KA: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India
by CALASSO, Roberto
- Used
- Fine
- first
- Condition
- Fine
- Seller
-
Gloucester City, New Jersey, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Reviews
KA, by the Italian writer Roberto Calasso, is a breathtaking and revelatory book. Calasso had hit the boards running in 1993 with THE MARRIAGE OF CADMUS AND HARMONY, a reimagining of the classic Greek myths; in KA, subtitled “Stories of the Mind and Gods of India,” he dives into the Indic myths and restores to them not only their brutal and erotic power but their mysterious, fluxive, almost vegetative qualities: the stories grow from each other as naturally as a flower from a stalk from a seed, and as startlingly, bafflingly, as the lotus stalk blooms from Vishnu’s belly. The collection of retold myths is usually a rote, schoolbookish genre: plots and characters but stale prose and no manna, no power, no emanations. Calasso is a full-flower European intellectual, and I’ll match any odds you offer that he is familiar with Heinrich Zimmer and Mircea Eliade and all the great twentieth-century mythographers, but that’s all behind the prose; he is also, here, an artist working solely, with an expressive and sensuous style, to render the tale for the tale’s sake: myth as a way of knowledge. He uses the tropical welter of the Vedic myths to envelop us; and when he arrives at the open field of the stories about the Buddha and Ananda he demonstrates how Buddhism grew out of Hinduism with a clarity we feel in our bones. Tim Parks has translated beautifully, not least in the playful cadences that close the book, that lull us back into story and wheel us back around to the book’s beginning. Calasso at the end evokes the hymn to Ka from the Rig Veda, with its teasing, lyric questions: “He who brought forth the great and lucid waters: Who shall we adore with our oblations?” KA—the Sanskrit word for “Who?”—is the book’s question; these stories, from the great and lucid waters of Indic myth, are its myriads of answer.
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Details
- Seller
- Between the Covers- Rare Books, Inc. ABAA (US)
- Seller's Inventory #
- 533996
- Title
- KA: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India
- Author
- CALASSO, Roberto
- Format/Binding
- Softcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Fine
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Publisher
- Alfred A. Knopf
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 1998
- Keywords
- UncorrectedProof, ShortStories
Terms of Sale
Between the Covers- Rare Books, Inc. ABAA
All books are first editions unless otherwise noted. All books are returnable within ten days if returned in the same condition as sent. We accept VISA, MASTERCARD, AMERICAN EXPRESS, DISCOVER, PAYPAL, checks and money orders. New Jersey residents please add 6.625% sales tax. All items guaranteed, all items subject to prior sale. Members ABAA, ILAB. Shipping is $4.50 for Media Mail, $10.00 for Priority Mail or UPS Ground. Tracking is provided for every order. Alternate shipping available by request. Shipping costs are based on books weighing 2.2 LB, or 1 KG. If your book order is heavy or oversized, we may contact you to let you know extra shipping is required.
About the Seller
Between the Covers- Rare Books, Inc. ABAA
About Between the Covers- Rare Books, Inc. ABAA
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- Wrappers
- The paper covering on the outside of a paperback. Also see the entry for pictorial wraps, color illustrated coverings for...
- Uncorrected Proof
- An uncorrected proof is a printed copy of a book that needs to be reviewed for errors and corrections. They are released prior...
- Verso
- The page bound on the left side of a book, opposite to the recto page.