/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11626746]

Greatest writer of all time
>Shakespeare

Greatest Poet of all time in all genres
>Shakespeare (if the plays count as poetry)

Greatest Epic Poet
>Homer (sorry, Dante)

Greatest lyric poet (that is, not dramatic or epic)
>Emily Dickinson (her poems are better than Shakespeare’s sonnets)

Greatest Novelist
>Tolstoy

Greatest short story writer
>Chekhov (Tolstoy in second place)

Greatest philosopher
>Buddha (after the division of philosophy and science his teachings remain the most profound, useful and wise)

Greatest artist
>Michelangelo

Greatest Musician
>Mozart (maybe is a tie with Beethoven, with Bach at second place)

Greatest movie director
>Orson Welles (Shakespeare did a great deal to his brain)

Greatest scientist
>Newton

Greatest psychologist and sociologist
>Darwin

[Anonymous No.11626770]

I'm inclined to agree with most of this but it is clear you are English monolingual if you choose Dickinson for best lyrical poet.

[Anonymous No.11626774]

>>11626746
Wow no one has ever expressed these opinions before. Good thing you made a thread about it.

[Anonymous No.11626779]

Basic eurocentric taste

[Anonymous No.11626785]

>Bach
try again, sweaty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWi7wD5SClM

[Anonymous No.11626807]

superlatives are extremely jewish

[Anonymous No.11626847]

>>11626770

English is not my native language.

[Anonymous No.11626893]

>>11626746
basic bitch tier

[Anonymous No.11626934]

>>11626746
The essential "I have no thoughts of my own but have instead learned the Right answers" opinions.

[Anonymous No.11626965]

>>11626746
This list is so basic, generic and unprovocative that it's actually pissing me off.

[Anonymous No.11626967]

>>11626934

If it was like that Bach would be the best musician, Cervantes the best novelist and maybe Keats or Wordsworth or Baudelaire the greatest lyric poet.

[Anonymous No.11626970]

>>11626785
it ìs Bach you pleb

[Anonymous No.11626973]

>>11626847
his point still stand if your native is Finnish or some shit

[Anonymous No.11626977]

>>11626746
>Orson Welles
You piss me off

[Anonymous No.11626979]

>>11626967
Nope, only if you are among semi-lit hipsters. Tolstoy is the answer to impress plebs with, Cervantes is just the Don Quixote guy with the windmills to non-readers.
Fuck it though, I'm not gonna sit here any longer and help the faggot OP improve his pseud bluffing skills.

[Anonymous No.11626987]

>Greatest lyric poet
>Emily Dickinson
Is this a /lit/ joke or something? Is Dickinson better than Keats? Better than Shelley? Better than Donne? Better than Yeats? I'm not even trying to be a dick. I'm just wondering if this is a Bloom opinion that /lit/ adopted a while ago or everyone really believes this.

[Anonymous No.11627012]

>>11626987
>Is this a /lit/ joke or something? Is Dickinson better than Keats? Better than Shelley? Better than Donne? Better than Yeats?

Her poems demonstrate the greatest metaphorical fertility and daring I have ever encountered, with the exception of Shakespeare. Metaphors, to me (and to Aristotle – let me use this authority argument): are the gold standard of poetry. Here poems are also extremely compressed: layers and layers of meaning packed into small neutron stars. Many of them are deeply philosophical and use the fusion of concrete and abstract language as a way to think.

She is not only superior to those other masters: she is vastly superior. Reading her poems and letter you can clearly witness the presence of a huge intelligence (I wonder how high her IQ was) working language in a raw way, almost as in a workshop.

I recommend you read her complete poems. Or at least Helen Vendler selection and commentary of some 100 of her poems. It’s awe-inspiring.

[Anonymous No.11627018]

>>11626746
painfully generic, almost suprised you didn't pick Socrates as Greatest Philosopher...
I'm going to have to agree with you on Mozart though, that's non-negotiable.

[Anonymous No.11627027]

>>11626977

What would be your pick of top five directors?

[Anonymous No.11627032]

>>11627027
1. Bergman
2.Bergman
3. Bergman
4. Bergman
5. Bergman/Ozu (tie)

[Anonymous No.11627042]

>>11627032

I see that you enjoy directors whose work is deeply focused on the script, and on human psychology. What’s your problem with Welles then? Most of his works deal above all with great characters and their psyche.

If you were more a photography kind of movie fan I would understand why you should be angry that Welles was put in that place and not Kubrick, but Bergman and Welles are not that different at their core-artistic-values.

[Anonymous No.11627049]

>no wagner
>no goethe
>emily fucking dickinson even close to being the best.
>better then shakespeare

you are a complete retard

[Anonymous No.11627056]

>>11627049
>>no wagner
Wagner over Mozart? lol

>Goethe
His poetry is boring as hell: hardly any original metaphor.

>>11627049
>>emily fucking dickinson even close to being the best.
I bet my ass you never read more than 3 or 5 of her poems

>>11627049
>>better then shakespeare

Read her poems, and then Shakespeare's sonnets, and then you judge who is the better lyric poet.

As for the greatest poet, Shakespeare is indeed superior.

[Anonymous No.11627065]

>>11626746
Greatest lyric poet (that is, not dramatic or epic)
>Emily Dickinson

[Anonymous No.11627072]

>>11627042
That's not me, my favorites are Griffith, Eisenstein, Buster Keaton, Hitchcock and Fellini in no particualr order.
It's not that I don't like Welles, I only think that he's highly overrated imo.

[Anonymous No.11627076]

>>11627072
shit taste lol

[Anonymous No.11627079]

>>11627065

Buy Helen Vendler's book on her and read it. You will thank me in the future.

[Anonymous No.11627081]

>Newton
>not Einstein
Sciencelet detected

[Anonymous No.11627092]

>>11626746
>Greatest psychologist and sociologist
>>Darwin

this makes sense

[Anonymous No.11627108]

>>11627056
You've proved yourself a brainlet as soon as you said anybody is even the "best". Like some manchild arguing about his comic book heroes. On top of this you exalt nobodys like Dickinson, while dismissing greats like Wagner and Goethe. I have a feeling somebody else told you all this.

[Anonymous No.11627118]

>>11627108
>greats like Wagner and Goethe
>I have a feeling someone else told you all this

[Anonymous No.11627141]

>>11627108
>Like some manchild arguing about his comic book heroes
That's the ITT of the thread . Don't imply people here even argument their replies you fag.
Everyone is a poseur, nobody reads. You are discussing with actual teens empowered by the internet. I bet you feel miserable now.

[Anonymous No.11627143]

>>11627108
>You've proved yourself a brainlet as soon as you said anybody is even the "best".

One of the best things to make a discussion get hot is to use certainties, even if you know deep inside that things are not so simple.

>>11627108
>while dismissing greats like Wagner and Goethe.

I'm not dismissing them: I like them both (Goethe's poetry has disappointed me quite a bit, however: his imagery is often unimaginative and derived from several common sources of Romanticism). I just dont think they are the greatest at their fields.

[Anonymous No.11627151]

>>11627079
read Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Apollinaire, Lautreamont and Verlaine in french ; read Rilke, Trakl, George and Benn in german ; and then we can talk about poetry m8
Emily fucking Dickinson lmfao

[Anonymous No.11627152]

>>11627118
>duuuuuuh projecting

[Anonymous No.11627179]

>>11627151
>Baudelaire, Rimbaud

Love them both.

>>11627151
>Benn

Love him.

>>11627151
>Rilke

Don't know why people take him so seriously.

>>11627151
>Emily fucking Dickinson lmfao

How about you read her first?

I'm going to give you three simple examples, all little poems dealing with storms (none of them among her best known). Pay attention to the daring of metaphors and the inventiveness of vision:

An awful Tempest mashed the air—
The clouds were gaunt, and few—
A Black—as of a Spectre's Cloak
Hid Heaven and Earth from view.

The creatures chuckled on the Roofs—
And whistled in the air—
And shook their fists—
And gnashed their teeth—
And swung their frenzied hair.

The morning lit—the Birds arose—
The Monster's faded eyes
Turned slowly to his native coast—
And peace—was Paradise!

________

A Cap of Lead across the sky
Was tight and surly drawn
We could not find the mighty Face
The Figure was withdrawn—

A Chill came up as from a shaft
Our noon became a well
A Thunder storm combines the charms
Of Winter and of Hell.

________

The Lightning is a yellow Fork
From Tables in the sky
By inadvertent fingers dropt
The awful Cutlery

Of mansions never quite disclosed
And never quite concealed
The Apparatus of the Dark
To ignorance revealed.

[Anonymous No.11627189]

>>11627179
damn if french poets were a drizzle, dickinson is a hurricane

[Anonymous No.11627196]

>>11626746
>Greatest psychologist and sociologist
>Darwin
guh
Freud is greatest psychologist, Marx greatest sociologist

Welles is a good choice though his work is limited (due to bad luck). Ford and Hitchcock would be good contenders in terms of sheer skill but they both lacked artistic and philosophical ambition (save for a scant few of their films). Murnau, Bergman and Tarkovsky, Bresson, Godard, Ozu are all contenders too.

