/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21844238]

Books where a vague evil force permeates the narrative?

[Anonymous No.21844257]

>>21844238
Lolita

[Anonymous No.21844284]

>>21844238
Maldoror by Lautraemont is exactly what you described.

[Anonymous No.21844301]

>>21844257
But it's just HH that is evil.
>>21844284
I'll check it out, thanks. Any recommended edition?

[Anonymous No.21844307]

the bible

[Anonymous No.21844323]

Call of The Crocodile

[Anonymous No.21844395]

Mason & Dixon

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21844410]

>>21844284
Ye, Baudelaire + a lot of machen fits the bill also, begin with the white people, imma post an excerpt of the opening.

SORCERY and sanctity," said Ambrose, "these are the only realities. Each is an ecstasy, a withdrawal from the common life."

Cotgrave listened, interested. He had been brought by a friend to this mouldering house in a northern suburb, through an old garden to the room where Ambrose the recluse dozed and dreamed over his books.

"Yes," he went on, "magic is justified of her children. There are many, I think, who eat dry crusts and drink water, with a joy infinitely sharper than anything within the experience of the 'practical' epicure."

"You are speaking of the saints?"

"Yes, and of the sinners, too. I think you are falling into the very general error of confining the spiritual world to the supremely good; but the supremely wicked, necessarily, have their portion in it. The merely carnal, sensual man can no more be a great sinner than he can be a great saint. Most of us are just indifferent, mixed-up creatures; we muddle through the world without realizing the meaning and the inner sense of things, and, consequently, our wickedness and our goodness are alike second-rate, unimportant."

"And you think the great sinner, then, will be an ascetic, as well as the great saint?"

"Great people of all kinds forsake the imperfect copies and go to the perfect originals. I have no doubt but that many of the very highest among the saints have never done a 'good action' (using the words in their ordinary sense). And, on the other hand, there have been those who have sounded the very depths of sin, who all their lives have never done an 'ill deed.'"

He went out of the room for a moment, and Cotgrave, in high delight, turned to his friend and thanked him for the introduction.

"He's grand," he said. "I never saw that kind of lunatic before."

Ambrose returned with more whisky and helped the two men in a liberal manner. He abused the teetotal sect with ferocity, as he handed the seltzer, and pouring out a glass of water for himself, was about to resume his monologue, when Cotgrave broke in--

"I can't stand it, you know," he said, "your paradoxes are too monstrous. A man may be a great sinner and yet never do anything sinful! Come!"

"You're quite wrong," said Ambrose. "I never make paradoxes; I wish I could. I merely said that a man may have an exquisite taste in Romanée Conti, and yet never have even smelt four ale. That's all, and it's more like a truism than a paradox, isn't it? Your surprise at my remark is due to the fact that you haven't realized what sin is. Oh, yes, there is a sort of connexion between Sin with the capital letter, and actions which are commonly called sinful: with murder, theft, adultery, and so forth. Much the same connexion that there is between the A, B, C and fine literature.

Cont

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21844417]

>>21844410
But I believe that the misconception--it is all but universal--arises in great measure from our looking at the matter through social spectacles. We think that a man who does evil to us and to his neighbours must be very evil. So he is, from a social standpoint; but can't you realize that Evil in its essence is a lonely thing, a passion of the solitary, individual soul? Really, the average murderer, quâ murderer, is not by any means a sinner in the true sense of the word. He is simply a wild beast that we have to get rid of to save our own necks from his knife. I should class him rather with tigers than with sinners."

"It seems a little strange."

"I think not. The murderer murders not from positive qualities, but from negative ones; he lacks something which non-murderers possess. Evil, of course, is wholly positive--only it is on the wrong side. You may believe me that sin in its proper sense is very rare; it is probable that there have been far fewer sinners than saints. Yes, your standpoint is all very well for practical, social purposes; we are naturally inclined to think that a person who is very disagreeable to us must be a very great sinner! It is very disagreeable to have one's pocket picked, and we pronounce the thief to be a very great sinner. In truth, he is merely an undeveloped man. He cannot be a saint, of course; but he may be, and often is, an infinitely better creature than thousands who have never broken a single commandment. He is a great nuisance to us, I admit, and we very properly lock him up if we catch him; but between his troublesome and unsocial action and evil--Oh, the connexion is of the weakest."

It was getting very late. The man who had brought Cotgrave had probably heard all this before, since he assisted with a bland and judicious smile, but Cotgrave began to think that his "lunatic" was turning into a sage.

"Do you know," he said, "you interest me immensely? You think, then, that we do not understand the real nature of evil?"

"No, I don't think we do. We over-estimate it and we under-estimate it. We take the very numerous infractions of our social 'bye-laws'--the very necessary and very proper regulations which keep the human company together--and we get frightened at the prevalence of 'sin' and 'evil.' But this is really nonsense. Take theft, for example. Have you any horror at the thought of Robin Hood, of the Highland caterans of the seventeenth century, of the moss-troopers, of the company promoters of our day?

