at

killer.

He

it.

Barnes never heard the shot. She

first

learned of

it

from

another secretary. Only two yards from the bathroom, they never

thought of it

as a

gunshot.

A young man came running in, telling her

to call the university police. It

seemed

to her that the security of-

Religion as a System

ficers

took forever to come. She called again. After hanging up she

went

hesitated, then

room

to look. In the men's

from the courtyard window, bathing the 1950s spreading from the fourth a

long

tile,

17

moment

stall,

sunlight streamed

floor

tile.

Blood was

shining in the fluorescent light. For

the scene held her

— the yellow and

black specked

the hand, and an unusual opal watch that looked

familiar. Just

then

loud rushing sound

a

somehow

made her jump out of her

skin — the urinals' automatic flush. She left.

Later she too saw the body on the stretcher. Despite the khaki trousers, turquoise striped shirt, yellow

and watch, she did not know

when

a

who

it

tie,

was.

maroon-bordered It

socks,

was almost 2:00 p.m.

Chicago patrolman asked to use her phone. As she talked

with another secretary, she overheard him spelling a name. "C-u-1-i-a, n-o,

A

a,

n-u-u, no, U!"

down

wave swept her up and carried her forward. She ran

main

steps, tears

streaming

down her

face,

the

not hearing herself

"Oh God, oh God. It's Mr. Culianu! No, no, not Mr. Not Mr. Culianu!" In the hall conversations stopped.

screaming: Culianu!

Gwen

rushed into

wail. "It's

it is!

it's

said.

not."

Yes

At 3:30 when

it is!"

his

the dean's office.

seminar had a break, Jerry Brauer strode

maybe loan Culianu, had committed

students could not believe

it.

Culianu?

One

to

The book sale crowd

still

moved

freely in

on the front

and out; the stereo

belted out concert announcements for the month.

A few policemen

patrolled the building while detectives Ellen Weiss and Al

questioned a student who had

suicide.

of the happiest

professors there? Small groups milled in the lobby and steps.

down

By then the rumor was spreading around the build-

ing that someone,

Most

Gilpin's office, her cries rising in a loud

Mr. Culianu!" she

"No, no, "Yes

Dean

McGuire

made the error of telephoning, hyper-

ventilating in his fear, to find out if the

rumor was true.

In his somber office Gilpin sat quietly in a swivel chair. Ashen, he

took a minute between telephone loan Culianu, Jerry," he

said.

calls.

"And

I

He stared at Brauer.

didn't even recognize

was

"It

him

." .

.

18

THE CRIME

"What happened?" "Well, the police think

"Did

they find the

"No, no,

there's

gun :

it

might be

suicide."

"

no gun."

"Where do they think the gun is?" who took it away." "They say maybe he had a friend "And implicate oneself in something like this? Suicide? He's .

.

.

just

got his green card, he's going back to see his family, he's getting

married

.

.

.

Wasn't he

sitting

on the

toilet?"

"Yeah."

"Come

on, what

take a gun, and stick

human being would go it

in the

in, pull his

back of his head?

pants down,

Where are

these guys

coming from?" "Well,

it

might be murder."

"Might be}"

The

initial suicide

television. After

aminer's report

report was in the newspapers, and

twenty-four hours, though,

came

in,

there was

when

no question.

it

was on

the medical ex-

was murder.

It

Greg Spinner and Michael Allocca noticed an ambulance outside Swift Hall when they unpacked groceries for the weekly Wednesday lunch for divinity students and

was to cover the theology of the

faculty.

ABC

That week's lunch

television series

After they finished, Patty Mitchell approached

Twm

Greg out

talk

Peaks.

in front of

building.

"Greg? Did you hear?"

"Hear what?" "loan committed suicide." "loan? Don't be ridiculous. last

person in the world

I

just

saw him

this

morning. He's the

who would commit suicide."

Mitchell gave him a funny look.

Greg walked

across the leafy quad to the Regenstein Library,

hardly giving a thought to Patty s rumor. his calendar a

reminder to

call

He remembered to note in

loan; they had a longstanding date to

get together as soon as his teacher's hectic settling into his study carrel,

friend,

life

calmed down. After

Greg saw another

Divinity School

Jason Gerber, approaching him. Jason's eyes were red.

"Greg," he burst out. "loan's committed suicide!"

Religion as a System

"Who's spreading this rumor? ridiculous. loan did not,

It's

suicide."

I just

would

heard

it

from Patty Mitchell.

not, could not, ever

But slowly Greg rose and headed

1

commit

back to find out exactly

what was going on.

Out on

the quad the spring air carried something soft, like the

mind

breath of memory. His

started to race.

Without knowing it he

ran a series of deductions, just as loan claimed the history of an idea or religion would follow.

Number

one: loan

would not commit

Number two: here were ambulance and, now, squad cars. Number three: two people had repeated a rumor loan was dead. If it suicide.

was

true, if

murder

.

.

.

Greg he was

loan was dead, then

Who

it

had to be murder.

would murder loan?

A year

earlier

getting into "dangerous territory" in

But what writing? Greg was running over now.

If it

was

he had told

some writing

One

look at

.

.

.

Gwen

Barnes's stricken face and his neat train of thought abruptly ended.

Later that day Culianu's students gathered on the steps of Swift Hall, crying, trying to console each other.

ging each other.

We

"We

just sat there,

hug-

couldn't speak," said Greg. Other students

came up, each pressing the other for news. There was little.

No gun,

no money stolen, no sign of struggle. In the evening the group headed over to Jimmy's, a favorite stu-

dent bar where loan had often gone with them after apart tables

from them

in the dark, seedy front

and some broken

editor of Incognita.

He

tioning. Nathaniel's

chairs,

class. Sitting

room, amid the scattered

was Nathaniel Deutsch,

assistant

did not join in their reminiscing and ques-

mother was East European, and

partly for that

reason loan Culianu had shared a special relationship with him. In the darkness Nathaniel listened to the others and stared blankly at the dusty editions of baseball encyclopedias and almanacs kept

on

He rested his head on his arms and began crying for relatives lost in the Holocaust. He did not, exactly, the shelf to settle bar arguments.

know why.

