Creation
March 9, 2008
Something else I learned about The Name of the Rose this week, without actually reading any of it, was that one of the characters is an Egyptian alchemist who attributes the creation of the world to a spasm of ‘divine laughter’. I learned this from
Creation (Artists, Gods and Origins)
by Peter Conrad
a magnificent tour de force comparing the depictions of creation in art, books, philosophy, religion and mythology – subjects of which Conrad shows an awesome breadth of knowledge.
It’s the sort of book you could give Stephen Fry for Christmas.
Don’t just take my word for it.
This is what Terry Eagleton said in the London Review of Books:
“If God spans the whole of Creation, Peter Conrad runs him a close second. This is an astonishingly erudite work, one which would still be impressive for its panoptic learning even if ‘Peter Conrad’ turned out to be the name of a committee of twenty or so scholars. Creation ranges from alchemy, the Kabbalah, Finnish mythology and primitive cave paintings to Stravinsky, Duke Ellington and Steven Spielberg, glancing en route at virtually every major European writer or artist. It is crammed with curios and choice anecdotes, all the way from Richard III’s hump to an oiled arm in a Mapplethorpe photograph probing a gaping anus. In a work which ranges effortlessly across the major arts, we are treated to learned disquisitions on Boethius, Hildegard of Bingen, Pico della Mirandola, Leonardo, Milton, Rameau, Sade, Mozart, Balzac, Darwin, Wagner, Rodin, Philip Pullman and a supporting cast of hundreds. A single page, selected at random and by no means the most thickly populated, scatters references to Conrad (Joseph), Hesiod, Rilke, Shakespeare, Plato, Mann, George Eliot, Gide and St John.”
Having been so impressed by Creation (not that I’m anywhere near finishing it, of course) I now have another big book on my must-read list – Conrad’s earlier work, exploring the 20th century:
Modern Times, Modern Places:
Life and Art in the Twentieth Century
It sounds equally overwhelming in its scope.