"Then, on the other hand, we underrate evil. We attach such an enormous importance to the 'sin' of meddling with our pockets (and our wives) that we have quite forgotten the awfulness of real sin."

"And what is sin?" said Cotgrave.

Cont

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21844421]

>>21844417
"I think I must reply to your question by another. What would your feelings be, seriously, if your cat or your dog began to talk to you, and to dispute with you in human accents? You would be overwhelmed with horror. I am sure of it. And if the roses in your garden sang a weird song, you would go mad. And suppose the stones in the road began to swell and grow before your eyes, and if the pebble that you noticed at night had shot out stony blossoms in the morning?

"Well, these examples may give you some notion of what sin really is."
Also op, I would highly recommend smith’s “the devotee of evil”

[Anonymous No.21844450]

>>21844238
Kubin, The Other Side

[Anonymous No.21844482]

That’s what 2666 is supposed to be

[Anonymous No.21844483]

>>21844238

Quite literally every book ever written by Philip K Dick. Yes even the nonfiction.

[Anonymous No.21844501]

>>21844284
When he blackpills an innocent kid to become a murderer. Fucking brutal mate.

[Anonymous No.21844537]

>>21844284
I read this recently and made a few posts about it, now I’m seeing a surge in it being mentioned. One of the strangest books I’ve read. I don’t even have an opinion on it because I’m not sure how I feel about it. I plan to reread it again soon knowing what I know now. I feel like his more optimistic Poesies is the key to understanding Maldoror

[Anonymous No.21844544]

>>21844537
>I feel like his more optimistic Poesies is the key to understanding Maldoror
y tho

[Anonymous No.21844573]

>>21844421
I never thought of Machen as a stylist but this is really unmistakeable. I wonder if it is the choice of image or simply the atmosphere, because this could be a page from Great God Pan. I understand the thematic overlap but it’s so extreme here to the point that these stories almost run together.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21844578]

>>21844544
Because it’s even more clear that he didn’t necessarily endorse this evil even as he glorified it above the mundane sort of common liars evil who suppresses himself, the real key would have been the “good” equivalent to maldoror which was sadly never written, on account of death.

[Anonymous No.21844582]

>>21844238
Death in Venice

[Anonymous No.21844585]

Anything about the history of the United States

[Paul Auster Shill No.21844588]

>>21844238
All of Ligotti's fiction, especially "My Work Is Not Yet Done"

[Anonymous No.21844592]

>>21844238
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov.

[Anonymous No.21844593]

>>21844578
He died because world is evil and Ahriman had no more use for him.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21844594]

Cont

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21844600]

Whoops

>>21844573
>>21844573
He’s absolutely a stylist, his language style is directly based on de Quincey and Robert Louis Stevenson, (to not mention the usual suspects, of course.) but his actual aesthetic while sufficiently unique is in the continuum of weird fiction, horror, ghost story and decadent literature, I think you get the best taste of his pure prose style in works of his like “ornaments in jade” which are pretty much explicitly prose poems. Example:

The Ceremony

From her childhood, from those early and misty days which began to seem unreal, she recollected the grey stone in the wood.

It was something between the pillar and the pyramid in shape, and its grey solemnity amidst the leaves and the grass shone and shone from those early years, always with some hint of wonder. She remembered how, when she was quite a little girl, she had strayed one day, on a hot afternoon, from her nurse's side, and only a little way in the wood the grey stone rose from the grass, and she cried out and ran back in panic terror.

"What a silly little girl," the nurse had said. "It's only the … stone." She had quite forgotten the name that the servant had given, and she was always ashamed to ask as she grew older.

But always that hot day, that burning afternoon of her childhood when she had first looked consciously on the grey image in the wood, remained not a memory but a sensation. The wide wood swelling like the sea, the tossing of the bright boughs in the sunshine, the sweet smell of the grass and flowers, the beating of the summer wind upon her cheek, the gloom of the underglade rich, indistinct, gorgeous, significant as old tapestry; she could feel it and see it all, and the scent of it was in her nostrils. And in the midst of the picture, where the strange plants grew gross in shadow, was the old grey shape of the stone.

But there were in her mind broken remnants of another and far earlier impression. It was all uncertain, the shadow of a shadow, so vague that it might well have been a dream that had mingled with the confused waking thoughts of a little child. She did not know that she remembered, she rather remembered the memory. But again it was a summer day, and a woman, perhaps the same nurse, held her in her arms, and went through the wood. The woman carried bright flowers in one hand; the dream had in it a glow of bright red, and the perfume of cottage roses. Then she saw herself put down for a moment on the grass, and the red colour stained the grim stone, and there was nothing else–except that one night she woke up and heard the nurse sobbing.

