/lit/ - Literature

>>4168757

It was a beautiful book.

That being said, if I have to listen to another actor freak out because I said Macbeth, I will kill everyone who has ever acted.

Burton would like a word with you

>>4168834
>

Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked newborn babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on th' other.


>so FUCKING good omfg

>>4168757
>Writes "tragedies"
>Plot spans more than one day; at times several days

And they call this drama? Literature? Weep, citizens, for the state of modern theatre.

>>4168858
Stars, hide your fires:
Let not light see my black and deep desires:
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

>implying this isn't gold

>>4168874
why does that matter

>>4168874
thats why its considered fiction

>>4168874
Nobody cares, Aristotle.

>>4168874
shutup punk nerd

reading macbeth in my senior year of high school lit class was when i was like "damn, shakespeare a thug"

>>4169067

I've always thought that Shakespeare would resonate with minorities and marginalized communities, as his works often addressed segments and concerns of the population that, oftentimes, were never considered in the public light. 12th Night and Othello are particularly good examples of this.

>>4169035
I've always thought that bit of Poetics was funny. Maybe it's just my modernist bias, but keeping a plot to one day (1 evening in particular, if I remember correctly) just seems so arbitrary and restrictive.

>>4169076
im white middle class i was just appropriating urban slang but really in this postmodern world who cares?? most white ppl i know listen to rap i dont think it matters...idk why whites are criticized for liking rap when blacks can like rock with no repurcussions...its that white guilt shit and the blacks also perpetuate it cause they bitter at whitey.....but fuck it lets all be happy together and share culture...one world order....internet bridging the gap...surrender your brain to the buzzing mass of web...

>>4169076
>12th Night and Othello are particularly good examples of this.
>Othello
It wasn't 'til the third or fourth time I read it that I realized that Iago basically gets Othello to internalize his own racist stereotypes. And then the play both became much better in my eyes and much, much more depressing—he goes from a noble, all-around cool dude to a savage, and in his last speech compares himself to a fucking DOG.

>I've always thought that bit of Poetics was funny. Maybe it's just my modernist bias, but keeping a plot to one day (1 evening in particular, if I remember correctly) just seems so arbitrary and restrictive.
And he also says that plays are better because they need less time to make their effect; I think both Plato and Aristotle undervalued the ability of fiction to be complex, thinky stuff rather than just emotional.

>implying The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus wasn't better

Shakespeare just had more shit. It's too bad Marlowe got stabbed in the eye because I would have loved to see who came out on top in the end.

>>4169085
but blacks invented rock, dude

>>4169089
This post really does a great job illuminating why classics are read and re-read so often. They never cease to have a dialogue with the present.

>>4169089
>I think both Plato and Aristotle undervalued the ability of fiction to be complex, thinky stuff rather than just emotional.

Well you can't really blame them with the whole birth of the modern self thing that happened centuries after their death.

>>4169076
You have to remember that Aristotle was talking practically about plays that had to be preformed publicly, without electronic amplification, to a general populace.

>>4169089

>It wasn't 'til the third or fourth time I read it that I realized that Iago basically gets Othello to internalize his own racist stereotypes. And then the play both became much better in my eyes and much, much more depressing—he goes from a noble, all-around cool dude to a savage, and in his last speech compares himself to a fucking DOG.

This, so much. Except I think it's more that Othello realizes, on some level, that to be accepted by Desdemona, his friends and army he had to act more white than any of them even acted. But yeah, first time I read Othello I wasn't crazy about it, but going back and realizing this it was a whole different experience.

>>4169085
>this is how crackers actually think

>>4169089
>thinky stuff
why aren't you published yet

The Macbeth we have today was heavily edited posthumously.

The play Shakespeare wrote wasn't as tight and short.

Good for you, OP.

a)

The Metaphorical Hability of Shakespeare


You know, the most striking feature in Shakespeare were not his ideas or his philosophy: regarding these he was completely non-original; his ideas just echoed the long established wisdom and common sense of the common people. He never created any radical and original new ideas: he was quite simplistic in this regard.

