The Celestial Hunter

by Roberto Calasso, Richard Dixon (Translator)

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

"[Calasso's] flow of associations leaves you feeling not out of your depth, but smarter and better read." -- The New York Times Book Review

The eighth part of Roberto Calasso’s monumental series on the primal forces of civilization

The eighth part of Roberto Calasso’s singular work in progress that began in 1983 with The Ruin of Kasch , The Celestial Hunter is an inspired and provocative exploration of mankind’s relationship with myth, the divine, and the idea of transformation.

There was a time, even before prehistory, when man was simply a defenseless animal. The gods he worshiped took the form of other beasts or were the patterns of the stars he saw above him each night in the sky, which he transformed into figures and around which he created stories. Soon, however, man learned to imitate the animals that attacked him and he became a hunter. This transformation, Calasso posits, from defenseless victim to hunter was a key moment, the first step on man’s ascendance to power. Suddenly the notion of the hunter became fundamental. It would be developed over thousands of years through the figures that became central to Greek mythology, including the constellations. Among them was Orion, the celestial hunter, and his dog, Sirius.

Vivid and strikingly original, and expertly translated from the Italian by Richard Dixon, The Celestial Hunter traces how man created the divine myths that would become the cornerstones of Western civilization. As Calasso demonstrates, the repercussions of these ideas would echo through history, from Paleolithic to modern times. And they would be the product of one the human mind.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Mythology, Philosophy, Italian Literature, Italy, Religion

464 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2016

About the author

Roberto Calasso (1941 – 2021) was an Italian writer and publisher.

Calasso was born in Florence in 1941, into a family of the Tuscan upper class, well connected with some of the great Italian intellectuals of their time.

Calasso worked for the publishing firm of Adelphi Edizioni since its founding by Roberto Bazlen in 1962 and became its Chairman in 1999. In 2015, he bought out the company to prevent it from being acquired by a larger publishing firm. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages.

He was the author of an unnamed ongoing work reflecting on the culture of modernity, which began with The Ruin of Kasch in 1983, a book admired by Italo Calvino. Dedicated to the French statesman Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord or, Talleyrand, it was followed in 1988 by The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, in which the tale of Cadmus and his wife Harmonia becomes a pretext for re-telling the great tales of Greek mythology and reflecting on the reception of Greek culture for a contemporary readership. Another world civilization is surveyed in Ka (1996, where the subject of the re-telling is Hindu mythology). K restricts the focus to a single author, Franz Kafka; this trend continues with Il rosa Tiepolo (Tiepolo Pink), inspired by an adjective used by Marcel Proust to describe a shade of pink used by Venetian artist Giambattista Tiepolo in his paintings. With La folie Baudelaire, Calasso once more broadens his scope from fresco to a whole civilisation, that of Paris in the latter half of the 19th century, reconsidering the lives and works of the post-romantic generation of writers and artists from Baudelaire to Valéry. In one of his more recent works, Ardore (2010), the author returns to India for an exhaustive analysis of the theory and practice of Vedic sacrifice and its significance for post-modern epistemology.

Along with his status as a major analyst specifically of the works of Kafka, Calasso was, more broadly, active in many essays in retrieving and re-invigorating the notion of a Central European literary culture. He also served as the president of the International Alexander Lernet-Holenia Society, which promotes the publication, translation and study of this multi-genre Austrian writer and his focus on the identity crisis of his characters at odds with postimperial Austria and Central Europe.

Reviews

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you've read Calasso's The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony then you'll have an inkling of what to expect: once again, Calasso delves into primarily, though not exclusively, Greek storytelling through myth but also through the Mysteries that were cults and kind of adjacent to religion. The theme that only partially holds all this together is that of the porous boundaries between the divine, the human and the animal; and hunting is the process that both defines and yet confuses these categorisations.

Going beyond the expected (such as Actaeon, the archetypal hunter turned prey), this is a dazzling meditation that is dense, hallucinogenic, suggestive - and occasionally bonkers! Calasso's breadth of scholarship is kaleidoscopic as he zooms from Homer, the classical Athenians to Burkhardt and Nietzsche and beyond (and you've got to love someone who has clearly reads the extant fragments of Callimachus!) but don't expect linearity or a composed precision - this is all flight and imagination that touches base on a topic before soaring off again...

Given my own research interests, the most stimulating ideas come from the way Calasso thinks about the hunt and the erotic: although the 'erotic hunt' is well recognised in literature, Calasso's take turns the whole concept on its head and positions the two as akin to incest - fascinating, and worth thinking about more deeply.

So another fascinating, amorphous, unpindownable text - it's exhilarating, erudite and stimulating, but kind of crazy too!

Many thanks to Penguin/Allen Lane for an ARC via NetGalley

[Fede · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yet another riddle for daring readers to get lost in.

One can't take anything for granted with R. Calasso. His highly academic background combined with amazing literary skills make it impossible to confine his books to the narrow domains of either high-brow philosophy or esoteric intellectual hodgepodge, thus putting the reader in a compromising position - between humiliation and hunger for more.
Even more so with this one, unfortunately still unavailable in translation: "Il Cacciatore Celeste" (Sky Hunter sounds good, although the antiquated adjective 'celeste' - also meaning 'light blue' - is particularly related to heavenly bodies and phenomena, as in the English 'celestial'). The book is indeed based on a deceivingly simple premise that soon morphs into a limitless array of possibilities for the mind to explore, a delta spreading its branches through the unarmed reader's synapses. Once the hypnotic river of Calasso's words starts flowing, all you can do is keep your head above the water and see where it takes you.

