"Risipitorii" / (The Wasters)

Being young is always seen as something similar to being free and able to take any course of action or make any decision. Youth is not seen as a period of confusion, indecision or inability to do great things in life. M. Preda sees the young adults as individuals who take great decision easily and are sometimes stunned by small ones.

“Risipitorii”/ The Wasters is a novel of a brief period in anyone’s life, when major decision are prone to take place and some of the decisions made are haste and have an effect that contours the entire life. Decision taken too easily can make an impact on people triggering turning points in a persons search for purpose in life. A young woman who marries a young doctor without having a clear idea about married life, finds herself, after an abortion, left for another woman, and thus seems to forget the purpose of her existence. In the confusion set by her depression she learns to enjoy life once more and knows that from now on she will forever keep a mark of what it means to be without meaning, but will continue to live for a meaning discovered as life succeeds this crisis.

Other crises are described, for instance the meaning of living with the person you love, can appear for those who live it complicated, and yet simple for those seeing it from outside. The search for professional achievement can sometimes fail and leave the person with the impression of uselessness, trying to live with a new purpose. The search for love and fulfillment in a family life can seem daunting and like a purpose for many who see it as eluding their life. 

Many times the thing which we seek most and consider as a purpose is the thing we cannot attain. We continue to force our mind and actions into creating new alternatives for reaching the same idea over and over again, without even considering for a second time if that thing/idea is really what we need to be happy. Sometimes the happiness lies in the process, as it is described throughout the book, Flow. The psychology of optimal experience, and I believe that the process of creating and achieving your purpose is one of the most personal things one can do with their life.

“Nunta in cer”/ (Marriage in Heaven)

Eliade’s novel continues a theme that I’ve encountered in “Intoarcerea din rai”, which is the theme of love without limits, which can only solve itself through acts of sacrifice and is ultimately an all or nothing game. A young writer that is cynical and full of himself to the point that his attitude is one in which he firmly believes he can decipher any woman or man within seconds or minutes, finds himself in love with a woman (Ileana), but unable to truly commit and live his love earthly, as opposed to what he thinks is the ultimate love, one that can be lived/felt only in an ethereal place (heavens).

This idea stops him and blinds him, as he cannot understand the woman he loves, nor how she feels about their love. He thinks that writer can/must only create art during times in which something is missing from their lives, in a sense that the urgency to create some imaginary world compensates for whichever lacks in one’s live. It is a very selfish point of view, from my opinion. As the action continues he separates himself from his love, to the point that he asks her to only love him, that their love may be sterile, without a child. The obvious happens, and after an abortion of which the main character is unaware of, he finds himself left, abandoned, as the girl could not live in his fantasy of how his perfect love should look like.

To add a mystery to the story, the author introduces another friend to whom the young writer confides his lost love. This elder man confides as well of a love he felt 8-9 years in the past and the story this love, which he thinks represents the love of his life. After finding out that the heroine has a similar name (Lena), the reader is left with a feeling that the book is more about a woman than two men telling their regrets of a one true love that escaped without them noticing it. We find out that after the First World War a teenage girl is separated from her aunt while traveling in a train and a young man helps her to the nearest train stop. This teenage girl is then seen as a young woman that falls in love with the man that helped her, years after. Their love ignites during a trip through Europe, during which they get married and start a life of their own. Due to their age difference their ideas of love are different: she wishes to live their love by themselves, he starts wishing for a baby, and because neither explains to the other their idea of love, they argue and ultimately they divorce, and decide not to see each other again.
The story is about love, and a woman through different times in her life, and with different men. It made me think about the damage an unspoken idea of love might due to a pair of lovers. Just imagine two lovers which are in love, but feel as if their love should be in some way, a way which is incongruent to the how the other feels. It indeed can destroy a relationship if there is no communication, or so I think anyway.

An interesting novel to read.

"Intoarcerea din rai"/The return from heaven

There must be indeed some law, a great attractor which pulls all the information towards the user. Or so it seems for me, judging by the books I read.

Mircea Eliade's novel is just a piece of the information my strange attractor brings me(according to my view of the chaos theory).

A society in change is usually a theme meant to reiterate itself, always new and yet in a different light. That's the way I perceived the society presented in the book. The intellectuals of the 1933-1934 period in Romania. The problems might be different, the communist riots were on the verge of breaking out(and one did happen) and now after almost 80 years we are struggling to change communist mentalities and to bring back a new sense of morality and perhaps to renew some lost values. The characters present their philosophical interrogations regarding their life purpose, and even if the social context might be change, the question still remain.

What is one's goal, ideal for his/her life? Is there a superior way in which to live, create, work? All these are themes that are present in every character's mind. The way the monologues are written reveal this pursuit of a meaning to life throughout the book.

One might think that these intellectuals are all selfish, each and everyone trying to realize goals of their one,trying to make a new start disregarding their families, their roots, only to discover in the end that you cannot live life on an intellectual realm, that you must transcend to life by embracing some concrete responsibilities. Each character becomes entrapped in a mesh of everyday problems and change occurs with or without them noticing. They change their ideals, seeing things more nuanced.

Only one character Paul Anicet chooses to suicide being thorn between a love for two women, realizing that he could not make himself be free, in the sense of freedom of thought and action that he wants. It's an selfish act, and one that betrays an pursuit for a unity that he thinks can only be found in death.

All in all it is a book about the meaning on creating a life, an pursuit for superior ideals, and the confront with the reality. It is indeed a book that can be found relevant for everyone who wants to create a path of development and growth that could best construct an individual's purpose, meaning to all it's actions.

Perhaps if there is a meaning which can be used to justify one's actions a sense of congruence is achieved(a congruence with one's goal, purpose).