The design and UX isn't done, Rob and Abbie, okkurrrr! 😌
kimushur's review against another edition
4.0
This was soo much fun to read! Roberto Calasso writes so beautifully, it's a delight to read. The book covers most, if not all, of the Greek myths and stories. It is a collection of essays where stories with similar themes or occurring at the same time are in the same essay. It is a heavy read, not beacause of heavy content matter but because of the language used. I'd recommend taking your time with this and reading one essay at time instead of trying to finish the whole thing in one go. Overall I really enjoyed reading this, inspite of taking 8 months to finish it.
bubble0nex's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
biiaanccca's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I had much higher hopes for this book. It started off good— informative, and well researched. I was quite excited to get the entire history on Cadmus and Harmony, and their marriage. Except, unfortunately it quickly got off that topic and started discussing other Greek mythological topics. That’s great and all, but it caught me off guard and was not what I was expecting. I would have rated this book just two stars, but because it is so well written and thoroughly researched I am giving it three.
catacombsaint's review against another edition
challenging
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
3.0
this is a great book but i wasn’t in the right place mentally to enjoy it so it just dragged on forever. definitely due for a reread when i have some more brain space available.
scholarhect's review against another edition
5.0
This is, without doubt, one of the most precious and beautiful things I've read. Ever. At the end of the world, or on the desert island, when I have to choose five things to keep with me, this will be one of them. There is not a single person I know that I wouldn't recommend it to. I am currently fighting the urge to re-draft our mythology course to use this as its primary modern text (instead of Harris & Platzner, with Graves as a backup) - though I suspect it would be far more effective as a companion text for studies in Greek epic and textual reception. Endlessly inspiring; perfectly composed and translated. Ten out of five stars.
daximus's review against another edition
4.0
Calasso...he is up there with Eliade and Campbell, for me.
urbi_shmurbi's review against another edition
4.0
Nemeluosiu buvo biški sunku skaityt šita knyga angliškai, nes labai sunkiais žodžiais parašyta, kuriuos pirma kart girdžiu.
Dabar jaučiuosi labiau išsilavinusi graikų mitologijos kultūroje. Mėgstamiausia vieta tai buvo kai rašė apie Trojos karą, nes tada daug maž žinai vardus ir t.t.
Dabar jaučiuosi labiau išsilavinusi graikų mitologijos kultūroje. Mėgstamiausia vieta tai buvo kai rašė apie Trojos karą, nes tada daug maž žinai vardus ir t.t.
fahrenheit's review against another edition
3.0
Un 3.5... por no ponerle 4, ya que lo leí hace tiempo y me encantó. Mucho. Puso a Calasso en mi lista de autores que no fallan.
phileasfogg's review against another edition
4.0
A meditation on Greek mythology. Calasso teases out connections and threads in the myths, rescues obscure myths from the silence, pulls almost-forgotten variants from the shadows.
He is especially interested in the power of variants in mythology. Every important myth exists in multiple contradictory versions. If many variants of a significant story do not exist in the written record, we must assume they once existed and have been lost to 'the silence', that the variants which must have been told in ancient times were never written or the written versions have been lost; but we can imagine what those variants must have been.
It's interesting that the most fascinating heroes of our world likewise exist in mutually exclusive variants, which are often enjoyed by the same audiences with no confusion or discomfort. Sherlock Holmes can live in Victorian London, in World War II America, in 21st century London, and in 21st century New York, and the same audience can enjoy all those stories. The Doctor, of Doctor Who, has contradictory existences in a variety of media; he's a different character in the TV show, the 1960s movies, the various comics, the 'annuals'. Any effort to enforce a canon, to police 'unauthorised' use of a character, can only weaken and limit that character.
I've read Homer, and I thought I knew a little about the rest of Greek mythology. Reading The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, I soon realised that apart from Homer, I knew only a sanitised, Disney version of this world. Calasso's Greek myths are a more horribly real body of stories, a better reflection of the barbaric, unregulated world from which they sprang. The most common threads he exposes are rape and suicide.
The significance of the title? The marriage of Cadmus and Harmony was a singular moment in the affairs of gods and men; their wedding feast was the one time gods and men hung out together openly, eating and drinking at the same table, with no ulterior motives and no disguises. Most other contact between the gods and humans involved deception, disguise, metamorphosis, rape, abduction.
