/lit/ - Literature

>>18711919
Cervantes

>>18711919
Why? He's obviously correct

>>18711929
Stephen King compared to David Foster Wallace

>>18711950
True, Cervantes is out of their league.

>>18711950
So better.

>>18711929
Cervantes is a hack

Goethe

Shakespeare is the intermediate point now. We’ve moved beyond him and Eliot wrote in a time place which no longer exists as anything but a memory.

>>18711919
Divide the world in what?
Adam Smith, Machiavelli, and Darwin are the big kahunas in applied FACTS AND LOGIC

>>18711919
Rilke>T. S. Eliot
cope

R. C. Waldun

>>18711919
homer,the real OG

>>18713127
I was going to say that, but:
>modern world

>dante
>modern world

>>18712801
filtered

>>18711919
Goethe

>>18711950
King is unironically better.

>>18711950
David Foster Wallace held classes on King, Stephen King never held classes on DFW

>>18711929
>>18711958
>>18713316
Shakespeare:
>Rich kid
>Never worked in his live
>Never fought in his live
>Wrote books about traitors that give long speaches about the inevitability of their acts to justify them being traitorous faggots
>Wrote in an arrogant and in an inaccesible way.

My boy Cervantes:
>Was a Soldier who fought in the most important battle to defend Europe from the moors: the Battle of Lepanto
>Worked all his live in different shitty jobs
>Didn' have an easy live
>Still got time to write the first model novels, and best books of all time.
>His character reflect the reality of his epoch and are still relatable nowadays.
>His character have soul and teach important lessons.
>Wrote in an accesible way for anybody.

Comparing Cervantes to Shakespeare is like comparing god to a gypsy.

>>18713237
Fucking Based

>>18711919
This was true for the English speaking world in the 19th century and the first half of the twentieth.
I don’t know the context but I’m surprised that Eliot would make such a broad and generalized statement by claiming the entire world.

>>18714490
Absolutely based
Another point in favor of Cervantes is the fact Shakespeare like any other anglo was still angry for losing the 100 years war.
Cervantes in the other hand was a soldier in Lepanto, fought alongside other catholics, fought the moors and made his legend and life even more impressive.

My diary desu

>>18711919
goethe
Goethe
GOETHE

Hegel and Deleuze

>>18712806
>>18713211
>>18714883
Only correct answer.

>>18711919
Pic related.

And Aeschylus at least demands a comparison with Shakespeare.

>>18711919
i'm the third

>>18715500
Also I'm trans, not sure if that matters.

Tolstoy is as great as both of them, but he wasn’t a poet. As far as creating characters and consciousness that are true to life he is even their superior.

Other than Tolstoy I don’t know anyone as great. If we count lyric poetry alone Emily Dickinson is far more impressive than any of the smaller poems by either Shakespeare or Dante. But they are famous for dramatic and epic poetry, so it’s a different story.

It’s interesting also to contrast the language of the two. Shakespeare is far more dense and complex, the greatest master of metaphor that every existed. Dante is more simple, clean, direct, concise, and as far as imagery goes he mostly uses similes.

Now, if I were to name the wisest writer, the one who had the greatest and most humane understanding of human beings I would name Chekhov.

Back to the main question: the big 3 are Dante, Shakespeare and Tolstoy.

>>18715579
>Tolstoy is as great as both of them,
Russians wish.

I have no doubt of Dante but I feel Shakespeare is overrated. Have never read anything of him though as plays are boring and annoying.

>>18715716
>Have never read anything of him though
then keep your opinion to yourself faggot

>>18714490
am stealing this

>>18711919
He be stupid tho

>>18714490
Lets see, Shakespeare was white, Cervantes was not. Therefore Shakespeare is the greater writer.

>>18715716
Overrating is what fanboys do to a talented artist. Just get around to rating it yourself.

Nice babe tho

>>18714490
Painfully bad bait

>>18715767
*pushes dick over face* ;3

>>18715789
Painfully bad post

>>18715803
>Le no u
Jesus shut up you same-fagging loser. 39 replies and 35 posters kek. Most of the stuff in that meme are either painfully untrue or reek of semiliteracy.

>>18715767
>>18715794
You want my dick right? :3

>>18715818
Painfully bad retort

>>18715824
Do you have to be this insecure, she literally posts only to have you hit on her. She posts with cat images and shit now

>>18711919
Can't be proved, because he's correct.

>>18711929
Cervantes had the same, or nearly the same profundity and power of imagination as Dante and Shakespeare, but didn't have even 1/10 of their verbal genius.
And yes, I do read Spanish fluently (my native language is Portuguese).
Cervantes's prose is very, very good, but not supreme in the way, say, Joyce's prose is, or Flaubert's, or Augustine's. As for his poetry, it is merely good, and he was never considered a very great poet in Spain (that would be Luis de León).

And that's why Cervantes is at an inferior rank when compared to Homer, Virgil, Horace, Dante, Shakespeare.

>>18715579
What a terrible post.
Tolstoy's prose reads like newspaper, and Dickinson's writing is highly overrated, much of her imagery is kitsch and her diction was outdated even at her time. Emily Dickinson never wrote anything remotely as interesting as the rime petrose, and her grasp of philosophical and theological matters was amateurish and superficial compared to Dante's.

