/lit/ - Literature

>>4011636
yes
he and rabelais

Maybe, but there's alos Proust to consider

Disregarding Madame Bovary's popularity, is Sentimental Education his magnum opus?

>>4011636
But muh Baudelaire

>>4011665
but muh Mallarmé

>>4011636
But you're wrong, that's not a picture of Stendhal, OP.

France had literature before the 19th century you know

That's not Dumas

>>4011696
And why would it be?

>>4011696
Which Dumas?

>>4011682
False. All literature starts and ends with Flaubert.

>>4011718
>/lit/ - Flaubert

>>4011718
>All literature starts and ends with Flaubert.

Is Flaubby wowing in French, or something? I've read Madame Bovary in English and found it little better than some dry melodrama not really worthy of any note.

>>4011664
I believe it is. Kafka and Proust agree.

>>4011726
His prose in french is perfection. He loses more in translation than does Proust.

>>4011726

>>4011756
>His prose in french is perfection
This. In terms of prose, there is no better French writer.

Flaubert - Great form, bland content

>>4011784
>>4011764
>>4011756
So he's like Henry James then?

>>4011789
Henry James reads like a Cosmo magazine. Very girly stuff.
>>4011784
I don't think the content is bland. Sentimental Education is the story of my life. Maybe he writes about bland people. I bet you're reading him in english.

My condolences.

>>4011798
I am reading him in portuguese. Madame Bovary was boring as fuck

For those bros who know French well enough to read and speak it, how long did it take you to become proficient?

That's not Zola

>>4012236
What to you mean by speak it? Enough to ask where the swimming pool is, or conduct debates in hermeneutics?

>Flaubert
>greatest French author

>>4012258
A challenger appears

>>4012258

>>4012265

>>4012267

>>4012267
Who doesn't like lesbians and hawthorns?

lautreamont

>>4012269
I like Celine, but come on. Best author in the french language?

>>4012277
think that was just a reaction image

>>4012277
Let's say best 20th century French author.

>>4012283
Pardon moi?

>>4012283
That would contradict your first post, unless you didn't really mean that. People forget sometimes that Proust is 20th century it seems.

My vote would be probably be Molière, and my personal softspot would be for Huysmans.

>>4012293
>implying pic related isn't superior

>>4012293
>>4012300
Neither of these two are French.

>>4012297
I'm just tossing great authors, not taking any important decisions on my favourite French author.

Also, here's one of my 'softspots'.

>>4012303
Oh sorry, I thought Ionesco published his plays in French. My mistake. La Cantatrice Chauve must be some kind of old English for "The Bald Soprano".

>>4012305
Is it bad to admit I've never heard of him? seems interesting from a quick wiki search though.

>>4012303
You might want to check that on wikipedia m80 unless you want to get into a semantic shitfest of
>define french
>define author

>>4012312
Although kind of well known in French-speaking countries due to his novel "La Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle" being considered as one of if not the first French romantic novel, he remains pretty unknown. It's a shame, since his works are pure genius. He's mostly known for this novel, which requires some knowledge of its historical context to be understood (we're the grandsons of the revolution, sons of the napoleonian wars, without a future, etc), thus being less accessible than your average Hugo or Flaubert.

>>4012321
Cool, I wrote down that and Lorenzaccio on my to-read list. By the way, do you plan on posting here often now?

>>4012337
I might. Since I'll take a break from drinking for a while, I can read again more often.

>>4012347
Ha, why are you taking a break from drinking?

>>4012352
I had some issues with the constabulary forces and felt that it was kind of fucking up my body.

>>4012268
Love this dude so much, and definitely the name I'd drop to try and get across what I like in writing in general.

Still... greatest? I'd go with the Balzac - stupendous body of work (reading in translation mind, so maybe it's the ideas more than the prose I'm weighing up).

>>4012509
how did it take this long for balzac to come up?

>>4012509
> my vote goes to balzac
> he wrote a lot

>>4012558
Well once you reach a certain level of brilliance there's no real distinguisher other than quantity or influence (is Pere Goriot better than RednBlack better than Bovary? fuck knows). Comparing influence gets impossible, so what's left? The guy who produced more classics.

Obligatory Proust upvote.

Also George Perec is a badass.

>>4012928
>upvote

We don't really do that here. You can just say that you like Proust. Maybe provide an explanation as to why.

I'm half way through swann's way at the moment. My god the feels, those moments when he creates such frisson and seems to be staring into my soul.

>no Bataille

>>4011784
I'm sorry, but do you even read ?

>>4013140
Bataille is cool, but the best? Fuck outta here.

