ITT: we post ineffable books

[Anonymous No.20966125]

I saw another anon critique the fetishization of symbolism in literature and the first book that came to mind as a prime was Ice. In my eyes, this is a book with relatively minimal symbolism and a strongly irrational, hyper-emotive, and imagistic writing style, almost like a time poem or a piece of visual art. I would describe Ice as beautiful—not profoundly beautiful but sensuously beautiful because of its tonal depth. Kafka is a popular writer who I believe fits these criteria for the most part, especially if we exclude his most popular short stories (though even those have a degree of ineffability).

Please give me more recs like this.

[Anonymous No.20966679]

Bumping nice thread
Thanks for the effort OP

[Anonymous No.20966740]

>>20966125
Can't think of one off the top of my head, I'd be interested to hear recs. Maybe Ancient Evenings by Norman Mailer.

[Anonymous No.20967999]

>>20966740
Thread's gonna die so I guess I'll elaborate. Parts of Ancient Evenings take place in the afterlife/underworld, which I feel are described pretty accurately by a "strongly irrational, hyper-emotive, and imagistic writing style". Moreover, I didn't grasp any especially grand themes from Mailer. He wrote a titanic novel about a poor bastard who learns how to send his soul into his own child at the point of conception, but reincarnation doesn't pan out for him. It includes a retelling of key Egyptian myths that are full of smut. It's decadent, the world is magical, the Pharaoh is supernatural. But I don't know why Mailer wrote it, or what he was trying to accomplish. He was just bricked up or something.

[Anonymous No.20968314]

>>20967999
>But I don't know why Mailer wrote it, or what he was trying to accomplish.
So I read an interview after I posted that to satisfy my curiosity. Mailer says he originally wanted the story to take place in Egypt, then Greece, Rome, and medieval Europe. Presumably the protagonist would be successfully reincarnating himself across those historical periods, which would be extremely fucking kino. But he got enamored with studying ancient Egypt.
Aside from that it sounds like he doesn't quite know why he wrote the story either. He wanted to undertake something monumental, that was out of character for him, to prove that he was a great writer. He also says that he feels he wrote the best books on topics no other good writers have tackled, namely the autobiographies on Marilyn Monroe and Ali, that he is a "bully" in that way, and that this book is the best novel written on the subject of magic.
In that vein he says he went out of his way to make sure that it contained no Judeo-Christian ideas. Personally, I feel the pervasive sexual elements that Harold Bloom described as scatological are more so a reflection of Mailer's individual predilections than they are an accurate reflection of a 'pagan' worldview. But I've always thought they are important to the novel to amplify the sense of the ancient and exotic, as they are used equally well in another historical fiction, Gary Jennings's Aztec. I'd like more historical novels like that but I don't know where to look.
So in the end, I still think Ancient Evenings is a great example of the kind of book you describe. It's Mailer's exploration of the ancient world, magic, and himself as a writer.

[Anonymous No.20969354]

Probably anything Rilke, George, Holderlin. Even Holderlin's prose works feel like nature-worship tone poems.

[Anonymous No.20969396]

>>20966125
Marcel Schwob is the author you're looking for. All of his books have this ethereal, unreal and dreamlike quality to them. Other authors that come to mind are Calvino (Invisible Cities), Morselli (Dissipatio H.G.) and Flaubert (Salammbô)

[Anonymous No.20969825]

>book
>Ineffable
My brother in Christ the book is literally words

[Anonymous No.20969835]

>>20966125
All things are phenomena at first glance

[Anonymous No.20969963]

>>20966125
>Lethem
>Zambreno
Jesus, I know the publishing world is a racket but why did they have to do my girl Anna like that.

[Anonymous No.20970044]

The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.
Fernando Pessoa

To say! To know how to say! To know how to exist via the written voice and the intellectual image! This is all that matters in life; the rest is men and women, imagined loves and factitious vanities, the wiles of our digestion and forgetfulness, people squirming — like worms when a rock is lifted — under the huge abstract boulder of the meaningless blue sky.
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tambours I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.
Fernando Pessoa,

I am the suburb of a non-existent town, the prolix commentary on a book never written. I am nobody, nobody. I am a character in a novel which remains to be written, and I float, aerial, scattered without ever having been, among the dreams of a creature who did not know how to finish me off.
Fernando Pessoa

[Voluntary Fool No.20970616]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91gT68xeDMM

[Anonymous No.20970668]

>>20966125
The Day Lasts More Than A Hundred Years by Chingiz Aitmanov

[Anonymous No.20971935]

bump

[Anonymous No.20972019]

[Anonymous No.20972131]

>>20966125
Ancient Evenings by Norman Mailer

[Anonymous No.20972460]

>>20966125
holy fuck this cover is unbelievably awful

[Anonymous No.20973130]

This shit.

Came expeting some mexican magic realism and left with a boring ass list of traditional recipes and a dull, melodramatic romantic story where literally any problem gets solved with MUH MAGIC AND SHIEEEET LOL.

[Anonymous No.20974430]

>>20966125
100% this, it basically led to the creation of surrealism and strongly influenced Rimbaud

[Anonymous No.20974434]