The Ruin of Kasch [Paperback]

Roberto Calasso (Author), William Weaver (Translator), Stephen Sartorelli (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0674780299 | ISBN-13: 978-0674780293 | Publication Date: March 1, 1996

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Ruin of Kasch examines the rise of the modern state and the origins of romantic nationalism, whose sick fruit has been harvested in places such as Bosnia, Chechnya, and East Timor. Roberto Calasso locates the transformation in the French Revolution, when a frivolous monarchy evaporated before a government that valued order, bureaucracy, and above all secrecy. He also attributes it to Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754-1838), who was perhaps the first professional civil servant. Ever selfish, Talleyrand proved the perfect servant to the Napoleonic Era; as Napoleon said, "Principles are fine; they don't commit you to anything." The Ruin of Kasch is about Talleyrand, but also, Italo Calvino notes, "about everything else." It's a whirlwind of a book, sometimes maddeningly so. It is one to pick up, ponder, put down, argue with, and then resume reading until the next argument pops up a page or two later.

Review

[This is] a work charged with intelligence and literary seduction...A master of obliquity, [Calasso] delights in the bishop's move: his ideas and conceits veer in all directions, striking an exhilarating balance between the aleatory and the deliberate. Profligate in its voices and conversations, this startling, puzzling, profound book yields no take-away thesis; but it lingers in the memory like the aroma of an ancient library.
--Sunil Khilnani (New York Times Book Review )

The book--like an explosion carrying sky-high the wreckage of a city--is an appropriately chaotic and fast-moving assemblage...One minute, the reader is present at the Congress of Vienna; the next, in Cambodia under the Pol Pot regime.
--Andrea Lee (New Yorker )

Calasso seems to have plundered no less than a national library to make this demanding but unfailingly provocative book. Its theme...is the shallowness of the modern mind, and because of the very workings of modern culture that Calasso so astutely analyzes, I hesitate to apply to his book the epithet it richly deserves: masterpiece...Like all great books, it reads us more truly than we read it. And like all great works of art or reflection, it may make you change your life.
--Jay Tolson (Civilization )

The Ruin of Kasch takes up two subjects: the first is Talleyrand, and the second is everything else. And everything else includes all the things that have happened in human history, from the beginnings of civilization until today...A book that loves to reveal itself as wandering and vagrant, guided only by fancy and by an insatiable curiosity, constructed of fragments, citations, digressions, anecdotes, and aphorisms--all so that it can be read with nearly continuous pleasure.
--Italo Calvino (Panorama Mese )

Philosophical, meandering, allegorical, funny, tragic, episodic, The Ruin of Kasch declares war on all ideologies...Those of you who love small, sensible, linear novels--this book will cure you of your shivers and qualms...Long live Calassotherapy!
--Frédéric Vitoux (Le Nouvel Observateur )

The Ruin of Kasch is not a narrative but an inexhaustible mine of anecdotes, not an essay but an endless string of brilliant insights into literature, history, philosophy, economics, politics--in short, into the makings and unmakings of the modern world.
--Masolino d'Amico (Times Literary Supplement )

Scarcely have readers opened the book when they are not merely interested but fascinated--dazzled in the richest sense of the word...Here is a work that combines erudition, brilliance of style, and intellectual virtuosity to portray the modern era.
--François Bott (Le Monde )

With The Ruin of Kasch Roberto Calasso has perhaps inaugurated a new literary category: the hybrid book, uniting history and novel, tale and aphorism, fable and reflection...One doesn't know what to admire more: the erudition that laughs at erudition, the supple and imperious thinking that connects disparate elements with a single stroke, the masterful way the subject engenders its own form...A very great book.
--Pascal Bruckner (Le Figaro )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (March 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674780299
• ISBN-13: 978-0674780293
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,099,096 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant meditation on Modernity, March 16, 2005

By 

Q (Q Continuum) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ruin of Kasch (Paperback)

Calasso is one of the greatest modern writers, and his work defies all generic conventions: a fascinating blend of history, poetry, scholarship, and philosophy. The era of great artists and masterpieces has perhaps passed, but there is still room for a genius like Calasso to write this postmodern pastiche. This work is a profound meditation on modernity, which he considers as beginning with the French Revolution. He considers the history of the French Revolution and its aftermath, and especially the role of Tallyrand, whom Calasso find fascinating for many reasons. Beyond the French Revolution, however, Calasso ranges far and wide, from Max Stirner to Marx to Nietzsche to Dostoevsky to Melville and even back to Hindu mythology. The coherency of this book is at the level of poetry or an epic novel such as Moby Dick, not at the level of logical argument. Those looking for a tightly focused argument or linear history should go elsewhere; those capable of appreciating a poetic and philosophic historically-informed mediation on the problem of our identity as moderns will read and savor this unique performance.

18 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars calasso's book is a brilliant mess, August 17, 1997

By 

Gary Arms (Dubuque, IA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ruin of Kasch (Hardcover)

Since I much admired Calasso's first book, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, I looked forward to reading this one. Unfortunately, it is a mess. Although full of interesting bits, the pieces fail to add up to a satisfying whole. The author is never able to define what he means by "modern" except to provide ever more anecdotes about Talleyrand. These are intriguing but unsatisfying. Calasso seems nostalgic for an old world when myths, customs, magic were taken seriously. But it is hard to be sure if even this nostalgia is the point of the book. Still one can't help but admire the wide ranging knowledge of this author and his sometimes eloquent writing

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fragmata and Obscurata, July 11, 2001

By 

Alvin C. Allen (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ruin of Kasch (Paperback)

Very odd book. Full of nostalgia for the aristocracy of France, not unlike Nietzsche's nostalgia for the aristocracy of Rome and Greece. It is highly disjointed, indeed ofter incoherent relying upon dense references to obscure figures in the 18th Century. There is a thread of Rimbaud running through the text There are brilliant moments and insights, but no follow through or exposition. It is fragmata, obscurata, anecdotes, quotes from belles letres and diaries. Its central theme is musings on the loss of aristocratic legitimacy and the rise of the democratic mob. Worth reading if the French revolutionary period interests you and you are familiar with European culture of that period.