/lit/ - Literature

Nothing, it's something you pretend to have read and pretend to have liked in elite societies.

navel gazing schizophrenic trash, read steinbeck.

There is more said about the future of humanity in the Circe chapter of Ulysses than there is in the entire rest of the western canon combined. Besides the Bible of course.

>>17260955
>There is more said about the future of humanity in the Circe chapter of Ulysses than there is in the entire rest of the western canon combined.
This has only convinced me of its value and your retardation, but I'd like to know why you think that. You should be able to briefly articulate at least one idea or value from that section.

>>17260896
Finnegans Wake directly inspired Joseph Campbell to pursue comparative mythology, and his work subsequently influenced a young filmmaker by the name of George Lucas. Without Joyce, and without Finnegans Wake specifically, we would not have Star Wars and by extension Baby Yoda.

>>17261388
and by extension baby yeed

>>17260896
I think he knows how to use the English language in a very aesthetic way. But oftentimes seems like he just wants to throw in a bunch of obscure references. But I'm a midwit, so what do I know?

>>17260920
I've read it and loved it. Joyce himself thought that every reader could read Finnegans Wake with a little effort and get something out of it. His use of language in it is beautiful, and every now and then it all comes together for a stunningly gorgeous passage

>>17261387
The power of a woman's touch.

>>17260955
This is a shitpost.

>>17260940
Middlebrow.

>>17260920
People do do this unfortunately.

>>17261388
Don't go around sharing this.

>>17260896
Vague question. Vague answer: Capturing and recreating the beauty and pain of human life in the forms of novels & short stories is artistically valuable.

>>17261525
>The power of a woman's touch.
That's a very broad statement, at least explain in what particular way.

>>17261455
Not much, given your use of aesthetic.

>>17261470
Are you knowingly demonstrating what that poster is complaining about?

>>17261525
>Vague question. Vague answer: Capturing and recreating the beauty and pain of human life in the forms of novels & short stories is artistically valuable.
NO YOU FUCKING FAGGOT THIS COULD BE SAID ABOUT ANYONE EVERYTIME I ASK ABOUT WHAT JOYCE WAS ARTISTICALLY UNIQUE FOR YOU FAGGOTS CAN'T EVEN BRING UP MODERNISM ALL YOU SAY IS HE WAS TECHNICALLY SOPHISTICATED AND SO ON, OBVIOUSLY I'M ASKING FOR A PARTICULAR EXAMPLE ABOUT HIM WHICH NO ONE I HAVE ASKED ON HERE HAS EVER BEEN ABLE TO GIVE!! IT'S ONLY A VAGUE QUESTION BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T WANT TO TYPE OUT AN ANSWER IN THE FIRST PLACE.

>>17261535
It's not broad at all if you paid attention to the chapter. Zoe touches Bloom. Then something happens. Protip: The chapter isn't random gibberish.

>>17261555
I haven't read the book, but without exception a valuable book has the potential of some value in itself being expresses, or directly suggested at as much as possible, in casual language.

No one can do this with Joyce, and I sense it's because few of you have actually risen to an artistic understanding of him.

>>17260920
>>17261387
>>17261535
>>17261568
you got filtered

>>17261568
>I haven't read the book
lol fuck off pseud

>>17261553
You clearly don't even know what your asking for... And you haven't read any Joyce, otherwise you wouldn't ask such a dopey question. Simulated artistic epiphanies? That's lost on you. The moments where Gabriel is thinking about how much he loves his wife? Not specific enough. The barmaid snapping her garter for Lenehan. Huh? What? Bloom hallucinating his son? You don't know what you want.

>>17261538
Language can absolutely be aesthetic

>>17261568
>has the potential of some value in itself being expresses, or directly suggested at as much as possible, in casual language.
Incoherent nonsense.

It's artistically valuable in the sense that it absolutely filters pseuds on /lit/ that are incapable of getting it. People on here can pretend that they read and understood Ulysses to fit in, but that isn't the case with FinWake and I love it for that reason

>>17261700
Do you have any interesting insights into Finnegans Wake?

>>17261584
>you can't ask questions about something you haven't read
You're just retarded and are incapable of answering these very simple questions.

>>17261585
You're too stupid.

All of these examples you have given, you could have chosen to explain something from, or explained why they are so inextricable from the prose. Which leads me to that fragment of a statement I made in the pink wojak post. It seems to me none of you understand Joyce artistically beyond "muh feelings," or that his language is very complex.

>The American poet’s quest for the hard edge announces the fracture between twentieth century Imagism and nineteenth century Symbolism. In the Imagist Manifesto, Pound states his opposition to the “cosmic poet” and something of this divergence is alluded to at the end of this piece.

