Roberto Calasso

Sulla spiaggia di Sidone un toro tentava di imitare un gorgheggio amoroso. Era Zeus. Fu scosso da un bri-vido, come quando i tafani lo pungevano. Ma questa volta un brivido dolce. Eros gli stava mettendo sulla groppa la fanciulla Europa. Poi la bestia bianca si gettó in acqua, e il suo corpo...

ON A BEACH IN SIDON A BULL WAS APING a lover's coo. It was Zeus. He shuddered, the way he did when a gadfly got him. But this time it was a sweet shuddering. Eros was lifting a girl onto his back: Europa. Then the white beast dived into the sea, his majestic body rising just far enough above the...

uddenly an eagle darkened the sky. Its bright black, almost violet feathers made a moving curtain between clouds and earth. Hanging from its claws, likewise immense and stiff with terror, an elephant and a turtle skimmed the mountaintops. It seemed the bird meant to use the peaks as pointed...

talleyrand: I speak at the threshold of this book because I was the last man to know anything about ceremonies. And I speak, as always, to deceive. This book is not dedicated to me or to anyone else. This book is dedicated to dedication. "Monsieur de Talleyrand is a difficult man to follow...

ON A BEACH IN SIDON A BULL WAS APING a lover's coo. It was Zeus. He shuddered, the way he did when a gadfly got him. But this time it was a sweet shuddering. Eros was lifting a girl onto his back: Europa. Then the white beast dived into the sea, his majestic body rising just far enough above the...