/lit/ - Literature

>>22354784
An infinite capacity for taking pains.

>>22354784
How the fuck would any of the retards on here know? Also do u think there are any talented writers on /lit/ currently?

>>22354864
this post is so incoherent and off point it destroys itself lol

>>22354784
a talented writer produces great work. a genius repeatedly produces great work. McCarthy put out about nine novels that would all each be any lesser writer’s greatest work.

>>22355927
>McCarthy
my fucking sides

>>22355927
It cant be quality in quantity
For example, if an author only wrote a single book, cant it be genius?
Cant a single book by an author have genius while his other books are crap?

>>22355929
shut up homo
>>22355932
a single work can be genius but an author can’t be genius because of a single work

>>22355927
I dont think its as simple as consistency. I think a genius writer is one who produces work in a way that no one really has before.
Gogol, for example, had only about 2 great works, The Overcoat and much of Dead Souls. His stories beyond that are too eratic and goofy to be called truly great. But his genius is undeniable, before the Ovedcoat no one had written in that style before. it would became the most influential story in Russian literature, with Tolstoy, Dostoy and Chekov deeply indebted to him.

>>22356059
philistine

The world will reject the writing of true geniuses, for they can not comprehend it

>>22356063
Faggot

>>22354784
friends in high places, good marketing, etc

>>22354784
Being an atheist. Roses husband is an atheist and also he is the smartest man of all times.

He has more balls in his mouth than Brian has in his pants.

>>22355927
>a genius repeatedly produces great work
how long do these works have to be? can I write one really long genius work, then divide it up and slowly release over the course of my life and then be called a genius?

your attempt to inject quantity into a qualitative discussion is asinine, by the way.

>>22354784
How much the author resonates with me, personally, at that specific time in my life.

The ancient greeks considered a perfect fifth to be a divine chord. It seems strange to us now. We hear so many different kinds of chords. Music is constantly playing, often too loud, and not the kind we like. The perfect fifth, perfectly (or imperfectly) reproduced by a complex technological arrangement of wires and diaphragms seems plain to us, and banal. It's as ordinary to us as level ground, conditioned air, and washing machines. But take away the wires and diaphragms. Take away the washing machines, and air conditioning, and pavement. Take away the tuning fork, the piano, and musical notation. Take it all away and find yourself in a unbeaten field, surrounded by goats, with intestine twined and dried and strung between carved wood. In the middle of a hot day, see if you can imagine, not an octave, not a major third, but the hum and ring of a perfect fifth. Inexplicable. A natural phenomenon so startling and so distinct from the passable earth that surrounds you, it cannot help but express some supernatural perfection. The wind has never not blown in your face. The dirt has never not been under your fingernails. The taste of meat has never not followed the smell of freshly spilled blood.A good writer plays the chord well. A genius plays it so well you remember it's divine.

>>22356182
If thats OC congrats anon thats beautiful

>>22356196
Thank you

>>22356182
>A genius plays it so well you remember it's divine.
what? that doesn’t even make sense

>>22356221
Try listening to Arthur Rubinstein play the Grieg piano concerto, and then listen to anybody else play it.

>>22354784
To me, a genius is one that is able to transcend genre's, and to be able to write multiple works of beauty and reverence and importance. Think Shakespeare. He wrote histories, comedies, drama's and poetry. He excelled in all, and profoundly changed the English language itself. An author who writes the same story nonstop may be good, may be very talented, but will never be a genius. For an example of directors: Kubrick and Welles will forever be at a higher tier than Hitchcock. Yes, Alfred made great thrillers, but that's all he could do.
>>22356182
Beautiful, saving this post, you made my night.

>>22356269
Now allow me to ruin it. I'm this anon >>22356123, and I have a trad wife

>>22354784
I remember Chekhov bejng praised as a talented writer by almost everyone in another thread. The probken is that he didn't create a "flagship" book in the same way Melville has Moby Dick, Dickens has A Christmas Carol, or even Conan Doyle has Sherlock. Chekhov, like O. Henry, suffer a lack of apprecjation since almost all theur works are short stories. They are both talented authors, but they lacked their magnum opus

>>22356284
Maybe as a short story writer you have a valid point, but there is no playwright worth his pen that would not consider at the very least The Cherry Orchard and The Seagull seminal works of drama.

>>22354784
Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.

>>22356059
Wouldn't it be measured by the works known to the general public without further inquiry? Of course if you extend this to other forms of art, like music, then someone like Britney Spears is a genius.

>>22356094
Oh it's you again

>>22356277
>and I have a trad wife
It's okay, we all have our cross to bear. The problem is when we take pride in our autism instead of fighting it, or accepting it.

