/lit/ - Literature

Books are completely irrelevant now. If Tolstoy, Shakespeare, or Dickens came to life today and wrote a book, no one would remember it in two years. Our culture is against literature by default. Entertainment is so oversaturated that the only way to read good books is to read older ones. You could literally be a genius and write a book that would have been remembered for centuries had it been written in any other time period but no one would care now. Art is dead.

why is it that the worlds best writers are right wing? Is it mere happenstance or is there something about being right wing that makes someone more conducive to being a better writer?

Is there a Tolstoy chart?

I haven't read a book in years but I used to love it. I used to be obsessed with Tolstoy, my favourite books are Moby Dick, The Death of Ivan Ivych and The Picture of Dorian Gray. What should I read to respark my love

I often swing back and forth between literary phase and work phase.
Literary phase is when I drown myself in books, and work phase is when I drown myself in work. When I'm in my literary phase, I grow an acute appreciation for everything art, and I often regret why I haven't become an artist or writer of some sort.
Currently I'm in my work phase, and recently encountered a literary discussion on YouTube. Speakers were really invested in the talk, but I couldn't help thinking things like 'who gives a shit?', 'why does it matter?'
How do I reconcile these two versions of me?

How does one write like him?

Why is criticism of him always so precise and down to the point, while praise of Tolstoy is always flowery and vague ("it's so full of life!" "it's so inspiring!" "elegant way of writing!" "the book just flowed in my hands!")

Its almost as if those who dislike his works dislike him sincerely, and those who "like" his works like him insincerely and out of this insincerity dont know where to actually grapple

anyone else agree he's overrated? I've only Anna Karenina and while it stars out quite good it goes really downhill. does war and peace fare better?

what an autistic sperg LOL

>>17071234
>and my bees

Which translations do you recommend for Tolstoy?

I read these two stories back to back last night, and was blown away how perfect they were. They were almost like short biblical proverbs.

Who else has read these? I loved "How much land does a man need" because it turns this "rural simple godly" myth on it's head. I am from rural America and there's this stupid sentiment that rural people are "less materialistic" or some shit. It's true to some degree but I like how this story shows that ANYONE can be tempted by greed.

I thought the actual moral of the story was great, there is a temptation today that if you just "keep going" and trying to aquire more wealth/status/power/education you'll eventually be satisfied. But in reality this is usually a trap, you see this in the cities all the time when people just keep thinking they're going to "make it" soon.

Thoughts on these stories?

Tolstoy ofc

>Though hundreds of thousands had done their very best to disfigure the small piece of land on which they were crowded together, by paving the ground with stones, scraping away every vestige of vegetation, cutting down the trees, turning away birds and beasts, and filling the air with the smoke of naphtha and coal, still spring was spring, even in the town.
>The sun shone warm, the air was balmy; everywhere, where it did not get scraped away, the grass revived and sprang up between the paving-stones as well as on the narrow strips of lawn on the boulevards. The birches, the poplars, and the wild cherry unfolded their gummy and fragrant leaves, the limes were expanding their opening buds; crows, sparrows, and pigeons, filled with the joy of spring, were getting their nests ready; the flies were buzzing along the walls, warmed by the sunshine. All were glad, the plants, the birds, the insects, and the children. But men, grown-up men and women, did not leave off cheating and tormenting themselves and each other. It was not this spring morning men thought sacred and worthy of consideration not the beauty of God’s world, given for a joy to all creatures, this beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony, and to love, but only their own devices for enslaving one another.

I’d like to see you try

>Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That’s my advice: never marry till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of, and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and irrevocable mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing- or all that is good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be wasted on trifles. Yes! Yes! Yes! Don’t look at me with such surprise. If you marry expecting anything from yourself in the future, you will feel at every step that for you all is ended, all is closed except the drawing room, where you will be ranged side by side with a court lackey and an idiot!... But what’s the good?

Pierre took off his spectacles, which made his face seem different and the good-natured expression still more apparent, and gazed at his friend in amazement.

>‘My wife,’
Continued Prince Andrey,
>‘is an excellent woman, one of those rare women with whom a man’s honor is safe; but, O God, what would I not give now to be unmarried! You are the first and only one to whom I mention this, because I like you.’

As he said this Prince Andrey was less than ever like that Bolkonski who had lolled in Anna Pavlovna’s easy chairs and with half-closed eyes had uttered French phrases between his teeth. Every muscle of his thin face was now quivering with nervous excitement; his eyes, in which the fire of life had seemed extinguished, now flashed with brilliant light. It was evident that the more lifeless he seemed at ordinary times, the more impassioned he became in these moments of almost morbid irritation.

>‘You don’t understand why I say this,’
he continued,
>‘but it is the whole story of life. You talk of Bonaparte and his career, but Bonaparte when he worked went step by step toward his goal. He was free, he had nothing but his aim to consider, and he reached it. But tie yourself up with a woman and, like a chained convict, you lose all freedom! And all you have of hope and strength merely weighs you down and torments you with regret. Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, and triviality- these are the enchanted circle I cannot escape from. And that stupid set without whom my wife cannot exist, and those women... If you only knew what those society women are, and women in general! My father is right. Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial in everything- that’s what women are when you see them in their true colors! When you meet them in society it seems as if there were something in them, but there is nothing, nothing, nothing! No, don’t marry, my dear fellow; don’t marry!’ concluded Prince Andrey

How does /lit/ feel about Tolstoy’s dislike of Shakespeare?

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27726/27726-h/27726-h.htm

why is classic russian lit so redpilled?

Which War and Peace translation should I read? P+V or Maude?

Would Leo Tolstoy like anime?

I want to read War and Peace. Where do I start?

What translation do I get and what background reading should I do before hand to understand it?

Some of you may not be aware that Tolsstoy thought that Shakespeare was an awful writer, and he wrote a long essay criticizing his plays, read it here

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27726/27726-h/27726-h.htm

I find this really fascinating, because what he says here mirrors a lot of what I thought about Shakespeare but was unable to really express. It's hard to get immersed into Shakespeare's plays because the events often are so unrealistic and the characters do talk so unrealistically. The fact that Lear never recognizes Kent in the disguise, for instance, just seems impossible and takes you out of the play. Some quotes I like:

>This is asserted with such confidence and repeated by all as indisputable truth; but however much I endeavored to find confirmation of this in Shakespeare's dramas, I always[53] found the opposite. In reading any of Shakespeare's dramas whatever, I was, from the very first, instantly convinced that he was lacking in the most important, if not the only, means of portraying characters: individuality of language, i.e., the style of speech of every person being natural to his character. This is absent from Shakespeare. All his characters speak, not their own, but always one and the same Shakespearian, pretentious, and unnatural language, in which not only they could not speak, but in which no living man ever has spoken or does speak.

>In Shakespeare everything is exaggerated: the actions are exaggerated, so are their consequences, the speeches of the characters are exaggerated, and therefore at every step the possibility of artistic impression is interfered with. Whatever people may say, however they may be enraptured by Shakespeare's works, whatever merits they may attribute to them, it is perfectly certain that he was not an artist and that his works are not artistic productions. Without the sense of measure, there never was nor can be an artist, as without the feeling of rhythm there can not be a musician. Shakespeare might have been whatever you like, but he was not an artist.