Roberto Calasso, Italian publisher and literary figure, dies

ROME – Roberto Calasso, a towering fig successful European publishing arsenic the driving unit down an esteemed Milan-based publisher, arsenic good arsenic an inquisitive and prolific writer himself, has died astatine 80, his institution said.

Italian quality media, quoting his publishing location Adelphi, said Calasso died Thursday successful Milan pursuing a agelong unwellness and a aftermath was held Friday successful the publishing house's Milan headquarters.

Directing Adelphi since 1971 and being its president since 1999, Calasso adhered to the doctrine choosing books to people not connected however they mightiness merchantability but connected whether they had thing important to say.

A autochthonal of Florence, who grew up with parents steeped successful the classics, Calasso besides wrote his ain books, utilizing a fountain pen for each but the last draft. His 1988 “Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony,” a readable, imaginative exploration of Greek mythology, was his best-known work.

Calasso's tastes successful determining what titles Adelphi would people were eclectic.

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Among his literate finds was an Italian physicist, Carlo Rovelli. Calasso started a caller imprint to connection readers Rovelli's 2016 “Seven Brief Lessons connected Physics.”

In an nonfiction Friday successful the Corriere della Sera newspaper, Rovelli recalled their archetypal gathering arsenic emblematic of Calasso's cognition toward publishing.

“'Carlo, I work what you wrote. I similar it. Whatever you constitute that you deliberation important, nonstop it to me. Don't deliberation astir penning books that sell, deliberation lone if you person existent things to say. I'll people them,'' Rovelli wrote.

“What much tin you anticipation to person from your ain publisher?" Rovelli wrote, adding that the "extraordinary attraction with which helium published books is mythical."

His U.S. editor, Jonathan Galassi of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, called Calasso “one of the large literate publishers of postwar Europe.”

“He was besides a prolific writer of wide and heavy imaginativeness and insight,” Galassi said successful a statement. “Basically, his life’s enactment was each 1 project: to plumb the inter-connectedness of quality civilization crossed clip and crossed civilizations. There was nary 1 similar him.”

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Starting with Adelphi erstwhile helium was 21, Calasso developed the publishing house. Among those helium published were Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia and the Czech-born Milan Kundera.

Adelphi was fundamentally the invention, successful 1962, of a Trieste intellectual, Roberto Bazlen, who rapidly enlisted the efforts of Luciano Foa' and the young Calasso, past surviving successful Rome. Italian industrialist Roberto Olivetti helped concern the venture.

Corriere della Sera recalled that Bazlen utilized to accidental of Adelphi's mission: “We'll lone people the books we truly like.” Calasso became editorial director, and aboriginal head and proprietor of Adelphi, a benignant of "father-master,'' the paper wrote.

The Paris Review successful an 2012 interrogation with Calasso called him a “literary instauration of one” and lauded Adelphi arsenic “Italy's astir prestigious publishing house.”

In that interview, Calasso reminisced astir his father, Francesco Calasso, a staunch anti-fascist and a past of instrumentality prof astatine the University of Florence who, successful 1944, was astir executed by the past German occupying forces. Calasso reminisced increasing up successful a “house lined with books.” His mother, Melisenda Codignola, who earned a doctorate with a thesis connected 1 of Plutarch's works, translated the classics.

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In a poignant crook of events, the steadfast died conscionable arsenic 2 of his works, described arsenic his astir auto-biographical, went connected merchantability successful Italy's bookshops: “Meme' Scianca,'' which draws connected his Florentine puerility successful a household of intellectuals, and ”Bobi," astir the beingness of Bazlen.

The subjects of Calasso's penning were wide-ranging, reflecting his curiosity, and included creator Giambattista Tiepolo and writer Franz Kafka.

Of Calasso's ain books, “it's hard to accidental successful peculiar what they spoke about, not due to the fact that they rotation but due to the fact that they travel an interior logical that knows nary borders,” the Italian quality bureau ANSA wrote.

Calasso besides wrote astir what helium called the fascination with technology, bemoaning however the integer property was “the gravest battle that the inclination to exposure oneself to the daze of the chartless has known."

Wrote Corriere della Sera successful its tribute, “for Calasso, the chartless is the essence of literature.”

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AP publishing newsman Hillel Italie contributed from New York.

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