Shelf Life.(Review)(Brief Article)

Jesus and Socrates left no written works, and man has suspected ever since that oral communication reaches closer to truth than does writing. The publication of lectures is the intellectual's method of splitting the difference: Here's what I say to my students, but presented in a format that will persist.

Roberto Calasso's Literature and the Gods (Knopf, 212 pp., $22) is an example of the greatness that can be achieved in this genre. Based on the Weidenfeld Lectures Calasso gave at Oxford in 2000, the book is an exploration of the reemergence of pagan divinities in intellectual life in the last two centuries. Calasso characterizes the history of modern literature as an attempt to recapture the uncanniness-the non- domesticatedness-of the Divine after its dethroning at the hands of skeptical Enlightenment humanism: "The enchanter gods wander like 'rapacious ghosts' in a desolate world. The time has come for them to sound their 'rebellion against Man,' represented . . . by the eternal pharmacist Homais, who is still 'amazed' that he managed to chase the gods off in the first place while presently preparing to burden Humanity with the awkward weight of a capital letter."

Homais, a character in Flaubert's Madame Bovary, is the best-known literary exemplar of modern science and skepticism; he represents the capitalization of Homme-Man-and it is against his spirit, not the spirit of traditional Western religion, that the pagan gods are conducting their literary revolt. The rise of what Calasso calls "absolute literature" has been made necessary by the fact that "there is no longer a theological power capable of taking charge and putting [gods and phantoms] in order." This ordering task of literature is not entirely new; Calasso notes that as far back as the Hindu Scriptures, man has intuited that the Word is at the heart of reality. He quotes from the Satapatha Brahmana: "Meters are the cattle of the gods." Calasso explains that "to operate effectively," Mind and Word "must team up, yoke themselves together." This yoke-the word itself is related to yoga-is meter: the transformation of Word into literature.

Calasso's book is immensely rewarding; it requires attention and offers much in return. For a somewhat higher ratio of effort to reward, look at George Steiner's Grammars of Creation (Yale, 344 ...