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/lit/ - Literature


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12431579 No.12431579 [Reply] [Original]

Why are anglos so afraid to translate him?

>> No.12431595

There is an English translation

>> No.12431597

>>12431579
He is the final boss of pessimism. Do you want to see all those jolly englishmen like Fry or Clarkson hang themselves?

>> No.12431604

>>12431579
>tfw there's a Spanish translation first than an English one

>> No.12431705
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12431705

>>12431597
>Do you want to see Fry or Clarkson hang themselves?
yes

>> No.12431719

>>12431604
I just bought this the other day. Is it good? What am I in for?

>> No.12431726

What of german idealism do I have to read before starting Mainländer?

>> No.12431754

>>12431726
Schopenhauer is basically the emo kid that started it all. The mainlander wrote his book and hung himself. Then nizche stole mainlanders idea about the death of god and went mentally ill from syphilis

Schopenhauer is the will to life
Mainlander is the will to death
And niezche is the will to power

>> No.12431826

Lads, the pessimism chart that's floating around the board is fucking shit. How about we use this Mainländer thread to sketch a new one?
These would be some of my suggestions:

Germans:
Arthur Schopenhauer - The World as Will and Representation
Philip Mainländer - The Philosophy of Redemption
Friedrich Nietzsche - On the Genealogy of Morals, On Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense and the 1888 works.

French writers:
Emil Cioran - The Fall Into Time, The Trouble With Being Born. If you can read French the Cahiers should be on your bedside table, hopefully they'll be translated soon for angloboos.
Montaigne - Essays
La Rochefoucauld - Maximes
Chamfort - The Academie Française has a great edition of his collected works, something similar in English probably exists
Pascal - Pensées

Italian Writers:
Pavese - Poetry (not familiar with his prose, someone else could help out here)
Leopardi - Complete poetry
Lampedusa - The Leopard

English writers (definitely not my strong point):
Beckett - Molloy, Waiting for Godot

Spanish writers:
90% of worthwhile literature in Spanish is very pessimistic, but some standouts include:
Miguel de Unamuno - San Manuel Bueno, On the Tragic Sense of Life
Nicolás Gómez Dávila - Scholia
Calderón de la Barca - La vida es sueño

Other:
Kierkegaard - The Sickness Unto Death

I know absolutely nothing about Russian literature but I'm sure more than a few writers could stand to be included here. Let's do this boys.

>> No.12431836

>>12431579
they aren’t, no one cares what philosofags think

>> No.12431856

>>12431579
>on the night on April 1, 1876, Mainländer hanged himself in his residence in Offenbach, using a pile of copies of The Philosophy of Redemption (which had arrived the previous day from his publisher) as a platform.
Is this the most /lit/ way to go?

>> No.12431866

>>12431826

Nietzsche is not a pessimist.

>> No.12431869

>>12431856
was it a pile or a staircase?

>> No.12431878

>>12431866
Neither are montaigne or kierkegaard

>> No.12431880

>>12431866
That there still could be an altogether different kind of pessimism, a classical type—this premonition and vision belongs to me as inseparable from me, as my proprium and ipsissimum; only the word “classical” offends my ears, it is far too trite and has become round and indistinct. I call this pessimism of the future—for it comes! I see it coming!—Dionysian pessimism.

>> No.12431882

>>12431866
He basically agrees with schopnehaur but then deviates to saying that pain and suffering is good and what does not kill you makes you stronger

>> No.12431915

>>12431878
>>12431866
I agree, but I still sense them as intrinsically linked and compatible in the outlining of a particular set of aesthetic interests. I think I would like to compile a chart not necessarily of pessimist authors, but of authors complementary to a particular (pessimistic, perhaps as with the N quote the other anon posted, classically pessimistic?) way of viewing the world.

>> No.12431928

>>12431915
I can agree about nietzsche and kierkegaard, but I don't see it with montaigne.

>> No.12431932

>>12431826
Russians aren't philosophizing pessimism, they just live it, so basically every author fits.
Here's one of my favourite poems by Blok:

It's toilsome for a corpse to have appeared
As ardent as a living man.
His creaking bones are hidden; and again,
He'll try it for the sake of his career.

The people sleep. He, from the coffin, hurried,
Fleets to the court, the senate, to the bank.
The brighter is the night, the darker's fury,
And feathers, all triumphant, yank.

He's working, through the day, on his report.
The work is done, and swaying with his back,
He, tired, tells the senator a gag,
An anecdote of an indecent sort.

The night. The shifty rain has spattered both
Pedestrians and buildings... and the rest...
The corpse is taken to another froth
By a rumbling taxi, — he's an honored guest.

Into the hall with pillars and the crowd
He enters swiftly, all dressed-up, and soon
Is greeted by, with smile and a shout,
A husband — idiot, and wife — the rare loon.

The bony creaking deafened by the chords,
The corpse is tired and with boredom fed.
While shaking hands with fellows of all sorts,
He must, he must pretend he isn't dead.

Then, by the pillar he would chance upon
His real friend: she is like him, demised.
And their conversation's phoney tone
Reveal the words they usually disguise:

«My tired friend, it's strange to wear this mask.» —
«My tired friend, the grave is so cold.» —
«It's a midnight.» — «But you have never asked
N-- to the waltz. She loves you, I was told...»

And there's N--. She's searching with a passion
For him, for him; and radiantly glow
Her eyes. The heart beats with obsession
Of senseless love's unthrifty overflow.

