/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22910226]

How do we westerners understand Chinese literature?
...
China has 4000 years of literary tradition.
They have 1.6 billion citizens.
I think we westerners need to at least try to understand China's rich literary history

[Anonymous No.22910249]

GOO BAK GONG CHAI MOO GOO GAI PAN

[Anonymous No.22910269]

>>22910226

>China has 4000 years of literary tradition.
They have 1.6 billion citizens
And yet millions of them want to live in the shadow of whites

[Anonymous No.22910271]

>>22910226
I miss her so much bros...

[Anonymous No.22910357]

>>22910226
>>22910271
who's da queue-tee?

[Anonymous No.22910372]

>>22910357
>looks at file name

[Anonymous No.22910416]

>>22910226
>How do we westerners understand Chinese literature?

by raising a specific class of people, we call them researchers/specialists, who will study those 4000 years of literary tradition and explain it to people who have enough time and resources to waste.

[Anonymous No.22910546]

>I think we westerners need to at least try to understand China's rich literary history
95% of English speakers can't even understand English text from a hundred years ago, and know nothing about their history, literary or not. Try focusing on that one first, maybe?

[Anonymous No.22910577]

>>22910416
So which book by them is best

[Anonymous No.22911083]

>>22910226
Yet the best literature they have to offer is Reverend insanity

[Anonymous No.22911093]

>>22910226
China does not have 4,000 years of literature. This is demonstrably false. It’s remarkable how Chinese people will say anything about themselves. Are you people capable of telling the truth? Do you even know your own history? You sound like you have never reflected critically on your own culture.

[Anonymous No.22911135]

>>22911083
So? It's a pretty damn good book. Better than whatever the average /lit/eral retard reads.

[Anonymous No.22911144]

>>22911135
It's souless like anything made in china

[Anonymous No.22911220]

>>22910226
play dynasty warriors 8 extreme legends edition and you will understand chinese litturature.

[Anonymous No.22911252]

>>22910226
>China has 4000 years of literary tradition.
>They have 1.6 billion citizens.
They also eat dog meat cooked in raw sewage.

[Anonymous No.22911255]

>>22911252
Different civilizations, different perspectives. You don't have to agree with it, just understand.

[Anonymous No.22911258]

>>22911255
Cooking with sewage is objectively bad I'm afraid.

[Anonymous No.22911300]

>>22911252
and you are gay

[Anonymous No.22911331]

>>22910226
This thread is a fucking train-wreck sprawling with retards thusfar, but I was actually also wondering whether there's anything good there, seeing how inaccessible it must be for us.
/clg/ has people learning classical chinese; what do they do it for? As in, with learning Greek, you know you've got Plato, the Iliad, Xenophon etc. etc. whereas with Chinese classics it seems like you're just kind of diving into the dark. Then there's an additional question whether these works would be worth reading in translation anyway, since Chinese languages are so far removed from anything we're familiar with.
but yes
>ping chong wong
and so forth

[Anonymous No.22911338]

>>22911331
You should ask in /clg/

[Anonymous No.22911507]

>>22911093
I'm not a gook but I was just estimating by saying 4000
>>22911331
I started reading the water margin and it's pretty good. But I'm not sure what else to read other than the four classics

[Anonymous No.22911529]

>>22910226
1. It's not 4000 years
2. Their poetry is quite good, and is already sufficiently translated/understood, including by Ezra Pound, and no more is needed, although if more is done it should be welcomed
3. Their philosophy is interesting, and managed to create a durable culture, but it astounds me how Pound saw so much in Confucius -- even so, it's already sufficiently understood, and has been studied by Westerners for centuries in fact
4. Their visual arts are interesting, but ultimately an exotic curiosity, like Japanese or Egyptian art, or even most Medieval Western art for that matter -- usually specialists will love it, praise it, say it's as good as Velazquez, but that's simply because they can't bear the harsh truth that they specialized in a minor subject because all others were already so full of studies and people competing for teaching positions
5. Their music is merely a curiosity too (as is all music other than the Western art music tradition that started with ars antiqua, and specially after the Renaissance, with the first Baroque composers) -- again, specialists will do what they always do, like those weird Medieval music players who try to convince us that actchually Josquin des Prez and Guillaume de Machaut are better than Bach and Mozart
4. They have not much else to offer. Their modern/contemporary art (Bei Dao, Can Xue, Yan Lianke, Xiaogang etc) is not special compared to ours, and in fact looks quite derivative of it, and even their famous science is mostly routine papers, not many breakthroughs and scientific geniuses at all. China's population is more than 10 times that of Western Europe, yet their cultural output hasn't yet surpassed that of France, Italy, even Spain, arguably even Portugal/Netherlands. Where's the Chinese Pessoa? And they have only 5 Nobel Laureates in STEM, Netherlands has like 15, since the 80's alone it's had 7 in physics/chem.