Why the Hunter, and why the Sky?
Because, according to Calasso, our ancestors' mind got inextricably bound to these images long before civilisation was even born.
What was the main characteristic of the prehistoric mind?
Fear.
Fear of basically anything, from fire to predators to darkness, from lightning to illness to famine to one's own reflection in the water.
Man's fear of the world was the paralysing fear of the Unknown and Unknowable: it was the perfect awareness of mankind's total vulnerability, wherever and whenever those quasi-human beings found themselves facing their physical and mental limits.
Those hybrid but dangerously ambitious creatures knew they were sonehow different from the animals crawling, roaring, hissing, braying all around their magnificent huts made of mud and shit; they knew they were bound to a still undefined future of greatness, but they didn't have the slightest idea of what, when, where and most of all why. All they knew was the 'who': themselves, whatever they were and for whatever reason.

Calasso shows how the journey to - and through - knowledge can be compared to hunt: more precisely, hunt seen as the first step down the path of the irreversible differentiation between men and beasts.
From the moment they started to eat other animals, our ancestors realised they were to inherit the earth and all its creatures. Long before the Book of Genesis was written, a bunch of Sapiens got tired of squatting in the deepest corner of a cave hoping to escape the lion's fangs: not after they'd found out how good the lion's flesh tastes (does it? Poetic license). And the age of fear was over.
As a consequence, such a momentous discovery created the exquisitely human need to really own both the earth and its inhabitants, edible or not. Because killing, eating, defecating were not mere acts of survival, not after a million years of nomadic and mostly vegetarian habits, in which meat was hardly a priority. Thus feeding on what had to be previously slaughtered implied a deep change in the human mind, a shift from one plane to another, an entirely new self-consciousnes.
Slowly but inexorably, it all began. Astronomy, agriculture, the first rudiments of ethology and biology were born, or at least the necessity of them as the means to control a whole world nobody actually knew anything about.

Such was the first - and truest - Enlightment, that paradoxically ended with the creation of myths and cults based precisely on those archetypal figures of animals and hunters: no wonder the first things ever painted and carved were animals and men wearing furs, skins and feathers. A human hunter is a wild beast gone through a metamorphosis, reassessing both his natures; a go-between crossing the border between the visible and the invisible, or rather between the human and the divine.
All over the world (the ridiculously small part of the world humans were confined to back then, that is) deities and ceremonies were conceived as part of those existential rituals, with surprisingly similar characteristics. From creatures to entities, Man was now the master sacrificing his goods to the enslaved inferior in exchange for their subjugation: thus ancient religion was established, as well as the basis of all religions yet to come, from the Great Ziggurat to Saint Peter's.
It's no coincidence that the constellation named from Orion the Hunter has always and universally been identified with an archetypal, often nameless and featureless hunter, depicted as such from Greece to India to pre-Columbian Americas. Half human, half deity: the first and purest image of Jacob's Ladder.

This is Calasso's point, though I apologise for making it sound so simplistic.
All throughout the book the author refers to Greek and Egyptian mythology, philosophy, literature in order to point out amazing similarities and unexpected parallels. From Homer to Plotinus, it's a labyrinthine universe with neither a way in nor a way out. I daresay one could even read these short paragraphs (the peculiar structure of Calasso's works) at random, and still the book would make sense.
I must confess I'm frighteningly ignorant with regards to Greek classicism, as I can barely discern between "Xena" and Xenophon. But I enjoyed the author's erudition nonetheless, it sucks you in before you even know.
Calasso's great ability is the way he provides his readers with a huge, heavy load of culture without burying them under their own inadequacy, or - even worse - the swollen ego of an undeniably gifted writer. I'd recommend his work to anybody, except the Italian public who's hopeless and unworthy.

[Kansas · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2024...

"Cuando empezó la caza no había un hombre que perseguía a un animal. Había un ser que perseguía a otro ser. Nadie podría decir con certeza cuál era cuál."

Me da un poco de vergüenza intentar reseñar una obra de Calasso sin resultar un tanto simplona y previsible, porque es tanta la erudición y la cultura que transpira este hombre, que resulta casi imposible, por lo menos en mi caso, controlar todas las referencias y establecer las conexiones. Hay momentos en que crees que lo tienes todo controlado, pero eso es solo al principio, y a medida que la obra avanza, el lector llegado un punto tendrá que desistir de este control absoluto y tomar conciencia de que se tiene que dejar llevar, sin la necesidad de tener que controlar todas las conexiones, a pequeños sorbos además, y no de una tacada. Adelphi Edizioni, es una conocida editorial, referencia absoluta del mundo editorial, a la que Roberto Calasso dedicó su vida como editor, visionario a la hora de rescatar y descubrir y dar espacio, creador de todo un microcosmos cultural, y sobre todo, autor. Investigando me doy cuenta de que Calasso y a través de esta editorial intentó abordar y hacernos llegar el conocimiento pero a través de las raíces de Europa. Con una curiosidad crónica por el conocimiento, los libros fueron para él una herramienta de apertura porque si leemos, el pensamiento se abrirá hasta el infinito. Necesitamos personajes guía que nos ayuden a entender y que nos abran a este conocimiento, que nos descubran otros universos, otras literaturas, que nos hagan salir de nuestros mundos cerrados. Calasso lo fue como editor, pero también como autor.


