|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Myths for the Moderns
| Article
# : |
10173 |
|
|
Section : |
BOOK WORLD
|
| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1993 |
2,859 Words |
| Author
: |
John Bremer
John Bremer, a Cambridge philosopher and educator, writes
mostly on Plato. |
THE MARRIAGE OF CADMUS AND HARMONY
Roberto Calasso, translated by Tim Parks
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993
403 pp., $25.00
The English and the Australians frequently refer to tall poppies. They mean anyone who excels, anyone who is more prominent than his fellows; they mean anyone who stands above the crowd, anyone who stands tall, out-topping the ordinary run of men.
It would take a tall poppy to explain to them that their common term--pejorative and sinister in its implication--is taken from a story of another tall poppy, Herodotus. As I recall, the Father of History tells how a tyrant sent emissaries to rule a city. Returning for instructions, they asked, as they walked along the edge of a summer cornfield, how they should deal with the great and leading men of their new dominion.. The tyrant did not reply but simply drew his sword and lopped off the heads of the poppies that had grown above the level of the corn. So much for great men.
It appears that Roberto Calasso has become a tall poppy. In Europe, his stature has been increased, his reputation heightened, by the literary prizes awarded his best-seller, published in Italy in 1988 and since translated into fifteen languages. In America, the reviewers are mixed and so are their reviews. Adolescent fatuity like Gore Vidal's "a numinous text to be placed beside--ahead of--Old and New Testaments" can scarcely help the proper reception of The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, and although there has been a roundup of adulation from the usual suspects, the major reviews range from condescendingly polite (Mary Lefkowitz in the Washington Post) to downright nasty (Peter Green in the New Republic).
Green's nastiness may be explained in part by the fact that Calasso is head of Adelphi Edizione, a publishing house that while not ideologically aligned is nevertheless not afraid to publish authors who are not politically correct. In fact, Adelphi had its birth in the refusal of another publisher to print for the first time in Italy a definitive edition of Nietzsche's collected works. Green's major criticism seems to be that "Calasso is riding a trend," but this scarcely conceals the envy, a nominally appropriate vice, of the reviewer. His conclusion is that "we end with the comforting thought that the gods are really only outsize funny human beings and that it's sex-and-symbolism that makes the world go round. Baby boomers will buy this book in
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
