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/lit/ - Literature

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19798429 No.19798429 [Reply] [Original]

>but him he killed on the ground
>slashing off his arms with a sword, lopping off his head
>and he sent him rolling through the carnage like a log
Holy shit, why did I think this was boring in high school? Is all ancient literature this brutal? What’s the point of reading anything other than homer when it’s this good?

>> No.19798451

>>19798429
>Is all ancient literature this brutal?
Ovid's account of the Lapiths battle with the Centaurs at the wedding feast of Pirithous is probably the best it gets. It's on the end of Metamorphoses

>> No.19798457

The ending of the Odyssey is also brutal and amazing

>> No.19798497

>>19798457
I just can’t believe that this is almost 3000 years old. I get that I’m a bit of a meme right now fawning over the Iliad, but damn. It keeps alternating between absolutely beautiful and gorgeous metaphors that make me want to learn Greek to read them, to just incessant gore and butchery. And he combines them together too.

>> No.19798530

>>19798451
Ovid and Ryūnosuke Akutagawa are the reason why I never hurt or kill a spider.

>> No.19799422

>>19798530
why

>> No.19799450

>>19798429
One of the big awakenings for youths about classic literature is that we expect it to be tame and/or boring, unlike the media we grew up on which is gory and realistic, while it's the exact opposite. Everything Hollywood and popular is tame, and cannot compare with the earnestness of the classics.

Beginning of Macbeth and all the way through was a real shock for me at 13.

>Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
>Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps,
>And fix'd his head upon our battlements.

>> No.19799683

>>19799450
This. The real awakening comes when you actually read the Iliad or Shakespeare the first time outside of a sterile classroom. You can't go back to modern literature after realizing everything from the most vivid of beauty to the goriest of blood 'n' guts already was written hundreds to thousands of years ago.

>> No.19799702

>>19798429
Not all, but Lucan's Pharsalia and Statius' Thebaid are good reads for aesthetic violence

>> No.19799742

>>19798457
>telemachus straight up hangs all those serving girls for having sex with the guys who wanted to fuck his mom
wtf