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, Culianu's twenty-seven -year-old

fi-

ancee, Hillary Wiesner, was in a deep afternoon sleep. Often loan

TH

20

CRIM

E

E

would telephone her that

he woke from

after

nap, describing a dream

a

would be exactly what she was doing, or explaining something

move or some obscure

significant about his next publishing

mology.

was part of the

It

fabric of

Hillary had hardly held hands with a man.

Her

friends described

women at Rad-

her as intense, otherworldly, and one of the smartest

men? No, none, not before

College. Incredibly funny. But

cliffe

cos-

with him. Before loan,

life

loan.

The phone She

rang, and she jumped.

sat bolt upright, frozen.

league, holder of the

Wendy

dreamless.

Doniger, loan's col-

in the faculty of the Di-

department member. "Hillary?

down. Are you

sit

Her sleep had been

was

Mircea Eliade chair

vinity School, a powerful

you better

It

sitting

Hillary,

down?"

"What?" There was been

a silence.

"I'm afraid

I

have to

tell

you

.

.

loan has

.

killed."

"What?" "I

.

.

.

I

.

.

.

Hillary, the police are asking if

who would do such a thing.

you know of anyone

I'm so terribly sorry ..."

For about one minute she couldn't breathe. Maybe

was ten

it

minutes. Oh, she finally thought. Tears couldn't come. She looked at

her wall, covered with pictures of him

Cairo, from the

mayeur and

Metra

Paris.

— from

train in Chicago,

from

Milan, Madrid,

Rome

and Cour-

He was grinning in front of the big American flag

she had bought him, "flown over the Capitol!" he liked to tors.

He was

giving her the

V for Victory sign he

was probably America's biggest patriot

.

.

.

liked to

tell visi-

make.

He

Slowly, methodically, she

began taking the pictures down.

Trustees office at Amherst College. again, her

By

work

in the

Board of

the time she had

hung up

She hung up and telephoned her mother

at

mother saying she was on her way, Hillary was already

thinking about packing her bags. She pulled out her suitcase,

with the O'Hare destination tag from her very

easily,

very

clearly, as

matics problem and

know

one might figure out

a difficult

it

mathe-

was right and

She had thought about

even discussed

still

dawned on her

instantly that the solution

true and something more, fated. tried to prepare herself,

last visit. It

it

before,

with her friends. You

Religion as a System 21

had to have

a

myth

for

your

life,

he once told

her,

some

discover to live by and turn to at your darkest moments. all this

time, just

when

derful for them, she find one.

everything seemed to have

story

Now,

become

so

you

after

won-

remembered. She had never taken the time to

Mnemosyne, said

the Greeks,

is

the

mother of

the Muses; the history of the training of this most

fundamental and elusive of human powers will plunge us into deep waters.

— Frances Yates, The Art of Memory

THE AFTERMATH

Every day students

left:

roses,

lilies,

scattered petals at Culianu's office door.

fresh bouquets, and

Chicago detectives Ellen

Weiss and Al McGuire stayed past midnight the sifting

through the evidence and conflicting rumors.

had apparently walked past Culianu's perched on sor's

first

head.

a toilet seat,

exit

The

entered the next

and pointed the gun down

From the entry and

left-handed.

stall,

few nights,

wounds, the

killer

killer stall,

at the profes-

appeared to be

The Aftermath 23

The

known

police district

as

Area

One on

Chicago's South Side

averaged some two hundred murders a year, mostly drug and gang

This one was unlike any other the police had encountered.

killings. It

yielded virtually

no

questing that no one

them

solid evidence. Detectives

that the professor

They found

found

note re-

a

lock Culianu's office door; his secretary told

had commissioned

a close

change in door

locks.

his family yard in

Ro-

emotional link with events

five

in his desk three walnuts

mania — evidence only of

a

from

thousand miles away. In Culianu's apartment a fax arrived from the office

of the exiled king of Romania. Your box arrived, the fax

but

was opened and empty.

it

The

What did you send? The autopsy

found no

coroner's report offered few clues.

"stippling" or

said,

gunpowder burns on the entrance wound, suggesting

that the unusually small gun, a .25 caliber Beretta,

was shot from

point at least eighteen inches from Culianu's head.

"To kill with one

shot from a .25 at that distance, that's not easy," said

medical examiner Robert Stein.

He

called

it

a

Cook County

"an expert shot,

like a

gangland execution."

On

network

New

bune to the

television

the killing was the

American

on

BBC

and in newspapers from the Chicago Tri-

York Times, Culianu's friends and family maintained first political

assassination of a professor

on

In articles and short stories in Italy and America and

soil.

broadcasts, they said, Culianu had called the 1989 revolu-

home country a bitter failure. He attacked the new Roma-

tion in his

He

nian government with almost prophetic insight. threats, as did other writers,

received death

and he attributed these to

right in his country, linked to the old

a

new

far

Communist security police, or

Securitate.

But investigators found no record of the reported them to the FBI or the police.

any

letters.

trip

home

students,

intact.

While the

and stumped

speaking agent

named

police, the

assassination, but not like

would have chosen

uous

site.

He would a "he."

killing

stunned the school,

FBI flew

Gabriella Burger.

killer

purse.

never showed anyone

Detectives found his airplane and car reservations for a

still

even been

Culianu never

threats.

He

in a special

The murder

any the FBI had ever seen.

a higher-caliber

gun and

.25

was small enough to

Romanian-

looked like an

A professional

a far less conspic-

He

have fired more than once.

The

terrified

fit

might not have into a

woman's

THE CRIME

24

If

the killing was a political crime, then the biggest question was

Why?

known

loan Culianu was becoming well

he was not

tional circle of scholars, but

The crime seemed

to pose

a

in a special interna-

major player

what Culianu would have

in politics.

called a lu-

dibrium, a high Renaissance riddle that reveals a mystery of the universe in

unraveling.

its

Why would a historian of religions and a

would-be fantasy writer who had arrived

dream of making the

best-seller

list

United States with

in the

a

have seemed so dangerous to

someone?

