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The Forty-Nine Steps Hardcover – August 1, 2001

by Roberto Calasso (Author), John Shepley (Translator)

8

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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. In this first translation of his most important essays, Calasso brings his intellect and elegant prose style to bear on the essential thinkers of our time, providing a sweeping analysis of the current state of Western culture.
"Forty-nine steps" refers to the Talmudic doctrine that there are forty-nine steps to meaning in every passage of the Torah. Employing this interpretive approach, Calasso offers a "secret history" of European literature and philosophy in the wake of Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud. Calasso analyzes how figures ranging from Gustav Flaubert, Gottfried Benn, Karl Kraus, Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht, and Theodor Adorno has contributed to, or been emblematic of, the current state of Western thought. This book's theme, writ large, is the power of fable - specifically, its persistence in art and literature despite its exclusion from orthodox philosophy.

Print length

304 pages
Language

English
Publisher

University of Minnesota Press
Publication date

August 1, 2001
Dimensions

5.88 x 1 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0816630984
ISBN-13

978-0816630981
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In contrast to Hitchcock's 39, Roberto Calasso prefers The Forty-Nine Steps, the number indicated by the Talmud as the correct amount of exegetical phases in moving toward full Torah passage elucidation. Calasso, the Milanese publisher of Adelphi Edizioni, produced what Gore Vidal called "a perfect work like no other" in The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, a retelling and cultural investigation of the origins of the Greek myths. These 49 steps (actually 21 chapters) move forward in time to take on 20th-century literature as it developed in the wake of Freud, Nietzsche and Marx. From the varying fascinations with the case of Daniel Paul Schreber to the red threads spun out by Karl Kraus and "Brecht the Censor," Calasso (as rendered here by Pasolini's translator John Shipley) moves light and fast, but stays grounded, throwing off ideas of his own at every turn.

From Library Journal

In this collection of essays, first published in Italy in 1991, Italian postmodernist Calasso (Ka, Literature and the Gods) explores the nexus among post-Hegelian continental philosophies, early psychiatric theory, and literary criticism. He writes compellingly of the constitutional weaknesses and political insights he identifies in the works of Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin, Goethe, Karl Kraus, Simone Weil, and more than a dozen other conceptualists. Calasso writes personably but without drama, portraying each thinker as a person who included intellectual activity among a range of other behaviors. As a result, these essays serve as critical biographies of intellects in themselves rather than as analyses of personalities or arguments for or against specific intellectual concepts. Many of these essays first appeared in journals in the 1970s, but they do not feel dated. Recommended for academic collections serving students of Western culture, comparative literature, and modern philosophy. Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley P.L., CA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Minnesota Press; 1st edition (August 1, 2001)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0816630984
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0816630981
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.47 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.88 x 1 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,472,134 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,718 in Modern Western Philosophy
- #14,560 in Literary Movements & Periods

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Aran Joseph Canes

A Tour of Early Twentieth Century Berlin and Vienna

Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2022

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The Forty Nine Steps is Roberto Calasso at his finest. Published mid-career in 1991, it consists of a series of characteristically ingenious essays on German thought and literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

It’s a world where the view of nature as a series of signs pointing towards God has been dethroned and in its place have come decoration and industry. Men and women sell their labor on the open market while dreaming of a utopia when they will dominate the state. Decoration serves, inadequately, to make this unnatural and inhumane way of living somehow palatable. All the while philosophers and journalists are forced into a reflection on the nature of language when its use to describe the essences of nature is no longer accepted.

Personally, I haven’t read Adorno, Kraus, Benjamin or almost any of the leading lights of the modern Teutonic world. So it was mostly useful to me as an introduction to their works and as a preparation for reading the originals.

Those who are already familiar with the Frankfurt school or, say, the fiction of Robert Walser will get a lot more out of the book than I did.

It’s something then to return to once you’ve delved more deeply than simply reading Kafka, Mann and Nietzsche.

But for those with an adequate background, highly recommended.

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Cody Franchetti

Splendid Calasso essays

Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2014

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Roberto Calasso, known in the USA mostly for his bestseller "The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony", a recounting of Greek mythology in a novelistic style with uniquely acute interpretations of the subsistence of many of its themes still today, is one of the greatest living essayists today. This book offers a collection of some of his greatest essays spanning from Plato to Nietzsche, from Goethe to Flaubert, from Marx to Benjamin, from Stirner to the Coca-Cola bottle. His erudition is unparalleled and his style spellbinding.
I will mention here just two of his essays, which appositely stand at the beginning and end of the book as two pilasters, the midst of which, the most seemingly disparate yet subtly interconnected essays lie. The first essay, "Fatal Monologue", on Nietzsche's "Ecce Homo" is beyond comparison for its penetrating and shattering conclusions, which too many "philosophers" of the last generation, who claim to have been influenced by Nietzsche, completely ignore despite Calasso's reading of Nietzsche exposes the marrow of the German philosopher's import. The book ends with an essay on Plato and myths called "The Terror of Fables", and, like the first essay, is a spellbinding charge of the core of Western thought and identity.

19 people found this helpful

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Jonathan Charles Cracknell

The Italian Intellectual

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 2, 2017

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Can Roberto Calasso do any wrong?

Mr. B. Allan

Didn't understand a word of it! Turgid isn't a ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 9, 2017

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Didn't understand a word of it!

Turgid isn't a strong enough word. To give a flavour of the book the first chapter consists of Calasso writing about Heidegger's writings on Nietzche's writings about Wagner's writings - arresting stuff.

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