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Baudelaire S Folly
Roberto Calasso
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Description for Baudelaire S Folly
Paperback. With Baudelaire's critical intelligence as his inspiration, the author ranges through his life and work, focusing on two painters - Ingres and Delacroix - about whom Baudelaire wrote acutely, and then turns to Degas and Manet, who followed in the tracks Baudelaire laid down in his great essay The Painter of Modern Life. Num Pages: 368 pages. BIC Classification: 2ADF; DSBF; DSC. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 195 x 124 x 23. Weight in Grams: 306.
Roberto Calasso is one of the most original and acclaimed of writers on literature, art, culture and mythology. In Baudelaire's Folly, Calasso turns his attention to the poets and writers of Paris in the nineteenth century who created what was later called 'the Modern.' His protagonist is Charles Baudelaire: poet of nerves, art lover, pioneering critic, man about Paris, whose groundbreaking works on modern culture described the ephemeral, fleeting nature of life in the metropolis - and the artist's role in capturing this - as no other writer had done. With Baudelaire's critical intelligence as his inspiration, Calasso ranges through his life and work, focusing on two painters - Ingres and Delacroix - about whom Baudelaire wrote acutely, and then turns to Degas and Manet, who followed in the tracks Baudelaire laid down in his great essay The Painter of Modern Life. In a mosaic of stories, insights, dreams, close readings of poems and commentaries on paintings, Paris in Baudelaire's years comes to life. In the eighteenth century, a 'folie' was a garden pavilion set aside for people of leisure, a place of delight and fantasy. Here Calasso has created a brilliant and dramatic 'Folie Baudelaire': a place where the reader can encounter Baudelaire, his peers, his city, his extraordinary likes and dislikes, and his world, finally discovering that it is nothing less than the land of 'absolute literature'. Born in Florence, Roberto Calasso lives in Milan, where he is publisher of Adelphi. He is the author of Tiepolo Pink, The Ruin of Kasch, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, winner of the Prix Veillon and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, Literature and the Gods, Ka and K.
Product Details
Publisher
Penguin Books
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2014
Condition
New
Number of Pages
368
Place of Publication
London, United Kingdom
ISBN
9780241957561
SKU
V9780241957561
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 5 to 9 working days
Ref
99-99
About Roberto Calasso
Born in Florence, Roberto Calasso lives in Milan, where he is publisher of Adelphi Edizioni. He is the author of an ongoing series of books which began with The Ruin of Kasch and includes The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Ka, K., Tiepolo Pink, La Folie Baudelaire, and Ardor.
Reviews for Baudelaire S Folly
[Roberto Calasso is] a writer about the foundational myths and tales of human society who has no equal in the sparkle of his storytelling and the depth of his learning . . . His writing . . . these lost voices speak again, in magical, uncanny and something even sinister ways . . .
Boyd Tonkin, The Independent
[Roberto Calasso is] an ambitious artist-critic, pushing the subject as far as he can, bent on penetrating the mind of both Baudelaire and his time. In the process, he delivers plenty of insight. . . Tough but rewarding, written with bold intelligence and panache.
Kirkus
Smoothing the way is the curiously conversational tone in which even the most arcane information is conveyed, as well as the underlying sense that, as the author piles detail upon detail, he's having a huge amount of fun. Calasso may identify with his hero, but there is no Baudelairean melancholy in his work. There's no show-off either-only a sincere delight, an innocent reveling in his own encyclopedic mind at play. This mood is catching, and if one adopts the right dreamy pace, one can commune with Calasso through a kind of imaginative osmosis.
Andrea Lee, New Yorker
It is a gorgeous, willful, and convincing re-staging of Baudelaire's style . . .
Adam Thirlwell, The New Republic
Arresting observations on painters and paintings alike, aided and abetted by some discriminatingly chosen illustrations, beautifully reproduced . . . La Folie Baudelaire is bedazzling.
Alex Danchev, The Guardian
What a rare and special book this is, from its opening paragraph . . . But then what a rare writer is the prolific, post-Calvino Italian master Roberto Calasso-72-year-old scholar, translator, author of film scripts, radio and television adaptations, operatic librettos and seemingly most other viable prose forms in the late 20th and early 21st centuries . . . [La Folie Baudelaire is] an ideal introduction in English to one of the most urbane and readable of living masters.
Jeff Simon, Buffalo News
Roberto Calasso [is] the most inquisitively suggestive literary critic in the world today . . .
Thomas McGonigle
Los Angeles Times
Boyd Tonkin, The Independent
[Roberto Calasso is] an ambitious artist-critic, pushing the subject as far as he can, bent on penetrating the mind of both Baudelaire and his time. In the process, he delivers plenty of insight. . . Tough but rewarding, written with bold intelligence and panache.
Kirkus
Smoothing the way is the curiously conversational tone in which even the most arcane information is conveyed, as well as the underlying sense that, as the author piles detail upon detail, he's having a huge amount of fun. Calasso may identify with his hero, but there is no Baudelairean melancholy in his work. There's no show-off either-only a sincere delight, an innocent reveling in his own encyclopedic mind at play. This mood is catching, and if one adopts the right dreamy pace, one can commune with Calasso through a kind of imaginative osmosis.
Andrea Lee, New Yorker
It is a gorgeous, willful, and convincing re-staging of Baudelaire's style . . .
Adam Thirlwell, The New Republic
Arresting observations on painters and paintings alike, aided and abetted by some discriminatingly chosen illustrations, beautifully reproduced . . . La Folie Baudelaire is bedazzling.
Alex Danchev, The Guardian
What a rare and special book this is, from its opening paragraph . . . But then what a rare writer is the prolific, post-Calvino Italian master Roberto Calasso-72-year-old scholar, translator, author of film scripts, radio and television adaptations, operatic librettos and seemingly most other viable prose forms in the late 20th and early 21st centuries . . . [La Folie Baudelaire is] an ideal introduction in English to one of the most urbane and readable of living masters.
Jeff Simon, Buffalo News
Roberto Calasso [is] the most inquisitively suggestive literary critic in the world today . . .
Thomas McGonigle
Los Angeles Times