/lit/ - Literature

I've been thinking about writing fiction for the first time outside of my education, which makes me feel odd because I know nothing of writing fiction whatsoever. The thought just came to me in a sleepless night, "maybe you could express your thoughts through stories as opposed to the terse and confusing language of acedamia?" After this thought I wrote what I can only call a soliloquy (I think?) of a man lost in space:
Two hundred billion miles. Two hundred billion miles from the home I wallowed in, much to my own chagrin. Two hundred billion miles from my brothers and sisters, most of whom I've never even known. Two hundred billion miles from any Earthly pleasure. No Sunlight or Moonlight, only LCDs. No air to breathe myself, only compressed oxygen. No food of the soil, only powder and dried morsels. Of all the things that could have come with me to this point, it is the one that has caused endless dread in every man's heart, even if only in his past youth. Darkness. That all encompassing nothingness, that eldritch abomination which has no end in any man's sight. Even in this hollow shell of metal I feel it staring, entering the depths of my psyche with no end in sight. I don't know how long I can take this, even how long I have taken it. Minutes become hours and days become weeks with no end in sight, no relief to be gained soon enough. I feel as though I have entered Hades' domain, not blessed or damned, only a common man to be forgotten in an endless abyss of time and sorrow. This fate seems worse than those of the hottest of Hells, for this punishment is unseen and unknown. Yet here I lie, in wait of this all consumming night to enter this pod, taking me with it.
>>13343273
sounds like you would love Epicurus and Lucretius

>>13287696
I actually own the Pythagorean Sourcebook, I forgot I had it, I got it in my esoteric phase. What are some of your favorite renderings of Heraclitus? To be frank I prefer the analytic autism of Barnes because I want to be a professor of Ancient Philosophy and write about the Presocratics specifically. I've been meaning to read the Lives since Diogenes is an important source on the Presocratics, remember reading his biography of Xenophon a while back.

>>12340202
so do I, fren

>>12332678
No one can truely know due to their work being fragmented, especially Parmenides. Parmenides' arguements are difficult to relate to Heraclitus due to the bulk of his Way of Truth being missing or fragmented and Heraclitus' aphorisms being riddle-like and scattered. Did Heraclitus believe everyhing changed completely or that everything changed on a smaller, less noticable scale a la Ship of Theseus? Was Parmenides' metaphysics absolute in all things, physical and metaphysical, being One or just metaphysically? Were the ancient commentators correct in their assessments of either philosophers' work?This is the tragedy and most interesting part of the Presocratics: the fragmented nature of their work breeding conjecture and guess-work. Though we will possibly never know the concrete truth of these mens' work, by God will we try and argue about it.