>>22356357
>>22356262
Truly, I have the sweetest cross, and I wish you could understand.

>>22356382
If you're happy, and your trad wife is happy, good for you. Happiness and contentment is something that is not earned or able to be found in a checklist, it's as mysterious as God's will. Enjoy and forge a mighty dynasty, just be careful, your children are 50% you 50% tradwife, make sure she's not 70 IQ, your children may end up that way.
enjoy it

>>22356446
Why do you assume that women who like being women are therefore stupid? Is a rose more foolish than than the vine?

The answer?

Whoever the general public decides to be genius, becomes a genius. You can be an author of great extraordinary talent that bends the genre in a new direction, but it doesn't really matter if no one's really heard of you. Yeah sure, you might end up with a small cult following a few decades after your death, but unless you get incredibly lucky your out of luck.

Granted, the people who are deemed genius writers to have a very powerful capacity in their respective field, but that was combined with sheer luck for them to be known and generally considered a genius.

Shakespear. Often considered a genius and is widely known as an influential writer.

John Keats. Mostly only people who have studied poetry a fair bit or taken a poetry college class would have known about him. Yet, I'd personally argue that his writing was far more meaningful and powerful than Shakespear. But who gives a shit about my opinion on a poet that I consider a genuis?

As someone above said, authors that lack a kind of magnum opus are blatantly out of luck and are just less appreciated and forgotten about despite being comparable to authors and writers who had a flagship book.

I think this has to do with how Western society in general focuses more towards achievement/completion rather than the process. So, at least in the West, someone can be a compelling and brilliant writer that transcends their medium, but unless they got lucky before or after their death alongside having a magnum opus, they are kind of out of luck. Hell, if you die a tragic death that might make the public see you as a genius writer lmao.

>>22356466
>Is a rose more foolish than than the vine?
your focusing on the physical and mental features of your bride, not the soul. Your wife should be your second half, your soul mate. If she is great, but realize that your soulmate is a trad wife, you have the peasant genome as well. Likely to continue the serf genome for generations. Nothing sad in that, actually beautiful in a gazelle on the prairie sort of way. True living, instead of mental torture that many people deal with today. Too many people have aristocratic/peasant hybrid genes. Causes mental breakdown and sadness.
Just be okay with farming wheat and having superiors that drive fancy cars and smoke cigars, okay? And that means they're probably gonna be jewish... and that means you have to be okay with that... follow your lord in his example, and have no resentment in your heart

>>22356536
As humble man is a wise man, so is a modest woman a prudent woman. I don't have to ask a man with a tattoo on his face for the meaning of life, for he clearly can't even find the meaning of a day. You say I'm superficial, but you measure wisdom in cars.

>>22357320
What about Mike Tyson?

>>22357427
What about Mike Tyson?

>>22357435
He has a face tattoo and seem to be a pretty wise guy in terms of no bullshitting and having life experience while not being completely corrupted by the world

Genius is about vision. People who treat book writing as a profession have no right deciding upon what makes a genius genius.

>>22357466
I would not ask Mike Tyson for the meaning of life.

The concept of genius is subjective. There is no scientific definition of what constitutes a brilliant accomplishment. In fact, even one of the major criteria we commonly use to define works of genius – the survival of a particular work over long periods of time – is something that depends on subjective factors (a writer may have good networking in life, and upon their death, the students and disciples of the teachers and theorists who praised that writer learn from their mentors that the writer was a genius, and they repeat the idea, which continues to be echoed again and again, mostly stemming from human relationships and subjective decisions).

If I were to define literary genius, I would say it's the ability to create works that appear undeniably extraordinary to the majority of readers who analyze them carefully, whether those readers are experts or not. The extraordinary nature of these works must simultaneously be (i) capable of touching, impressing, and moving a vast number of people, yet be (ii) so difficult to produce that only very few individuals have managed to replicate the feat.

I think of something like the Sistine Chapel. Practically everyone who sees it feels, viscerally, that it's undeniably beautiful. At the same time, many artists and painters who are considered great in art history would be unable to reproduce something like the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel: their technical and inventive abilities are not at the same level. However, if Michelangelo had to máster the style of those other artists, he would be capable of doing it, had he put his mind and obsession into that plan.

When we talk about literature, it seems that there are several characteristics that qualify a work as genius: a great innovation in the way of seeing the world and representing it through language (Cervantes and the novel, Kafka’s bizarre world view), a profound understanding of human beings and the ability to demonstrate this understanding through stories (Tolstoy and Chekhov), an incessant ability to create verbal beauty (the poetry of Emily Dickinson), the patience and dedication to create a single great work (Dante), among other criteria.