We westerners like to think that "behind" China or Russia there is this deep, profound culture that is full of immense richness, totally impenetrable to us, the "Chinese mind", the "Russian soul"... In reality, they don't, even Russia is only great insofar as it's Westernized.
Same thing is done even about the Dark Ages, which "experts" now wish to insist actchually weren't that dark, you know, cause muh carolingians and such! In reality, they were indeed dark and only started to lighten up a bit by the time of the goliards and troubadours, already a prelude to the Renaissance...

[Anonymous No.22911606]

>>22911252
Dog meat peasants generally don't write or enter canons.
>>22911529
I'm not Chinese, but I sincerely doubt Classical Chinese poetry is translatable without losing most of its potency.
also
>ultimately an exotic curiosity
Isn't this kind of a ridiculous attitude? The Chinese could very well turn around and call "Occidental" art a mere curiosity and the argument would end right there rather than each trying to understand the respective tradition from its own first principles. Whether it's good or bad isn't a simple quantitative measure such that you can dismiss entire traditions by claiming artistic superiority, and I don't even necessarily deny that claim of yours about Western art being superior at certain things. Your entire post is frankly puerile and has the same fetishistic attitude towards works that makes it clear you don't even understand what makes something great. If you knew the inexhaustible depths of a single great Western work, like say, the Commedia, you would know that whole traditions aren't to be approached and dismissed with the same narrow presuppositions that you're comfortable with. You would know this because you would be immediately familiar with the fact that artistic vision is capable of so much more than mere power level dickwaving. Maybe you should actually read Ezra Pound and try to see what world he saw in the works that lured him.

[Anonymous No.22911626]

>>22911606
You speak truly! I would note in your favor that the Buddha, for example, is an intellectual powerhouse which no one in the west seems to know about beyond the he liked to meditate
>you're a [swear words]
well, I'm not here to argue, just saying my view.

__ postscript

please use the "sage" option when appropriate! let's keep the board speed down!

[Anonymous No.22911645]

>>22910226
When Monks went to China for the first time all of them were excited to read Chinese philosophy. They all left disappointed because the Chinese failed to establish things like eternal truth etc

[Anonymous No.22911650]

>>22911606
>I'm not Chinese, but I sincerely doubt Classical Chinese poetry is translatable without losing most of its potency.
So is any poetry in any language, and Ezra Pound is as good a translator (regardless of accuracy for minutiae) as any poet is ever likely to get.

>Isn't this kind of a ridiculous attitude?
No. Same applies to much of the West, e.g., most Medieval painting (specially before late Byzantines/Cimabue/Giotto).
Saying something is a "curiosity" doesn't mean it's bad, only that, comparatively speaking, there is superior stuff for you to spend your time with. The Ptolomaic system was extraordinary, but a man in 2023 would do better to spend his time with a contemporary astronomy book... Unless he has some specific curiosity in the history of science and such.
I myself own books that talk about Chinese (and Medieval) art, by the way, and would probably own dozens if they weren't so expensive. But you won't find a Botticelli there. Or maybe you will. I haven't.

>If you knew the inexhaustible depths of a single great Western work, like say, the Commedia
I know it better than you, in the original too.

>Maybe you should actually read Ezra Pound
I've read his collected poems 13 years ago, as well as dozens and dozens of his essays, and have been rereading him since.

I have no time to argue about aesthetics. It's ultimately subjective, but even so there just isn't enough in China to justify the fascination some people (not necessarily you) feel for it.
If you think I'm wrong, just learn their language and write about it. It's what I do whenever I want to understand more about a certain culture/tradition.

[Anonymous No.22911670]

>>22911650
Could you put on the rose glasses for a minute and say what are the good points of the chinese culture?

[Anonymous No.22911684]

>>22911650
>No. Same applies to much of the West, e.g., most Medieval painting (specially before late Byzantines/Cimabue/Giotto).
That doesn't excuse you. I could very well argue that de Machau is on the level of Bach and Mozart if not "better." But I won't because it's apples to oranges and I know they were just different projects ultimately. The fact that this is so outlandish for you just shows that you lack imagination.
>only that, comparatively speaking, there is superior stuff for you to spend your time with
My point is that this is an absolutely midwit hermeneutic. Simple as.
>The Ptolomaic system was extraordinary, but a man in 2023 would do better to spend his time with a contemporary astronomy book...
Ah yes, subtly inserting the notion of Scientific Progress into the arts. Thank you for making my work easier and showing other anons exactly what I'm getting at.
>I know it better than you, in the original too.
You don't know me lol, meds.

[Anonymous No.22911695]

>>22911670
Wonderful lyric poetry, a highly respectable political tradition and philosophy, good inventions, a wonderful style of landscape painting, and such. They also have four great novels I haven't read, so I cannot say whether they are indeed great or not.

