/lit/ - Literature

>>10741546
He who would write heroic poems should make his whole life a heroic poem.
Life of Schiller.

Reminder Nietzsche was just a poor man's Carlyle.

What did he have to say?

Dismal Scientist AMA

Is he worth reading, /lit/?

>Economics

Ah yeah, that dismal science...

Carlyle never wrote one, but he permitted Froude to write his official autobiography.

It's an incredible read, but even the abridged version is long as fuck.

Reading has made me realize that there are truly not enough hours in the day.

>>8151450

>The jagged mountains were pure blue in the dawn and everywhere birds twittered and the sun when it rose caught the moon in the west so that they lay opposed to each other across the earth

Heh, brings back memories of the great Comma Famine of 1864.

Strangely, we had a surplus of conjunctives that year.

>>8084585

>existentialist feminism

Kys.

>Go to bed when this thread has 30 posts, hopeful of a fruitful discussion when I awake
>I return to see over 200 posts of predictable shitposts from democracy cultists

A place of deathbed sighs in song,
Where time stands still, with thoughts in throng,
My eyes are closed, there's naught to see,
This leaden place, eternity.

In all directions; cold, grey plane,
Unending breeze, my comfort's bane,
But no mere wasteland, empty space,
Betrayer's lair, I now must face.

I look above, and see a sky,
But no mere void doth grace mine eye,
These countless stars, they too deceive,
They are ideas, the heavens' weave.

My gaze averts, and wanders hence,
Nothing has changed, yet air is tense,
I hear his voice, the quiet breaks,
I want to leave, my body quakes.

I try to wake, I cannot move,
My courage now, I cannot prove,
He coalesces, standing there,
The one I sought, is now laid bare.

At last I twitch, no longer bound,
This place is fading, home is found,
I now return, without relief,
Where once reigned comfort, disbelief.

The way I went, upon my wake,
It now lies open, his to take,
This world of mine, can it withstand?
His world's his will, his own idea.

>>7801987

>2016
>Wanting to hear anything other than the right side

>>7765129

He simply meant that they can write well; make their points strongly, entice our imaginations.

They provide no comfort nor relief for the poor and downtrodden, however.

He's ultimately making a point about their motivations. Who wanted to help the world more?

>>7126340
>age:
20
>Class:
Middle
>religion/metaphysics:
Atheist; Sympathetic to Roman Catholicism
>single:(married, divorced, gf/bf etc..)
gf
>country of residence:
England
>Your views about the current state of affairs(whatever part of them interests you) in your country and the reasons for it:
Rampant moral decline, boiling-point racial tension, and accelerating leftward drift, caused by a self-organizing universalist/egalitarian memeplex cladistically descended from Puritanism.
>your preferred type of literature:
Short stories, probably.
>Your favorite literary work:
Conrad - Heart of Darkness
>Why is the above your preferred literary work:
Strips the soul of civilization bare by discarding all moral priors and revealing the primal, primitive Horror within all of mankind.
>The way you wish your life to turn out
I get my Master's Degree in something geology-related, get a nice house, marry.
>Describe life on earth in 100 years:
If the Technological Singularity hasn't come by then, we'll either be full dystopia, or picking up the pieces of Western civilization.

>mfw I sound like a mega-crank at this age

>>6797565
>>6797567

>I read books with swearing in them, I am now a big boy

What do you think of his book on the French Revolution ?

>>6308758
>>6308774

Ugh, Barf, Eww.

No class.

>>6088687
>mfw unsubtle trell

>>5839596
2/10 bait, made me reply

Who else knows about the sage of Scotland, Thomas Carlyle? I've finished Chartism, the Latter Day Pamphlets and have just ordered a 1907 edition of Heroes and Hero Worship. Any opinions on him?

>>5026473
Thomas Carlyle, I'm reading him right now. I'd start with The Latter Day Pamphlets. The man has a writing style that is like a volley of cannon fire.

