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The eagle Garuda is on a mission to steal soma--an intoxicating liquid that was to the gods of India what ambrosia was to the Olympic pantheon--in order to ransom his human mother, Vinata, from the snakes who have held her captive since she lost a bet and became her sister Kadru's slave. He reflects to himself, "So many things happening, so many stories one inside the other, with every link hiding yet more stories...."
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And so it is with Ka, Roberto Calasso's treatment of Indian mythology from the creation of the universe to the spiritual awakening of the Buddha. Employing the same fragmentary narrative techniques as in The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Calasso builds his story by adding image after image, teasing out the hidden connections and submerged themes. He draws amply from the Vedas and the Mahabharata, "three times as long as the Bible, seven times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey put together." Tim Parks's translation preserves Calasso's sensitivity to the visionary power of language, presenting the reader with a pathway that leads through dizzying awe to gradual recognition of a more familiar world.
With the same startling originality and brilliance that made his Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony a literary landmark, Roberto Calasso narrates the birth of one of the world's great cultures: the formation of the mind of India. He doesn't explain or describe this mental world--he regenerates it through its epic cyclical stories and customs, until we no longer need to define it for ourselves because we have come to know what it is.
So: Who is Ka? And who is the immense eagle asking the question, filling the sky, elephant and giant turtle dwarfed in his claws? How can he be the child of a woman? Who are the tiny folk he eats? The first impact of Ka is one of tremendous strangeness, bewilderment, disorientation. How can a Western tradition which demands to identify a beginning and an end understand one that sees no beginning and no end, but only an eternal tangle? Slowly, though, the strange becomes familiar, as new and ever more fantastic stories are spun out, gods emerge, bizarre sacrifices are performed. Why must the king's wife copulate with a dead horse? How is man reduced to an eye in an ant's nest? Why must the road to higher consciousness pass through an erotic adventure? Why is the first girl the dawn and the second the dusk? Rejecting our cravings to have the culture systematized and predigested for us, Calasso invites us to understand India on Indian terms, through Indian images, through India itself.
As Ka unfolds, the worlds of the Devas, of ´Siva, Brahm-a and Visnu, of the wars of the Mah-abh-arata, are splendidly revealed, until finally, with the advent of the Buddha, we are amazed at our own sense of recognition, for these stories seem to confirm, or to articulate for the first time, our own deepest perceptions about our human
condition.
An entirely unique reading experience from an author at once supremely erudite and unceasingly creative.
So: Who is Ka? And who is the immense eagle asking the question, filling the sky, elephant and giant turtle dwarfed in his claws? How can he be the child of a woman? Who are the tiny folk he eats? The first impact of Ka is one of tremendous strangeness, bewilderment, disorientation. How can a Western tradition which demands to identify a beginning and an end understand one that sees no beginning and no end, but only an eternal tangle? Slowly, though, the strange becomes familiar, as new and ever more fantastic stories are spun out, gods emerge, bizarre sacrifices are performed. Why must the king's wife copulate with a dead horse? How is man reduced to an eye in an ant's nest? Why must the road to higher consciousness pass through an erotic adventure? Why is the first girl the dawn and the second the dusk? Rejecting our cravings to have the culture systematized and predigested for us, Calasso invites us to understand India on Indian terms, through Indian images, through India itself.
As Ka unfolds, the worlds of the Devas, of ´Siva, Brahm-a and Visnu, of the wars of the Mah-abh-arata, are splendidly revealed, until finally, with the advent of the Buddha, we are amazed at our own sense of recognition, for these stories seem to confirm, or to articulate for the first time, our own deepest perceptions about our human
condition.
An entirely unique reading experience from an author at once supremely erudite and unceasingly creative.
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- PublisherEditorial Anagrama
- Publication date1999
- ISBN 10 8433908901
- ISBN 13 9788433908902
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages464
- Rating
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Ka. [Traducción de Edgardo Dobry].
