/lit/ - Literature

I came here to post the direct recommendations Schopenhauer made, seeing as they have already been mentioned you ought to consider novels written by writers who are known to have read Schopenhauer and admired Schopenhauer. Thomas Hardy's novels are what >>17308582 would call Schopenhauerian in spirit, with the additional benefit that Hardy read Schopenhauer, von Hartmann and others extensively and expressed aspects of Schopenhauer's metaphysics in his novels. How one can Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd or The Mayor of Casterbridge and not perceive the workings of merciless and impersonal Will driving men to ruin is beyond me. Jude the Obscure is my favourite of Hardy's novels but I would advise reading at least one of his more well-known works beforehand.

Thomas Hardy

He masterfully portrays that numb sense of frustration when dealing with unexplainable human prejudices and assumptions. Despite his view of himself as a poet (which is extremely justified as he has written some of the most affecting poems I have read), his novels are simply tales to be experienced. I cannot go on a wet ramble without thinking of Tess slaving away. He sums up the experience of the disillusioned romantic perfectly.

What I sometimes dislike is the fact that he can dish out a beautiful passage such as when he describes the Shelleyan atheism of Angel and his closeness to his Paulean father and then go on to shatter all sense of hope with pages and pages of bleak sadness. Although I suppose that that is more of a personal issue, sometimes I need consolation.

Escaping thoughts of you in mind,
beleaguers me to take the skies.

Enveloped by that world of blue,
these thoughts of mine take on a hue,
that no one man can stop or sunder,
these thoughts of you strike me like thunder.

In which with lies we tell ourselves.
This one, I beg, pray not you tell.

What should I do?

Profiles in the Pane

Like a phantom the train barreled down the tracks. Unassuming and self-reflective, David Rocklin stared into the pane of the train, staring and saying to himself things that shouldn’t be heard. The upper carriage was devoid of any at all passengers except for David. Sporting an untrimmed beard and a papaya green polo shirt, David began to think about what he would do and say when he got to the party. As a writer, his skills in creating possible scenarios in his head were but a pastime, although in the case of real human contact, he had the social skills of a exiled Slavic Siberian bound political prisoner. Knowing full well that social gatherings were a thing that he liked only from a safe viewing distance, to help broaden his palate and horizons David had decided to go beyond his comfort zone. Taking his glasses off he eyed through near-sighted vision the imprints left by the pads of his eyeglasses. He could only rub his nose in frustration, another thing for him to mully over.

To fully commit to this state of discomfort David had decided to forgo driving a car at all to the city and instead take the Metro-train. A European concept, most people, it seemed to David, didn’t bother with train travel, with the occasional crashes and stops every ten minutes. Though why there would be anything like livestock or abandoned couches left on the tracks was anyone’s guess. He also thought it would do him some good observing real people in a real environment, people must use this train to get to work, but after pondering over that it made more sense for him to come to Los Angeles in the morning where people took the train to work. He saw that for a fact when the outbound train passed them by at one of the next stops.

Even if it was for his brother’s going away party, he couldn’t find any excuse to come and see Leon off. Modern technology today allowed the two of them to keep in moderate contact, though David wouldn’t categorize them having any sort of relationship beyond the blood ties and familial bonds that they shared due to their mutual father and mother. They were both writers, though David had his books published, Leon on the other hand translated them for a living, his talents went beyond grammar, punctuation, and the flowery prose that they both possessed. What set Leon apart from David was the myriad amount of tongues in his possession. Leon’s mind was built like a super-computer for various languages, computing grammar and sentence structure, as a party trick to friends he would like out 212 Chinese characters from memory, which also included every use for them. This is what afforded him the affection that was rewarded to him on a daily basis from their parents, while David nevertheless struggled with his share of languages, his brain wired like an Alan Turing computer, one word took several hours for him to memorize.

What is the best work by Thomas Hardy?