Lost Literature

[Anonymous No.19460352]

>lost literature of the world thread, I guess
/lit/bros who know more about the current state of the Epic Cycle - is there hope that we will ever see at least a more complete recovery of the Nostoi, the Telegony, any one of the lost epics?
Is there anything that points to the fact that the Iliad and the Odyssey were the greatest of them, or did we lose even bigger literary treasures to time?
Give me hope, frens, I am inexplicably grieving over the loss of such literature.

[Anonymous No.19460465]

bump

[Anonymous No.19460630]

>>19460352
Sounds like an interesting thread
bump

[Anonymous No.19460689]

here for interest, tho I have no clue op

[Anonymous No.19460876]

Here's a book that was almost lost.

Song of Kwasin is an adventure novel that was being written by Philip Jose Farmer. He died before finishing it. Several years later his family found the manuscript in one of his filing cabinets and hired a guy to help finish it. In my opinion it is one of Farmer's best books.

[Anonymous No.19461124]

>>19460352
>Is there anything that points to the fact that the Iliad and the Odyssey were the greatest of them,
Aristotle I think mentioned a third on par with them iirc. I think Homer wrote a third epic too.

[Anonymous No.19461385]

Bump for interest

[Anonymous No.19461387]

>>19460876
this is really interesting, anon, thanks!
>>19461124
I would like to know which one was mentioned as being on par with them
also, do we accept that the Iliad and the Odyssey are both Homer's? I thought the consensus was that they were both written by a single author, but a different author for each one

[Anonymous No.19461391]

>>19460352
>Le lost media!!!
I hate zoomers

[Anonymous No.19461408]

>>19460352
It is a veritable misfortune that we have so little extant of the
works of the ancient masters and that not a single one of their works
was handed down to us complete. We are involuntarily influenced by
this loss, measuring therefore with false standards, and letting
ourselves be disposed more favorably toward Plato and Aristotle by the
sheer accident that they never lacked connoisseurs and copyists. Some
go so far as to assume a special destiny reserved for books, a fatum
libellorum. Such a fate would have to be malicious indeed to deprive
us of Heraclitus, of the wonderful poetry of Empedocles, and of the
writings of Democritus, thought by the ancients to be Plato's equal
and, so far as ingenuity is concerned, his superior, slipping us
instead the Stoics, the Epicureans, and Cicero. Very likely the most
impressive part of Greek thought and its verbal expression is lost to
us, a fate not to be wondered at if one remembers the misfortunes that
befell Scotus Erigena and Pascal and the fact that in even this
enlightened century the first edition of Schopenhauer's Welt als Wille
und Vorstelluna had to be sold for wastepaper. If someone wishes to
assume a special, fatal power governing such events, he may do so and
say with Goethe "Do not complain of the mean and the petty, for
regardless of what you have been told, the mean and the petty are
everywhere in control." That they are more in control than the power
of truth is certainly true. Mankind so rarely produces a good book,
one which with bold freedom sounds the battle-cry of truth, the song
of philosophic heroism. And yet the most wretched accidents, sudden
eclipses of men's minds, superstitious paroxysms and antipathies,
cramped or lazy writing fingers, down to book worms and rainfall, all
determine whether or not a book will live on another century or turn
into ashes and mould. But let us not lament or, in any event, remember
the consolatory words with which Hamann put an end to the lamentations
of scholars over lost works. "Did not the artist who squeezed a lentil
through the eye of a needle find enough lentils in a bushel to
practice his acquired skill? One should like to put this question to
all the scholars who make no better use of the works of the ancients
than that man did of his lentils."

[Anonymous No.19461415]

>>19460352
>/lit/bros who know more about the current state of the Epic Cycle - is there hope that we will ever see at least a more complete recovery of the Nostoi, the Telegony, any one of the lost epics?
Unlikely that they'll ever be found close to complete but you never know when something could turn up. We'll probably get some more fragments from Oxyrhynchus at some point though, although that could take a long time.

[Anonymous No.19461506]

>>19461391
??? meds
>>19461415
what work is being done on Oxyrhynchus?

[Anonymous No.19461513]

Be careful

[Anonymous No.19461518]

>>19460352
I think we have everythin from Homer in the Epic Cycle, the other books like the Nostoi and the Telegonia were written by other people. I am more familiar with the lost books of Greek literature than any other literary tradition in the world, so I'll speak on that. I say if I had an opportunity to bring back any lost works from antiquity, the top three contenders would be: (1) Aeschylus' other plays, e.g. Myrmidons, Glaucon, Prometheus Invinctus, etc. (2) Callimachus' history of Greek literature, called Πίναξ παντοδαπῶν συγγραμμάτων. Recovering this work in its entirety would be of incomprehensible value. Firstly, it is the first comprehensive history of Greek literature, being written in the 3rd century BCE. The entire work was divided into 120 books and was further dividdled according to poetry, oratory, law, philosophy. Not only that, but each division contained a chronologically ordered list of all known writers in a particular area and a complete catalogue of their oeuvre. (3) The next work I would like to have is the Λογίων γίων κυριακῶν ἐξηγήσεως by Papias of Hierapolis in 5 books. The work is a collection m of Christ's sayings and deeds as related to Papias by various eyewitnesses and their descendants. He is our earliest source for the authorship of the Gospels of Mark and Matthew.

