Editing Mircea Eliade (section)

==== ''Întoarcerea din rai'' ====
Eliade's 1934 novel '''''Întoarcerea din rai''''' ('Return from Paradise') centers on Pavel Anicet, a young man who seeks knowledge through what Călinescu defined as "sexual excess".<ref name="Căl. p.958" /> His search leaves him with a reduced sensitivity: right after being confronted with his father's death, Anicet breaks out in tears only after sitting through an entire dinner.<ref name="Căl. p.958" />

The other characters, standing for Eliade's generation, all seek knowledge through violence or retreat from the world—nonetheless, unlike Anicet, they ultimately fail at imposing rigors upon themselves.<ref name="Căl. p.958" /> Pavel himself eventually abandons his belief in sex as a means for enlightenment, and commits suicide in hopes of reaching the level of primordial unity. The solution, George Călinescu noted, mirrored the strange murder in Gide's ''[[Lafcadio's Adventures]]''.<ref name="Căl. p.958" /> Eliade himself indicated that the book dealt with the "loss of the beatitude, illusions, and optimism that had dominated the first twenty years of '[[Greater Romania]]'."<ref>Eliade, in Ellwood, p. 101</ref> Robert Ellwood connected the work to Eliade's recurring sense of loss in respect to the "atmosphere of euphoria and faith" of his adolescence.<ref name="Ellwood, p.101" /> Călinescu criticizes ''Întoarcerea din rai'', describing its dialog sequences as "awkward", its narrative as "void", and its artistic interest as "non-existent", proposing that the reader could however find it relevant as the "document of a mentality".<ref name="Căl. p.958" />