Unfortunately here has never been a fully complete filmmaker genius in the manner of Shakespeare or Michelangelo. They are all too compromised.

Anyone who disputes Dickinson being at least in the top 5 lyric poets is a literal brainlet.

[Anonymous No.11627200]

Anyone here that is speaking ill about Dickinson should read Camille Paglia essay (on her book, Break, Blow, Burn) on this poem:

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers -
Untouched by Morning -
and untouched by noon -
Sleep the meek members of the Resurrection,
Rafter of Satin and Roof of Stone -

Grand go the Years,
In the Crescent above them -
Worlds scoop their Arcs -
and Firmaments - row -
Diadems - drop -
And Doges surrender -
Soundless as Dots,
On a Disk of Snow.

So few words, and yet they convey perfectly the futility of our longing for immortality and the ultimate fate of the Universe with all it’s stars and worlds of glory

[Anonymous No.11627209]

>>11627179
>mashed the air—

>The creatures chuckled on the Roofs—


>Our noon became a well


>The Lightning is a yellow Fork
>From Tables in the sky

All these verses are sublime

[Anonymous No.11627288]

>>11627018
You are a scar on this earth if you think Socrates is a worse answer than the fucking Buddah. Socrates is a top teir favorite philosopher.

[Anonymous No.11627316]

>>11627079
Vendler on Stevens is fantastic, but on Dickinson only ok. I liked the book well enough, I guess- perhaps I should read it again.

[Anonymous No.11627386]

>>11627288
Don't get me wrong anon, I love Socrates. But he's a guy that everyone associates with philosophy, even people who don't know anything about it. Any high school student would tell you their favorite philosopher is Socrates, so yeah, it'd be a kinda generic answer. I feel like lots of people who only know the fucking David painting would name him as their favourite, when they probably haven't even read the Apology. It's just an obvious association, just like writer - Shakespeare, epic poet - Homer or artist - Michelangelo. I don't mean to say they're NOT great, they're just so...obvious, a 14-year-old could have named them.

[Anonymous No.11627439]

The Dickinson hate in this thread reminds me how many plebs post here.

[Anonymous No.11627468]

>>11626746
the greeks
the greeks
the greeks

[Anonymous No.11627469]

>>11626746
What does "greatest" even mean? Most well-known? Largest vocabularies? Most use of the letter "z"?

[Anonymous No.11627510]

Greatest writer of all time
>Dante Alghieri

Greatest Poet of all time in all genres
>Dante Alghieri

Greatest Epic Poet
>Dante Alghieri

Greatest lyric poet (that is, not dramatic or epic)
>William Blake

Greatest Novelist
>Don DeLillo

Greatest short story writer
>Tony Chekov

Greatest philosopher
>Spinoza or Joe Rogan

Greatest artist
>Albrecht Dürer

Greatest Musician
>Chopin or Thom York’s

Greatest movie director
>Orson Welles

Greatest scientist
>J. Robert Oppenheimer

Greatest psychologist and sociologist
>Norman Vincent Peale

[Anonymous No.11627547]

>>11627510
You're a bitch

[Anonymous No.11627554]

>>11627547
Too many Americans on this board

[Anonymous No.11627556]

>>11627554
he's right tho

[Anonymous No.11627563]

>>11627556
samefagging like a true American

[Anonymous No.11627566]

There's no pseud-er thing one can do than shilling mozart.
Everthing in major is garbage, and most of what he did in minor also is garbage.
The tiiiiny part that isn't garbage is still outclassed by literally any other renowned composer.
Also greatest composer is either Arvo Pärt or Gabriel Fauré

[Anonymous No.11627569]

>>11627563
don't be such a bitch about being called a bitch on the internet, bitch

[Anonymous No.11627584]

>>11626746
>greatest short story writer
Blocks your path

[Anonymous No.11627586]

>>11627569
>rick and morty biiiiiiiiiiatch !

[Anonymous No.11627621]

>>11627081
>>>r/ifuckinglovescience

[Anonymous No.11627630]

>>11627200
>And Doges surrender -
very profundity

[Anonymous No.11627651]

Reading those Dickinson poems reminded me of how little i esteem her. Like Frost, she is wholly devoid of a good mellifluous rhythm.

[Anonymous No.11627677]

>>11627566

Not trying to offend you or shit on your selected composers, but could you recommend some of their best works, some YouTube videos of great moments of their body of work?

I’m new to classical music, but I feel like Infound a mistress that I want to keep visiting for the rest of my life.

[Anonymous No.11627687]

>>11626746
This is the most boring opinion I have ever read.

[Anonymous No.11627741]

>>11627510
>Chopin or Thom Yorke
Shit taste

[Anonymous No.11627754]

>>11626746
>Greatest writer of all time
>Homer

>Greatest Poet of all time in all genres
>Shakespeare

>Greatest Epic Poet
>>Homer

>Greatest lyric poet (that is, not dramatic or epic)
> Vladimir Mayakovsky

>Greatest Novelist
>Joseph Konrad

>Greatest short story writer
>Chekhov

>Greatest philosopher
>Sokrates

>Greatest artist
>Michelangelo

>Greatest Musician
>Bach

>Greatest movie director
>Stanley Kubrik

>Greatest scientist
>Newton

>Greatest psychologist and sociologist
>Darwin

>Greatest Theologist
>St. Aquinas

>Greatest Playwright
>Shakespeare

>Greatest Mathematiciaon
>Euclides

>Greatest Politician
>Marcus Aurelius

[Anonymous No.11627760]

>>11627677
Technically, the classical era is just the one Mozart and a few others lived in , usually defined as ~1750 to ~1830, so neither Fauré nor Pärt is classical.
Sperging aside:
For Fauré I'd say the Requiem is the best place to start, and probably the best piece of vocal music ever composed. If it suits you, you can dig into the rest of his stuff, which is plentiful (Pavane, Romance sans parole, Apres un Reve..)
If Fauré suits your tastes, you can then into Debussy and Ravel as the historical continuation. La Mer or his Estampes for Debussy, and stuff like Trois Beaux Oiseaux de Paradis for Ravel (the Bolero is his most famous piece, but far from his most interesting, even though it's pretty chill to listen to)
For Pärt, I'd say start with Spiegel im Spiegel (piano/viola version) to check if you like the style or not. If you do, then go onto stuff like the other spiegel im spiegel versions, Tabula Rasa and his Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten, then whatever.

[Anonymous No.11627767]

>>11626746
Newton was unspeakably based.

[Anonymous No.11627773]

>>11627081
Yes Newton over Einstein. Newton was a better mathematician than Einstein ever was.

[Anonymous No.11627777]

>>11627081
>I know nothing

[Anonymous No.11627780]

>>11627754
>Euclides
>Not Archimedes

No. Euclid inherited a lot of his works from the Pythagoreans, but Archimedes was wholly original.

[Anonymous No.11627791]

>>11627780
There wouldn't be spatial math without euclides, Archimedes was to be honest a fucking psycopath.

[Anonymous No.11627792]

>>11626746
Greatest Writer of All Time
>James Joyce

Greatest Poet of All Time
>Dante

Greatest Epic Poet
>Ovid

Greatest Lyric Poet
>Byron

Greatest Novelist
>Joyce

Greatest Short Story Writer
>Chekhov (I agree wholeheartedly)

Greatest Philospher
>Nietzsche

Greatest Artist
>Carlo Crivelli (The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius)

Greatest Musician
>John Coltrane or Bach or John Cage

Greatest Director
>Ingmar Bergman

Greatest Scientist
>Leibniz

Greatest Psychologist and Sociologist
>Jung

[Anonymous No.11627801]

Memespeare sucks

[Anonymous No.11627803]

>>11627780
Or rather, there are two books that people still buy, one is euclides elements the other one is newtons principia mathematica. You can get your fundaments from those two books.

[Anonymous No.11627809]

>>11626746
10/10 bait

[Anonymous No.11627813]

>>11627791
>There wouldn't be spatial math without euclides

Not denying that, he's definitely the most influential mathematician of all time, but was he the best? I don't think so, I think he meticulously collected and axiomatised existing results (And a lot of his own), and I think that's dwarfed by the genius of Archimedes.

Still a good choice though.

[Anonymous No.11627820]

>>11627792
It's not really a Greatest thread, it's just a personal opinion thread.

If anons relaxed, they'd have fun.

[Anonymous No.11627830]

People have refuted almost everything but pic related. Is he actually in a league of his own?

[Anonymous No.11627831]

>>11627813
I honestly can't disagree with that. You're right, but if you would look at "citations" and "influence" euclides would crush archimedes.