While the FBI focused on the detectives

idea of a political murder, Chicago

McGuire and Weiss worked on

theories of a disgrunded

student or colleague, an occult fanatic, a homosexual lover, an interrupted mugging, or a drug deal gone sour. Right before loan

Culianu was

they discovered, he placed a

killed,

Hall office to someone in Medellfn, Colombia.

call

from

The

his Swift

call lasted

one

minute.

Culianu was an enthusiastic and sympathetic friend, detectives learned, and a groundbreaking thinker astral religion,

and the Renaissance magic

monics" refined by

a sixteenth-century

dano Bruno. Scholars praised

command. "He had

how

his

and

who

arts

in the outside world."

of memory or "mne-

philosopher

his creativity, boldness,

a rare ability," recalled

his students'

specialized in dualism,

Dean

named Giorand

linguistic

Gilpin, "to

work could be connected

show

to larger events

His courses on such subjects were extremely

"He was one of the few faculty members who actually just talked to students," said Karen Anderson. "He popular. Students adored him.

met us

at the

Allocca.

seminar door and greeted us by name," said Michael

Greg Spinner added,

"I'll just

never

know anyone

again." Recalling his teacher's willingness to

Nathaniel Deutsch

As

a teacher

said,

"He was

a

buy him

like

him

breakfast,

mensch."

he was open, funny, and controversial. As a friend,

however, he was secretive and insular.

He seemed as if he was hiding

"He was very complicated really, very difficult to know," one faculty member, who saw him as a consummate academic

something. said

husder.

He was

suspected of seducing female students, or of trying

the drug-induced ecstasies he wrote about.

"A couple of

faculty

The Aftermath 25

really hated

had

just

Well,

him," said a student who did not want to be named.

been tenured.

My

thought when he was

first

killed

"He was

now they'll be happy."

Criticized as a "yuppie exile" and a self-promoter, he left behind totally conflicting impressions

of who, exactly, he was.

a charismatic forty-one-year-old

who had

emigre fluent in

brilliant, origi-

erlands,

and the United

patterns in daily

Umberto Eco. His

him from Romania

itual quest, taking

life.

He

States, as

was

a spir-

to Italy, France, the

Neth-

he sought

a

themes

at the university memorial service

students, friends,

life

key to universal

claimed to have found that key in the

imagination. Divinity School dean Clark Gilpin

As

languages

seminal contribution on the history of hermetic (magical)

thought," according to his friend

crime's

was

earned three Ph.D.'s, including the doctorat d'etat from the

Sorbonne. His supporters considered his work to be nal, "a

six

He

summed up on June

3,

the

1991.

and university administrators packed into

Rockefeller Chapel, Gilpin spoke not of politics or motives but of the relation of ideas to the world:

"The university's reason for being

displays helplessness before a violent foresee, could

not

deflect,

power

that ideas could not

could not comprehend.

.

.

.

The

relation

of human thought to the mysterious power at the heart of creation takes on new urgency. Is there any enduring connection between the human ideas to which universities are accountable and some eternal wisdom present at the primordium, when God 'set a compass upon

the face of the deep'?"

Around the world the crime set off a wave of telephone calls between Culianu's friends and fellow exiles, including Andrei Codrescu and

Saul Bellow. Their suspicions rested police, a force so vicious

pean countries did not cists,

who may

secret

trust

them. Others suspected Romania's

fas-

have once counted Mircea Eliade, Culianu's gentle,

renowned mentor,

Guard had

on the ex-Communist

even their counterparts in other East Euro-

as

settled in

one of them.

Many members

of the Iron

North America's Midwest, evading respon-

sibility for

one of

lectured

over the world about the power of the past, while acting

as

all

history's

least-known holocausts. loan Culianu

though someone from the past was always

at his heels.

Whatever

THE crimp:

i6

motive, his murder sounded most of all like the plot of one of the

its

was writing, an enigma

fantasy novels he

eerily foreseen

by the

victim himself.

Like his mentor, or the mystics, or the romantic poets, Culianu

and coincidences

our

felt

that the details

the

most fundamental questions of who we and

quality of his fiction

dimension to

est

rialized

like his

cared to look

lives offer

are. It

an answer to

was the prophetic

political

statements that added the strang-

He

wrote of

political events that

later,

of secret

his story.

months or years

markably

in

sects,

mate-

and of murders

re-

own. This legacy offered clues to anyone who

— to

the logic of our universe, to our psyches, and,

perhaps, to the identity of his

killers.

In the last chapters he wrote before his death, he almost seemed to explain the proliferation of theories about his murder. In

"Games

People Play," from The Tree of Gliosis, he began with the story of a

Chicago gangster

who

Culianu compared his idea of historical

more permutations

He

move by flipping a coin. movements branching into

decided his next

to the decisions of the gangster flipping his coin.

called the process the "multiplication of theories."

He

claimed

that the twentieth century's fascination with "archetypes, formalism

and structuralism" demonstrated upheaval, such as a revolution, cesses operating in history.

He

a conviction that in

we can most

moments of

clearly see deeper pro-

wrote that such convulsions reveal

systems of thought, each functioning almost as "an object coming

from

outside

and crossing our space

way, in which there are able

to

is

a

in an apparently disconnected

hidden logic which we can reveal

move out of our space.

only ifwe

"

Other scholars found such formulations

either exciting and pro-

found or unproved and bizarre. In the space of a few months investigators

the

later, a

young man, with

same birthday as loan Culianu, offering evidence from

series life

would have two suspects and, much

of experiences.

No

a strange

one, though, could see the background of a

that cut across boundaries of time and geography, the experience

from which Culianu's thought sprang.

*

The world is a chiaroscuro:

there are enough traces

and signs ofa superior presence

—LP.

Culianu, Eros and

to

make

it

bearable.

Magic in the Renaissance

THE ART OF MEMORY

Culianu was born in a once-beautiful eastern Moldavia. boyar,

He came

or noble, family in

Ia§i,

from the most or Jassy, a

home on

intellectual

cultural and

a hill in

branch of

near the Soviet border. If the most striking thing about his its

extraordinary unity, then

its

themes were

a

scientific center

set in a region

life

was

"where

streams sprang up and swift rivers poured down, whispering secrets," as the

Moldavian author Ion Creanga wrote.

