Horia Corneliu Cicortaş
Horia Corneliu Cicortaş was born in Aleșd, Romania, in 1969.
Having completed studies in philosophy at the University of Naples (Oriental Institute) with a thesis on "Ways of Salvation and Models of Cosmology in Ancient Buddhism" (thesis director: Prof. Giovanni Verardi), he obtained the doctorate at the same Institute under the direction of Prof. Mauro Bergonzi. His doctoral dissertation was entitled: "Eliade and India".
Cicortas was a founding member of the editorial board of one of the first Italian intercultural journals, "Sophia", (founded in Naples by Horst Künkler and Giovanni Rossetti), active between 1999 and 2005.
He has collaborated with the Chair of Archaeology and History of Art in Central Asia, Giovanni Verardi, and with that of the History of Aesthetics (Horst Künkler), publishing studies and articles on topics in philosophy, intercultural studies, and South Asian studies in various periodicals in Italy and abroad.
In November 2007 he founded the Forum of Romanian Intellectuals in Italy (FIRI) with a group of young scholars. The Forum is a cultural association promoting Italo-Romanian friendship.
Cicortas has participated in a number of research expeditions in India, in the Himalayan region of Dolpo in Nepal (with the Tibetologist Francis V. Tiso), and in Singapore.
As a free-lance researcher, he often works as a tour guide in South India, Ladakh, and Rajasthan.
As a scholar, his principal interests are in the work of Mircea Eliade, a number of whose unpublished works he has translated into Italian. With his Romanian colleague, Liviu Bordaş, he is working on a critical edition of Eliade's early works on India. He has also translated the work of Dora d’Istria, L'epopea indiana, from Italian and French into Romanian.
He has been living for several years in Tuscany with his wife, the visual artist Letteria Giuffrè Pagano (director of the theatrical performance, The Endless Column of Mircea Eliade, which presents the life and thought of the sculptor Constantin Brâncuşi,).
[ Drawn up in July 2009 for the website http://www.ippolito-desideri.net ]
Connected pages:
António de Andrade
Enzo Gualtiero Bargiacchi
Luigi Foscolo Benedetto
Giotto Dainelli
Filippo De Filippi
Angelo De Gubernatis
Manoel Freyre
Gherardo Nerucci
Luciano Petech
Carlo Puini
Giuseppe Toscano
Giuseppe Tucci