[Anonymous No.11627839]

Greatest writer of all time
>Russel Edson

Greatest Poet of all time in all genres
>Lao Tzu

Greatest Epic Poet
>Lao Tzu

Greatest lyric poet (that is, not dramatic or epic)
>Lao Tzu

Greatest Novelist
>Salinger

Greatest short story writer
>Joyce

Greatest philosopher
>Christ

Greatest artist
>Steve Jobs

Greatest Musician
>Bach

Greatest movie director
>Chaplin

Greatest scientist
>Tesla or Hoffman

Greatest psychologist and sociologist
>Hegel

[Anonymous No.11627848]

>>11626746

Greatest scientist
>Newton
Wrong, edward Lorenz was better. Chaos theory is our last hope for further advancement in science since most other avenues (high energy physics, machine learning, etc. ) have proven dead ends, while chaos theory has remained largely unexplored.

[Anonymous No.11627864]

>>11626746
I want Yuhja Wang to be my strict piano teacher mommy gf.

[Anonymous No.11627876]

>>11626746
Read La Divina Commedia in Italian and then come back and say with a straight face "Sorry, Dante"

[Anonymous No.11628382]

Yuja is perfect

[Anonymous No.11628459]

Greatest writer of all time
>Shakespeare

Greatest Poet of all time in all genres
>John Keats

Greatest Epic Poet
>Homer

Greatest lyric poet (that is, not dramatic or epic)
>John Keats

Greatest Novelist
>Tolstoy

Greatest short story writer
>Dostoyevsky because of White Nights

Greatest philosopher
>Kierkegaard

Greatest artist
>That one guy's paintings I saw at a museum in Detroit whose name I forget

Greatest Musician
>Puccini

Greatest movie director
>Kurosawa

Greatest scientist
>Pascal

Greatest psychologist and sociologist
>My therapist desu

[Anonymous No.11629342]

>Baudelaire finally arrives in the mail
>read the first poem
>it's fucking magnificent
What did I do to deserve this life?

[Anonymous No.11629398]

>>11627830
Tough one but I'd say it's at least debatable.

[Anonymous No.11629442]

>>11626746
Nice blog faggot

Homer was a compiler at best presuming he was even a real person

>Buddha
lmao READ

[Anonymous No.11629566]

>>11627012
>Reading her poems and letter you can clearly witness the presence of a huge intelligence (I wonder how high her IQ was)
kek

[Anonymous No.11629595]

>>11626746
Shakespeare
Shakespeare
Dante
Spenser
Tolstoy
Joyce
Spinoza
Durer
Bach (indisputable)
Welles
Archimedes
Jordan Peterson

[Anonymous No.11629597]

>>11626746
>Greatest Epic Poet is a prompt
>ctrl+f: Virgil
>zero results
Pseud board, at least people who responded to this thread seriously.

[Anonymous No.11629632]

>>11629597
He's good but he's not Homer good.

[Anonymous No.11629672]

>>11629632
Homer isn't even a real person, and Virgil is Shakespeare-tier in prose.

[Anonymous No.11629806]

>>11627012
What's her top 5 poems?

[Anonymous No.11629809]

>>11627777
Socrates?

[Anonymous No.11629814]

>>11626746
>Dickinson
>Tolstoy
>Mozart
>Orson fucking Welles
>Darwin
Everything else is alright

[Anonymous No.11629839]

>>11626746
Homer was probably more than one person

[Anonymous No.11629849]

>>11629839
Homer: Greatest hits of Mycenae

[Anonymous No.11630138]

>>11629566

Incels don’t have an unbiased opinion. Sorry.

[Anonymous No.11630184]

>>11627876

It’s not that Dante isn’t great, but to me his differences with Homer are like comparing a golden statue of a bull with a real bull. Dante is the statue sculpted with gold, with all sorts of details, decorated with rubis, sapphires, emeralds, opals: a masterpiece made to be calmly and solemnly admired: you can also see the artist will and personal tastes in every curve of the work.

As for Homer, his poems are the real creature. He is full of defects and imperfections: the foul smell of manure, flies over his back, a green paste of cud dropping from the mouth. But he is also alive, you see his flesh moving, you feel the warmth of blood running throw the veins.

All the characters in Dante are either symbols or small portraits of people he is revenging himself upon. He is constantly forcing on us what we need to thing, what his opinion is and how his opinion is the right one. He lacks a great deal of emphaty, and mostly sees people on a white/black pattern, that needs to conform mostly with his own credos than with those of the Divinity itself.

What makes his so spectacular is his unparalleled powers of structure, the intrincated rhyme scheme, the perfect balance of the cantos, all sorts of paralelisms and mirrors (the famous example is the ending with the word “stars” in every one of the three parts of the poem). His economy of language and concision is also remarkable (although for my taste Shakespeare’s baroque language is far more awe-inspiring, although it wouldn’t function in a poem lokenthe comedy, where Dante needs to describe places and facts and where the plot is already so spectacular that metaphors would end up being excessive).

With Homer we don’t have the same order, the same balance, the same diamond of diamonds of a structure. But he gives us things that we don’t find in Dante in the same degree: a vast gallery of lively characters (including strong female characters), an all-seeing eye that generally avoids judgment and let people be people, the rites of war and the daily rituals of peace, and two completely different poems (the three parts of the comedy all happen on different worlds, but they are organized and structured in a same way: they are huge variations on the same theme of the quality of the soul, from the most polluted to the sublime).

Dante was the greater artist, but there is more life in Homer, to my mind.

[Anonymous No.11630345]

>>11627830
No, he’s just the boring choice that’s likely not to offend. OP could’ve picked Bernini, Titian, Caravaggio or even Raphael.

[Anonymous No.11630555]

I see many Anons mocking Emily Dickinson in this thread. So I took the liberty of commenting on some of her poems (most of them are not even his most famous ones).

Yes, she is one of the greatest poets of all time, no doubt about it.

I hope I can arouse the interest of more people for her, because you will not regret reading her work. For those of you who write poetry: reading Emily Dickinson's complete work is probably the greatest learning experience you can get after reading Shakespeare's complete work and the epics of Homer and Dante (if metaphor is you thing, then Dickinson is even better a professor than Dante and Homer).

And no, I'm not Anglo. Ok, let's start.

Here a small scene of a fairy world - a Midsummer Night Dream in a pill:

Drab Habitation of Whom?
Tabernacle or Tomb —
Or Dome of Worm —
Or Porch of Gnome —
Or some Elf's Catacomb?

Have you ever read such a simple and yet inventive way to see the sun: a boy who enjoys sleeping, wrapped in his lava covers, his plushy fire blankets, but who needs to wake up (the sun also rises), open the eyes of the world, and dress the blonde sleepy day as if it were his little sister:

How good his Lava Bed,
To this laborious Boy —
Who must be up to call the World
And dress the sleepy Day —

This one about the Vesuvius. The last stanza is masterful, with the lips that never lie - the volcano vomits out his whole soul, he keeps nothing to himslef - and the final verse, with the astonishing verb "ooze": cities dissolve and flow in ruby streams through the night.

A still—Volcano—Life—
That flickered in the night—
When it was dark enough to do
Without erasing sight—

A quiet—Earthquake Style—
Too subtle to suspect
By natures this side Naples—
The North cannot detect

The Solemn—Torrid—Symbol—
The lips that never lie—
Whose hissing Corals part—and shut—
And Cities—ooze away—

[Anonymous No.11630560]

>>11630555

Pity the poor spiders who build up crystal Babylons and silver pyramids in the corners of the houses, who engage in an almost insubstantial commerceof airy coins, who frantically weaves empires made of soft diamond bones from one week to another, only to find the final judgment hanging over the broom bristles of a housewife:

The Spider holds a Silver Ball
In unperceived Hands —
And dancing softly to Himself
His Yarn of Pearl — unwinds —

He plies from nought to nought —
In unsubstantial Trade —
Supplants our Tapestries with His —
In half the period —

An Hour to rear supreme
His Continents of Light —
Then dangle from the Housewife's Broom —
His Boundaries — forgot —

This one is about ladies that are so refined, so chaste, so pure, so nourished with nectar, perfumed with moonlit milk, having golden hair for bowels, that, in the face of Christ, the humble Christ, a workmen burned with the sun, they would feel fear and disgust.

