Roberto Calasso

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Roberto Calasso, 1991

Roberto Calasso (born May 30, 1941 in Florence , † July 28, 2021 in Milan ) was an Italian essayist and cultural-philosophical writer , whose most important works have been translated into many European languages. He was also the director of the Adelphi Edizioni publishing house in Milan.

Life

Roberto Calasso studied English literature at the University of Rome and received his doctorate from Mario Praz with a study on The Hieroglyphs by Sir Thomas Browne . After the death of Roberto Bazlen in 1965, who together with Luciano Foà had founded the publishing house Adelphi in Milan in 1962 - as the secession of Einaudi Verlag , so to speak - Calasso took his place and was managing director since 1971. One of the first projects of the young publisher was the Italian version of the by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari developedcritical edition of the works of Friedrich Nietzsche tackled. For his services to Nietzsche's work in Italy, Calasso was awarded the Premio Nietzsche in 1998. In 2008 he was awarded the Science Prize of the Aby Warburg Foundation .

When in 2015 the takeover of Adelphi Verlag, which Calasso managed as a minority shareholder, threatened to be taken over by the publishing empire Mondadori , presided over by Marina Berlusconi , Calasso succeeded in “buying out” itself or Adelphi by increasing its stake to 71% of the total capital.

He has been a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2000 . The American Academy of Arts and Letters he belonged since 2015 also as a foreign honorary member.

Calasso was married to the writer Fleur Jaeggy and lived in Milan, where he died at the end of July 2021 at the age of 80 after a long illness.

Works

In his larger works, Calasso “artfully kept the balance between literature and essay. Associatively lined up one picture after the next, he unfolded his view of Greek mythology (in The Marriage of Kadmos and Harmonia ), the Indian world of ideas (in Ka ) and modern European literature (in The Downfall of Kasch ) ”. In his subsequent work The Literature and the Gods , Calasso finally attempted to narrow Greek and Indian mythology and that literature of European modernism that he describes as "absolute": first Friedrich Hölderlin and Friedrich Schlegel , then Charles Baudelaire , Lautréamont , Friedrich Nietzsche , Gottfried Benn .

A special feature of Calasso's literary production were the laundry slips that he wrote for hundreds of Adelphi titles. Because they are not the usual advertising, but, as one reviewer wrote, texts “of the finest quality, which can be condensed into sparkling micro-narratives on the length of two printed pages”, a selection of a hundred of these miniatures in one was made for the 40th anniversary of the Adelphi publishing house Volume issued.

Fonts (selection)

  • The secret story of Senate President Dr. Daniel Paul Schreber. (1974) Translated from the Italian by Reimar Klein. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 1980 ISBN 3-518-11024-1 .
  • The wedding of Kadmos and Harmonia. (1988) Translated from the Italian by Moshe Kahn . Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / Leipzig 1993, ISBN 3-458-33176-X .
  • The downfall of Kasch. (1983) Translated from the Italian by Joachim Schulte and Reimar Klein. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 1997, ISBN 3-518-39925-X .
  • Ka. (1996) Translated from the Italian by Anna Katharina Fröhlich and Marianne Schneider . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 1999, ISBN 3-518-41067-9 .
  • The literature and the gods. (2001) Translated from the Italian by Reimar Klein. Hanser, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-446-20263-3 .
  • The forty-nine steps. Essays. (1991) Translated from the Italian by Joachim Schulte. Hanser, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-446-20567-5 .
  • A hundred letters to an unknown reader. (2003) Translated from the Italian by Roland H. Wiegenstein . Hanser, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-446-20741-7 .
  • K. (2002) Translated from the Italian by Reimar Klein. Hanser, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-446-20759-2 .
  • The Pink Tiepolos. (2006) Translated from the Italian by Reimar Klein. Hanser, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-446-23576-2 .
  • Baudelaire's dream. (2008) Translated from the Italian by Reimar Klein. Hanser, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-446-23998-2 .
  • The embers . (2010) Translated from the Italian by Reimar Klein. Hanser, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-446-24918-9 .
  • The unnameable today . Translated from the Italian by Reimar Klein and Marianne Schneider. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3518428665 .
  • Il Cacciatore Celeste . 2016
    • The heavenly hunter . Translation: Reimar Klein, Marianne Schneider. Berlin: Suhrkamp, ​​2020

honors and awards

Web links

Commons : Roberto Calasso  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Addio a Roberto Calasso: scomparso lo scrittore ed editore Adelphi. In: milanotoday.it. July 29, 2021, accessed July 30, 2021 (Italian).
  2. ^ Vil .: Publishing director Roberto Calasso is the new majority shareholder. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, December 14, 2015.
  3. ^ Book of Members .
  4. ^ Honorary Members: Roberto Calasso. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 7, 2019 .
  5. ^ Morto Roberto Calasso, scrittore e editore. corriere.it, accessed July 29, 2021 .
  6. ^ Art. Roberto Calasso. In: Gero von Wilpert: Lexicon of world literature. Foreign language authors A – K. 4th edition. Stuttgart: Kröner 2004, p. 303 (book title added)
  7. ↑ Volker Breidecker: Roberto Calasso ennobles the laundry slip. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , 20./21. December 2003. (Review of the Italian original of Hundred Letters to an Unknown Reader )
  8. ↑ Lena Bopp: Hit by the wave and flooded for a moment. In: FAZ . February 8, 2013 .;
  9. ↑ Johan Schloemann : Blood washes blood . Review. SZ, July 20, 2020, p. 9
personal data
SURNAME Calasso, Roberto
SHORT DESCRIPTION Italian writer and publisher
BIRTH DATE May 30, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Florence
DATE OF DEATH July 28, 2021
PLACE OF DEATH Milan