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- Author Unknown
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ZIN Product Number: 10652727
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| | | |  | | | Product Details
 Format: Hardcover, 385 pages
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674780264
Release Date: Jan 9, 1994
Average Reader Review:  (Based on 1 review.)
| |  | | | In Brief
In this novel, the author reflects on the life of Talleyrand, and "thesweep of French history from 1780 to 1830. . . . {Mr. Calasso's} stories, meditations, aphorisms and quotations {address} . . . the metamorphosis of the ancient and classical worlds into the modern. In his eyes, this is a shift froma universe of sacred correspondences to one of conventional equivalences, a move from the rituals of sacrifice to the transient laws of experiment--from which flow the immoderate cruelties of the modern period." (N Y Times Book Rev) First published in Italy in 1983.
| | | | From The Publisher
Taking as his focus the periods immediately before and after the French Revolution but making occasional sallies backward and forward in time - from Vedic India to the porticoes of the Palais-Royal and to the killing fields of Pol Pot - Calasso recounts, elucidates, and interprets the downfall of what Baudelaire was already calling "the Modern." This downfall came as a sequel to an earlier and opposite collapse: that of the archaic societies which were regulated by the movements of the stars and the rituals of sacrifice. At the center of the work stands the story of the ruin of Kasch, a legendary African kingdom whose annihilation becomes emblematic of the ruin of the ancient and modern worlds. The genius of Calasso's book is that, in its illuminating blend of literature and ideas, it establishes a genre all its own. Its form is a rich blend of anecdotes, quotations, analysis, digressions, aphorisms, dialogues, historical discussion, and straightforward storytelling that beautifully mirrors its subject matter and evokes the protean spirit of Modernism. It is a sumptuous literary feast. Calasso brings to his stage a vast gallery of characters, including Laclos and Marx, Benjamin and Chateaubriand, Sainte-Beuve and Levi-Strauss, Max Stirner and Joseph de Maistre. And presiding over them all is the French statesman Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, who knew the secrets of both the Old and New regimes and who was able to adjust the perplexing and cruel notion of "legitimacy" to the modern age. Cynical Talleyrand - who showed that success in the new era depends on agility, fluidity, and a consummate sense of style - serves, fittingly, as the master of ceremonies throughout the book, which is at once a meditation on the origins and nature of power and a breathtaking synthesis of Western cultural history. It is an extraordinary reading experience.
| | | | Annotation
Focusing on the periods immediately before and after the French Revolution, Roberto Calasso recounts and interprets the downfall of what Baudelaire was already calling "the Modern." With French statesman Tallyrand serving as the book's "master of ceremonies, " Calasso persuades us to see our civilization in an entirely new light.
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 | | | | | Number of Reviews: 1 Average Rating:
a masterpiece
-- sharon chehade, December 19, 2000
Also Recommended: the marriage of cadmus and harmony by roberto calasso the tartar steppe by dino buzatti
| | | | The Reader's Catalog
The author of The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony brings his enormous erudition and unique stylistic skills to the period immediately preceding and following the French Revolution and charts the downfall of "The Modern." "This book has two subjects: one is Talleyrand; and the other is everything else"--Italo Calvino
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| | | | | | Keywords
History, Fiction, Kings and rulers, Revolution, 1789-1799, Civilization, Western, France, Consulate and First Empire, 1799-1815, Modernism, Africa, France, History, Consulate and First Empire, 17, Fiction, Revolution, 1789-1799, Europe - History, History - General History, Europe - General
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