/lit/ - Literature

>>11105020
T.S. "maybe if I reference enough obscure symbolism I'll make up for the fact that I have no poetic talent whatsoever" Eliot gets regurarly shat on here though

>>11105026
Yes I've noticed that. People are becoming aware of Eliot's pseudry. There's still a big chunk of lit who considers him to be the greatest poet of last century though.

>>11105020
Ernest Cline references the 80's just to reference the 80's. It has no underlying reason for being reference other than being an 80's reference. The references do not further a theme or build on an idea. They are they simply for the sake of reminding you that the novel takes place in an 80's obsessed future. Cline's references are of such a poor quality and lacking artistic merit that at one he point he just says "doing an 80's dance" and explains no further what an 80's dance would entail. This is a typical 80's reference in Cline's writing. He just smacks the modifier 80's onto a word as an adjective. It has no further substance.

>>11105044
>implying Eliot's reference add any kind of meaning or substance to his poems
Just admit that he literally does the same thing for academia highbrow pseuds

>>11105020
There's a difference between name dropping and allusions my friend. You're probably one of the people who regularly post "DANTE WAS THE FIRST INCEL NEET TO GET HIS BETA FANFIC LARP PUBLISHED AND CANONIZED XD"

>>11105057
I can't speak for Eliot because I never read him. But I'm trying to explain to you why Cline gets shit on. I highly doubt Eliot made allusions without trying to further a theme or idea.

>>11105020
>"highbrow"literature

>>11105059
No because Dante had poetic talent and knew how to play with words.
Eliot has no substance and his poems don't even sound good. The only thing he got going for him is his references. Honestly he reminds of all those pop culture references in rap songs to illustrate something that can be said with usual words. They do it to impress their teenage fanbase. The same can be applied to Eliot for academia pseuds.

>>11105065
Nice picture, pseud.

>>11105039
>>11105057
>>11105074
If they're pseuds how can they get the references?

Jesus Christ, the absolute state of this board

>>11105087
>I know things thus I'm intellectual and intelligent

>>11105113
Unless Eliot name drops like Ernest Cline, then there is no way to get a reference unless you have a working knowledge and understanding of the work being referenced.
You have still yet to refute my point.

>>11105131
He may not namedrop, but he references things in a pretty clear way. If you've read the referenced works and have an average memory you will get most of the references. Of course there's "obscure" ones but most of them are only interpreted in various ways not actually """understood""".

>>11105158
Now you might say : "Hah! They have read the works! They have read the canon! They are true intellectuals!", but that will only reveal your own pseudry.

>>11105158
Part of getting a reference is understanding it in the context of which it is made. If all you can do is recognize that something is a reference but can't understand why the reference is being made, you don't get it.
Also are you trying to imply that there can't be multiple interpretations of a text? If so, you should never become a critic.

>>11105026
>>11105039
FUCK YOU

>>11105183
Holy shit this is the most pseud shit on eart HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
So when some untalented rapper says : "I kill'em all like John Wick" the faggot who catches the reference is smart for understanding it in it's context? I can already hear the pseuds screaming "false analogyyyy!" but what you faggots don't realize is that there is no difference between getting a shitty John Wick reference and a Shitty Paradise Lost reference. It's just that the rap faggot doesn't read and you do, but that doesn't make you intelligent.

100 years from now when Modernism has truly become just another period in literature, the scholars will look back and ask why the movement produced so little verse of any lasting value. With little effort, they will discern that it was Eliot's influence - more than any other poet of the era - that poisoned the literary well. They will see how the influence of the truly talented and groundbreaking Walt Whitman and his greatest disciple Fernando Pessoa was overshadowed by the school of Eliot and Joyce. They will point out how the visionary expressiveness and liberty of language that was being discovered by Whitman and Pessoa, was ignored in favor of Eliot's and Joyce's tortured stylizations and firework literary devices. Whereas Whitman and Pessoa looked at Modernism as a chance to break free from the dry formalism of past literature and invent new modes of individual expression; Eliot and Joyce looked at Modernism as a conscious reflection upon past literature, producing works that were mere pastiche and allusion, inventing nothing truly original. Because the school of Eliot and Joyce appealed more to intellectuals (seeing as it required one to be well-read in past literature), it quickly gained the ascendancy in academia, where poetry was cannibalized by self-referential, aloof academics - leaving it to the totally uncultured Beat and Slam poets to try (unsuccessfully) to recover the art of poetry as a means of expression (rather than as a smug, formal, academic game). The scholars of the future will uncover Eliot's own essay on Milton wherein Eliot derides Milton as a "bad influence" on the art of poetry, and will mock Eliot as the worst influence on the art perhaps in its entire history.

