/lit/ - Literature

>>22358230
I'm still sad about it, anons
But Adelphi will live

>>21975781
>thinking you are an elitist for measuring your reading in days it takes to consume book so that you can proceed to consume next book, reading translated paperbacks and tossing them aside like fast food wrappers

Ngmi

I had someone, and the rona virus took them away from me. Well, to be more exact he had to move back to Italy to take care of his parents when both got ill, and then never came back.

Fucker had everything, he was an archeology student, loved literature/poetry and was an amateur lepidopterist. Im still shocked he wasn't gay. We would go out for drinks and bring poetry books to show each other. He let me practice my Italian and would quote long stretches from Leopardi and Petrarch, and then ,though he didn't know any, he would ask me to say something in Russian because he liked the sound it.

God! even writing this down sounds like it should end with us kissing, but no. Fucker just left ... now im all alone =(

Two days ago, I got a phone call, form a not very close friend, asking me to read his novella.
Now he’s a Russian guy, very bright, but also a brute: too angry and too impulsive to stay out of trouble, in the time i’ve know him he’s been to prison, and still at the age of 30 whatever-he-is, regularly getting into fights with strangers.

Despite this, he is absurdly well read, particularly in respect to Kant and philosophy in general , and, as i’ve seen multiple times, can easily hold his own against a uni professor right up until his constant boiling rage suddenly gets the upper hand and I inevitably have to step in and calm the situation.

We drink together, and sometimes talk lit, but I never had the impression that he cared for the slightest thing I said right up until two days ago when he sheepishly asked to read his manuscript.

Oh! and there’s another thing to know about him … he is an incel in all but name. Perhaps it’s Schopenhauer’s ghost, but despite his obvious sexual success , the guy absolutely hates women. Though he get’s laid plenty, and has held down a few multiyear relationships , he just seems to hate em all the more.

And it’s this that gets me onto the book, which, despite some attempts to disguise it, is nothing but a long unstructured, ungrammatical rant against the evils of opposite sex. Thirty pages in he gives up all presence and just has the narrator rant for multiple chapters about all the wrong’s that women have caused. (in b4 based) It then stops for a while and becomes about a philosophically minded young man being rejected by the love of his life, before kicking back into gear with more angry ranting.

Now that sounds neat, in a Tropic of Cancer, William Burroughs kinda way, but it’s really more Ian Rand, except more poorly written. He has no talent, no feeling for the flow of a sentence, as he furiously heaps more heavy octosyllabic words one on top of the other, as though it’s been autotranslated from the German.

It’s bad. And not because of it’s content. And now I have to be a bro and explain it to him.

IDR why I wrote this, just to complain before I have to come up with how im going to break to him.

Wish me luck lit.

Which of his books do you consider to be essential and which can be skipped?

I think fiction is useless, what books have improved your life?
And how?

i dont know if the people posting these threads want a real answer, i always assumed it was just a meme, but heck i'll bite.

First: go on a long-form dating site and be honest with your interests. I met my wife of 6 years, as a early 30 neet with nothing to his name but an unwieldy home library, a failed business, and some debt, while she was from a wealthy (even aristocratic) Italian family, well employed and with a European literature/history degree.

Second: read on a wide range of subjects, including science, sociology, music, economics, etc, as well as, in the best humanist tradition, practice rhetoric as a social tool to amuse and engage. The ability to entertain, or to use small-talk, is the most underrated skill, that can get you almost anywhere. I say this as an otherwise shy reclusive man. Being able to fake confidence is almost better then having real confidence. Learning to talk without simply listing off memorialized facts – the most know-it-all, unattractive quality imaginable – is something gained through experience.

Third: memorize some poetry. The knack of deploying it is an art lost to time and is now something only gained through rough experience, that will at times leave you looking like a fool trying, but when done right, good concentrated language still has a power that modern ears find almost magical.

Forth: if you can, learn an extra language. Italian and french have served me well, and have not only expanded my dating pool , but have also given me an international and worldly air , that even today counts for quite a lot.

Filth: make notes. Read with a phone or a pencil on hand and save the anecdotes, aphorisms and observations that you think can be deployed in dally life. I have multiple pdf’s crammed with the stuff that I simply dip into whenever I expect a social occasion. Again, here only experience will help. A histrionic sensibility will help but even then giving your words a modern and natural sounding feel takes more effort that you’d think.

Sixth: Don’t be snob. Gain an appreciation for pop culture, or at least an understanding of it. Depending on your disposition, this is almost the hardest thing to do, but as it is something you will never escape, literature – criticism in particular – can make easier. Play video games, read some classic comic books or manga, watch some anime and youtube videos. This all culture, and unless you plan on larping as a Victorian gentlemen, which girls might quirky for a few weeks, it’s something you will have to engage in on some level.

You get get it, live a complete life. Don’t just read Evola or DFW or whatever fucking meme book lit has adopted this year. This is all the lit related – tangentially related – advice that is not just hit the gym, or watch your body language .

