/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22423170]

Why was he so famous in his time? He doesn’t have any works that are still popular esteemed classics. His economic critiques were immediately improved upon by socialists. Was he just the contemporary equivalent of a Twitter user who shits on everything?

[Anonymous No.22423177]

>>22423170
He was the Memerson of his day

[Anonymous No.22423292]

>>22423170
Well firstly, why should he have any works that are still "popular" classics? What part of Sartor Resartus or French Revolution screams popular? They have niche and classic appeal among the cognoscenti, because they're unique, interesting, dense, well-written books by a well-read man, but their elitism and idiosyncrasy hardly suits the popular democratic tastes of today. That does of course beg your original question of how he became popular in the Victorian era, which I honestly don't know enough to answer, and I'd be intrigued to find out exactly what the Victorians saw in him and how they differ to contemporary taste. My best guess is Carlyle's popularity mostly suffered because of the world wars and there's an indelible rift in the collective psyche of the West before and after WWII: the "Great Man" can't help but remind us of atrocities, whereas there would've been hope and excitement over such a figure in the patriarchal households of Victorian England. In any case, I'm glad he was popular at the time because his writing is passionate and important, and he did much to advance interest in the very great writers of German Idealism and Romanticism.

[Anonymous No.22423399]

>>22423170
>He doesn’t have any works that are still popular esteemed classics.
He absolutely does for anyone intelligent. You're a retard.

[Anonymous No.22423468]

>>22423170
I cant say much, didnt read, but a book called "how to speak and write correctly" from 1910 that, besides detailing remedial english structures, also commented on the great linguistic influences and contributors to english styles, definitely included him quite a bit along with others like Emerson, Keats, Byron, Whitman, and Addison.
He was definetly mentioned a good deal in stuff on the topic of writing in the early 1900s at least, given I read a decent bit from that period.

[Anonymous No.22423589]

>>22423170
He was not very smart. The type of writer who only has something to say about his time period.

[Anonymous No.22423950]

>>22423170
It's the plight of reactionaries that they get left even further behind.

[Anonymous No.22424308]

>>22423170
>t. "He doesn’t have any works that are still popular esteemed classics"

[Anonymouṡ No.22425456]

>>22423170
What do you mean, "was"? He's still a must-read for anyone serious.

Anyway his popularity was (and is) partly because of what he said, but mostly because of how he said it. As someone-or-other commented, no-one else has ever written like Carlyle, before or since.

[Anonymous No.22425885]

>>22423170
Every edition of this guy online is either crazy expensive or brutally unreadable.

[Anonymous No.22425904]

>>22425885
Go to abebooks or search your local charity bookshop. Although maybe he is harder to find in US than in UK? Over here it’s not too difficult.

[Anonymous No.22427204]

bump carlyle threads

[Anonymous No.22427216]

>>22425885
Huh? Oxford Classics has French Revolution and Sartor Resartus for fair prices

[Anonymous No.22427219]

>>22423950
It's true that no matter what he would become largely forgotten since he dismissed capitalism and liberal democracy at a time when both were growing around the world, but unlike other rightist thinkers who are still influential today, he just lacks any long-lasting works. They're either outdated, extremely difficult to read or only written for educated aristocrats. His most compelling stuff are his economic critiques but then you read Marx and Engels and they're elementary in comparison.

[Anonymous No.22427220]

>>22423170
It is lookism. He was lucky he was born sexy.

[Anonymous No.22427226]

>>22423170
He was cool and based. Also a very smart guy and redpilled!

[Anonymous No.22427234]

What am I in for?

[Anonymous No.22427245]

>>22423292
Nice informed reader post

[Anonymous No.22427248]

btw I randomly found this casual nod to Sartor Resartus in Finnegans Wake. Maybe it’s a sign I should read it lol

[Anonymous No.22427253]

>>22427234
Autistic screeching

[Anonymous No.22427264]

>"...thank heaven, our interesting black population, equalling almost in number of heads one of the Ridings of Yorkshire, and in worth, in (quantity of intellect, faculty, docility, energy, and available human valor and value) perhaps one of the streets of Seven Dials, are all doing remarkably well. “Sweet blighted lilies,” as the American epitaph on the nigger child has it, sweet blighted lilies, they are holding up their heads again! How pleasant, in the universal bankruptcy abroad, and dun, dreary stagnancy at home, as if for England too there remained nothing but to suppress Chartist riots, banish united Irishmen, vote the supplies, and wait with arms crossed till black anarchy and social death devoured us also, as it has the others; how pleasant to have always this fact to fall back upon: our beautiful black darlings are at least happy; with lit- tie labor except to the teeth, which, surely, in those excellent horse-jaws of theirs, will not fail!"

[Anonymous No.22427272]

>>22427219
Chartism, Latter-Day Pamphlets and Past and Present are still excellent. Anyone interested in critiques of modernity should read those and they've aged well. People are just lazy and don't want any unique intellectual stimulation anymore.

[Anonymous No.22427285]

>>22427272
True. People opt for genital stimulation these days.