Also, this: " Of freckled Human Nature" is one of the most concise and original verses I've ever encountered to define our imperfection as human beings:

What Soft—Cherubic Creatures—
These Gentlewomen are—
One would as soon assault a Plush—
Or violate a Star—

Such Dimity Convictions—
A Horror so refined
Of freckled Human Nature—
Of Deity—ashamed—

It's such a common—Glory—
A Fisherman's—Degree—
Redemption—Brittle Lady—
Be so—ashamed of Thee—

Autumn and its red flowers and brown plumage have already been described in many ways. What do you think of this poem that shows it as a great hemorrhage that drowns the city with its blood and peels its red globules on all the houses and hills:

The name—of it—is "Autumn"—
The hue—of it—is Blood—
An Artery—upon the Hill—
A Vein—along the Road—

Great Globules—in the Alleys—
And Oh, the Shower of Stain—
When Winds—upset the Basin—
And spill the Scarlet Rain—

It sprinkles Bonnets—far below—
It gathers ruddy Pools—
Then—eddies like a Rose—away—
Upon Vermilion Wheels—

The equation of beauty and truth is very famous, and appears at various points throughout literature. It is the theme of the final verses of one of the famous Keats Odes. Here's the ghostly dream that Emily creates with this concept (even in the silence of death there will be another silence):

I died for Beauty - but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining Room -

He questioned softly "Why I failed"?
"For Beauty", I replied -
"And I - for Truth - Themself are One -
We Bretheren, are", He said -

And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night -
We talked between the Rooms -
Until the Moss had reached our lips -
And covered up - Our names -

[Anonymous No.11630567]

>>11630560

There are many drinking songs. Here's what Emily Dickinson does with the theme: a kind of spiritual drunkenness, intoxication with nectar, with liquid electricity, with dew and Coleridge's milk of paradise. Even the angels and the saints come running to contemplate her ecstasy, her bacchanal of a single person:

I taste a liquor never brewed –
From Tankards scooped in Pearl –
Not all the Frankfort Berries
Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of air – am I –
And Debauchee of Dew –
Reeling – thro’ endless summer days –
From inns of molten Blue –

When “Landlords” turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove’s door –
When Butterflies – renounce their “drams” –
I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –
And Saints – to windows run –
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the – Sun!

Here is a a song about the distance between the living and the dead, which can not be reached or understood either by the microscopic or the cosmic:

Under the Light, yet under,
Under the Grass and the Dirt,
Under the Beetle's Cellar
Under the Clover's Root,

Further than Arm could stretch
Were it Giant long,
Further than Sunshine could
Were the Day Year long,

Over the Light, yet over,
Over the Arc of the Bird—
Over the Comet's chimney—
Over the Cubit's Head,

Further than Guess can gallop
Further than Riddle ride—
Oh for a Disc to the Distance
Between Ourselves and the Dead!

Here is Emily Dickinson as a Gothic poet. Writing here in the Gothic romantic mood she enjoyed in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (1847), Dickinson describes the dramatic and even perilous extremes to which the soul is subject:

The Soul has Bandaged moments—
When too appalled to stir—
She feels some ghastly Fright come up
And stop to look at her—

Salute her, with long fingers—
Caress her freezing hair—
Sip, Goblin, from the very lips
The Lover—hovered—o'er—
Unworthy, that a thought so mean
Accost a Theme—so—fair—

The soul has moments of Escape—
When bursting all the doors—
She dances like a Bomb, abroad,
And swings upon the Hours,

As do the Bee—delirious borne—
Long Dungeoned from his Rose—
Touch Liberty—then know no more,
But Noon, and Paradise—

The Soul's retaken moments—
When, Felon led along,
With shackles on the plumed feet,
And staples, in the Song,

The Horror welcomes her, again,
These, are not brayed of Tongue—

[Anonymous No.11630574]

>>11630567

Have you ever seen a shorter and more terrible way of expressing the loss of faith than to imagine that God had a warm and protective hand, a soft nest for your soul to cuddle in pleasure for eternity, but that this hand has now been "amputated"?

Those—dying then,
Knew where they went—
They went to God’s Right Hand—
That Hand is amputated now
And God cannot be found—

The abdication of belief
Makes the Behavior small—
Better an ignis fatuus
Than no illume at all--

And look at the boldness of this poem about prayer and singing in the church: Dickinson sinks her beak, her fangs, hunger, and craving in the flesh of God. She identifies herself with Cochineal, a parasitic insect that lives in cacti and swells with red bowels:

Sang from the Heart, Sire,
Dipped my Beak in it,
If the Tune drip too much
Have a tint too Red

Pardon the Cochineal —
Suffer the Vermillion —
Death is the Wealth
Of the Poorest Bird.

Bear with the Ballad —
Awkward — faltering —
Death twists the strings —
'Twasn't my blame —

Pause in your Liturgies —
Wait your Chorals —
While I repeat your
Hallowed name —

A brief picture of the parasitic relationship between the intellect and the heart (what other poets would dare to use the metaphor of parasitism for such noble faculties of spirit)?

The Mind lives on the Heart
Like any Parasite—
If that is full of Meat
The Mind is fat.

But if the Heart omit
Emaciate the Wit—
The Aliment of it
So absolute.

[Anonymous No.11630599]

>>11630574

This is one of her most famous poems:

Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And Immortality.

We slowly drove—He knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility—

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess—in the Ring—
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the Setting Sun—

Or rather—He passed Us—
The Dews drew quivering and chill—
For only Gossamer, my Gown—
My Tippet—only Tulle—

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground—
The Roof was scarcely visible—
The Cornice—in the Ground—

Since then—'tis centuries— and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity—

There is a good analysis here:

http://bloggingdickinson.blogspot.com/2013/08/because-i-could-not-stop-for-death.html

[Anonymous No.11630609]

>Mozart
>not Kate Bush
Thread discarded

[Anonymous No.11630653]

>>11630599

This is other ofher great poems:

Safe in their alabaster chambers –
Untouched by morning –
And untouched by noon –
Sleep the meek members of the Resurrection,
Rafter of satin, and roof of stone.

Grand go the years,
in the crescent above them –
Worlds scoop their Arcs –
And firmaments – row –
Diadems – drop –
And Doges – surrender –
Soundless as dots
On a disk of snow.

Believers are docile, like cattle or sheep, the "meek" Resurrection club. In their alabaster chambers nothing else touches them: sun, stars, time that falls like leaves - they no longer exist. The only thing that pseudo-exists is their hope of awakening.

However, there will be no resurrection for the dead, but not only for the dead: the Universe itself will also be at last cloistered in an insubstantial chamber of the whitest alabaster.

The worlds of the cosmos will eat with their Arcs and ages with spoons, the firmament, the galaxies and constellations will go on rowing their fate to the end. The mighty ones of the world will all surrender, all human glories, the diadems of our culture and civilization, will fall, and in the end all souls will not even be the sound of a snowflake falling on the gigantic white disk of the void in the absolute vacuum, the clock with dissolved pointers, the time that has forgotten itself in the supreme Alzheimer, the zero that finally lost the last lint of a soul.

You can read a great analysis here:

https://books.google.com.br/books?id=uW1j8ZCEpRQC&pg=PA105&lpg=PA105&dq=paglia+metaphorically+dickinson%27s+disc+of+snow+is+the+clock+face+stripped+bare&source=bl&ots=l2E0STJOt0&sig=REbcJcfSfrS2Rjh-hSTENfU1zHE&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiywsG7wvHcAhXMGJAKHZqxAdMQ6AEwAHoECAIQAQ#v=onepage&q=paglia%20metaphorically%20dickinson's%20disc%20of%20snow%20is%20the%20clock%20face%20stripped%20bare&f=false

[Anonymous No.11630666]

>>11627049
>no wagner


holy shit filth like you should actually fucking kill yourself jfc FUCKING DIE

[Anonymous No.11630676]

>>11627081
Einstein would consider Newton to be greater than himself

[Anonymous No.11630685]

>>11626746
GREATEST WRITRE OF ALL TIME
>VIRNGA WOOLF
GREATEST POET OF ALL TIME
>SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERDGE
GREATEST EPIC POET
>ROY CAMPBLEL
>GREATEST LYRICAL POSET
pinDAR
>GREATEST NOVELIST
>NABOKV
>GREATEST SHORT STORY WRITER
BORGES
>GREASTEST PHILOSOPHER
DELEUZE
>GREATEST ARTIST
ZUBARAN
>greates musician
MENDELSSOHN
>great movie direcror
WELLES SUCK LOL
>greatestscientist
nicholas land
>greates pyshoclgyst and socilogist

DELEUZE

[Anonymous No.11630688]

>>11627510
>Chopin or Thom York’s
They're both shit
I'd say Miles Davis, but that's just my opinion

[Anonymous No.11630696]

>>11627839
>Steve Jobs
More of a sociologist than an artist de su

[Anonymous No.11630717]

>>11626785
Was gonna post this.

