/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19447819]

Why is there almost no great non-paganistic literature between 476 and 800? Is the Dark Ages meme actually real?

[Anonymous No.19447823]

>>19447819
Anon, people recycled Roman glass, because glassmaking technology was lost and only recovered by about 9th century. Yes, the Dark Ages were real, despite the modern "denial" meme of it. Go to any European national museum (e.g. in Zurich or Copenhagen) and you'll always get bored af going through the early medieval section.

[Anonymous No.19447826]

>>19447819
Yes. It took almost a thousand years for art and science to catch upto what was lost during Roman times

[Anonymous No.19447828]

>>19447819
The Consolation of Philosophy.

[Anonymous No.19447827]

>>19447819
There were lots of schisms happening.

[Anonymous No.19447834]

>>19447828
mogged by Plotinus (pbuh)

[Anonymous No.19448080]

>>19447823
>implying that the antique section isn't even more boring in the museum of Copenhague or Zurich.

[Anonymous No.19448182]

>>19447823
Oh no! Not the technology!

[Anonymous No.19448189]

And to what paganistic literature form that period which is so great are you referring?

[Anonymous No.19449712]

There wasn't a lot of things being written at the time due to the collapse of urban centers.

[Anonymous No.19450504]

>>19447819
Urban centers had become hellholes and rural populations lack the manpower to maintain libraries over the course of the centuries (because you need multiple individuals copying texts, BY HAND) on a regular basis because the damp and seasonal changes of european climate make it extremely difficult to store large numbers of books and scrolls for a long time.


So, you need

1. a robust community of readers and writers ( not possible all readers will desire to read unless forced, furthermore not all readers will desire to also write unless forced.)

2. a large quantity of available writing materials (expensive at the time)

3. a manual labor force who is willing to just give the readers and writers food they grew, in exchange for the idea that these dudes copying a bunch of books you never get to read, is going to help you in the very long run (on the order of generations.)

4. Even if you somehow started producing a few books, if you started with a very small library (less than twelve texts) and your copy-est buisness somehow managed to pump out enough copies that everyone who wanted a complete library could have one, you just saturated your local whole market with only a few years of work, meanwhile your broader export market is very unreliable. It could be decades before you get a large enough order of replacements and new libraries to justify your buisness.

5. Libraries are a source of 'true power' and control of literature and history is understood as a powerful symbolic victory over a rival or enemy, you are now a political target for capture at the very least.

[Anonymous No.19450969]

>>19450504
Based effortposter. This shows just how much work was required to have a library of any kind in the Middle Ages.

[Anonymous No.19452520]

>>19447819
"pagan" is already an adjective, you don't have to hypercorrect it to become an adjective

[Anonymous No.19452674]

>>19450969
And yet the pagans had built various libraries in Syracuse, Athens, Antioch etc which were burned by christniggers. See the burning of the library of Antioch by jovian

[Anonymous No.19453055]

>>19447819
great ages are marked by lack of materiality. not only in being more spiritual and agrarian, but also in leaving less 'artifacts' since the oral tradition precedes the written tradition and men in those times have higher mental capabilities. the fact early middle ages leave few written pieces and Rome lost 10x its population is not bad signal, on the contrary. just like the peak of christendom is not in the age of cathedrals, but prior to that.

basically the early middle ages was the highest point in the past 2000 years. the last spiritual age.

[Anonymous No.19453066]

>>19447823
Viking and Anglo Saxon artifacts are awesome, the fuck are you talking about.

[Anonymous No.19453335]

>>19453055
>le most spiritual age is also le most illiterate
>I HECKIN LOVE IGNORANCE!!!
The absolute state of /lit/

[Anonymous No.19453476]

>>19453335
The point was that it was authentic and you didn't have a bunch of busybodies doing theology and going at each other.

[Anonymous No.19454215]

>>19452520
I used "paganistic" because "pagan" would imply that the author wasn't a Christian. "paganistic" communicates that the author used certain tropes from pagan literature. For example, Nonnus' Dionysiaca could be "paganistic" under this definition, but not "pagan", as Nonnus was a Christian.

