Point Regarding Books Maitreyi
Title | : | Maitreyi |
Author | : | Mircea Eliade |
Book Format | : | Paperback |
Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 200 pages |
Published | : | March 28th 2003 by Humanitas (first published January 1st 1933) |
Categories | : | European Literature. Romanian Literature. Classics. Fiction. Romance |
Narrative Conducive To Books Maitreyi
Set in 1930s Calcutta, this is a roman Ă¡ clef of remarkable intimacy. Originally published in Romanian in 1933, this semiautobiographical novel by the world renowned scholar Mircea Eliade details the passionate awakenings of Alain, an ambitious young French engineer flush with colonial pride and prejudice and full of a European fascination with the mysterious subcontinent. Offered the hospitality of a senior Indian colleague, Alain grasps at the chance to discover the authentic India firsthand. He soon finds himself enchanted by his host's daughter, the lovely and inscrutable Maitreyi, a precocious young poet and former student of Tagore. What follows is a charming, tentative flirtation that soon, against all the proprieties and precepts of Indian society, blossoms into a love affair both impossible and ultimately tragic. This erotic passion plays itself out in Alain's thoughts long after its bitter conclusion. In hindsight he sets down the story, quoting from the diaries of his disordered days, and trying to make sense of the sad affair. A vibrantly poetic love story, Bengal Nights is also a cruel account of the wreckage left in the wake of a young man's self discovery. At once horrifying and deeply moving, Eliade's story repeats the patterns of European engagement with India even as it exposes and condemns them. Invaluable for the insight it offers into Eliade's life and thought, it is a work of great intellectual and emotional power. "Bengal Nights is forceful and harshly poignant, written with a great love of India informed by clear-eyed understanding. But do not open it if you prefer to remain unmoved by your reading matter.It is enough to make stones weep." — Literary Review Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) was the Sewell L. Avery Distinguished Service Professor in the Divinity School and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Many of his scholarly works, as well as his two-volume autobiography and four-volume journal, are published by the University of Chicago Press. Translated into French in 1950, Bengal Nights was an immediate critical success. The film, Les Nuits Bengali, appeared in 1987.
Be Specific About Books Concering Maitreyi
Original Title: | Maitreyi |
ISBN: | 9735004100 (ISBN13: 9789735004101) |
Edition Language: | Romanian |
Characters: | Allan, Maitreyi Devi, Surendranath Dasgupta |
Setting: | Calcutta,1930(India) Kolkata,1930(India) |
Rating Regarding Books Maitreyi
Ratings: 3.93 From 15606 Users | 254 ReviewsWrite Up Regarding Books Maitreyi
Not really my idea of a good book. It focuses way to much on creating an original and believable world that it leaves the character lacking and it makes it hard for the reader to relate to the story and it's meaning. If this wasn't mandatory and I was sure it wouldn't show up on my final exam, I don't think I would have gotten past the first 20 pages.Momentously racist / orientalist / makes me hate humanity, remembering that I once saw no problem with all the bizarre things Eliade writes / does to Indian culture in this book makes me want to hurt myself...
An absolutely fabulous love story beetwen different worlds, but essentialy the same...The atmoshere is fantastic...you can smell the parfurmes, can taste the flavours, can feel that delicate "sari"...can even think in that specific way..that Maitreyi is used to...Fabulous and sweet and touching!
*3.5 stars*It's tough to rate a book like this. Initially upon finishing it I rated it quite highly, but after I've had more time to think about the content, I felt much less compelled to do so.Bengal Nights was written by a European man in India (Calcutta in the 1930s), so I knew I was going to be shaking my head a lot. I expected racism, exotification, cultural ignorance and superiority, paternalism and simplification of the other, and I got all those: "Once more I saw that it was civilized
second time i've fully read it and again it made me feel so so good, love it
This is the first book I have ever read twice and it was so much worth it! I first read it in my high school years as part of the Romanian literature curriculum and it was love at first page. I had heard that the female protagonist of the book, Maitreyi, wrote herself a novel as a response to Eliades Maitreyi and Bengal Nights. Some years later I got hold of her novel (It Does Not Die: A Romance) and I started reading it in parallel with Maitreyi. It is one of the rare instances in literature
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