[Anonymous No.19461541]

>>19461506
Oxyrhynchus is basically one giant rubbish pile found in Egypt from what I've gathered. Papyrological investigations have been done there since the 1890s.

[Anonymous No.19461629]

>>19461408
I kek at the lentil thing, though he's right, I think scholars seem to make the least use of these great works
>>19461518
fascinating shit, I never heard of Callimachus' history or papias' work
and to think that maybe right now, out there, there are hidden fragments of collossal works, almost makes me want to study archaelogy so I could help with the work

[Anonymous No.19461781]

>>19461387
>do we accept that the Iliad and the Odyssey are both Homer's?
yes

Iliad is a cultural myth passed down, and the version we read is Homers and Odyssey is a seperate original work from him.

[Anonymous No.19462158]

>>19461781
Ah, thank you for enlightening me, anon. Are you this >>19461518
anon?
What are you studying?

[Anonymous No.19462179]

>>19460352
the original ossian poems were lost on a journey to france
probably hundreds of other ancient books as well in scotland

[Anonymous No.19462196]

>>19460352
Lost my diary on the train yesterday

[Anonymous No.19462198]

>>19462179
journey over water? I always wondered whether relics like these are recoverable, water and silt tend to preserve some things surprisingly well.

[Anonymous No.19462202]

>>19460352
>>19462179
and i forgot to say there was a seperate collection of ossianic poems from scotland which were roughly 6" thick lost as well

[Anonymous No.19462238]

>>19462198
the book survived the journey but in france the french revolution happened and the book disappeared from the university

[Anonymous No.19462246]

>>19460352
The complete Cook's Tale. I would have liked to see where he went with it after the guy shacks up with a hooker.

[Anonymous No.19462527]

>>19462238
I really need to read up on this, I'm fascinated.
>>19462246
cheeky

[Anonymous No.19462559]

>>19462527
read from here
https://archive.org/details/poemsofossianino00macp/page/n41/mode/1up
page xxx

[Anonymous No.19462604]

>>19460352
Melville wrote a novel after Moby Dick named Isle of the Cross which is lost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_the_Cross

[Anonymous No.19464112]

>>19462604
Sad

[Anonymous No.19464443]

>>19461541
Glad to see someone mention this. some of the discoveries from Oxyrhynchus have been amazingly helpful in recovering extended passages of lost works and in supplying dates for New Testament related compositions.

Very, very cool stuff. The archaeological work was completed in the 19th century but there are still heaps of fragments waiting to be sorted and studied.

I don't think anything will beat the kind of full library discoveries of Qumran and Nag Hamadi, but the Oxy Papyrii are extremely old and the fragments are very helpful for supplying early dates and verifications of text transmission accuracy or text samples in different languages from extant full copies.

[Anonymous No.19465554]

>>19464443
this is the sort of thing I was looking for, I'm feeling hopeful, anon
thanks!

[Anonymous No.19465675]

>>19460352
Do you think it's likely that there are some extremely rich people who have 'lost' writings in their private collections? I know this has sometimes been the case with paintings.

[Anonymous No.19465684]

>>19462158
>What are you studying?
I'm not in university, I'm a baker by trade. I found about Myrmidons because of /lit/ gay posters, Callimachus' history from reading the entry on him in William Smith's "Dictionary of Greco-Roman Mythology and Biography", and I learned about Papias from Dr Richard Price, a biblical scholar who often appears on the MythVision yt channel. These were my sources

[Anonymous No.19465854]

>>19465684
baking is extremely based, I want to learn how to bake shit at home but I have a really awful kitchen setup in the studio apartment I'm in
any tips for learning (I know it's a lit board) including any books I should get?

[Anonymous No.19465899]

The whole story of the dead sea scrolls is a fun ride.

[Anonymous No.19465946]

>>19460352
It's over

[Anonymous No.19465962]

>>19464443
>>19465554
To give you more hope:
>Since 1898, academics have collated and transcribed over 5,000 documents from what were originally hundreds of boxes of papyrus fragments the size of large cornflakes. This is thought to represent only 1 to 2% of what is estimated to be at least half a million papyri still remaining to be conserved, transcribed, deciphered and catalogued.

[Anonymous No.19465983]

>>19465854
I don't know any books on the subject, I went to trade school for it. But it's very easy to make bread, you only need dough, salt, water and yeast. If you have an oven, you're pretty much set. There's plenty of recipes on the internet that tell you how to make certain types of bread and pastries, I don't think you'll need a lengthy book to learn how to make a strudel or a baguet. I wish you good luck in your baking!

