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Loading... The marriage of Cadmus and Harmony (original 1988; edition 1993)by Roberto Calasso, Tim Parks (Translator)
Work InformationThe Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony by Roberto Calasso (1988)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. A "thoughtful romp" through classical mythology: serpentine and cyclical, symmetrical and ornate, equal parts pornographic and gruesome. It is very easy to get lost in this book and then resurface, cresting on a particularly beautiful passage and unsure of quite where you've landed. More than that, the chapters on Pelops, the Oracle at Delphi and others read like some freak Greek blockbuster. "What are the mysteries? 'The saying of many ridiculous things and many serious things' is the definition Aristophanes offers, and no one has ever bettered it.'" On "the Greek thing": "'With a god, you are always crying and laughing,' we read in Sophocles' Ajax. Life as mere vegetative protraction, glazed eyes looking out on the world, the certainty of being oneself without knowing what one is: such a life has no need of a god. It is the realm of the spontaneous atheism of the homme naturel. But when something undefined and powerful shakes mind and fiber and trembles the cage of our bones, when the person who only a moment before was dull and agnostic is suddenly rocked by laughter and homicidal frenzy, or by the pangs of love, or by the hallucination of form, or finds his face streaming with tears, then the Greek realizes he is not alone. Somebody else stands beside him, and that somebody is a god. He no longer has the calm clarity of a perception he had in his mediocre state of existence. Instead, that clarity has migrated into his divine companion. A sharp profile against the sky, the god is resplendent, while the person who evoked him is left confused and overwhelmed." No, Socrates himself cleared up the point shortly before his death: we enter the mythical when we enter the realm of risk, and myth is the enchantment we generate in ourselves at such moments. Endorsements on the back matter can be daunting. How do we explain our struggles or indifference with work which is lauded so many which we admire? Half way through this, I was south of neutral and growing impatient. Abandonment was an option. The work then slid out from under its treatment of Athenian mythography and constructed a comparison with the practices and beliefs of Persia, Sparta and Egypt. I did and do find that fascinating. The divine practices of rape and reproduction are sufficient cause for us to be recalled as a species back to the plant. I do not as rule become excited by myth or tale. Such informs my struggles. This is a ridiculously erudite book. I am sure it won't be my last Calasso as I have a stack to tackle in the future. Mr. Calasso has created a wonderful, (in both senses of the word!) meditation on the religious structure pf the Ancient World. One must recognize that only at the time of the Roman Emperor Julian the apostate (361 - 63 CE) was there an attempt to create a consistent organized, picture of the Pagan Gods and their exploits and duties, trying to rival the tidy picture of the Christian gospels and Acts. Pausanias' travelogue has shown us that the Pagan world's religion was a confused picture, where various temples created their own versions of Genesis and Exodus, and Joshua, mixing and matching names and attributes of their Gods but seldom trying to co-ordinate the narrative to be consistent. Julian did not remain in office long enough to complete his attempt. Thus, to this day, the Pagan religion remains a mass of material and it's expression is primarily found in the Works of the Athenian Tragedians, the epic and lyric poets of the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds, and Homer. There's no plan! Some Gods are described as children of gods who, elsewhere are described as the fathers of the same Gods. Into what is often an Escher-like set of Genealogies, a conflicting set of actions, and confused power relationships , Robert Colasso plunges, and manges, very cleverly, to produce a set of meditations on this canon. His scholarship is deep, and in my mind at least, he manages to create a set of explanations and interactions that may have occurred in the minds of a very clever and well read mythographer of the later Roman Empire. Do not look for a connected narrative here, but the modern reader will come away with a fuller appreciation of what the classical mindset could contain. This is not a book for a single reading, but a keeper and consultation fountain. Bravo! no reviews | add a review
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. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)853.914Literature Italian Italian fiction 1900- 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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On Helen (of Troy), my paraphrase: On Athens/Sparta: On Heroes/Monsters: Misc:
“I alone among the gods have the keys to the room where the lightning is sealed.” (I am always mis-attributing this to Job)
“Atreus eyes.” ( )