>>18714490
>Rich kid
>Never worked in his live
>Never fought in his live
>Wrote books about traitors that give long speaches about the inevitability of their acts to justify them being traitorous faggots
>Wrote in an arrogant and in an inaccesible way.
Are you retarded

>>18715579
>The Tolstoy teenager again

>>18711919
Chaucer was born after Dante died and is a better writer than Shakespeare, so yeah that's the third.

>>18711929
Guenon might agree, even though he viewed Dante as one of only two great western intellects, the other being Meister Eckhart.

>>18711919
Retarded fucking mutt should have stopped speaking for the """world""". In East nobody know Dante. Eastern poetry is light years ahead of west.

>>18714490
pure cope compressed into a single image

>>18715852
Thank you for effortposting.

>>18715852
>Tolstoy's prose reads like newspaper,

It’s not about the prose. There are more things in literature than just the style. Tolstoy’s style is very simple, but go and try to perceive so many subtleties in other human beings and then bring them to the page. You will not find the same accuracy in Shakespeare, certainly not in Dante.

Haven’t you read the part I mentioned that Tolstoy is not a poet, like Dante and Shakespeare?

By the way, you speak of how profound Cervantes is but criticizes his verbal style. Then you attack Tolstoy (whose style is superior to Cervantes, simple, direct, but still clean and crystalline and mostly concerned with finding the exact
word), a writer that is far superior to Cervantes.


>Dickinson's writing is highly overrated, much of her imagery is kitsch

What of her images are kitsch? How much have you read? Take any of her major poems and compare them to Dante sonnets and you will see Dante can’t hold a candle to her in lyric writing.

By the way, if Dickinson is kitsch, why not say the same about Shakespeare? He is bombastic and highly rhetorical in several moments, which doesn’t take away the brilliance even of those excessive moments.

>Emily Dickinson never wrote anything remotely as interesting as the rime petrose

I completely disagree. There are hardly any metaphors in those poems, mostly are direct statement, and mostly in a very pious and cliche-style religiosity. There’s a reason why these poems are hardy read by anyone and don’t have a single spark of the popularity of the Comedy.

Post any of those poems by Dante. I will find something in Dickinson dealing with a simile theme that is superior.

>and her grasp of philosophical and theological matters was amateurish and superficial compared to Dante's.

I’m talking about poetry, not theology or philosophy. By the way, she felt religion with far more depth than Dante, because she had doubts and fears and agonies, while for Dante everything was certain and obvious. She talked about God and to God on a more crude and visceral way, more akin to the old Israelites in the desert, for whom God was the terror in the storms and with whom one could still beg and fight and even scream in rage. Dante is far more cold, intelectual, bookish, almost text-book-like. Add to that the fact that he was not particularly gifted with the capacity for metaphor and you end up mostly with bland and uninteresting lyrics.

Dante is the Comedy. Nothing in his work comes close.

And I’m still waiting for your examples of what is kitsch in Dickinson. By the way, what does Kitsch even mean? It’s like purple prose. A vague term people use to criticized what they don’t like, but something that, done by someone who they indeed like, becomes “poetry” and “great prose”.

>>18714490
>believing the official story about """Shakespeare"""
Stratfordians are genuinely rarted

>>18715767

souce?

>>18711929
>>18711958
>>18713237
>>18714490
>>18714763
>>18716040
I can’t browse this board anymore knowing how many people I’m forced to take seriously are non-white

>>18717627
First Sonnet in the New Life
>To every heart which the sweet pain doth move,
>And unto which these words may now be brought
>For true interpretation and kind thought,
>Be greeting in our Lord’s name, which is Love.
>Of those long hours wherein the stars, above,
>Wake and keep watch, the third was almost nought,
>When Love was shown me with such terrors fraught
>As may not carelessly be spoken of.
>He seemed like one who is full of joy, and had
>My heart within his hand, and on his arm
>My lady, with a mantle round her, slept;
>Whom (having wakened her) anon he made
>To eat that heart; she ate, as fearing harm.
>Then he went out; and as he went, he wept.
Give me a Dickinson poem as great as this

>>18718109

Ok.

Since you chose the theme of love, here's a poem she wrote on the same topic.

When, on the shores of doomsday, all mists of illusion and subterfuge are "carved away" and the beloved soul will the the only atom in all of creation she willchoose for herself, abandoning all generations of fleshy earth from Adam to the last human who ever lived, all "the lists of clay":

Of all the Souls that stand create –
I have elected – One –
When Sense from Spirit – files away –
And Subterfuge – is done –
When that which is – and that which was –
Apart – intrinsic – stand –
And this brief Drama in the flesh –
Is shifted – like a Sand –
When Figures show their royal Front –
And Mists – are carved away,
Behold the Atom – I preferred –
To all the lists of Clay!

>>18718109

Also,I have a nice copy-pasta about some pfher poems if you want to read. The poems are all short, so it wont take much time

>>18715852
>prose is everything
Cervantes could die in a car crash and still have more power in his pen to compose something better than any writer working today. He is more than prose or plot. He has soul, which you clearly lack, as a reader.

Joyce has nothing to say. He'll be forgotten in a few decades.

i will always find funny how the english really fooled the world into worshipping shitspeare. he is not even the best writer of the british isles

>>18718686
>He is more than prose or plot. He has soul, which you clearly lack, as a reader.

Not him, but I agree that prose is not everything. But I think that “soul” is too much of a general criticism.

You’ll you mind quoting something that shows Cervantes “soul” in his writing?