But is it not that because of Joyce's position as a modernist, he is laying focus on the experience of the idea as the originary reality, as well as his layering and condensing as much as possible a multiplicity of meaning in a single language, stressing even more the inextricability of his vision from the letter of the artwork itself, that is less Romantic poet or poet at all whose idea (or vision) is rather more easily extrapolated out of the work? Or that he is more dramatist than poet too, and hence more an enactening than describing? Whether these are exactly right or wrong, the point is you do not make an effort to explain because you've likely never understood yourselves.

>>17261618
You can't correct a misspelling? Change "expresses" to "expressed," and it's pretty simple.

>>17261584
>you can't ask questions about something you haven't read
You're just retarded and are incapable of answering these very simple questions.

>>17261585
You're too stupid.

All of these examples you have given, you could have chosen to explain something from, or explained why they are so inextricable from the prose. Which leads me to that fragment of a statement I made in the pink wojak post. It seems to me none of you understand Joyce artistically beyond "muh feelings," or that his language is very complex.

>The American poet’s quest for the hard edge announces the fracture between twentieth century Imagism and nineteenth century Symbolism. In the Imagist Manifesto, Pound states his opposition to the “cosmic poet” and something of this divergence is alluded to at the end of this piece.

But is it not that because of Joyce's position as a modernist, he is laying focus on the experience of the idea as the originary reality, as well as his layering and condensing as much as possible a multiplicity of meaning in a single language, stressing even more the inextricability of his vision from the letter of the artwork itself, that is less Romantic poet or poet at all whose idea (or vision) is rather more easily extrapolated out of the work? Or that he is more dramatist than poet too, and hence more an enactening than describing? But in the case of Shakespeare though he is dramatist, invaluable world-historical ideas or relevancies can still be articulated from him.

Whether these are exactly right or wrong, the point is you do not make an effort to explain because you've likely never understood yourselves.

>>17261618
You can't correct a misspelling? Change "expresses" to "expressed," and it's pretty simple.

>>17261832
Holy CRINGE hahaha

PUT ME IN THE SCREENCAP

>>17260896
Finnegan's wake is a book about the collapse of the tower of babel and it manages to treat that subject in a more philosophically and artistically interesting way than any prior or subsequent work.

>>17262035
How so

>>17261984
Literally no answer.

>>17261700
bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!

>>17262035
See, this is the kind of interesting thing I mean. I'm not sure if you've read it, but if you have, could you give an example of a way in which it allowed you to see the story of Babel again?

I'm aware that it focuses on the spreading into different languages a lot with those thunder words but that's about it. Was it in that direction?

Joyce's works follow a fairly stable trajectory leading from concreteness to abstraction. He was not the most prolific writer and his whole product can be taken in at once glimpse.

>Dubliners
His most "conventional" work of prose. Very beautifully written if a bit prosaic and "matter of factly," it is clear that he could have kept writing in this manner and would have been remembered as a fine if not so innovative writer, similar in vein as Zola.

>Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Personally I find this to be peak Joyce. It's sort of hilarious--not sure if intentionally or not-- and you can begin to see a level of experimentation peek through. Using a crafty method of free indirect speech the development and workings of Steven Dedalus's mind are pried open and presented with fresh style. It somehow manages to be both parochial and expansive.

>Ulysses
Obviously Joyce's most renowned work and one which straddles the experimental and conventional. Using a myriad of narrative forms and innovations, Joyce somehow manages to make an ordinary day in Dublin seem like a cosmic event. It clearly owes a lot from Portrait and perfected the ideas he first scouted in that book.

>Finnigans Wake
At this point Joyce goes off the deep-end into his most overtly experimental and unconventional work. Polarizing, confusing, and utterly unique, it demands that you learn its bespoke language and learn the rules of its world or be left blinking in bewilderment and frustration. It is not a book that you read, per se, it is a book that you must become to make sense of it.

>>17262158
Prime example of why literature isn't for everyone. Don't take this guy seriously. He doesn't take literature seriously.

>>17260896

I can talk about Dubliners and Portrait (haven't read Ulysses, but you said "in his works" so you've given me free rein). Disclaimer: There are many things he does well, this is just what I personally find meaningful.

Joyce is really good at writing about really specific, nuanced, and subtle experiences and make you realize that they are in fact extremely important and emotionally intense.

Reading about these characters' experiences will make you realize that you've also had these experiences too in some slightly different but related form — you just didn't think about it as hard as him and weren't able to articulate it as well as he could. He'll make you realize that your own specific, nuanced, subtle experiences are in fact extremely important and emotionally intense, and in doing so will make you feel connected to the writer, other readers, and humanity in general.