She often used to think of the strangeness of very early life; one came, it seemed, from a dark cloud, there was a glow of light, but for a moment, and afterwards the night. It was as if one gazed at a velvet curtain, heavy, mysterious, impenetrable blackness, and then,

Cont

[Anonymous No.21844605]

>>21844592
Signs and Symbols by Vladimir Nabokov was sinister as fuck bro. That terrified me. Some dark shadow was dancing behind those words.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21844606]

>>21844600
for the twinkling of an eye, one spied through a pin-hole a storied town that flamed, with fire about its walls and pinnacles. And then again the folding darkness, so that sight became illusion, almost in the seeing. So to her was that earliest, doubtful vision of the grey stone, of the red colour spilled upon it, with the incongruous episode of the nursemaid, who wept at night.

But the later memory was clear; she could feel, even now, the inconsequent terror that sent her away shrieking, running to the nurse's skirts. Afterwards, through the days of girlhood, the stone had taken its place amongst the vast array of unintelligible things which haunt every child's imagination. It was part of life, to be accepted and not questioned; her elders spoke of many things which she could not understand, she opened books and was dimly amazed, and in the Bible there were many phrases which seemed strange. Indeed, she was often puzzled by her parents' conduct, by their looks at one another, by their half-words, and amongst all these problems which she hardly recognized as problems, was the grey ancient figure rising from dark grass.

Some semi-conscious impulse made her haunt the wood where shadow enshrined the stone. One thing was noticeable; that all through the summer months the passers-by dropped flowers there. Withered blossoms were always on the ground, amongst the grass, and on the stone fresh blooms constantly appeared. From the daffodil to the Michaelmas daisy there was marked the calendar of the cottage gardens, and in the winter she had seen sprays of juniper and box, mistletoe and holly. Once she had been drawn through the bushes by a red glow, as if there had been a fire in the wood, and when she came to the place, all the stone shone and all the ground about it was bright with roses.

In her eighteenth year she went one day into the wood, carrying with her a book that she was reading. She hid herself in a nook of hazel, and her soul was full of poetry, when there was a rustling, the rapping of parted boughs returning to their place. Her concealment was but a little way from the stone, and she peered through the net of boughs, and saw a girl timidly approaching. She knew her quite well; it was Annie Dolben, the daughter of a labourer, lately a promising pupil at Sunday school. Annie was a nice-mannered girl, never failing in her curtsy, wonderful for her knowledge of the Jewish Kings. Her face had taken an expression that whispered, that hinted strange things; there was a light and a glow behind the veil of flesh. And in her hand she bore lilies.

Cont

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21844612]

I think anom, you’d find much interest in MR James, and anyone associated with the golden Dawn who wrote fiction/verse, if you want similar aesthetics to machen.

>>21844606
The lady hidden in hazels watched Annie come close to the grey image; for a moment her whole body palpitated with expectation, almost the sense of what was to happen dawned upon her. She watched Annie crown the stone with flowers, she watched the amazing ceremony that followed.

And yet, in spite of all her blushing shame, she herself bore blossoms to the wood a few months later. She laid white hothouse lilies upon the stone, and orchids of dying purple, and crimson exotic flowers. Having kissed the grey image with devout passion, she performed there all the antique immemorial rite.

[Anonymous No.21844620]

>>21844544
>>21844578
This. I suppose that is why Les Chants de Maldoror will remain such a strange enigmatic book. As Frater said, Poesies is the best work for understanding what Lautreamont is about, but even that is strange and enigmatic. It is more clear than Maldoror though and gives some semblance of a key. Quite a few writers delve into “evil” as a sign of “good”. I’m convinced de Sade was making fun of the growing French middle class and their morality. Nietzsche obviously also deals with the food and evil theme. I tried reading Moravagine some years ago but dropped it. I might give it another chance looking at it from this angle

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21844625]

>>21844620
Eh I can rant about de Sade if you desire, and also recommend a book you may have interest in, if you’re into studying de Sade deeper.

[Anonymous No.21844633]

>>21844620
>Quite a few writers delve into “evil” as a sign of “good”.
I DON'T FUCKING GET IT
Why the fuck a God fearing man would be interested in evil? What's good in evil?

[Anonymous No.21844638]

The Blind Owl.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21844648]

>>21844633
Depends on who you’re asking, for some it’s purely a theological and ontological question, perhaps you gain an understanding of what is sin, what is man, what is his worst and his best, perhaps some minds can only grasp these things via aesthetic contemplation, depends on the person, I feel I definitely was able to contemplate the ontological structure of evil better on account of such lit.

[Anonymous No.21844649]

>>21844625
I’ve actually never read Sade but I feel he is badly misunderstood. I could easily be wrong, but hey, this is the internet where everyone can claim expertise in areas they have no knowledge in, so why the fuck shouldnt I? But really, I’d be interested in what you think of him

[Anonymous No.21844650]

>>21844450
Never heard of it. Looks pretty interesting. Thanks.

[Anonymous No.21844653]

>>21844625
>>21844649
And to add, I’d love a recommendation

[Anonymous No.21844664]

>>21844648
>the ontological structure of evil
What's the tl;dr?