All this thread has done is remind me how fucking boss French lit is. Not sure anyone fucks with them 19th century onward.

>>4013229
Walt Whitman? Tolstoj?

>>4013239
Russian lit comes close, but the French have their poets as well. There are amazing English and German poets from that period on, but their literature isn't as good as the French.

Germans take philosophy, though.

>>4011636

toppest of lel's

gtfo

In heaven:

The poets are French
The philosophers are German
The novelists are Russian

In hell:

The poets are Russian
The philosophers are French
The novelists are German

>>4013307
B-but muh post-structuralism

>>4013277
>Not addressing Whitman

"No Western poet, in the past century and a half, not even Browning or Leopardi or Baudelaire, overshadows Walt Whitman or Emily Dickinson. [...] These six major poems, Song of Myself and the five lesser but still extraordinary meditations, are what matter most in Whitman. To find their aesthetic equivalent in the West one must go back to Goethe, Blake, Wordsworth, Holderlin, Shelley, and Keats. Nothing in the second half of the nineteenth century or in our now almost completed century matches Whitman's work in direct power and sublimity, except perhaps for Dickinson."- Bloomy

>>4013313
post-structuralism has nothing on the legions of GOAT German philosophers. Germany is unmatched in her ability to churn out top-tier philosophers.

>>4013317
>No Western poet, in the past century and a half, not even Browning or Leopardi or Baudelaire, overshadows Walt Whitman or Emily Dickinson
top lek

>>4013327
I celebrate myself
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease . . . . observing a spear of summer grass.

i read somewhere that nabokov thought madame bovary was a masterpiece but sentimental education was "a poor novel"

lol what was that guy's problem ?

>>4013378
Never listen to a word Nabokov said outside of his literary work.

>>4013318
Germany doesn't have a gender. And if it did, it'd be a woman?

>>4013576
Were it to be a woman, it would be a monstrous one.

>>4013378
He probably hates Sentimental Education because it contains references to history and politics.

I'll remind you that Joyce liked to brag that he had read everything Flaubert have ever written.

>>4013307
Agreed.

>>4013608
>but muh ivory tower

>>4012267
Who the fuck told you you were getting some psychedelic tripzone?

>>4013576
>

>>4013620
supposed to represent my mind being blown.

>>4013576
It's like the same thing with boats and shit
think of that painting with the french revolution or whichever uprising in 1848 or whatever that was on the coldplay album

>>4012309

He did. I read Rhinoceros in French. He was a French citizen, but Romanian ethnically.

>>4013716
I think he was being sarcastic.

>>4012966

No back to redditing? I think I like this anon.

voltaire or stendhal. flaubert is fucking terrible: tedious, sentimental, sees the woods for the trees, terrible political or social insight.

>>4013222

L'abbe C is one of the most perfect works of fiction I've read, right up there with Heart of Darkness. It haunted me for days, running around in my head like a maze. Plus, he's one of those rare authors who can be fairly avant-garde but still kick your stomach in with feels. The only other authors I've found with that kind of mind-heart balance are Faulkner and William Vollman.

>>4013718

Yeah, maybe I should read the whole post more carefully instead of the first sentence.

Marquis de sade is the greatest french writer, right?

>>4013732
Thank god, someone thinks like I do.
I had to quit reading Madame Bovary, it was so fucking tedious, I almost puked.

Alfred Jarry, made one big piece, and he must be one of the most influential writers.

>>4013772

yeah he's a contender

>>4013766

no, his writing style is actually quite bad. foucault called him "the accountant of ass". the substance is fantastic though

>>4013732
> Flaubert
> sentimental

2/10

Not one mention of Montaigne? It's like you guys only care about fiction

>>4012321
> He's mostly known for this novel

he's mostly famous for his plays now, Lorenzaccio is probably the purest illustration of Hugo's ideas on dramaturgy

>"La Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle" being considered as one of if not the first French romantic novel

who are Rousseau and Chateaubriand
please stop talking out of your ass

>>4014934
it's like /lit/ browsers are only superficially knowledgeable about french literature and namedrop the same 10 writers all the time or something

But Bovary sucked balls

>>4017670
>he's mostly famous for his plays now, Lorenzaccio is probably the purest illustration of Hugo's ideas on dramaturgy

I don't think this is true, but it could be the case where you live, although Lorenzaccio indeed is well known, but not as much as his Confessions.

>please stop talking out of your ass
as one of if not

>>4017717
> it could be the case where you live

I live in France and he's mostly famous for his plays. And for being George Sand's boyfriend.