Spanning part of Europe's eastern

frontier,

Romania

is

a fertile

30

vol

11

i

land long pressed by empires, from the

Roman

to the Soviet.

"The

history of Romania," reads an official guide brochure, "is undoubt-

edly one of the most tormented parts of European history." Enclosed by Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Ukraine, and Moldovia, the

an outpost — a Latin people set the farthest north of any

country

is

Latin, a

European land

set the farthest east

of any European. With

Romanians "can

culture poised between the Orient and the West,

be counted

among the

a

great practitioners of the ... art of survival,"

observed historian Istvan Deak.

Dominated by foreign power and subjected ship, first foreign

and then

native,

to corrupt leader-

Romanians survived

people

as a

primarily through the shared experience of telling stories.

weapons of sabotage were ambiguity, humor, mystery,

"Our

poetry, song,

and magic," wrote Andrei Codrescu. The most famous Romanian the West, Dracula,

is

a fictional character based

fifteenth-century prince Vlad

Te P e

§>

on the

or Vlad the Impaler.

emblematic national symbol to many Romanians sheep, Miori^a,

in

named

aptly

The most

an enchanted

is

who foresees the murder of her beloved

shepherd

at

the hands of his brothers. Instead of resisting his fate, the shepherd

triumph through

instructs Miorit.a to transform his tragedy into

myth. "Tell

my

really a

wedding presided

The Romanian

poet Lucian Blaga

mother the murder was

over by the sun and the moon."

adopted the shepherd for a national "mioritic space,"

a

world of the

imagination no conqueror can violate. Mircea Eliade saw in him a national escape

Culianu's

from

history.

A Westerner would see him as mad.

home town of Ia§i was a provincial

capital

and center of

"the holy land of nationalism," with cobblestone boulevards and

domed synagogue, and

trolley cars, a

the Great (145 7- 1504).

statues of heroes like §tefan

Dominated by the

stately white

politan cathedral, the intricately carved Trei Ierarhi, or

archs church, and the fantastic,

featured

some

Metro-

Three Hier-

enormous Palace of Culture,

of the country's great institutions of literature

oldest university, presided over

Ia§i

and

its

by Culianu's grandfather and great-

grandfather.

The Culianu 172

1,

boyars

fleeing

family had escaped to

Ottoman

Romania from Greece

in

persecution. In Ia§i they entered a world of

and peasants, of church privilege and deep

narrow rutted roads, shrouded

valleys, steep

class divisions,

of

mountains, and broad

The Art ofMemory 31

melancholy

plains.

four-fifths of the population

Nearly

were peas-

and most of them were uneducated. Out of the mountains their

ants,

along as they had for centuries, driven by

carts puttered

ing fur hats and layers of wool coats, their

them in bundles of wool.

women

The surrounding plains

of wind, snow, and charcoal

men wear-

seated beside

in winter smelled

fires.

In the nineteenth century Culianu's great-grandfather Neculai

Culianu helped found the Junimea Society, or Young Conservatives.

These

privileged

young men joined the pressing debate about

their country should follow the East or

whether

West

as a cultural

The Junimeists voted for the West, donning tight-collared many of their fathers still wore Turkish pashas' robes. They proposed a democratic program promoting the nation's model.

Parisian shirts while

arts

while preserving their privileges. As the University of

last's

president from 1880 to 1898, Neculai ("Papa") Culianu ceremoni-

ously rode his horsedrawn carriage the five blocks from his

home

to

the university, wearing a black greatcoat and top hat, demonstrating

and power of higher learning.

to a primitive region the perquisites It

was

a good time to be a

with gypsy or

Roma men

boyar.

melody on an

A pretty six-year-old Roma girl

inn, plant her feet firmly,

and play

exquisite miniature violin. Carolers

to the door, singing songs like

that

streets filled

playing drums, accordions, and saxo-

phones, pushing real dancing bears.

might come into the

At Christmas the

a haunting

came frequently

"Mo§ Craciun" (Old Man Christmas)

sounded otherworldly. There were big barrels of pickled cab-

bage, peppers, and cucumbers.

might

fall as

smells of roast

church incense and hearth

By the

On

Christmas Eve a beautiful snow

lamb and pork,

fires,

tsuica

or

plum brandy,

rose beneath the stars.

early years of the twentieth century the Culianus featured

prominently in physics, chemistry, mathematics, and law. their children to the best universities in

They sent

Bonn and Paris. They ruled

comfortable estates, farming, horse trading, and helping to build a

modern

infrastructure in science

friendly with

Zarifopol,

and

law.

They were

prominent people, including the

King

literary critic Paul

Carol's controversial mistress and first wife, Zizi

Lambrino, and the novelist Mihail Sadoveanu. As in the

related to or

Communist

a

boy growing up

world, loan Culianu learned early that he be-

YOUTH

}2

longed to

a

high tradition in a country where intellectuals served as

political leaders.

In contrast, his mother's father, the physicist and chemist Petru

Bogdan, was risk-taking,

a

an orthodox

who

peasant orphan

and savvy

built his career

through

priest, a beautiful Paris-trained pianist.

seven children,

all

of

whom

talent,

Bogdan married the daughter of

socializing.

They

raised

went on to become medical doctors,

scientists,

or attorneys. Sporting a busy white mustache and patri-

cian belly,

Bogdan rose

to the position of university rector in 1927.

His fourth child was graceful,

a funny, talented girl. Slight, dark,

and

Elena Bogdan was fiercely loyal to friends and family. She

earned a doctorate and professorship in inorganic chemistry, also

captured a world of picnics in the

Her photograph albums meadows of the Jiu Valley, at the

medieval castle at Hunnedoara, or

at the

developing a keen interest in photography.

girlfriends

posed with dresses

lifted

some young men wearing white plored the family house, with rinthine

its

beaches of Constanza.

Her

high or arm in arm with hand-

flannels. In half-lit prints she ex-

winding porch balustrade and laby-

rooms shaded by oak and walnut trees.