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21844687]

>>21844649
de Sade and I know this sounds weird, isn’t actually fixated on desire and sexuality, he mocks desire as of little importance and even Pleasure fulfillment, he sees sexuality as a means to an end. His end is absolute freedom, he sees crime as another name for freedom and believes that negation through crime, violence and so forth is the key.

So de Sade when he’s writing about his hate and sexual sadism, he’s trying to dominate that aspect of reality, slowly his work progresses from transgression of other humans/negation of other humans, to negation of society, until it eventually reaches negation of God until finally it reaches negation of self/nature, which is only possible through apathy and solitude.

De Sade’s work is about vice as not inherently good but integration of the most criminal, vice filled powerful position mentally so that no matter what occurs, you can mentally digest and dominate it, this is why his books about the two sisters parallel each other, one girl goes through the same problems but tries to be virtuous, thus experiences constant suffering and enslavement, the other sisters experience is identical but because she approaches it from the posture of freedom and criminality all of her horrid experiences are (in a Nietzschean kind of way) digested into her psyche and will, leaving her not damaged but rather enraptured. So I’m saying for de Sade the ultimate question is freedom, and such an ultimate freedom means the freedom to assert your will on others and others to try to assert their will on you.

This is the core and heart of de Sade, the union with transgression as a means of freedom. Under the surface it’s rather unique, there’s parallels to bataile and even more so to lautreamont.

After a manner, sade’s project is a kind of inverse Buddhism, to Free himself from all dependencies and laws and bondages, via hateful transgression, this is what 120 days ultimately is, a way to deny his sexual drives while still fulfilling them; thus transgressing even himself. So no he is not parodying the period, though he does have much humor.


As for the recommendation, the title is prettty on the nose! It’s called Lautréamont and Sade, it’s written by Blanchot.

[Anonymous No.21844696]

>>21844395
What is this true?
I thought Mas and Dixon was going to be wholesome and spiritual

>>21844238
Hey that is a very good question

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21844698]

>>21844664
To post it would overwhelm the thread, of which I’ve already posted too much desu, here I outline it here.

>>/lit/thread/S19448578#p19460635

[Anonymous No.21844724]

>>21844687
Interesting and thanks for typing that out. I’ve always been more interested in de Sade as a person and his ideas more than his actual writings. I feel I would tire of them quickly and it would be a slog. What do you think the relationship is between the books Juliette, and Justine, if there is any? And while I have your attention, what would you consider THE de Sade book to read if someone could only read one? Also have you read Moravagine?

[Anonymous No.21844744]

>>21844238
The Bible

[Anonymous No.21844750]

>>21844238
Pale Fire. Heart of Darkness. Much of Borges (Forking Paths, Tlon).

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21844768]

>>21844724
Juliette is a sequel to justin and follows her sister, the books make the sisters undergo equivalent circumstance the only difference being that one sister strives to remain virtuous and is enslaved by the suffering of the world, whereas the other sister who has embraced vice, is able to metabolize her scenario from slavery into spiritual freedom and domination, simply by an adjustment of her mental relation to what is happening. The good one is punished the bad one is rewarded. While it’s no masterpiece of prose and can definitely be a slog, if I had to pick one I would give a three fold option.

1=do you want the whoa freak out pop experience? If so, 120 days or literally the movie would be best
2=are you interested in approaching him as proper lit and really deep diving everything, if so justin would get you accustomed to what it’s gonna be.
3=do you want just a tldr on his ideas and aesthetics? If so “ Philosophy in the Bedroom” would be your best bet.

As for Moravagine, nope, ya think I ought read it sometime?

[Anonymous No.21844804]

>>21844768
>Moravagine
I couldn’t say as I dropped it years ago. One of my favorite writers raves about Cendrars so I’ve put it into my on deck pile to read sometimes this year. I’ve often found time passing, a different mindset, and a new perspective can make all the difference. Quite a few of my favorites I didn’t care for at first and even dropped them. Thank god I gave them another chance

[Anonymous No.21844821]

I like David Lynch for this

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21844826]

>>21844804
Eh, what’s it hurt, I’ll grab a pdf.

>>21844821
Honestly yeah I think this works well.

[Anonymous No.21844842]

>>21844238
Demons by Dostoevsky

[Anonymous No.21844896]

>>21844410
>>21844417
>>21844421
I was hooked. thanks for posting these

[Anonymous No.21844904]

>>21844821
Yea and >>21844638 is like David Lynch but mystical and in Iran.

[Anonymous No.21844919]

>>21844750
>Pale Fire
I got this for Christmas a few years ago and never got around to reading it, should I throw my copy away?

[Anonymous No.21844929]

>>21844919
Yes

[Anonymous No.21844956]

>>21844696
It's main recurring theme is Jesuit conspiracies. That's probably the vague evil.