"Un día, a las muchas invenciones de los hombres agregaron otra: empezaron a rodearse de animales que se adaptaban a los hombres, en tanto que durante un tiempo muy largo habían sido los hombres los que imitaban a los animales

Toda caza es caza de almas."


Calasso compara lo que es el largo viaje del hombre hacia el conocimiento con lo que es la caza, porque cuando el hombre comienza a cazar animales es cuando empieza diferenciarse de las bestias, adquiere poder, control. Toda esta primera parte de esta magnífica obra en la que Calasso cuenta cómo el hombre adquiere conciencia de sí mismo y de su poder cuando deja de huir y esconderse de los depredadores, y revierte los papeles convirtiéndose él mismo en un depredador, es lo mejor de esta obra: en un depredador además que puede alimentarse de algo más que de bayas, sino que se alimenta de carne. Pero quizás este punto de ruptura, este paso que le hace diferenciarse de las bestias tiene su punto álgido en el hecho de que el hombre ha dejado de tener miedo, y adquiere control en el acto de supervivencia porque ya no tiene necesidad de huir. El Homo ha dejado de esconderse, de huir, ya no es una presa. Es el primer paso hacia el conocimiento.


"El modo en que el hombre se volvió, en palabras de William James, la más terrible de todas las bestias depredadoras y, de hecho, la única que depreda sistemáticamente a su propia especie, es una historia sin precedentes en los acontecimientos de la tierra. El pasaje a la depredación fue un salto de especie etográmatico. Enormemente arriesgado y disruptivo. Cambiaba las relaciones de Homo con todas las especies que lo rodeaban.

(…)

“La conquista del Vellocino de Oro, la caza del jabali de Calidón, la guerra de Troya: en las tres ocasiones, y solo en ellas, los héroes se reunieron para una empresa conjunta. Para los despojos de un animal, para matar a un animal, para recuperar una mujer. Ninguna otra cosa sería motivo suficiente para que los héroes actuaran conjuntamente. Fueron tres regímenes. En el primero se mataba un monstruo. En el segundo se cazaba a un animal poderoso. En el tercero, los hombres se mataban entre ellos. Primero matar al monstruo, después cazar, después matarse mutuamente. Era el resumen de lo que había sucedido desde el origen.”


El hombre prehistórico deja de tener miedo al convertirse en cazador, lo que le hace también tomar conciencia de sí mismo, porque tiene el poder de actuar sobre la naturaleza y de los animales que la habitan. Una vez tomada esta conciencia de sí mismo, de ahí a inventar y crear herramientas para defenderse y cazar hay un solo paso. A partir de este primer tercio en el que Calasso demuestra del por qué la figura del cazador se vuelve fundamental porque es el primer escalón del hombre hacia el poder (“Una vez cumplido el pasaje a la depredación, Homo no sabía cómo tratar esa parte nueva de su naturaleza. Eligió circunscribirla a su significado literal y expandirla indefinidamente como metáfora. Inventó la caza como actividad no indispensable, gratuita. Fue el primer arte por el arte.”), enlazará con los mitos (la construcción de la ficción), los animales se convierten en sus tótems, la raiz sobre la que partirá la mitología. La caza se convierte en un ritual: “Existe un punto, misterioso tremendo, en el que se cruzan el acto de matar y lo divino". Así que esta obra no deja de ser, toda ella, esa exploración de cómo el ser humano llegó a mirarse a sí mismo a través del acto de cazar. La mirada del uno dirigido hacía sí mismo y de esta forma se acaba estableciendo la autorreflexión. Es un tema apasionante sobre todo por la forma en que enlaza con la mitología griega: ya sabemos que el mito es ficción que conecta lo humano con lo divino. La caza comienza como un acto inevitable de supervivencia pero termina siendo un acto gratuito, matanza y sacrificio, para acabar estableciendo un símil entre los atentados terroristas de ahora con el sacrificio ritual. Calasso lo define bien cuando establece una y otra vez la visibilidad del mito: estatuas, rituales, teatro. Lo invisible ya es otra cosa: esa interioridad del ser humano: “¿No se me ha abierto el universo en un parpadeo?”


"Cuando una gran parte de lo existente se retiró hacia lo invisible, no por eso dejó de suceder. Pero se volvió más fácil pensar que no sucedía.

Lo invisible no debe ir a buscarse muy lejos. Incluso puede no ser hallado precisamente porque está demasiado cerca. Lo invisible termina en la cabeza de cada uno.

¿Dónde va lo que desaparece? Va a lo invisible, que, al final, está lleno de presencias. No hay nada más animado que la ausencia."


