Dubuisson's Twentieth Century Myths is the second work to appear in the "Racines et modéles" (Roots and Models) series. The series, we learn from the dust jacket, is dedicated to the "epistemology of representations", i.e., to approaching specific texts, authors and works "according to a particular dialectic: being rooted in some tradition, and being the manifestation or epiphany of some model in search of its roots". Dubuisson's contribution to this complex inquiry into the makings of modern culture takes the form of a methodological innovation which he calls "comparative epistemology" (p. 17). "Comparative epistemology", he tells us, unfolds in four stages. The first is the "historic" stage, which is descriptive: it provides the reader with biographical detail, and traces the intellectual and philosophical background of the author under examination. The second is the "analytic" stage, whose purpose it is to identify the "cosmological scheme (global or local)" of the specific work considered as "a verbal universe" (p. 18). The third is the "critical" stage, the stage at which the comparatist draws attention to the "limitations" of the text as a conceptualsystem, and of the age in which it was conceived. In the fourth, "synthetic" stage, the comparatist "draws the map of instances" (la carte des instances), a map of the factors--and "places" (lieux)--most "invoked" to account for the existence of a particular myth in a particular form.
Structurally, the book is divided into four parts, parts one to three dealing with Dumézil, Lévi-Strauss, and Eliade, respectively, and the fourth a "Critique of Mythic Reasoning". It is Part Three that is likely to attract the most attention, for Mircea Eliade continues to be a highly controversial figure.
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Dubuisson lays the following charges at Eliade's door: 1) he is arbitrary in his selection of "facts", and tends to simplify; 2) he totally ignores the relevant historical and ethnographic evidence; 3) his generalizations are exaggerations; and 4) his explanations are open to argument. Dubuisson, who has first-hand knowledge of India, rejects Eliade's views on yoga. Eliade's methodology, he protests, is no more than "a subjective and irrational aesthetic of the religious sentiment" (p. 232). Eliade proposes an ontology watered down by pagan naturalism, and poses as a prophet, though he does not even consider Christianity to be a religion. He teaches the homo religiosus, for whom the experience of the holy is the fullness of life. "Religious", "holy", "ontological", and "primitive" are all synonymous for Eliade. And so enamored was he of the cult of power that he prided himself on having recognized the religious dimensions of torture and killing, as ways of coming face to face with "being" and with "the holy". As Dubuisson catalogues Eliade's errors, he substantiates his charges with quotations from the latter's works. Eliade's memoirs, he notes right at the outset, portray the Iron Guard not as a political movement, but as a religious sect, and dismiss its acts of violence as a matter of historical necessity. There are no hangmen and no victims in Eliade's system. Moral issues are of no concern to him. Which explains why he has no use for the Judeo-Christian tradition. Compared to the timelessness of The Holy, History is a deterioration. A Judeo-Christian invention that has desecrated the universe. And has made anxiety the lot of modern man. The victims of the Nazi concentration camps, in Eliade's vision, are the vanguard of humanity; the flames that consumed them did so in the name of History. But the victims, too, are to blame: as the victims of History, they were the victims of something they themselves had created. Eliade's "eternal cycle", the return to the beginning, to the holy, concludes Dubuisson, always brings him back to anti-Semitism. In the final analysis, Dubuisson suggests, even the Aztec, the Nazi, or the Soviet despots, the murderers of countless thousands, qualify as homo religiosus. For Eliade's "unsettling postulate" is the following: "All works of culture and civilization wrought by man have always been and should always be subordinated to a transcendent cosmic imperative: the maintenance and regeneration of the faculties--most often through an orgy of blood--and the consequent perpetuation of the hierarchies of nature".
The neo-paganism of the homo religiosus, concludes Dubuisson, "is nothing other than his vindication of the rule of the dark principles and forces which animate the world, to which he must make his life and acts conform. All this makes thinking, reason, and virtue quite superfluous; in fact, they are likely to prove to be insurmountable obstacles" (pp. 288-89).