[Anonymous No.19454226]

>>19453066
fucking retard who doesn't get the point

[Anonymous No.19454240]

>>19453476
source: my ass

[Anonymous No.19455904]

>>19447819
>Is the Dark Ages meme actually real?
Why wouldn't it be?

[Anonymous No.19456207]

>>19453066
Vikings and Anglo-Saxons don't count because something something snowniggers.

>>19447819
The Diamond Sutra was written during that time frame, as was the Heart Sutra.

[Anonymous No.19456251]

>>19456207
Buddhism is nihilism for faggots so nothing of value was created

[Anonymous No.19456259]

>>19456251
>Buddhism is nihilism
No it isn't. Abrahamic religion is, though. It's also for faggots. No wonder you're such a fan.

[Anonymous No.19456266]

>>19447819
Nope. Those years never happened.

[Anonymous No.19456277]

>>19456259
I'm a polytheist though

[Anonymous No.19456404]

>>19456277
No you aren't lmao, you would be stoned to death for impiety if you were transported to any pre-christian society

[Anonymous No.19456429]

>>19456404
>the ancients would just randomly stone people for doing stuff
Holy shit you're retarded, go back to your subreddit to practice buddhism with your fellow guilt-ridden white basedlords

[Anonymous No.19456496]

>>19453066
>>19453335
>>19456277
>>19454240
too juvenile to post on /lit/. read more and stop larping or just go to reddit

sage

[Anonymous No.19456505]

>>19456496
>too juvenile to post on /lit/. read more and stop larping or just go to reddit
>sage

[Anonymous No.19456520]

>>19456429
>the ancients wouldn't stone me to death for being a jew cock sucker
Yes, they would. That's why Jews hate Vespasian. And Trajan. And Augustus. And Nero. And... Well, really, every Emperor before Constantine, and Julian.

[Anonymous No.19456545]

>>19456520
Buddhism and cucktianity are on the same level of globohomo religion, buddhists would be persecuted in the empire for being impious atheists and discrediting the Gods for their beloved bodhisattvas. Take your ass out of the board and learn some history.

[Anonymous No.19456591]

>>19456545
>globohomo
funny that you say that when most pagans are degenerate globohomo LGBT QUEER crypto-atheists

[Anonymous No.19456596]

>>19456545
Not sure what you mean, Buddhists to this day worship Hercules, and the Greco-Bactrians had no problem being Greeks and Buddhists. I get that you're upset about /qa/ getting sent to hell, but this is no way to act because of it, anon. Can't you see that you're hurting yourself?

[Anonymous No.19456622]

>>19456429
One of the literal founding documents in the western philosophical tradition is about a guy getting executed for meme spirituality like muh figurative interpretation of the gods

[Anonymous No.19456624]

>>19456591
>most pagans
Yeah, the LARPing nupagans kind, the irreligious faggots who think the Gods would never hurt anybody for making a mistake during the rituals. They're as fake as the protties who make tiktok videos.
>>19456596
>Buddhists to this day worship Hercules
Give me one buddhist sutra where the Gods aren't trapped in samsara or are stripped of their divine qualities. I get that buddhists irl do whatever the fuck they want, but their sacred texts are extremely critical of polytheistic traditions.

[Anonymous No.19456636]

>>19456622
Pythagoras, Plato, Apollonius of Tyana, Proclus and Plotinus were never executed and they developed some real controversial exegetical interpretations of the Greek myths.

[Anonymous No.19456646]

>>19456624
>but their sacred texts are extremely critical of polytheistic traditions.
How? Affirming the existence of a plurality of deities isn't criticism of polytheism, or of polytheistic traditions. Buddhism has always defended polytheism.
>b-b-but bodhisattvas!
Buddhists that worship Hercules are worshiping Hercules. Are you going to get butthurt about Platonists saying that the whole MUH EMANATIONS thing is "critical of polytheism"? What about the Stoics? The Orphics? The Pythagoreans? If you don't like that Buddhism uses metaphysics to explain the Gods, and thus argues that they are at some level understandable to us and similar to us (if just by, like us, existing), then what do you possibly want?

