The Ruin of Kasch

Roberto Calasso

THE RUIN OF KASCH

Translated from the Italian by Richard Dixon

Contents

THE RUIN OF KASCH

Note for Lucien

Living in the Torrent

Exempla Voluptatis

The Grand Ball

Treacherous Trifles

Dismal Glory

“The Mysterious Force of Legitimacy”

Arcana Imperii

The Origins of Sweetness

Eulogius

L’Autrichienne

The Woodcutter and the Fisherman

Goethe in Venice

On Taste

Metamorphoses of Style

A Belated Nostalgia for Sorrow

The Languor of a Park in Berry

Around Port-Royal

The Ruin of Kasch

Among the Ruins of Kasch

Elements of Sacrifice

Law and Order

The Forest Doctrine

Archives and Will-o’-the-Wisps

Postcards from the Quaternary

The Demon of Repetition

Goethe’s Birthday

Sacrificial Crumbs

The Antiromantic Child

Limits

Process

Glosses on Marx

Ricardo’s Ruthlessness

Geldkristall

History Makes Experiments

The Artificial Barbarian

Un frisson nouveau

Behind the Glass

Bien-aimé

A Visit to Picpus

“The Organization Wouldn’t Like That”

The Moscow Doorkeeper

Montaigne’s Wake

The Wolf-Man Recalls

Voices from the Palais-Royal

Mundus Patet

Letter from Saint Petersburg

Notes

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THE RUIN OF KASCH

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.

In the beginning the mountains had great wings. They flew through the sky and landed on the earth as they pleased. Then the earth trembled and shook. Indra chopped off the mountains’ wings. He fastened the mountains to the earth to make it stable. The wings became clouds. From then, the clouds gather around the peaks.

TALLEYRAND: I speak at the opening of this book because I was the last person familiar with ceremonies. I also speak, as always, to deceive. This book is not dedicated to me, nor to anyone else. This book is dedicated to dedication.

“Monsieur de Talleyrand is a difficult man to follow around the meanderings of his political life,” said the Duchesse d’Abrantès as she opened the doors of the Salon de M. de Talleyrand.¹ At the entrance, the delicious stuccoes of the ancien régime. By the exit, the bourgeois dining room. At the center, the hypnotic beasts of the Empire stare at us from armchairs. And in rooms to the side we greet the guillotine and the American forests. Toward the far end, a Congress stumbles in the trails of its dances. From every corner Prince Talleyrand’s mots echo among the guests. A delicate tom-tom, an instrument heard for the first time at Mirabeau’s funeral, sounds them out through the meanderings, billets-doux along the way. Mots retold many times over, almost never by the Prince himself, who was so lazy about writing. He entrusted certain terrible truths to the instant of a reply, threw them into the bustle of conversation, risking each time that they might not be picked up. But Talleyrand, who had seen it all, even before he had set off on his journey, always kept a magnanimous faith in at least one thing: in society as a resonant salon, where each time there would be at least one hidden ear to catch what he said. And so those mots, bound up in balsamic bandages, would be passed down over the years as if they were a set of folio volumes. Certain aristocrats, in old age, tend to resemble their servants. Here the Great Chamberlain will gradually become a simple master of ceremonies, keeper of a house of ghosts, tour guide. The meanderings of his life and of his salon will become the context for a cruel performance repeated over and again, though in changeable sequences, in place of the myth that society had forgotten to repeat.