[Anonymous No.21844968]

Anyone read The Journal of Albion Moonlight by Patchen? I get real similar vibes to Lautreamont

[Anonymous No.21845163]

A book's narrative will be permeated by a vague evil force if the author committed suicide. This means that the narratives in all of Ernest Hemingway's books, all of David Foster Wallace's books, all of Sylvia Plath's work; and the work of many other suicide-oids; are each permeated by a vague evil force.

[Anonymous No.21845166]

>>21845163
Why do you consider suicide to be evil?

[Anonymous No.21845172]

>>21845166
Suicide is caused by evil. Suicide victims are driven to suicide by evil. Authors who become suicide victims were probably driven to write by the same evil that killed them. Their writing must be infected with the evil too.

[Anonymous No.21845181]

>>21845172
Sounds like christian gobbledygook

[Anonymous No.21845182]

>>21845172
Meds

[Anonymous No.21845189]

>>21845181
It sounds like it.

Many things sound like Christian Gobbledygook.

[Anonymous No.21845196]

>>21845182
Psychiatric medication causes suicide.

[Anonymous No.21845200]

>>21844238

[Anonymous No.21845204]

>>21845196
Scientologist?

[Anonymous No.21845210]

>>21845204
No. But Scientologists treat psychiatry correctly. It's actually a very harmful and damaging thing for modern people.

[Anonymous No.21845212]

>>21845196
tinfoil hat time

[Anonymous No.21845378]

>>21845200
This is a good book

>>21845212
is this a joke? Literially does

[Anonymous No.21845449]

>>21845378
elaborate

[Anonymous No.21845460]

>>21845163
I dunno if I would necessarily call it straight up evil, but being aware of an author's suicidal tendencies absolutely does taint their work in a certain way. Confederacy of Dunces is great and one of the only books that's made me laugh out loud, but it's just depressing when you keep in mind that Toole based Ignatius on how he viewed himself and ended up killing himself over his perceived failure.

[Anonymous No.21845497]

>>21845212
And I suppose you think chemotherapy cures cancer?

[Anonymous No.21845500]

>>21844238
Green Face

[Anonymous No.21845525]

>>21844238
Talmud

[Anonymous No.21845559]

>>21844238
Most of Robbe-Grillet's novels. The Voyeur is great.

[Anonymous No.21845757]

>>21844633
>Consequently: he who wants to have right without wrong,
>Order without disorder,
>Does not understand the principles
>Of heaven and earth
>He does not know how
>Things hang together
Chuang Tzu, Great and small

[Anonymous No.21845768]

Perfume by Patrick Süskind

[Anonymous No.21845775]

>>21845525
You haven't read a page of the Talmud. If anything it's a vague autism that permeates it.

[Anonymous No.21845837]

>>21844284
He said "vague evil force" not "insane evil force" anon. Great book though. Apparently big influence on surrealists; I learned about it from listening to too much Current93 and Nurse With Wound records.

[Anonymous No.21845905]

>ctrl + f
>"kafka"
>0 results
Kafka

[Anonymous No.21845908]

The Passenger, unironically.

[Anonymous No.21846874]

Steppenwolf
The book is kinda dogshit though, I only liked the ending

[Anonymous No.21846895]

>>21844238
White Fragility

[Anonymous No.21846936]

>>21844238
A Rose For Emily by William Faulkner

[Anonymous No.21848365]

>>21844238
>not serena

[Anonymous No.21848374]

>>21844238
Interesting request. Like the David Lynch of literature. You've made one of the only interesting threads of /lit/ 2023, so I hope you get some good recs.

[Anonymous No.21848379]

>>21844410
First time I've seen you post since you shared your poetry last year, then again, I'm not always here either. Do you lurk or just pop in now and again?

>begin with the white people
>imma
So are you white or black, lol?

[Anonymous No.21848396]

>>21848379
He's a gypsy or a Serbian. He talked about this but he was pretty vague and I don't blame him considering the rampant /pol/ faggotry on this board.

[Anonymous No.21848444]

>>21845559
yes

[Anonymous No.21848446]

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21848464]

>>21848379
I’ve been busy so mostly lurking, “the white people” is the name of the book kek

> So are you white or black, lol?>>21848396

To be precise, gypsy which are an admixture of Dalit diaspora (Indian lowest caste) with Balkans, so neither white nor black. Specific groups being Russian gypsy and Italian gypsy, neither of which have mixed with non gypsy blood for (as far back as I can trace) at least a couple hundred years. Don’t know about any admixture prior, physically I look Italian, I’ve been mistaken for Italian, Sicilian, Arabic, Jewish, Hispanic, all manner of Med. I’m a chameleon kek.

[Anonymous No.21848523]

Dissipatio HG - Guido Morselli
The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
Mountainhead - New Juche

[Anonymous No.21848538]

>>21848464
>"the white people" is the name of the book kek
Oh, lol. I'm both white and black, so I didn't care either way. It was in jest.
>gypsy and so forth
Very interesting. Good to see you back. You're one of the few quality posters this board has.