>All the Millenniums I ever heard of heretofore were to be preceded by a “chaining of the Devil for a thousand years,” — laying him up, tied neck and heels, and put beyond stirring, as the preliminary. You too have been taking preliminary steps, with more and more ardour, for a thirty years back; but they seem to be all in the opposite direction: a cutting asunder of straps and ties, wherever you might find them; pretty indiscriminate of choice in the matter: a general repeal of old regulations, fetters, and restrictions (restrictions on the Devil originally, I believe, for the most part, but now fallen slack and ineffectual), which had become unpleasant to many of you, — with loud shouting from the multitude, as strap after strap was cut, “Glory, glory, another strap is gone!” — this, I think, has mainly been the sublime legislative industry of Parliament since it became “Reform Parliament;” victoriously successful, and thought sublime and beneficent by some.

So that now hardly any limb of the Devil has a thrum, or tatter of rope or leather left upon it: — there needs almost superhuman heroism in you to “whip” a garotter; no Fenian taken with the reddest hand is to be meddled with, under penalties; hardly a murderer, never so detestable and hideous, but you find him “insane,” and board him at the public expense, a very peculiar British Prytaneum of these days! And in fact, THE DEVIL (he, verily, if you will consider the sense of words) is likewise become an Emancipated Gentleman; lithe of limb, as in Adam and Eve’s time, and scarcely a toe or finger of him tied any more. And you, my astonishing friends, you are certainly getting into a millennium, such as never was before, — hardly even in the dreams of Bedlam. Better luck to you by the way, my poor friends; — a little less of buzzing, humming, swarming (i.e. tumbling in infinite noise and darkness), that you might try to look a little, each for himself, what kind of “way” it is!

The man, whatever you think of him, had an impressive control of language.


Your ship cannot double Cape Horn by its excellent plans of voting. The ship may vote this and that, above decks and below, in the most harmonious exquisitely constitutional manner: the ship, to get round Cape Horn, will find a set of conditions already voted for, and fixed with adamantine rigor by the ancient Elemental Powers, who are entirely careless how you vote. If you can, by voting or without voting, ascertain these conditions, and valiantly conform to them, you will get round the Cape: if you cannot, — the ruffian Winds will blow you ever back again; the inexorable Icebergs, dumb privy-councillors from Chaos, will nudge you with the most chaotic ‘admonition;’ you will be flung half frozen on the Patagonian cliffs, or admonished into shivers by your iceberg councillors, and sent sheer down to Davy Jones, and will never get round Cape Horn at all! Unanimity on board ship; — yes indeed, the ship’s crew may be very unanimous, which doubtless, for the time being, will be very comfortable to the ship’s crew, and to their Phantasm Captain if they have one: but if the tack they unanimously steer upon is guiding them into the belly of the Abyss, it will not profit them much! — Ships accordingly do not use the ballot-box at all; and they reject the Phantasm species of Captains: one wishes much some other Entities, — since all entities lie under the same rigorous set of laws, — could be brought to show as much wisdom, and sense at least of self-preservation, the first command of Nature. Phantasm Captains with unanimous votings: this is considered to be all the law and all the prophets, at present.

Or perhaps this

All the Millenniums I ever heard of heretofore were to be preceded by a “chaining of the Devil for a thousand years,” — laying him up, tied neck and heels, and put beyond stirring, as the preliminary. You too have been taking preliminary steps, with more and more ardour, for a thirty years back; but they seem to be all in the opposite direction: a cutting asunder of straps and ties, wherever you might find them; pretty indiscriminate of choice in the matter: a general repeal of old regulations, fetters, and restrictions (restrictions on the Devil originally, I believe, for the most part, but now fallen slack and ineffectual), which had become unpleasant to many of you, — with loud shouting from the multitude, as strap after strap was cut, “Glory, glory, another strap is gone!” — this, I think, has mainly been the sublime legislative industry of Parliament since it became “Reform Parliament;” victoriously successful, and thought sublime and beneficent by some.