The Ruin of Kasch

Abstract

Taking as his focus periods immediately before and after French Revolution but making occasional sallies backward and forward in time - from Vedic India to porticoes of Palais-Royal and to killing fields of Pol Pot - Calasso recounts, elucidates, and interprets downfall of what Baudelaire was already calling the Modern. This downfall came as a sequel to an earlier and opposite collapse: that of archaic societies which were regulated by movements of stars and rituals of sacrifice. At center of work stands story of ruin of Kasch, a legendary African kingdom whose annihilation becomes emblematic of ruin of ancient and modern worlds. The genius of Calasso's book is that, in its illuminating blend of literature and ideas, it establishes a genre all its own. Its form is a rich blend of anecdotes, quotations, analysis, digressions, aphorisms, dialogues, historical discussion, and straightforward storytelling that beautifully mirrors its subject matter and evokes protean spirit of Modernism. It is a sumptuous literary feast. Calasso brings to his stage a vast gallery of characters, including Laclos and Marx, Benjamin and Chateaubriand, Sainte-Beuve and Levi-Strauss, Max Stirner and Joseph de Maistre. And presiding over them all is French statesman Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, who knew secrets of both Old and New regimes and who was able to adjust perplexing and cruel notion of legitimacy to modern age. Cynical Talleyrand - who showed that success in new era depends on agility, fluidity, and a consummate sense of style - serves, fittingly, as master of ceremonies throughout book,which is at once a meditation on origins and nature of power and a breathtaking synthesis of Western cultural history. It is an extraordinary reading experience.

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