It

was

said to be the

home of the poet Veronica Micle, illicit lover of the national Mihai Eminescu. The garden where the literary couple met

former poet

secretly,

The

immortalized in their love poems, stood a few streets away.

1920s offered a period of freedom, unrest, and rising wealth.

After the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Greater Ro-

mania increased role

and

it

by almost

had long expected.

factories,

bank

in size

rates.

cusj, the

An

a third, poised to play the leading

oligarchy helped subsidize railroads

while newly landed peasants suffered under onerous

Avant-garde

artists like

the sculptor Constantin Bran-

playwright Eugene Ionesco, and the young novelist Mircea

Eliade vaulted the culture into the twentieth century while extolling the best of its unique, wild past.

Yet democratic traditions never really took root. Anti-Semitism

who joined the nation in new territories. At the University of Ia§i, a charismatic student named Corneliu Codreanu founded a fascist movement called the rose with the millions of ethnic minorities its

Legion of the Archangel Michael,

later the Iron

Guard.

One

of the

The Art ofMemory 33

oldest of

European

new politics and

a

fascist

movements, the Iron Guard

"new man" of moral, and

Guard's mystical nationalism appealed to lectuals dissatisfied

E.

called for a

ethnic, purity.

The Iron

many of the young

M. Cioran and Mircea Eliade. Evolving into what political

tist

intel-

with social corruption, including young writers scien-

Vladimir Tismaneanu called "the most straightforward expres-

sion of national anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe," the Iron

drew on a volatile and "temporary alliance between the

Guard

mob and the

elite."

As university ence in his

rector,

Petru Bogdan faced the Iron Guard's influ-

faculty and student body, and he brokered increasingly

violent clashes between Codreanu's followers and student socialists

and Communists. Twice the university had to be closed. As the country tilted toward alliance with the Axis powers, Bogdan became

known

for defending

some of

Ia§i's

Jews one day by wielding

his

marble-handled cane against their tormentors. Against this backdrop of fear Elena Bogdan began dating the son

of

last's

leading family. Sergiu Culianu had a fragile physique, a

military bearing, and owlish glasses. Because of

ill

health he had

returned from his studies of advanced differential calculus at the

Sorbonne munist

him

in Paris.

He suffered from asthma and later, under Com-

rule, tuberculosis. In Ia§i

he drove an old Citroen that made

neighborhood.

a character in the

When

it

stopped

its

engine

loudly sputtered and died unless his brother Henri jumped out to

crank still

it.

Arriving home, Henri or Sergiu leaped out while the car

moved, rousing chickens

as

they flung open their driveway gate.

During the summer of 1938 Sergiu and Elena took to swimming together in a nearby stream.

One day they stayed late with her sister home in the dark. The cab much shifting, Elena ended up on Ser-

and had to take a small horsedrawn cab

was

built for two,

and

after

giu 's lap. "I'm not hurting you?" she asked, laughing.

"Not yet!" he

called.

Two years later they were married.

In 1938 King Carol had the handsome young Corneliu Codreanu assassinated. In the public backlash Romania's Iron

moment.

It allied

Guard found

with the military dictator Ion Antonescu,

its

who

vol

34

I

II

took over from Carol in 1940. Within

new

tonescu

I33.I5M55

19,192-93,222-25

return to University of

reelection of, 177

Chicago

and revolution, 181-86, 202-

5,222-25,270-71 Chimera II conference, 233-34 Church History,

1

as lecturer,

126

with Hillary Wiesner, 126-62

149-51

in Italy,

tenure at University of

10

Chicago, 163

Cioran, E. M., 33, 66

Lumea Libera, 1 79. Lumea Libera

Codreanu, Corneliu, 32,33,116, 262

See also

and revolution, 182-89

Codresoi, Andrei, 25, 30, 89, 135, 186, 196, 208, 225-53, 2 73> 2 7 6

277

"Scoptophilia," >

202-9

Other Realms: Death, Ecstasy and Otherworldly 7

,

Exquisite Corpse,

1

Journeys in Recent

Coja, Ion, 45, 49, 62-63, 192, 259,

266

Scholarship Conference,

11,225,234-37

Collins, John, 180, 273

conference

titles, 11,

236-

Constantin, Nicolae, 212-13,

37

260-61

murder

Copernicus, 221

of,

9-28, 240-42

Works

Creanga, Ion, 29 Crowley, John, 12-13, 206, 23233> 2 48

Love and Sleep, 273 Culianu, Alexandru loan Petru

154-57,203 The Emerald

Collection,

173

Encyclopedia ofMagic, 215,

221

in Ia§i

family,

Dictionnaire des religions,

Eros and Magic in the

29-34

childhood, 35-40

Renaissance, 12,45,91, 112,

Varatic Monastery, 39-40

134, 154, 160,206,224,

University of Bucharest, 41-

233

magie a

67

Eros

Atlantida (Atlantis; literary

Renaissance,

group), 45, 62

Magic in

Communist

party,

51-54

et

la

1484 (Eros and

the Renaissance

1484), 107-10,

1

—

12-13,

Index 295

Modern

120, 129,134, 150-51, 154,

Christianity to

160, 206, 224, 264

Nihilism, 26, 142-43, 195,

221,234,239

Experiences de Vextase:

with Eliade

Extase, ascension et recit

World

visionnaire, de VHellenisme

Eliade Guide

au Moyen-Age

Religions, 112, 125, 167,

(Ecstatic

195,216,227,230

Experiences: Ecstasy,

Ascension

and

Encyclopedia ofReligions,

Visionary

Accountsfrom Hellenism

to the

Middle Ages), 106,

229

1 1 1,

112, 125,215

with Wiesner

"Freejormania," 273

Eliade Guide

Les Gnoses dualistes

Religions,

103, 152

d''Occident,

Incognita: International

Journalfor Cognitive Studies in the Humanities, 12, 19,

187,215

to

World

227

"The Emerald Game," 157 "The Late Repentance of Horemheb," 165, 194 "The Secret Sequence," 209,233

