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'Conversations with Leuka' is a tribute to the contemporaneity of myth. Italian author Cesare Pavese considered mythology and myths to be an indispensable part of modern man's understanding and existence, and his 'Conversations with Leuka' from 1947 is a beautiful and experimental retelling of ancient Greek myths. Conni-Kay Jørgensen has translated and written the book's afterword, and Maja Lisa Engelhardt has illustrated the book's short stories with 27 monotypes.
About the making of the book, Pavese explained: 'If it had been possible, we would have loved to do without all that mythology. But we are convinced that myth is a language, a means of expression - that is, something not arbitrary, but a reservoir of symbols that, like any other language, contains a particular substance of meaning that nothing else could reproduce. When we repeat a proper name, a gesture, a mythical wonder, we express in half a line, in a few syllables, a synthetic and comprehensive fact, a core of reality that animates and nourishes a whole organism of passion, of human being, a whole complex of concepts. And all the better if we have been familiar with this name, this gesture, from childhood, from school. The disturbance is truer and sharper when it sets an old familiar substance in motion. Here we make do with Hellenic myths because of their forgivable popularity, their immediate and traditional acceptability. We abhor everything that is disorderly, diverse, random, and try - also in terms of matter - to limit ourselves, to create a framework, to insist on a bounded state. We are convinced that a great revelation can only come from a stubborn insistence on one difficulty. We have nothing in common with the travelers, the experimenters, the adventurers. We know that the surest - and quickest - way to be amazed is to keep staring unchanged at the same object.'
Pavese's errand is by no means backward-looking, but the message is that the return of modern man to his mental and geographical origins is not a search for a lost paradise, it is not a rejection of modern culture and civilization in favor of a primitive world. He does not reject culture and is well aware that it is impossible to recapture innocence once lost. But one can at least try to see with virgin eyes, without prejudice, and return to the primitive mentality that allows one to relive original, authentic experiences. Myth is a reservoir of symbols, a treasure chest that is filled in childhood and gives the rest of life its richness.
Today, 'Conversations with Leuka' - next to 'The Moon and the Baboons' - is Cesare Pavese's best-known and most widely read work, and the text is the subject of great interest and interpretation; hermeneutic, phenomenological, existentialist, purely philological or in the light of this or that anthropologist, psychologist or philosopher.
The book has been translated into numerous languages and is available here for the first time in Danish in Conni-Kay Jørgensen's translation.
Cesare Pavese (1908-1950), author, literary critic and translator. He made his debut as a poet, but later published many novels. As an editor and consultant at the publishing house Einaudi, Pavese was responsible for the introduction of new American literature in Italy.
In 2020, Maja Lisa Engelhardt created three unique monotypes for each of Pavese's retellings in Conversations with Leuka. Of the 81, one monotype for each of the 27 stories has been selected and reproduced in the book.
Maja Lisa Engelhardt (b. 1956), visual artist. Has illustrated a large number of books, including the Bible, Saxo, Søren Kierkegaard, B.S. Ingemann, Pär Lagerkvist and Prince Henrik, and has also decorated a large number of churches.
Conni-Kay Jørgensen (b. 1968), translator and author, MA. in Latin and philosophy and PhD in philosophy after studying in Naples, Florence and Turin. Has translated Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and Giovan Francesco Straparola, among others.
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