/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13594564]

>Aeschylus wrote 79 plays. Only 7 survive.
>Euripides wrote 75 or 95 plays. Only 19 survive.
>Sophocles wrote 123 or 130 plays. Only 7 survive.

[Anonymous No.13594578]

>once my hard drive is gone there wont be a single fragment left of my dairy desu

[Anonymous No.13594679]

>>13594564
Overrated garbage anywho tbqh.

[Anonymous No.13594691]

Such a shame to the literature world

[Anonymous No.13594741]

>Shakespeare's sister wrote 0 plays

it gets me every time ;-;

[Anonymous No.13595638]

>>13594578
nobody wants to read it anon

[Anonymous No.13595653]

>>13595638
That's not true.

If you are 20-something virgin NEET I would love to take a look at it.
I love reading permutations of my own diary.

[Anonymous No.13595670]

>>13594578
Don't lose the milk

[Anonymous No.13595688]

>>13595638
Cringe

[Anonymous No.13595697]

>>13594679
Congratulations your opinions aren’t worth sharing

[Anonymous No.13595727]

>>13594564
Fun story: we have so many works by Euripides because one manuscript of his complete works was preserved - but only partially, so since the plays were ordered alphabetically, only the ones whose titles started with "h" and "i" survived. Imagine how much of a retarded stroke of luck that was, something as arbitrary as the alphabet decided what great art would and would not survive until today.

[Anonymous No.13595823]

>>13595727
that sounds... like a greek tragedy.

[Anonymous No.13596222]

>>13594578
Mines on GDrive

[Anonymous No.13596245]

>>13594564
Shouldn't have burned down your fucking library

[Anonymous No.13596248]

>>13595727
Don't call the alphabet arbitrary every again you stupid fuckpig

[Anonymous No.13596261]

>>13596245
story?

[Anonymous No.13596280]

>>13595823
no it doesnt

[Anonymous No.13596288]

>>13596280
you're right, but it is tragic still.

[Anonymous No.13597289]

>>13594564
Socrates wrote 0 plays. His whole life survives as one.

[Anonymous No.13597302]

>>13594564

Thank god I don't have to actually read all that repetitive shit, and I can instead virtue-signal my lamentations that "so much of the Canon is lost, like tears in rain!"

[Anonymous No.13597698]

>>13597302
>he doesn’t unironically like the oresteia
Fucking loser

[Anonymous No.13597849]

>>13596261
The great library at Alexandria burnt down. It housed many of the western world's works. It's been said that if it had not burnt, Colombus would've gone to the moon instead of America

[Anonymous No.13597972]

>>13597698
>even the orestia's satyr play is lost
fug

[Pessoa No.13598541]

>>13594564
>thinking about Seneca's lost letters

[Anonymous No.13598546]

>>13597849
thats a myth. only scientific discipline it housed was geography. and it wasnt the only library in the world

[Anonymous No.13598559]

>>13594578
that thought comforts me. I live in terror of my parents reading everything ive written after I commit suicide and they want some way to connect with the child they lost. I have been trying to figure out the best way to destroy it all but the sheer quantity of stuff Ive written on paper and computers is ridiculous, and I dont know how to get it all because i can barely go to work every day and buy food, I am trembling and broken and cant even breathe. I can't even clean my apartment or make myself food, i starve half the time because im in agony laying on the floor writhing around in my kitchen because my head hurts so fucking much and I can't focus my anything to make sense of the world except as a fever dream in which my body is literally melting and hurts so much and I cant understand what is happening

[Anonymous No.13598568]

>>13598559
And yet you seem surprisingly lucid, despite the run-on sentences.

[Anonymous No.13598591]

>>13598559
why would you give away the life God gave you for free?

[Anonymous No.13598622]

>>13595727
>Alcestis
>greek: Ἄλkηστις
>Medea
>greek: Μήδεια
>Andromache
>greek: Ἀνδρομάχη
>The trojan women
>greek: Τρῳάδες
>Phoenician women
>greek: Φοίνισσαι
>Orestes
>greek: Ὀρέστης
>Bacchae
>greek: Βάkχαι
>Cyclops
>greek: Κύkλωψ
Many of his plays start with "h" so there might be something to your story, but at least do a google search before posting bullshit like "only the ones that start with "i" and "h" have survived"

[Anonymous No.13598630]

>>13598559
>can type crybaby shit on 4chan
>cant clean his room

That's it, I'm calling Dr. Peterson and giving him your IP address.

