The Forty-nine Steps

Download or read book The Forty-nine Steps written by Roberto Calasso and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ""Forty-nine steps" refers to the Talmudic doctrine that there are forty-nine steps to meaning in every passage of the Torah. Employing this interpretive approach, Calasso offers a "secret history" of European literature and philosophy in the wake of Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud. Calasso analyzes how figures ranging from Gustav Flaubert, Gottfried Benn, Karl Kraus, Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht, and Theodor Adorno has contributed to, or been emblematic of, the current state of Western thought. This book's theme, writ large, is the power of fable - specifically, its persistence in art and literature despite its exclusion from orthodox philosophy."--BOOK JACKET.