Aunque sea un libro denso, lleno de referencias interextuales, lingüisticas, mitológicas, que puede llegar a saturar, no deja de ser una obra que fascina por cómo conecta todas estas referencias impactando en el lector que termina abriéndose a nuevas perspectivas que tienen que ver con la evolución del ser humano… acabamos deteniéndonos y haciéndonos preguntas nuevas. La prueba está por ejemplo, en una sección que aparentemente pueda resultar surrealista en una obra como ésta y es cuando Calasso abandona por un momento el cosmos de la mitología y le dedique algunas páginas a establecer una conexión con Henry James. ¿cómo conecta el tema estrella que es la caza y la evolución del pensamiento humano con Henry James?


“Entre los cuentos más importantes de Henry James hay algunos que no llegó a escribir. Son los pequeños ‘sujets de nouvelles’, embriones nunca desarrollados que solo conocemos por sus anotaciones en los Cuadernos. Torquay, el 28 de octubre de 1895, James anotó estas palabras en su cuaderno: -Recuerdo cómo Mrs. Procter me dijo una vez que, habiendo tenido una vida repleta de problemas, sufrimientos, cargas y devastaciones, la posibilidad de sentarse a leer un libro constituía para ella, en sus años otoñales, un placer singular, un lujo profundamente sentido: tan grande era el sentimiento de seguridad que de ello emanaba, la certeza de que, tras haber sobrevivido a tantas cosas, nada podía ocurrirle ahora. Prácticamente nunca había gozado de ese placer en tal grado y manera; y día tras día disfrutaba de él como si fuese nuevo.”


Calasso establece un simil entre el cuento imaginado y nunca escrito de James y el Homo Sapiens, la humanidad es Mrs.Procter que después de una vida de sufrimientos y cargas, consigue relajarse, la certeza de que ya ningún factor o acontecimiento externo podría afectarla (ya nada podia suceder), osea, creerá haber llegado a un nivel en que esté protegida del mundo exterior (los depredadores). Sin embargo, a lo que quiere llegar Calasso es a establecer el hecho de que superados estos factores externos, ese control sobre la naturaleza, quizás esta destrucción podría venir desde el mismo interior del ser humano; porque aunque se centra en el mito griego para desplegar su universo, estos símiles aparentemente inconexos como el del cuento de Henry James, serán lo que terminarán de esclarecer hasta qué punto esta obra es la exploración de la mente humana como resultado de sus mitos, creencias. Desde ya adoro a Roberto Calasso, aunque me lo tomaré con tranquilidad, a pequeños sorbos.


"Los Misterios no son algo que se pueda poseer, como un pensamiento: no son algo que se aplica, como una fórmula. Son un lugar que ofrece algo distinto cada vez que se vuelve. Para volver, sin embargo, es necesario alejarse, regresar a la vida común, para abandonarla de nuevo."

♫♫♫Becoming the beast - Karliene♫♫♫

[Viktoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I think they were not astonished because there were relations that numbers could not define, but intensely happy to see that even that which is not defined through numbers is yet always a relation."

Calasso's mind is a torchlight, whose flames lick the primordial images painted inside a cavern, which is also a skull. He is a superb author, a dream-weaver, a born storyteller, who was nurtured by the same source from which all stories, like thought-rivers, spring to life.

His stream of consciousness consists of a multitude of stories, layers upon layers of semantics and different points of view, which all happen to interconnect and create a vast cosmic drama. In this drama the main character is knowledge of the divine, which binds us, which flows through every living and non-living being and leaves us at awe at its tremendous essence.

Calasso dedicates a large portion of his book to his intellectual predecessors — Plato, Ovid, Plotinus, prophets who envisioned that “single bond that naturally binds everything”, be it metamorphosis, the ability to change one's form, or that “large, remote, immobile, solitary animal, which does not think, because thinking would diminish it, like any other single act, because the animal is already the whole act”.

Calasso, just like that solitary animal, interweaves legions of stories, characters, and scientific data to create a “whole act”. In truth he has written what I can only call an Ovidian work, infinitely rich and ever-changing, but vitaly important in all its stages of evolution. When reading “The Celestial Hunter” you can clearly tell that this is not just a book, but a life's work. Abundance of knowledge, gathered through the span of not only Calasso`s life but of all our ancestors' lives. Splendid and beautiful work, a shout out to connection, to the divine, to the cosmos, to stories, to the Eleusinian mysteries, to the incommensurable, to man, to sacrifices, to culture and society, to metamorphosis, to excess, to theater, to order and chaos, to knowledge.

[Tamara Agha-Jaffar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Translated from Italian by Richard Dixon, The Celestial Hunter by Roberto Calasso moves at a dizzying pace reflecting the dizzying speed of Calasso’s thoughts. Calasso credits the activity of hunting as the source of rituals, cults, and myths, which, in turn, formed the basis of religions and the pursuit of all areas of human knowledge. Hunting, as represented by the celestial hunter Orion, permeated the divine, human, and animal realms, bleeding from one realm to the other through porous boundaries.

Hunting fundamentally transformed man’s relationship to his environment. Calasso traces the progression from man as the hunted to man as the hunter and beyond. Killing and eating what one has killed precipitated a momentous shift in human consciousness that informed man’s relationship with animals. When humans made the shift from prey to predator, when they changed from the hunted to the hunter, they began to see themselves as distinct from the animal kingdom, possessing a unique ability to exert power over nature.

