/lit/ - Literature

Where should I start with the Platonic dialogues?

>>12454061
Not the same guy, but I was hurt by people I thought were my friends. It is painful.

>>11982749
Apollonian soul is pure present, therefore Apollonian drama is based upon incident, which fall at random. Consider how Laocoon dies and how Troy got fucked because Poseidon sided with the Greeks. It was random and there was nothing the Trojans could do but meekly to submit to fatum. The beauty of the Laocoon group is how nobly he bears the suffering

>>10285407

And the writers? Who would conceive that it was possible – had it not survived by the work of generations and generations of dedicated and love-for-knowledge-drenched copyists – for works like the Iliad and the Odyssey to have been written in 800-750bc? Who would have dreamed that so early the germs of narration, of character building, of simile, of dramatics, of thriller and suspense could already have bloomed into flowers, into perfect orchids of delicate detail and huge oaks of fictional-narration skeleton? To see the mastery of such works one need only to compare them with the Mahabharata and the Epic of Gilgamesh, who, in spite of their beauties, fail to achieve the same concentration, the same memorable characters, the same continuous presentation (in page after page) of vivid language? The earliest books of the Bible, with their dry, plain, almost civil-law-code-style-language, can’t compare with the beauty of Homer (or the different authors of the collected material): it’s like the dry bones of a whale put side by side with the actual animal, with its dark-blue flesh, its rugged skin covered with barnacles, its gigantic heart pumping rivers of blood, its vital jet ascending to the skies to splash in the cheeks of the clouds, its abyss-mouth swarming with plankton, sea flowers, and crustaceans.

And what to say about Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides? The practitioners of one of another of the supreme inventions of the Greeks: the Tragedy? To this day, if pressed, one will hardly find any other poet who dares as much in metaphoric language as Aeschylus (the world would have to wait a long time for such a successor, the great William Shakespeare). And all that amazing gallery of characters who were actually brought to live by actors, to discuss – under the pacific and safe disguise of the reanimation of the myths – the politics of the day, the glories and failures of the human race, the falsehood and hypocrisy of the established social institutions, the cravings and secret desires that creep like salamanders inside the swamps of our subconscious, perpetually ruminating, always waiting for the moment to ascend to the surface and morph into crocodiles (when finally the mother kills her children; the son beds his mother; the intoxicated women of the town, finally free from social convention and intoxicated with lust and madness, torn their king apart into rags of bloody flesh).

>>10280519

And the writers? Who would conceive that it was possible – had it not survived by the work of generations and generations of dedicated and love-for-knowledge-drenched copyists – for works like the Iliad and the Odyssey to have been written in 800-750bc? Who would have dreamed that so early the germs of narration, of character building, of simile, of dramatics, of thriller and suspense could already have bloomed into flowers, into perfect orchids of delicate detail and huge oaks of fictional-narration skeleton? To see the mastery of such works one need only to compare them with the Mahabharata and the Epic of Gilgamesh, who, in spite of their beauties, fail to achieve the same concentration, the same memorable characters, the same continuous presentation (in page after page) of vivid language? The earliest books of the Bible, with their dry, plain, almost civil-law-code-style-language, can’t compare with the beauty of Homer (or the different authors of the collected material): it’s like the dry bones of a whale put side by side with the actual animal, with its dark-blue flesh, its rugged skin covered with barnacles, its gigantic heart pumping rivers of blood, its vital jet ascending to the skies to splash in the cheeks of the clouds, its abyss-mouth swarming with plankton, sea flowers, and crustaceans.

And what to say about Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides? The practitioners of one of another of the supreme inventions of the Greeks: the Tragedy? To this day, if pressed, one will hardly find any other poet who dares as much in metaphoric language as Aeschylus (the world would have to wait a long time for such a successor, the great William Shakespeare). And all that amazing gallery of characters who were actually brought to live by actors, to discuss – under the pacific and safe disguise of the reanimation of the myths – the politics of the day, the glories and failures of the human race, the falsehood and hypocrisy of the established social institutions, the cravings and secret desires that creep like salamanders inside the swamps of our subconscious, perpetually ruminating, always waiting for the moment to ascend to the surface and morph into crocodiles (when finally the mother kills her children; the son beds his mother; the intoxicated women of the town, finally free from social convention and intoxicated with lust and madness, torn their king apart into rags of bloody flesh).

>read Greek classics
>sudden urge to get off my ass and get /fit/
Is this normal? What are some other books that inspire the reader to obtain the Greek god body?

Sorry if I'm all over the place, but I just love the Shakespeare discussion:

>>9531595
Fair enough--It's a fun ride.
>>9531593
"We have King Lear: and it is immortal." I've only read it twice, and a few essays on it, but hot damn is it great.
Also,
>>9531593
>>9531573
Since you two also chose Hamlet, can I ask why? For me, it's his moral sensibility and his genius (Bradley) and the "coming to terms" with his mother and his life crashing around him, and how that goes with the "bounded in a nutshell" line, and so, so much more.
>>9531612
>>9531601
Who are your guys's favorite Shakespeare critics? Essential readings?

Recommend me books or philosophy on physical pain and how it might make you a better person.

I'm already familiar with:

>Aurelius, Seneca
>Book of Job
>Nietzsche

>>9384725
It doesn't matter. The gods wanted Troy to fall and nothing could stop them.

Can anyone recommend me some good books on daily life in Ancient Greece (or anywhere in the ancient world)

The Odyssey is just as great, its got Blood Meridian levels of describing violence.

"Not a word in reply to that, the ruthless brute.
Lurching up, he lunged out with his hands toward my men
and snatching two at once, rapping them on the ground
he knocked them dead like pups—
their brains gushed out all over, soaked the floor—
and ripping them limb from limb to fix his meal
he bolted them down like a mountain-lion, left no scrap,
devoured entrails, flesh and bones, marrow and all!
We flung our arms to Zeus, we wept and cried aloud,
looking on at his grisly work—paralyzed, appalled.
But once the Cyclops had stuffed his enormous gut
with human flesh, washing it down with raw milk,
he slept in his cave, stretched out along his flocks. "

If Hellenism is so stupid, how come the illiad/Odyssey is still relevant?

Why is it that most intellectuals throughout history have been radical apologists for authority and oppression?

>>6562750
>>6560557
Who /fit/-/lit/ masterrace here?

>tfw bringing back the greek utopia

Aristotle sodomized young boys

John Green was sodomized when he was a little boy

2+2=4

>>6392392
Boipussy general?