[Anonymous No.13598700]

Only the loss of Suetonius' Lives of Famous Whores is something I really feel bad about

[Anonymous No.13598724]

>>13598568
>>13598591
>>13598630
it is hard when you want to be a prophet for universal love and you beat the shit out of your girlfriend

it is even harder when you don't remember what a person even is and you can't know if you've hurt someone because you have no concept of reality

[Anonymous No.13598739]

>will never read Cypria, Aethiopis, Little Iliad, Illupersis, Nostoi, or Telegony

[Anonymous No.13598741]

>>13598559
please call 911
better broke your parents than live like that

[Anonymous No.13598826]

>>13598739
The Telegony honestly sounds like a fucking mess, losing it was probably a good thing. But god damn do I wish we had the others.

[Anonymous No.13598836]

>>13594564
The good ones survived, the crappier ones didn't because nobody cared

[Anonymous No.13598839]

>>13598739
>read

[Anonymous No.13598917]

>>13594578
>>13595670
$2.99 a gallon

[Anonymous No.13598934]

>>13594564
>Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles
WHO?

[Anonymous No.13598947]

>>13594564
And that's a good thing.

[Anonymous No.13598950]

>>13594578
my diary desu

[Anonymous No.13598953]

>>13598541
posting in a sticky

[Anonymous No.13599039]

>>13598546
No but all the others also were destroyed.
Almost all knowledge we have are of COPIES from the Library of Constantinople—and it too was destroyed.
So much is lost.

[Anonymous No.13599131]

>>13598622
You're an anal faggot. There is something to my story because I read it in an introduction to his plays.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euripides#Extant_plays
Yes, there are also plays which were preserved by being copied many times deliberately (for their greater artistic quality), which do not only start with h and i, but the ones I was talking about, the ones from the "alphabetical" edition, do.

[Anonymous No.13599239]

>>13594741
Calm down, Virginia

[Anonymous No.13599312]

>>13594564
>be me
>be antique stonerfag
>hanging 'round in the Impirial Library of Constantinople cuz it's pretty comfy there
>read my man Euripides
>light a little joint, you know, for recreational purposes only
>warden heading my way
>oh_shit.fresco
>been warned multiple times not to smoke in the fucking library
>rip out a bundle of pages, hide the butt in the book and the papyrus under my stola
>pass by the warden
>whistling_innocently.drama
>whew, that was close
>go home and lay down at the table
>order my personal citharatrio λοφο kυπαρισσια to start playing
>light another joint, pull out the stolen pages and start reading
>strange: all the playes on the stolen pages either start with "H" or "I"

[Anonymous No.13599318]

>>13594564
Why is ancient fiction considered good when we live in the 21st century? Has no one wrote better?

[Anonymous No.13599364]

>>13599312
kinda reddity

[Anonymous No.13599365]

>>13599318

Human nature does not change, even if our circumstances do. The insight they provided then still provide the same insight now.

[Anonymous No.13599373]

>>13599365
Does this image imply the "void" is conscious or perhaps consciousness itself?

[Anonymous No.13599377]

>>13599318
You obviously haven't

[Anonymous No.13599389]

>>13599373
>consciousness is Cthulhu
Possibly. Human is the only animal known whose offspring come to this world screaming in utter terror.

[Anonymous No.13599399]

>>13599373
I don't see how. It implies that consciousness arises out of nothingness and that there is no afterlife

[Anonymous No.13599438]

>>13598559
Why does your head hurt?

[Anonymous No.13599459]

>>13594564
I wonder how much books, movies and shows would change thanks to those lost Greek plays considering most of the media we consumed nowadays is influenced by ancient Greek plays in a way or another

[Anonymous No.13599966]

>>13599459
Better question is why we rely so much on an ancient civilisation in which the average literate person capable of creating these works was not in contact with anywhere near as much variety of background literature, of contemporary people of letters, or of cultural energy as we are?

[Anonymous No.13600033]

>>13599966
Because most of culture is derivative (and nowadays more than ever). Ancient works are the "seeds" to a far greater extent than we're willing to admit. Do you want to learn about each and every mutation of the root concept, or just learn about the single ancient idea, so that you can recognize/have intuition about anything that is inspired by it?

