/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22043404]

>Johnson "felt himself overwhelmed with an horrible melancholia, with perpetual irritation, fretfulness, and impatience; and with a dejection, gloom, and despair, which made existence misery".

[Anonymous No.22043439]

Despair, a word one comes across often lately, but what does it mean.

[Anonymous No.22043447]

>>22043439
Despero: I have no hope of; desperare: to have no hope of, to despair. It means what it means.

[Anonymous No.22043483]

>>22043447
Is it supposed to be good in this context?

[Anonymous No.22043687]

I am happy that this state of mind doesn't necessarily stop one from achieving great things.

[Anonymous No.22043710]

>>22043404
Classic individuation crisis. His intellectualism had given rise to an unbalanced, overspecialised personality. Neurosis was inevitable.

[Anonymous No.22043731]

>>22043483
No.

[Anonymous No.22043742]

>>22043404
Johnson was a dilettante.

[Anonymous No.22043744]

>>22043483
Do they not teach reading comprehension in school anymore?

[Anonymous No.22043753]

>>22043744
Johnson became a successful guy, where's the contradiction?

[Anonymous No.22043913]

>>22043439
>>22043447
I think it is much clearer when we analyze in the Portuguese and Spanish vocable: desespero, des- (dis-) + espero, from esperar meaning to await, to hope, expect. That is, you do not have anywhere to go, anything to look for, neither will anything come to you.

[Anonymous No.22043915]

>>22043404
He was fat

[Anonymous No.22044006]

You HAVE read the Rambler essays, right, /lit/?

[Anonymous No.22044016]

>>22043710
How do you fix it?

[Anonymous No.22044169]

>>22043710
This is possibly true. But also maybe life’s a bit shit? Especially when you’re diseased since childhood, monstrously ugly due to scrofula, half-blind, somewhat obese, and to top it all off you have Tourette’s syndrome giving you uncontrollable tics during conversation making you seem on first impressions like an idiot to everyone you meet despite being one of the greatest minds of your generation. And you only ever married one older, slightly homely woman who you didn’t really get on with and lived in poverty for most of your early life. Johnson was perhaps too intellectual for his own good but I don’t think that was the main problem for him, he was very able and well-rounded in conversation which is rare for a cloistered scholar.
I also do wonder if Boswell sentimentalised Johnson’s melancholy a little too much. Johnson does seem very melancholy from some of his writings but, apart from occasions where it is warranted like after the death of his mother, not excessively so, it’s tempered usually with good humour and a little helping of frivolity. Boswell was a bit gloomy in his later years after Johnson died himself, I personally think he might have overemphasised that aspect of him in the biography.

[Anonymous No.22044173]

>>22043742
This dude was based as hell. I wonder if he's still alive, if he is he'd probably be one of the oldest people alive.

[Anonymous No.22044184]

>>22044173
You’re wondering if Robert Burton is still alive…?

[Anonymous No.22044262]

>>22044184
Well, if anyone could persevere through the centuries on pure will alone it probably ly would be Burton, but I suspect he is confusing him for some other Burton, Richard maybe?

[Anonymous No.22044264]

>>22043404
>>Johnson
Was he referring to a BBC here?

[Anonymous No.22044300]

>>22044173
kek

[Anonymous No.22044308]

>>22043404
literally me

[Anonymous No.22044319]

>>22044169
Didn't Boswell have the clap from fucking a hooker in London? As I recall Johnson himself mentions it in one of his letters to someone.

[Anonymous No.22045582]

>>22044006
Yes, I loved them, and he is one of the reasons for my beginning to learn latin. I read them on Gutenberg or whatever that website is called.

[Anonymous No.22045643]

>>22043404
Literally me.

He went an unusual route for a misanthrope. Rather than doing the usual thing of hating women as the representatives of frustrated worldly desires, he did the opposite, hating men and turning for a (Platonic) consolation in women.

I think I understand why he did it, desu. It was probably from weakness, fearing to seem cowardly in front of men whilst suffering from intangible terrors like existential angst when a real man would only fear distinctly visceral terrors.

[Anonymous No.22045676]

>>22045643
Did he write anything about it? Where? Because I find it is a mark of Italian Fedeli d’Amore to find in a female archetype some sort of paradigm of perfection, beauty, in the end consolation too perhaps.

[Anonymous No.22045790]

>>22045676
It's mostly suffused throughout his work, and not focused in any one book or review.

Besides, I'd say it's mostly a similar sort of situation to Disraeli rather that a kind of Dante situation. He turned TO women AWAY from men, his first choice as he (I presume) attempted to pursue a more Ancient style of friendship. He was disappointed in men and found consolation in women, but only having accepted them as naturally inferior, not in a kind of patriarchal sense, but merely as the quantitative and qualitative lessers to men. This is where he found the solace: in not having to face the full rigours of society and life as exhibited by men.

"The key to a happy life is not taking women seriously whilst not letting them know you don't."

[Anonymous No.22045812]

Listed as 'moralist, essayist and lexicographer', a figure of fun, an absurdity, the stage Englishman of Goldoni, 1707-93, admirable because he will not lick boots, but intellectually 'fuori del mondo', living in the seventeenth century, so far as Europe is concerned.
Very possibly the best mind in England of his day, save for those months that Voltaire spent in London

[Anonymous No.22045820]

And all that for not getting his way?

[Anonymous No.22046090]

>>22044016
Humility and charity.

[Anonymous No.22046201]

>>22044016
Clean diet and exercise

[Anonymous No.22046289]

>>22043710
>>22044016
>How fix
Should be obvious. Like many people he was unfamiliar with the discipline of self-control, and probably unfamiliar with the discipline of purging of the lusts.

Imagine a brain wearing mormon underpants.

