/lit/ - Literature

>>22784576
Is that book actually life changing? I have it somewhere in my attic.

>>22784576
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition since 1781 is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Kant.

>>22784590
I think it largely depends on where you’re at in life, especially in regards to faith. Behind the veil of popular misconceptions, Blake was an unbelievable visionary genius, and Frye does a great job at capturing this throughout the text. If you have the time, I’d give it a shot

>>22784576

>>22784609
In the world of German Idealism, I’d say Holderlin is pretty underrated. But I’m partial to the poets, so take it with a grain of salt.

>>22784576
Not a specific book, but the writings and concepts of the Modernists (Eliot, Hulme and especially Pound), as critics or in Pound's case as "translator", have become the single biggest orienting factor for my taste in literature and my understanding of the relationship between art and society. Spengler also helped with this.

>>22784677
fav Eliot essays?

>>22784677
Ditto, Pound is phenomenal.

>>22784576
Blake's prophetic poems confused the fuck out of me, does this book explain them?

>>22784576
Wow, this book made me leave Islam years ago. Feels weird seeing it now.
>>22784758
He explains Blake's design behind the prophetic poems, and the types and tropes of his mythology generally, which would really help you engage with the whole. But nothing besides repeated readings of Blake will take care of your confusion. Blake wrote his poems for a general audience, not Kabbalah-theosophy enthusiasts.

>>22784758
Yes, the latter half is purely concerned with the prophetic works.

The first few chapters set the stage by defining the various aspects of Blake’s philosophy, which is ultimately necessary for understanding the symbols Blake employs (or creates, perhaps). I firmly believe Frye is the best introduction if you want to seriously get into Blake.

>>22784576
I plan on reading that along side my complete blake collection. Im glad to see its getting praise. I kinda just picked it up as a companion book on a whim. Are there any other books like this one but for other poets? I feel like I've seen one for Dante and I think you could probably count Yeats' qusi-mystic text as one for his work.

>>22784645
Absolutely cringe, Ted is absolute proof that you just have to sound intelligent and people will blindly worship you
Your anti tech revolution will never happen, kill yourself

>>22784576

>>22784685
I'm really just referring to his most well-known concepts and areas of interest, associated with the "The Metaphysical Poets" (with honorable mention to the Dryden and Marvell essays) and TatIT, I haven't read him fully at all. I read and enjoyed "Imperfect Critics" and his essay on Byron just because I found the topics interesting at the time, I can't imagine they're necessarily among his best works but I still learned a lot from him just because his ideas and knowledge shine through even in incidental pieces. I remember thinking "Hamlet and His Problems" was overly analytical and perhaps excessively contrarian, but I read it a long time ago so I might feel differently if I read it again.

The main value I'm talking about is simply that of being able to see with the eyes of a different age.

>>22784702
For all his flaws and eccentricities as a poet, he's been absolutely priceless to me simply by spurring me to put in the effort to be able to fully appreciate the value of natural/primitive/ancient purity in poetry. Personally I believe that that appreciation is the greatest gift a reader can be given.

If I was pressed to give a direct answer to OP question, it would definitely be picrel.

Pic rel is what really got me into literary criticism, and more deeply into the Russian canon. Probably a bit overplayed at this point but Bakhtin's entire corpus is really quite interesting. Alongside the stuff >>22784677 mentioned (especially Tradition and the Individual Talent) it's what inspired me to take my own crack at writing fiction.

>>22784576

>>22784857
>Carnivalistic categories are not "abstract thoughts about equality and freedom, the interrelatedness of all things or the unity of opposites... they are concretely sensuous ritual-pageant "thoughts" experienced and played out in the form of life itself
Wow, this is extremely similar to Eliot's ideas in The Metaphysical Poets, that's really cool.
>"thoughts" that had coalesced and survived for thousands of years among the broadest masses of European mankind",[33] and therein lies the source of their power in literary forms.
Perfect. I'm not sure if all his ideas resonate with me yet but I will spend more time with him on the strength of this, these understandings are incredibly important.

I'm glad you feel empowered to write, personally I feel somewhat less so the more I understand the importance of cultural context, but I do think some writers have made interesting inroads on that front.

>>22784824
Wow you surely convinced me

>>22784824
he had 145+ iq and was a math whiz, youngest professor at Berkley, and you, who are you exactly?

