Viareggio Prize (Premio Viareggio / Premio Letterario Viareggio-Rèpaci)
Literature and the Gods
An essay collection that reads the relationship between myth and literature across time, tracing how classical divine figures return within modern literature. Its short chapters survey literary history on a wide scale.
作品情報
Ancient gods reappear in modern literature in altered forms.
Based on lectures at Oxford, Roberto Calasso traces the return of the gods from Greek myth through Romanticism and into modern literature. He shows, in meticulously crafted prose, how literature can revive myth.
レビュー要約
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Readers admire the book's erudition and its reach from myth to modern literature. It is widely seen as short but densely packed.
書籍情報
- 出版社
- Knopf
- 発売日
- 2001-03-13
- ページ数
- 224ページ
- 言語
- 英語
- サイズ
- 13.49 x 2.21 x 19.79 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780375411380
- ISBN-10
- 0375411380
- カテゴリ
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/History & Criticism/Criticism & Theory
From the internationally acclaimed author of The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony and Ka , a stunning summation of his lifelong study of the role of the gods in the human imagination. Based on the prestigious Weidenfeld Lectures Roberto Calasso gave at Oxford in May 2000, Literature and the Gods traces the return of pagan divinities to Western literature from their first reappearance at the beginning of the modern era to their place in the literature of our own time. Calasso sets out to uncover the divine— godly or otherwise—in specific texts, and finds it in what he calls "absolute literature." With its roots in early Vedic verse, absolute literature reached the apex of its expression during the period beginning with the German Romantics in 1798 and ending with Mallarmé's death in 1898. But Calasso also discovers the divine in the work of Valéry, Auden, Yeats, Montale, Borges, and Nabokov, and he reveals how these writers, in their own very particular ways, were articulating the same unnameable thing. Finally, he delineates the timeless, ever-mysterious laws that surround the creative act itself. With Literature and the Gods , Roberto Calasso profoundly deepens our understanding of our literary tradition. It is, itself, a literary masterpiece.
Born in Florence, Roberto Calasso lives in Milan, where he is publisher of Adelphi Edizioni. He is the author of The Ruin of Kasch ; The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony , which was the winner of France's Prix Veillon and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger ; and Ka .
レビュー
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The manufacturing quality is disgraceful. This book does not feel like a Vintage International edition. It feels like a counterfeit of its own description: flimsy, joyless, and produced with the level of care one associates with a parking ticket or a takeout menu left in the rain. The paper, binding, and finish all suggest a product made as cheaply as possible, then dressed up in a reputable imprint and pushed out the door before anyone with eyes or shame could object. I did not buy this expecting a luxury object. I expected readability. What am I? Miss Sanchez posing at the MET GALA? . That is not an extravagant demand. It is the basic premise of selling books to people instead of insulting them with glued-together pulp and calling it an edition. What makes this especially absurd is the title itself. Literature and the Gods is a serious literary work, yet this copy has been manufactured with all the reverence of a disposable instruction manual for a broken toaster. The contrast is almost comic, except I paid money for it, which ruins the joke. If Amazon is going to manufacture editions under the Vintage International name, then those editions should not feel like temporary objects waiting politely to fall apart. This copy is cheap, unpleasant, and unworthy of the book it contains. Please provide either a replacement copy of genuinely acceptable manufacturing quality or a full refund. I would also appreciate a response that does not pretend this is a matter of personal preference. This is a manufacturing-quality issue.
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I gifted away my paperback, so I "re-quiped" a Kindle edition this time. Some may have a problem with it if, for instance, you don't have a solid background in the classics and mythology, or if you don't like the way Italian writing has a kind of lyrical, rambling rhythm, but this is simply a great book. I absolutely love it and recommend it to everyone when conversation moves near this type of subject matter (synchronicity and so on). And just to belabor the point, I wouldn't be surprised if it had something to do with Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" making it to television.
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I had high hopes for this book, judging from previous reviews, but was very disappointed. I have never come across a book that combined academic discourse with new age woo before, but I have now. I was hoping to find how the ancient gods have been re-imagined in European literature. What I got was an incoherent ramble concluding with an assertion that the Hindu gods are embodied in sentence construction, or something. All rather beyond me. Apparently this results in absolute literature, which seems to mean the books the author likes. Back to Baudrillard and Derrida, who are a tough read, but at least make sense, and Neil Gaiman, who knows how to use the gods in a novel.
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I decided to add a review because I was not only impressed with how erudite Calasso is, but I was also inspired by his rich approach to literature and the complex understanding he sheds on the wellspring of literature. After reading C. Collins review and the other two reviews, I realized no more needed to be said. I agreed with them all. Allow yourself the luxury of reading this challenging yet nourishing book.
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All of Calasso's writings reveal deep insights from comprehensive readings of the classics.