"The Intervention of the Zorabis in Jormania," 173,

198,273 Iter in silvis: Saggi scelti sulla

gnosi

to

e altri

studi (The

Road

Culianu, Sergiu, 33, 35 Culianu, Tess (Mrs. Dan Pretrescu)

childhood with loan, 36-37,

104

in Silver),

Culianu, Henri, 33 Culianu, Neculai, 3

"The Language of

56,66

Creation," 220, 233

marriage to Petrescu, 105

Libra,

visit to

104

La

nostalgie des origines

Quest),

(The

Otherworldly Journeys from

112, 167,

freed

arrest, 178,

from house

arrest,

in Poitiers, 209, 219,

99

Out of This World: Gilgamesh

Holland, 142

under house

Mircea Eliade, 99

to

Albert Einstein,

after the

183 183

226-28

murder, 248-49,

266, 274, 277

Cuza, Alexandru loan, 35

195,229-31,239, da Vinci, Leonardo, 85

251,264 Psychanodia:

A Survey of the

Dabezies, Andre, 226

Evidence Concerning

Davis, John, 271

Ascension of the Soul and Its

Death, Ecstasy, and Otherworldly

Relevence, 103, 128, 133,

229 Religione epotere (Religion

Journeys (ed. Collins), 273

Deutsch, Nathaniel,

19, 24, 167,

187,237

and Power; with Lombardo

Dick, Philip K., 239

and Romanato), 102, 104

Dictionary ofImaginary Places, 240

Tree of Gnosis: Gnostic

Doniger, Wendy, 20, 107,

Mythology from Early

125, 156, 160,

1 1 1,

174,247,252

1

,

296 Index

Dracula, 30

Sacred and the Profane, The,

Dragan, Constantin Dima, 263 Dragan, Iosif Constantin, 87, 223,

"Secret of Dr. Honiger,

10

224

The," 59-60, 99

Dreamtime (Duerr), 107 Duerr, Hans Peter, 107, ill, 175

Zalmoxis, 43 with Culianu. See Culianu,

Dulocq, Julia, 167

loan Petru: Works, with

Dumas, Alexandre, 39

Eliade

-12

Dumitrescu, Cornel, 219

Eliade, Christinel, 90,

Eco, Umberto, 25, 115, 143, 151,

130,154,175,233,239,248 Eminescu, Mihai, 32, 55, 96, 227,

160, 178, 188, 191, 208, 278

Economou-Zarifopol, Maria, 233 Edwards, Peggy, 241-42

Eggejim, 16

2 55 Escher,

M. C,

1 1 1

169, 187

Facon, Nina, 61

Einstein, Albert, 152, 167, 229

Fassbinder, Werner, 248

Eliade, Mircea, 10, 43-47, 59-60,

Faust, 54,

225-26

66, 141, 143, 152, 154-57, 163,

Fermi, Enrico, 10

227-32,238, 259,274, 277 with Culianu in Paris, 85-92

Ficciones

friendship with Culianu,

96-

100, 108-12 fire

Feyerabend, Paul, 107,

no

See Borges, Jorge Luis Ficino, Marsilio, 55, 81, 107-9,

atMeadville

library,

125-

128, 151, 158, 165

The Book ofLife, 46

26

Fishbane, Michael, 215, 250, 273

stroke, 130

Culianu

as

executor of papers,

Flacara,

254

Flatland (Abbott), 167, 169, 173,

134-36 1930s journalism, 173-74,

202-4

Foreign Correspondent (St. John), 98

Iron Guard accusations, 25,

Foucault, Michel, 41, 43

30-33,52,89,96-100,

Foucaults Penduhmi,

in, 116-19, 203-4,

Fourth Dimension (Rucker), 167

18, 259,

Buna

2I 7~

262-63

Vestire,

1

2

Funderburk, David, 270

157

Works

Galileo, 6, 109, 149, 221

Aspects ofMyth

and

Mythology, 43

Gamwell, Chris, 126, 130, 160, 162, 187, 228

"Boy with Eyeglasses,

Gamwell, Frances, 187, 228, 274

The," 96 Le chamanisme, 230

Gavriliu, Leonard, 255, 266

Myth of the Eternal Return,

Georgescu, Andrei, 102-3, 126

The, 10, 43

Georgescu, Carmen, 44, 101-4,

"Nights

59-60

in

Serampore,"

Geertz, Clifford, 113, 132

in, 164

118, 120, 129, 141, 156,

Index 297

Georgescu, Emil, 118

Jedlicka, Sandy, 256-60, 264-65,

Georgescu, Vlad, 34, 52 Gilpin, Clark, 16-18, 24, 250-52,

Jews, 32-35

268-69, 275—76

as mystics, 60,

277 Giurescu, Anca, 72-75, 78 Glass, Philip, 10

associate),

Gnosticism, 10, 39, 45, 80, 104,

166

"Johnny" ("Adrian Szabo"

