The Myth of the Eternal Return by Mircea Eliade

Author:Mircea Eliade [Eliade, Mircea]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, pdf
Tags: Religion, Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780691123509
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 1949-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THREE

MISFORTUNE AND HISTORY

Normality of Suffering • History Regarded as Theophany • Cosmic Cycles and History Destiny and History

Normality of Suffering

WITH this chapter, we hope to approach human life and historical existence from a new point of view. Archaic man, as has been shown, tends to set himself in opposition, by every means in his power, to history, regarded as a succession of events that are irreversible, unforeseeable, possessed of autonomous value. He refuses to accept it and to grant it value as such, as history—without, however, always being able to exorcise it; for example, he is powerless against cosmic catastrophes, military disasters, social injustices bound up with the very structure of society, personal misfortunes, and so forth. Thus it would be interesting to learn how this “history” was tolerated by archaic man; that is, how he endured the calamities, the mishaps, and the “sufferings” that entered into the lot of each individual and each collectivity.

What does living mean for a man who belongs to a traditional culture? Above all, it means living in accordance with extrahuman models, in conformity with archetypes. Hence it means living at the heart of the real since—as Chapter I sufficiently emphasized—there is nothing truly real except the archetypes. Living in conformity with the archetypes amounted to respecting the “law,” since the law was only a primordial hierophany, the revelation in illo tempore of the norms of existence, a disclosure by a divinity or a mystical being. And if, through the repetition of paradigmatic gestures and by means of periodic ceremonies, archaic man succeeded, as we have seen, in annuling time, he none the less lived in harmony with the cosmic rhythms; we could even say that he entered into these rhythms (we need only remember how “real” night and day are to him, and the seasons, the cycles of the moon, the solstices).

In the frame of such an existence, what could suffering and pain signify? Certainly not a meaningless experience that man can only “tolerate” insofar as it is inevitable, as, for example, he tolerates the rigors of climate. Whatever its nature and whatever its apparent cause, his suffering had a meaning; it corresponded, if not always to a prototype, at least to an order whose value was not contested. It has been said that one of the great superiorities of Christianity, compared with the old Mediterranean ethics, was that it gave value to suffering: transforming pain from a negative condition to an experience with a positive spiritual content. The assertion is valid insofar as it refers to a giving of value to suffering and even to a seeking out of pain for its salutary qualities. But if pre-Christian humanity did not seek out suffering and did not grant it value (with a few rare exceptions) as an instrument of purification and spiritual ascent, it was never regarded as meaningless. Of course, we here refer to suffering as an event, as a historical fact, to suffering brought on by a cosmic catastrophe (drought, flood, storm), by an invasion (incendiarism, slavery, humiliation), by social injustices, and so on.

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