Since ancient times, writers have written about the gods because the community entrusted them with this role. However, they continued to write even when the community began to ignore or fight against those very gods they once worshipped.

But who were these gods, and why do their names still interest the world? Starting with the ancient Greek gods, who after the Renaissance traverse European thought in strong and quirky waves, and moving on to the gods of the East, who with German Romanticism occupied Central Europe, their divine forms helped literature break free from rhetoric and lead to a land that is not mapped but where - from Hölderlin to Mallarmé and from Proust to today - we find literature in all its transformations and expressions.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]