He's whispering her a jocose phrase, —
The things that would impassion living souls.
Her eyes and cheeks become a rosy haze,
Her head onto his shoulder falls.

In deadening mixtures of the ballroom pounds,
He's spurting jokes, all in the strangest tone.
«He is so smart! Yes, yes, he is the one!f

Her ears catch unknown, foreign sounds;
A bone has scratched against a bone.

>> No.12431941
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12431941

>>12431856
>finish your magnum opus, make sure it's printed, having nothing else to contribute, an hero
Absolutely Chad

>> No.12431942

>>12431928
You know, maybe you're right, I may have been driven to include him in an attempt to trace a lot of these writers (Cioran in particular) to a particularly French style of writing, but he may be out of place. Cool, we exclude him then.

>>12431932
This seems very cool anon, thanks. Any particular collection of Blok's or any other Russki suggestions?

>> No.12431944
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12431944

Sounds like a pleb

>> No.12431962

>>12431942
This particular poem belongs to the collection titled "Scary World"

>> No.12432053

>>12431866
Retard. His basic premise is that life is full of suffering and that it's necessary.

>> No.12432332

>>12431579

Was it Mainlander or Zapffe that wrote about God committing suicide?

>> No.12432389

>>12432332
Zapffe

>> No.12432393

>>12431579
He cute.
iDubzz?

>> No.12432420

>>12431826
Zapffe, Strindberg, Ligotti, maybe Hamsun

>> No.12432441
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12432441

google labels his "The Philosophy of Redemption" as a genre: Kochbuch, as a Cooking book.

>> No.12432443

>>12431866
Nietzsche is a pessimist. Unlike Schopenhauer he is life affirming but that doesn't make him not a pessimist.

>> No.12432515

>>12431826
Add some latin Authors
Lucretius- De Rerum Natura
Virgil- Eclogues/Bucolics
Seneca's Tragedies
Lucan- Pharsaliia

>> No.12432525

>>12432332
>>12432389
It was Mainlander

>> No.12432530

>>12432515
Thank you! Any Greeks come to mind? That way there could be a Classical heading.

Going on the suggestions from another anon I think that a Scandinavian heading is also warranted:
Kierkegaard - The Sickness Unto Death
Knut Hamsun - Hunger
Zapffe - The Last Messiah
Strindberg - Ghost Sonata (don't actually know anything else of his, help is appreciated)

>> No.12432563
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12432563

>>12431595
Prove it

>> No.12432579

>>12431826
Anyone ever read Bahnsen? From what I gather he was kind of Mainländer's "rival" in that they both thought they were perfecting Schopenhauer's philosophy, but he's not nearly as well known.

>> No.12432593

>>12431826
You forgot Michelstaedter

>> No.12432684

>>12432530
Only Euripides comes to mind.

The Trojan Women is a good example.


Here's some Italians as well

>Giovanni Verga- Little Novels of Sicily
>Leopardi- Zibaldone, Operette Morali, Piccoli e Grandi Idilli, Canti
>Ugo Foscolo -On Sepulchres / Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis
>Pirandello- Novelle per un anno, The Late Mattia Pascal
>Tomasi Di Lampedusa- The Leopard
>Poetry of Eugenio Montale and Salvatore Quasimodo
>Cesare Pavese
Hard Labor: Poems
Dialogues with Leucò
The Business of Living
>talo Svevo
The Confession of Zeno
As a Man Grows Older
>Dino Buzzati- The Tartar Steppe
>Carlo Levi- Christ stopped at Eboli

>> No.12432742

>>12431826
>Emil Cioran
>French writer
burger detected

>> No.12432750

reddit isn't entirely shit:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Mainlander/

>> No.12432754

>>12432742
He wrote in French for most of his life

>> No.12432764

>>12432684
>Euripides

What are the best translations to get?

>> No.12432806

>>12432764
I can't help you.
I haven't read him in English.

>> No.12432833

>>12432742
It's about the language. Notice how the "English" section has an Irishman and the "Spanish" a Colombian.

>> No.12433251

Is pessimism the new /lit/ fotm? Cool

>> No.12433267

>>12432742
>>12432833
He wrote in French, though. He's a French writer in that sense, not in the sense that he himself is French and a writer. Same goes for the Colombian one.

>> No.12433632

>>12431826
zappfe, pessoa, celine, kafka, the list could go on

>> No.12433797
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12433797

>>12431826
Pessimism is too broad. A better theme for a chart would be "God is dead" or simply philosophical atheism. Then you could include Buddhists, Schopenhauer, Mainlander, Nietzsche, possibly Lovecraft (if you want to go further than just philosophy), and so forth.

You should not include merely "life is a tragedy" writers because, again, you could easily include almost every great writer from Shakespeare down to Greek Tragedy. It should focus on genuinely atheist others who also argue for will or life denial (that way you cannot include Dawkins or other effeminate life-affirming writers).

If you followed the atheistic theme, therefore, you would not include people like Dosto, Tolstoy, Kierkegaard, and so forth who are nowhere near as comfortless as Schopenhauer

>> No.12434079

>>12433797
I like this idea mate, thank you.

>> No.12434123

>>12431705
if you look up punchable face in an encyclopedia you'll find a url linking to a youtube clip of stuart lee referring to himself as smug in a way that subverts the audience, his ideological opponents, anyone less smug than him, and also any compassion for him that his immediate family may have still harboured. In doing so, he is then able to act as if "inb4" in the form of an extended sarcastic screed constitutes immunity against any criticism from those he considers more immoral than him.