[Anonymous No.19456707]

>>19456646
>Buddhism has always defended polytheism.
Okay, give me a buddhist text where the Gods aren't stuck in samsara.
>Are you going to get butthurt about Platonists saying that the whole MUH EMANATIONS thing is "critical of polytheism"? What about the Stoics? The Orphics? The Pythagoreans?
All these groups still respected the Gods as immortal and divine beings, what do the buddhists do besides demoting the Gods to a lower level of existence and elevating buddhas and bodhisattvas to godlike status?

[Anonymous No.19456748]

>>19456624
>their sacred texts are extremely critical of polytheistic traditions
Gods are literally killed and reborn all the time in polytheistic traditions. The other anon is right and you are out of your depth. Nothing is as intolerant as mosaic religion. If Buddhists were demanded to pray for the Roman emperor, they would have. They certainly did in Japan and China.

[Anonymous No.19456757]

>>19447819
Too busy making more copies of the gospels on palimpsets since parchment was scarce and so were wits

[Anonymous No.19456785]

>>19452674
People were murdering Christians in that library, it was burned by the Roman authority because it became ambush-murder hideout

[Anonymous No.19456787]

>>19456748
>Gods are literally killed and reborn all the time in polytheistic traditions.
"All the time" is a dangerous generalization, a restricted number of Gods would indeed face death, but they still held an influence over the phenomenal world afterwards. The vast majority of the Norse Gods (besides Baldr and sonebody else) would still be technically immortal until the end times of Ragnarok. The Greek Gods can get mutilated and wounded in the mythos, but they never die with the exception of Dionysus who became immortal after being birthed by Zeus. The Celtic Gods are immortal as well, you could argue that death is almost nonexistent in indo-european mythology.

[Anonymous No.19456793]

>>19456545
I will fuck one of the goddesses you worship and convert her to Christianity, djinn girls are slags

[Anonymous No.19456799]

>>19456748
> If Buddhists were demanded to pray for the Roman emperor, they would have.
Pathetic

[Anonymous No.19456816]

>>19456799
Not paying taxes is its own reward
>>19456787
Personal immortality would be denied by the Buddhists but they would also retcon all those gods as bodhisattvas or earlier Buddhas rather than force people to give them up.

[Anonymous No.19456832]

>>19456816
The Catholic Church had saints, they were good enough. Are expecting Christianity to give up its values like a whore? Buddhism is a whore religion.

[Anonymous No.19456847]

>>19456832
>Are expecting Christianity to give up its values like a whore?
Oh but it did! Read some history

[Anonymous No.19456852]

>>19456793
lol I don't think you're allowed to copulate with demons in Christianity

[Anonymous No.19456861]

>>19456707
>demoting the Gods to a lower level of existence and elevating buddhas and bodhisattvas to godlike status?
But if Hercules is a Bodhisattva, that's a promotion, not a demotion. Again, you can make this argument more convincingly with Platonism, where Hercules gets demoted to merely one of the divine emanations of the Demiurgos.

>>19456787
The Aesir and Vanir are reborn after Ragnarok, but what that means is up in the air. Does Odin get reborn as Odin? Or does he get a new, but similar, personality? Baldr continues to live in Hel after dying, so what the fuck is up with that? You make a good point that the Indo-European conception of death as just a form of change is far, far more in line with Buddhist conceptions of it than it is with the Abrahamic pseudo-atheism of death being the black void of your brain turning off until Jesus resurrects your meat-mecha.

>>19456816
Personal immortality is denied by all Indo-European religions. Even Zeus fears being overthrown. Sure, maybe he doesn't die like we do, but how different is what happened to Ouranous from death? Saying that "X is actually X AND Y" is nothing new, unless you want to argue that Jupiter and Zeus aren't the same guy. All that the Buddhists are doing is giving Gods upgrades when they say that they're Bodhisattvas.

[Anonymous No.19456867]

>>19456852
Muslims marry djinn, I’ll be fine

[Anonymous No.19456874]

>>19456861
>All that the Buddhists are doing is giving Gods upgrades when they say that they're Bodhisattvas.
Yeah I would agree, the hellenistic gods picked up new titles and names all the time, especially without fixed scriptures in place, but I'm not an ex-christian trying to reconstruct polytheism using mosaic assumptions such that any foreign contact is to the debasement of my own religion

[Anonymous No.19456875]

>>19456847
Yes, but all information on Buddhism now is so far removed from whatever Buddha said it is unbelievable, historians now think that early Buddhism did not even deny the soul. All these different schools just make up shit along the way.

