Editing Mircea Eliade (section)

===Childhood===
Born in [[Bucharest]], he was the son of [[Romanian Land Forces]] officer Gheorghe Eliade (whose original surname was Ieremia)<ref name="Biografie in Handoca">''Biografie'', in Handoca</ref><ref name="smihai">Silviu Mihai, [http://www.cotidianul.ro/index.php?id=3920&art=8997&diraut=123&cHash=ae6af0be58 "A doua viaţă a lui Mircea Eliade" ("Mircea Eliade's Second Life")], in ''[[Cotidianul]]'', February 6, 2006; retrieved July 31, 2007 {{in lang|ro}}</ref> and Jeana ''née'' Vasilescu.<ref name="Căl. p.956">Călinescu, p. 956</ref> An [[Romanian Orthodox Church|Orthodox]] believer, Gheorghe Eliade registered his son's birth four days before the actual date, to coincide with the [[Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar|liturgical calendar]] feast of the [[Forty Martyrs of Sebaste]].<ref name="smihai"/> Mircea Eliade had a sister, Corina, the mother of [[Semiotics|semiologist]] [[Sorin Alexandrescu]].<ref name="scnostal">Simona Chiţan, "Nostalgia după România" ("Nostalgia for Romania"), interview with Sorin Alexandrescu, in ''[[Evenimentul Zilei]]'', June 24, 2006</ref><ref name="vilasanjpaseo"/> His family moved between [[Tecuci]] and Bucharest, ultimately settling in the capital in 1914,<ref name="Biografie in Handoca"/> and purchasing a house on Melodiei Street, near [[Piața Rosetti]], where Mircea Eliade resided until late in his teens.<ref name="vilasanjpaseo">Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, [http://www.lavanguardia.com/cultura/20070530/51355796343/paseo-por-el-bucarest-de-mircea-eliade.html "Paseo por el Bucarest de Mircea Eliade" ("Passing through Mircea Eliade's Bucharest")], in ''[[La Vanguardia]]'', May 30, 2007 {{in lang|es}}; retrieved January 16, 2008</ref>

Eliade kept a particularly fond memory of his childhood and, later in life, wrote about the impact various unusual episodes and encounters had on his mind. In one instance during the [[World War I|World War&nbsp;I]] [[Romanian Campaign (World War I)|Romanian Campaign]], when Eliade was about ten years of age, he witnessed the bombing of Bucharest by [[German Empire|German]] [[zeppelin]]s and the patriotic fervor in the occupied capital at news that Romania was able to stop the [[Central Powers]]' advance into [[Moldavia]].<ref name="ihincep">[[Ion Hadârcă]], [http://www.sud-est.md/numere/20070428/article_3/ "Mircea Eliade la începuturi" ("Mircea Eliade at His Beginnings")] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071108070458/http://www.sud-est.md/numere/20070428/article_3/ |date=2007-11-08 }}, in ''Revista Sud-Est'', 1/2007; retrieved January 21, 2008 {{in lang|ro}}</ref>

He described this stage in his life as marked by an unrepeatable [[epiphany (feeling)|epiphany]].<ref name="ipcmahapar">[[Ioan P. Culianu]], "Mahaparanirvana", in [http://www.elhilodeariadna.org/index.asp ''El Hilo de Ariadna''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071230010917/http://www.elhilodeariadna.org/index.asp |date=2007-12-30 }}, Vol. II</ref><ref name="Ellwood98-99">Ellwood, pp. 98–99</ref> Recalling his entrance into a drawing room that an "eerie iridescent light" had turned into "a fairy-tale palace", he wrote,
<blockquote>I practiced for many years [the] exercise of recapturing that epiphanic moment, and I would always find again the same plenitude. I would slip into it as into a fragment of time devoid of duration—without beginning, middle, or end. During my last years of lycée, when I struggled with profound attacks of [[Depression (mood)|melancholy]], I still succeeded at times in returning to the golden green light of that afternoon. [...] But even though the beatitude was the same, it was now impossible to bear because it aggravated my sadness too much. By this time I knew the world to which the drawing room belonged [...] was a world forever lost.<ref>Eliade, ''Autobiography'', in Ellwood, pp. 98–99</ref></blockquote>

[[Robert S. Ellwood|Robert Ellwood]], a professor of religion who did his graduate studies under Mircea Eliade,<ref>Ellwood, p. 5</ref> saw this type of [[nostalgia]] as one of the most characteristic themes in Eliade's life and academic writings.<ref name="Ellwood98-99"/>