/lit/ - Literature

>who is the literary bach?

I want to know what you guys think about what some Anon posted about Bach some days ago, his answear on the question above:

Anon:

The simple answer is there is none [literary Bach]. Imagine a writer with the ingenuity and mastery of language/drama like Shakespeare with the output capability of a nuanced but prolific novelist like Stephen King, with the playful complexity of Pynchon but at once the essentialist-minimalist style of Hemingway, and Tolstoy's complete understanding of the human spirit and his ability to imbue that into the written form in there form of epic dramas, and then to top it off, such a writer would have to be writing all of his works with perfect success from a multi-narrative point of view that converge into a coherent conclusion, in a niche style devoted solely to the glory of God like Christian Fiction, and be unrecognized for their absolute genius for hundreds of years. Lasty, such a writer would have to have produced some works of art that continue to challenge even the greatest readers today, as Bach wrote technical-and-interpretative-mastery-level-only triple-black-diamond experts-only pieces for a variety of instruments.

Bach has no equal. He could write highly ordered and well constructed complex polyphonic works with the (apparent) ease of a child sitting scribbling chaotically on a sheet of paper. Clip below is a Bach organ fugue arranged by Respighi for a full orchestra, simply breathtaking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXwHORPeOsg

(...)

There is no smooth equivalent, there's too many a areas where Bach is superlative.

That have mastered literary elements that can loosely be translated to the musical form.

Tolstoy is the closest we have to Bach in literature, if you really want the answer, but even Tolstoy falls far short of what Bach accomplished and the depth of Bach's work. If Tolstoy was alive today and had the prolific output of Stephen King and was writing post-modern multi-narrative novels that formed coherent conclusions and his works were all at least as good as War and Peace, then you might have a close comparison to Bach.

Can you imagine an author like that?

Neither can I.

That's what Bach is to music.