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The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony by: Roberto Calasso List Price: £8.99 City Travel Guides Price: £6.74 You Save: £2.25 (25%)Prices subject to change. |
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Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 133 EAN: 9780099308010 ISBN: 0099308010 Label: Vintage Manufacturer: Vintage Number Of Pages: 416 Publication Date: June 30, 1994 Publisher: Vintage Studio: Vintage Sales Rank: 60579 Related Items:
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 Rating:  - AdelphicaRoberto Calasso is probably unreadable and at a certain attempt even this book (his most popular both in the sense of notoriety and accessibility) is. But Roberto Calasso is not a writer a novelist or a poet, he is mainly a publisher, Adelphi, his publishing house, is one of the best in Italy since Aldo Manuzio (!!!). This book is just the second chapter of a long work in progress comprehending The ruins of Kasch, Ka, K and Il Rosa Tiepolo (just published in italian) and supposed to be a giant trait-d'union between all the titles published by Adelphi. It is meant to sollicit a curious mind, to create new links between different approaches to Literatures, to be the starting point of a wider search for an esotheric reader (in the sense of someone ... Read More: Rating: - Eye-poppingAll of Roberto Calsso's book are unreadable. Except this, which issublime. Be clear about what this is not: it's not a traditonal historicalnovel, a mythology textbook, or merely an excersise in style. Tis is anattempt to look at the Greeks, and a culture which was part prehistoric,part modern. In many ways they were just like us. In many others they werestone-age. This is about the birth of western conciousness and what itmeans to be a thinking human today. It gives the Greeks a rightful placein our sommon western heritage and is still a wonderfully entertaining,brilliantly structured read. Fabulous. Rating: - intangible, beguiling and rewardingTruly an excellent book - conveying in it's veiled scholarship the intangible essence of myth. It is not the 'Golden Bough' of myth (nor is it Clancy or Harry Potter) as the reviewer above has it - as Calasso goes to great lengths not to espouse any particular mythographic theory (especially not a ritualistic one). His aim is not to put forward any one mythographic reading, such as the Jungian or Levi-Straussian perspective etc., but simply to reiterate the myths and tacitly show their essence in their telling and in their structure. it is in their retelling that the nature of the mythic becomes slowly apparent to the reader, not due to the battering of any scholarly argument. often as Calasso shows there is no true cannon for myths, but there are ... Read More: Rating:  - Interesting, but who is it aimed at?This is clearly the work of a highly intelligent & original scholar. But - it is also VERY obscure. If you want a primer in Greek mythology, look elsewhere! Calasso comes up with some striking insights & connections but rarely backs them up with anything as vulgar as an argument. I also find the marketing of this book rather dubious. The publishers has lined up approving quotes from various top intellectuals (Gore Vidal, AS Byatt etc) but in case you might think it's too highbow they also call it an "international bestseller". What, like Harry Potter or John Grisham, you mean? Rating: - The Bible and The Golden Bough of Greek Mythology all in oneCalasso has a depth and range of knowledge of every variant of Greek myth which is matched only by his remarkable storytelling capabilities. At once informative about every aspect of a wide range of Greek myths, his style is also fluid and subtle, surprising and unacademic, reading with the ease of a novel. Borne through the variations on the pattern of the myths of the ancient culture, Calasso's powerful use of a simple device utterly engages and refreshes the stories and gives them (oh, cliche! - but it is true) contemporary relevance and a liveliness whilst at the same time revealing their origin. His central tool is simple: he briefly, decisively, tells and re-tells every myth in each form in which it has occurred - and then draws all ... Read More: |
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