In other words you are not alone, the mundane is significant, and the ugly can be beautiful.

>>17262295
Well said, friend

>>17260896
Redpill me on how much the Book of Kells influenced Joyce. I think I’m missing something big here

>>17262295
I felt ashamed that I had neglected the value of my life so much for the sake of "absolute" truths like one finds in Plato or Goethe, so much. Not that I reject that, but I was living in such a shallow existence before hand.

>>17262419
Which of his books made you start to realize that?

>>17262385
That's something I know absolutely nothing about, so I'd be interested in that as well

>>17262385
He said he wanted his work to mimic its complexity. You can see it in Ulysses, but more obviously the Wake. It's not a mapping to the Book of Kells, just inspiration.

>>17260896
senseless thread and question. It has about every idea imaginable. 1 idea it contains is akasis memory, the idea that everything, including every though, is contained in a library, which has somewhat become a reality with data storage, and a very large sci-fi idea. You're welcome.

>>17262529
Not talking about you, but I really detest how these classic ideas of art have become so butchered in modern entertainment. Being that people then read those silly, originally misunderstood, ideas into the traditional. So they see Faust and they're like "OMG he's creating AI it's like genesis!!!" In the Ring cycle they think "Yass Love conquers authority to the Gods!!" or in this case turning the profound question of akasis into a material storage.

>>17262571
idk what you're really talking about. AI from Faust? But yeah, dumber people can't appreciate works that have too many ideas all interconnected, they have to read books that start, "I'm an invisible man, no not like a ghost"

>>17262528
Well the book of Kells lacks floral art like in typical manuscripts—it’s almost entirely geometry and knots (influenced by vegetation—or you can say it’s the geometric abstractions from flora) and fused animals. There is a certain angelic character in it. It goes above this nature to the world of forms and angels. I wonder if Joyce saw that...

>>17260896
I really enjoyed A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man but, it was fairly challenging for me. I think it improved my reading comprehension though and don't regret going through it.

>>17262600
You know Faust II where Wagner (the character) is trying to create a human being?

In any event, I'm talking about high art being misunderstood and turned into cliches, leading to further misunderstanding of them and their ideas in further public discourse.

>>17262670
That's alchemy dumbass

>>17262695
In the case of Goethe, yes. Or do you think normies learnt and pulverised the idea for their entertainment from Alchemy?

>>17262708
What the fuck are you talking about

>>17262670
Ok I haven't read faust part 2 yet, though plan to as faust was great. But also I think that these ideas are simple, it's just midwits can't think of many different ideas at once, and so are amazed by 1 simple idea. I don't think they get it wrong, since it's simple, it's just they are mind blown by it. good for children, though they can't appreciate it from a higher plane of perspective. I don't think people watching blak mirror are fanboying over faust 2 is what I'm saying, and ideas like those of sci fi aren't very interesting. What I like most about My favorite works of art such as ulysses is how accuartely it portrays people, something only a genius could do. Sci fi is for kids.

>>17262746
Are you legitimately retarded?

>>17262754
Likely since I post here, but it appears that you are too

>>17262708
>>17262746
but yeah that isn't ai that's alchemy.

>>17262750
These ideas are simple, but they still require much thinking about to properly understand and place them.

>I don't think people watching blak mirror are fanboying over faust 2 is what I'm saying, and ideas like those of sci fi aren't very interesting.
I'm not saying that either, I'm saying that the ideas and themes in famous artworks such as Faust have become cliche and common in mass entertainment.. how many shows have you watched with some crappy theme of "le humans being gods creating living machines," and I'm saying it's an incredibly stupid mass-entertainment framing of these artistic ideas and evaluations, which has the negative effect of when someone does try to read something like Faust, they then read these modern cultural precepts back into it.

You must be shitposting with a reading quality this low.

>>17262819
Learn to read, that's not what I was saying.

>>17262924
I understood you perfectly and I agree that 99% of people are dumb. I don't watch tv, people who've read Ulysses don't watch TV or movies. Also the way I write presupposes the reader knows what the conversation is about, so your reading quality is low.

>>17263045
Why would you state
>I don't think people watching blak mirror are fanboying over faust 2 is what I'm saying, and ideas like those of sci fi aren't very interesting.
if you knew that wasn't what I was saying then?

