Roberto Calasso: A Man Possessed

“Roberto Calasso passed away this year at the age of 80. There is no one quite like Roberto Calasso; perhaps there is no one remotely like Roberto Calasso.”

“For in the beginning of literature there is myth, as there is also at the end of it.”

– Jorge Luis Borges

“Never judge a book by its cover.” Or so we are told. It has been almost three decades since I came upon a remaindered copy of Roberto Calasso’s 1983 book The Ruin of Kasch. I had never heard of Roberto Calasso, but I was struck both by the title and the cover illustration—a detail from a fresco by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo of whom I was also somewhat ignorant of at the time. Having judged the book by its cover and in a leap of faith, I purchased it.

Not judging a book by its cover seems to be a more specific derivative of a more general orientation to reality which suggests that appearances are deceiving, that the visible has no relationship to what is not visible. Certainly appearances are often deceiving. But how often? And if things are not what they appear to be, what are they? Little did I realize when I bought The Ruin of Kasch that I was entering a world which would confront these very questions.

There are few books like The Ruin of Kasch. I can think of no common category which contains it. It contains history, storytelling, philosophy, literary criticism, psychology, economics, and even gossip, yet it clearly is not simply the sum total of these categories. The Ruin of Kasch is all of these things and more. The Ruin of Kasch is the first in a series of books Calasso would insist are all interconnected. After years of reading Calasso’s books, I think it fair to say that The Ruin of Kasch is emblematic of all of his work.