Each time a hunter wore the skin of the animal he hunted, he experienced a metamorphosis. He straddled both worlds by “becoming” the animal. Accordingly, he developed rituals to merge with the animal, to kill the animal, to separate from the animal after a successful hunt, and to atone for killing the animal through libations and blood sacrifice. These rituals formed the foundation of all religions. From metamorphosis, humans shifted to reliance on a “prosthesis”—an arrow, a javelin, a remote-controlled drone—to become the most formidable species on the planet, the only species able to kill without touching.

Calasso’s knowledge of his subject matter is extensive. He moves with alacrity all over the map, weaving Greek and Egyptian mythology and statuary; Hinduism; the Eleusinian Mysteries; the words of Plato, Ovid, Homer, Nietzsche, Herodotus, Henry James, James Frazer, and a host of others including anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, and academicians, all in a dizzying display of erudition. His process is non-linear, labyrinthine. His chapters encompass the breadth and scope of his vast knowledge as well as his sense of humor. His technique, akin to stream of consciousness, consists of leaping to whatever associations and anecdotes come to mind even though the connections may be centuries and worlds apart, and not evident to a general reader. It is a daunting task to keep up with his breathtaking pace and to follow his train of thought.

Calasso’s theory is fascinating; his insights are stimulating; his analysis is brilliant; his tone can be irreverent. At times, his mental leaps are baffling. One doesn’t quite know where he’s going or why. But always, always, the depth, breadth, and immense scope of his knowledge is evident.

A challenging book, but one that attests to the presence of a brilliant mind at work. Highly recommended.

My book reviews are also available at www.tamaraaghajaffar.com

[Carloesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Diversi anni fa Baricco in un suo libro che aprì qualche discussione e polemica (“I Barbari”), teorizzava che, tramontata un’età moderna nata nell’800 sulla spinta dei precedenti rinascimento e illuminismo, si stesse ora aprendo sotto le nuove spinte create dalla globalizzazione e dalle nuove forme di comunicazione “ovunque e in tempo reale”, un’età neo-barbarica. Un po’ come al crollo dell’impero romano, sulle cui rovine si creò una nuova società (quella medievale) che pure sfruttandone qualche elemento sopravvissuto introduceva un mondo nuovo sovvertito rispetto al passato.

Per Baricco il “nostro” mondo al tramonto era quello di una cultura “specialistica” portata allo scavo profondo (verticale) in punto preciso dello scibile. La nuova età che si sta ora affacciando (quella dei barbari) sarebbe invece portata all’espansione in senso orizzontale, rivolta alla ricerca di connessioni tra punti diversi sparsi sulla superficie del globo e della cultura: in pratica “la rete”.

La tesi di Baricco per me ha il suo fascino. Ma dove posizionare uno come Calasso, incapace di rinunciare alle profondità degli scavi ma in cerca anche lui di nuove e affascinanti connessioni tra mito, religione, psicologia, storia e cultura , e di riflessi sul nostro essere oggi, con tutto il bagaglio di conoscenze che ci portiamo appresso, e al quale non dobbiamo né possiamo rinunciare, angoli bui da illuminare meglio e nuovi scavi da intraprendere?

Ecco, secondo me Calasso è uno scavatore di gallerie, una specie di speleologo “in orizzontale” in cerca di nodi di una rete non di superficie, ma di profondità, tra i punti sotterranei che la cultura specialistica ha realizzato ma spesso agibili solo da chi, con esperienza in materia, possiede il bagaglio per calarvisi nuovamente. Le nuove gallerie e i nodi di profondità aprono una nuova rete sotterranea che mette in comunicazione non solo la superficie, ma anche i pozzi già aperti al di sotto di essa.

Ennesima nuova puntata di un lungo lavoro iniziato da anni con “Le nozze di Cadmo e Armonia” questo nuovo libro è estremamente stimolante e affascinante soprattutto nella prima parte, dove si parla della pratica della caccia come primo atto di cosciente separazione dell’uomo dal resto della natura (dentro la quale fino ad allora si trovava indistintamente immerso) e come tale alle fondamenta di tutti i miti, le religioni e le culture che l’uomo stesso ha creato da allora.

Da naturale preda di animali più feroci e sovente più grandi di lui, attraverso la ingegnosa realizzazione di protesi (le armi: la lancia, la clava e poi l’arco con le frecce) e “imitando” il comportamento dei predatori di cui era stato semplice vittima, l’uomo preistorico prende coscienza di se stesso e del suo potere sulla natura e sul resto delle sue creature separandosene definitivamente. La caccia diventa “rito”, e gli animali imitati diventano loro protettori totemici, e poi “divinità” di tali riti. La "sacralità" entra a fare parte della vita dell'uomo diventando presto una delle spinte fondamentali per la nascita di una cultura e per il suo progresso. Nella presistoria affondano le radici su cui cresceranno il Mito e poi la Storia.

Un po’ più pesante la seconda, nella quale si naviga in cerca di collegamenti tra dei olimpici, egizi, orientali e filosofi, scienziati e uomini di lettere. Non mancano spunti e stimoli appassionanti anche lì (ho trovato magnifico il capitolo su Plotino), ma in diversi punti confesso di avere proceduto con maggiore fatica.

Quattro stelle però se le merita tutte.

[Guillermo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mi libro favorito de este año. El nivel de erudición de Calasso está al alcance de muy pocos. Un impresionante un recorrido por el origen y el devenir de la cultura europea.