[Anonymous No.22911697]

>>22911606
> Isn't this kind of a ridiculous attitude?
It is not, anon is spot on. I cannot talk about chink literature, nor do I care, but the russian one, I have been studying it for years in educational facilities as one of my native tongues is russian and I simultaneously laugh and cringe every time when some westerner tries to pass russocrap as the ultimate preeminence, the deepest of the deep, the only choice of a know-it-all. It’s all just a miserable cheap shlock, you silly puffed up pseud. And a very repulsive one at that.

[Anonymous No.22911698]

>>22911684
>>22911650
hey hey fellas let's calm it down you're both venerable scholars and we respect both of your opinions

[Anonymous No.22911706]

>>22911331
>/clg/ has people learning classical chinese
Yeah all 1.5 of them. I wish there'd be more people learning classical Chinese and other Asian/East Asian languages.

[Anonymous No.22911708]

>>22911698
I don't respect these random women though.

[Anonymous No.22911718]

>>22911684
>I know they were just different projects
Ok.

>My point is that this is an absolutely midwit hermeneutic. Simple as.
Ok.

>Ah yes, subtly inserting the notion of Scientific Progress into the arts
No. One has some truth, the other has more. Some works have some things of interest for an artist, others have more, regardless of when they were written.

>You don't know me lol, meds.
Ok.

Anyway, since I'm a midwit and have an easy time learning languages, then you, a highwit, should just shut up and learn Chinese, no? Instead of saying westerners "should at least try to understand" China's literature, as if dozens and dozens, indeed thousands and thousands of Westerners hadn't read, translated and studied Chinese books already, indeed for hundreds of years.
Literally just go on Amazon and search chink stuff.

[Anonymous No.22911723]

It's funny how china gets mogged in every aspect culturally by a tiny island who's people live on rice and fish.

[Anonymous No.22911737]

I fell into Chinese lit by accident, as I had read Simon Leys’ essays on European literature but still had to slog through a bunch of his Sinophile shit just so I could say I’d finished the book of essays. That was 4 years ago and I’ve barely touched a western book since. It’s one thing to be told China is the other great cultural force besides Europe, but to actually go and experience it is like discovering a whole new planet to explore.


>>22911684
>>22911718
Dumbest argument I’ve seen on 4chan in a while, kek

[Anonymous No.22911748]

>>22911697
>russian lit bad
>therefore others must also be
Stupid rusmonkey. And that's assuming your judgement on your own tradition is worth a damn in the first place, which it clearly isn't.
>>22911718
>as if dozens and dozens, indeed thousands and thousands of Westerners hadn't read, translated and studied Chinese books already, indeed for hundreds of years.
bait n switch. We were talking about your pseud approach. It is true that this intellectual promiscuity is also rife in scholarship, but that's a different matter.
I also never said anything about Westerners not trying to understand China's literature. Just addressed your approach. You clearly can't even follow a thread of discussion and justify your view.

[Anonymous No.22911784]

>>22911748
>ad hominem fallacy
Hit a nerve there, huh?
Btw I never said I’m russian, I said I have mastered russian since birth. Silly puffed up pseuds and reading comprehension never go hand in hand, eh?

[Anonymous No.22911816]

>>22911784
Learn what ad hom is stupid rusmonkey.

[Anonymous No.22911839]

>>22911737
>>22911748
If chink culture is so great where is the chink Newton? Why was Paul Dirac born in Bristol and not Peking?
It's always to the non-objective areas these people resort to, because then you can say all sorts of bullshit, e.g., calling Ezra Pound or Arthur Waley's a "pseud approach" and so on, and whenever one tries to add some objectivity, perhaps make some comparisons, perhaps compare the elaborate technique, richer use of color, greater psychological exploration, immensely greater variety of original styles, even the sheer increase of artistic studies and treatises, in the era of post-Giotto Italian painting, with that of, say Medieval monks who barely knew how to draw a rabbit fighting another, or Egyptian painters who kept repeating similar styles for so long with very little creativity and evolution, all you say is "these are different cultural projects", "apples to oranges" etc.
Always the same excuses from people who like to defend the "cultural underdogs".
The truth is that the "cultural underdogs" are so because they deserve to be. The "misunderstood culture", like the "misunderstood genius", is 99 times of 100 a myth devised by specialists or easily impressible persons who are overly enthusiastic about their areas of interest/expertise.
But aesthetics is ultimately subjective, so that with enough words it's possible to hide this fact, invent some kind of interpretation that will make the cave painter as good than Botticelli, if not better.
As soon as you go to the truly objective areas (maths and physics) they shut up, because then you see how few great Chinese/Medieval/whatever scientists, mathematicians, inventors there actually are, specially if you adjust for population size. China is comparable maybe to Japan or Arab world, or more adequately to India, not to Europe. I mentioned the Nobel in my previous post, but they also have less Fields Medals than Japan, as many as Iran if you count Terence Tao (who's of Chinese origin, but grew up, studied and always lived in the West).

