/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12239954]

I know someone on /lit/ knowing this is a long shot, but: is there a book that has a catalog of T.S. Eliot’s personal library in it? I can’t find it online and I know there is a little book by Ellmann with a catalog of Joyce’s library in the back.

[Anonymous No.12239988]

>>12239954
He looks like Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective. Fucking Toilets lol I bet he was a degenerate.

[Anonymous No.12240002]

>>12239988
Or one of the cronies from 101 Dalmatians. Dude had a Disney villain face.

[Anonymous No.12240028]

>>12239954
Not quite first rate. A fraud.

[Anonymous No.12240042]

>>12240028
Doesn’t mean much coming from a writer who was third rate when he was at his best. Get over your obsession with his meaningless pronouncements.

[Anonymous No.12240053]

>>12240042
>coming from a writer who was third rate when he was at his best.
lol the absolute state of Toilets fans. His prose was top notch, his plotting was immaculate, and his characters were brilliant.

[Anonymous No.12240318]

>>12239954
Valerie Eliot has died since this was written and gave the books that she possesed to Magdalene College , but 2/3 is first editions and translations of Eliot's own writing. PDF of list can be found here

https://www.magd.cam.ac.uk/pepys/catalogues

[Anonymous No.12240331]

>>12240053
Nabakov's only contribution to literature is milquetoast bourgeois commentary on morality " WOAH GUYS what if pedophilia, was actually gray morality, it's hebephilia not pedophilia"

[Anonymous No.12240456]

>>12240331
That's not his thesis, at all. You're a brainlet.

[Anonymous No.12240467]

>>12240331
That's not his thesis with Lolita, at all. You're a brainlet. No wonder you're impressed by Toilets' poetry. You think his verbal diarrhea amounts to something profound, don't you? Nabokov at least had the balls to claim he viewed books as clockwork.

[Anonymous No.12240479]

>>12240467
verbal diarrhea is a perfect description of nabokov's writing

[Anonymous No.12240482]

>>12240028
I don't think there's a more lame writer to get caught up in the cult of personality of than Nabokov, of all people you choose Nabokov, my fucking god.

[Anonymous No.12240496]

>>12239954
Weialala leia Weialala leia

[Anonymous No.12240559]

>>12240028
>a fraud

Nice addition you made there

[Anonymous No.12240564]

>>12240479
Except what he writers about actually amounts to something, whether it is a description, or the character's thoughts, or anything. But what the fuck is this:

We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness. I have said before
That the past experience revived in the meaning
Is not the experience of one life only
But of many generations—not forgetting
Something that is probably quite ineffable:
The backward look behind the assurance
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.

Or shit:
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

That's the most sterile poetry I've ever seen in my life. Totally soulless. It doesn't even have the clockwork-like characeristics of a Nabokov creation.

[Anonymous No.12240574]

>>12239954
Eliot is the ultimate cringe poet.
>90% of the time he is trying unsuccessfully to be funny.
>The rest of the time he is fetishizing "pretty" foreign words or archaic language or philosophical arguments because he thinks they look nice
>He makes stilted attempts to introduce other voices and perspectives but always ends up lapsing into the same wistful semi-ironic tone
>His themes are always reducible to a simple ideology of Roman Catholicism/monarchism
>Has no interesting life experience and this is reflected in his totally soulless academic poetry

[Anonymous No.12240587]

>>12239954
Defend this trash:

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.

[Anonymous No.12240600]

A poet worth his salt squeezes ten things into each sound or image bite. Literally.
The Waste Land - a commentary on the failure of modern civilization - enacts an experience of mental collapse in the face of the crumbling facades of a civilization that hypocritically tried to remain intact or claim its inner cohesion even on the eve and in the aftermath of the two greatest international disasters the world had known - it was published in 1922. It's a collage, a seemingly arbitrary and unintelligible collection of literary quotations taken from all kinds of sources - English, German, French, and Hindu texts, among many others, some profane, some sacred. It includes Nursery rhymes and sets them cheek by jowl next to Shakespeare..... the crumbling facade of literary integrity or - more drastically - of the integrity and viability of the human voice itself - think of the noise of the machine gun fire, the rolling tanks, drowning out the puny little insignificant voice of a child screaming in the dirt in Flanders.....this enactment of linguistic self-destruction is meant - I think - to enact a sense of the futility of upholding a civilization without the backing of viable political, social-political infrastructure - kind of what we're facing - though with less dramatic denouement - in the international crisis conjured up by the crumbling facade of corporate driven capitalist parasitism. Trump is arguably the whore of Putin, but Trump is only a phenomenon.
Reach beyond.
Byron, Shelley, Coleridge - the Jack Sparrows of the early 19th century - they fought the deadrot of civilization.
As did Eliot.
Sing it!!!!!: Weilalalaaaaaa!!!!! til the fuckers get the message. CIVILIZATION will not die if we don't let it.
NEVER STOP READING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous No.12240613]

>>12239954
>>12240331
>>12240559
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water

[Anonymous No.12240623]

>>12240564
>>12240587
>>12240613
Jesus Christ T.S Eliot is pure cringe. I hadn't read him for years and now i'm glad, he's just as shit as i had thought before. No discernable talent, just posturing and not even pretentiousness but just appeal to the lowest common denominator as if to signal "g-guys i'm a talented poet XD see how i care not about meter and i use allusions in the most pathetic way to signal my place in the canon, g-guys Cleopatra taking a shit haha, fear death by water hehe". God i remember when i read The Waste Land and he used Dante to describe a scene in London or whatever. Absolutely fucking cringe and a disgrace to Dante being used in the most cliche, predictable and without a hint of self awareness or understanding of the original material. The only thing i have to say to T.S Eliot defeners is: read more, you'll eventually see that not only he was the worst modernist poet (and they were already the worst movement of the century), but he spawned so many more shit tier poets that his works should be burned and his memory be erased.

[Anonymous No.12240630]

>>12240623
You know people can see how many posters are in the thread right?

[Anonymous No.12240646]

>>12240623
I read a 3 page description of graphite on a pencil, atleast T.S eliot has thematics, nabakov never even started with any, Ezra Pound was a better writer by tens

[Anonymous No.12240664]

>>12240564
Why not listen to some of the many recordings of Prufrock on Youtube and see if you can get a glimmer of what it means.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfZhfbTujvA

[Anonymous No.12240863]

>>12240318
Thank you so much. Pleasantly surprised to get an answer.

[Anonymous No.12240873]

>>12240467
““That is not his thesis at all; that is not his thesis, at all.”

[Anonymous No.12241214]

>>12240873
Ha!