[Santiago Gutiérrez]

OK PERO
AUTOCOMPLACENCIA ASOCIATIVA
INCONTINENCIA SEMÁNTICA
TURBOLACONISMO ACADEMIÚRGICO

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Theology for the (very) intelligent polytheist. More intelligent than me for I understood perhaps half of it. What I did get I enjoyed.

[Francisco · Rating 3 out of 5]

Atractiva aproximación a la relación del ser humano con su entorno, las tradiciones religiosas y el pensamiento social. Lectura complicada, no obstante, por el ambicioso planteamiento inicial, que obliga a la falta de linealidad, provocando saltos que dificultan su continuidad.

[riley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insanely fascinating and extremely stimulating. Calasso floats around so many broad and expansive ideas in this book on the nature of the divine, mythology, and humanity throughout history. There was so much he talked about it was difficult to keep track, and his writing, while absolutely beautiful, sometimes suffered from how meandering it was. Meanderingly beautiful, sure, but it did get a little confusing. That just might be me not understanding, though, which is definitely possible.

This book mixed together almost all of my interests so of course I loved it. I think I learned more just from reading this book than I would have from a whole semester on the same subject (but I guess it depends on the professor, of course). Either way, this book was incredibly eye-opening, intellectually stimulating, and endlessly fascinating.

One of my favorite quotes:

"Anyone who recognizes the divine but does not identify with any social body remains outside. He is the ultimate stranger. Only in the sphere of literature can he express himself, since literature is the place where nothing is legally binding."

and a couple pages later...

"Many are accustomed to thinking that a civilization can end up in literature. But how can it have its beginnings in literature?"

Edit: I also want to add that some chapters are better than others, and you don't need to read all of them in order, if you read any of them. But if you do wanna try some of this book and are overwhelmed by the sheer expanse of it all, my favorite chapters were "Statues," "The Divine Before the Gods," "In the Time of the Great Raven," "The Brief Age of Heroes," and "Spuma Fui."

[Javier Galarza · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Frente al Oso apenas troceado, el cazador susurra una plegaria muy dulce, que causa vértigo: «Permíteme también matarte en el futuro”. #RobertoCalasso, El Cazador Celeste.

[Annarella · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm always fascinated by Roberto Calasso's books as they are a mix of good storytelling, sound knowledge and you cannot help wondering how great his erudition is.
This book is no exception and I was enthralled and involved in this book full of great story, interesting reflections and food for thought.
It was an excellent read and I strongly recommend it.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Felt like I was tripping on shrooms the entire time. Was mysteriously engaging as I skimmed, but I'm not sure I'll get any concrete takeaways: it's more just a vauge mix of discombobulation and oneness with the past.

[Mia Ruefenacht · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've loved everything I've read by Roberto Calasso, so it's no surprise that I really enjoyed this one. In some ways it feels like a summary of his work; it returns to many of his favorite topics, especially Greek mythology and Vedic philosophy, while developing further some of the themes which are addressed in his other works, in particular on the origins of human consciousness. Compared to his other works, it is perhaps a little less unified in content: each chapter essentially functions as a self-contained essay on some particular topic, from the philosophy of Plotinus to the writings of Ovid. Calasso does not connect these chapters to one another explicitly, but when examining the book as a whole it is pretty obvious why these are included and what exactly he is trying to say, though the order which the chapters are placed in does seem a little arbitrary to me. Nonetheless one of the great pleasures of reading Calasso is when he leads you down the path of a long and intricate argument, only for him to pull back the curtain and and reveal where you were being lead, all this time, without knowing it—to me, it's a thing of wonder.

The thesis of this book, in short, is that many features of human thought can be traced back to that prehistoric period when human beings learned to become hunters, when we learned to imitate the very predators who had once terrorized our own species. One of the most obvious consequences of this is the practice of animal sacrifice, whereby some sort of guilt is assuaged only by a further guilty act. But for me the most interesting concept I got out of this book, the one which has stuck with me the most, is Calasso's notion of the Age of Metamorphosis. This idea is ubiquitous in myth: that at some point in the past the lines separating gods and men, plants and animals, were much blurrier than they are today, and one might very well change into another. For the Greeks this corresponded to the Age of Heroes, which like a blazing fire only lasted a handful of generations before burning itself out. All seem to agree that at some point this period came to an end, that things must now continue being what they are, and all that is left to us is imitation.

[Dinh Nguyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe the best book you will never read (but i did haha suck on you losers). Calasso is a monster not only because of the sheer breadth of his reading, but because of the enigmatic, almost oracular way in which he synthesises mythology, philosophy, anthropology, and speculative history. Reading him often feels like being gently but relentlessly disabused of one’s inherited assumptions about history, evolution, and what it means to be human.

At its core, Celestial Hunter is an inquiry into the origin of humanity as something irreducible to biology. Calasso argues that what distinguishes humans from animals is not simply reason or language, but ritual, especially the ritual of hunting and sacrifice. Humans do not merely kill animals for survival. They stage the act symbolically, as a way of negotiating their own animality. Hunting becomes a mirror in which humans recognise themselves by imitating the predators that once threatened them. In this nocturnal, pre-linguistic space, the boundary between hunter and hunted becomes unstable. The prey may also be human.