[Anonymous No.22911874]

>>22911839
>If chink culture is so great where is the chink [insert list of western fixtures]
Stopped reading there. You people are literal midwits who can't even parse my post. This is how all normie apes think.
If chink culture is great it's because it's chink culture, just like Western culture is great because it's fully itself (was). Things have their own essences. Spengler knew this, Pound knew this, pretty much anyone who's actually literate knows this.
Inventors have nothing to do with it and the value of a literary canon isn't in how close it places us to star trek wormhole travel or whatever gets your vulgar utilitarian rocks off because you don't actually have the spirit to appreciate literature. I don't know how I can make it any simpler than that.

[Anonymous No.22911876]

>>22911839
>If chink culture is so great where is the chink [insert list of western fixtures]
Stopped reading there. You people are literal midwits who can't even parse my post. This is how all normie apes think.
If chink culture is great it's because it's chink culture, just like Western culture is great because it's fully itself (was). Things have their own essences. Spengler knew this, Pound knew this, pretty much anyone who's actually literate knows this. It's the most basic prerequisite to actually interfacing with a work of art.
Inventors have nothing to do with it and the value of a literary canon isn't in how close it places us to star trek wormhole travel or whatever gets your vulgar utilitarian rocks off because you don't actually have the spirit to appreciate literature. I don't know how I can make it any simpler than that.

[Anonymous No.22911909]

>>22911645
Monks from where? Europe?
>>22911697
Don't Pessoa and like Dostoevsky have a lot in common?
>>22911876
How do I grasp the essence of it?

[Anonymous No.22911933]

>>22910226
I love agatha

[Anonymous No.22911934]

>>22911876
>Stopped reading there.
>Also refutes points anon made.
>Only considers fictional literature and choses to ignore scientific lit.

Whew anon.

[Anonymous No.22911935]

>>22911876
Ape culture is fully itself too, anything is "fully itself", a mineral is fully itself, European culture today is also fully itself and if it's in decline it's because it was in itself to be in decline.
If you want to be a true relativist, just decide by luck which culture you're going to study and "try to understand", since they're all fully themselves and therefore equivalent.

[Anonymous No.22912050]

>>22911934
>Stopped reading there.
>Also refutes points anon made.
I only discussed the point I highlighted. Another illiterate.
Fields medals are not literature. You're reminding me that I spent way too long as a stemfag in academia.
>>22911935
They aren't equivalent at all and I'm not a relativist. Relativism is when you reduce everything down to nothing like you do. Nothing is equivalent. They are all worth studying though. Even ape culture--good example actually--that's why we study ape culture; well maybe the men who originally started studying ape culture. Your problem is that you only perceive quantity. That's why you only process things by tearing them down to this reductive comparison. You literally cannot conceive of the qualitative aspect inherent in things, hence you write it off as mere aestheticism or mere subjectivism. I know I'm going to get mocked for invoking him, but you are the last man in the Guenonian sense. Let me in fact break down your last post.

[Anonymous No.22912072]

>>22911839
>If chink culture is so great where is the chink Newton?
I addressed this above.
>calling Ezra Pound or Arthur Waley's a "pseud approach"
Straight up lying again, I praised Ezra Pound.
>muh objectivity
Complexity is only one measure and a rather pedestrian one at that. You only use "objectivity" as a buzzword here. An understanding of various traditions from rigorous first principles is, in fact, more objective than vulgar comparison between disparate traditions that boils down to being predicated upon a single vague definition of art that presupposes the objectives of your own tradition. This reminds me of "the abuse of art" that Jacques Barzun talks about in his treatise.
>all you say is "these are different cultural projects", "apples to oranges"
Yes, yes they are. I don't care if they're "objectively inferior" by your predetermined goalpost setting. Those monks and Egyptians had something important to say and unless you approach those works with that mindset, you'd be better off not approaching them. Which is fine--there's no need to. But to write them off as worthless prima facie makes you no different to book-burning jihadists, except with none of the firepower, a pseud essentially. Also, the repetitive nature of those works hints at something deeper that you entirely miss in your reductive search for novelty. Both of those peoples, as reflected in their art also, literally had access to the Other World--or so they thought--and to be unable to appreciate this perspective is what's really lack of creativity. You have no idea how much immeasurable creative depth and symbolism is buried in the icon of the Pantocrator alone.
>Always the same excuses from people who like to defend the "cultural underdogs".
Underdogs in what sense? This is the language of a sports journalist. I couldn't give less of a shit which field of study is more popular. This is only of importance to collectors of facts, men suited for populism. These are the conjurings of a mind with no affinity for metaphysics.
(cont.)

[Anonymous No.22912075]

>>22912050
>You're reminding me that I spent way too long as a stemfag in academia.

