/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17733890]

Can literature be truly abstract? If so, what are some examples?

[Anonymous No.17733922]

>>17733890
Finnegans Wake
Bottom's Dream

[Anonymous No.17733937]

>>17733890
Books which are in a language which I don't speak

[Anonymous No.17734017]

John Ashbery

[Anonymous No.17734021]

Diary desu
Mine

[Anonymous No.17734029]

>>17733890
No they can't really. Something like William S. Burroughs is the closes to abstract that you can get I think

[Anonymous No.17734042]

>>17733922
They still resemble something
>>17733890
Arrange all the words in your favourite novel by alphabetical order.

[Anonymous No.17734324]

>>17733890
Ice by Anna Kavan

[࿇ C Œ M G E N V S ࿇ !KNDYqWRDiE No.17734406]

THE ABSTRACT IS NOT REAL; THE REAL IS CONCRETE; LITERATURE IS AN ARTFORM; ALL THE PRODUCTS OF AN ARTFORM (ARTIFACTS) ARE CONCRETE OBJECTS; A LITERARY WORK, BEING AN ARTIFACT, THEREFORE CONCRETE, IS A REAL OBJECT, THEREFORE IT CANNOT BE ABSTRACT.

[Anonymous No.17734471]

>>17733890
House of Leaves but you spill ink all over it and then do >>17734042
maybe scramble some of the word art for good measure

[Anonymous No.17734476]

>>17734406
aren't you the guy who posts about y2k aesthetic in /mu/?

[Anonymous No.17734493]

>>17734406
what did rei mean by this image

[Anonymous No.17736053]

>>17733890
ZANG TUMB TUMB motherfucka

[Anonymous No.17736059]

>>17733890
Tons of examples. John Ashberry is a good one already mentioned. Here is a poem of his
http://mhsoldham.weebly.com/uploads/3/8/9/2/3892961/p25.pdf

[Anonymous No.17736157]

>>17733890
I don't think so. Of course there have been attempts at it, but I wouldn't really call it literature. Look up sound poetry. On the other hand, texts like the experimentations of Cummings aren't really abstract.
>>17734406
God, what a dumb insufferable faggot you are.

[Anonymous No.17736181]

>>17733890
I don't see how literature can be wholly abstract when it replies upon words to convey something. Unless you just want to vomit incoherently onto a page, then i suppose that would be "abstract?"

[Anonymous No.17736191]

>>17734406
Pedo

[Anonymous No.17736557]

I don't think so. Unlike other artforms, literature relies on symbols with preassumed- and assigned meaning as its most basic "building block".

[Anonymous No.17736565]

>>17734406
neck yourself pedo

[Anonymous No.17736655]

>>17733890
>>17734042
>They still resemble something

Abstract =/= Incomprehensible.

Abstract art is art that uses, for example in visual art, shapes, forms, visual composition and color to create images that are disconnected to the "concrete world", as in, not representative of what is real.

In the case of fiction literature, the equivalent might be something like a novel that uses text, words, paragraphs, characters and plots that are not representative of how people act, stories unfold, things happen and people think in reality, or even of how language really works in real life.

If you want truly, incomprehensible and experimental literature, check

Gadsby by Ernest Vincent Wright
Alphabetical Africa by Walter Abish
The Voynich Manuscript
Finnegan’s Wake
Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans
Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age by Bohumil Hrabal
How It Is by Samuel Beckett
Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serfini
At-Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien

Have a surreal chart as well

[Anonymous No.17736750]

>>17736655
>Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans
Only read this out of your list. But really wouldn't call it abstract. Could you expend on what makes you think that?
I don't think your criteria for defining abstract really work either. If we make a comparison with painting, I'd say that an abstract painting is a one were no concept are laid. A work by say Gustave Moreau would fit your definition of abstract in the case of a painting, but really we see that the shift is too big. Same goes for music: most of instrumental music can be said to be abstract because it is felt before it is thought. I believe this is more or less impossible for literature, as something like a sound poem really doesn't qualify as literature imo.
That being said you have a point by pointing surreal/experimental lit, I think it utilises the abstraction of language, rather than its realistic illusion. But in the end I believe meaning is primordial. Perec in species of spaces also have a few passages that could fit your criteria.

[Anonymous No.17736817]

>>17733890
Unameable by Samuel Beckett

[Anonymous No.17736826]

>>17736750
Against Nature has a very unique, I'd say experimental style. It's mostly the first-person ramblings of an eccentric for the whole duration of it, no plot, no structure, only thoughts and musings piling up. It's mostly the style and the absence of plot to me. I'm lead to believe you mention Gustave Moreau only because he was mentioned in Against Nature, even if only be unconsciously recalling him through this connection, since his art is very straight forward and could only fit my description of abstract art in which its themes are more "fantasy" than "realism".

>abstract painting is a one were no concept are laid

Hardly so. If you check an art's gallery in person or in their site during an exhibition of abstract big names, you see that they use obscurantism and all sorts of semantic gymnastics to claim that the work has some sort of meaning or theme, that would allegedly seem evident once explained ("this red painting represents fury"), thus exposing a technique that seems to be rooted in exposing a concept through whatever method you prefer without a rooting in objective concrete references (an objective reference for "fury" would be an animal or person displaying fury).