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A look at Dumézil's Mythes et dieux des Germains, on the other hand, a book which Dubuisson, too, mentions, will alter this picture considerably. Here, Dumézil draws historical parallels which perfectly update what he calls the erstwhile "nostalgic juxtaposition" of the Pax Germanica and the Pax Romana. The military elite merged with the priestly elite, with consequences that have endured to this day. "Possibly it is this prehistoric 'militarization' of mythology that is responsible for its singular success. For mythology did not die out when the external manifestations of paganism did; more exactly, it revived in the nineteenth century, and assumed a significance which it is no exaggeration to call religious. With our own eyes we saw it regain its hold on the continental Germans, and dissuade them of their Christian responsibilities and Christian ways with a vengeance. Everywhere else, even in the most nationalist of countries, the pious evocation of the distant past, of ancestral beliefs, has an element of the artificial, the rhetorical about it: "Wonderful legends", one thinks. For the past century and a half, the "wonderful legends" of the Germans are not only popular again, but are myths again: they are myths in the strictest sense of the word, in that they justify, support, and inspire collective and individual behavior which bears all the marks of the sacral." (All this from Dumézil who, Dubuisson has argued, does not define what he means by "myth", and has no use for Durkheim's sacred/profane dichotomy [p. 67, 88]). It makes no difference, Dumézil continues, that the "wonderful legends" of the Germans originated in Scandinavia and Iceland; what counts is that they have been "naturalized", thanks to the Romantics and Wagner. "In 1914-1918, the Wagnerian mystique was more of an inspiration to the German soldiers in the hour of defeat and sacrifice than in the hour of victory. The Third Reich did not have to create its fundamental myths; on the contrary. It was probably German mythology, revived in the nineteenth century, which gave form, spirit and institutions to a Germany made marvellously malleable by unprecedented misfortune. Perhaps it was what Germany had suffered in trenches haunted by Siegfried's ghost that allowed Adolf Hitler to conceive, forge and wield a power unlike that of any German chieftain since Odin's legendary rule." Yet, the "neo-pagan" propaganda of the new Germany, Dumézil concedes, is artificial, in a way. It is interesting for a historian of religion, but more interesting still is the fact that the relationship between the masses and their leaders spontaneously follows the old mythological model. "The originality of the German experience lies in this pre-established harmony between past and present, rather than in any conscious imitation of the past".
It would have been instructive to learn whether Dumézil, who wrote these words on the eve of World War II, revised his views in the wake of the new Götterdämmerung. Dubuisson's study, at any rate, leaves us in the dark on this score. On the other hand, had the thoughts quoted at length above been expressed by Eliade, I have no doubt that Dubuisson would have cited them at no lesser length. Another thing that Dubuisson forgets to tell us is that it was Dumézil, a professor at the Collége de France at the time, who wrote the preface to Eliade's Traité d'histoire des religions published in Paris in 1949, though he does mention that it was he who introduced the Romanian exile to French academic society. Dumézil, however, is forgiven; Dubuisson only hints at his rightist sympathies, but does not quote any incriminating passages. It is as if Dumézil had just been caught up in the tide of fascism, while Eliade actually swam some way with it; Dumézil's fascist experience, Dubuisson seems to be saying, was what Eliade would have called a felix culpa.
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If we ponder the import of Dubuisson's book, and consider the Romanian reactions to it, we shall find that Eliade's reception in the Western world, positive and negative, is a manifestation of the "Dracula-effect": the perception of the periphery as a fascinating, but dangerous place. The periphery is tantalizing to the center, but is rebuffed when it gets too close for comfort. An artist or scholar coming from the periphery must play by different rules than those that apply to the center. The periphery must be at once exotic and terrifying, inviting and repulsive--such are the unwritten laws of "cultural reciprocity". Eliade's celebration of brutality fulfils the need for horror, but the ideology behind it is found repugnant, on closer examination. Mind you, people have not always wanted to look too closely. Now that they do, they find themselves having to topple a graven image of their own creation, a tricky business at best. Such reversals of value judgement serve to eradicate the very moral sense that they ostensibly uphold. And they serve to reinforce the particularism and sense of isolation of the periphery, and feed the paranoia that has already been the source of so much tragedy.[...]