Everyone bitches about overspecialization in academia , but what about overspecialization on lit? Not that it has to, but where has all your read led you ?
In Aristotle's time: music, dancing, politics, rhetoric, etc were all integrated, and taking an active interest each of those things was all part of being a responsible citizen, and a compete person.
Right now we all scattered throughout the various forums and discords, each specializing in it's own, ever more thin, strand of the bigger picture. Each fine on it's own but missing that interdisciplinary element, that weave of intersection that binds together and strengthens both sides.

So i guess im asking how has lit improved your life? Where have you gone, that you otherwise wouldn't have.

rest in peace to a true giant

Supplementing lit

What hobbies/jobs/situations/etc have had a marked improvement on your reading life?

Last year i picked up the piano and the addition of music and music theory has opened up whole new avenues of literature for me.
From Mann's Doctor Faustus to Schoenberg's ideas, and onwards to a new appreciation for the nuance's of setting poetry to music.


In the end literature is about life, and one needs to know something of that in order to fully judge it.

Calasso is currently one of the most important living authors in Italy, and possibly in Europe

>>18076984
There's probably still going to be the pandemic, but in case things are better Bologna is worth a shot - just avoid July and August because the city is empty. Otherwise check out Rome and just go for random places. Tourist cities like Florence have become horrible, but luckily for you there is good art and good food nearly everywhere.

Books I would suggest you read while here, if you haven't already are:
>Ovid's Metamorphoses
>Apuleius' Golden Ass
>Catullus
[also other latin literature, but epic poems don't really stick with the atmosphere as much as these, in my opinion]
>Cavalcanti's Rime
>Dante's Comedy
>Petrarch's Canzoniere (best italian sonnets you can find, if you can read the language)
>Boccaccio's Decameron
>Ariosto's Orlando
>Leopardi's Small Moral Works, Canti, something from the Zibaldone if translated
>Pavese's Dialogues with Leucò, The Moon and the Bonfires
>Gadda, whatever you find translated if there's stuff in english, otherwise, if you read italian, Pasticciaccio, Cognizione del Dolore, Adalgisa, Eros e Priapo
>Calvino's Baron in the Trees and rest of the trilogy Our Ancestors (but also check the short stories)
>Eco Name of the Rose, Baudolino
>Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard
>D'Arrigo, Horcynus Orca (again, if you read italian, I don't think it's translated)
>Calasso's Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Tiepolo Pink and Celestial Hunter

For cool philosophy I'd read there, check out
>Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods + whatever you like
>Plotinus
>Marsilio Ficino (especially On Love / Sopra lo Amore, should be translated)
>Giordano Bruno (italian dialogues)

It's rather scattered, but I hope you will like some of these. Enjoy your stay anon, and try as much food as you can, because the only thing we have left that is actually unparalleled in quality on the rest of the planet is food.

>>17935099

Vidal and Calasso were buddies in Italy and once tag-teamed a whore together.

>>16950414
Paris Review pic of him for reference, he was pretty chad

What's his endgame?

Can we have a Roberto Calasso thread? Have you read anything by him? If you did, how was it? I'm thinking of picking up "K" after finishing my Kafka binge but I wonder if it would go over my head.

Can we have a Roberto Calasso thread? Have you read anything by him? If you did, how was it? I'm thinking of picking up "K" after finishing my Kafka binge but I wonder if it would go over my head.

What are some authors that are comfortable to read even though you may not agree with them?

>>11519501

I think you may already know, but the Ruin of Kasch is part of an ongoing series, continuing with The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Ka, K., Tiepolo Pink, La Folie Baudelaire, The Ardor and the Celestial Hunter. The relation between literature, reality and theories of sacrifice is explored in most of these works. As I am halfway through the series, I have the feeling that he's producing a massive, Proust-like kind of work, returning on similar themes in the attempt of revealing some fundamental truth about life. For me he's possibly the greatest Italian intellectual alive.

Read this guy. Italian author, chief of publishing house Adelphi, only man on the planet who could rivel - and possibly beat - Umberto Eco in terms of culture. Writes a series of obscure essay-novels on the relationships between ancient paganism, theories of sacrifice and literature by examining - in this order: Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (The Ruin of Kasch), ancient greek mythology (The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony), indian mythology (Ka), Franz Kafka and his novels (K.), Giambattista Tiepolo (Tiepolo Pink), Charles Baudelaire (La Folie Baudelaire), indian mythology again (The Ardor), theories of sacrifices and hunting related myths (The Celestial Hunter).
His work is comparable to that of Proust in scope, examining and re-examining an idea through different perspectives - myths, figures in literature, history and painting - discussing the literary nature of reality (world as fiction/projection/literary creation) and its relation to sacrifice, violence and the sacred.

Also, the guy looked like a fucking god when he was young.
Don't lie: you would have fucked him.

Check this interview if you are curious about his life. There are details of him writing his dissertation on hashish in London.

https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6168/roberto-calasso-the-art-of-fiction-no-217-roberto-calasso

>>9450905

Roberto Calasso.

>Chief of the Italian publishing house Adelphi, most aesthetic of all publishing houses on the Planet.
>Writing series of unenderstandable novel/essays about indian and Greek mythology, plus full of references to great figures of literature
>Looked like a God in his young days
>Esoteric AF

To begin: 'Literature and the Gods', 'The Ruin of Kasch' -> continue then with 'The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony' and so on until you reach final enlightenment