My point was that abstract art is that which there are no objective standards of how to represent what you are trying to convey, and no technical, formal restraints either. In literature, it would be a novel in which neither the real world or previous literature (much like in abstract art neither the real or previous art) have the role of objective standard to your creation, and you can use plots, characters, themes and prose how you prefer.

[Anonymous No.17736944]

>>17736826
>'m lead to believe you mention Gustave Moreau only because he was mentioned in Against Nature.
Not only, but the connection is helpful.
>Hardly so
Yup. Spoke too fast. I think the second definition I made about music is more accurate: it is felt before it is thought. The "red=fury" comes from a secondary conceptualisation.
>My point was that abstract art is that which there are no objective standards of how to represent what you are trying to convey, and no technical, formal restraints either. In literature, it would be a novel in which neither the real world or previous literature
I think the problem here is the word. A word, unless it's new and made for the occasion, has an inherent meaning that is automatically assimilated to how it is felt. And the word is the "paint" of the writer. Paint can be used without inherent meaning, sound too. When a word is new for the reader, there can maybe be some abstraction. I'm not sure myself. How do you react to a new word? And especially one that doesn't have any signification. Three examples I can think of are the "merdre", the "ptyx" and the "bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk". The three of them work quite differently and Mallarmé is the one that is the closest to abstraction IMO. But as a reader, can we read these words (in context) and not give them signification despite ourselves? Can we really lose ourselves in it without feeling the need for meaning, like we can in an abstract painting or in music?
Two other interesting other attempts at abstraction can be seen in the fatrasie or in poems like Grasshopper by EE Cummings. But while the former escapes the logic of meaning in a sentence, it does not free itself of the the word. The later, I feel, is closer to an impressionist painting, because meaning can still become quite objective after some reading.
I know I haven't answered much to your argument but I feel we mostly have a difference about how to name the same thing: experimental seems more fitting to me for what you call abstract. Hopefully you'll still find some interest in my undecided mental masturbation.

[Anonymous No.17737678]

>>17736157
>God, what a dumb insufferable faggot you are.

But he's right

[Anonymous No.17737719]

>>17733890
No, it can't (and that's a good thing)

[Anonymous No.17737740]

>>17734406
other way round. all art is abstract.

[Anonymous No.17737756]

>>17737678
By his definition, an abstract painting cannot exist. Therefore his post is irrelevant to OP's question which is obviously making a connection with abstract painting.
Also samefag. You are an insufferable pedophile faggot.

[Anonymous No.17737813]

>>17736157
think abstract lit isn’t writing similar to abstract painting, content to imitate naively a painter’s blobs of colour and balancing effects. it needn’t give form to a thought, but thought itself.

[Anonymous No.17737816]

JH Prynne.
Debths

[Anonymous No.17737832]

>>17733890
Abstract literature? Example?

>YOOO DOO HOOOGOO ONGEEE TALOBODO SINGLOO TOPONO ROPSLAW HAKE HAKE DINGLO BADDO BADDI FIGLOO

There's your example, homo.

[Anonymous No.17737836]

>>17733890
>nfskdfwkfjqwejfqenfkenrgkqergkqebgkqnekvnqedkvbqkehgkqerhtkehrtekngkqebrgkberbtkb
Just wrote some right there for you

[Anonymous No.17737839]

Ydgdy jshdusbdg jagwgehdufhcg!

[Anonymous No.17737844]

Dadaist poetry, perhaps?

[Anonymous No.17737875]

>>17733890
>can literature be a CIA psyop like Pollock

[Anonymous No.17738077]

>>17737756
Take your meds, m8

[Anonymous No.17738082]

>>17738077
mate your banter game is fucking atrocious

[Anonymous No.17738083]

>>17737875
Take your meds

[Anonymous No.17738159]

>>17737678
God shut the fuck up

[Anonymous No.17738577]

please at least check out the reviews to see what it its. its almost exactly what everyone is looking for in these discussions.

[Anonymous No.17738878]

literature is good because it's not abstract. it's resisted the mediocrity and stupid conceptual gimmicks of visual art.

language poetry tries to be and has accomplished nothing of note.

[Anonymous No.17738915]

>>17733890
No, because of the nature of words. Words all refer to something in the real world, or to a relation of things, or at worst an abstraction from concrete things. It's different from a colored smear in a painting with no recognizable shape that is called "abstract art". The closest you can get with literature is just writing nonsense.

[Anonymous No.17739100]

>>17738878
>it's resisted the mediocrity and stupid conceptual gimmicks of visual art.
The only reason for this is that reading a book takes significantly more effort than looking at a painting. If you're James Joyce and you wrote Ulysses then you have enough cred to get a very small minority of people to read your experimental meme book, whereas anyone at all can stare at an abstract painting for a bit. The social circles in which these consensuses on taste are formed are just not willing to actually read Finnegans Wake, they are simply not going to do it, so it retains prestige but it's not in the spotlight, the entire artform didn't switch over to that level of abstraction. Poetry did experiment a lot more with abstract forms, and it's obvious why, reading a short poem doesn't take much time or effort compared to reading a novel.