It's the Baudrillardian seduction, or reversibility, between the predator and the prey, the symbolic and the real, that makes us human, that makes us know how to stand on the animals that once threatened us. From this matrix gradually arose astronomy, agriculture, early ethology, and proto-scientific thought. These disciplines do not begin as neutral knowledge systems, but as desperate attempts to impose order on a cosmos that was once radically opaque.

Written in a fluid, associative style, Celestial Hunter itself becomes a modern myth. It is not a scientific book, nor does it rely heavily on formal references. Scepticism is invited. Yet before questioning it, the reader is asked to listen. Reading it feels like sitting beneath a star-filled sky, by a flickering fire, while a wise elder recounts the origins of the world. You become something extraordinary, even just for a slice of a second, while reading this book.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wat kan ik erover zeggen? Niets, én tegelijkertijd heel veel. Calasso schreef een duizelingwekkend, fragmentarisch traktaat dat zich aan elke poging tot definiëring of systematisering onttrekt. De stream-of-consciousness-stijl waarmee hij zijn gedachten neerpent lijkt op het eerste gezicht een reeks losstaande flarden zonder onderlinge samenhang. Maar bij herlezing — en nog eens herlezing — blijft het een caleidoscopische stroom van raadselachtige interpretaties, variërend van Vedische en Eleusinische mysteriën tot computationalisme en AI-“ismen”.

Die overdaad aan inhoud, gecombineerd met een associatieve manier van denken die voorkennis haast als voorwaarde stelt, maakt dit boek tot een zegen voor wie zich graag onderdompelt in de diepten van zijn mythische lezing en antropologische beschouwing. Voor lezers die een chronologisch geordend overzicht van sagen verwachten is het daarentegen een kwelling: Calasso is overduidelijk geen Stephen Fry.

Nee, dit geschenk is geen geschenk voor wie op zoek is naar licht, verteerbaar vermaak. Calasso daagt je uit de metafysische grond te ontwaren van het transcendentale in de verhalen van de oudheid, in de overleveringen die uiteindelijk allemaal terug te voeren zijn op de (hemelse) jagers. Wanneer je de laatste pagina omslaat en het boek sluit, heb je niets om op te staan: het is volstrekt onmogelijk het werk te reconstrueren. Maar je bent wél een ander mens geworden. Je hebt een andere wereld aangeraakt — een wereld die zich bij mij naar binnen wrong terwijl ik, haast hallucinerend, aan het lezen was.

Wees gewaarschuwd.

[Michael Greer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let's begin with the time of the Great Raven. You and I, dear reader, were there, but we were also absent. This is a paradox we formulate in these terms: before we were, the path was already provided by our natural inclinations. This is why even though we spend so much on education, little is actually needed. We are always already equipped to hunt. We are always already equipped to hear the story of our gestation.
At the time of the Great Raven, all was obvious, even to those who spent most of their time ignoring what was in front of their faces. The invisible was made visible. Animals were not merely animals, as we have settled into our daily routine of distinction, identification, and discrimination. There was the time before the categories. An animal might be a god, without contradiction. Forms are easily assimilated, easily transformed. Sometimes an animal was also a deity, also a demon, also an animal. There is a continual flow of forms, recollecting the Heraclitean flux and the glory of the resurrection.
Sly remarks pepper this presentation. "When a vast part of what existed withdrew into the invisible, that doesn't by any means mean that things stopped happening."
I have learned from our author, hunting is not a man chasing an animal. Of course that's how "we" understand the matter. At that time, because our author found a way into the mind of the primitive, things were more, considerably more complicated. The animal chased might very well be a man in disguise. Things did not, then, have identify with themselves. Everything was porous, everything might yield to another form. Materiality was capable of endless transformation. Today, living in an era of totalitarian mentalities, East and West, things must be what they are. So "our" leaders will dictate.

[Dosi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cuándo compara el relato de Henry James acerca de un hombre que se sienta en una banca a leer un libro con la historia del homo-sapiens dije: Sólo a este cabrón se le ocurre esta relación. Me fascinó.

El capítulo que corresponde a Plotino también es una joya, aunque a veces me falta cultura para entender la relación entre unos temas con otros. También como los dioses griegos huyen a Egipto y se transforman en animales sagrados.

Creo que entendí que al final el ser humano busca entenderse en relación con el otro y su entorno, para eso recurre a la imitación de sus depredadores, de sus presas , de sus dioses etc. Incluso esa imitación llega hasta la metamorfosis. Calasso da el reconocimiento a esta habilidad que ha permitido al ser humano sobrevivir a su entorno y desarrollar cultura.

Y bueno también la imitación es un juego, como yo que soy un gato que lee libros .... miaaau 😽😼

[Joaquin Lopez Tapia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una pena que el segundo libro que leo en el año seguramente sea el mejor de todos.

Como todos los grandes libros, las 200 primeras páginas son increíbles.

Y como todos los grandes libros también se va haciendo algo más denso hacia el final, aunque cerrar el mejor libro de mitología griega que leí nunca con los misterios eleusinos hace que valga la pena y te deja con ganas de más.

Su mayor virtud y su mayor defecto son los mismos: cada capítulo parece una clase magistral de un profesor de universidad a medio camino entre sabio y genio, que sin embargo te bombardea con conceptos y términos que muchas veces no son explicados como deberían.

