Notes Without a Text

Roberto Bazlen published nothing in his lifetime. An advisor to Italian publishing houses, a translator of Freud and Jung, a friend of Montale and Calvino, he was nothing if not a literary man, but he was deeply suspicious of the enterprising spirit of the “literary world” and kept his writings to himself. Notes Without a Text is an introduction to the work of one of the unknown masters of twentieth-century European literature. Alex Andriesse is a writer, a translator, and the managing editor of the Review of Contemporary Fiction. His translation of François-René de Chateaubriand’s Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, 1768–1800 is published by New York Review of Books Classics. Roberto Calasso is the publisher of Adelphi Edizioni and lives in Milan. He is the author of a multi-volume work in progress that began with The Ruin of Kasch and includes such books as The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Ka, K., Tiepolo Pink, La Folie Baudelaire, and Ardor.