/lit/ - Literature

Grendel

Dare I say it?
MY

>>10503983
BIBLE

V. & Gravity's Rainbow & Ulysses

I don't remember because depression fried my brain
Probably brothers Karamazov

>>10503972

>>10503991

>>10503972
the gambler is always fun to read

“This self now as I leant over the gate looking down over fields rolling in waves of colour beneath me made no answer. He threw up no opposition. He attempted no phrase. His fist did not form. I waited. I listened. Nothing came, nothing. I cried then with a sudden conviction of complete desertion. Now there is nothing. No fin breaks the waste of this immeasurable sea. Life has destroyed me. No echo comes when I speak, no varied words. This is more truly death than the death of friends, than the death of youth.”

Virginia Woolf - The Waves.

>>10503972
Kierkegaard

>>10503997
>woman tries to mimmick depression

That's cute

The Stranger, BoTNS, and the entire Legend of Drizzt series. The sum of these helped quite a bit.

>>10504021
Ironically if I had your taste I would be depressed

>>10503972
A doctor.

I was sinking deeper and deeper for about a month and literally nothing helped me except a dream I had

>>10504041
was it about bunnies ?

>>10504047
no

Steppenwolf

"Look, there's Brahms. He is striving for redemption, but it will take him all his time."
I realized that the thousands of men in black were the players of all those notes and parts in
his scores which according to divine judgment were superfluous.
"Too thickly orchestrated, too much material wasted," Mozart said with a nod.
And thereupon we saw Richard Wagner marching at the head of a host just as vast, and felt
the pressure of those thousands as they clung and closed upon him. Him, too, we watched as he
dragged himself along with slow and sad step.
"In my young days," I remarked sadly, "these two musicians passed as the most extreme
contrasts conceivable."
Mozart laughed.
"Yes, that is always the way. Such contrasts, seen from a little distance, always tend to show
their increasing similarity. Thick orchestration was in any case neither Wagner's nor Brahms'
personal failing. It was a fault of their time."
"What? And have they got to pay for it so dearly?" I cried in protest.
"Naturally. The law must take its course. Until they have paid the debt of their time it cannot
be known whether anything personal to themselves is left over to stand to their credit."
"But they can't either of them help it!"
"Of course not. They cannot help it either that Adam ate the apple. But they have to pay for it
all the same."
"But that is frightful."
"Certainly. Life is always frightful. We cannot help it and we are responsible all the same.
One's born and at once one is guilty. You must have had a remarkable sort of religious education
if you did not know that."

I read that and what followed and I cried pretty much harder than I've ever cried before.

>>10503972
None. Not being able to read was a reason why my depression got so bad.

I turned to Meditations

>>10503972
Whatever. Didn't push me over the edge like I'd hoped it would, though.

>>10503972
Human, All Too Human

>>10503972
Read Ligotti's Conspiracy and I fucked up.

"I don't understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn't it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world? There are people to whom gain is unimportant, who are hopelessly unhappy and lonely. We are so closed to one another! And yet, were we to be totally open to each other, reading into the depths of our souls, how much of our destiny would we see? We are so lonely in life that we must ask ourselves if the loneliness of dying is not a symbol of our human existence. Can there be any consolation at the last moment? This willingness to live and die in society is a mark of great deficiency. It is a thousand times preferable to die somewhere alone and abandoned so that you can die without melodramatic posturing, unseen by anyone. I despise people who on their deathbed master themselves and adopt a pose in order to impress. Tears do not burn except in solitude. Those who ask to be surrounded by friends when they die do so out of fear and inability to live their final moments alone. They want to forget death at the moment of death. They lack infinite heroism. Why don't they lock their door and suffer those maddening sensations with a lucidity and a fear beyond all limits?

We are so isolated form everything! But isn't everything equally inaccessible to us? The deepest and most organic death is death in solitude, when even light becomes a principle of death. In such moments you will be severed from life, from love, smiles, friends and even from death. And you will ask yourself if there is anything besides the nothingness of the world and your own nothingness."

Antic Hay, innit.

>>10503989
V. made me live again, experience joy. Profane is a catharsis, Mondaugen's story is comfy and cleansing, and the aesthetics are so good.

>>10504068
This. Thought I was done when I was unable to read for two weeks after a MDMA binge while being depressed.

>>10503972
Schopenhauer - On Women

>>10504041
care to tell us about that dream, anon?

>>10503972
Seneca
>>10503980
I read that but besides some beautiful and sad passages I can't really say it provided me with anything. Care to elaborate?

