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Heads floating above the sky

The Celestial Hunter
MYTHOLOGIES / In Calasso's fourteen essays, we often find ourselves between myth and science.




(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

The Celestial Hunter by the Italian author Roberto Calasso was originally published in 2016 by the publisher Adelphi as Il Celcciatore Celeste. The book is now available to English readers thanks to a fine translation by Richard Dixon. Those who know Calasso's essayistic prose are not surprised by his Protév style and way of thinking or by the theme. Those who do not yet know his writings will be able to enjoy his fresh approach to ancient subjects and various associations.

The book is a collection of mythologies. Calasso is the 21st century myth writer. His style is not like anyone else's: Separate sections that create a kind of "pilot ladder", such as steps, are connected by thin stripes – they work alone, but are still connected.

The Celestial Hunter weaves together stories about metamorphosis and the development of ethics and man in society. The associations are broad, including from Greek myths. Calasso, for example, recounts an anecdote about Egyptian priests – who, after hearing from Solon that this was their older story, began to laugh and said: Ah, you Greeks are so childish; to the Egyptians, all these stories are quite new.

Is God also an animal?

Calasso brings us to Nicolas Malebranche, Lewis Binford, Plotin and Simone Weil…

Calasso tells the story of the primeval hunters and how Homo sapiens evolved due to its metamorphosis, how man actually evolved to Homo sapiens by becoming an animal: Man had to become a predator to be human. To kill an animal, to hunt for meat, man disguised himself as an animal. It needed tools to kill animals, could not do it with just his hands. Calasso writes: Man cut animal bones into tools and weapons – did he mock the animals? Did man have a bad conscience? Perhaps the cave paintings serve as a testimony to man's first remorse and fascination, Calasso wonders. So how can man make amends for his own sake? By a sacrifice, by sacrificing blood. Either from another animal or a human. The question that then arises: Is God also an animal, is he also a predator?

Calasso – disguised as Plotinus – questions ethics. Plotinus is similar in many ways to the Gnostics, but he still finds their behavior repulsive – he thinks the Gnostics lack virtue.

A heavenly hunter

So where does virtue come from? From life in contemplation – Plotin, or Calasso answers. But what about the never-healed wounds of existence that Nietzsche wrote about? Or Marx's and Cieszkowski's solution with life in practice, Calasso asks.

Finally, he gives a series of reflections on Simone Weil and her exchange of letters with her brother André, who was a mathematician and imprisoned at the time. They are not talking about his miserable situation, they are talking about irrational numbers. André Weil believes that the discovery of irrational numbers, of the incomparable, was the beginning of a catastrophe: the understanding that the world and the cosmos have no end. Simone, on the other hand, saw it as a source of joy. Here we are between myth and science.

This may be a response to Calasso's wonder and wanderings. He himself is a hunter, but a heavenly hunter, just like Artemis, whom he glorifies in one of the fourteen essays, or Orion, reverse arbor, the inverted tree. As Homer says: the men with heads hovering over the sky. Or as Plotinus, who believes that the movements of life are an art, like the movements of a dance. In addition comes lógos – to exist, man needs a challenge, a critical thought, an invigorating, intellectual resistance. Thus, Calasso, like Orion, with his head up against an unlimited sky, hunts for myths, and gives them back to us in a fresh and stimulating form.

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