Word: calassos
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...Calasso also puts forward the claim that absolute literature exists without context, connected only to other pieces of absolute literature. Not in a causal link, mind you: Calasso reveals at the end of the book they are only related by the initiating impulse in the soul of the artist. A pretty slick answer to the accusation of arbitrariness, is it not? Maybe if Calasso had spent more of the book explaining why he feels “absolute literature” is without context, and proved that point before gallivanting around the literary canon like a madman, the book would...
...Calasso doesn’t make it any easier for us by making an argument that pretty much just says, “Some works are divinely inspired and some aren’t.” Calasso also seems to think that spark elevating those divinely inspired works can be discovered only by a reader’s personal reaction to it (such as having his hairs stand on end), begging the question of why the hell we would need Calasso to point them out. But this is not to suggest that this is a thesis-driven sort...
...best reason to be glad we have Calasso is that he represents an antidote to the most common error on the modern lit-criticism scene: that of dissecting a text until it is nothing more than a series of textual moments made to be deconstructed, rather than a living, breathing emotional experience. In Literature and the Gods, Calasso goes too far in the opposite direction, letting himself get bowled over by the mystical alchemy that happens in good literature, but at least it’s in the opposite direction...
...then you can go. So, as for Literature and the Gods, smile when you pass it on a bookshelf, but don’t buy it. If it’s awe and wonder you’re looking for, check out The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, where Calasso comes by it honestly. If it’s coherent literary theory you’re looking for, bleached of interest, I hereby give you permission to sneak into any one of the English courses on campus, free of charge...
...Roberto Calasso...