[Anonymous No.21848611]

>>21844842
cme to post this

[Anonymous No.21848961]

>>21844238
Peace by Gene Wolfe is probably the best example of this I can think of

[Anonymous No.21849352]

>>21844537
This is a slow board and a few good posts about good things by one person can sway the boards opinions. The general cynicism prevents garbage posts and books to do the same thing.

[Anonymous No.21850035]

>>21848464
Why does the elder Gypsy gave a satanic bible to the girl in The Turin Horse? There was a vague evil force in that film too.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21850065]

>>21850035
Haven’t seen it, if I had to guess, people usually associate gypsy with witchcraft or the like, on account of us actually doing a lot of psychic scams. But again I’ve not watched the movie.

[Anonymous No.21850168]

>>21844257
Every Nabokov main character is evil incarnate. And I'm nit even sure H.H. is the worse one.

[Anonymous No.21850190]

>>21844919
You should read it now. It's increadible. A genius poet reflecting on death. Fat people commiting suicide. People who think they are protagonist of other people's story. Anticommie early 20th century royalist fantasy. Ghost possession. All in one novel. Chef's kiss.

[Anonymous No.21850218]

>>21845172
Like Samuel and Judas

[Anonymous No.21850603]

>>21845196
>>21845204
Not him but this is a known problem with psychiatric medicine, simply read the warning labels. Doctors justify using it with muh “good done outweighs the evil” but psychiatric meds really do cause lots of problems.

[Anonymous No.21850812]

>>21844238
Negative Space by BR Yeager is like this. You never really get a full picture of what the spooky shit going on actually is you just hear people’s schizo ramblings about it and have to piece it together yourself, it’s unsatisfying in a good way.

[Anonymous No.21850815]

>>21850603
>Depressed people are more likely to try meds
>depressed people are more likely to kill themselves

Doesn’t seem like a mystery at all

[Anonymous No.21850912]

>>21850035
>vague
It was anything but.

[Anonymous No.21851107]

>>21844238
Unironically my diary desu

[Anonymous No.21851540]

>>21844238
Das Kapital. It's a good read.

[Anonymous No.21851803]

>>21850065
Sup' O Wise Gypsy

Can you please answer this >>21851759
Your theoretical voice lives rent free in my head and it breaks my modernist buck. Please explain your obsessions with sublime and harmony and hatred of mundane and how dark artistic works like weird fiction can be beautiful

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21851822]

>>21851803
Sure, while I’m currently busy i should begin to have a proper rely in about 30.

[Anonymous No.21851839]

>>21851822
Based, I'll be waiting for Frater kino

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21851930]

>>21851803
The question comes down to definitions and ontological foundations, when we say beauty, to me, I would define beauty (in line with the kabbalistic and platonic Definition ) as harmony, but harmony of what? Data points, these are of two types, concepts/ideas and sensual experience, the more harmonious the ideas with the sensual substance and the form of the work, the more beautiful. Now, the sublime isn’t actually in opposition to the beautiful, the sublime is an experience and aesthetic that produces an individual apprehension of the infinite, in such that it is not a pure abstraction of the infinite, nor a personal interaction with the infinite as a person, but as an encounter with a consuming vastness, this in Hindu (tantrik) aesthetics would be referred to as Parapara, the boundless in the bound, if the beautiful is the harmony of sensations and ideas, then the most beautiful would be that which incorporates all ideas and sensations, thus both the infinite and finite ideas and aesthetics must be integrated.

Now, as to the question of the ugly in weird fiction vs the ugly as normally portrayed in modernism and also vs the ugly as used in Rabelais, the Ugly cannot be treated in such a monolithic way, we should instead divide the Ugly from the terrible, and then divide the ugly from the “carnival” of sensations, by this I mean to say.

1=the Ugly is the common disunity of concepts and sensations or the degenerated asymmetrical variants of these, the problem here is lack of coherency and unbalanced principle and/or execution, to give an extreme example, compare the ranting of your average edgelord against the rhetoric satan uses in Milton, the same concepts and material are being used but the latter is guided by Superior principle and skill.

2=the terrible, this is in fact a modification of the Sublime more commonly referred to today as the “sublate” where the sublime absorbs your mind with an attractive vastness, the sublate/terrible is an infinite/all encompassing force that is directly in opposition to your self, repels the self, but in this repulsion and power you are pulled into the great power of it, the aesthetic of vastness becomes an all devouring one, we see the sublate throughout the ancients, such as the world and elements and men shaking in fear at the presence of the Lord throughout the psalms, or the terrible burning many mouthed form of Vishnu in the Gita which reveals himself to Arjuna, in both cases this is still beautifully harmonious, it simply makes heavy usage of the concepts of decay, anger, fear and other such, the systematic approach to this is treated extensively in Indian aesthetics under their rasa theories.