>>11105087
because eliot tells you himself in the notes what he is referencing. that's how much of a hack he is

>>11105215
That's a name drop. But it still strengthens the rap lyric. If you've seen John Wick, you know that he was retired and only killed in the first movie for a righteous reason. The rapper's name drop of John Wick suggests he is a righteous killer. But honestly you're grasping for straws. Your use of reaction images to valid points is a tell-tale sign :^)

>>11105221
But if they had to check the notes to get the reference, they didn't get the reference.

>>11105218
Holy shit this is the best post I've seen today. Though I'd argue thet behind the literary references Joyce always had something to say. He also was very self-aware and would subtly moke his own use of references. Eliot was a pseud faggot who thought he actually produced some sort of meaningful masterpiece and that he was the reincarnation of those tha preceded him.

>>11105229
Holy fuck man do you actually believe that this is a good thing? Being so untalented that you can't express things with your own words so you use external element to express yourself? Talented writer know how to express themselves in a universal and timeless manner, using common words that are accessible to everyone. If you can only express emotions and concepts through a fictional character that you didn't even invent, you're the biggest pseud on earth.

>>11105261
Damn dude, I guess you're right. Joyce is totally a talent-less hack for naming his character Stephen Dedalus.

>>11105261
Damn dude, I guess you're right. John Milton is a total hack for writing Paradise Lost. He didn't even invent those characters!

>>11105261
Damn dude, I guess you're right. Kierkegaard is a total hack for using Abraham and Isaac in Fear and Trembling.

Salieri was considered a greater composer than Mozart by his contemporaries.
One day, Pessoa will be recognised as the true genius and representative modern poet, and Eliot will be resigned to the trashbin of history.
Amen.

>>11105087
>If they're pseuds how can they get the references?
getting references doesn't mean you're an intellectual, duh

>>11105020
You bastard, for a second I thought Harold Bloom had reviewed Ready Player One.

>>11105218
Whitman is bad too.
>Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour!

>>11105359
Whitman is good bad, Eliot is bad bad.

>>11105261
You goofed, anon. 17th century English poets, probably the greatest of all time, referenced Greek mythology, past poets, and each other. The thing is they had well-reigned meter, rhyme, astounding imagery, etc. which made them the greatest.

>>11105362
What is good bad?

>>11105388
Good bad: Nael's poem about the Tiger
Bad bad: Rupi Kaur's poetry about boys and vaginas

>>11105381
>17th century English poets, probably the greatest of all time
nnnnnnnnnNNNAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

>>11105398
Prove me wrong

>>11105392
I thought it was good for a kid's, but all the spam and high praise of it have made me dislike it. It really isn't amazing, only decent.

>>11105039
That would be Yeats

The horrific idiocy of this thread is beyond belief. You children aren't capable of reading Four Quartets, and Eliot's best poems are sublime whether you get any references or not.

>>11105218
What the absolute FUCK are you babbling about? Whitman isn't a Modernist, he pre-dated them by a good half-century and more. Whitman published Leaves of Grass in 1855, and was part of transcendentalist and realist schools. This is like saying Alcott's "Little Women" has been unfairly overshadowed by Virginia Woolf.