However, several writers defined as geniuses could have their definition contested. I believe that few names are a perfect unanimity.

cont.

>>22357727

For me, the indisputable literary genius is Shakespeare. He understood human beings and could put himself inside the skin of all kinds of people; his ability to create verbal beauty was inexhaustible, and any major topic or subject (war, peace, time, death, love, hate, jealousy, the transitory nature of the world and universe, politics, nature and the natural world, etc) is described in his work in one of its most memorable forms. His productivity was vast, and he didn't spend years honing a single great work, but wrote several memorable works, one after another, incessantly. If the words (the vocabulary) he used hadn't aged and changed in meaning over time, the speeches of his characters would immediately impact any reader or listener (nowadays, sometimes a little familiarity with older vocabulary is needed for that impact to occur). Exploring the complete corpus of what Shakespeare wrote, you find hundreds of different life philosophies and worldviews; there are more philosophical theories in Shakespeare than even in Plato (who was more of a poet than a rigorous thinker), although some of these views occur more briefly, like flashes, in a series of bold metaphors that blend concrete and abstract concepts into incredibly original forms of thought.

So, while the concept of literary genius is subjective, I believe that what Michelangelo is to visual arts, Shakespeare is to literature. Character creation, understanding of the human mind, fertility, verbal beauty and inventiveness (a single one of his great plays often contains more bold metaphors and inventive imagery than the complete works of other famous poets.), the use and exploration of various ideas and themes, a broad and diverse corpus: Shakespeare achieved all these goals.

It seems to me that Shakespeare is the author who undeniably embodies the subjective concept of 'genius' in literature. He is the Einstein/Newton, the Bach/Mozart/Beethoven, the Michelangelo of the art of writing.

>>22354864
I am legitimately a genius, I am also retarded. I can do maths well, my writing is subpar at best and that’s being generous. I only know I am a genius because they tested me as a child for not comprehending how periods work at the end of a sentence and they thought I might actually be mentally retarded. I still barely grasp the concept of grammar.

>>22357747
What's your IQ? Not saying is the same thing as "genius", but just curious.

>>22356182
great post

>>22354784
Time. It's seemingly the only novelty that doesn't de-legitimise

>>22354784
Bump

>You hope that the amount of meaning that you can pack into the book will always be more than you are capable of consciously understanding. Otherwise, the book is likely to be as thin as you are. You have to trick your medium into doing far better than you, as a conscious and clearheaded person, might manage.

Literary genius is a term used to describe individuals who possess exceptional creative and intellectual abilities in the field of literature. While the exact definition can vary depending on perspectives and cultural contexts, there are several characteristics and qualities often associated with literary genius:

Originality: Literary geniuses often bring new and innovative ideas to their works. They are known for their ability to create original and groundbreaking concepts, themes, and narratives that challenge traditional norms and push the boundaries of literary expression.

Profound Insight: Literary geniuses have a deep understanding of human nature, society, and the complexities of life. They are able to explore and depict these insights in ways that resonate with readers on a profound level, often offering unique perspectives that provoke thought and reflection.

Masterful Language Use: Exceptional command of language is a hallmark of literary genius. These individuals have a remarkable ability to manipulate language, employing a rich vocabulary, intricate sentence structures, and poetic techniques to convey complex emotions, ideas, and imagery.

Narrative Skill: Literary geniuses are skilled storytellers. They can craft compelling narratives that engage readers emotionally and intellectually, weaving intricate plots, well-developed characters, and meaningful themes into their works.

Symbolism and Allegory: Many literary geniuses utilize symbolism and allegory to add depth and layers of meaning to their writing. They create stories where elements represent larger concepts or universal truths, allowing readers to interpret and analyze on multiple levels.

Impact and Influence: A literary genius often has a lasting impact on the literary world and beyond. Their works can shape the course of literature, inspire future generations of writers, and even influence societal and cultural conversations.

Diversity of Styles and Themes: Literary geniuses are versatile, able to excel in various genres, styles, and themes. They might write poetry, novels, essays, plays, and more, tackling a wide range of subjects with equal prowess.

Emotional Resonance: The ability to evoke strong emotions in readers is another trait of literary genius. Their words have the power to make readers laugh, cry, reflect, and experience a myriad of emotions.

Timelessness: Works of literary genius often remain relevant and meaningful across generations. Their insights into the human condition and universal themes ensure that their writings continue to be appreciated and studied over time.

Continual Exploration: Literary geniuses often explore various aspects of life, society, and human nature throughout their body of work. They show a willingness to tackle complex and difficult subjects, continuously pushing themselves to expand their creative boundaries.

>>22361242
fuck off chatgpt. Nobody cares about the slop you paste together from click-bait articles and blogs written by unemployed MFAs.

