/lit/ - Literature

>>16241522
Can you demonstrate this? Pretend you're a streamer but you don't have a video game

>>16241522
Poetry is for fags. Virgil Ovid and Horace are not poets you fucking pleb. Stick to your language dribble and stay away from the classics. You obviously have no idea what the fuck you are barking about

>>16241537
Not that anon but I agree. The Romans were philosophers who wrote in code. Dante idolized Virgil for this reason, and Augustus banished Ovid for this too. It’s not just that they wrote in code, their writing itself was not what you think of when you think of oral poetry, like Homer or Pindar. If you are familiar with Plato’s Phaedrus this would make a lot more sense. Roman poetry was nothing like the way you think of poetry today, it was a mastery of language that we are still studying because we can’t make sense of how the fuck it does what it does, and what exactly it does still confounds the best of scholars. Needless to say, Shakespeare idolized Ovid, and when you think of the height of verse it’s usually Shakespeare not Ovid. And it’s because Shakespeare is a lot easier to understand.

>>16241522
I wonder about this often. The elegiacs especially are above anything I've ever read in Greek.

>>16241522
Because Roman poets were writers

>>16241522
The Romans were the great chads of history

>>16241578
any books on this subject?

>>16241537
What are you talking about?

>>16241642
Yes, pick up any book of Ovid or Virgil. You will see that every line is aware of itself in the place it belongs, it’s cadence and melody corresponds with the subject at hand, it’s “metaphors” always in play. Today we look back at these works and write 10 pages on a few lines and pull out how woven it was with ancient history, current events (in Rome), how it saluted poets of the past or made fun of customs of the day, all while telling a story, with words that could be allegory and aphorism all at once. It’s kind of one of those ‘hidden in plain sight’ things. We fetishize latin because of these poets did with it.

>>16241585
>The elegiacs especially are above anything I've ever read in Greek.
How though?

>>16241682
>>16241578
Can you read Latin? Otherwise, how can you tell from translations?

>>16241736

All great works need to be translated anon. There is no surface text. Any book that you can understand on the first go around isn’t a great work. Now we are talking about works written two thousand years ago, with allusions to plants and customs on romans would understand. Being able to read latin would help me to understand that knowing latin won’t help to understand the great works of latin. That can be attested to the number of books dedicated to these writers by modern authors who are anything but in agreement to not only the literal translation but the meaning and alliterations that I was talking about. We are talking about Vigil and Ovid right? I know how to play chess but Bobby Fischers moves still blow my mind

>>16241776
Sounds like huge fucking nigger cuck cope by translation fags

>>16241522
>Why was Roman poetry so superior to Greek poetry
Literally the opposite man. I could see you arguing them being equal, but definitely not greater.

>>16241782
Well you wouldn’t know either way kek

>>16241782
>doesnt read
>makes claims about the material
Why is /lit/ like this

>>16241829
Let’s not draw /lit/ with that retards crayons

>>16241522
Is this where the Roman Paris decides which of the philosophers are wisest and gives the apple to.

>>16241776
>Being able to read latin would help me to understand that knowing latin won’t help to understand the great works of latin
learn latin and realise how wrong you are. reading virgil in latin is nothing like reading him in translation.

>>16241890
Do you think it’s just “reading Latin”. We’re talking about a dead fucking language that is based on pronunciation and cadence as much as translating the words not only literally but in the context of the story that’s being spoken about. Fuck no you have never read Virgil I don’t care how fluent you are in Latin

>>16241600
Apollonius of Rhodes was a writer. Hesiod was a writer. The tragedians were all writers.

>>16241903
Wrong. They were orators. Writing starts with Plato

>>16241792
Greeks only had Homer

>>16241909
Apollonius was born after Plato’s death.

>>16241909
Apollonius of Rhodes was after Plato anon

>>16241917
well he has Plato to thank for that

>>16241919
Fuck that nigga bitch ain’t no one got time to know when the nigga was born

>>16241578
I have looked at a bit of Roman poetry and it is absurdly dense. The only stuff I could make much sense of was Virgil's Georgics

>>16241909
Define orator. Do you mean that it’s possible that the tragedians often composed through dictation, with slaves as scribes? If so, this practice was commonplace throughout all of antiquity. You need to clarify the implied significance.

>>16241938
The Romans were assholes and made an art out of being as obscure as possible. Try reading Tacitus.

>>16241938
Check out the Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus. Shit’s absurd.

>>16241944
Will give it a try. By far the easiest Latin text I've come across is Augustine's Confessions. I'm not sure if the language itself is that much simpler or it's the subject matter that makes it easier to understand.