>>11105381
>Implying said poets are not only using thise character to create their own character though thems
Greek gods and other religious figures are archetype, you can model them in numerous ways so it fits your style and ideas. It's very different from referencing a complex character which you cannot really add anything to and end up just referencing without any meaningful purpose, which is what Eliot do.
Holderlïn's Hyperion in the other hand is completely different from the original myth of Hyperion.

>>11105686
Stop, anon. You're just embarrassing yourself. This is pathetic. "No meaningful purpose." Christ.

>>11105261
Damn dude, I guess you're right. Dante is totally a copying brainlet who made contemporary and historical references in writings.

This thread is just full up with niggers and faggots.
You should all kill yourselves.

>>11105074
>his poems don't even sound good
Strong disagree

Jesus christ the Eliot detractors on this board are the fucking worst. There are multiple instances where he very clearly outlines his reasons behind using the mythic method. I'm not even saying you have to like it but pretending like it was just lazy posturing over the deeply concerted artistic effort that it was is ridiculous.

Not to to mention there's only like one fucking major poem that heavily relies on that shit, and it absolutely functions whether or not you know the allusions. And then you have all the people bitching about "muh free verse" even though Eliot himself hated free verse and clearly put a lot of attention and effort into meter and rhyme, he just refused to be constrained by it. He himself even defined musicality as the ideal all poetry should strive towards, and it shows. I just don't understand, people bitch about him being too formalist and traditional, while also bitching about him being too modern and discordant. They bitch about him being too stiff and clinical while also calling him melodramatic and whiny. I just don't get this wave of Eliot resistance, especially since most of it seems to be coming from people who don't know jack shit about him.

>>11105935
Most people naturally hate poetry.

>>11105935
Cus they're contrarian children who get their opinions from Papa Bloom.

>>11105935
Yep. It's fucking infuriatingly stupid. Eliot is an excellent poet by any standard.

>>11106375
>Eliot is an excellent poet by any standard.

He isn't. Some guy keeps praising the Four Quartets, but look how sophomoric and mock-intellectual the opening lines are lol. I don't understand why Eliot is so highly praised.

>>11107082
>but look how sophomoric and mock-intellectual the opening lines are
You are basing that off of absolutely nothing. The only thing "mock-intellectual" about this is you parading your own ignorance and shallow aversion to his work as artistic sensibility and taste. Eliot was obsessed with dissecting how tradition and contemporaneity intersect and impress themselves on each other. That's what Burnt Norton and really all of the Four Quartets is concerned with. What the fuck is sophomoric about an aged devout Christian writing the philosophical and spiritual apotheosis of all he has tried to express and reconcile in his work? Why even bother trying to add something to the conversation when you clearly don't know anything about the subject at hand?

And lmao, "some guy". Apparently "some guy" is the only person who praises Four Quartets. It's not like it's one of the most highly regarded works of modernist poetry of the past 70 fucking years.

>>11105754
Same. He's not 100% of course, but things like "Son of man / You cannot say, or guess, for you know only / A heap of broken images" are great. Or the whole passage from "come under the shadow of this red rock" to "I will show you fear in a handful of dust"

>>11106119
>Papa Bloom
What did that myopic nitwit say now?

>>11105020
Eliot's actually good at poetry, you nigger.

'What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.'

To the TS Eliot detractors, would you say Borges also simply relies on references just as much?

>>11107654
That's a dreadful passage. He relies on pompous catchphrases that impress pseuds - "Son of man", "A heap of broken images", "I will show you fear in a handful of dust" - but when you look past these pompous, meaningless catchphrases, you see that these lines are mere drivel - "the sun beats", "dead tree gives no shelter", "cricket no relief", "dry stone no sound of water", "shadow under this red rock", "shadow at morning striding behind you / shadow at evening rising to meet you" - all dead images, meaningless drivel.

SHIT poetry from a SHIT poet, he was just an arch-pseud who knew how to impress pseuds.

The only explanation for the cult of Eliot is that he larped as an Englishman at a time when England's literature was in its death throes. There is no lyrical, no philosophical talent shown any of his poems. Even his best ones suffer from major defects and don't cohere.

Yeats, Frost, even Beckett's poems are superior imo.