[Anonymous No.22912076]

>The "misunderstood culture"
Every culture that can be called a culture is misunderstood, including the Greeks. Because very few people are actually capable of accessing the interior dimension of any culture. The vast majority are nothing more than empty-headed book thumpers like you who mistake fetishisation of their chosen and approved cultural products for wisdom. It's never more than a cover for uneducated chauvinism, not an actual love for the works whose titles they espouse.
>99 times of 100 a myth devised by specialists or easily impressible persons who are overly enthusiastic about their areas of interest/expertise.
The specialists never even go far enough. The past is always an alien civilisation. It's an in-built feature, not a bug, of human memory that we simplify the past in order to function. Even mediocre past cultures had a lot more to say than we can glean from such pseud analysis.
>But aesthetics is ultimately subjective, so that with enough words it's possible to hide this fact
I've already addressed this need of yours to level all art down into "objectivity" or vulgar realism.
>invent some kind of interpretation that will make the cave painter as good than Botticelli
They were both convening with their gods. You have access to neither. Even the cave painter filters you.
The rest of your post is another juvenile invocation of STEMfaggots who dazzle you with their runes. And also filter you apparently since you seem to think Fields medals in algebraic topology have any bearing on literary traditions. Only someone with a shudraic understanding of both literature and stem could come up with this shit.

>>22911909
>How do I grasp the essence of it?
Become a Thomas Taylor.

[Anonymous No.22912084]

new niggerfaggot web design butchered the succession of my responses
oh well

[Anonymous No.22912179]

>>22911083
based. However even though the author of RI is Chinese, I would not attribute the creation of RI to China. The RI author is pure genius, China on the other hand have done everything to limit his potential and crestive ability.

[Anonymous No.22912226]

>>22912076
>It's never more than a cover for uneducated chauvinism
Oh, no, I'm such a chauvinist!
>The past is always an alien civilisation
How do you know? How do you know this is not just you misunderstanding them as being more than they actually are?
>Even mediocre past cultures had a lot more to say than we can glean from such pseud analysis
How do you know? How do you know the "things they say" are not merely your misunderstandings of what they actually say?
>to level all art down into "objectivity" or vulgar realism
No, I am not a realist in art.
Also, if you do not have any objective criteria to judge art, how come in your opening post you described China's literary history as "rich"? How do you distinguish "rich" from poor? Is it just because they wrote a lot of pages, and therefore it's rich? Is Harry Potter very "rich" then?
And why do you call some cultures of the past "mediocre"? What's the difference between great cultures and mediocre ones? Is it just numbers?
Clearly even you implicitly use some sort of criteria when judging a culture, but as soon as someone criticizes your favorite country you retreat into cheap high-school relativism, and when he decides to use truly objective metrics, such as mathematics, you suddenly start acting as though it's unimportant, even though the Chinese themselves recognized the importance of science and maths, and still do, they're just not as good at it as Westerners, Ashkis, Japanese and others (or maybe even the Indians), even though they would love to be, but they're not.
>And also filter you apparently since you seem to think Fields medals in algebraic topology have any bearing on literary traditions
It's just that I am trying to find something objective to compare, but clearly you do not wish any thing objective, because you fear the comparison, since it will show China's intellectual limitations.
Also, they do have some things in common, as the elites which produce poets tend to be the same which produce great scientists. Historically, cultures where you find great scientists tend to be ones where you find great poets too, with some exceptions, but the tendency is real. It's quite peculiar that a culture of "4000 years" with such an amazing literary tradition, philosophy, art and such would fail to produce a Newton, a Gauss, an Euler, a Galileo, a Harvey, even a Columbus, though we know they did in fact have a science, technology, medicine, big ships...

You are just a relativist, in typical mid-20th century style. Australian Abo culture as good as German culture, Nigeria slum culture as good as Italian Renaissance, cause in both people "talk to their gods", are "fully themselves", each works well when understood according to its own "interior dimensions", and other such U.N. tier slogans etc. etc. etc.
Useless talking to you. As soon as objectivity comes in, you run away into empty repetitions of spenglerian bullshit.

[Anonymous No.22912361]

>>22910226
>China has 4000 years of literary tradition.
>They have 1.6 billion citizens.
Reminded me of the "monkeys at a typewriter eventually typing Shakespeare" thought experiment.

[Anonymous No.22912399]