[Anonymous No.19456886]

>>19456875
Yes the original Buddha and the original Christ also made their shit up along the way. The most religious thing you can do is B.E. yourself

[Anonymous No.19456893]

>>19447819
It’s amazing how not one single speck of Buddhism ever had any single appeal to me, fuck off with that atheist bullshit, even Jainism is better.

[Anonymous No.19456897]

>>19456886
Crowley? Is that you?

[Anonymous No.19456900]

>>19456875
>historians now think that early Buddhism did not even deny the soul.
No they don't.

>>19456874
To be fair, polytheistic reconstructionists need to be on edge constantly to keep Jews and Wiccans out. If they don't, you'll eventually get some retard talking about how Gerald Gardener was actually Asherah and thus was also Baldr because Thor is Loki. I don't blame people whose autistic hobby is the Edda for not having in-depth knowledge of a completely separate religious tradition, and I don't blame them for trying to keep out people who are clearly hostile.

[Anonymous No.19456914]

All traditions are monotheistic. Larper above is confusing mythology with religion.

[Anonymous No.19456936]

>>19456874
>Yeah I would agree, the hellenistic gods picked up new titles and names all the time
Buddhism is interesting in that regard because it seems to ossify a lot of these deities in place. In Hinduism, Indra ends up getting demoted from King of the Gods to almost a sort of jester figure, but in Buddhism he remains in place as the thundergod. Hercules being worshiped by Buddhists has also been mentioned, and a lot of the Gods that show up in Chinese Buddhism also stop being worshiped, or change radically, in Chinese Folk Religion as time passes.

[Anonymous No.19456961]

>>19456897
The idea that only one charismatic person ever had the truth is not a Buddhist one, it's a Christian one. Any enlightened person could essentially reboot "Buddhism" if they wanted to in theory. Cannot be done for Christianity.
>>19456900
The easiest way to "reconstruct" is to just invert mosaic religion. Since mosaic religion itself is an inversion of pagan Egyptian religion, such a rule of thumb gets you far closer than reconstructing a museum exhibit from any scant remainder of pre-Christian evidence there is. Perhaps the Greco-Roman religion is an exception since there is so much material, but that material is extremely diverse and hardly amounts to a unified "religion" in any event. It really is as simple as reversing the various demands: not having icons, not having idols, not having philosophy, not having multiple gods, not having food, not having drink, not having exogamy, etc. From there you'd fill in the blanks, study living polytheism e.g. Hindu or Shinto, study the neoplatonic, orphic, pythagorean philosophies (in the classical sense of the word, not modern)

[Anonymous No.19456966]

so what DID they invent in the early medieval ages

[Anonymous No.19456972]

>>19456936
It's definitely quirky that China and Japan are using Indra's Net as a metaphor at the same time as India being invaded by Muslims while worshiping Shiva

[Anonymous No.19457014]

>>19447823
>people recycled Roman glass, because glassmaking technology was lost and only recovered by about 9th century
Literally wrong. And glass was recycled even in the Roman period.
>>19447819
>caedmon
>consolation of philosophy
>history of the langobards
>Bede
>Gildas
>Isidore of Seville
>Gregory of Tours
It's pretty much the opposite, all great literature of the period is Christian.

[Anonymous No.19457039]

>>19457014
What's the deal with longobards? You never hear about any smallobards. Were they just hiding behind the other ones and we couldn't hear them? Was there some terrible smallocaust we never hear about?

[Anonymous No.19457114]

>>19456961
What are your sources for comparative religion? The impression I get is that you might be reading a bunch of theosophists since you mix religion and mythology. You have never read Uzdavinys, Guénon, Schuon, Eliade etc have you?

Your idea of death in Christianity shows how shallow your understanding is from a protestant background. This dormitionist idea was never orthodox.

