La rovina di Kasch

The Maestro views Civilization-History-Politics through timeless poles of Ritual and Sacrifice. Using Talleyrand as a drifting sort of focus, there's a great deal that is pondered, rather than explored. This glossing is perhaps history by other means yet the Vedic sources failed to anticipate the su Leggi tutto

I first saw this in an upright position, sandwiched by two other books, with only its title and author “Calasso” emblazoned on its spine and visible to the eye. I immediately felt a mysterious pull of strange familiarity, like when you meet someone you’re sure you’ve met before but could not pinpoin Leggi tutto

I started this one as a fresh-face graduate, I finish it 19 years later at roughly the age Roberto Calasso was when he published it, his first book, and the foundational section of his life's work, an exploration of sacrifice, myth and modernity. Most of Calasso's cast and almost all his themes turn Leggi tutto

The most difficult book I read in 2018, Roberto Calasso’s The Ruin of Kasch, I picked up at the donation table disbursing the personal library of a dead poet to his semblables around Montreal in a dark bar before a reading. It had everything you look for in a fascination: quotes from Italo Calvino a Leggi tutto

This life of that extraordinary man Talleyrand – “who betrayed everything except style” – provides the frame around which this multi-faceted discourse is woven. Near the end of his own life Talleyrand gave a funeral oration for an obscure diplomat which Calasso dissects as a superb example of calcul Leggi tutto