>>22912226
>Oh, no, I'm such a chauvinist!
That means you're actively filtering yourself tard. Don't larp about "the truth" again.
>How do you know? How do you know this is not just you misunderstanding them as being more than they actually are?
>more than
I'm not out here with a ruler looking for the supreme. I don't need to do that because have faith in my own culture's ability to nourish me--because I am actually conversant with it. I come to other forms of art for curiosity and to see how they explain the world and what novel perspectives it can offer me, not to shape it in my image, but to drink from it. But to answer your question more directly, like I said this is just a fundamental truth of history. We actually capture way less of the past than we think we did and then we pick and choose broad strokes from that based on our intuitions. The purpose of an actual education is to open up those intuitions for you to be able to receive universally varied wisdoms, but nobody has that anymore, in fact, it's labelled bigotry by leftists who are by their very origin anti-culture.
>if you do not have any objective criteria to judge art
I do. You keep mistaking me for a relativist. I'm not a relativist; I think the proper term would be perspectivist, similar to Goethe and Nietzsche.
>why do you call some cultures of the past "mediocre"?
Well, by your standards they are. I don't think I've been as clear as I could have so I do apologise for that. I do have my own preferences in these things and they're not extremely heterodox or anything. I am not a china-boo by any means. It's just the profanity with which every side, both the left and the right, approaches these things that angers and saddens me. The world's cultures are in a process of total self-annihilation through this (as well as animal and plant species), not least of which is Western European culture.
>when he decides to use truly objective metrics, such as mathematics, you suddenly start acting as though it's unimportant
I think we immensely and wrongly conflate the scientific method, an absolute cultural particular, with the Good itself. This is a bold claim and will no doubt sound conceited but I believe very few people in the modern world have an insider's understanding of 'what science is.' You don't need to be a great scientist or a genius for this, you just need to follow certain intellectual strains far enough to get the full picture. I suspect this is the point where you will simply not see what I mean if not experience a cultural immune reaction. That's not so relevant to the question of literature and art either way, so we can drop that. I genuinely don't know why you posit scientific progress as some sort of measure of a culture's artistic richness.
(cont.)

[Anonymous No.22912408]

>>22912226
>China's intellectual limitations
No, I admit that these are many and varied. I am not a china-boo. I just went into the thread expecting the exact sort of response I knew there would be from the dialectical reactionaries on this board and everywhere else which is what I wanted to address.
>cultures where you find great scientists tend to be ones where you find great poets too
Kind of. It is a similar process of exploration. The empirical realm is only a very small dimension of exploration. Is Ancient Greek culture worthless to you as well considering they didn't hold empirical science in particularly high regard either?
>Australian Abo culture as good as German culture, Nigeria slum culture as good as Italian Renaissance
This is getting tiresome. I never mentioned the words "as good" in my post. It seems like that's the point where your consciousness stops. You are like the symbol of the cross with the vertical axis removed. Such an attitude is the culmination of a degenerated culture, not in a moral sense but the actual meaning of degenerate.
I always reach this impasse with people when they fail to see how much load the term "good" is bearing in their theses. Is abo culture as good as German culture? Idk, as good at what? At building Western civilisation? Fuck no, these are practically zoological specimens. But remember, I actually like the world and don't want to flatten it into my own image, (because the world actually is an interesting and beautiful place, the only thing we have at any rate unless you're some sort of AI cultist.) Do I go into a zoo and apply this methodology? This is the poisonous aspect of the anglo mindset that has become some sort of weird global confusion.
>its own "interior dimensions", and other such U.N. tier slogans
That's called "co-opting". The UN and other such institutions are actually satan incarnate and do the opposite of celebrating the diverse bounty of the world.

[Anonymous No.22912505]

>>22911331
>>22911507
Chinese literature is probably the most formally canonized tradition out there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Books_and_Five_Classics
(note that these do NOT include the four classic novels, which are of relatively very minor importance)
These aren't all really "literary" works, but they're the foundation of the Chinese worldview.
For belles-lettres, you'll want the Classic of Poetry, Songs of Chu, fu rhapsodies, Tao Yuanming, Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi, Han Yu, Li Shangyin, Su Shi.
For philosophy, the four classics of Confucianism mentioned above, plus Zhu Xi for neo Confucianism, Daodejing, Zhuangzi, Liezi, Mozi, Han Feizi.

>>22911529
>complains about artificial flattening of differences in cultural sophistication
>compares China with fucking Russia
I dunno anon, sensing a teensy bit of bias here. Also Netherlands is a fun example considering they have zero (0) authors of note. Maybe sciences and arts are not necessarily always one and the same competency? Shocking suggestion, I know.

>>22912399
>>22912408
Based, but please don't spend this much time talking to him lol, he has a condition and it's a problem for his handler, not for internet strangers.

[Anonymous No.22913019]

>>22912505
>compares China with fucking Russia
In terms of intellectual achievements, yes. (Proportionally, Russia much better).

>Also Netherlands is a fun example considering they have zero (0) authors of note. Maybe sciences and arts are not necessarily always one and the same competency?
The Netherlands has one of the best painting traditions in the world, despite having a small population, a tradition which particularly flourished around the time when its science was starting to develop.
Huygens, Leeuwenhoek, Grotius, Spinoza, Vondel, Rembrandt, Vermeer all contemporaries. Their population in the 17th century? According to some estimates, around 2 (two) million.
People talk about the "Dutch golden age", "Spanish golden age", "Portuguese golden age" for a reason. Great progress in the sciences, technology, geography, trades, manufacture etc. is usually accompanied by great artistic works.