The most important characteristic of Shakespeare, what separates him from all other writers (which puts him sitting alone at the top of the mountain while even others literary genius may already be in the snowy zone, but still just climbing its edges) is his verbal inventiveness, especially his ability with metaphor (being metaphor the true meat, marrow and muscle of poetry). Aristotle said in The Poetics that: “the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.”, and Shakespeare was by far the greatest master of metaphor that ever lived.

>>4170070

b)

His language is the most inventive, beautiful and awe-inspiring in the world. Hi is, by far, the greatest poet of all time. I have read almost all of the English poets, and of the poets of my native language (Portuguese), as well as Spanish poets. I have read the Italians (Leopardi, Dante), the French (I’m a Rimbaud fan), the Germans (Goethe, Heine, Schiller, Hölderin), the Greeks (Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Sappho, Anacreon, Alcman, Pindar), the Latin (Virgil, Horace, Lucretius, Ovid), the Russians…hell, I have even read the Japanese (Ono no Komachi, Basho, Hitomaro, the folk songs of the kojiki and Man’yoshu), the Chinese (Li Bai and Du Fu) and the Indian (Kalidasa, Tagore, the ancient epics), always searching for the same metaphorical feast and imagistic orgy of Shakespeare’s work, but in vain: nobody has ever done the same with words. Nabokov is right when he says that “The verbal poetical texture of Shakespeare is the greatest the world has known, and is immensely superior to the structure of his plays as plays” and Stephe Booth: “Shakespeare is our most underrated poet. It should not be necessary to say that, but it is. We generally acknowledge Shakespeare’s poetic superiority to other candidates for greatest poet in English, but doing that is comparable to saying that King Kong is bigger than other monkeys. The difference between Shakespeare’s abilities with language and those even of Milton, Chaucer, or Ben Jonson is immense.”. This guy is the greatest master of language of all human history.

>>4170074

c)

Other great characteristic of Shakespeare was his ability to create several different characters, most of them totally alien to his personal experience. There was also his apparent lack of any particular philosophical belief and credo: he expresses several different opinions about life according to the characters who spoke the words or the atmosphere of the play. Most writers write they works trying to convey some general idea or moral (and its no shock to perceive that this idea or moral is most of the time their own vision about the world), but Shakespeare didn’t seem to care about that: he was like a chameleon, changing the colors of his mind according to the body which he impregnated at the moment. He had the poetic character that was described by Keats several years before:

>>4170078

d)

>As to the poetical Character itself (I mean that sort of which, if I am any thing, I am a Member; that sort distinguished from the wordsworthian or egotistical sublime; which is a thing per se and stands alone) it is not itself - it has no self - it is every thing and nothing - It has no character - it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated - It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation. A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity - he is continually in for - and filling some other Body - The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute - the poet has none; no identity - he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's Creatures. If then he has no self, and if I am a Poet, where is the Wonder that I should say I would write no more? Might I not at that very instant have been cogitating on the Characters of Saturn and Ops? It is a wretched thing to confess; but is a very fact that not one word I ever utter can be taken for granted as an opinion growing out of my identical nature - how can it, when I have no nature? When I am in a room with People if I ever am free from speculating on creations of my own brain, then not myself goes home to myself: but the identity of every one in the room begins so to press upon me that I am in a very little time annihilated - not only among Men; it would be the same in a Nursery of children

>>4170082

e)

But there also must be noted that Shakespeare characters are always artificial; they don’t sound like normal people: they are colossal, as if their brains were on steroids. Shakespeare excelled in language, and did not mind sacrificing the verisimilitude and reality in favor of the verbal beauty. If an idea grabbed his mind in the middle of a speech and scene, he was determinate to use that idea, to exhibit that metaphor, even if it was not relevant to the plot or faithful to the character that was speaking, and only for the pleasure and pride of modeling beauty in verses. No one ever spoke like Shakespeare's characters: the human race that he modeled is artificial in this respect: they are as human beings who had took steroids for the mind, who had the brain areas related to language and verbal thinking augmented by some divine touch. Shakespeare makes all humans (even mediocre ones) speak as Gods, as D. H. Lawrence said:

“When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder
That such trivial people should muse and thunder
In such lovely language.”

