Roberto Calasso: 18 books

In a meditation on the wisdom of the Vedas, Roberto Calasso brings ritual and sacrifice to bear on the modern world In this revelatory volume, Roberto Calasso, whom The Paris Review has called "a literary institution," explores the ancient texts known as the Vedas. Little is known...

An interior look at Roberto Calasso's work as a publisher and his reflections on the art of book publishing In this fascinating memoir, the author and publisher Roberto Calasso meditates on the art of book publishing. Recalling the beginnings of Adelphi in the 1960s, he touches on the Italian...

Brilliant, inspired, and gloriously erudite, Literature and the Gods is the culmination of Roberto Calasso’s lifelong study of the gods in the human imagination. By uncovering the divine whisper that lies behind the best poetry and prose from across the centuries, Calasso gives us a renewed sense...

The eighteenth-century Venetian painter Giambattista Tiepolo spent his life executing commissions in churches, palaces, and villas, often covering vast ceilings like those at the Würzburg Residenz in Germany and the Royal Palace in Madrid with frescoes that are among the glories of Western art. The...

From the internationally acclaimed author of The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony comes one of the most significant books in recent years on a writer of perennial interest–a virtuoso interpretation of the work of Franz Kafka. What are Kafka’s fictions about? Are they dreams? Allegories? Symbols?...

A decisive key to help grasp some of the essential points of what is happening around us. The ninth part of Roberto Calasso’s work in progress, The Unnamable Present, is closely connected with themes of the first book, The Ruin of Kasch (originally published in 1983, and recently reissued...

Un programma editoriale nasce inevitabilmente dal disegno e dal caso – e finisce per configurarsi come un "mondo possibile". E i mondi variano per bellezza, ricchezza, vivibilità. Questo libro è una prima guida a quel "mondo possibile" che si è manifestato in una foresta di...

A sparkling new translation of the classic work on violence and revolution as seen through mythology and art The Ruin of Kasch takes up two subjects: "the first is Talleyrand, and the second is everything else," wrote Italo Calvino when the book first appeared in 1983. Hailed as one...

A brilliant new translation of a classic work on violence and revolution as seen through mythology and art The Ruin of Kasch takes up two subjects—“the first is Talleyrand, and the second is everything else,” wrote Italo Calvino when the book first appeared in 1983. Hailed as one of those...

"A giddy invasion of stories--brilliant, enigmatic, troubling, outrageous, erotic, beautiful." --The New York Times Book Review "So brilliant that you can't look at it anymore--and you can't look at anything else. . . . No one will read it without reward." --The Boston Globe With the...

Presenting the stories of Zeus and Europa, Theseus and Ariadne, the birth of Athens and the fall of Troy, in all their variants, Calasso also uncovers the distant origins of secrets and tragedy, virginity, and rape. "A perfect work like no other. (Calasso) has re-created . . . the morning of our world."--Gore Vidal. 15 engravings.

Ci fu un'epoca in cui, se si incontravano altri esseri, non si sapeva con certezza se erano animali o dèi o signori di una specie o demoni o antenati. O semplicemente uomini. Un giorno, che durò molte migliaia di anni, Homo fece qualcosa che nessun altro ancora aveva tentato. Cominciò a imitare...

Come Zeus, sotto forma di toro bianco, rapì la principessa Europa; come Teseo abbandonò Arianna; come Dioniso violò Aura; come Apollo fu servo di Admeto, per amore; come il simulacro di Elena si ritrovò, insieme a quello di Achille, nell’isola di Leukè; come Erigone si impiccò; come Coronis,...

«Chi è Ka?» si domanda l’immenso uccello Garuda, sprofondato tra le fronde dell’albero Rauhina, quando incontra questo nome alla fine di un inno dei Veda. Ka è il nome segreto di Prajapati, il Progenitore, colui che ha dato origine ai trentatré dèi e agli innumerevoli uomini. Presto gli...