[Anonymous No.11630754]

>>11626746
Greatest writer of all time
>Shakespeare

Greatest philosopher
>Me

Greatest artist
>Michelangelo

Greatest Musician
>Wagner

Greatest movie director
>Kurosawa

Greatest psychologist and sociologist
>Ernest Becker

[Anonymous No.11630840]

I'm a monolingfag which skews my taste a bit, apologies
>Greatest writer of all time
Joyce
>Greatest Poet of all time in all genres
Walt Whitman
>Greatest Epic Poet
Herman Melville (his prose alone is easily better than Homer and Dante)
>Greatest lyric poet
AE Housman
>Greatest Novelist
Cervantes
>Greatest short story writer
JLB
>Greatest philosopher
Aquinas
>Greatest artist
Antoni Gaudí
>Greatest Musician
Astor Piazola
>Greatest movie director
Pleb answer but, David Lynch. I regretfully haven't watched a lot of film
>Greatest scientist
Idk
>Greatest psychologist and sociologist
Franz Boas

[Anonymous No.11630849]

>>11627848
Lorenz isn't on Einstein's level, and Einstein isn't on Newton's level.

Meme-tier self depreciating comments by Einstein absolutely notwithstanding.

Also an argument for best scientist can be made for Turing, since we're pretty much living in his world now.

[Anonymous No.11630864]

>>11630840
>>Greatest artist
>Antoni Gaudí

[Anonymous No.11630883]

>>11630864
Now you're getting it!

[Anonymous No.11630884]

>>11630555
>>11630560
>>11630567
>>11630574
>>11630599
>>11630653

Thank you

[Anonymous No.11630905]

>>11630883
The Sagrada Familia was the grossest thing I've ever gotten inside of, and I know your mother.

[Anonymous No.11630930]

>>11630905
I think we saw two different cathedrals then, anon. It was the greatest work of man that I've ever seen, and I've seen your waifu pillow

[Anonymous No.11631037]

>>11630930
Thanks it's a real nice pillow

[Anonymous No.11631073]

>>11630884

This is the best definition I know of people who slowly destroy their lives, be it with alcohol, drugs, neuroses, psychoses, involvement in criminal activity and the dive to the abyss of suicide.

Nobody wakes up one day and says, "Today I'm going to ruin my life." There are layers and more layers of defeats that are accumulating daily, hymens of hope that break one after the other, until finally rotting is consumed, ruin is so entangled in the flesh that there is no more way to extract the cancer, for now the very being that breathe is cancer.

Here's the poem:

Crumbling is not an instant's Act
A fundamental pause
Dilapidation's processes
Are organized Decays —

'Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul
A Cuticle of Dust
A Borer in the Axis
An Elemental Rust —

Ruin is formal — Devil's work
Consecutive and slow —
Fail in an instant, no man did
Slipping — is Crashe's law —

[Anonymous No.11631079]

>>11627179
Some original metaphors and descriptions, sure, but that isn't all that makes a good poet. Recommend some of her best please.

[Anonymous No.11631110]

>greatest director
Ingemar Bergman, by far.

[Anonymous No.11631131]

>>11631079

Some of them here:

>>11630884
>>11631073

[Anonymous No.11631170]

>>11631110
hahahahahahaha

[Anonymous No.11631183]

>>11627027
Bergman
Ozu
Tarkovsky
Kurosawa
Kubrick

[Anonymous No.11631187]

>>11627081
Nigga, Einstein isn't even second place (that would be Gauss)

[Anonymous No.11631205]

>>11631131
>>11631131
Like I said before, original comparisons and descriptions that are cool, but I'm not impacted by it greatly. I don't know if it's the subject matter, her meter, or something else. All of these poems seem to have the same tone, the same voice, and there are numerous lines that tripped me when she added a syllable or reversed the meter. I just don't see how you hold her so highly unless you're only counting originality.

[Anonymous No.11631243]

>>11631187
As a scientist? As a mathematician sure but I think he'd need some better overall credit, or maybe his work with asteroid qualifies him?

Academic because IMO Euler was his better and did more impressive astronomical work IMO (Three body problem)

[Anonymous No.11631358]

>>11630666
Satan doesn't like Wagner confirmed

[Anonymous No.11631464]

>>11626970
this. Bach is the turning point from ancient music to modern music. There's no one else who even approaches Bach's influence on western music

[Anonymous No.11631663]

>>11631464
>most influential = greatest

[Anonymous No.11631996]

Greatest writer of all time
>司马迁

Greatest Poet of all time in all genres
>杜甫

Greatest Epic Poet
>屈原

Greatest lyric poet (that is, not dramatic or epic)
>苏轼

Greatest Novelist
>曹雪芹

Greatest short story writer
>张爱玲

Greatest philosopher
>朱熹

Greatest artist
>牧谿法常

Greatest Musician
>夔

Greatest movie director
>黑泽明

[Anonymous No.11632021]

>>11631464
*block your path*

[Anonymous No.11632200]

>>11631996
You forgot
>中出しの喜び

[Anonymous No.11632448]

She is so hot

[Anonymous No.11633202]

>>11630653

This sucks.

[Anonymous No.11633250]

>>11629442

[Anonymous No.11633257]

>>11633202

Maybe if you are a christ-fag or alt-right neo-conservative

[Anonymous No.11633269]

>>11626746
>dickinson
lmao
not even the best american poet

[Anonymous No.11633299]

>>11626746

Nice bait.

Nothing white can ever be the greatest or that is racist, pick some non-whites to fill those positions

[Anonymous No.11633311]

>>11626746
I'm gonna let you all in on a little secret: your life won't have improved in any way once you've compiled a list of your favourite things.

[Anonymous No.11633315]

>>11633257

Torpor touted as subtlety. Lame phrases embellished with inert exoticism. Subhumanity perfumed enough to pass for child-like whim. It SUCKS.

Compare to the vigor of Nemesis:

Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,
I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,
I have sounded all things with my sight;
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.

I have whirl’d with the earth at the dawning,
When the sky was a vaporous flame;
I have seen the dark universe yawning,
Where the black planets roll without aim;
Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name.

I had drifted o’er seas without ending,
Under sinister grey-clouded skies
That the many-fork’d lightning is rending,
That resound with hysterical cries;
With the moans of invisible daemons that out of the green waters rise.

I have plung’d like a deer thro’ the arches
Of the hoary primordial grove,
Where the oaks feel the presence that marches
And stalks on where no spirit dares rove;
And I flee from a thing that surrounds me, and leers thro’ dead branches above.

I have stumbled by cave-ridden mountains
That rise barren and bleak from the plain,
I have drunk of the fog-foetid fountains
That ooze down to the marsh and the main;
And in hot cursed tarns I have seen things I care not to gaze on again.

I have scann’d the vast ivy-clad palace,
I have trod its untenanted hall,
Where the moon writhing up from the valleys
Shews the tapestried things on the wall;
Strange figures discordantly woven, which I cannot endure to recall.

I have peer’d from the casement in wonder
At the mouldering meadows around,
At the many-roof’d village laid under
The curse of a grave-girdled ground;
And from rows of white urn-carven marble I listen intently for sound.

I have haunted the tombs of the ages,
I have flown on the pinions of fear
Where the smoke-belching Erebus rages,
Where the jokulls loom snow-clad and drear:
And in realms where the sun of the desert consumes what it never can cheer.

I was old when the Pharaohs first mounted
The jewel-deck’d throne by the Nile;
I was old in those epochs uncounted
When I, and I only, was vile;
And Man, yet untainted and happy, dwelt in bliss on the far Arctic isle.

Oh, great was the sin of my spirit,
And great is the reach of its doom;
Not the pity of Heaven can cheer it,
Nor can respite be found in the tomb:
Down the infinite aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom.

Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,
I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,
I have sounded all things with my sight;
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.

Or not, since it's incomparable.

[Anonymous No.11633335]

>>11627056
yeah i read 4 of her poems

[Anonymous No.11633372]

>>11626746
>Greatest philosopher
>>Buddha (after the division of philosophy and science his teachings remain the most profound, useful and wise)
Greatest movie director
>Orson Welles (Shakespeare did a great deal to his brain)
Lmao

[Anonymous No.11633411]

>>11626746
>all white
>only one female
anon, people aren't going to be happy about this!

[زنجي الرمال No.11633441]

>>11626746
Such a unique and exquisite taste anon. Thanks sharing it with us.

[Anonymous No.11633454]

>>11626785
Wagner may have been a great composer, but Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven were also great performers.

[Anonymous No.11633472]

>>11633441

You people might be saying that it’s a general and text-book taste, but Anon was daring when he selected Emily Dickinson, Buddha and Darwin for the places were the placed them.

[Anonymous No.11633518]

Greatest writer of all time
>Shakespeare

Greatest Poet of all time in all genres
>Dickinson

Greatest Epic Poet
>Dante

Greatest lyric poet (that is, not dramatic or epic)
>Rilke

Greatest Novelist
>Dostoevsky

Greatest short story writer
>Borges

Greatest philosopher
>Wittgenstein

Greatest artist
>Van Gogh/Monet

Greatest Musician
>Bach

Greatest movie director
>who gives a fuck

Greatest scientist
>Newton/John Von Neumann

Greatest psychologist and sociologist
>Dostoevsky

[زنجي الرمال No.11633542]

>>11633472
Nah. Most likely these were the only names he knew.