>>22784824
Cope faggot, I've read thousands of books regarding politics, histories and humanities and what Ted wrote is better than anything I've ever read. What book do you read (if you can read lol) you monkey?

>>22784824
Retard

>>22784609
Keep shilling that book, we are still not reading it

>>22785182
>>22785349
>>22785563
>>22785565
Coping anprim faggots, there will NEVER be an anti-tech revolution
>b-but he wuz a profesor
An extremely shitty one according to all sources

>>22785657
Yea there will, we shall reclaim the earth

>>22785687
You will just end up the same as the luddites
Enjoy dying for another man’s dream

>>22785657
Keep saying "it won't happen because i said so" instead of refuting any of his arguments retard

Blake is a TITAN

Frye is the Key, Blake is too far ahead for us to reach unaided

Awesome book, awesome scholar, awesome subject

Blake has been totally life changing for me as well. He has liberated my mind in many ways.

>>22785945
What arguments you dumb faggot? His arguments basically boil down to “well revolution is only impossible because they think it’s impossible :(” which is infantile logic.

>>22784576
>>22785957
Sounds like kino

>>22785975
Bait

>>22785982
It is pure kino. Ignore the Ted discourse shitting up this thread. Blake is the real deal

>>22784576
>>22786037
Should I read Blake before or after reading Frye (or both)?

>>22786093
I would read Blake’s earlier works before starting, just to get a feel for his subtlety. Blake doesn’t hold your hand in the later prophecies, so if you want to read those (which you should, although most “readers” of Blake will not) I would highly recommend reading Frye first. Not to say that you wouldn’t get anything out of a blind reading, but you’d probably be wasting your time without the proper context.

>>22784824
lowest iq post of the day

>>22786256
t. Seething anprim
At most ted’s followers will be a minor nuisance while the big boys actually make change in the world

>>22784576
It’s either this or Assyrian Conquest Stelae translations.
There exist no other correct answers for such a question.

>>22784636
I read a bit. Great so far. Not sure if I would say life-changing, but very good. Thank you for the recommend my friend.

Was the Romantic age the peak of humanity?

>>22786374
I think so, but it’s important to remember that Blake predates all of them.

>>22786398
I have read a bit of Blake, I definitely will read more once Im done with Frye. I personally like Rousseau as my favorite Romantic era

>>22784609
nah nigga fuck Kant

>>22784814
>Yeats' qusi-mystic text as one for his work
check out Yeats the Initiate by Kathleen Raine
shes far from the mainstream of yeats criticism, in that she actualy takes magic and the supernatural seriously. Yeats went to seances, hung out with ghosts, practiced magic all his life... "the mystical life is the center of all that I do and write" he says, so he doesnt respond too well to normie literary criticism.
blake is similar imo and kathleen raine is incidentally also a very impressive blake scholar. her book blake and tradition is maybe the most comprehensive study of the pholosophical, mythological, occult .etc. sources for blakes work.

it makes me sad how many literary studies seem to be just critical works, without much reverence or enthusiasm about the imaginative power of literature.

>>22784576
OP your question is very thought provoking. i dont know who i would be without the books I have read. I dont know who I am at all really... yheres so many books that have expanded my intelectual horizons and shown the way to new places in my inner world
keats ode on melancholy is very important to me and i think anyone with a feeling for poetry should read it (if they havent already.

>>22784576
Pic related are my five big literary turning points over the last decade

>>22785158
This is the most based post in this whole thread

this book was the first step that helped me research into the truth about the fear based hell and how it don't exist. universal reconciliation just makes more sense than what most hellfire preachers bash out p.s. this documentary may help https://youtu.be/b-09mmIzgfA?si=rQuvRTDPaL-20c8H

It’s not philosophy, but my life wasn’t as good until I read this book and started practicing it.

So it changed my life for the better.

>>22786761
>it makes me sad how many literary studies seem to be just critical works, without much reverence or enthusiasm about the imaginative power of literature.
Agreed. That was the exact spirit in which I asked the question. To try to avoid the flaccid reductive criticality for something more inspiring.
>check out Yeats the Initiate by Kathleen Raine shes far from the mainstream of yeats criticism, in that she actualy takes magic and the supernatural seriously.
I actually did have this in my sights but was a bit put off by the reviews which made it sound like a stiff historic account but if its more like what you say I'm going to add it back into mu reading list. It would be cool to check it against his mystical journals and my own feeling from his poems. Thanks for the rec.

