James's review
The Marriage Of Cadmus and Harmony by Roberto Calasso
"To invite the gods ruins our relationship with them but sets history in motion. A life in which the gods are not invited isn't worth living. It will be quieter, but there won't be any more stories. And you could suppose that these dangerous invitations were in fact conceived by the gods themselves, because the gods get bored with men who have no stories."
An absolutely brilliant, if meandering, journey through variants of Greek myth. Roberto Calasso writes with evident passion, weaving the ancient and malleable stories of gods and goddesses and mortals together in a way that even Arachne would envy.
In these pages, it seems as if the gods stride the earth once again, playful and mischievous, and the mortals dance to their folly and triumph. The dullness of the profane is stripped away, and Athens lives again. An extraordinary book.
An absolutely brilliant, if meandering, journey through variants of Greek myth. Roberto Calasso writes with evident passion, weaving the ancient and malleable stories of gods and goddesses and mortals together in a way that even Arachne would envy.
In these pages, it seems as if the gods stride the earth once again, playful and mischievous, and the mortals dance to their folly and triumph. The dullness of the profane is stripped away, and Athens lives again. An extraordinary book.