>>16241941
Yes. It was common but not for writers, like Plato, who was very particular about words and organization of text and texts themselves. The Roman masters were just like this but on steroids. Ovid makes a point to transform whoever it is that’s narrating the story into the very writing. After compiling all the great greek myths he went about retelling them in a way that would signify them, that would develop them, The Metamorphosis is much more than a compendium of rehashed old stories. There’s even been rumor that Ovid took it upon himself to become acquainted with the writings of the Jews, and compiling their prophets as he did the Greeks, and was banished from Rome because it was he who wrote the New Testament.

>>16241776
Based

>>16241522
>>16241578
But how do we deal with these facts: a lot of greek poetry is lost and a lot of poets were considered to be under divine influence in their compositions, so maybe, for this fact, losing linguistic nuances in the composition but expressing more deeply what they were inspired to express?

>>16241998
>under divine influence
That just means inspired. All poets write from inspiration.

>>16241998
What are you saying?

>>16242005
He's probably referring to Plato's Ion

What are the best Latin poetic works?

>>16242012
Plato’s Ion is a masterful work is about that but it is anything but that. Parmenides’ poem as well as Empedocles’ fragments have to do with that theme, they begin with being taken by the muses, but their work is sharp and terse and anything but poppi scoopi poetic alcoholic inebriated spit drivel

>>16242002
yes and this is meant to be a divine influence, the same way Socrates is led by his daimon all the time in the dialogues. Also, this divine inspiration is reflected in the Romantics, see Holderlin for example, he even writes about that. So yeah it has nothing to do with your modern narrow mentality of ''oh that just means they were inspired (god knows what I mean with this!) and felt like writing some things''.

>>16242077
You have absolutely no depth beside name dropping you fucking fraud lmao

>>16242077
>You know like Holderin, he does that
AMAZING

>>16242077
Take your pills

>>16242077
>So yeah

>>16241522
translation limitations

>>16242100
>>16242114
>>16242123
And this is how you'll counter argue that? How could I expect you would have a notion about what Holderlin, Novalis, Schiller and other Romantics wrote precisely on this relation of poetry and divine inspiration when you doesn't even know how the Greeks themselves regard their poetry and tragedies, Homer was literally lauded as divine.

>>16242305
Please shut the fuck up retard

>>16242329
give me a single argument against what I said, otherwise you'll just prove my point that you have no idea about what you're talking (and I wonder what someone like you is doing in a thread on poetry)

>>16242350
What is there to argue?
>poets are inspired
>this inspiration was considered divine
Is there something I’m missing, or was there a reason unnecessarily named dropped a bunch of people u have wiki understanding of?

>>16242413
are you the same person who replied to me in a dismissive tone saying that ''under divine influence just meant inspired'', that is, rejecting the very implication of inspiration?

>>16242470
Your done

>>16241914
And Hesiod and Pindar and Sappho and Theocritus and Aeschylus... (the list goes on)

do the people here proclaiming about whether greek or latin poets are better actually read greek and latin?
you can enjoy a poet in translation, but how can you possibly hope to get a measure of how good they are, or which of two poets is better? poetry is the art of arranging words and without spending time with the actual words they arranged you literally can't even talk about it; you're just comparing which of the two got a better translator

>>16242612
your like a child, coming into the middle of a movie

>>16241914
>Greeks only had Homer
>the absolute state of this board
it sometimes makes me cry

>>16242575
>>16243161

>>16241776
Except when you read Virgil in Latin you are reading what he intended and then you interpret the meaning. A translation into English is not what he wrote, but a translation of what he wrote, and so you’re interpreting the meaning based off a translation of someone other than Virgil.

>>16241884
You’re our Helen of Troy.

Romans got paid better

>>16241776
Look at this faggot, a whole fucking paragraph of rationalizing his use of translations if you had any balls left in your nutsack you would neck yourself out of shame

>>16244840
pseud spotted

>>16241522
You only say that since your ear isn't accustomed to Greek sounds.

Why?
Vergil is a shitty knock off of Homer and Theocritus
Ovid is a knock off of Nicander

>>16241642
None, because it's bullshit
Latin doesn't have magical powers and neither did Latin poets who mostly copied those who came before them
Latin is much easier to translate than greek though
Even Archilochus' blowjob poetry is nigh impossible to translate

>>16241902
We have a pretty good idea of how the Aneid and classic Latin might have sounded like, though. You are just coping because you are probably too stupid to learn a "dead language" (lol), and yet come up with retarded conclusions about the ancient Romans "writing in code" even though, under your own logic, you will never truly understand what they were trying to say. Yet you somehow know for sure what they were doing with their poetry. You don't even know basic latin, you are a literal clown.