>>22912399
>We actually capture way less of the past than we think
Of the present too. Both truisms.
>I genuinely don't know why you posit scientific progress as some sort of measure of a culture's artistic richness
1) I am talking about their culture in general, not just literature, though the topic of the opening post is literature (but I am not forced to restrict myself to the opening topic).
2) You gave no standards through which we could measure their literary achievements. This is the problem with these kinds of discussions. Someone shows up saying how amazing chink literature is, and how we haven't been paying enough attention, how scholars have a "pseud approach" to that supposedly amazing literary tradition that is just lying there hidden, yet they never explain what exactly their standards are, and fly from attempts at objective discussion by saying things like "apples and oranges" or whatever. Which is why I chose to compare chink science, which, though it does contain major inventions (compass, gunpowder etc.), is mediocre considering its population size, with that of European countries, including small ones like Holland.
This is *not* a *direct* way of accessing their literary richness, and I never claimed it was, but merely a clue, an indication of their intellectual capacity and creativity as manifested in history, which has the advantage of being objective, and therefore untainted by vague concepts which are bound to appear in discussions of literary merit. It is certainly surprising that a nation that claims so much greatness to itself never managed to produce a truly great scientific figure, only some rather interesting, but ultimately minor ones, who did not have what it took to generate a scientific revolution in the same way so many Western scientists did.
>Is Ancient Greek culture worthless
Greeks had great science and maths.
>Idk, as good at what?
Good in the same sense you use "rich". What is rich and what is poor? Rich in what and poor in what? Looks like you're an actual degenerate too, you just use a different word.

[Anonymous No.22913090]

>>22913019
Anyway, I won't discuss further, having spent too much time in this thread already.
Also, I have nothing against China other than prejudice after a certain amount of exposure to Chinese works. What I read of their poetry was sometimes very good, but other than that nothing of interest, specially not their "philosophers".
Since you seem interested, I encourage you to learn their language and maybe translate some of their untranslated books. I probably won't read them, but it's good work anyway. I don't wish to discourage anyone from such studies. They have 1+ billion people, so some of it is bound to be good, I would imagine.

[Anonymous No.22913115]

>>22913019
Cultural =! intellectual. Mathematicians =! culture.

Painting =! literature. Spinoza =! Dutch. (Grotius && Vondel) =! important. Technique =! culture.

[Anonymous No.22914178]

>>22911697
You are comparing a sapling with a venerable oak on the ending days of its life.
Goethe had a rather decent model of literary development.
Poetry, Theology, Philosophy, Prose.
You can't compare literature from 19th century england to literature from 19th century russia because they are in different stages of development.

[Anonymous No.22914251]

>>22912072
>Complexity is only one measure and a rather pedestrian one at that.
Not him but what other measures of quality could one use? Depth? Style?

[Anonymous No.22914260]

>>22910226
Chinese literature is irrelevant to the west. Just watch Kung Fu Panda and The Forbidden Kingdom and you now know Chinese lore.

[Anonymous No.22914354]

Any good essays or books on the process of trying to translate literary work from such an entirely different alphabet and culture and time period?

[Anonymous No.22914822]

>>22914354
>>22914354
>korean has a separate language for women and children
Please tell me this is true

[Anonymous No.22914869]

>>22910226
>China has 4000 years of literary tradition.

Invented in the last decades by the Communists.

[Anonymous No.22914967]

>>22910577
Call to Arms by Lu Xun.

[Anonymous No.22914980]

>>22913115
He never mentioned literature specifically though, you assumed that. Go back and see. He was talking about a generalized "cultural output" in which case the golden age Netherlands really is not to be underestimated.

[Anonymous No.22916215]

>>22914967
What is that?

[Anonymous No.22916229]

>>22914822
Men use Hanja, women and children use Hangul.

[Anonymous No.22916274]

Chinese intellectualism is weird. There's a good book called 'The Man Awakened from Dreams' that goes into this a bit. The Chinese used their brightest students as government officials.

[Anonymous No.22916340]

>>22914980
Here's how the discussion went:
>OP asks about Chinese literature
>anon makes post talking about how Dutch are better at science than Chinese
>I point out to anon that this "argument" is completely retarded and irrelevant because the Dutch have no literature to speak of
>anon moves the goalpost and starts talking about painting
Yes, the Dutch were good at painting. Germans were good at music. Their other pursuits were very slightly elevated by the rising tide of the Renaissance but not in a way that was anywhere near proportional, and not enough to be significant. One specialty is not a culture, it is a triumph of technique, which is clearly what that anon thinks culture is, because he is autistic. I mean he's literally unwilling to actually discuss literature because it's not "objective" enough, in a thread that is specifically asking about literature, on a literature board. He's a STEM autist who has a bone to pick because he saw the humanities departments at his institution running their relativist grifts and he feels the need to assert the superiority of Evropean cvltvre with facts and logic instead of just having confidence in its actual strengths.