[Anonymous No.11633556]

>>11633518
replace dante with milton wtf was i thinking

[Anonymous No.11633579]

>>11626746
>Orson Welles
>not D.W. Griffith

[Anonymous No.11633771]

>>11633518
>Dostyevsky

[Anonymous No.11633812]

>>11626746
>Emily Dickinson
>Tolstoy
>Chekhov
>Mozart
The other ones are debatable, but these are all just wrong, especially Chekhov.

Don't even really understand what you mean by Buddha? Like, Siddhartha? You realize he's just the most recent Buddha, right?

Also:
>Greatest Musician
You mean composer, and that's still wrong.

[Anonymous No.11633861]

>>11633812

Let me guess: you think that the greatest novelist is Cervantes and the greatest composer is Bach.

[Anonymous No.11633898]

>>11633861
Dumas, Pynchon, and Faulkner are all better novelists.

Beethoven, Brahms, Shostakovich, Schoenberg, and Xenakis are all better composers.

[Anonymous No.11633954]

>>11633898

Only Beethoven saves you. The novelists you pick up as superior to Tolstoy make me wonder if you ever read the Russian. Pynchon, really? A guy who can’t neither write poetically nor with elegance and simplicity? That’s trolling.

[Anonymous No.11634019]

>>11633518
>>11633556
v nice
except for me maybe swap dosto for kierkegaard in the last one

[Anonymous No.11634031]

>>11633898

>those novelists over Tolstoy

This Anon has let the memes corrode his judgment

[Anonymous No.11634470]

>>11633861
I do

[Anonymous No.11634514]

>>11633518
>John Von Neumann

I like him, but he's the most gifted meme scientist there ever was, unlike Godel he didn't really do any truly groundbreaking pure maths, he systemized QM, but so did Dirac, and he created the Von Neumann architecture but that's just a footnote on Turing's work on the computer, he also dismissed Nash's equilibrium which shows he was being careless with the development of Game Theory.

He was very gifted, and mastered a number of topics, but he was far broader than he was deep.

[Anonymous No.11634522]

>>11626746
Thanks for offering literally the most normie views possible. Allow me to do the same.

Pynchon, Shakespeare, Milton, Dickinson, Pinecone, Barthelme, Heidegger, Basquiat, Bach, who tf cares about movie directors, Turing, Jung.

[Anonymous No.11634531]

>>11633898
>SHostakovich
>Schoenberg
>Xenakis

you need to be a chronic masturbator/pothead to genuinely enjoy these limpwristed faggots lol

[Anonymous No.11634532]

>>11634522
>Turing.

If my answer wasn't Newton, it'd be Turing. We are literally living in his world.

[Anonymous No.11634549]

>>11634514
I agree with everything you said except the "meme scientist" pejorative. He was, according to his peers (most of the brightest mathematicians and scientists in the world) the greatest mind of all time. If we're ranking scientists based on contributions, firstly most people myself included couldn't credibly compile a list; secondly he surely wouldn't head it.

[Anonymous No.11634581]

>>11634549
>I agree with everything you said except the "meme scientist" pejorative

He's become one for 2 reasons:

1) A glowing biography by Norman Macrae which essentially treated him as a living God
2) He's being given artificial popularity because he's not just one of the finest minds ever, he was politically conservative for the most part, which makes him attractive to Westerners especially in contrast with Einstein.

I'm also unconvinced that he really was the consensus greatest, first of all, it's poor comparison because none of the people he's being compared to were ever like, top no.1 mathematicians at their universities, just highly creative. You also have to remember that these are claims being made by Wigner, a very close friend of his who worked closely with him for a long time. However Einstein also said that Lorentz was the greatest mind he ever worked with and called Von Neumann a "Thinking animal", we also know for a fact that Theodore Von Karmann was a better mental calculator than Jansci because as a child he could multiply 6 figs by 6 figs, something Jansci was unable to replicate even as an adult (http://archive.li/rh7uG, it's at the bottom). None of this takes away from the fact that he had indisputably the highest quantity of achievements at that time, but I think he's steadily transitioning from man to myth as people forget that he's not really being compared to his true peers (Godel, Hilbert, Ramanujan) against whom he falls pretty short.

[Anonymous No.11634587]

>>11626746
>writer
not sure
>poet
blake
>novelist
dostoevsky maybe
>philosopher
the buddha, hegel
>artist
not sure
>composer
bach, probably
>natural scientist
maxwell
>sociologist
karl marx
>mathematician
badiou :^)

[Anonymous No.11634597]

>>11634581
My point is that Wigner said that nobody ever disputed that Jansci had the finest mind, I think that Einstein was possibly being modest. I think he was also being modest when it came to Lorentz.

I think the truth is that the finest mind of that period was, in fact, Einstein.

[Anonymous No.11634626]

I get the idea that very few people, if any (and never mind the people posting here) are qualified to give "non basic" answers to all these things. At a certain point you have to go off everything you've heard or just answer them all with someone who could do everything.

You may have read a lot of novels and poetry and be more qualified to give an answer on those counts (but you'd still probably give an answer that "seems generic") but would you trust the same person on science?

Someone like Adorno might have good answers to most of these, but not all.

All the people here complaining that OP is basic would almost certainly only be able to give "better" greatest people in their respective fields in two or perhaps three of these categories.

[Anonymous No.11634633]

>>11634626
I think even people qualified to give answers, say, on which scientist is the best, you're going to get answers that'd be disputable.

An astrophysicist will say Newton/Einstein, a Quantum physicist might say Dirac/Feynman, because they esteem the world that they're in, it's probably why they're in it in the first place.

[Anonymous No.11634728]

>>11634581

There’s a biography of him I have read where the author states that his memory was good, but not miraculous. For example, one of his friends said he knew every word of every book he had ever read, which was clearly an exaggeration.
Many of his friends enjoys circulating legends about him, while reality was a little less legendary.

The reality is that, when he wanted to memorize something, he had to sit down and do a conscious effort. When he was moving to the US he decided to better his English by reading Dickens A Tale of Two Cities. He decided to memorize the first pages by heart to amuse his friends, and worked his way into knowing how to recite them by heart.

As you can see he could memorize things well when he set his mind to it, but he wasn’t a machine-like savant with some different brain structure that allowed him to remember everything he have ever read (there are some cases like that, like Kim Peek, but this people have organically different brains: that gives them unexplainable capacities in some areas while at the same time damaging other important functions of a healthy central nervous system).

The “evidences” of his supreme memory are false.

There were even people who stated that he could recall every single book he ever read, word for word. This is a gross exaggeration.

Just think: Von Neumann was incredibly gifted with raw talent and had the luck to have been born in a rich and cultured family who was interested in fostering a very demanding education since he was still an infant. Therefore, he matured in a very bright man.

Yet he was one human being of billions and billions of other humans that have lived thorough history, and nobody has ever seen (and proved) anything like an eidetic memory capable of storing that much quantity of information (all the books that an avid reader has read). There is the case of Kim Peek, but his brain was biologically different, and there is no decisive proof that Peek actually could recall every book he read perfectly.

There are right now many people in the world with remarkable brains, and there were others in Von Neumann’s time, and before that. Yet we never see anything like the tales we find in Von Neumann’s stories.

It is one thing for one to train oneself to memorize a particular work: there are people who did this with the Iliad in ancient times, and even today. There are people who go to talk shows to show their great memory, but they all depend on training, and to ask for them to memorize every book they read from one single read is to ask something that cannot be done.

[Anonymous No.11634740]

>>11634728

Here, look at this book about Neumann: the author is clearly saying that there was a lot of legend about Neumann’s capacities:

https://books.google.com.br/books?id=pmPaAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA308&dq=von+neumann+memory&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwis6oG3wZ_TAhVBlZAKHT2CA_I4ChDoAQhdMAg#v=onepage&q=memory&f=false

And here (here is the central piece of my argumentation) you can see that he selected some books and subjects to “learn by hearth”, to memorize them, and later used the time-invested-knowledge to baffle his friends:

https://books.google.com.br/books?id=pmPaAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA308&dq=von+neumann+memory&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwis6oG3wZ_TAhVBlZAKHT2CA_I4ChDoAQhdMAg#v=onepage&q=von%20neumann%20memory&f=false

and:

https://books.google.com.br/books?id=pmPaAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA308&dq=von+neumann+memory&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwis6oG3wZ_TAhVBlZAKHT2CA_I4ChDoAQhdMAg#v=onepage&q=memory&f=false


So he was actually doing what all the people who work their own memories do: he was training and selecting specific texts to learn.

[Anonymous No.11634747]

>>11634728
He actually memorized a lot of formulae and stuff too, his method was heuristic and intuitive, rather than analytical.