[Anonymous No.22427327]

>>22423170
>>22423589
>>22423950
>>22427219
Who let the midwits in? It's impossible any of these posters have read Carlyle, probably some pop-phil summary that talks about his 'outdated' economic critiques because he was right wing and ignores his genius as a prose writer. In fact these posters probably tried and failed to parse his prose and now want to justify their own stupidity by attributing his style to a mere eccentricity of the 19th century. Something 'thankfully' forgotten for such lucid and enlightened writers as Yuval Harari.

[Anonymous No.22427371]

>>22427216
>French Revolution and Sartor Resartus
I'm talking about his real stuff

[Anonymous No.22427376]

>>22427371
That’s the good shit, the literary shit. Everything else is a meme.

[Anonymous No.22427392]

>>22423170
he's a based ;— enjoyer

[Anonymous No.22427410]

>>22427376
>Signs of the Times
>Chartism
>Past and Present
>Occasional Discourse
>Latter-Day Pamphlets
>Shooting Niagara: and After?

[Anonymous No.22427421]

>>22427410
>politics
Strictly for the birds

[Anonymous No.22427424]

>>22427410
erm excuse me but you seem to have forgotten one of his most classic works, occasional discourse on the N I G G E R question

[Anonymous No.22427486]

>>22427371
>>22427376
You're both wrong. Carlyle's historical genius blends towards both fiction and politics. In even his most political works there is always the use of fictional characters and rhetorical devices. And in his most fictional, poetic works there is an historical subject lying in the background with imminent political conclusions.

[Anonymous No.22427520]

>>22427486
The enlightened centrist's here

[Anonymous No.22428293]

>>22423177
Thomas Carlyle was anti-Jewish though. Jordan Peterson is very pro-Jewish.

[Anonymous No.22428313]

>>22428293
Also Thomas Carlyle was a hardcore conservative.
Jordan Peterson is just a classical liberal.

[Anonymous No.22428328]

>>22428313
Also Thomas Carlyle was a great mind who influenced many other great minds while Peterson is a midwit with no influence outside of the manosphere.

[Anonymous No.22428338]

>>22423170
My 2 cents is that it's because he's at the crossroads of so many things going down at the time

>the revival of the interest in the middle ages, seeing it as an era with merits of its own rather than just a benighted dark age
>disillusionment with enlightenment philosophy, the french revolution, and feel-good humanitarian slogans
>the beginnings of anti-capitalism, often paired with a strong anti-semitic element
>german philosophy reaching its zenith, plus the anglo reaction to its excesses, the overall atmosphere of weltschmerz taking hold
>fear of mass democracies, disillusionment with and skepticism of parliamentary democracies, the beginnings of the autocratic turn among those who think liberal democracies to be hamstrung by bureaucracy and capitalist interests

[Anonymous No.22428365]

Because he was a huge influence on other great writers and not seen as a mere reactionary writer, Engels wrote a glowing review of his Past and Present.
He was a conservative (and something of a modernist) who wrote against bourgeois money-worship and valetism (reverse-heroism, criminal worship) and the failure of the aristocracy and priesthood to do their duties.
As for his prose, if you've read Dickens you've seen a malformed ripoff of it that sometimes stole entire sentences.

[Anonymous No.22428809]

I believe that Carlyle became influential primarily on account of the quality of his work, such as it was that anyone of a sufficient intellect can recognize it. For him to be so much less popular now may well be simply a testament to a decline in such readers, and a decline in literary skill
When Sartor Resartus was printed in Fraiser he got TWO pieces of fan mail. One from some random Irishman and another from R.W. Emerson himself. He recounts this in a reply to Emerson

Emerson further comments on the upopularity of Sartor Resartus:

>I feel like congratulating you upon the cold welcome which you say Teufelsdrockh* has met. As it is not earthly happy, it is marked of a high sacred sort. I like it a great deal better than ever, and before it was all published I had eaten nearly all my words of objection. But do not think it shall lack a present popularity. That it should not be known seems possible, for if a memoir of Laplace had been thrown into that muck-heap of Fraser's Magazine, who would be the wiser? But this has too much wit and imagination not to strike a class who would not care for it as a faithful mirror of this very Hour. But you know the proverb, "To be fortunate, be not too wise." The great men of the day are on a plane so low as to be thoroughly intelligible to the vulgar. Nevertheless, as God maketh the world forevermore, whatever the devils may seem to do, so the thoughts of the best minds always become the last opinion of Society. Truth is ever born in a manger, but is compensated by living till it has all souls for its kingdom. Far, far better seems to me the unpopularity of this Philosophical Poem (shall I call it?) than the adulation that followed your eminent friend Goethe.

[Anonymous No.22429242]

>>22428293
>>22428313
>>22428328
Victorians on average were about 15 IQ points higher than us.
If you add those to our Peterson; it seems quite likely he might begin to resemble Carlyle.

[Anonymous No.22429249]

It's because he isn't considered acceptable or worthwhile by elites and academics today like Marx. Like always, the cause is mainly difference in ideology. There is no materialist explanation because materialism is retarded.

