/lit/ - Literature

>>22310421
Not with those DSL

Who is the most handsome /lit/ figure? Byron's gotta be in the running, right?

No, the super-muscular Greek philosophers don't count. Not unless you know what they actually LOOKED like. You can be ripped and still be ugly.

>>16959808
Byron. Byron's poems get chicks wet. They have the whiff of the man's own irresistible sex appeal.

>>16276583
I mean we ALREADY know he was bisexual, and fucked multiple men and multiple women, including one of his own blood relatives.

What could have been in there that was worse? Byron's sexual exploits were common knowledge in Romantic England. Actually this makes me morbidly curious. What could possibly have been in those memoirs that was worse? Pedophilia? Bestiality? Necrophilia? I wouldn't put anything past Byron.

So basically OP should read Byron since Byron actually did live and die by the ideals of the Romantic poets.

Basically all of the English Romantics anticipate Nietzsche and his ideas to a certain extent.

You could make the argument that, in addition to Napoleon, Byron is the great Overman figure of the 19th Century.

I feel like a biography of Byron would be useful, the man's life basically WAS Romanticism, its essence lived out by a human being.

I feel like it is generally very difficult to write great poetry without a sense of the transcendent. You must have some sense of a world beyond your daily life, some higher, grander reality that you want to snatch a piece out of and bring down to the rest of the world. This is true even for poetry about mundane, everyday things. Half the point of writing a poem about your day to day life is that you are relating your own modest experiences to things above and beyond them.

Even the Romantics, for all that most of them were atheists, had a sense of the transcendent. They believed in Progress, in Freedom, in Love, those sorts of things. Most of them, like Shelley, were believers in grand projects to improve the human condition; remember, most of the Romantics were supporters of the French Revolution. So I think, if modern poetry is shit, it's because the sense that there is a transcendent reality has been lost from many people. Even the belief in "a better world" has been basically dragged into the dirt. Everybody fighting for what they think is a better world, like these people protesting for racial justice, basically see it in very mundane, lowbrow terms, as opposed to some grand, metaphysical struggle on a cosmic scale, and this means they cannot write great poetry about it.

Basically, Nietzsche killed poetry. Ironic, given that he loved it so much.

Most authors want to be Lord Byron but not many can. Which have come close though?

"Gothic" fiction is essentially just Byron fanfiction, Byron is literally the base model for every Gothic hero ever.

>>14910451
>Les Fleurs du Mal
>Novel

Mademoiselle, I regret to inform you that it should perhaps be YOU who should read a bit more since you seem to be incapable of distinguishing between prose and verse, something a child would be able to do by looking at the line breaks alone. Until then, do not deign to speak to me out of bienséance until you are able to disentangle the two kingdoms of our literary heritage in your mind; let this be a learning experience for us both. And pray tell, what is with the ax you bear? Perhaps a bit more of a fan of our mutual friend Raskolnikov than you are willing to let on, eh? As it stands, Crime and Punishment would be a novel that would be more than fitting for the very description of the same type of book that you decry me for reading. Good day!

>>14910715
But also this

>>14736613
Why, yes, I am utterly and completely irrational. How could you tell?

>>14555600
I was going to say. THIS is the true start of modern vampire fiction. This short story.

Fun fact: this story is meant to be a character study/satire of Lord Byron. Polidori was part of Byron's circle of orbiters and hangers-on. So, basically, everything popular culture thinks about vampires can trace its origins to Byron's personality. Which explains a lot, really.

>>14367975
IMO the other five just write superior poems as far as moving and stirring the soul. It's not to say that Byron is a BAD poet, I just think the other five are superior because they write poetry that's more stirring and striking.

I do love Don Juan, though.

>not catching his fist and knocking him the fuck out with a counter-move

Byron would be ashamed.

Is it /lit/ to rack up huge debts and then stiff your creditors by fleeing the country?

Have you memorized any poems, /lit/?

>not being witty, charming, and charismatic enough to respond to your critics and defeat them

Every great writer and poet has pissed people off. The trick is, how do you respond. Byron was legendarily combative with his critics, for example, and often loved to insult and belittle them.

The arts have spent the better part of 70 years, at least, ignoring the very basic fact that harmony is pleasing and lack of harmony is not. This is everywhere, from free verse in modern poetry to atonality in modern music.

It all fucking sucks. Over and over again, we humans are shown to really enjoy rhythm, rhyme, and regularity, and to not particularly enjoy the lack of these things. But the idiot universities and grant organizations continue to foist lack of harmony upon us in nearly all the arts, and then they wonder why nobody actually enjoys most recent works of music, literature, and visual art.

Why haven't you read Don Juan, /lit/? I think you would really like it, it's very amusing.

Why does nobody write narrative poetry any more? I mean epics and long story-poems and such. Could narrative poetry every make a comeback?

Is there anything more /lit/ than racking up a huge amount of debt and then fleeing the country to stiff your creditors?

Should good writing cause a physical reaction? I think it should, whether it's poetry or prose. I think if a poem or story or novel causes a physical reaction in you, it's succeeded, because it's gone beyond engaging you merely in your mind and has managed to capture the attention of your complete person, your whole humanity: both soul and body.

Whenever I read a really great, sublime poem, I feel a chill run up my spine. This happens over and over, and, in fact, I've begun to be disappointed when a poem doesn't cause this reaction. Everyone says that a great poem should make you FEEL, but what do we mean by that? Do we just mean a kind of vague intellectual reaction? Or do we really mean it when we say that a poem should provoke a feeling?

Read Don Juan by Byron, it's a hilarious poem and there's lots of sex, as well as a little cannibalism.