>>11105935
>durr durr you can only judge things but their own criteria
>>11107185
>durr durr appeal to authority

>>11107701
What the fuck are you talking about. 'pompous catchphrases that impress pseuds' is meaningless; they're grim authoritative lines based on Ecclesiastes that when grouped together make a great flow and passage of despair and emptiness.

>>11106375
>. Eliot is an excellent poet by any standard.
Any trivial standard. He has no music, no talent for rhyme, scarcely a single striking image in all his work. None of his ideas are original, so that leaves his style. Unfortunately his style is too feeble express adequately his sensibilities.

He put all his effort into conveying two sentiments. One was his conception of the burden imposed by an old and heavy literary tradition. The other was his sense that the modern world must seem tragic to any mind shaped by that tradition.

But he never finds a proper method of direct conveyance to the reader. An objective correlative (Washington Allston's term, not his), what have you.
>Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
>I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
>I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
Putting aside the poetic clumsiness of it, it fails to move even as prose-verse. What does he choose to express his sentiment of the need-negation of the romantic? Cheap irony.

>>11107665
>, would you say Borges also simply relies on references just as much?
No, because there is more than reference in his work, and his use of it adds tot he work instead of being a list of personal evocations.

>>11107757
Honestly, it's just exceptionally bad taste to mix his free-flowing jazzy style with grandiose, biblical phrasing. It makes him sound either like he's engaged in humorless mockery, or like he's too conceited and self-important.

>>11107654
>There is shadow under this red rock,
>(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
lol how weak is that

If you took away Eliot's famous name from his poetry, you'd think it was written by a vain and melodramatic teenager of above-average intelligence.

>>11107805
Look

-

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

-

or here

-

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

-

see what I mean?

>>11107613
He hates Stephen King and JK Rowling. That's all I know about him. None of his other opinions matter.

ayy looks like the Eliot hating pseud has woken up.

>>11107701
>>11107719
>hurrr da words no have meaning cuz i don tink dey hab meaning.

>"Son of man"
Ezekiel 2:1 "Son of man, stand upon thy feet and I will speak to thee". Eliot's clearly imbuing the passage with a divine authority to underpin the degraded, antagonistic state of the landscape being described.
>"A heap of broken images"
Ezekiel 6:4 "And your altars shall be desolate and your images shall be broken". Systems of understand the world have broken down, only a "heap of broken images" remains.
> "I will show you fear in a handful of dust"
The fact that you can't automatically recognize the association there is pretty embarrassing. Obviously calling to mind Genesis 3:19, reinforcing the impermanence of the one the speaker is addressing.
>"dead tree gives no shelter", "cricket no relief","dry stone no sound of water"
Can you seriously not piece together phrases as simple as that? Why the fuck am I even responding to this? You're just being needlessly dense and arbitrarily refusing to let the images cohere by plucking them out at random.
>>11107769
Again, what exactly is wrong with the phrasing there? You're making completely baseless judgements as if your own individual poetic sensibility, which is thus far completely unknown to anyone here, is justification enough for the pretty heavy accusations you're throwing against him.
>>11107809
No, I don't see what you mean. The Hollow Men is all about the space between intention and action. It's all about hollow, degraded indolence, which those lines perfectly express. And I have no clue what you're trying to imply with the Burnt Norton section. Your whole argument is based some weird immediate associations you make that you don't like, and refuse to further elucidate.

Bloom is too well read for mortals to understand

>>11107782
Well I outright disagree. I think - in that particular passage at least - it's a very erudite and imposing kind of emptiness he's expressing. Maybe you have some connotations about the ' free-flowing jazzy style' he employs.
>>11107809
Well taking away some of the italicization and page placement it loses some of it's impact but hollow man passage is still very good on its own. Again, there may be some connotations you have here because of how overused and misused the passage and rap-like style has become.

The Waste Land is the modernist equivalent of Leftopia
Prove me wrong

Is that why we like him? I thought we liked him because he done wrote good.