[Anonymous No.19465993]

A true mindfuck is that most of the old libraries have literally millions of books that are uncatalogued. They don't even know what they have.
Some have starting making digital catalogs, but for the most part, there could be literal lost masterpieces sitting on a shelf of some dusty library and the only way to find out is to randomly pick it up.

[Anonymous No.19467119]

>>19465993
never thought about this until now, aren't there cultural programs that fund people to catalogue everything?

[Anonymous No.19467128]

>aristotles dialogues

[Anonymous No.19467129]

>>19467119
because no one cares about the humanities

[Anonymous No.19467155]

>>19460352

Do you read in Latin or Greek? If not then you're already technically missing out on the majority of written works, not only literature because that's of little significance, written between 800BC and the 16th century.

[Anonymous No.19467182]

>>19465675
The Vatican's secret library undoubtedly has a whole bunch of obscure stuff. But, most of it is probably just evidence of Medieval kings getting cucked and priests fucking little boys, and as such is completely worthless today, and very strange heretical Christian and Jewish works that, while novel, are completely pointless because of how bizarre they are. I highly doubt that the Pope is keeping any Platonic dialogues secret from us.

Anyways, I'm gonna go with
>any of the numerous Roman historical or theological works that we know existed because they were cited, quoted, or said to exist, but that we don't have
and
>literally anything that the Druids wrote down, because we're told that they did in fact write stuff down

[Anonymous No.19467210]

>>19467155
checked
I'm learning Latin, though if it is as you say it is, I don't know if I'm even going to have the physical time to read all the "important" stuff
>>19467182
what happened to the writing of the Druids, just lost to time or something more specific?

[Anonymous No.19467563]

do you think we lost some good stuff from the mayans/aztecs, or was it just bean counting?

[Anonymous No.19468001]

>>19460352
>>19467128
get the tissues bros... get a lot...

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_literary_work#Classical_world

[Anonymous No.19468063]

>Lost plays of Aeschylus. He is believed to have written some 90 plays, of which six plays survive. A seventh play is attributed to him. Fragments of his play Achilleis were said to have been discovered in the wrappings of a mummy in the 1990s.[3]
>Lost works of Aristotle. It is believed that we have about one third of his original works.[4]
>one
>fucking
>third
>Lost works of Chrysippus. Of over 700 written works, none survive, except a few fragments embedded in the works of later authors.
>over 700
>Lost works of Democritus. He wrote extensively on natural philosophy and ethics, of which little remains.
>Lost works of Pyrrhus. He wrote Memoirs and several books on the art of war, all now lost. According to Plutarch, Hannibal was influenced by them and they received praise from Cicero.
>Lost plays of Sophocles. Of 123 plays, seven survive, with fragments of others.

[Anonymous No.19468574]

>>19468001
>>19468063
I wanted hope, now the dread is back..
Perhaps there is a whole library lost under the sands somewhere

[Anonymous No.19469006]

bump

[Anonymous No.19469051]

>>19468063
Yeah... I know... also a complete "On Nature" of Heraclitus would be very good desu. I wish we had the sibylline books, Pythagoras' and Zoroaster's complete texts.

[Anonymous No.19469109]

>>19468001
>>19468063
>>19468574

It gets much much worse

>The easier writing materials—papyrus in particular, but also parch- ment—were obviously more perishable than the tablets: we learn more from Niniveh about Babylonian and Assyrian culture than we can from most Greek and Roman sources about Greek culture.11 We cannot even chart precisely the streets of ancient Alexandria nor plot on an archaeologi- cal map the foundations of the library and its subsidiary collection. Papyrus was a great enabler; it made the act of writing easier, with the introduction of a simplified alphabet and, given the grain of papyrus, the ability to vary letter-forms. It was inevitable that a scroll-making industry should develop and the literary arts spread far and wide. But when a palace or library burned down, clay tablets were baked into stone; papyrus and parchment burned, stoking the flames. We possess substantially more textual material from the millennia before the Greeks than from the Greek periods themselves

[Anonymous No.19469260]

All the works of men are ephemeral, why be upset? Yes progress was lost but new things emerge. The cycle keeps rolling on

[Anonymous No.19469291]

>>19469109
WHAT??????? are you fucking kidding me

are you seriously telling me we have a better view of the desert arena shithole that was the bronze age near east than we do about the fucking greeks

ok now im really gonna fucking do it

[Anonymous No.19469311]

>>19467210
Just lost to time. We're told that they used Greek to write, although they didn't write their own teachings down. Perhaps this means that they literally took the Greek language one of the various Greek alphabets, or perhaps they used a Greek alphabet to write in some kind of Celtic language. We don't know. No matter what, it would be an absolutely fascinating find, however.

>>19467563
Absolutely. Everything that we have from them is fascinating. Aztec Religion and Maya: Lords of Time both go over this.