>>16241776
You are such a fucking pseud, completely full of shit. I mean, how can you write this >>16241578 with a straight face when you don't know Latin? Seriously, are you retarded?

>>16246082
I actually can't believe I'm reading this kek
>Roman poetry was nothing like the way you think of poetry today... it was a mastery of language that we are still studying because we can't make sense of how the fuck it does what it does
>an anon asks if he can actually read it in the original form
>N-no... b-but being able to read latin would help me to understand that knowing latin won't help to understand the great works of latin (???), p-plus modern translators still aren't even all in agreement with the meaning and alliterations
infinite cope, literal retard

>>16246082
I actually can't believe I'm reading this kek
>Roman poetry was nothing like the way you think of poetry today... it was a mastery of language that we are still studying because we can't make sense of how the fuck it does what it does

>an anon asks if he can actually read it in the original form

>N-no... b-but being able to read latin would help me to understand that knowing latin won't help to understand the great works of latin (???), p-plus modern translators still aren't even all in agreement with the meaning and alliterations
infinite cope, literal retard
best way to spot a pseud is when you get a paragraph of bullshit and cope when they're asked a simple, direct question

different style, hexameter sucks for aesthetics

>>16242077
This is correct.
>>16242114
>>16242100
Why do pseuds just shit on everything?

>>16243714
I’m no Helen.

>>16246210
>>16246082
>>16246066
>>16245417
>>16244840

>>16241902
It's known, with an extreme degree of accuracy, how high register "proper" Latin would have sounded as spoken in the Golden Age based on a number of factors, including Classical authors routinely bagging on retards for not speaking pure patrician Latin. There is basically zero disagreement in how it was, and should be, pronounced, except that some people choose to use the Vatican's pronunciation for convenience, which was created by convention after there was widespread consensus in how Classical pronunciation would sound,, and is basically Classical with some Italian mixed in. Same goes for Greek. Most ancient Greek dialects have been reconstructed to high degrees of accuracy (accurate to what would have been considered proper and unaccented by literary authorities at a particular point in time); we know what prim and proper Athenians would have sounded like at the height of their literary tradition when making an effort to speak clearly, but we don't know what the street Greek in New Testament times would have sounded like, exactly. It's also completely possible to learn to read Latin and Greek, especially Latin, fluently, as learned Greeks and Roman's would have, the same way European writers could easily compose works across disciplines in Latin. There's nothing dead about it, just memes perpetuated by translation cope.

Because Homer ended poetry for Greeks

>>16241970
>ovid wrote the old testament.
best shitpost i've seen on /lit/ all week desu

>>16242077
>so yeah

>>16241578
Okay this is epic beyond measure

>>16249121
You don't understand, man! Like, Virgil is actually a secret coded message predicting Jesus! Like, even though he openly says that he's predicting the rise of Augustus, he's ACTUALLY referring to some random Jewish guy! He was like, secretly Catholic! BEFORE Jesus! And so was like, Augustus! And Julius Caesar!

Woahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

>>16241578
ubi, ecastor, haec offendisti?!

>>16242470
I don’t think they believe in god anon. They think you are insane.

>>16241902
What the fuck are you even talking about? You describe reading the Aeneid in Latin like some Herculean task. It's very possible to count the dactyls and spondees yourself in each line, you can easily read it in the same way the original Roman's might've and you'll get an unthinking sense for them as you read.

>It's based on translating the word not only literally but in the context of the story
Now I'm certain you're talking out of your arse, there are a few cases where you have the stretch the meaning of the word, but it's all very intuitive, for example you might translate Pallas' 'sedes' (lit. a seat) to Pallas' home/hall (as in his seat of power), other than this and examples of Virgil referring mythology by personifying things such as war as 'Mars' and calling the dawn '(the goddess) Aurora' the language is all very literal - it's the exact same kind of poetic flair you have in English or any other language.

Honestly, how are you not be embarrassed? Please tell me more about how incomprehensible and difficult the Aeneid is while not even being able to conjugate amo amas amat

>>16250433
Keep reading buddy. The well is deeper than you think.

>>16249935
This months assignment, my little padawan, is Frazier’s The Golden Bough. And make sure to read Chapter 24 very very carefully :)

>>16241902
Crazy how it's possible for your point to go over the heads of so many in this thread, including those who ostensibly have familiarity with the subject.