Eliot didn't write poems, he wrote "literature". He wasn't a poet, he was a "writer". This is why he is detested by poets, and loved by "writers" and professors in literature departments. No poet has ever discovered anything worthy of praise or imitation in Eliot; but the devotees of "literature" look up to him as a Homer, take shelter with him as a grandfather. He did not write a single poem.

>>11108080
>poets HATE him! Click here to find out why!

>>11108080
>No poet has ever discovered anything worthy of praise or imitation in Eliot
Montale praised him. Crane wrote his The Bridge in response to The Waste Land. I don't even like him.

>>11108080
Complete nonsense. If you don't like his poetry then that's fine but don't pretend like this unfounded drivel has any legitimacy.

>>11105063
Then why the fuck are you even posting then?

>>11108129
He's right. Eliot wrote verse, but not poetry.

>>11107613
Bloom doesn't like Eliot. Though, unlike the people on here, he's not nearly enough of a moron to discount completely, he doesn't regard him as a major poet, on account of his alleged antisemitism and his indifference to the Romantics which produced a hostility to romantic poetry in Eliot's critical descendants, the New Critics.

How anyone can say with a straight face that Eliot has no music and is just an empty load of references is beyond me. This board is so fucking embarrassingly retarded sometimes.

>>11107082
I'm praising them, because I've been reading them for the past 18 years, and they're literally a profound masterpiece, with incredible meditations on time, redemption, war, and poetry. Your ignorance of poetry is not a crime, but you don't have to make such a spectacle of yourself. You don't understand Eliot, fine. Go read something you can grasp, but stop deluding yourself that you have Eliot's measure and are qualified to grade him.

>>11107809
So, in your head, these are supposed to be examples of Eliot sucking? Jesus Christ, anon. Stop reading poetry: it's wasted on you.

>>11108080
Except Auden, Larkin, Heaney, Hill, Crane, Hughes, Lowell and Plath are all quite clearly inspired by Eliot to varying degrees, so you're just being retarded.

>>11105207
Mr Elliot, I didn't know you browsed this board.

>>11108438
>because I've been reading them for the past 18 years
that's an interesting way of wasting your time

I honestly don't get how hating on Eliot became the new Peterson meme for the board.

And I think it's the same fucker doing it every time by the way he sets up how a dichotomy of Eliot versus Pessoa, as if it's impossible to like both or like neither.

Not that he really gets either. Slamming Eliot for requiring his readers to be well read while holding up the author of "Mesagem", which name drops basically all of Portuguese Literature preceding him is kind of muddle-brained.

>>11108606
Its just trollin' pure and simple

>>11105338
I want this to happen.

>>11108606
Hating Eliot comes entirely from one person and that person is also a massive Pessoa shill, Which is extremely ironic, given he accuses Eliot of being bombastic.

>>11108435
Bloom does not like Eliot, because Eliot saw through his weak method of criticism before Bloom was even born.

>I'm reminded of a moment in T. S. Eliot's “The Perfect Critic” (from The Sacred Wood) wherein he quotes some words of Arthur Symons's comments on Cleopatra: “In her last days Cleopatra touches a certain elevation . . . she would die a thousand times, rather than live to be a mockery and scorn in men's mouths . . . she is a woman to the last . . . the play ends with a touch of grave pity . . . ” “What, we ask, is this for?” asks Eliot and decides that it was an instance of “Mr. Symons . . . living through the play as one might live it through in the theater; recounting, commenting.” For Eliot, the result was less than satisfactory, and it would be of interest to hear what he might say about Bloom's way of living through the play. Of course Bloom is on record as calling Eliot “one of the worst critics of the twentieth century.”

>>11105218
4/10 bait would not (You) again

>>11105020
Cool story, op. Tell me more about how I'm the best poet of the 20th century.

>>11109170
I mean, Eliot was a far better poet than he ever was a critic and his influence did produce some bad habits in his followers and devotees. Discounting his poetry on the basis of his literary criticism is brain dead level of stupid.

>>11107922
You proved yourself wrong because you are shitposting.