[Anonymous No.22046308]

>>22043447
>Despero: I have no hope
Technically, chap, de+spe(s) translates to "from hope," probably in the sense of misery being caused by unrequitable hopes and wishes. See: False Hope, See: Pandora

[Anonymous No.22046945]

There was not a single non-pseud in the 18th century.

[Anonymousn No.22047169]

For all Johnson fans, I recommend 'The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson' by James Boswell.

It's basically a road-trip book him and Johnson travelling around 18th-century Scotland. And you're intimately along for the ride. Very entertaining.

A random excerpt:

>We talked of a man's drowning himself. JOHNSON. 'I should never think it time to make away with myself.' I put the case of Eustace Budgell, who was accused of forging a will, and sunk himself in the Thames, before the trial of its authenticity came on. 'Suppose, sir,' said I, 'that a man is absolutely sure, that, if he lives a few days longer, he shall be detected in a fraud, the consequence of which will be utter disgrace and expulsion from society.' JOHNSON. 'Then, sir, let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is NOT known. Don't let him go to the devil where he IS known!'

>He then said, 'I see a number of people bare-footed here: I suppose you all went so before the Union. Boswell, your ancestors went so, when they had as much land as your family has now. Yet Auchinleck is the Field of Stones: there would be bad going bare-footed here. The lairds, however, did it.' I bought some speldings, fish (generally whitings) salted and dried in a particular manner, being dipped in the sea and dried in the sun, and eaten by the Scots by way of a relish. He had never seen them, though they are sold in London. I insisted on scottifying his palate; but he was very reluctant. With difficulty I prevailed with him to let a bit of one of them lie in his mouth. He did not like it.

[Anonymous No.22047196]

>>22047169
he's a lot like his descendant, the former mayor of london; a caricature of petulant churlish yet oafish bore, bless his trousers.

[Anonymous No.22047491]

>>22043404
imagine being one of the few smart bongs in that island

[Anonymous No.22047541]

>>22046308
Nta, but it can also can be used to indicate downward or away movement or separation (detergeo, “I wipe down”.) This is of course in addition to its most common usage meaning of “of” or “about” (as in “regarding”). So in this sense it’s a movement away from “spero.” Just curious: Do you actually study Latin or were you just looking up the prefix to screw with the guy who posted that?

[Anonymous No.22047544]

>>22043404
The evidence is pretty clear that he had obsessive compulsive disorder. As someone who has it myself, I can attest that it’s a fairly aggravating condition and probably caused quite a bit of his misery.

[Anonymous No.22047563]

>I refute it thus.

No joke, is this the greatest btfo in the history of literature? It single-handedly killed Berkeley's credibility and he is slowly being written out of the history of philosophy as a major thinker.

[Anonymous No.22047757]

>>22044016
Pursue the goal of individuation, and cultivate a more rounded personality.
In the case of intellectuals, cut down on nerdy pursuits. Explore art and music. Go for walks and learn to appreciate nature. Indulge your sex life. Take up dancing or martial arts. Do anything at all that isn't focused on thinking.
Also, get in touch with your unconscious psyche. Pay attention to your dreams (including daydreams). Experiment with meditation and divination. Take psychoactive drugs, if you find this acceptable. Challenge your own convictions and prejudices. Discover your spirirtuality, if that side of you is lacking.
Be warned that this is not a quick or easy remedy, but a lifelong process of adjustment.

[Anonymous No.22047784]

>>22047757
>cut down on nerdy pursuits. Explore art and music
uh

[Anonymous No.22047818]

>>22047784
Nerdy, as in focused on thinking. Art and music stimulate the emotions.

[Anonymous No.22047929]

>>22047818
reductive

[Anonymous No.22048204]

>About this time...[h]e was so ill, as, notwithstanding his remarkable love of company, to be entirely averse to society.... Dr. Adams told me, that, as an old friend, he was admitted to visit him, and that he found him in a deplorable state, sighing, groaning, talking to himself, and restlessly walking from room to room. He then used this emphatical expression of the misery which he felt: 'I would consent to have a limb amputated to recover my spirits.'

[Anonymous No.22048218]

>>22043483
Of course not.
>>22043913
Good addition.
>>22046308
Not quite, although your translation "from hope" is close to the matter at hand. >>22047541 has it right: it is the going out of or from, the separating of, the departure or removal from *hope* qua *hope*. If you want to nag at me like a pedant, what the Latin "despero" really means is "I am away from or am deprived of hope."

[Anonymous No.22049434]

>>22048218
>If you want to nag at me like a pedant, what the Latin "despero" really means is "I am away from or am deprived of hope."
I might nag, considering that 'hope' was not considered highly in the ancient world and so "being removed from hope" would have a highly positive meaning. It's that the actually more literal de+spes would make sense as the origin of that word in a negative concept, e.g. "a malady born of hope," i.e. "malady born of having hopes that are impossible to ever attain," e.g. lusting after a women above ones pay grade, etc.

Cultural context + literal translation arrives at this meaning, bolstering this origin with sturdy proofs.

>>22047541
>Do you actually study Latin
I spent a few years on it as a side thing, mostly to translate the untranslated Marcus Valerius Martialis "dirty verses,"

You are of course right: "de" is of/regarding, so "de+spe" is "of hope," i.e. to possess hope, and this is only more obvious as the meaning to our sense is backwards when the concept 'of' Hope is understood in its context in the original Latin.

Again, see: Pandora.

>So in this sense it’s a movement away from “spero.”
Not sure how you went from stating the obvious "de"="of" to arrive at "away",

if this claim is correct then,
e.g. De Agricultura would then become "move away from agriculture," for instance. It's literally two simple words, "of" and "hope." That's a solid proof.

Three solid proofs then.