Published by
Anagrama, Barcelona
(2016)
ISBN 10: 8433908901
ISBN 13: 9788433908902
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Book Description Softcover. Condition: New. 2a.ed. 22x14 cm. Colección Panomrama de narrativas, 420. 462 p., Rústica con solapas. Sprache: Spanisch, NUEVO / NEU / NEW. «Quién es Ka?», se pregunta el inmenso pájaro Garuda, sumergido entre la fronda del árbol Rauhin a, al encontrarse este nombre al final de un himno de los Veda. Ka es el nombre secreto de Prayápati, el Progenitor, aquel que dio origen a los treinta y tres dioses y a los innumerables hombres. Ka significa «¿Quién?», y es la última pregunta, la que se formula cuando todas las otras preguntas ya han sido formuladas. Pero antes debieron transcurrir numerosos eones, surgir y desaparecer numerosos mundos, en una secuencia de vértices cuyo ojo es el mismo Ka. Así aparecen los Deva, los dioses que se baten contra otros dioses; los Asura, para conquistar el jugo embriagador del soma; los Siete Videntes, que observan el curso del mundo desde los astros de la Osa Mayor -y a veces intervienen-; Siva, Brahma, Visnu, con sus peripecias entrecruzadas, diversas, que reverberan de era en era; manifestaciones de la Diosa, como Sati y Parvati, unidas a Siva en amores interminables; el joven Krsna y cortejo erótico de pastoras, las gopi; Krsna ya maduro, que rige la suerte de la funesta guerra entre primos narrada en el Mahabharata; y, en fin, ya en pleno kaliyuga, la «era del número perdedor», en la que habitamos, irrumpe un príncipe que abandona la casa paterna y descubre una vía de liberación nunca antes pisada: el Buddha. Se consuma en la mente lo que había tenido inicio en la mente -y que acaso había acontecido sobre todo en la mente-, por aquel que sabe que «el mundo es como la impresión que deja la narración de una historia», según las palabras de un antiguo texto indio. Para responder a la última pregunta es necesario atravesar todas las historias. Y para atravesar todas las historias es necesario formularse, como le sucedió a Garuda la pregunta acerca de quien silenciosamente lo acoge: Ka. [Texto editorial] [literatura italiana+traducción al castellano]. ** 10% DESCUENTO/RABATT/DISCOUNT PRIMAVERA * 19,80 (reduced from 22,00 ) **. Seller Inventory # 517188
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Ka. [Traducción de Edgardo Dobry].
Published by
Anagrama, Barcelona
(2016)
ISBN 10: 8433908901
ISBN 13: 9788433908902
New
Softcover
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Softcover. Condition: New. 2a.ed. 22x14 cm. Colección Panomrama de narrativas, 420. 462 p., Rústica con solapas. Sprache: Spanisch, NUEVO / NEU / NEW. «Quién es Ka?», se pregunta el inmenso pájaro Garuda, sumergido entre la fronda del árbol Rauhin a, al encontrarse este nombre al final de un himno de los Veda. Ka es el nombre secreto de Prayápati, el Progenitor, aquel que dio origen a los treinta y tres dioses y a los innumerables hombres. Ka significa «¿Quién?», y es la última pregunta, la que se formula cuando todas las otras preguntas ya han sido formuladas. Pero antes debieron transcurrir numerosos eones, surgir y desaparecer numerosos mundos, en una secuencia de vértices cuyo ojo es el mismo Ka. Así aparecen los Deva, los dioses que se baten contra otros dioses; los Asura, para conquistar el jugo embriagador del soma; los Siete Videntes, que observan el curso del mundo desde los astros de la Osa Mayor -y a veces intervienen-; Siva, Brahma, Visnu, con sus peripecias entrecruzadas, diversas, que reverberan de era en era; manifestaciones de la Diosa, como Sati y Parvati, unidas a Siva en amores interminables; el joven Krsna y cortejo erótico de pastoras, las gopi; Krsna ya maduro, que rige la suerte de la funesta guerra entre primos narrada en el Mahabharata; y, en fin, ya en pleno kaliyuga, la «era del número perdedor», en la que habitamos, irrumpe un príncipe que abandona la casa paterna y descubre una vía de liberación nunca antes pisada: el Buddha. Se consuma en la mente lo que había tenido inicio en la mente -y que acaso había acontecido sobre todo en la mente-, por aquel que sabe que «el mundo es como la impresión que deja la narración de una historia», según las palabras de un antiguo texto indio. Para responder a la última pregunta es necesario atravesar todas las historias. Y para atravesar todas las historias es necesario formularse, como le sucedió a Garuda la pregunta acerca de quien silenciosamente lo acoge: Ka. [Texto editorial] [literatura italiana+traducción al castellano]. ** 10% DESCUENTO/RABATT/DISCOUNT PRIMAVERA * 19,80 (reduced from 22,00 ) **. Seller Inventory # 517190
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Ka
Published by
Editorial Anagrama
(1999)
ISBN 10: 8433908901
ISBN 13: 9788433908902
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. New. Seller Inventory # Wizard8433908901
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Ka
Published by
Editorial Anagrama
(1999)
ISBN 10: 8433908901
ISBN 13: 9788433908902
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Paperback
Quantity: 1
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. New Copy. Customer Service Guaranteed. Seller Inventory # think8433908901
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