Towards the end of his book Calasso segues away from myth and into the realm of real history, to tell us how awful the Spartans were. This seems off-topic, but worth knowing about. It made me think less of those Hollywood people who made heroes of the Spartans, and who had probably done enough research to know what bastards they were. Yes, most people in the past look like bastards by our standards, but the Spartans really take the biscuit.
All the talk of sacrifice, and of tragedy (which was originally a 'goat dance', and associated with the sacrifice of a goat) made me think of how all story-telling is like a continuation of the ancient Greek practice of sacrifice, the ritual killing of an animal or person. Tragedy, in the technical sense, is a story that ends with the death of the hero; the performance of a tragedy is a ritual sacrifice where no actual people get hurt, only the fictitious hero.
In real life, if we live in a well-managed civilisation and do not work in the emergency services, we can go for years without ever seeing death. But death always features a lot in stories.
I started thinking about this a few years ago. My grandmother was dying, and had become almost immobile, and for the first time had developed a desire to read novels to amuse herself. But the one thing she didn't want to read about was death, and fair enough. It turns out it's really hard to find novels in which nobody dies. They're mostly about people making quilts or having sex. She read a lot of novels about people making quilts.
About the same time, I saw an excellent documentary series called How Art Made the World, which spends an episode on the question of why so much art, especially narrative art, is about death. This book reminded me very much of that episode's conclusion, as I saw it: that the stories we watch and read are the survival into our comparatively nice civilisation of ritual human sacrifice, sublimated into an imaginary form.
He is especially interested in the power of variants in mythology. Every important myth exists in multiple contradictory versions. If many variants of a significant story do not exist in the written record, we must assume they once existed and have been lost to 'the silence', that the variants which must have been told in ancient times were never written or the written versions have been lost; but we can imagine what those variants must have been.
It's interesting that the most fascinating heroes of our world likewise exist in mutually exclusive variants, which are often enjoyed by the same audiences with no confusion or discomfort. Sherlock Holmes can live in Victorian London, in World War II America, in 21st century London, and in 21st century New York, and the same audience can enjoy all those stories. The Doctor, of Doctor Who, has contradictory existences in a variety of media; he's a different character in the TV show, the 1960s movies, the various comics, the 'annuals'. Any effort to enforce a canon, to police 'unauthorised' use of a character, can only weaken and limit that character.
I've read Homer, and I thought I knew a little about the rest of Greek mythology. Reading The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, I soon realised that apart from Homer, I knew only a sanitised, Disney version of this world. Calasso's Greek myths are a more horribly real body of stories, a better reflection of the barbaric, unregulated world from which they sprang. The most common threads he exposes are rape and suicide.
The significance of the title? The marriage of Cadmus and Harmony was a singular moment in the affairs of gods and men; their wedding feast was the one time gods and men hung out together openly, eating and drinking at the same table, with no ulterior motives and no disguises. Most other contact between the gods and humans involved deception, disguise, metamorphosis, rape, abduction.
Towards the end of his book Calasso segues away from myth and into the realm of real history, to tell us how awful the Spartans were. This seems off-topic, but worth knowing about. It made me think less of those Hollywood people who made heroes of the Spartans, and who had probably done enough research to know what bastards they were. Yes, most people in the past look like bastards by our standards, but the Spartans really take the biscuit.
All the talk of sacrifice, and of tragedy (which was originally a 'goat dance', and associated with the sacrifice of a goat) made me think of how all story-telling is like a continuation of the ancient Greek practice of sacrifice, the ritual killing of an animal or person. Tragedy, in the technical sense, is a story that ends with the death of the hero; the performance of a tragedy is a ritual sacrifice where no actual people get hurt, only the fictitious hero.
In real life, if we live in a well-managed civilisation and do not work in the emergency services, we can go for years without ever seeing death. But death always features a lot in stories.
I started thinking about this a few years ago. My grandmother was dying, and had become almost immobile, and for the first time had developed a desire to read novels to amuse herself. But the one thing she didn't want to read about was death, and fair enough. It turns out it's really hard to find novels in which nobody dies. They're mostly about people making quilts or having sex. She read a lot of novels about people making quilts.
About the same time, I saw an excellent documentary series called How Art Made the World, which spends an episode on the question of why so much art, especially narrative art, is about death. This book reminded me very much of that episode's conclusion, as I saw it: that the stories we watch and read are the survival into our comparatively nice civilisation of ritual human sacrifice, sublimated into an imaginary form.