EXPERIMENT ȘTIINȚIFIC ȘI ALCHIMIE ÎN MEMORIILE UNUI SOLDAT DE PLUMB

The study analyses how Mircea Eliade used his inclination towards alchemy in a novel he had outlined as a teenager but abandoned after many rewrites. One of the manuscript-notebooks that were preserved include various aspects specific to alchemy (transforming metals into gold, the search for the philosopher’s stone, incantations, rituals, invocations, palingenesis etc.). These aspects also appear, fragmentarily, in other notebooks, a proof that the themes in How I found the Philosopher’s Stone are not a singular occurrence at that age, and that young Eliade already had extensive knowledge in the matter.