>>22356182
Its nice to see that people with talent still visit this board.

>>22361353
That’s very kind. Thank you.

>>22354784
The Godfather was written by a merely talented writer. The movie was directed by man of genius.

>>22356284
Perhaps you don't consider short-stories to be a proper art-form like poetry, plays or novels?. Chekov's The Black Monk is masterful.

>>22356182
Your metaphor is either built on ignorance pandering to a readership you believe more stupid than you, you did not play the chord well to use your metaphor.

The perfect fifth is an interval, not a chord and we don't really know what the ancient Greeks thought about it beyond a few individuals. We don't know if any musicians or composers gave a damn about what people like Pythagoras had to say on the subject of music and we only have a vague idea how their instruments were actually played and tuned. We don't even know if they used Pythagoras' perfect 5th of 3:2 or something else or if they even used chords. Western music is largely built around those perfect fifths and it is probably the most important interval, certainly the most common. The majority of the chords we hear contain a perfect fifth, the ubiquitous power chord is nothing but. Everyone in the west has an intuitive sense of the fifth even if they are not aware of it and composers exploit that to no end. All these centuries of twiddling our scale trying to get each interval just right and the fifth is the only one that has remained unchanged; sure we temper it a bit for the piano but most of our instruments still play perfect 5ths and the difference is so slight that most can not tell the difference anyways.

You also have a few ambiguities which need to be dealt with. What is plain and banal? Is it the perfect fifth, the technology or the perfect fifth being reproduced by the technology? Sentence structure is not great here and for those who know their theory this is a rather irksome ambiguity that makes it difficult to parse your meaning since you already introduced ambiguities regarding the perfect fifth itself, Either exploit the ambiguity or get rid of it, it needs to be more than a stumbling block.

An A for effort but a C for execution.

>>22354784
>what makes a genius writer
has a sad life, is a terrible person

only then can they embroil themselves into their world of ideas for long enough to make it good

>>22362013
Sorry to burden and bother such a superior intellect.

>>22362013
His post was perfect. It illustrated what OP asked for with a simple metaphor. You, in contrast, droned about something that was circumstantial at best. Pedantry is not a virtue.

>>22361746
Oh, don't get me wrong. I love short story collections, mainly for the fact i needn't worry about buying an enormous book I didn't like, instead i just flip to another of the stories.
Chekhov really has stood out to me as an expert in them; his range of styles and moods is impressive. From lighthearted fun to introspective case studies of human behavior, he does well in both of these, which is something not many achieve. However, the short story as a medium doesn't get nearly as much "prestige" in literary circles, almost always shadowed by the novel and even plays.
My favourites by him are Enemies and The Grasshopper. The characters feel so realistic imo

>>22362691
>>22362800
That anon at least cared enough to put some effort into his response and share his knowledge to help someone improve, gives me some hope that /lit/ is not completely dead.
>His post was perfect.
I think he explained fairly well why it is not perfect and even suggested how remedy it while sticking to the metaphor.

>>22354784
Talent hits targets nobody else can hit whereas genius hits targets nobody else can see.

>>22354784
Being dead for 50 years.

>>22362914
He didn’t give a shit and solely wanted to feel superior by writing about things that were beside the point, anon.

>>22362914
A for effort I guess

>>22363987
you get an f for being a faggot

>>22364018
My wife and children disagree.

>>22354864
Frogposters are geniuses

>>22354784
Something that articulately validates my personal beliefs and prejudices.

>>22362914
I try but it generally seems pointless.
>>22363894
If I wanted to feel superior I would not have bothered to explain anything or even bothered to reply. The effort deserved more than a (You).

>>22366188
>look at me and my effort

>>22354784

Genius.

exceptional originality, full stop

such minds seem to always possess a multitude of dazzling capabilities, tremendous memories, gifts of language learning... minds that work extremely fast on several levels at once, always, and are persistently energized and constantly active from a very young age.

I was just reading a bit from the Education of Henry Adams describing a dinner party in which the poet Swinburne amazed all by reciting entire plays of Shakespeare and poems of Villon in French. His mind and thoughts amazed all present who afterwards unanimously agreed they had just been in the presence of genius

I have witnessed musical genius and it had this nature of otherworldly surprise, where a person demonstrates several capabilities which each excel what you imagined a human lifetime capable of acheiving.

It is real, ferocious and godlike. We stopped worshipping these men and now the cities are becoming black wastelands subject to oligarchic corruption.

genius has no force at all when the population is so stupid it cannot distinguish great men from complete idiots

>>22354784
One makes you forget you're reading for the duration, the other is noticeably not transparent in the narrative to the detriment of verisimilitude.