[Anonymous No.11634758]

>>11634740

>In contrast Johnny borrowed (we must not say plagiarized) anything from anybody, with great courtesy and aplomb. His mind was not as original as Leibniz’s or Newton’s or Einstein’s, but he seized other people’s original (though fluffy) ideas and quickly changed them in expanded detail into a form where they could be useful for scholarship and for mankind. He rightfully deemed that this was clever people’s duty and their fun, so he was not worried that he was not credited with all his due by the general public or the newspapers (the latter he held in what sometimes seemed Prussian disdain). One of the professional ways in which he wrung more than twenty-four hours’ work out of a twenty-four-hour day was to get the boring research on some projects done by collaborators whom he enthused by gasping that they were famously expanding their own original ideas

>The great glory from Einstein’s dreaminess, which can also be called his closer touch with the cosmos, was that he had marvelous flashes of irrational intuition that changed the direction of scientific progress; Johnny amiably envied these because Johnny could never be irrational himself.
>“For Von Neumann,” said his assistant Paul Halmos, “it seems impossible to be unclear in his thought expression.” Although “we can all think clearly, more or less, some of the time, Von Neumann’s clarity of thought was orders of magnitude greater than that of most of us, all the time.” Halmos was probably thinking of Einstein when he likened some scientists to the creator of the Great G-Minor Fugue, while adding in his next sentence that by contrast “Von Neumann’s greatness was of the human kind”.
>A big advantage to mere humans is that one can one can develop them from nursery on. Among the several million babies born this month, it is plausible that there will not have been any Einsteins or creators of the great G-minor Fugue. But it is genetically almost certain that there will have been some who could become capable of thinking in the towering level of Johnny’s concentration, intellect and mind.

https://books.google.com.br/books?id=pmPaAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20&dq=von+neumann+johnny+envied+this+because+he+could+never+be+irrational+himself&source=bl&ots=xst7kJLVSj&sig=Gyin1ROfYLEqWRvhCta36pTq1zk&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwit2KuG3c7RAhVLkZAKHaxNDHkQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=von%20neumann%20johnny%20envied%20this%20because%20he%20could%20never%20be%20irrational%20himself&f=false

[Anonymous No.11634768]

>>11626847
So that explains why you don't know that all of her poems can be sung to The Yellow Rose of Texas, thus debasing her work beyond redemption.

[Anonymous No.11634772]

>>11633315
hhahahhahahahhahahaa

You denigrate one of the greatest poets of all time, and post this awful cliched tripe written by a tin-eared pulp fiction writer. Stick to Harry Potter and Transformers movies if you don’t realize how unoriginal, hackneyed, and corny this “poem” you posted is.

[Anonymous No.11634986]

>>11633954
Too bad we're judging their novel-writing abilities, not their prose.

>>11634531
brainlet detected

[Anonymous No.11635097]

>>11626746
>Mozart
>Bach
I get it, you have not musical taste and you put "classical music" in the background while reading or something like that
>Orson Welles
You haven't seen Citizen Kane to begin with.
>Darwin
>Pyschologist and sociologist
Gu-guys...social darwinism is real...is what darwin meant in his book( i haven't read).

[Anonymous No.11635613]

>>11630653

You must be a woman. Shits up the thread "protecting" "womyn" giving her shit opinion about shit poems and doesn't even know how to shorten a link.

[Anonymous No.11635659]

>>11626746
AND NOT A SINGLE NIGGER WAS NAMED. I AM SO SICK AND TIRED. WHAT ABOUT MLK HUH? ROSA PARKS? WHAT ABOUT 2PAC.

Jk the IQ gap is real and we all know it.

[Anonymous No.11635664]

>>11627386
Is that not a testament to their greatness?
You’re not making much sense.

[Anonymous No.11635673]

>>11627780
>not Euler
You two are confirmed brainlet faggots.

[Anonymous No.11635678]

>>11627081
Another retard spotted

[Anonymous No.11635682]

>>11635097
>hasn’t played Mozart and understood his brilliant emotional range
God damn this thread is full of FECES

[Anonymous No.11635698]

>>11626847
What is it? Unless it's one of the major ones (so not German), then the point still stands.

Emily Dickinson is good, but she's very far from being the greatest of lyric poets. I don't think any person who's perfectly fluent in reading French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Latin or Persian would ever hold such a bizarre belief, unless they've been educated by American college teachers.

The rest of your list is ridiculous too.

[Anonymous No.11635705]

>>11635698

Probably just a woman.

[Anonymous No.11635707]

>>11627012
>small neutron stars
>(I wonder how high her IQ was)
>almost as in a workshop.
>awe-inspiring

This is how you identify someone whose literary education was vastly influenced by contemporary American college culture.

[Anonymous No.11635710]

>>11635682
You meant Chopin, right?

[Anonymous No.11635727]

>>11627179
''The Lightning is a yellow Fork
From Tables in the sky
By inadvertent fingers dropt
The awful Cutlery''

Too forced, so that it ends up looking infantile. Lighting is a yellow fork? Really? My mom had very similar metaphors to describe thunders. Not impressive.

I wish people who praise this as great poetry would read what Borges had to say about the metaphor. Great metaphors are not the unexpected (i.e. forced) ones, but rather those which modify and enlarge the ones we are already familiar with.

Dickinson's music is very boring too. Makes me wanna sleep. Even Longfellow had a better ear.

[Anonymous No.11635888]

>>11635710
Chopin is god-tier too
Even playing Ray Charles with your eyes closed comes close

[Anonymous No.11636041]

>>11634772

And how would I realize it?

[Anonymous No.11636050]

Hello from /classical/. This is the greatest composer. Have a good day.

[Anonymous No.11636188]

>>11635727

Shakespeare used forced metaphors all the time “my salad days” and Borges was a sucker for him.

>>11635698

>Unless is one of the major ones

Here we go.

Why don’t you make a list?

[Anonymous No.11636192]

>>11635705

Incel opinions are discarded

[Anonymous No.11636201]

>>11636050
you are not wrong

[Anonymous No.11636224]

>>11636192

I can recognize the nagging and excusing of a woman.

[Anonymous No.11636253]

>>11636224

You barely can talk to them, my poor eunuch-wit. Also: why a woman who cared so much about gender-propaganda would choose only one female for a list?

Those with castrated-courage in real life, the fellows of the eyes-on-the-ground and the low-voice are ussualy the most aggressive posters when protected by anonymity.

[Anonymous No.11636279]

>>11636253

Lol - "ok" argument, but stop projecting yourself.

[Anonymous No.11636292]

None.

For someone claiming to appreciate Tolstoy, you seem to have misunderstood him.

[Anonymous No.11636316]

>>11636292

There’s a difference between appreciating Tolstoy’s art and his moral and aesthetic philosophy, Anon.

And a careful study of his diaries and biography show a man with an enormous ego whose confession and depression were actually vehicles to establish a new, and even greater, persona. He desires to be hailed not only as a great artist, but also as a saint. His egocentrism was palpable from the earliest of his notes and was there up until a few days before his death.

But yeah, making lists is stupid in the end. It’s more of a killing-time device.

[Anonymous No.11636413]

>>11635727
>I wish people who praise this as great poetry would read what Borges had to say about the metaphor. Great metaphors are not the unexpected (i.e. forced) ones, but rather those which modify and enlarge the ones we are already familiar with.

I read those essays, and I confess I do not agree with Borges. I think perhaps he himself does not realize the implications of his theory, or maybe we're misunderstanding him.

If we were to follow his guidance we would not have Aeschylus, Shakespeare, John Donne, Emily Dickinson, Nabokov, among others, but especially Shakespeare.

I have always believed that this phrase of Aristotle is one of the most perfect definitions of the core of great poetry:

>“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 the dissimilar.”

As for the choice of Dickinson as the greatest lyric poet, I see it both as right and wrong. It is right in the sense that Dickinson is one of the great poets of all time; it is wrong in the sense that there are several other poets as great as her, and the choice of the best one ends up being more of a matter of personal taste.

Artists who tower above others in their field of activity and who appear to be undoubtedly the greatest are very rare. If I had to choose examples, I could only think only on Shakespeare and Michelangelo.

[Anonymous No.11636766]

>>11635097
What's wrong with listening to music while reading? Can one only appreciate and enjoy music while listening to it by itself?

[Anonymous No.11636799]

Greatest writer of all time
>Tournier

Greatest Poet of all time in all genres
>st Vincent Millay

Greatest Epic Poet
>who gives a shit

Greatest lyric poet (that is, not dramatic or epic)
>st Vincent Millay

Greatest Novelist
>Tournier

Greatest short story writer
>who gives a shit

Greatest philosopher
>Spinoza

Greatest artist
>Norman McLaren

Greatest Musician
>Chopin

Greatest movie director
>Norman McLaren

Greatest scientist
>le epic black science nigguh - for all of your retarded poll

Greatest psychologist and sociologist
>Fromm xD

[Anonymous No.11636803]

>>11626746
Dante is not an epic poet you fucking retard.

