Roberto Calasso, who has died aged 80, wrote: “A life in which the gods are not invited is not worth living. Calasso insisted that these were not just curious fairy stories but essential allegories of what we were and are. I was three years old in 1944 when I was told: ‘If someone asks you, you are Roberto Fachini.’”The boy was precocious. It pleased Calasso he could elevate public literary taste with often abstruse books. As Banville put it in the Irish Times: “ In a mealy-mouthed time, Calasso speaks out strongly from an unfashionably high-intellectual position.

Source: The Guardian July 30, 2021 15:55 UTC