/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18845077]

What are some historical books that really impressed and had an effect on you? When you consume the great works of Western culture in other mediums like music for example Bach, Beethoven, Mozart etc are really extremely impressive and have an effect on you. Same thing happens when you walk into St. Peter's Basilica or the Louvre but for some reason reading the classics of both literature and philosophy have had zero effect on me. It's very possible that I'm low IQ or don't have the background needed but it's not like that for any other medium. You think there would be some works that convince everyone who reads of them of their greatness. I've gone through a ton of stuff and haven't found anything comparable. I've read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Ovid, Virgil, Chaucer. Goethe, Milton etc. I've read Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Leibniz, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant. Nothing. No feeling of greatness like walking in a cathedral. What should I read to get this feeling?

[Anonymous No.18845080]

>>18845077
>historical books
Hammond and Hammond labourers
EP Thompson Making

[Anonymous No.18845081]

>When you consume the great works of Western culture

[Anonymous No.18845137]

>>18845081
The funniest part of his image is that it's less of a caricature than the real man's actual face.

[Anonymous No.18845162]

>>18845077
Cyrano, maybe.

[Anonymous No.18845209]

>>18845077
I read a lot of novels, but I think they won't offer you that sense of the sublime because the roots of the medium are ironic and discursive. Poetry might, but probably only in your native tongue, whatever that is, and most likely not poetry beyond one or two hundred years old because the music of the language changes. Short stories can, probably more than novels, in so far as they encapsulate a scene. Philosophy should, but I think more likely not academically aimed philosophers like Kant because the prose is too horrid.

>>18845077
>convince everyone who reads of them of their greatness

On the other hand won't work in philosophy, most people only encounter one or two writers who provide that sense of sublime identification with worldview

For me:
Death in Venice
Wittgenstein's Tractatus
Eugene Oneigin
Vanity Fair
King Lear (on stage, the reading is only necessary prep work)

[Anonymous No.18845833]

>the best reader even enjoys average books. a writer only erects the ladder, the reader must be bold enough to climb it himself. if everything stays dead to him, he should just do manual labor instead of wasting time reading.

[Anonymous No.18845857]

It's because you're reading English, which is a midwit language.

[Anonymous No.18846964]

>>18845077
The Bible