>>16250944
It would seem he has a point, but the others also have a point that one should learn Latin to read Latin texts. Once you know Latin and can read the poem then you can read these commentaries and analyses to get the fuller picture.

>>16250727
didn't find any issues in my reading which couldn't be fixed by checking a dictionary for obscure vocabulary, care to give any examples where it's somehow impossible to understand for a modern reader?

>>16250944
because his point is retarded, he describes Latin like some kind of obscure dead language as if it were Sumerian or hieroglyphics. Latin and Roman literature has been studied for millennia in Europe, everything he mentions, including classical pronunciation and cadence, we know about

>>16250755
Frazier was a hack

>>16250755
Frazer was a pseud who understood nothing about mythology

>>16250966
Let’s see. Hmmmm. How about one of Ovids stories from the Metamorphosis. A short one. Give me your take on the story of Narcissus and Echo

>>16250959
>>16250992
I would love to learn Latin, honestly. It’s just I have a full time job not wasting my time.

>>16251076
>NOOOO I CAN'T WASTE ANY TIME, MUST MAXIMISE MY TIME TO PRODUCTION EFFICIENCY RATIO
absolute bugman

At least if you're going to read in translations, don't write paragraphs of cope to hide the fact that really you just don't care enough to learn Latin

>>16251076
>>16251143
Unless if you mean to say that you have an actual fulltime job and have to prioritise your interests due to limited free time and I've wrongly understood your "I have a full time job (,) not wasting my time" to be the cynical quip I thought it to be. In which case I'm sorry for being so hard on you anon

>>16251076
Which is fine, but you shouldn't act like an authority about Latin poetry if you can't even read it, I mean this is just obvious.

>>16251143
I read translations but I also read second hand hand material, even on English writers. This puritan tip toeing around words, and the way to access them is pure ideology and idolatry. I rely and am speaking from not just those who learned learned latin but those who were experts in it and the only thing that is unanimous is that the works of Roman Antiquity, specifically Ovid, Virgil, and Horace, in that order, are not Taco Bell menus. I know you thought you could learn a foreign language, then run through the grammar between classes so that you could brag about how you “read Virgil” over the weekend. I know that what I am saying is popping your bubble. I’m not sorry.

ecquis ad latine colloquendum de quolibet? sententias de carminibus quae hic inveniuntur pati non possum

Isn't the greatest literary work out of Roman culture literally a fan fiction of Homer's stuff?

>>16251180
yea u need to check your seething at the buddy

>>16251186
I can do whatever the FUCK I want

>>16251188
Translations can offer you almost the whole meaning perhaps, indeed Latin can probably be translated into English better than most other languages. You're missing the exact type of alliteration of letters which signal certain emotions and moods, the cadence, the varying of melody depending on the subject - the spitting alliteration of 's' or the mournful hum of m's and n's, the (predominately) spondaic and dactylic lines you refer to in its original language. You even miss the use of word order by the author, the promotion of verbs, the irregular placement of adjectives for meaning, the surrounding word order of agreement in chiasmus, often the very distance between two words has been designed for meaning.
I could go on, but I appreciate I am delving into the grounds of autism at this point. Nevertheless, how you can claim that modern translations and commentators can transfer all this to you is beyond me, unless they quite literally quote the Latin and explain every subtle out-of-place use of the language and every moment Virgil begins a clause with a specific verb and all their effects. Considering that's going to be perhaps up to three references and explanations per line, honestly at that point you might as well just be reading it in Latin

>>16251201
Just trim the hedges

>>16251215
mm yes sorry the lack of comma threw me off, I was in my autism e-argument confrontational mode

>>16251298
quid tibi vis?

>>16251295
>unless they quite literally quote the Latin and explain every subtle out-of-place use of the language and every moment Virgil begins a clause with a specific verb and all their effects
Yes, that’s exactly what they do. As to the rest of your post, pure bullocks. I stand by everything I’ve said so far

>>16251201
ne scio, creesne filum pro Latino????

>>16251342
Sounds incredibly dull, all the same, how can reading such things as "paratactic syntax used by Virgil to draw attention to the focus of the men" or such details as "the careful interlocking word order of ... in the line mirrors the procedural discipline of the men" mean much to you when you can't actually look over and appreciate it all for yourself in the Latin. Sounds like nothing more than cope to me

>>16241682
Give us an example you ultrafaggot

>>16251449
I can’t but then again I’m not reading to jerk myself off over the exact meaning of a line. I would never have been able to get through a single word of any of the books that I read if I proceeded with such autism. And back to the main point, so far no are humans have even touched my original point, that the words of the Romans are much more than what we would consider And back to the main point, so far no are humans have even touched my original point, that the words of the Romans are much more than what we would consider poetry. And you don’t even have to read it in Latin to pick up on that because the people who translated it were very keen on delivering the word, dignity, reason for any such translation at all in dedicating so much time to delivering any such work