[Anonymous No.19457212]

>>19457114
I doubt you are from an orthodox background given where we are. No idea what dormitionism is. I have read Uzdavinys, Assmann, Burkert, others. Mainly I am skeptical of "reconstruction" because it always resembles Christianity, when one would be infinitely more "pagan" by adapting existing polytheism with a few tweaks, which is historically what the old religions did when they "discovered" new gods. Essentially if you want to get at a "Norse" or a "Hellenic" polytheism I think it's more authentic to start as a Hindu and do an interpretatio graeci than to scour for some sacred texts and be as dry and pharasaical as possible with them

[Anonymous No.19457264]

>>19457212
Polytheism is only folkloric. The religious greeks like Pythagoras and Plotinus were strict monotheists, though they talked about "gods" of course. I still don't know why you mix Greek folklore with initiatic cults, or give any attention to literary elements such as the Edda as if they represented the religion.

[Anonymous No.19457319]

>>19457264
>Pythagoras and Plotinus were strict monotheists, though they talked about "gods" of course.
Not quite so strict are we? If you're going to call this monotheism then we have to qualify "monotheism" because otherwise it sounds like you're calling them abrahamists. I am aware the latter, Christian and Muslim, appropriated neoplatonist monism so they would have more highbrow theology than "the man in the sky told some idiot provincials to follow ten laws"
>I still don't know why you mix Greek folklore with initiatic cults, or give any attention to literary elements such as the Edda as if they represented the religion.
I don't care to accurately represent the religion and neither do you apparently, since all three of those elements were broadly present: folklore, initiatic cults, and literature. I am not suggesting these should be stitched together to make a valid reconstruction; what I would suggest is that someone who wants to reboot it as it were would do better to apply elements from these to a living polytheism in that most ancient of polytheistic praxes, borrowing indiscriminately.

[Anonymous No.19457326]

>>19447819
Here are some authors for you (not pagan because there were pretty much no pagans at this time in the former empire) but some of these authors wrote on pagan themes:
>Nonnus
>Dracontius
>Ausonius
>Sedulius
>Aldhelm (a little later)
>Paulinus of Nola
>Maximianus
>Orosius
>Vatican Mythographers
>Luxorius
>Eudocia
>Proba
>Paul the Silentiary
>Fortunatus
>Prudentius
>Sidonius Apollinaris
>Optation
>Colluthus
Also the dark ages are not really a thing in scholarship anymore. If you don't know anything about the literary culture of the time you should read The Jeweled Style by Roberts. Might also help if you can at least read Latin otherwise you won't really understand just how good these poets are.

[Anonymous No.19457337]

>>19456622
Socrates' charges of impiety were clearly bullshit charges fabricated by his personal enemies who hated the fact they he kept publicly questioning widely held beliefs and the competence of powerful people and also probably because he had a controversial political history, and hardly any of the pagans actually bought it. That's why Socrates was regarded as the greatest philosopher in the Hellenic cultural sphere almost immediately after his death.

[Anonymous No.19457382]

>I am aware the latter, Christian and Muslim, appropriated neoplatonist monism so they would have more highbrow theology than "the man in the sky told some idiot provincials to follow ten laws"
Wow, so it was really like that huh? You sound really knowledgeable. Or perhaps you judge traditions you have prejudice against based on your own ignorance.

Encyclopedic knowledge of mythology amounts to nothing. It is not wisdom. At this point you could be as well talking about anime characters and "reconstructions" or "reboots" (as if one could reconstruct a religious tradition even in theory)

[Anonymous No.19457423]

>>19457382
I've already said I think bald reconstruction is unfeasible. I also don't respect the truth claims of the revelatory monotheisms so call it "ignorance" or whatever you like, doesn't change that they take orders from a comic book backed by charismatic leadership and state violence

[Anonymous No.19457426]

>>19457264
>The religious greeks like Pythagoras and Plotinus were strict monotheists

What the fuck dumb shit are you on about?

[Anonymous No.19457433]

>>19457426
I smell an anglo convert to orthodoxy based on the other posts itt. This is a theology retcon they've developed, and it developed because the bible is embarassing.

[Anonymous No.19457485]

>>19457433
I dunno about all that. Sounds to me like it's just some brainlet who uncritically accepted some spurious narrative they heard that was based on old-ass, long-debunked, shoddy scholarship.

[Anonymous No.19457880]

>>19447819
Dark Ages never happened, it's late antiquity --> Renaissance we're in the year 1600 at the latest