>>10503972
The Recognitions. I then turned to god.

>>10503972
It wasn't a very deep depression, but still a dark place, Franny and Zooey. I'm not even Christian

>>10504391
after a period of intense depression, nihilism etc, one night I had a dream where I was walking on a road to nowhere, then all of a sudden a little 6-7 year old girl grabbed my hand and started walking with me. Woke up with a strong dopamine rush full of joy and love. Kinda weird because I never really cared about kids but that gave me a strong sense of meaning.

>>10504286
discovering that not being able to read is a symptom of depression probably made me cry. I was so fucking relieved.

Ereaders helped, too.

>>10504279
Lol ikr

>>10503972
I was too depressed to read.

The Qur'an

>>10504432
so you discovered that you're a pedo? note the transition of walking with you to woke up with a strong dopamine hit. you are clearly inferring that you needed to fuck a child in a nabokovian manner.

>>10504516
i knew some fag like you was about to say that good job

>>10504286
I'm a month and a half into some sort of seratonin fuckery, I read a whole book last night but very slowly and not like myself.
Pretty sure i've fucked myself for life

>>10504565
Fucking hell, same.
I've had a really rough year, and now I'm sure I fucked up beyond repair, but I'm too afraid to admit it. I'm just... really despondent and anxious all the time.

>>10503972
I've read all Houellebecq's oeuvre and finished with Journey to the End of the Night.

>>10504583
now if you're in a depression, why would you try to make it worse ?

>>10503972
Journey to the End of the Night made me depressed :(

>>10504573
hopefully it'll get better, I'm attempting to rebuild my personality rn
gunna try running and i'm already eating pretty clean even though my sense of time is warped

>>10504635
yeah, I hope so too. Good luck, anon

Essentials of nutrition

>>10503972
Something happened by Heller is pretty bad.

Infinite Jest

Hölberm helped me out big time, probably one of the last western geniuses.

>>10504681
>read infinite jest
>my depression worsens

Thanks for nothing DFW

Starting Strength

>>10504692
well memed m8

>>10504267
that's a beautiful passage

>>10503972
Schopenhauer. He told me to do it.

>>10504516
>t. pseud

I didn't read when I was depressed.

how does it feel to be depressed ? any book to learn more of it ?

>>10505408
I'd argue it's something that can't truly ever be understood unless it is experienced. After all it is a chemical imbalance in the brain that drives it. To be depressed to to be intoxicated with a perspective and way of thinking so persevere from the norm as to drive many to suicide - they believing suicide the only form of escape despite ALL logical argumentation against their view. The best descriptions of

i couldn’t actually read or do something but i turned sometimes to cioran and dostoyevsky. i had this state for nearly two years with some psychotic features that were making me see patterns everywhere, i felt like everything i would stumble upon in movies or books or social media was a message directed at me and a threat, i imagined every side of an argument coalescing and becoming one single barricade against me, storic enemies becoming friends united by a shared hatred of me, i would literally read a word and think how that could be directed at me for some tiny detail i did wrong in the past, i was weaving a giant web of concepts that haunted me mercilessly. i remember i read Houellebecq back then and thought he wasn’t writing against me both as the pathetic loser and the vicarious slut, i would bring myself to paranoia and imagine people laughing at me reading my diary of when i was 13 or discovering all of my google search history, i would imagine me being in social situation and then hear people teasing me on a sentence i had pronounced 4 years before. so i took to not reading at all, there was almost no content at all the would not bring me to paranoia about my sins. only cioran was kind of non judgmental at my nerves but really... i wasn’t reading

Wheelock's Latin

>>10505964
t i thought houellebecq WAS

>>10504256
this. TCATHR was bigly beneficial.

When I was actually depressed a few years ago I'd just shitpost on /v/ but nowadays it's this >>10503999 or at the very least The Sickness Unto Death. The descriptions of despair in it are accurate and helped me a lot to view everything from a new perspective and see how I can try fix myself (can't tho lol). The whole God thing was shit but the first half really changed how I thought about despair and depression so I'd recommend it for anyone in despair.
thx for reading my blog ;3

>>10504855
are you denying your will?

Twilight of the Idols by Nietzsche
Nausea by Sartre
The Body Artist by Don Delillo
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart

Also quite a lot of Keats

I read quite a lot when I was at my worst because I didn't want to do anything but stay depressed and reading really helps to keep you depressed.

It doesn't matter what I read, nothing comforts me.

