Who gave a greater answer to life? Who comes closest to the prior questions of existence itself??

[Anonymous No.17382619]

Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Goethe or Wagner?

How does their understanding of life differ?

[Anonymous No.17382647]

>>17382619
Read them and find out

[Anonymous No.17382663]

>>17382619
Aeschylus and Shakespeare

[Anonymous No.17382672]

>>17382619
>a greater answer to life
Life isn't a question.

[Anonymous No.17382717]

>>17382647
But I'll then have to study Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes and the like to get even a fraction of their originality and ideas.

>Years ago a musician said to me: 'But isn't there a place where you can get it all [meaning all of poetry] as in Bach?' There isn't. I believe if a man will really learn Greek he can get nearly 'all of it ' in Homer. I have never read half a page of Homer without finding melodic invention, I mean melodic invention that I didn't already know. I have, on the other hand, found also in Homer the imaginary spectator, which in 1918 I still thought was Henry James' particular property. Homer says, 'an experienced soldier would have noticed'. The sheer literary qualities in Homer are such that a physician has written a book to prove that Homer must have been an army doctor. (When he describes certain blows and their effect, the wounds are said to be accurate, and the description fit for coroner's inquest.) Another French scholar has more or less shown that the geography of the Odyssey is correct geography; not as you would find it if you had a geography book and a map, but as it would be in a 'periplum ', that is, as a coasting sailor would find it.

[Anonymous No.17382732]

>>17382672
The use of the words "answer" and "question" are just secondary to the point of the literary artist; that is, how far he sees in life.

[Anonymous No.17382835]

that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

[Anonymous No.17382860]

>>17382835
I'm not talking about religions or philosophy anon, just as far as the great literary masters go, within their religion and influenced by their philosophy, what do they see?

[Anonymous No.17382894]

I don't think any of them set out to answer that question you autist

well, maybe dante and hesiod

[Anonymous No.17383097]

>>17382717
You should
>>17382619
Aeschylus, Hesiod and Sophocles gave answers largely about particular aspects of life more than life as a whole. Homer has the whole of the Greek world in his writings which are elaborated on by the aforementioned poets. Cervantes himself only had to say something about a particular kind of life, but is marinated in humor such that the assumptions of depth only came about through post-hoc analysis. Cervantes and his contemporaries probably saw Don Quixote as "the funny book" and not much else. Depending on what kind of person you are, you will find much value in Homer, Dante or Goethe (though you should read all of them regardless of your outlook).

[Anonymous No.17383521]

>>17382619
I'm completely nude. Here is the answer you seek

[Anonymous No.17383803]

>>17383521
Dogmatic.

[Anonymous No.17384701]

>>17383097
To use the slightly schizo language of Hegel, art appeals to the absolute through the particular. Aeschylus and Hesiod are hardly irrelevant to questions of existence itself.

[Anonymous No.17384705]

>>17382619
There is an entire board for homework
>>>/hm/

[Anonymous No.17384752]

>>17384705
This isn't homework, just interested in what other anons have to say about literature and life.

[Anonymous No.17385431]

Bump. Surely more people must have contemplated the greats?

[Anonymous No.17385470]

>>17383521
Based

>>17382619
I would go with Borges

>If life’s meaning were explained to us, we probably wouldn’t understand it. To think that a man can find it is absurd. We can live without understanding what the world is or who we are. The important things are the ethical instinct and the intellectual instinct, are they not? The intellectual instinct is the one that makes us search while knowing that we are never going to find the answer.
>I think Lessing said that if God were to declare that in His right hand He had the truth and in his left hand He had the investigation of the truth, Lessing would ask God to open His left hand - he would want God to give him the investigation of the truth, not the truth itself. Of course he would want that, because the investigation permits infinite hypotheses, and the truth is only one, and that does not suit the intellect, because the intellect needs curiosity. In the past, I tried to believe in a personal God, but I do not think I try anymore. I remember in that respect an admirable expression of Bernard Shaw: ”God is in the making.”

[Anonymous No.17385478]

>>17382619
>Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Goethe or Wagner?
all NPCs bourgeois. you cant be serious, or are you a woman/??

[Anonymous No.17385487]

>>17385478
So you like Epictetus?

[Anonymous No.17385491]

Saged for low effort posting

[Anonymous No.17385500]

>>17385491
It's just a very general thread, which you need sometimes.

[Anonymous No.17386430]

Bump.

[Anonymous No.17386505]

>>17385470
>>17383521
We need a definitive answer because of the problem of death.
Borges asked for a priest in his deathbed. Death demands an answer and it will not wait until you intellectually reach at the right one. This is why we must do the leap of faith.