>>22787164
Have you achieved gnosis yet?

>>22787852
I realized that was a false path.

>>22784576

>>22784824
Wow you're so smart anon, also what iPhone do you have?

>>22785657
The idiot's veto
>no I won't talk about it it's stupid

>>22787760
On second thought I realized I was thinking of a completely different book that I had been looking at. pic related is the one who's reviews put me off. Im even more excited by the prospect of your rec being a new discovery.

>>22784576
I tried reading that one and got bored quickly and barely understood shit. Does it truly explain every problem known to man?

>>22784576
I wish I had something better but I haven't read much nonfiction.

>>22784909
Kek

>>22784576
read ye olde englishe version if you can (includes lives of Br Juniper and Br Giles)
I’m Catholic because of this book, answered prayer etc.

>>22784824
based tedhater. ted’s the psued detector. he sounds amazing but if you sit down and think about him for more than ten minutes you realize he’s full of shit

>>22788215
How the fuck does this change your life?

>>22786093
Anything that is deep Abrahamic or Semitic symbology I skip.

>>22789771
How, exactly? I don't think anyone who wasn't already agreeable to the book's thesis and the mystical/esoteric in general would ever read it.

>>22789619
>saying this about Blake
very retarded take, your edgelord ass would probably love The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

same hole

>>22786037
Ok you piqued my interest, what is Blake all about?

>>22789619
The Old and New Testaments are the Great Code of Art.
If Morality was Christianity, Socrates would be the savior.
The Classics! it is the Classics, and not Goths nor Monks, that desolate Europe with wars.

>>22784590
>>22784609
>>22784645
>>22789619
>>22789771
>>22789818
>>22789867
>>22789873
>>22789551
>>22789055
>>22788215
>>22785565
>>22785657
>>22785182
>>22785349
>>22785158
>>22784909
>>22784857
>>22784846
>>22784840
>>22784779
>>22784758
>>22784609
>>22784636
>>22784590

SACRED TRUTH HAS PRONOUNCED THAT GREECE AND ROME, AS BABYLON AND EGYPT, SO FAR FROM BEING PARENTS OF ARTS AND SCIENCES AS THEY PRETEND, WERE DESTROYERS OF ALL ART. HOMER, VIRGIL AND OVID CONFIRM THIS OPINION, AND MAKE US REVERENCE THE WORD OF GOD, THE ONLY LIGHT OF ANTIQUITY THAT REMAINS UNPERVERTED BY WAR. VIRGIL IN THE ÆNEID, BOOK VI, LINE 848, SAYS ‘LET OTHERS STUDY ART: ROME HAS SOMEWHAT BETTER TO DO, NAMELY WAR AND DOMINION’.

ROME AND GREECE SWEPT ART INTO THEIR MAW AND DESTROYED IT
A WARLIKE STATE NEVER CAN PRODUCE ART.
IT WILL ROB AND PLUNDER AND ACCUMULATE INTO ONE PLACE, AND TRANSLATE AND COPY AND BUY AND SELL AND CRITICIZE, BUT NOT MAKE.
GRECIAN IS MATHEMATIC FORM: GOTHIC IS LIVING FORM.
MATHEMATIC FORM IS ETERNAL IN THE REASONING MEMORY: LIVING FORM IS ETERNAL EXISTENCE.