Cont

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21851960]

>>21851930
3= the final form which I relate to a carnival of sensations, is what I believe the modernists(more specifically drawing out of Joyce) attempt to create but I’ve yet to see success in, the qualia of it is a kind of drunken happiness, to use the most precise philosophical terminology it is an experience of “ disjunctive synthesis” where the harmony of relations occurs specifically by the contrasting non-relation, the most tame example of this is how in a bouquet of flowers, the addition of a few white flowers will cause the hues of the many to all pop out more so, the distinct difference causing further harmonious beauty. In the works of Rabelais extremes such as spiritual perfection, drunkenness, fear of cuckoldry and anal humor are all seen on an equal ground, not equal in that they are all meaningless, but that they are all jovial, all meaningful, all beautiful, all lovely and the contrast is precisely how meaning and beauty are amplified, while I’m a plebe when it comes to film, I think the holy mountain demonstrates this Rabelaisian drunken carnival effect very accurately.

A wonderful illustration of this terrible sublate in weird fiction imo is smith‘s apocalypse of evil. If you desire here’s a pastebin I wrote, it’s from a poetry book (not yet published.) and goes in depth on my ontological grounding of my aesthetics and view of the aesthetics, its potential and shortcomings.

https://pastebin.com/un9sgQab Apologies it’s lengthy.

[Anonymous No.21852002]

>>21851930
>>21851960
Kino

> you desire here’s a pastebin I wrote, it’s from a poetry book (not yet published.)
Wow, thank you

I have one more question regarding photography. I know you're very big on imaginative arts but the thing with photography is that you have on some extent accept the external world. With it come all sort of limitations, you can't impose your absolute Will on the world(unless you're a studio photographer) but ironically these limitations can become its beauty(and what is unique about photography) in the acceptance of world, that you're photographing something which you deem more important than you. The photographer is still always subjective and photography is very clever at deceiving people into whatever they're seeing is beautiful. But please shed some light on how this sublate, this volcano of sensations(here I am not talking about just one photographs but multiple photographs) can be presented into photography. Is it possible?

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21852053]

>>21852002
Gonna throw a book at you first, because while I’m not big on photography I’ve briefly read some works on photography and filmography, apologies for the heavy terminology use in it.

https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=2E044683DDAD8C859DA03A2556997F49

But in any case, I believe there is a scale between solid sensation and pure conception in the arts, poetry obviously being the most malleable, photography while one of the least is certainly more malleable than sculpture and I know for a fact that sculpture can induce the sublate (for this is the goal of Clark Ashton smith’s sculpture works, I would also recommend the various nail-idols of Africa, such are called “Nkondi” and depict wrathful spirits and groups of spirits. See pic related. Next photo will show a particular favorite style of afro altar which is used also throughout South America.

I reckon this sublate can operate in photography either by technique, I’ve seen images of skyscrapers where their cold non human nature by the implied vastness creates the sublate for example, likewise the subject matter “terrible” but well done is another means to induce the sublate. See next image.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21852064]

>>21852053
This is a nganga which is a kind of altar used in various traditions but these in specific are from palo, they’re made by taking the bones of a dead man, his grave dirt and placing various Objects into grant it power, so if it has a knife it can kill, bones from a bird’s wing it can fly, etc, such are worshipped, I think it evident that these images demonstrate the sublate.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21852066]

>>21852064

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21852076]

>>21852066
And I am sure we’ve all seen videos of Gore, photos of piled up holocausted bodies and other images of extreme violence; symbols of seemingly endless decay; the hows of how to evoke this with the every day Elements normally seen is far more difficult to capture with a photo, though obviously not impossible.

[Anonymous No.21852121]

>>21852053
>I reckon this sublate can operate in photography either by technique
Yes, I am only interested in technique just like you shill for cold technical mastery in literature. The photos that you have shared technically suck dick but they do have that terrible effect. This is more confusing to me. So subject>technique?

Can you look at the photos of Joel-Peter Witkin and Andreas Gursky on google images? One is subject/atmosphere based other is a cold autisitc compositional master. Just write few lines about what do you think about them.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21852250]

>>21852121
>The photos that you have shared technically suck dick but they do have that terrible effect. This is more confusing to me. So subject>technique?


You’re confusing low quality with low harmony, no rather the amateur quality of the photos fits with how folk and low the thing depicted looks, it doesn’t make it over dramatic or over sterile, it fits. But I would say it’s not that subject trumps technique or verse versa, but good selection of both is the key to any great art, expert quality skill with Boring subject matter may uplift the subject, and boring technique with extreme content can lift up the quality, In both however there is a feeling of incompletion, the aforementioned asymmetry, imo this is the core problem behind Joyce, his contents are usually far too plain to stand up to the prose style he’s going for, which yes I know that’s part of the point, mundane already being heroic and in itself the meaningful and so on and so forth.

Point being, the cold aesthetic method of creating art extends both to the technique employed and to the specific contents chosen, Poe’s “philosophy of composition “ is a short but good work explaining precisely this.