>>16241578
>it was a mastery of language that we can't make sense of how the fuck it does what it does
maybe it wouldn't be so mystifying to you if you could actually read the language kek

>>16251468
There is this line in the Aeneid that was so incredible when I read it and studied it and compare translations and it has to do with this woman whose vagina is rotting and she won’t take a shower but instead continues to spread around her foul stench everywhere she goes, let me see if I can find it, I’ll try to pull up the original latin too

>>16251475
also, translations have this cool thing called annotation where they sometimes you know talk about what’s being translated and even have the original Latin words there and sometimes you’re not gonna believe this they even have comparisons with other translations. I mean you’re not gonna get that reading it in the original. Again some people want to read a work so that they can say they’ve read it, whereas other people are actually interested in the work at hand And would like to savor it, understand it, maybe even read it again, multiple times, Day and night, and you’re not gonna believe this, do this outside of school and not tell anyone about it!

>>16251545
the best course is still obviously to learn Latin and then read the analyses as well, this is an incredibly strange hill for you to attempt to stake your defense upon

>>16251573
So far the only argument against my claims is that since I can’t read a dead language I can’t be making the claims that I’m making. Which I will be making because fuck you

>>16251475
>I'm not reading for to jerk myself off over the exact meaning of the line
>I'm not reading for all this autism
Sorry to tell you, but all this linguistic 'autism' as you call it is exactly what poetry is. The use of language and structure (or autism as you call it), is exactly why the poetry is considered so technically great and why the language is so beautiful. It's really not difficult to see either, I appreciate that such technical phrases as 'paratactic syntax' sound like the highest grade of autism or 'interlocking word order', but it's quite intuitive when you see the endings in the latin itself going like A B A B, or when there's 4 plain direct clauses of action in a row.

If you can ever spare time from your fulltime job or if you drag yourself away from the Netflix and modern entertainment (since I find that people always have the time for what they enjoy and waste most of it in the modern age), give it a go after acquainting yourself with the basics of Latin, with a bilingual Loeb with the Latin on the left and English on the right you soon won't need much aid

>>16251475
>I'm not reading for to jerk myself off over the exact meaning of the line
>I'm not reading for all this autism
Sorry to tell you, but all this linguistic 'autism' as you call it is exactly what poetry is. The use of language and structure (or autism as you call it), is exactly why the poetry is considered so technically great and why the language is so beautiful. It's really not difficult to see either, I appreciate that such technical phrases as 'paratactic syntax' sound like the highest grade of autism or 'interlocking word order', but it's quite intuitive when you see the endings in the latin itself going like A B A B, or when there's 4 plain direct clauses of action in a row.

If you can ever spare time from your fulltime job or if you drag yourself away from the Netflix and modern entertainment (since I find that people always have the time for what they enjoy and waste most of it in the modern age), give it a go after acquainting yourself with the basics of Latin, with a bilingual Loeb with the Latin on the left and English on the right you soon won't need much aid, it's quite enjoyable

>>16251576
Because you can't dude. An important part of poetry is how it sounds, and also you simply can't entirely accurately translate things from one language to another. We are not saying controversial things here...

>>16251598
Wrong.

>>16251607
Whew, is this all you have left in you. Well, at least you've eventually ended your futile struggle, even if it took a thread full of people calling you out as a retard and a pseud

>>16251604
I can I will and I did and you can’t address my original point because you were trying to talk to a strawman where there isn’t one. According to your logic no one has ever read the epic of Gilgamesh

>>16251614
I know you’re desperate to talk to me but you’re gonna need to give me something to worth responding to

>>16251616
No one's responded to your original point because you don't have one, you haven't even described it beyond your vague mutterings that the "words of the Romans are much more than what we would consider". Are you referring to how poets make references to the people and context of their times? Sorry to tell you that it isn't a unique phenomenon to the romans that you sometimes need context and a historical understanding to understand an author's references. If that's not the point, then it might be a good idea to clearly make it, beyond ambiguous references, so that anons can discuss it

>>16251704
>are you talking about candy
>cuz candy causes cavities

>>16251372
Pigritia obstat, ignoscas. possum tamen hic sermocinari. Ut vales?

aeque pars ligni curvi ac recti valet igni

>>16251764
Intellego
Ne valeo, cotidie de necando me cogito, umbrae incipiunt cingere meum, et tu?