/lit/ - Literature

I'm Brazilian, but my ethnicity (my genetic backround) is Germanic.

If I were to say who is the best writer of the German language, I would say George Büchner, who passed away at the age of only 23. He seems to me to be a far more fertile and inventive poet than Goethe (certainly endowed with a far superior wealth of metaphorical creation, with a richer "verbal poetic texture", in the words of Nabokov).

This excerpt from his play, Danton's Death, was written when he was only 21 years old:

DANTON. Will the clock not be still? With every tick it slides the walls closer round me, till they’re as narrow as a coffin. I once read a story like that as a child. It made my hair stand on end. Yes, as a child. What a waste of time fattening me up and keeping me warm! Mere work for the grave-diggers. I feel as if I were rot- ten already. My dear carcass, I’ll hold my nose and make believe you’re a girl all smelly and sweating after a dance and pay you compliments. We used to have better times together. Tomorrow you’ll be a broken fiddle, with no tune left in you. Or an empty bottle—the wine’s drunk but I’m not; I have to go sober to bed. Lucky people who can still get drunk! Tomorrow you’ll be a worn-out pair of pants—you’ll be thrown in the wardrobe and the moths will eat you whether you’re stinking or not.—Ah, it’s no good. Dying is a wretched business. It apes birth. Dying, we’re as naked and helpless as new-born infants. We’re given a shroud as a napkin. But it’s no help. We can grizzle in the grave as well as in the cradle. Camille! He’s asleep. [Bending over him] There’s a dream playing between his eyelashes. I’ll not brush the golden dew of sleep from his eyes. [Stands up and walks to the window.] I shan’t go alone. Thank you for that, Julie. Yet I’d have liked to die differently, effortlessly, like a falling star, like a note fading away, kissing itself to death with its own lips, like a ray of light burying itself in clear water. The stars are sprayed across the night like shimmering tears; there must be great grief in the eye that shed them.

If he had survived and continued to devote himself to literature I believe he would have become one of the greatest writers of all time.

Büchner wrote this with only 21. He died with 23. What might he have achieved if he had lived longer.

Here's a speech of Danton abouth death, in the tragedy that Büchner wrote about him:

DANTON. Will the clock not be still? With every tick it slides the walls closer round me, till they’re as narrow as a coffin. I once read a story like that as a child. It made my hair stand on end. Yes, as a child. What a waste of time fattening me up and keeping me warm! Mere work for the grave-diggers. I feel as if I were rotten already. My dear carcass, I’ll hold my nose and make believe you’re a girl all smelly and sweating after a dance and pay you compliments. We used to have better times together. Tomorrow you’ll be a broken fiddle, with no tune left in you. Or an empty bottle—the wine’s drunk but I’m not; I have to go sober to bed. Lucky people who can still get drunk! Tomorrow you’ll be a worn-out pair of pants—you’ll be thrown in the wardrobe and the moths will eat you whether you’re stinking or not.—
Ah, it’s no good. Dying is a wretched business. It apes birth. Dying, we’re as naked and helpless as new-born infants. We’re given a shroud as a napkin. But it’s no help. We can grizzle in the grave as well as in the cradle.
Camille! He’s asleep. [Bending over him] There’s a dream playing between his eyelashes. I’ll not brush the golden dew of sleep from his eyes. [Stands up and walks to the window.] I shan’t go alone. Thank you for that, Julie. Yet I’d have liked to die differently, effortlessly, like a falling star, like a note fading away, kiss- ing itself to death with its own lips, like a ray of light burying itself in clear water. The stars are sprayed across the night like shimmering tears; there must be great grief in the eye that shed them.