's

211-12, 258-63, 269

Jonas, Hans, 91, 160, 207

Jones, Karen de Leon, 177

126 Culianu's research, 143, 152,

Jung, Gustav Carl, 43, 153

239-40,277 Kabbalah, 47, 165-66, 176

Gray, Hanna, 252

Kairos,

Harvey, William, 221 Hertzfeld, Kurt, 159, 178, 185,

219,225,247 Hinton, Edward,

1

Kligman, Gail, 196-97

70

Science (Thorndike),

no

34 Hockenos, Paul, 193, 223 2

Kremer, Charlie, 115

215

Hitler, Adolf,

Horia, Natalia,

(Behr), 184

Kitagawa, Joseph, 160

History ofMagic and Experimental

History of Science,

96

Kerouac, Jack, 44 Kiss the Hand You Cannot Bite

Harvard Review, 195

Lambrino, Mario, 84 Lambrino, Zizi, 3 Lanternari, Vittorio, 157

La Rose,

70

Elise,

247

Laurent, Marcel, 48 Idel,

Moshe, 165-66,

178, 208,

Lawrence, Judy, 241-42, 247, 260,

202-3, 207,

Lazzati, Giuseppe, 80

264-65,274

215-16,232,248 Iliescu, Ion, 185, 198,

223,236,253-54,259,265,271,

Lederman, Leon, 10

276-77

Leggere,

209

loan Culianu (Zolla), 273

Lenin, Vladimir, 167

Ionesco, Eugene, 32, 43, 184

Levi,

Ionescu, Nae, 98, 117, 157

Levi-Strauss, Claude, 43, 45, 208

n 6- 17

Iorga, Nicolae,

Iron Guard, 25, 87, 24, 228,

1

14-17, 223-

262-65

Legion of Archangel Michael, 32

~35>

2

54 1 17-19, 255, 259 Eliade, Mircea

Lewis, Jim, 250 Libertatea,

253

Lombardo, Mario,

53, 62,

76

Religione e potere {Religion

and

power), 102, 104

Securitate,

Lovinescu, Monica, 118, 263

See also

Lullus, Raymundus, 220 Lumea Libera, 179, 200-202, 205-

Ivanovici, Victor, 44-49, 51-55, 2

Edward, 130, 233

54-55

Jedlicka, David, 256-60, 264-65,

268-69, 275—76

8,212,218,238,274 "A Unique Chance," 115, 208 "Viitorul Romaniei in 1 puncte," 188

1

1

298 Index

"A Lecture on

Politics,"

196

Scoptophilia, 201-2

9,

"Dialogue of the Dead, Part

I,"

Mirandola, Pico

(Ricketts), 135

"The Fourth of July," 203

Mitchell, Patty, 18-19

"Filme de groaza" (Horror

Money

films),

the

218

"The Most Important Romanian in the World," "The Most Stupid 204

22-24, 245-47,

249, 258-59, 260,

Magureanu,

1

97

3

National Salvation Front, 191,

194,233,265

262-63

Nazis, 98,

Virgil, 186, 193, 266,

276

in,

1

15-16

Necromancer (Fassbinder), 248 Neophilogus, 96

Mali^a, Mircea, 62

Malutan, Colonel

1

Nation, 193

McGinn, Bernard, 252 Al, 17,

Laundered (Possamai),

Morin, Edgar,

How

Profits Are

Mussolini, Benito, 87

Luther, Martin, 109

McGuire,

on the Run: Canada and

Worlds Dirty

Moro, Aldo, 72, 91, 175 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 270 Munteanu, Marian, 197, 259

208

Intelligence,"

107-

Mircea Eliade: The Romanian Roots

1907-1945

202

della, 46, 81,

166

New Vasilei, 2 70

York Review of Science Fiction,

Manea, Norman, 198

209 Nicholas of Autrecourt, 221

Manzoni, Bruno, 77 Marchiano, Grazia, 172-73, 176,

Nicholas of Cusa, 109, 22

191, 194,219

1984 (Orwell), 51

Noomen, Willem, 94-95,

Margareta, princess of Romania,

232,230 Marghescu, Mircea, 74-75,

78,

85-90

Occult, 6, 13, 176

Oi§teanu, Andrei, 44, 61,

Markov, Georgi, 175 The Truth That Killed, 179 Materialism and Empirio-Criticism

103-4,

164

1

18-19,

122-23,230,272 Oi§teanu, Valery (Valery Galley)

"Wall Patrol," 123 O'Leary, Cathy, 164, 166, 170-71,

(Lenin), 167

Mazilu, Dumitru, 199, 233 Meslin, Michel, 96, 103, 151-52,

207,217 the Road (Kerouac), 44

On

Orwell, George

155,157,160 Michael, king of Romania, 23, 34-

39,231-32,239,291,261-62,

1984, 5 1

Ouspensky,

P.

D., 170

269 Pacepa, Ion, 193, 250

Michnik, Adam, 223 Micle, Veronica,

Red Horizons,

32

Militaru, Nicolae, 185, 199 Miller, Fred, 246

Mind Tools (Rucker),

153

1

18,

295

Panorama, 87, 194, 199 Party of Romanian National Unity

(PUNR),

192

Index 299

Penthouse, 225

Ricoeur, Paul, 10

Petreanu, Dan, 266

Riesebrodt, Martin, 227

Petrescu, Dan, 105, 193, 219, 228,

Roman,

Paris,

Petre, 225, 254, 273

Romanato, Gianpaolo, 83-84, 86-

234,236,266, 274 meeting with Culianu in

91,95-97,120,143,155-56 Religione epotere (with

156

Culianu

and Lombardo), 102, 104

266

Securitate, 119, 142,

Liberation interview, 163, 178

Romania

anti-Ceau§escu, 177-79

Romania Mare, 192-93, 218, 224,

under house

arrest, 178,

freed from house

arrest,

183 1

84

ministry appointment, 188,

206-7 in Poitiers,

197,212,223

2 33, 2 54-55 Romanian Nationalism: The

Legionary Movement (Ronnett), 17

208-9

Ronnett, Alexander, 117

Pidoux-Payot, Francois Jean-Luc, 97, 106,

Libera,

in

Rosen, Moses, 224 Rucker, Rudy, 153, 167

Plato, 78, 202

Ple§u, Andrei, 92, 179, 188,

206-7

Sabau, Mircea, 202, 203, 219

Podina, Mircea, 253

Sadoveanu, Mihail,

Poe, Edgar Allan, 39, 168

Salinger, J. D., 43

Poghirc, Cicerone, 55, 61-62, 125

Sanskrit, 46, 54-55,

Pop, Traian, 94 Popa, Radu Dumitru, 44-49, 62-

Saptamina (Weekend; later

3

60

Romania Mare), 192 Schluntz, Erika, 127, 138, 159, 166

66, 85, 192

Possamai, Mario, 197

"Scoptophilia." See Scott,

Lumea Libera

Nathan, 130

Raceanu, Mircea, 207

Sebastian, Mihail, 157

Ratesh, Nestor, 187

Secolul 20

Rebreanu, Liviu, 63

Red

(Twentieth Century), 66,

77

Brigade, 72

Securitate, 23, 36, 51-55, 62, 91,

Red Horizons (Pacepa), 118, 255

117-19, 122-23, 142, 163, 209,

Reformation, 109, 134, 154

212-13,227,254-55,276,279 in revolution, 182-89, 192-

Religione epotere (Religion

and

power) (Culianu, Gianpaolo, and

Lombardo), 102, 104

93,

218

Tess; Cea§escu, Nicolae;