>>4017733
Damn, no luck mate.

tip : don't talk about french literature on this anonymous imageboard if you haven't read this

>>4012252
pffff... debating hermeneutics in french is the easiest. Seriously though, I was reading philosophy in french after studying maybe a year of french: all the technical words are the same as in english. Now, talking about your daily life, that's where all the vocabulary is different, that's the hard shit.

>>4012297
Proust was a 20th c. man writing 19th c. fanfiction of Parisian society. He's great though.

>>4017695
1. Correspondences
2. Sentimental Education
3. A Simple Heart
4. Bouvard et Pecuchet
5. Temptation of Saint Anthony
6. Salammbo
7. Madame Bovary

>>4018680
Temptation of St. Anthony was weird as fuck.

>>4018581
That's a great description. Lost you on the second part. Fantastic writer (that is, assembler of words, nothing more), but eh on everything else.

>>4018728
so pleb it hurts

>>4018737
why are french people so annoying

>>4018751
They picked up an alarming pomposity around 1800 and never lost it. Shame really.

>>4018737
See >>4012267

"I cried cause mommy wouldn't tuck me in [300 pages about a single dinner party and then walking on some grass], then Swann is a guy, nice, he cared about this girl [300 pages of him knocking on her window with a cane, still the same sentence, then the narrator does the same thing] then I went on vacation with my grandma [blah blah etc, still same sentence], then this one time, Duc de Guermantes, [rattle on about her hair and shows for 3 pages, still the same sentence though], looked my way and I fainted; then I talked to her friends [800 pages later] turns out they're all pompous, rich, and french: but then I saw some gays [1500 pages about being gay [this is all the same sentence]], then the war kinda happened, but I was still gay, and so is eveyone else; also memory is weird."

I saved you all 3-4000 pages.

>>4018771
There are 'spoilers' in that (if you consider ISOLT a story with a plot) so be 'warned.'

>>4018771
shoes*

Bonsoir, c'est moi

Yeah, its fucking Celine /thread

>>4018771
Swann in love is fucking tedious. The first 200 pages were great though. Does ISOLT get any better?

>>4018771
Did you even read it in French ? It's not about the plot. It's the prose; that bloody prose is so wonderful to read, it's like slowly slipping into the warmest, most comfortable bed ever; the sentences that seemed long and void of sense earlier suddenly flow easily as you advance in the book; every thought of the protagonist is surrendered to you in the most delicate, graceful way, and their manner is so gentle that the most common, boring thought suddenly becomes absolutely magnificient, and you just KNOW what it's all about, and forget you're reading a book; it's like Proust is whispering his words directly into your head and images build themselves on their own.
Seriously dude, I see you bashing Proust all the time all other the board, it makes me sad that his prose didn't do that for you too.

>>4018862
*over

>>4018849

>>4018849
En fait j'encule ta mère avec une bar de fer

>>4018862
The Proustian sentence is a woman, a whore, a greek deity, floating, ethereal, only held in its suprasensible being by its bubbles, its parenthesis, which let it fly through one's mind and dive in one's soul.

>>4018944
barre

>>4018959
sacré bleu

>>4018944
Except that's a terrible description of "the Proustian sentence."

Only worthwhile tripfag was deep & edgy.

Everyone else is at best boring and, at worse, stupid and gay.

>>4018972
>gay as a pejorative

Into the trash with thee.

>>4018972
Damn mate you wouldn't judge me like this, like, on one sentence which I copied off Swann's way fourth cover?

>>4018862
I don't really hate Proust that much, I'm mostly exaggerating. I really like Swann's Way, but in my opinion the novel starts to die down afterwards: even the prose isn't as good. The prose is seriously brilliant, but prose isn't the only thing that matters when talking about the qualities (even the bare aesthetics) of a book.

>>4018858
If you find Swann in Love tedious, you're not going to have much fun... I thought Swann in Love was really great actually, so take this from me.

Then again, try to read the second volume for yourself and see if you like it.

>>4018979

It's a wonder you don't bruise yourself getting dressed, with skin that thin.

>>4018971
>tfw no qt French gf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWRCJhsz5t4

>>4019204
Dude, you're so retarded.

Everyone knows the best volume is Sodom and Gomorrah. Beckett knew it. Proust even admitted to his publisher that it was the most important volume with the best psychology.

But I bet you read it in english.

>>4019251

>with the best psychology

"Homos are really women inside you guys"

regards Proust

>>4011636
Huysmans.

>>4019259
Doesn't neuroscience say something similar?

>>4019259
The best psychology within his series.
>>4019299
And yeah, neuroscience has come to prove nearly everything Proust has said.