In a meditation on the wisdom of the Vedas, Roberto Calasso brings ritual and sacrifice to bear on the modern worldIn 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 about the Vedic people, who lived more than three thousand years ago in northern India: They left behind almost no objects, images, or ruins. They created no empires. Even the soma, the likely hallucinogenic plant that appears at the center of some of their rituals, has not been identified with any certainty. Only a "Parthenon of words" remains: verses and formulations suggesting a daring understanding of life. "If the Vedic people had been asked why they did not build cities," writes Calasso, "they could have replied: we did not seek power, but rapture." This is the ardor of the Vedic world, a burning intensity that is always present, both in the mind and in the cosmos. With his signature erudition and profound sense of the past, Calasso explores the enigmatic web of ritual and myth that defines the Vedas. Often at odds with modern thought, these texts illuminate the nature of consciousness more vividly than anything else has managed to till now. Following the "hundred paths" of the Satapatha Brahmana, an impressive exegesis of Vedic ritual, Ardor indicates that it may be possible to reach what is closest by passing through that which is most remote, as "the whole of Vedic India was an attempt to think further."

Escritor y editor, Calasso se licenció en literatura inglesa con la tesis Los jeroglíficos de Sir Thomas Browne. En ella, revisa el arquetipo del jeroglífico y la obra del escritor inglés nacido en 1605, vinculada a la medicina y la teología, la erudición anticuaria y la filosofía esotérica, las ciencias naturales y el simbolismo hermenéutico. Con este libro, la primera edición mundial del texto, Calasso da las claves para entender lo que más tarde desarrollaría en Ka, Las bodas de Cadmo y Harmonía o La ruina de Kasch.

Product Description: Written by the great Italian writer Roberto Calasso as he finished editing the famous German judge Daniel Paul Schreber’s book, Memoirs of my Nervous Illness, this book studies Schreber from a unique perspective, with a very different approach from that taken by such thinkers as Freud or Lacan...read more

Product Description: It would seem as though Kafka never had the intention of publishing these philosophical writings as an autonomous book, although they did surface posthumously in 1953 thanks to his friend Max Brod, who published them as part of a larger collection...read more

The author of The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony presents an original interpretation of the work of Franz Kafka in a series of essays that looks at the meaning of Kafka's stories and what they reveal about the enigmatic author himself. Reprint.

Product Description: El loco impuro is the spanish translation of the first book of the great italian writer Roberto Calasso. It is a fascinating book on the famous german jurist, Daniel Paul Schreber, written by Calasso as he finished editing Schreber’s book, Memoirs of my nervous illness...read more

Product Description: In books lauded as brilliant, exhilarating, and profound, Roberto Calasso has revealed the unexpected intersections of ancient and modern through topics ranging from Greek and Indian mythology to what a legendary African kingdom can tell us about the French Revolution...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

The author completes his sweeping look at the role of gods and goddesses in the human imagination by focusing on the emergence and re-emergence of pagan deities in the Western literary canon. Reprint. 10,000 first printing. (view table of contents)

In a collection of epic cyclical stories woven together, the author explores the myths and legends of India, chonicling the exotic worlds of the Devas, Siva, Brahma, Vishnu, the Mahabharata, and the Buddha.

Throughout his travels, Bruce Chatwin took thousands of photographs. They demonstrate his legendary 'eye' at its best, showing a sense of colour and surface, an ability to find beauty in the most mundane of objects or prosaic of places.

In a collection of epic cyclical stories, the author of The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony explores the myths and legends of India, chronicling the the exotic worlds of the Devas, Siva, Brahma, Vishnu, the Mahabharata, and the Buddha. 25,000 first printing. (view table of contents)

Product Description: In this brilliant work, Roberto Calasso cracks the code of what Baudelaire named the Modern--the increasingly murderous period from the French Revolution to the end of World War II. From Talleyrand's France and the legendary African city of Kasch, to Lenin's Russia and the killing fields of Cambodia, Calasso leads us along an enticing maze of mythology, literature, art, and science to the pulsing heart of civilization, where he deciphers the deepest secrets of history...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Retells, in a modern interpretation, the stories of Greek mythology