Eliade on Writing Novel (Conceptual, Thematic Technique) Experience
Eliade: That same year I also published an almost Joycean novel, called The Light That Failed.
That same title as one of Kipling's books. Was that intentional?
Eliade: Yes, because of a certain similarity between the two central characters. I've tried to reread the book several times since—impossible, I can't understand a word of it! I had been very impressed by an excerpt from Finnegans Wake, published under the title "Anna Livia Plurabelle," and I employed the stream-of-consciousness technique of Ulysses—for the first time in Romania, I believe. It was wholly unsuccessful. Even the critics didn't know what to make of it. It was totally unreadable.
This influence Joyce had on you, and the taste for the word as such that it presupposes, does surprise me, rather. It seems to me that up until then you had been more inclined to treat language as simply a means to an end. Were you writing poetry at this time?
In a sense yes, But I ought to say that what I was interested in, first and foremost, when I decided to use the stream-of-consciousness method, was conveying the mental processes of a man who loses his sight for several months. It was within that "internal soliloquy," containing all he thinks, sees, and imagines in that darkness—it was there that I really tried to play with language, allowing myself total freedom. And that is why the book is almost incomprehensible. Yet the story is a very simple one, and quite affecting, too. A librarian is working at night in a municipal library, correcting proofs—of a Greek text on astronomy, I think it was; anyway, it was a somewhat mysterious text. He begins to be aware of the smell of smoke, becomes uneasy, sees a number of rats scuttling away, then smoke seeping into the room. He opens the window, opens the door, and in the reading room he sees a young woman lying naked on a big table. Standing over her is a professor of Slavic languages, reputed to be a creature of the devil, a magician. At the height of the fire, the professor vanishes. The librarian picks up the young woman, who has fainted, and rescues her. But as he is carrying her down the marble staircase, a section of molding on the ceiling comes loose, falls, strikes him on the head, and deprives him of his sight for six months. In the hospital he begins struggling to understand. It all seems absurd. Midnight, in the library of a university city, a fully clothed professor and a naked woman, a woman he knew quite well, as a matter of fact—she was the professor's assistant. The librarian now hears it rumored that the professor was performing a Tantric ritual and the the ritual was the cause of the fire. Then he recovers his sight, and in his joy at being able to see again—to see, not read—he decides to go traveling. I don't recall the end exactly, because, as I said, I've never managed to reread the whole book. I know that at one point the librarian begins talking Latin to people who haven't had his education and so can't understand him—an echo of Stephen Daedalus perhaps? Everything becomes mysterious, enigmatic. At all events, the book was unreadable and a total failure. After that third book I was free. People still knew my name, but as the author of Bengal Night. I was freed from the necessity to please people.