>>17263045
>>17262924
ok I'll elaborate. THe reason I say that 99% of people are dumb is that that is the reason people are not able to appreciate high art such as faust or Ulysses and must resort to lower brow entertainment. Their stupidity is not a result of the mass media, the mass media is a result of what the general population want, tv. That's the perspective behind my responses. What you're complaining about is something like pearls before swine, that people look at masterworks and all they see are what they've been exposed to. That is a common complaint, commonly seen in the form of "Who is listening to this song not because it was in Rocky but because you like the song?"

>>17263097
But anon, people who watch movie and tv are not all "dumb," and you're ignoring the effect that movies and tv have on a people. These ideas are entered into and present in the public mind by their practical inception in the arts, and utter reduction in modern or pop-culture.

It's still a culture, it's still a people, no intellectual class of a people have ever been beyond basic entertainment, but even if they were it still circulates.

>>17263097
Also I should clarify myself, it's not just that this reductive idiotic versions are being read back into the originals and/or classic texts, but that these originally positive ideas are now reduced, and made as they are and instead have that chief effect through such a thing. The fact that we see it in sci-fi (which I wouldn't completely say is for children) is because the low reflects the high.

A man cannot study everything, every silent motive or loud production around him.

>>17263125
>>17263152
>17263152
alright I see what you're saying. But I'd say Ulysses is about as modern as you can get. I'd say it doesn't lack anything that philip k dick's discog contains. The fact that we have ipads now doesn't make us anymore aware of reality than Joyce was. If Joyce was born today, I bet his writings wouldn't be nearly as omnipotent, I think he would've been a coomer. I'm just saying one idea isn't what's special, hence why I called OPS question senseless, what is important is the art, a topic I don't want to expound upon, I know that ideas are essential to art. I'll just quote Ralph Waldo Emerson who said that writing down a truth is like bottling a grain of sand from the beach, the ocean of truth which is the world.

>>17263205
>the man would've been a coomer
Joyce didn't let a lack of internet prevent him from being a coomer, anon

>>17261984
Your newfag is showing

>>17261832
>hasn't read the book
>proceeds to double down on his autism
Cringe. Bluepilled. Filtered. You are the reason /lit/ is bad. An hero.

So, in the story, "An Encounter" in Dubliners, the old man jerks off in front of the boys, right? Is that what the weird shit he is doing when he leaves for a few minutes but is only a few steps away from them?

>>17261387
Circe, in many ways, prophecies the future form of instant interaction that would come with the internet. I know this sounds a bit insane, because I dont know what in Joyce compelled him to write it the way he did, but nothing I’ve read in modern literature or even seen in film or television represents the instant messaging and communication the internet would bring better than Circe. Not only that, but the Wilderness-of-mirrors-effect of the chapter only amplifies the constant distractions which would be created by radio, then television, then computers, then smartphones.
It is extremely fractional. It isn’t ONLY representing communication, obviously. I think what it was intended for much more is the fractionalized meaning life was taking on. The miniature scandals, the memories, the temptations, the succumbing to temptation. I really can’t write about it all in a post, and I’m not articulate enough to do it. I think there’s just a wealth of meaning in it.

>>17263746
I believe he goes out of sight when he does that, and when he comes back they get the gist of him being a weirdo.

>>17260896
Only Joyce I’ve read is Dubliners, but the stories speak for themselves. They are the most perfect little descriptions of life, nothing I’ve read so far has matched it.

If you read a chapter and feel something, that’s it’s value. If you don’t, you’re filtered.

>>17263892
It was interesting as well, that he is curious to know of the boys' sweethearts before, and after he comes back he suddenly sees it as wicked that boys should talk to girls. Kind of reminded me of the guilt and shame associated with masturbation in the Catholic Church.

>confusing, obscure literature with the occasional good passage
based
>confusing, obscure philosophy with the occasional good passage
cringe

>>17264159
Well yes, because the message of Finnegans Wake is the plasticity of language. He's obscuring the narrative, not what he's trying to say with it. Obscure philosophy is annoying because the entire point of writing it to begin with is to explain a new philosophical concept

>>17264215
>Obscure philosophy is annoying because the entire point of writing it to begin with is to explain a new philosophical concept

But one can't demonstrate a philosophical concept in writing, with the plasticity of language?

I've read like 100 pages. I think that if you're 50 years old and have read all your life, then the book will be fun as heck.
Also, at that point you might even not care about what people think about what you read.

>>17260896
>>17266022
Also, it's an experience.
People listen to obscure experimental albums without any lyric content and everyone's alright with that, but when you are reading aloud in an Irish accent, English not being your native language, on your bed in the evening, trying to play around with 5 puns and you ENJOY it, well sir, you might be a bit autistic. but there is nothing like it.