[Anonymous No.13600042]

>Rescue the Stoic classics
>It doesn't even matter in the end

[Anonymous No.13600081]

>>13597849
“Science” was worthless in those ages anyways. All natural philosophy bullshit. It wasn’t until we had thinkers like Kepler and Descartes break free from the ancients and their Aristotlean thinking that science became useful.

[Anonymous No.13600091]

>>13600081

>It wasn’t until we had thinkers like Kepler and Descartes break free from the ancients and their Aristotlean thinking that science became useful.
>break free from the ancients and their Aristotlean thinking that science became useful.
>that science became useful.
>became useful.
>useful.

Hmmmmm

[Anonymous No.13600092]

https://vocaroo.com/i/s1S8Y93N2W1J

[Anonymous No.13600104]

>>13600091
>the internal combustion engine, electricity, and the computer aren’t useful
Okay, go live in a mud shack and think about your essences

[Anonymous No.13600125]

>>13599389

Some children, including myself, are born in silence. My mother asked the doctor what was wrong with me and he replied "Nothing."

Get wrecked.

[Anonymous No.13600144]

>>13600125
Great observation! Indeed some children are born dead. In that regard, there's a lot of commonality with other species.

[Anonymous No.13600585]

>>13600033
I'm not entirely sure what the purpose of that question is.
What I would like to know here is why the claustrophobia of ancient civilisation - where the written culture was so small and the purpose of thinking for its own sake less clear - was capable of coming up with so many concepts and stories that we lean on to this day, meanwhile we are languishing in the production of ground-breaking works with literally billions of people able to read and write.

[Anonymous No.13600708]

>>13600585
Yeah I see what you mean. Take for example roman legal system - it's been kept near unchanged to this day, and by every account is complete shitshow now.
Advances in math (which too back in roman times was about as fuzzy as their legalism) should give us hint - formal stuff that matters must accord to best formal standard we're capable of. Meanwhile, we're stuck in 2000 years old kindergarten rhetorics you'd attempt in math you'd be laughed at.

And there are dozens upon dozens of examples where we take something ancient, and keep it despite its inherent inefficiencies and scaleability issues, and just make it more and more byzantine through incremental "improvements", instead of just scrapping it and back to drawing board.

As for why, I suspect it's to do with power law in cultural inertia and meme propagation. That is, if incubent meme is extremely widespread, a radical meme can't replace it on merit alone willy nilly - it has to be magnificently better to get a shot as an "underdog". Compound advantage, pulling by the bootstraps economical effect.

This got worse especially as of recent, as the decision making got "democratized" - radical ideas are harder to propagate because there are no longer philosopher kings who occasionally served as a shortcut to test the merit of radical ideas.

[Anonymous No.13600724]

>>13598934
cringe

[Anonymous No.13600892]

>>13600708
I have always had an inkling that mass democracy has more of a stifling impact on the creative spirit than we would like to think, and because the meaningful forms of liberty that democracy is supposed to complement are now being eroded, I am becoming less supportive of our systems and being drawn into thinking that living in a less autistic version of the Chinese system where the rulers are teams of intellectuals and specialists will both free people and provoke them into a more vibrant way of living.
It also has the capacity for the radical changes you mentioned because the fears of the masses are no longer preventing radical change at the state level.

Can you elaborate on your reference to the power law in cultural inertia?

[Anonymous No.13600907]

>>13594564
gets me every fucking time

[Anonymous No.13600962]

>>13599039
>Almost all knowledge we have are of COPIES from the Library of Constantinopl
>Capitalizing COPIES like it means something
Every single ancient text that we possess is a copy of a copy of a copy of god knows how many copies. There is not a single ancient text of which we possess the original work.

[Anonymous No.13600985]

>>13599399
I think, generally, when you "rip" something it remains a piece or fragment of the whole it was ripped from. Ex. If I rip a piece of paper in two, I have two smaller pieces of paper. If I rip a small corner off, it is still paper.