It even seems that some kind of strange metaphorical-parasite have invaded Shakespeare’s brain, laid a multitude of eggs on his crumbs and usurped the synapses of his neurons, in a way that he only could think thorough images, trough metaphor and similes: every fiber and streamer of thought at birth is already mounted by an image, that rides it. In his plays one metaphor tread on the heels of another who has just broke out of its shell, one simile breaths on the neck of another simile that has just been born.
Moreover, Shakespeare accepted any plots, no matter how fantastical and bizarre, provided they were interesting. He did not care to kill important characters without any scruple, and sure he did not bother to set his stories anywhere in the world and at any time in history, without even analyzing the customs of other peoples or epochs: the important thing was to captivate the attention of public (and finding nice opportunities to forge brilliant metaphors and similes)

>>4170084

f)

Well, as a Coda to this review about Shakespeare, let me talk briefly about his most beautiful metaphorical techniques: the fusion of abstract and concrete language.

The marriage of concrete and abstract language is one of the most powerful tools of a poetical arsenal. Want an example? If concrete and abstract language should not be mixed many of the most glorious passages of Shakespeare (better that almoust anything else in recorded literature) would not exist, such as:

that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked newborn babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.

(here, for example, Pity is an abstraction, but is connected with the concrete image of a babe)

Or

By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap
To pluck bright honor from the pale-faced moon,
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,
Where fathom line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drownèd honor by the locks,
So he that doth redeem her thence might wear
Without corrival all her dignities.
But out upon this half-faced fellowship!

(here the most string passage is that of honor being plucked by its locks; well, Honor is an abstraction, and it certainly had no locks and cant drown. But this passage is better than anything that Pound ever wrote).

THE END :)

>>4170074
>This guy is the greatest master of language of all human history.
I don't know if I'm supposed to be laughing or crying at this crap.

>>4170078
>changing the colors of his mind according to the body which he impregnated at the moment
"Inhabited" you mean.

If you've read Homer in the original greek, you'd know Shakespeare isn't the best.

>>4170089

You have every right to disagree, but present evidence and arguments. I am happy to be contradicted, since often the criticism I receive make me grow as a person :)

>>4170093


It was just an expression; the word you suggested is actually better.

>>4170094

Shakespeare Metaphor's, IMO, are far more varied and complex.

See you later guys. Going to the gym now.

>>4170105
>but present evidence and arguments
You're making the positive claim here. You're foaming at the mouth that Shakespeare is the absolute best because he's supremely super without any argumentation whatsoever outside of random quotations.

Nabokov thought Shakespeare was amazing? Well, Tolstoy thought Shakespeare was shit. What now?

Hamlet is a failure. Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra are his best.

Othello is a nigger.

>>4170126

>T.S. Eliot detected

>>4169095
>They never cease to have a dialogue with the present.

Or rather show how little society really 'advances' the hypocrisy of criticising earlier ages.

Reading through The Story of Civilisation and you get the same impression. Same people, different time periods, all the same emotions, crimes, joys, pleasures, and pursuits. Technology might change but people fundamentally haven't advanced all that much.

>>4170109
>Well, Tolstoy thought Shakespeare was shit. What now?

a)

Let’s talk about Tolstoy’s hate for Shakespeare.

The problem with Tolstoy and Shakespeare is the huge difference between these two writers:

>>4170084
>Shakespeare excelled in language, and did not mind sacrificing the verisimilitude and reality in favor of the verbal beauty. If an idea grabbed his mind in the middle of a speech and scene, he was determinate to use that idea, to exhibit that metaphor, even if it was not relevant to the plot or faithful to the character that was speaking, and only for the pleasure and pride of modeling beauty in verses. No one ever spoke like Shakespeare's characters: the human race that he modeled is artificial in this respect: they are as human beings who had took steroids for the mind, who had the brain areas related to language and verbal thinking augmented by some divine touch. Shakespeare makes all humans (even mediocre ones) speak as Gods, as D. H. Lawrence said:

>“When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder
>That such trivial people should muse and thunder
>In such lovely language.”