[Anonymous No.11636922]

>>11636803
Dante is a singer who sang "Miss California" with Pras

[Anonymous No.11636964]

>>11627012
>metaphorical daring
I wouldn't thank her

[Anonymous No.11637012]

>>11627839
fuck hegel

[Anonymous No.11637143]

What is even the point of a thread like this? Anon posts his stupid opinions and everybody just gets mad? Sage.

[Anonymous No.11637169]

>>11637143
Agreed

[Anonymous No.11637291]

>>11631073
How is it better than, say:

You can know a needle's eye
Or a hungry baby's cry
But no one knows that demons dance alone

Silver linings came and went
When I was an innocent
Never knowing demons dance alone

But somehow I was seduced
And my innocence reduced
By a demon that became my own

Knowingly I followed it
I took the hook and swallowed it
Until I found it dancing in my home

Terrified I tried to quit
But I need the taste of shit
Like a dancing demon needs a home

I had hoped to fill my years with
More than melancholy tears
But the demon makes me dance alone

[Anonymous No.11637311]

>>11626785
Didn't read the thread, loved the music

[Anonymous No.11637351]

>>11626746
Greatest writer of all time
>Joyce

Greatest Poet of all time in all genres
>Shakespeare

Greatest Epic Poet
>Homer

Greatest lyric poet (that is, not dramatic or epic)
>Byron

Greatest Novelist
>Hugo

Greatest short story writer
>Poe

Greatest philosopher
>Camus

Greatest artist
>Van-Gogh

Greatest Musician
>Beethoven

Greatest movie director
>Godard

Greatest scientist
>lol idgaf

Greatest psychologist and sociologist
>lol idgaf

>imho

[Anonymous No.11637448]

Shakespeare can suck cock. Read Quevedo and shut the fuck up

[Anonymous No.11637470]

>>11637351

t. living meme

[Anonymous No.11637500]

>>11637448

Lol, jokes on you, I have already read him. Shakespeare is superior. Perhaps Quevedo was on disvantage, first of all because the decassílabo doesn’t offer as much space per line as the iambic pentameter. Since English is composed of a lot of monosyllabic words it’s far easier for them to inject more meaning in each single verse line. That’s a great advantage, a very obvious one, yet I hardly witness people realizing it. A sonnet in English offers far more space for invention than one in Spanish, Portuguese or Italian. One good solution is to choose the 12-sylable verse line - like the French - instead.

As for language, I really like Quevedos baroque, but Shakespeare’s language is more varied and inventive than the one of the Spaniard, his metaphors more abundant and diversified. Then finally there is the fact that Shakespeare actually used his language to create several different worlds populated by thousands of characters.

What’s more, Shakespeare hardly preaches to the reader and to this day people don’t know exactly what were his opinions on several major subjects of life. As for Quevedo, you can always see his catholic mind and upbringing directing the course of his poetry and though. His mind is way to simple of compared to Shakespeare’s prismatic-consciousness.

Why do Spaniards always sound so combative and patriotic? I would never put Dickens or Austen or any British novelist above Tolstoy, for example.

[Anonymous No.11637610]

>>11635673
We were discussing Greeks, if you hadn't figured it out. Also Newton > Euler IMO.

Archimedes might be the better of both because he had so many disadvantages, for one the Greek number system was horrific, and relative to the guys we're talking about he had less research to expand upon.

[Anonymous No.11637645]

>>11627630
chuckled

[Anonymous No.11637936]

Greatest writer of all time
>Shakespeare

Greatest Poet of all time in all genres
>Eliot

Greatest Epic Poet
>Homer

Greatest lyric poet (that is, not dramatic or epic)
>Walt Whitman

Greatest Novelist
>Joyce

Greatest short story writer
>Hemmingway

Greatest philosopher
>Hegel

Greatest artist
>Monet

Greatest Musician
>Beethoven

Greatest movie director
>Coppola

Greatest scientist
>Newton

Greatest psychologist and sociologist
>Darwin

[Anonymous No.11637947]

>>11637291
>But I need the taste of shit

Quintessentially /lit/.

[Anonymous No.11637952]

>>11626785
Don't you have a fantasy novel to read?

[Anonymous No.11637994]

Greatest writer of all time
>Joyce

Greatest Poet of all time in all genres
>Leopardi

Greatest Epic Poet
>Dante (the translate versions of divine comedy sucks)

Greatest lyric poet (that is, not dramatic or epic)
>Petrarca

Greatest Novelist
>Dostoevskij

Greatest short story writer
>Kafka

Greatest philosopher
>C.B., Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bergson

Greatest artist
>Caravaggio, Van Gogh, H. Bosch

Greatest Musician
>Chopin

Greatest movie director
>Hitchcock

Greatest scientist
>K. Mullis

Greatest psychologist and sociologist
>Freud, Jung, Darwin

[Anonymous No.11638002]

>>11635097
>>Pyschologist and sociologist
>Gu-guys...social darwinism is real...is what darwin meant in his book( i haven't read).

OP here.

I was not thinking in social Darwinism. What I meant was that, by discovering our relation to all other creatures, and the similarity of our species with other great apes, Darwin has made most to understand our unconscious and our deep-rooted desires (and here comes the social desires and social roles and activities too) than all precedent philosophy on the subject. A close analysis of the chimpanzee might well be more significant to know who we are in the biological depths of the brain and basements of instinct than all the books of Freud.

[Anonymous No.11638005]

>>11634772
>>11636041

Anything?

What's funny about Nemesis is the perfect rhyme and plain phrasing alone make it decidedly superior to most poetry simply by justifying it as a poem, something poets struggle with so much that stumbling sonority is the norm. And as far as content, just the "was...is" in the penultimate stanza is as marvelously Semiotic as the usual logorrhea is tragically empty.

[Anonymous No.11638006]

>>11633315
Cringe from me

[Anonymous No.11638030]

>>11636766
Its a different experience, there are musicians/music you only "get" while listening actively and other that is the oposite, baroque and some classical only work (in my opinion) if you don't pay them too much attention, if you do: they become repetitive. I think the "best composer" should be someone that works in a passive and active listening.

[Anonymous No.11638073]

>>11638005

I was the guy who you criticized first (or rather, the guy who posted the Dickinson poem you criticized), but I am not the Anon that mocked Lovecraft’s poem.

I still prefer Dickinson, but I honestly liked the poem you posted. The problem is – to my view – that most of his imagery can be found in other places. Many would be striking if they were new, but they have been there repeatedly in other poets. There’s also a tone of gods and demons and of phantasy-writing world that makes it look a little childish.

Also, your poem has 456 words, while the Dickinson one has only 55: it’s not quite a fair fight, don’t you think? Lovecraft is using much more space to deliver his message. In the end, however, the message of Dickinson’s poem seems more powerful than the one in Lovecraft’s work: it has a legitimate terror of emptiness and lack of meaning, while Lovecraft’s poem, though fine, seems to be more of a horror-story kind.

But there are some very nice verses in your poem (at least I liked them):

>I have whirl’d with the earth at the dawning,
>When the sky was a vaporous flame;
>I have seen the dark universe yawning, [note here that the verb yawning, in this situation, might >seem original but it’s actually not]
>Where the black planets roll without aim;

(…)
>I have plung’d like a deer thro’ the arches
>Of the hoary primordial grove,

[Anonymous No.11638094]

>>11627012

This guy's right. After Shakespeare, Dickinson's the most relentlessly inventive poet in the language.

[Anonymous No.11638100]

>>11638002
so that's what you meant?. I get it, now i can see why you chose him, I disagree but sounds logical

[Anonymous No.11638115]

>>11629806

Not who you're responding to, but this is impossible to answer. She wrote over 1700+ poems. Of those, probably two dozen are shit, 1500 are stunning, and the remainder are masterpieces. It's worth reading her entire oeuvre.

If for some reason you don't want to submerge yourself in the mind of the greatest English-language lyricist to ever live, pick up a copy of "Final Harvest," Thomas Johnson's selection of her "best" poems. I generally agree with him.

When you purchase a complete edition go for the Franklin. Johnson preserved Dickinson's idiosyncratic grammar, but he separated a few poems that were meant to be read in sequence and corrected all misspellings, even those that could be read as Dickinson inventing five-way puns.

Personal Top Five List:
Because I could not stop for Death
I cannot live with You
My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain
I heard a Fly buzz - when I died

[Anonymous No.11638924]

>>11627179
>reading women
Yeah, not even once. If women could write something of value they would have by now

[Anonymous No.11639124]

>>11638924

Read Memoirs of Hadrian and then you come back here, incel

[Anonymous No.11639430]

>>11629806

real answer from someone who actually reads Dickonson

It was not Death, For I stood up,

Did life's penurious length italicize its sweetness

From Blank to Blank

This consciousness that is aware

Because that you are going

[Anonymous No.11640099]

>>11638094
T h i s

[Anonymous No.11640118]

>>11638924
Incel alert