/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18936866]

Everyone bitches about overspecialization in academia , but what about overspecialization on lit? Not that it has to, but where has all your read led you ?
In Aristotle's time: music, dancing, politics, rhetoric, etc were all integrated, and taking an active interest each of those things was all part of being a responsible citizen, and a compete person.
Right now we all scattered throughout the various forums and discords, each specializing in it's own, ever more thin, strand of the bigger picture. Each fine on it's own but missing that interdisciplinary element, that weave of intersection that binds together and strengthens both sides.

So i guess im asking how has lit improved your life? Where have you gone, that you otherwise wouldn't have.

[Anonymous No.18936872]

i read some books and enjoyed the experience

[Anonymous No.18936885]

>>18936866
My interest in literature led me to music (of a sort I hadn't listened to before, and now listen almost exclusively to), and helped me form a more concrete idea of my political alignment (though I try to stay out of it). There's no /bildung/ board, sadly. I guess /lit/ is as close as we're going to get.

[Anonymous No.18936927]

I agree, OP: fragmentation, specialization, separation, and division—not just of labor or interests but all the spheres of life—seem to be the rule of the day. And the trends in that direction don’t seem to be slowing down. Funnily enough, Calasso was one of the last contemporary authors I respected because he was one of the very few in whom I found that sense of breadth and wholeness that the other anon hinted at by mentioning Bildung. There’s only so much we as individuals can do to combat the increasing fragmentation, but I do see a thirst, even tacitly stated, for a fuller life in many young people today, whether they turn to traditionalist Catholicism and the classics or crafting and socialism. Unfortunately, people have found solace from the cut-up world in these insular interest-based groups, many with their own one-sided dreams of a more put-together world that are products of the fragmentation they’re fighting in the first place (“an ethnostate,” “rightists in reeducation camps,” “integralist monarchy,” etc.). I live a one-sided life as a NEET, “one-manned” and solitary even, but I find the specter of a more well-rounded life in my mind and the texts I read. I know this is not enough, that I’d like to play whatever part I can in the revival of collective life in the outside world, but it’s where I am now and may remain for some time.

[Anonymous No.18936932]

>>18936927
And to add to that: I remain a NEET in large part because of academic specialization. I don’t want to specialize and take pride in being a generalist, but there is no place for one like me in the contemporary university.

[Anonymous No.18936942]

Well i learned French and am now dating a French girl, so there's that.

But there was one big moment early on when reading Chesterton's essay on Chaucer. There he describes how one of the things poetry can do is to show us how to see and how to love the world. How all that has been made ugly or unfashionable by history or the modern world has it's nobility forever maintained in that scrap of good writing.
That made realize ( i was 17 and still needed such thing explained to me) how all the pornography and cheap consumerism that was then turning me towards a pol like nihilism could not diminish the beauty of what it aims to make make ugly.

It's funny to write this now, but somehow Disneyworld and marvel movies and youtube LP seemed to cheapen the world around me. Chesterton made me see that the meaning and nobility of life had never gone away. Rather I was so angry that i just couldn't see it anymore. Somehow i've been reading books differently since then.

[Anonymous No.18936951]

> all those misspellings.
... new keyboard =/

[Anonymous No.18937006]

>>18936942
This is Blakes minute particulars. The details that reveal more to the whole.
IE: reading an poetic/scientific/philosophical description of a sunset can enable you to see the real thing differently .

[Anonymous No.18937015]

>Not that it has to, but where has all your read led you ?
I went looking for answers and I came out with far more severe questions that remain unanswered. I'm not very happy about it.

[Anonymous No.18937063]

lit is stuck talking about the same 20 authors so i fucking welcome it.
Bring on fitlit, mlit, glit and mlplit

[Anonymous No.18937064]

>>18936866
He was so fucking handsome in his prime, an absolute chad.
Also he was a pretty great example of a non specialized scholar (if you can even call him that) that had relevant things to say about different fields, like mythology, literature and even social commentary.

[Anonymous No.18937120]

as someone who basically spends all of their spare time engaging with art in various fields, it's just shown me how interconnected basically every great work of art truly is. i was a /film/fag (not the board) before going full /lit/ and reading has only made my analyses of film more expansive and interesting. basically everything modern is borrowed from or rooted in history, even if it is a particularly novel idea, and these throughlines can be used and built upon or even mangled in such interesting ways. i prefer lit to film these days but reading has simply just made the world more interesting. even the simple act of noticing these parallels is entertaining for me, though i tend to stay quiet about it because bringing it up feels to me at least like i'm just sitting there yelling "i get that reference!" lmao.
on the other hand it has undeniably alienated me from society at large because i simply no longer care to entertain the banal, trite opinions of anyone who doesn't read in at least some moderate quantity. this is seen as aberrant in the eyes of my peers and parents etc. but fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your outlook), depression beat all possibility of caring out of me at a younger age so i now just exist as i please and coast through life enjoying my own closed world.
if you could reconcile the first part of my post with a healthy and active social life as opposed to what i do (being social genuinely exhausts me and i cannot do it on consecutive days past maybe two or three), then you would probably be pretty happy in the grand scheme of things. it's a very satisfying way to live, i've found, and i hope other people who engage with literature and the arts share at least some of the appreciation i've come to feel for it all.

[Anonymous No.18937169]

>>18936866
You can learn anything on 4chan. Just click on a different board

[Anonymous No.18937180]

>>18936866
>I'm going to frame my existential crisis as YOUR existential crisis and pretend I'm winning an argument

[Anonymous No.18938511]

Bump! Interesting

[Anonymous No.18938529]

Be the octopus, but beware. In being the octopus, you have to love truth, and the simple life