'It is a poignant tableau of the catastrophic clash between two different cultures and modes of life.'

As their relationship blossoms, they overstep this fine boundary, and under the increasingly suspicious looks of Maitreyi’s family, the two secretly get engaged and consummate their love. While, in Maitreyi’s opinion, love belongs to the realm of the spiritual, for Allan, love is more physical and carnal. However, due to their cultural differences, the two have competing views on love. She has “ un suflet pantheistic ” (a pantheistic soul) and “ nu face deosebire dintre sentimentele ei si ale obiectelor” (makes no distinction between her own feelings and those of inanimate objects). However, as time passes, he slowly becomes infatuated with her and is puzzled by the mysterious aura that surrounds her: “ nu izbuteam să înțeleg ce taine ascunde făptura aceasta” (I could not fathom the mystery that lay hidden within this creature).Īllan goes on to discover that Maitreyi is a talented poet with a metaphysical outlook on life. To him, she is not simply an ordinary Bengali girl, but even a rather ugly one, ' cu ochii ei prea mari și prea negri, cu buzele cărnoase, cu sânii puternici de fecioară bengaleză, crescută prea plin” (with eyes that were too large and too black, thick and fleshy lips, and the powerful chest of a Bengali maiden who had developed too quickly). During their first encounters, she fails to impress Allan. His subsequent encounter with Narendra Sen’s daughter, Maitreyi, proves to be a turning point in his life. As a Westerner, Allan is fascinated with India and the exotic “Other ” and he endeavours to adopt the Bengali way of life. It is a poignant tableau of the catastrophic clash between two different cultures and modes of life.Īllan is a determined British engineer in Calcutta, residing in the house of Narendra Sen, a hospitable Indian colleague. It is an immensely popular, erotic, exotic, and realist-modernist novel that tells the impossible love between a Westerner and an Easterner in first-person narrative. Since its publication in 1933, his book Maitreyi has been translated into over five languages, and continues to captivate literary aficionados all over the world. 'Maitreyi has been translated into over five languages, and continues to captivate literary aficionados all over the world.' His literary work encompasses fantastic novels, novellas, and short stories, and the fulcrum of his literary creation is constituted by his skilful combination of fiction and reality, science and art, religion and myth, and the sacred and the profane.

Mircea Eliade was a Romanian novelist, professor, religious historian, journalist, and philosopher.

Fantastic Tales by Mircea Eliade