> Joel-Peter Witkin

Oh I’ve actually seen his work before, reminds me much of Giuseppe Arcimboldo(posting two, first of which is my favorite.)

My complaint is that it is operating by an initial sort of wonder/amazement at the peculiarity (Adbhutam in the rasa system.) but doesn’t seem to have much beyond that. On one hand sure I understand the appeal of the grotesque and in some of them there’s the horror vacui effect, but the problem is it just fades from the mind beyond the initial impulse of wonder at the subject matter. Doesn’t really make a sense of beauty, nicholai hartmann writes in his aesthetics that an art piece is only so effective as far as the foreground of its production disappears and you are hypnotized/enchanted into a background of concepts, ideals, visions of worlds and other such. I don’t really see a world behind the photos.

Gonna look at gursky next

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21852261]

>>21852250
Oh I absolutely see what you mean with Gurky, he’s positioning the photos to create a sense of continuous depth but the targets of these are often bland like market aisles which highly subtracts from it, the failure is in putting that qualia behind something so mundane, but it clearly operates much better when he’s showing the gargantuas of buildings, technology, streets, posting some next so I can point to which ones I’m referring to.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21852269]

>>21852261
Yep, geometry on this one being used to imply an extreme multitude of layers and detail.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21852280]

>>21852269
Grey color being used to emphasis the repeating sterile non-human monstrous elements of the building, glass being at a slanted angle so you can only see the darkness, only light being used to show it can’t be penetrated.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21852309]

>>21852280
Black of the panels with the black of the obscured background again being used to produce an illusion that the panels go on endlessly which is again, a long endless impenetrable darkness.


Yeah I think all three of these seem to be above his average quality since when he’s showing trash for example, he’s just using the technique towards a message of endless pollution and taint/corruption, hoping that sentiment drives it, or when he’s showing the aisles hoping that the common sort of melancholia over the mundane world will carry it through, while there’s definitely skill there, it does seem a bit one-trick? Or perhaps my analysis abilities with photo are too dull to notice the further nuances of his style, but in any case, while there’s much to enjoy I think it’s clear his skill is many many times more enjoyable when matched with a theme/content that is after a manner, already vast, already consuming, already awe in-inspiring. Which shouldn’t be shocking! The best should be best in all things.

[Anonymous No.21852326]

>>21852250
>You’re confusing low quality with low harmony, no rather the amateur quality of the photos fits with how folk and low the thing depicted looks, it doesn’t make it over dramatic or over sterile, it fits. But I would say it’s not that subject trumps technique or verse versa, but good selection of both is the key to any great art
FUCK, that's it

I want to ask a lot more questions but since you're busy so I'm going stop and apologies if this was too much. I'll be chewing on this content for a while. Thank you!!!!! You're always, always helpful.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21852376]

>>21852326
No problem! Was fun! Thanks for the rev of gursky, he’s definitely the more interesting of the two I’ll look at him more later.

But yeah Feel free to ask questions any time, though in another thread! I feel bad when I over post in a thread, feels like spam.

[Anonymous No.21852385]

>>21852309
>it does seem a bit one-trick?
Yes unfortunately it does. Mostly art photographers are one-trick that's why they usually focus too much on purely formal qualities to maintain their careers. It is really hard in photography to keep changing narratives while maintaining your signature style. Again it is due the limitations of photography.

I know why you're not fully keen on these photographs. It is because they're too materialistic and lack that stranger contemplative element. Masahisa Fukase's photobook "The Ravens" pushed me into that state.

[Anonymous No.21852413]

>>21852309
>>21852385
Here's a flip through video of photobook to see photographs in original sequence. Keep in mind that "photobook" is different from a catalog book or a picture book. A "photobook" has proper editing and sequencing of images to signify a narrative:
>https://youtu.be/VI6BcisXJtI

[Anonymous No.21852423]

>>21852376
>I feel bad when I over post in a thread, feels like spam.
Thread was kinda dead so that's why I asked
>But yeah Feel free to ask questions any time, though in another thread!
Cheers mate

[Anonymous No.21852525]

>>21850815
You’ve never been on psychiatric medication.

[Anonymous No.21852563]

>>21844588
wait are you the guy that recommended me to read paul auster a couple of weeks back when i asked for recommendations here about books like pic rel?

[Anonymous No.21852638]

>>21844238
Just live your life.

[Anonymous No.21853409]

>>21844301
Seen

[Anonymous No.21853445]

>>21844956
there are much more sinister conspiracies going on in mason and dixon, reread it

[Anonymous No.21854262]

>>21851960
Disjunctive Synthesis, or as it is known among artists, the technique called Counterpoint, Chiaroscuro, Contrast between themes. There are a lot of successful uses of it in literature, but it's important to remember, literauture is a non-linear psychological puzzle. While structure and drama causes imediate aesthetic arrest (as Joyce puts it) Contrasting Themes requires symbolic comprehention, only achieved upon multiple reads.