HE NEVER CAN BE A FRIEND TO THE HUMAN RACE WHO IS THE PREACHER OF NATURAL MORALITY OR NATURAL RELIGION; HE IS A FLATTERER WHO MEANS TO BETRAY, TO PERPETUATE TYRANT PRIDE AND THE LAWS OF THAT BABYLON WHICH, HE FORESEES, SHALL SHORTLY BE DESTROYED WITH THE SPIRITUAL AND NOT THE NATURAL SWORD. HE IS IN THE STATE NAMED RAHAB; WHICH STATE MUST BE PUT OFF BEFORE HE CAN BE THE FRIEND OF MAN.
YOU, O DEISTS! PROFESS YOURSELVES THE ENEMIES OF CHRISTIANITY, AND YOU ARE SO: YOU ARE ALSO THE ENEMIES OF THE HUMAN RACE AND OF UNIVERSAL NATURE. MAN IS BORN A SPECTRE, OR SATAN, AND IS ALTOGETHER AN EVIL, AND REQUIRES A NEW SELFHOOD CONTINUALLY, AND MUST CONTINUALLY BE CHANGED INTO HIS DIRECT CONTRARY. BUT YOUR GREEK PHILOSOPHY, WHICH IS A REMNANT OF DRUIDISM, TEACHES THAT MAN IS RIGHTEOUS IN HIS VEGETATED SPECTRE—AN OPINION OF FATAL AND ACCURSED CONSEQUENCE TO MAN, AS THE ANCIENTS SAW PLAINLY BY REVELATION, TO THE ENTIRE ABROGATION OF EXPERIMENTAL THEORY; AND MANY BELIEVED WHAT THEY SAW, AND PROPHESIED OF JESUS.
MAN MUST AND WILL HAVE SOME RELIGION; IF HE HAS NOT THE RELIGION OF JESUS, HE WILL HAVE THE RELIGION OF SATAN, AND WILL ERECT THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN, CALLING THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD ‘GOD’, AND DESTROYING ALL WHO DO NOT WORSHIP SATAN UNDER THE NAME OF GOD. WILL ANY ONE SAY: ‘WHERE ARE THOSE WHO WORSHIP SATAN UNDER THE NAME OF GOD?’ WHERE ARE THEY? LISTEN! EVERY RELIGION THAT PREACHES VENGEANCE FOR SIN IS THE RELIGION OF THE ENEMY AND AVENGER, AND NOT OF THE FORGIVER OF SIN, AND THEIR GOD IS SATAN, NAMED BY THE DIVINE NAME. YOUR RELIGION, O DEISTS! DEISM IS THE WORSHIP OF THE GOD OF THIS WORLD BY THE MEANS OF WHAT YOU CALL NATURAL RELIGION AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, AND OF NATURAL MORALITY OR SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS, THE SELFISH VIRTUES OF THE NATURAL HEART. THIS WAS THE RELIGION OF THE PHARISEES WHO MURDERED JESUS. DEISM IS THE SAME, AND ENDS IN THE SAME

>>22789916
Blake looks like a baki character

>>22784576
what does this image truly mean anons

>>22789619
Enjoy skipping basically everything of interest in the Western canon

>>22789539
He also y'know....sent bombs to random people...

Not the most indicative behavior of a non-batshit crazy brain

>>22784576
Isn't this an episode of The X-Files?

>>22784576
OP mind telling me what you got out of this? I downloaded it the same day you posted this thread and I don't understand anything so far

>>22790126
How far into it are you? I admittedly had to reread sections over and over before understanding them, and I think that it’s really the only way to read the book and get something out of it (Frye forces you to understand each aspect of Blake fully, and doesn’t wait for you to catch up before moving onto the next thing).

If the intro on Locke isn’t making any sense, I’d recommend skipping to the chapter “Beyond Good and Evil”. Picrel is the second paragraph of the chapter, and perhaps the most succinct in the entire book. It is followed by this quote from Blake himself:

>But as I understand it Vice is a negative… Accident is the omission of act in self and the hindering of act in another; this is Vice, but all Act is Virtue. To hinder another is not an act; it is the contrary; it is a restraint on action both in ourselves and in the person hindered, for he who hinders another omits his own duty at the same time. Murder is hindering another. Theft is hindering another. Backbiting, undermining, circumventing, and whatever is negative is Vice.

Mull this over, and then continue on in the chapter before returning to the previous ones.

>>22790121
What's your point, faggot? Life is cheap. Also they weren't random.

Materialist technologists have no right to complain about being murdered. What's one cog compared to another?

>>22790121
It's always coming down to strawmaning with you lot. If he preached and did act, you would call him a coward who did not subscribe to his own belief and so not worth listening to. When he actually followed through you call him a lunatic not worth listening to.

>>22784590
Yes.

>>22784758
Yes.

>>22790164
Interesting. Thanks.

>>22789916
19th Century schizoposting
>>22789924
kekek I've always thought that Baki art looks like Blake's

>>22789551
Very briefly albeit. I kind of just had a fad of making weird sophistic connections between various unseemly things.