>>10504432
yo nice bro good luck with the individuation process

>>10504403
I didn't use it to feel better

The Cantos.

I shall come to visit Pounds grave one day and in a beatific gesture come to terms with his essence.

Grant the good a granted good.

Industrial Society and Its Future. It confirmed a lot of my biases against civilization, especially living in a place where you have no identity. Today i see that it was edginess, but at the time, i could not stop dreaming about living in caves, hunting with your bros, stealing food from other tribes, fighting for your gf and dying early but happy. This made me read One Hundred Years of Solitude and opened my eyes towards Latin America literature overall.

>>10506546
How did you convince yourself Kaczynski was wrong? Because I'm still in that horrible phase.

>>10503997
lol this is shit tier prose. women can't write

>>10506787
If you want a clear, rational refutation of his thesis i can't provide you. In fact, i still feel that the man was right about many things. But i can say that the feeling of disgust towards modernity does vanish away when you grow past 20, especially if you have to take care of yourself. I say that it was edginess because, let's be real, modernity is not going away, no one but (few) sad losers want it to go away and you probably not going to do anything about it. Either you man up, go live in the woods, plant your own food, die in a fight with a bear or you wagecuck like everyone else.

>>10506862
The self-sufficient life is so appealing. I would never question the purpose of anything I did, because I am the one who decided to do it. But in this world I feel like a slave. I've always disliked school, but now, as I fight Senioritis, I sometimes stop my work and just think about how pointless it all is. I feel as if I'm in a dystopian novel, and I want to tell everyone that we're being deceived, just as the populace is so easily deceived in 1984 or Brave New World.
Dying slowly in the cold wilderness by starvation would be more beautiful than this consumerist place. If I weren't so excelled in academics I don't know how I would endure it all. And I'm still not sure if I will.

>>10504432
Someone's been reading Lolita

Tom Stoppard - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
I don't know which was the darkest at this point. Haha.

>>10504286
>depression
>MDMA

i see your problem right thar

>>10503997
From the same

The Bell Jar made me realize what a little bitch I was being and it brought me out of a depressive state

>>10503972
The essence of Christianity

>>10504466
>I was too depressed to read.
This is the real answer. You can read a lot of depressing shit just before the wave hits when you're feeling horrible yet marginally focused still but when that wave hits for real there's no motivation to read anymore. You just sort of float about in a catatonic state.

Frankl

idk i dont really get fkd up like that but if u wanna chat abotu books and reality come join us

https://discord gg/c37NwyB

>>10503972
Bane?

>>10503972
Crime And Punishment.

>>10504432
nice

>>10505408
You feel like shit and the enjoyment you'd get out of various things you previously enjoyed is now diminished and almost non-existent.

>>10503972
Crito

>>10504256
This. Also read BNTHB by Benatar. I got really into anti-natalism at that time.

>>10503972
I don't know, I haven't gotten there yet.
>>10507032
But damn, this is a good one.

"Death is not anything.... Death is - not. It's the absence of presence, nothing more. The endless time of never coming back. A gap you can't see...and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound."

>>10506959
Why do you have a picture of my post??? Also Kaczynski was right about the destruction of the industrial system and and anti-tech revolution which I am organizing now a mass force now to destroy the cities, millions will follow me. If you want.to join me Im starting a movement I am a prophet in a sense because I am one of the few that c an tell the world is ending and we are going backwardss in time and returning to the beginning. The apocalypse is not armageddon like destruction and global civil war though these things arr about to happen. The future is ancient. The glow on your screen, the hum from your kitchen the flow of the highway outside. Time is cyclical, it has a frequency and tone. Do you remember when you were one, when you were everything? Before they divided you, before they cut you in half. Everything is teeming with death toxins and virulent mutagens threatening to spill out at any moment. Helter skelter my man, All of the buildings in the world will fall, it will all be turned off and then we will be there to face the precipice again of the incomprehensible exteriority. The wheel of time does not stop, though there is constantly an institution that claims to stop it. A return to myth, reincarnation, the world of the forms/astral/imagination, the manifestation of the fifth element (aether). And then one day we will all return to the light on the hill from which we came, like children again we will enter the kingdom of God. We will all be children once again forever.

>>10508293
You are incredibly ill, seek help.

>>10508395
Well as I said millions are following me so I've got all the help I need right now, however if you're interested in lending a hand I can.give you some things to do (depending of course on where you're located).

>>10505179
This. I find it hard to do anything when I'm that way.

