/lit/ - Literature

>>20129606
Probably in Search of Lost Time. It was so beautiful, frens. I'm going to reread it this year.

>>19173603
Okay, anch'io sono ossessionato da sta cosa, quindi eccoti un po' di consigli. La prima cosa che ti direi è di insistere con l'inglese e di imparare qualsiasi altra lingua tu riesca a imparare. If you come here, you're probably capable of understanding most basic english literature, and you can step up from there. It opened a world for me: Nabokov, DFW, Pynchon and Joyce are so much better in the original than they are in translation. As for other languages, I usually found that Italian translation from romance languages are, for obvious reasons, better than those from other languages, so I tend to read spanish and french literature in Italian.
When I move onto other languages, such as Russian or German, I mostly check two things:
>1. date of the translation
>2. academic background, qualifications and other works of the translator
I tend to trust academics more than writers and journalists, unless they have specific ties with the author. Take the Italian translations of Ulysses: most of them are terrible, Einaudi included, because the choice of the translator was very poor. Terrinoni's, fairly recent and from a Joyce scholar, is far superior to all others both in style and notes, being possibly the only readable one in our language. It somehow got published with Newton Compton, which is a shit publishing house for translations, but it came out great. I think that if you combine academic background and date, and go for a mix of the most-recent/most-informed translation you can likely get something good, especially on Russian stuff.
The real problem is new novels, for which you only have one translation available. That's where knowing English helps, because some english translators are very good, and if you know English you have the options of checking their translations as well.
If you are generally distrustful, which is a good thing, another tactic is to check available translations beforehand in your local libraries (or by pirating the books online), see which one reads best according to your taste, and then buy that one. Also, there's a lot of online discussion on translations (that's how I found out about Terrinoni's Ulysses being the best, for instance), so a quick google research can also help. Last resource? Email a university professor. Find someone in Bologna or wherever who is an expert on a given author and ask him what the best translation is. Usually professors are very approachable for these kind of straightforward questions and are vain enough to not lose an occasion to show how many things they know more than you do (but remember you'll be the one getting the best book, in the end).

Looking for recommendations on some easy French books to help me learn the language. So far all I've read is a beginners book of short stories, Le Petit Prince and various Tintin comics. I'm thinking maybe Jules Verne or Georges Simenon next. Can any anons help me out here?

>>17148315

>>16995131
>less is more
Wrong. I'm not saying that more and more and you should only read infinite jest-like novels but it is plainly obvious that the way Proust fashions his long-ass sentences allows him to achieve an effect that Borges never could, while still telling very short stories inside of it, small details that are self-sufficient. If that were true, you wouldn't hold Borges for the greatest of the 20th century but someone like Char or Pound. I like Borges, and I dislike the idea of a "greatest author" but I think that technically speaking Proust or Joyce are better.
Also since you like Borges, check out Schwob's short stories sometimes, they are great and had a major influence on Borges.

>>16985495
no it makes you comfy fren

sleep tight

sleep tight apu