magic, 3,6, 24, 81,133, 136,

166

Petrescru,

philosophers, 40, 60, 81 to

of, 91,

See also Iron Guard; Culianu,

Renaissance

Return

187-99,202-4

Culianu 's criticism

Cosmology (Toulmin), 107

Segal, Allan, 237, Shafir,

Dan 274

Michael, 265

Reynolds, Franklin, 250

Shakespeare, William, 46, 81

Rickert, Jonathan, 271

"Sons of Avram Iancu," 206, 253

Ricketts,

Mac Linscott,

60,

1 1 1

Sontag, Susan, 10 Spengler, Oswald, 226

300 Index

Spinner, Greg, 4-6, II, 18-20, 24,

Ulieru, Nicolae, 276

167-70, 176-78, 180-81, 187,

Unanue, Manuel de Dios, 208

207-8, 228, 232, 236-37, 247-

Ungureanu, Sanda, 47, 76

50,252

Ihuuvers, histoire

Stamatu, Horia (H.

S.),

Stamm, Stephanie,

167, 181

Stanculescu, Victor,

1

1

15—17

et description:

VEgypte ancienne (Laurent), 48 "Ureche," Captain, 51-55

84

Stanescu, Gabriel, 274-75

van der Leeuw, Gerardus, 104

Stanescu, Sorin Ro§ca, 274-75

Vatra Romaneasca, 192, 218, 238, 259,

Stefan the Great, 30

Verdery, Katherine, 196

Stevenson, Jennifer, 13, 233 Stein, Robert, 23, St.

Vermaseren, M.J., 103

249

Viata Romania, 200

John, Robert, 98

Sullivan,

265-66

Lawrence, 153, 160, 188,

Vidyasagar, Prabadh,

45-46

Voican (-Voiculescu), Gelu,

215,229,236

1

84,

193,199-200,273-75

Sweek, Joel, 246 "Szabo, Adrian," 211-12, 258-63,

Diminea\a interview, 186, 200 Voinea, Dan, 271

269,275 Szulc, Tad, 212, 225

Wagner, Richard, 206 Weiss, Ellen, 17, 22-24, 245-47,

Talpes, Ion, 276

Thompson, D'Arcy Wentworth,

249,258-59,260 Wiesel, Elie, 207

137,239 Thorndike, Lynn, 215-16 Through

Wiesner, Dorothy (Mrs. Kurt Hertzfeld), 159, 185, 219, 225

the Looking-Glass

Wiesner, Hillary,

(Carroll), 167, 170 Tillich, Paul, 10

190, 195,

Tismaneanu, Vladimir,

33, 56,

12-14, 20-21,

192,197,231,254

197,203-9,221,234,

238

meets Culianu, 126-28, 131 —

Tokes, Laszlo, 182

34. *36

Toulmin, Stephen, 107, 171, 221

in Turkey,

Tracy, David, 156, 158, 233

in Italy,

Tricolorul,

9,

83, !53, 157-66, 179, 182, 187,

263

138-45

I49-5 1

*

J

57- 6l

Triet Le, 208

151,216-

in

Cambridge,

in

Amherst, 185, 219

Trifa, Viorel, 119

14,

17

Truth That Killed (Markov),

1

75

Tudor, Corneliu Vadim, 192, 265

after the

Tudoran, Dorin, 164, 175-78,

253-54, 266 works with Culianu. See

180, 196, 206, 208, 227, 235-36,

Wiesner

Agora, 167, 198, 207

22,217-18,233-34,238,251, 54-55»

2 59»

murder, 247-49,

Culianu: Works, with

254,273,274

2

»

172-76,191

262-63,

2

73

Wiesner, Nikki, 159, 185, 190,

248-49

Index 301

William of Occam, 221

Zaharia, Dorin, 44, 45, 78

Wilson, Liz, 175 Windsor Star, 114

Zaleski, Carol, 108, 229, 237,

Winkler, Mary,

no

248 Zarifopol, Paul,

3

Ziua, 274

Yoga, 43, 60, 84, 89 Yu, Anthony, 153-54, 160, 226,

250,277

Zolla, Elemire, 175-76, 194, 219 Archetypes,

172-73

loan Culianu, 273

IS?

occult whose predictions were often remarkably

accurate— began toying with

coalition in Romania, taunting

presumed safety of

his

new

a

far-right

them from the

American base with the

content and tone of his

articles,

goading them

into believing him dangerous. Besides shedding

new

light

on the murder, this book offers

a

fascinating introduction to Romanian politics in the

aftermath of the 1989 revolution and to

the relation of ideas to power in current history, as well as to the exotic and mystical ideas of a brilliant

man.

TED ANTON

is

an associate professor in non-

fiction writing at

DePaul University. His Lingua

Franca cover story on Culianu's murder was a finalist for

the National Magazine Award in

Reporting in 1993. For his work on this book he

was awarded

a Fulbright fellowship

and

a

Fund

for Investigative Journalism grant. His writing

has been recognized for three straight years in Best American Essays. His articles have appeared in The Sciences, Chicago

Tribune,

Magazine, the Chicago

and other publications; he

editor of The

New

is

Science Journalists.

Jacket design: Rich Hendel

the co-

"Fascinating and excellent .

.

.

important not just

because

it

illuminates

history, but

because at the

center of the story

is

loan

Culianu, a figure so interest-

ing no novelist could invent

him. [In this murder] fiction

and fact change places in a deadly

game

of masks and

illusions."

— Andrei Codrescu "Reveals both a fascinating individual's twenty-year-long

life-and-death struggle with his conscience,

and a violent

underground war in Eastern Europe. This

is a

story not

only about the power of

freedom of speech and press, but also about the explosive

convergence of scholarship

and

politics,

and the very

real risks of the

bered

life

unencum-

ISBN 0-8101-1396-1

90000>

of the mind."

—Jeffrey

Kittay, publisher,

Lingua Franca 78081

0"1

13961