[Anonymous No.13601020]

>>13600892
>Can you elaborate on your reference to the power law in cultural inertia?
Power law is simply "strength in numbers". But that doesn't mean old memes are completely invincible. Take christianity for instance - it got undone by rational inquiry and increasing literacy, people got less and less superstitious after dark ages, as that was at odds with scientific boom of renaissance. This is the typical example of "small, new, but magnificent" taking on "large, old, but kinda meh", where the underdog overcame the top dog, against all odds. Interpose with islam - christianity, just slightly more virulent. It did have some success at displacing the top christian dog, but as nowhere near capable of outright displacing it.

And now there's nothing left of old religiosity as the two were mutually exclusive. Materialism has won, because it improved quality of life. Masses decide on selfish short term benefit (like populism). Netflix and fast food is better than prayers and family.

This brings another factor: When some meme wins organically like this, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is superior in the long run. Modernism brought in plethora of its own issues which are only now are becoming apparent, and could very well undo us compared to still religious agrarian societies. Looking back at islam - even if it did not triumph over christianity (because it is only slightly more robust/virulent - not enough edge to overcome the power law), it definitely gave a fight. And it was sufficiently dogmatic and ruthless so as retain coherence when facing modernity, whereas christianity was too weak for that. I'm not sure islam will last, though.

Culture wars is an evolutionary process, where memes win by tactical agility, and nobody pays much attention to long term strategy, swarm intelligence is short sighted.

[Anonymous No.13601062]

>>13600042
He tried so hard
and got so far...

[Anonymous No.13601069]

>No written works of Diogenes survived

[Anonymous No.13601110]

>>13601069

>Diogenes
>Writing

[Anonymous No.13601137]

>>13601110
he got posthumously btfo'd lmao

[Anonymous No.13601159]

>>13601110
>fucking kids and their writing
>fucking kids and their canvas paintings
>fucking kids and their standardized script
>fucking kids and their printed works
>fucking kids and their bibles
>fucking kids and their diagrams
>fucking kids and their photographs
>fucking kids and their telegraph
>fucking kids and their phonographs
>fucking kids and their telephone
>fucking kids and their radio
>fucking kids and their internet
>fucking kids and their cellphones

[Anonymous No.13601653]

>>13600125
>what was wrong with me
>Nothing
>browsing a mongolian cartoon site
Hmmmmmm

[Anonymous No.13602436]

>>13594564
>I've written thousands of shitposts
>perhaps 0.1% will ever be read again

[Anonymous No.13602451]

>>13597849
>It's been said that if it had not burnt, Colombus would've gone to the moon instead of America
It's been said that the sky is green too, but guess what

[Anonymous No.13602564]

Most of them were probably shit. Shakespeare wrote loads of plays but people only watch the same few

[Anonymous No.13602601]

>>13594578
get a pen and a notebook you weirdo - but first, print out your stuff and put them in binders, if you care about what you've written.
I can read not only my thoughts from over a decade ago, but the emotion I wrote them with by just glancing at my penstrokes

[Anonymous No.13602647]

>>13602436
Iktf. At least a few of mine have been screenshoted but the vast majority are post ironic passive aggressiveness that cost me days of my life all added up.

[Anonymous No.13602663]

>>13602647
That's like complaining that the conversations you've had with friends and the jokes you've made will be forgotten. It only really has worth in the moment and isn't worth revisiting but that doesn't mean it's worthless, and you'll remember the best ones.

[Anonymous No.13602667]

>>13596222
#not a diary

[Anonymous No.13602765]

>>13598739
>Cypria, Aethiopis, Little Iliad, Illupersis, Nostoi, or Telegony
Here's a remade Cypria
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1546302956/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=

And here's a later Roman book filling in the gap between Iliad and Odyssey, using plays, Virgil, etc as sauces
https://www.amazon.com/Posthomerica-Classical-Library-Quintus-Smyrnaeus/dp/0674997166
They aren't the real things but, they seem to be viewed positively, if you want to read more than a quarter of the cycle

[Anonymous No.13602799]

>>13602663
Yeah, I know. It was mostly the last part that makes me sad. I've "wasted" so many hours here and for what? It's pure cope because I can't function in society. This does not mean I don't love you guys as much as is possible but I still know it's not ideal. And often I feel addicted and distracted by this place and it interferes with my motivation to do productive things like reading and writing. Then again, I did "self-publish" about a month or two ago and I feel prepared to do it again. Just have to start writing whatever comes next