>It even seems that some kind of strange metaphorical-parasite have invaded Shakespeare’s brain, laid a multitude of eggs on his crumbs and usurped the synapses of his neurons, in a way that he only could think thorough images, trough metaphor and similes: every fiber and streamer of thought at birth is already mounted by an image, that rides it. In his plays one metaphor tread on the heels of another who has just broke out of its shell, one simile breaths on the neck of another simile that has just been born.
>Moreover, Shakespeare accepted any plots, no matter how fantastical and bizarre, provided they were interesting. He did not care to kill important characters without any scruple, and sure he did not bother to set his stories anywhere in the world and at any time in history, without even analyzing the customs of other peoples or epochs: the important thing was to captivate the attention of public (and finding nice opportunities to forge brilliant metaphors and similes)

>>4170445

b)

Tolstoy, however, was a fanatic for realism. He fought hard to make his characters speak realistically, not with an bookish breath and rhetorical exhalation. He also studied deeply the history of the periods and places depicted in his works; in reality, most of the things he portrayed were taken from his own life-experience. It is common to see Tolstoy, when he praises the art of someone, using the words: "very true, very real" - to be close to truth was one of the greatest virtues of an artist in his view. He was numb to the appreciation of verbal pyrotechnics and the construction of highly complex metaphors (the very thing that makes Shakespeare what he is), and if someone don’t appreciate this then of course Shakespeare is going to be a bad writer for this person, because his language is far more important than plot, characters and ideas. He is so great because of his poetic imagination: no other poet has it on the same level.
Also, Shakespeare did not have any particular philosophy or religion: he changed his views and beliefs according to the play he was writing. Tolstoy, however, as he grew older, started to increasingly assert his doctrines, even in his art.
And finally, we cannot forget the literary envy. Tolstoy was a very proud and egocentric men (when he was a teenage student and got bad grades he was so furious with the boldness of the teachers in affronting him, a count, that he look inside his room and cried of rage for some days; he was always calling any man who said something against him for a duel when he was young; he said in his diary that he liked more to read bad books because they made he feel better with himself because good books made him angry and desperate: read about his trouble personality in this book: “Intellectual’s, by Paul Johnson:http://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Marx-Tolstoy-Sartre-Chomsky/dp/0061253170/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375381835&sr=1-1&keywords=intellectual+paul+johnson)) , and for him to hear praises to Shakespeare all the time by everyone’s mouth was something deeply irritating.

>>4170459
I read an awesome essay by Orwell on Tolstoy's hatred of Shakespeare.
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/lear/english/e_ltf
I'm not going to bother trying to summarize it, but I will note that it becomes even more interesting when you remember Orwell's own political views and how they're at odds with Tolstoy's (and also how they do a lot to inform his reading of Shakespeare).

>>4170490

Looks good:

>This, then, is the substance of Tolstoy's pamphlet. One's first feeling is that in describing Shakespeare as a bad writer he is saying something demonstrably untrue. But this is not the case. In reality there is no kind of evidence or argument by which one can show that Shakespeare, or any other writer, is ‘good’. Nor is there any way of definitely proving that — for instance — Warwick Beeping is ‘bad’. Ultimately there is no test of literary merit except survival, which is itself an index to majority opinion. Artistic theories such as Tolstoy's are quite worthless, because they not only start out with arbitrary assumptions, but depend on vague terms (‘sincere’, ‘important’ and so forth) which can be interpreted in any way one chooses. Properly speaking one cannot answer Tolstoy's attack. The interesting question is: why did he make it?

>>4169067
>>4169076
you fucking idiots, shakespeare wrote psychological dramas an crises, how does that relate or appeal to the lower class specifically? Nice surface level readings there you fucking degenerate childrens

>>4170061
Macbeth is one of his longer plays, how much longer was he going to make it? that's not true in the slightest you fucking liar

>>4170605
Hahahaha no it's not m8. It's his 6th shortest play. Macbeth has 2477 lines, Hamlet has 4024.

>>4170614
citation needed on editing then

>>4170623
I dunno about the editing, different guy, but Macbeth is pretty short.

Where did the Fool go?

> dis nigga's handwriting

didn't Ben Johnson say that Shakespeare never crossed out a line? He's a fucking liar.

>>4170636
There was no fool, it was a figment of his imagination.

>>4170640
> wow shakespeare ur so deep

>>4170640
He couldn't have been because Goneril makes a remark at him one point in the play.

>>4170873
Lear imagined that too