Pienso que de haber sido sistemático y didáctico, sería el manual de referencia para el estudio de la mitología griega en cualquier universidad del mundo.

[Joel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Calasso has an enormous range of reading, an impressive intellect, and a familiarity with the texts of antiquity that is staggering. That said, the book meanders and doesn’t seem to hold together to me. I read an interview with him where he mentioned essentially using note cards and assembling them into a book at some time, and that is what this feels like: a series of notes that are loosely related but which do not add up to some coherent whole.
I enjoyed parts of the book immensely, but found other sections very dull. But the book made me want to read different books by Calasso. Ancient times were in many ways weird and totally different to how we live today, and that oddity comes through in this book.

[Peter Zomer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book starts off strange, very strange, and it remains so. It is stunning text. The author offers truly original insights into the mind of the hunter, i.e. the mind of ancient man. His insights are nurtured by a magic blend of anthropology, mythology and psychology and does justice to the complex character of the topic. In fact, I would consider his reasoning an example of complexity thinking which is highly creative and intuitive, as well as speculative, and, nevertheless, a smart and plausible approximation of what must be true about the hunter's mind.
Frankly, I have been reading only the first sixty pages. The text is so dense and requires so much concentration that it is hard to read the book all at once. But it is great fun to read it. It is Joseph Campbell meets Freud. Exhilarating.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Celestial Hunter is another entry in Calasso’s enchanting counterhistory of the modern world. As in previous books, he dives into a body of myth—in this case, the mythology of hunting from the Paleolithic era to the Information Age—to piece together aspects of our lives that lie just beneath society’s facade. Calasso reveals that Homo sapiens’ evolutionary leap from fruit-eaters to hunters continues to reverberate hundreds of thousands of years later. The reverberations are everywhere, once you know where to look. In this dazzling book, Calasso directs our gaze, pointing us to the mysteries within.

[SusanJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

the NY Times Book Review reportedly says "[Calasso's] flow of associations leaves you feeling not out of your depth, but smarter and better read." I feel out of my depth, for sure, certainly not smarter or better read; it's definitely worth being out there in the water or whatever the image is supposed to be... I sure would like someone to actually DISCUSS this book with... accompanying a close reading. Calasso is a LOT of work, and it's worth it to me if I get to connect with others peckin' away at it...

[Rafa González · Rating 4 out of 5]

como ya dije en el comentario que dejé por aquí cuando empecé a leer el libro, los primeros capítulos son brutales. después de eso, algunos me parecen más flojos y pesados, con relaciones de conceptos algo forzadas y cogidas con pinzas y fórmulas que se hacen algo repetitivas. sin embargo,estoy seguro de que cuando vuelva a él reconoceré muchas cosas que ahora han quedado algo inciertas y que se irán reordenando en las páginas subrayadas para volver a saltar al firmamento, ahora florecidas, cuando las vuelva a abrir

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I adored and reread The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony a number of times, this work was hit or miss for me. The more mythology-focused sections sang in a similar way to The Marriage, but the more philosophical and historical chapters felt flat with too much meandering. This could be because I have a greater grasp on mythology; the sections regarding philosophers / historians I am more familiar with (Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides) were definitely more interesting than most.

[Oscar Manuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

¡Roberto Calasso es don chingón! La erudición es un arte cuando cuenta algo y no se empecina en ser verborrea petulante. El Cazador Celeste fue un acontecimiento absoluto para mí, lector mediocre pero entusiasta. La prosa y el tratamiento de los temas que el maestro desarrolla a su muy particular estilo, me atravesaron como las flechas de Apolo y Artemisa. Donde Calasso pone el ojo, pone la flecha.
Como a Eleusis, hay que volver a Calasso.

[rea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Il suo libro migliore, tra quelli che ho letto per ora. Contiene molti elementi della prima parte dell'Opera - quella più narrativa - e insieme apre alla seconda, più saggistica (senza per questo scadere nel discorsino da cattedra) e anche più sfrontata nel riferirsi direttamente a studi contemporanei. Uno spartiacque fondamentale, attraverso cui passano e convergono i temi principali dell'Opera, per poi rifrangersi nel ventaglio degli ultimi libri, come un fascio di luce con un prisma.

[Freca - Narrazioni da Divano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Come sapete adoro Calasso, ma avevo letto solo un paio di suoi libri, e riimmergermi nelle sue pagine fa sempre bene all'anima: la ricchezza di contenuto e linguistica, l'inizio carico subito nel fulcro senza introduzioni fa' sentire immediatamente parte del racconto, che poi saltando da una mitologia all'altra, altro non è che quello umano, un frammento, complesso, che si unisce a tutti gli altri particolari nel quadro generale. L'autore riesce sempre a creare una narrazione densa, affascinante, mai monocorde e sempre compatta, con un senso di meraviglia che solo la mitologia, che unisce concretezza allo straordinario, riesce a creare.

[Laurel Roth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the beginning, which focuses on mythology, the best. Once Calasso gets into Plato and Athenian politics, I definitely started to skim. Lots of interesting tidbits though! Like apparently "image" and "corpse" have the same root in Egyptian. I feel like someday I'll pick this up again when I need inspiration for a poem or something.