/lit/ - Literature

>>15630810
There are some quotes out there which are attributed to Chesterton, but which he didn't actually say. Or, at least, he didn't say them exactly, but he said essentially the same thing but not as concisely or pithily.

Like that famous line:

>When a man ceases to believe in God, he does not believe in nothing; he believes in everything.

It's often attributed to Chesterton, but he did not actually say it. At least, he didn't say it exactly. He said essentially the same thing over the course of a paragraph, but he didn't say that specific line.

On the other hand, Borges would probably have a better memory for this sort of thing than I would, so he's probably in the right.

>>15543839
I think Newman is more of a pure philosopher and seeker after pure truth than Chesterton. But I do think Chesterton has some holiness to him. He's inspired people to convert to Catholicism, after all.

>>15262603
Start with Heretics, then move on to the Father Brown stories. Then you can read The Napoleon of Notting Hill.

Reminder that Chesterton refuted Nietzsche and the only defense Neetch fans have is to babble that he's been misunderstood.

Of all the many things Chesterton was good at, what does /lit/ think he was BEST at?

I think he was best as an essayist. Short story writer comes in a close second, but I think his essays are by far his best stuff.

He is one of those great geniuses who can talk about very complex things using very simple terms.

In addition to all the fiction and essays mentioned, his poetry is very good too. One of the particular geniuses of Chesterton is that he was very good at a fuckton of things. He was a journalist, essayist, critic, short story writer, novelist, poet, dramatist, philosopher, and theologian. He wears a lot of hats, and while some of his stuff in some fields is better than others, nothing he ever put out is truly bad.

>it's another "somebody other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare" theory

Chesterton has a passage in Heretics where he talks about the reason these theories percolate the way they do. He essentially says that many smart people don't like to consider the idea that the greatest genius in the history of English letters was some ordinary guy who came from a bumpkin town outside of London, and who had a normal life and family. Chesterton asserts that by the early 20th Century, the idea of the genius as some odd, idiosyncratic figure had already taken hold, and so the details about Shakespeare's life, which are neither odd nor idiosyncratic, became offensive. Surely this rather ordinary fellow couldn't have written these brilliant plays. So the idea that he was some secret nobleman, or some other, odder genius, began to arise.

Anon, Paradise Lost is weird because Milton is a formal heretic. He had a weird conception of God where the Father was a separate, superior entity to the Son. This is one of the oldest heresies in Christianity, it's called Arianism and it denies the essential divinity of Jesus.

You can't trust Milton for an accurate portrayal of Christianity and the Christian view of God. Just read the nice poetry and don't think so hard about it.

>>13335562
>he thinks you have to be a commie to oppose capitalism

>>13224163
I'm a devout Catholic, and reading this just makes me realize how little Orwell understood anything about what it means to be devout. Like, he really comes across as very stupid here.

If you've become immersed in a devout practice of a religion, especially a religion with deep traditions like Catholicism, it eventually colors every aspect of your life. Even aspects of your life that were previously outside any religious consideration become colored with your practice of the Faith, because you realize that God is massive and encompasses all of reality. God is in the very big, true, but omnipotence and omniscience mean that God is also in the very small, and even ordinary, mundane things may take on a sacramental, mystical quality.

Converts are always more sensitive about these sorts of things than most cradle believers, because when you convert to a religion you take a deep and profound interest in it, and you allow it to influence you profoundly, in precisely the way I described above. It's no surprise to me at all that a convert to Catholicism like Chesterton would consider his religion a thing that involves every aspect of his life, including whether to drink tea versus whether to drink beer. Orwell's failure to grasp this is disappointing, and proof of his limited appreciation for a religious perspective.

>>13203989
The Napoleon Of Notting Hill is very good.

What is Chesterton's single greatest work, in your opinion?