BOOKS IN ORIGINAL LANGUAGES or TRANSLATED FROM ENGLISH
Storytelling is a human condition (and it is certainly used by non-human species, but translation is waiting on that). Literature is a world-wide manifestation of the condition. I think it is important to pay attention to what language is the home for the storytelling. Not only does Whistlestop carry hundreds of translations of world literature, but where we can we carry the originals, sometimes in dual-language format. For fun we also carry a few titles of contemporary books back-translated into Latin. Try it — you will amazed at how much your brain is fired up when you read a different language!
Caligula
Caligula
Here is the theme of the play presented by the author himself (in the U.S. edition of Theater in 1957):
"Caligula, a relatively kind prince so far, realizes on the death of Drusilla, his sister and his mistress, that "men die and they are not happy." Therefore, obsessed by the quest for the Absolute and poisoned by contempt and horror, he tries to exercise, through murder and systematic perversion of all values, a freedom which he discovers in the end is no good. He rejects friendship and love, simple human solidarity, good and evil. He takes the word of those around him, he forces them to logic, he levels all around him by force of his refusal and by the rage of destruction which drives his passion for life.
But if his truth is to rebel against fate, his error is to deny men. One cannot destroy without destroying oneself. This is why Caligula depopulates the world around him and, true to his logic, makes arrangements to arm those who will eventually kill him. Caligula is the story of a superior suicide. It is the story of the most human and the most tragic of errors. Unfaithful to man, loyal to himself, Caligula consents to die for having understood that no one can save himself all alone and that one cannot be free in opposition to other men."