Roberto Calasso Knihy

Nevšední dílo, stavící na autorově bravurní znalosti řecké mytologie, je zároveň básnivě vypravěčským podáním mýtů i komentářem k nim, jakýmsi podobenstvím o nadvládě nutnosti a náhody nad lidskou existencí. Ve dvanácti kapitolách podle znamení zvířetníku či počtu olympských bohů nám Calasso předkládá různé, často i protichůdné varianty řeckých bájí a současně i cestu k jejich pochopení. V jediné knize se mu daří spojit talent vtipného vypravěče a básnický cit s učeností inteligentního badatele a lehkým perem esejisty.

O Kafkově díle a životě byly napsány a vydány stovky knih a tisíce studií. Všichni autoři se v nich snažili povědět něco, co ostatní neřekli, postihnout tak Kafkovu jedinečnost. Roberto Calasso, italský filozof, znalec mytologie a nakladatel, se ve své knize K. k Franzi Kafkovi postavil ne jako ten, kdo našel pravdu jeho díla, ale jako čtenář, který si při čtení srovnává svět, v němž žije, se světem, který mu předkládá kniha a její autor. Vytváří tak jedinečný obraz Kafkova světa, který tu přestává být fikcí a stává se realitou, do níž čtenář vstupuje jako jedna z Kafkových postav. V žádném jiném textu nejsme Kafkovi blíž než v Calassově knize.

Focuses the ancient texts known as the Vedas. This volume explores the enigmatic web of ritual and myth that define the Vedas.

In a dramatic tale, Garuda, a powerful black eagle, defies the heavens to retrieve soma, a divine nectar, in a desperate bid to save his mother. The story unfolds amidst cataclysmic events, including fiery rains, highlighting themes of sacrifice and determination. Enhanced by stunning artwork, this adaptation brings a captivating retelling of an ancient myth to life, appealing to both new readers and fans of the original bestseller.

'When hunting began, it was not a man who chased an animal. It was a being that chased another being. No one could say with certainty who each of them were.' Connecting Greek and Egyptian myth, the stories of poets, shamans and gods, Roberto Calasso takes us on a spellbinding voyage that traces the beginnings of our detachment from the animal world; from the landmark evolutionary moment in which humans became the hunter rather than the prey. Roaming through time and across cultures - from the Palaeolithic era to Turing's Machine - The Celestial Hunter delves into the crucible of all our stories- the source of human grief, guilt, resilience and redemption with which we have wrestled throughout history.

A splendid reimagining of key stories from the Bible, by the author of The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. A man named Saul is sent to search for some lost donkeys and on the way is named king of his people. The queen of a remote African realm travels for three years with her multitudinous retinue to meet the king of Jerusalem and pose him a few riddles. A man named Abraham hears a divine voice speaking words that reverberate throughout the Bible: 'Go away from your land, from your kindred and from the house of your father toward the land that I will show you'. In The Book of All Books, Roberto Calasso weaves together stories of promise and separation from one of the founding texts of Western civilisation. These tales of grace and guilt, of the chosen and the damned, cast many Biblical figures and indeed the whole book in a light as astonishing as it is disquieting. The Book of All Books is part of a larger work which began with The Ruin of Kasch (1983) and includes The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Ka, and The Celestial Hunter.

"Throughout his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time, Proust repeatedly refers to colours as Tiepolo Pink or Tiepolo Red. Who exactly was the artist that he so memorable transformed into colour? The eighteenth-century Venetian painter Giambattista Tiepolo spent his life executing commissions in churches, palaces and villas, creating frescoes that are among the glories of Western art. The life of an epoch swirled around him - but though his contemporaries admired him, they failed to understand him. Few have attempted to tackle Tiepolo's series of bizarre and haunting etchings, but Roberto Calasso rises to the challenge, interpreting them as chapters in a dark narrative that contains the secret of Tiepolo's art. Blooming ephebes, Oriental sages, owls, snakes- we will find them all within the pages of this book, along with Venus, Time, Moses, angels, Cleopatra and Beatrice of Burgundy - a gypsyish company always on the go. Calasso makes clear that Tiepolo was more than a dazzling intermezzo in the history of painting. Rather, he represented a particular way of meeting the challenge of form- endowed with a seemingly effortless style, Tiepolo was the last incarnation of that peculiar Italian virtue sprezzatura, the art of not seeming artful"--Publisher's description.

Tourists, terrorists, secularists, hackers, fundamentalists, transhumanists, algorithmicians- in this book Roberto Calasso considers the tribes that inhabit and inform the world today. A world that feels more elusive than ever before. Yet once contrasted with the period between 1933 and 1945, when the world made a partially successful attempt at self-annihilation, the new millennium begins to take on an unprecedented form. What emerges is something illusory, ever-shifting and occasionally murderous- the unnamable present. This book, the ninth part of a work in progress,is a meditation on the obscure and ubiquitous process of transformation happening in societies today, where distant echoes of Auden's The Age of Anxiety give way to something altogether more unsettling.

In Ka, Roberto Calasso delves into the corpus of classical Sanskrit literature recreating and re-imagining the enchanting world of ancient India. Beginning with the Rig-Veda, Ka weaves together myths from the Upanishad, the Mahabharata and the stories of the Buddha, all of which pose questions that have haunted us for millennia.

With Baudelaire's critical intelligence as his inspiration, the author ranges through his life and work, focusing on two painters - Ingres and Delacroix - about whom Baudelaire wrote acutely, and then turns to Degas and Manet, who followed in the tracks Baudelaire laid down in his great essay The Painter of Modern Life.