[Anonymous No.22429269]

There's a lot of writers that used to be famous. I have no idea why you say socialists "improved" upon his "economic" ideas since his ideas largely influenced things about our modern economy as well, also childcare. His works are also dense and repulsive to the average reader. I saw one progressive "review" his French Revolution and it just seemed to make him angry and state that it was just insult after insult and therefore bad, as if progs don't simply insult the people who think their theories are retarded.
>and the failure of the aristocracy and priesthood to do their duties.
That's typically reactionary since reactionaries seem to be the only people who realize today that all systems are staffed by people and not "material conditions".
>>22427285
And genital mutilation. Which is a good thing because only progressives are crazy enough to do it.

[Anonymous No.22429295]

>>22429269
It's kind of funny how the chud perspective of revolutions as cynical power grabs by rival elites agains the old elites, justified after the fact, is closer to the marxist understanding of what revolutions are than the whiggish liberal understanding of revolutions as triumphs of Justice, Reason, and Progress against the diabolic forces of Reaction, Religion and Irrationality.

[Anonymous No.22429314]

>>22429295
is it, though?

[Anonymous No.22429332]

>>22429314
Libs hate history that does not make out "their side" to be morally superior. There's no thought in historiography that libs hate more than the idea that history is arbitrary and morality is whatever people have the power to make others treat as such.

[Anonymous No.22429337]

>no one has mentioned Carlyle's Frederick the Great
The prose bros... it's so good. It's like having someone massage your brain.

[Anonymous No.22429340]

>>22429295
funny how marx and marxist just copied reactionaries like Giambattista Vico

[Anonymous No.22429341]

>>22429242
I want to know how you can retroactively score iq tests on a people

[Anonymous No.22429347]

>>22429341
Do you distrust the experts, anon?

[Anonymous No.22429349]

>reactionary
tranny word

[Anonymous No.22429358]

>>22429295
Closer but there's a big difference. Marxists think that the final revolution will be done entirely by the workers and triumph over the cruel burgeoise. In fact, some say it has been done in the past but was subverted. Marxists tend to essentially think that humans are just machines and that the ideological "superstructure" does not matter, or not as much as the economical infrastructure, which to us is hidden under more epistemological layers than the mattresses covering the bean which the princess slept on.
Another thing with Carlyle that makes him hard is that he references a bunch of obscure facts that he expects you to know

[Anonymous No.22429366]

>>22423170
>Why was he so famous in his time?
He still is very famous, but he was famous because of his charisma, writing style, and charm.
>He doesn’t have any works that are still popular esteemed classics.
His history of the French Revolution is still popular and esteemed as a classic.
>His economic critiques were immediately improved upon by socialists
AH! You're a commie, of course you hate conservatives. Your resentment is not an argument though.
>Was he just the contemporary equivalent of a Twitter user who shits on everything?
Not really, Twitterettes like yourselves are also braindead.

[Anonymous No.22429370]

>>22429347
I'm not arguing with you, I'm just curious. It would make sense, since modern medicine/health care has enabled the weakest to survive

[Anonymous No.22429375]

>>22429366
I need to read this man. I saw on Wikipedia that the national socialists liked him, was he really just a conservative?

[Anonymous No.22429384]

>>22429375
Well an Anglo conservative. I personally don't care about him but he's still leagues above commietards.

[Anonymous No.22429386]

>>22429384
That is a low bar. I'm yet to interact with a commie/leftist with a coherent worldview

[Anonymous No.22429387]

>>22423170
>was for all intents and purposes a chud with little love for the french revolution
>also his personal heroes were the kingslayer Oliver Cromwell and the enlightened francophile Frederick the Great

Uh, how did he reconcile these things?

[Anonymous No.22429390]

>>22429375
He's not a conservative. Proto-fascist.

[Anonymous No.22429506]

>>22429375
He held Heroics very highly and considered the rejection of great men, usually under the guise of some nitpicking in hindsight, to be the sign of very lowly men.
His view on heroism is arguably the main reason why he's hated by bourgeois liberalism. It's fairly antithetical to their views of captive minority-democracy and crime-worship.

[Anonymous No.22429509]

>>22429390
So that's why all the pseudo intellectual /pol/tards jerk off to him, as well as that edgy Jew Moldbug.

[Anonymous No.22429514]

>>22429506
Delusional.

[Anonymous No.22429515]

>>22429509
>nothing but buzzwords
You could just as easily not post you know

[Anonymous No.22429518]

>>22429515
Did I hit a nerve? You seem upset.

[Anonymous No.22429583]

It is kind of funny how every leftist just copies liberal complaints about him when he's the groundwork for a lot of their arguments surrounding the dignity of labor and the duties of the state.

[Anonymous No.22429979]

>>22429518
literally malding rn incel racist coomer sjw

[Anonymous No.22429983]

>>22429583
It's kinda funny how every 'leftist' believes in every bit of progressive insanity but thinks they are rebels because they want even more taxes

[Anonymous No.22430994]

>>22429514
Not that anon, but heroism and liberalism don't really intersect. Nor does genuine statesmenship

[Anonymous No.22431008]

>>22429509
I'm personally unfamiliar with this. Do you suggest that if /pol/ likes something that it's automatically a write off? Is this how we base if something is good or not, not by its content, but by a portion of its enjoyers?