>>10505977
Christ almighty. You're wild.

I expected a bunch of joke answers and for this thread to shortly die out, but I guess this board has faced some dark days early on in life and overcome them with success.

>>10508395
Also the brain is just a read/write interface with world of platonic ideals (you dont need to actually have a brain to be conscious) so stuff that the managerial psychiatrict state regards as 'schizophrenia' and so on is really just insight into different worlds as Marshal mcluhan said 'no one is more susceptible to propaganda than modern literate man' so be careful out there my friend be careful what you do and say anything can be converted to dark matter which fuels the death star and anti-life organism the great torturer's wheel of our galaxy. The darkness hasn't even really begun. We will look back on 2017-2018 in a few short years and forget all of what now seems like tragedy and travesty. In some sense I think we deserve a horrific experience because it seems like it's the only way for the utter annihilation that our current institutional forms summon to truly register on a primeval level as to how wrong they really are.

>>10503972
I wrote this during a very stressful time in my life. 27-28k word novella written within 5 days. This is the first draft, not sure if I'll ever bother editing it. Yes, I know the title is at a cringe-worthy level of melodramatics. Been told it's fairly well-written though.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/j-n-morgan/another-one-please-to-dull-the-pain/ebook/product-23229284.html#productDetails

>>10508293
nice to see you again, your thread kinda skewed off course. But I enjoyed our conversation. Keep it up, dude

Cioran - everything. But reading his diaries make me want to fucking kill myself.

>>10503972
The Call of the Wild
Winnie the Pooh

>>10503972
Deleuze - Nietzsche and philosophy
Cured me from my depression

>>10508507
Nice do not despair have you ever tried going a while without using any communication technology or video screens it can really do wonders for your perception of passing time and how how you process and recall information I would recommend

Zhuangzi and Laozi

“The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?”
― Zhuangzi

16. Being a Guide
Go to the limit of emptiness
Take on quiet dependability
The ten-thousand natural kinds are all dealt with.
And I thus view their response
In general, natural kinds flourish.
Each responds by returning to its root.
Returning to the root is called quietude.
This I call responding to the word.
Responding to the word we describe as 'constant'.
To know what is constant we describe as 'discernment'.
Not to know what is constant is wantonly taking risks.
To know what is constant is openness;
Open thus equitable;
Equitable thus kingly;
Kingly thus natural;
Natural thus guiding;
Guiding thus enduring
Doesn't stop when you bury the body.

“Words are not just wind. Words have something to say. But if what they have to say is not fixed, then do they really say something? Or do they say nothing? People suppose that words are different from the peeps of baby birds, but is there any difference, or isn't there? What does the Way rely upon, that we have true and false? What do words rely upon, that we have right and wrong? How can the Way go away and not exist? How can words exist and not be acceptable? When the Way relies on little accomplishments and words reply on vain show, then we have rights and wrongs of the Confucians and the Mo-ists. What one calls right the other calls wrong; what one calls wrong the other calls right. But if we want to right their wrongs and wrong their rights, then the best to use is clarity.”
― Zhuangzi

“There is the globe,
The foundation of my bodily existence.
It wears me out with work and duties,
It gives me rest in old age,
It gives me peace in death.
For the one who supplied me with what I needed in life
Will also give me what I need in death.”
― Zhuangzi

“How do I know that the love of life is not a delusion? Or that the fear of death is not like a young person running away from home and unable to find his way back? The Lady Li Chi was the daughter of a border warden, Ai. When the state of Chin captured her, she wept until she had drenched her robes; then she came to the King’s palace, shared the King’s bed, ate his food, and repented of her tears. How do I know whether the dead now repent for their former clinging to life? ‘Come the morning, those who dream of the drunken feast may weep and moan; when the morning comes, those who dream of weeping and moaning go hunting in the fields. When they dream, they don’t know it is a dream. Indeed, in their dreams they may think they are interpreting dreams, only when they awake do they know it was a dream. Eventually there comes the day of reckoning and awakening, and then we shall know that it was all a great dream. Only fools think that they are now awake and that they really know what is going on, playing the prince and then playing the servant. What fools! The Master and you are both living in a dream. When I say a dream, I am also dreaming. This very saying is a deception. If after ten thousand years we could once meet a truly great sage, one who understands, it would seem as if it had only been a morning.”
― Zhuangzi

>depression
>reading books
good 1 m8

>>10508429
Transcendence is absorption my man

>>10504112
Wise choice.