/lit/ - Literature

>>18815809
>One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.
>In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.
Anyway, I was expecting an effortpost summarizing in a few sentences why each of those authors have value; but of course, if they don't have a value, there won't be any such post.

It's always great when you suddenly find that the answer to a problem perplexing you lies in something you had read long ago, as it were, buried deep in your memory, waiting to come out just at the right time. Thankfully this passage just came to my mind:

>Our life is like a journey on which, as we advance, the landscape takes a different view from that which it presented at first, and changes again, as we come nearer. This is just what happens—especially with our wishes. We often find something else, nay, something better than what we are looking for; and what we look for, we often find on a very different path from that on which we began a vain search. Instead of finding, as we expected, pleasure, happiness, joy, we get experience, insight, knowledge—a real and permanent blessing, instead of a fleeting and illusory one. This is the thought that runs through Wilkelm Meister, like the bass in a piece of music.

>Men of any worth or value soon come to see that they are in the hands of Fate, and gratefully submit to be moulded by its teachings. They recognize that the fruit of life is experience, and not happiness; they become accustomed and content to exchange hope for insight; and, in the end, they can say, with Petrarch, that all they care for is to learn. It may even be that they to some extent still follow their old wishes and aims, trifling with them, as it were, for the sake of appearances; all the while really and seriously looking for nothing but instruction; a process which lends them an air of genius, a trait of something contemplative and sublime. In their search for gold, the alchemists discovered other things—gunpowder, china, medicines, the laws of nature. There is a sense in which we are all alchemists.

Two hundred and thirty three years ago on this day this based man was born.Say something nice about him.
C.G. Jung:
>One day people ... will build monuments to Schopenhauer!

>>17314857
Cope.

>>17308397
Schopenhauer already recommended you four novels.
>A novel will be of a high and noble order, the more it represents of inner, and the less it represents of outer, life; and the ratio between the two will supply a means of judging any novel, of whatever kind, from Tristram Shandy down to the crudest and most sensational tale of knight or robber. Tristram Shandy has, indeed, as good as no action at all; and there is not much in La Nouvelle Heloïse and Wilhelm Meister. Even Don Quixote has relatively little; and what there is, very unimportant, and introduced merely for the sake of fun. And these four are the best of all existing novels.

>>17260470
No.

>>17155541
I am.

>>17129997
Aren't you forgetting someone?
>If we turn from the forms, produced by external circumstances, and go to the root of things, we shall find that [the Buddha] and Meister Eckhart teach the same thing; only that the former dared to express his ideas plainly and positively, whereas Eckhart is obliged to clothe them in the garment of the Christian myth, and to adapt his expressions thereto.

>>16933002
Yes.

>>16873450
>Horace, Lucretius, Ovid, and almost all the ancients spoke of themselves with pride, and so did Dante, Shakespeare, Bacon, and many others. That a man can have a great mind without his noticing something of it is an absurdity of which only hopeless incompetence can persuade itself, in order that it may also regard as modesty the feeling of its own insignificance.

That picture is ridiculous though. I would say Wagner is on relatively equal grounds with Aeschylus and Shakespeare.

>>16766267
Here is one of my favorite quotes:

"Poetry is related to philosophy as experience is related to empirical science. Experience makes us acquainted with the phenomenon in the particular and by means of examples, science embraces the whole of phenomena by means of general conceptions. So poetry seeks to make us acquainted with the Platonic Ideas through the particular and by means of examples. Philosophy aims at teaching, as a whole and in general, the inner nature of things which expresses itself in these. One sees even here that poetry bears more the character of youth, philosophy that of old age. In fact, the gift of poetry really only nourishes in youth: and also the susceptibility for poetry is often passionate in youth. The youth delights in verses as such, and is often contented with small ware. This inclination gradually diminishes with years, and in old age on prefers prose. By that poetical tendency of youth the sense of the real is then easily spoiled. For poetry differs from reality by the fact that in it life flows past us, interesting yet painless; while in reality, on the contrary, so long as it is painless it is uninteresting, and as soon as it becomes interesting, it does not remain without pain. The youth who has been initiated into poetry earlier than into reality now desires from the latter what only the former can achieve. This is a principal source of the discomfort which oppresses the most gifted youths."

>Poetry is related to philosophy as experience is related to empirical science. Experience makes us acquainted with the phenomenon in the particular and by means of examples, science embraces the whole of phenomena by means of general conceptions. So poetry seeks to make us acquainted with the Platonic Ideas through the particular and by means of examples. Philosophy aims at teaching, as a whole and in general, the inner nature of things which expresses itself in these. One sees even here that poetry bears more the character of youth, philosophy that of old age.

>In fact, the gift of poetry really only nourishes in youth: and also the susceptibility for poetry is often passionate in youth. The youth delights in verses as such, and is often contented with small ware. This inclination gradually diminishes with years, and in old age on prefers prose. By that poetical tendency of youth the sense of the real is then easily spoiled. For poetry differs from reality by the fact that in it life flows past us, interesting yet painless; while in reality, on the contrary, so long as it is painless it is uninteresting, and as soon as it becomes interesting, it does not remain without pain. The youth who has been initiated into poetry earlier than into reality now desires from the latter what only the former can achieve. This is a principal source of the discomfort which oppresses the most gifted youths.