[Anonymous No.22916354]

>>22916340
>he feels the need to assert the superiority of Evropean cvltvre with facts and logic
Nothing wrong with that

[Anonymous No.22917198]

>>22916340
I highly praised Chinese poetry, and mentioned the fact that it has *already* been extensively studied by Western authors, and books such as Pound's Cathay are *already* part of the Western canon. As soon as I mentioned Pound and Waley, however, you started complaining about their "pseud" approaches. They're not faithful? No translator is. Not even the Chinese's reading of their own past is truly faithful to it. Perhaps Pound's translation is more faithful than a "faithful" one could be. Being a poet who sometimes translates his own poems, I know what I'm talking about.
Insofar as China has a worth-reading literature, it seems to me *as a foreigner* that it's already been translated and studied, and in fact begun to be so as soon as the West managed to access their books. Pound himself took very great pains to learn some Chinese, find rare editions of Confucius, corresponded with Chinese professors etc.
If you happen to believe there are many Chinese classics, muh "hidden masterpieces", which remain untranslated, maybe you learn some Chinese and translated them yourself, Mr. Highwit.
Keep in mind I am only talking about the English here. There are many more translations by the French, Germans, Soviets...
China has indeed a great literary tradition, which I never denied, though if there is a Chinese Dante, a Cervantes, a Goethe, a Mallarmé, a Proust, a Nietzsche, a George, I must confess I have never in my life read him, heard of him, suspected of his existence. Chinese literature for me holds the same level of interest as, e.g., Persian literature, or in fact ancient Hebrew literature (Bible), which contains some extraordinary works, but seems to never have reached a modern stage of development, which only really happens in Europe after the dolce stil nuovo, Petrarch, Cervantes and others. These literatures also, even at its best, contain nothing truly similar to the true major works of the Greeks and Romans, but rather to the likes of Hesiod and such. Leopardi on the differences betwn. Biblical and Homeric imagery is quite conclusive for me.
Michael Wood on YouTube wants to convince me that Du Fu is as great as Donne, maybe Shakespeare, that Chinese poets had attained in Medieval Times an excellence which the English only attained much later, with the Elizabethans and metaphysicals. Maybe??? I don't know Chinese! But in translations no, they don't, Beowulf is as good, the Goliards better, troubadours much better -- and I might make similar bold claims about dozens, maybe hundreds of authors from my own tongue, and once you read them and find they're not that good I can blame translators, no?

Not knowing the language, it's very hard to truthfully discuss Chinese (or Persian, Indian, Mesoamerican, Alaskan, Yoruba, Haiti slum etc.) literature. As far as I can see, it's a very great, very noble tradition, but overrated by the Eternal Chinaboo, like the Jews/Christians overrate the Bible (or do they? I don't know Hebrew either!).

[Anonymous No.22917280]

>>22917198
>Leopardi on the differences betwn. Biblical and Homeric imagery is quite conclusive for me
Nta, but can you explain this?

[Anonymous No.22917513]

>>22911723
japanese art would be nothing without the influence of the west and china

[Anonymous No.22917530]

>>22917513
Man would be nothing without woman. And yet...

[Anonymous No.22917726]

>>22911252
Yes and whites are becoming woke trannies, so what? Everyone is humiliated in the modern era.

[Anonymous No.22917736]

>>22910577
the dragon ball comics

[Anonymous No.22917743]

>>22911839
>If chink culture is so great where is the chink Newton?
Faustian faggots are a cancer on the world.

[Anonymous No.22917768]

>>22916274
>The Chinese used their brightest students as government officials.
So they were practicing (or at least attempted to enact) Plato's Republic with rule by a philosophical oligarchy.

[Anonymous No.22917830]

>>22916229
진짜? 역서적인 사실인데?
요즘은 남자들이 한자를 쓰지 않다 ㅋㅋ

[Anonymous No.22918189]

I downloaded Romance of the Three Kingdoms and The Outlaws of the Marsh
I have read the Tao Te Ching, Zhuangzi, The Analects and about 50 pages of the Book of Documents
What else should I read?
I did read a bit of Chinese poetry but I prefer prose

[Anonymous No.22918242]

>>22918189
The other two big ones are Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber

[Anonymous No.22918289]

>>22918189
Read Reverend Insanity.

[Anonymous No.22918331]

>>22910357

[Anonymous No.22918357]

>>22918189
>>22918242
I liked Dreams of Red Chamber, and have Peony Pavilion ordered. What are the other big love love stories?

[Anonymous No.22918366]

>>22914354
Someone already brought up Pound but in one of his essays he describes how a poem may or may not be translatable depending on its style. If the focus of the poem is imagery then it can be translated just fine, because images aren't tied to any one language, but if the focus is on musicality then don't bother, as it relies directly on the language. This doesn't account for the cultural references though.

[Anonymous No.22918398]

>>22910226
Why is the ccp wasting money here on blatant propaganda?

[Anonymous No.22918487]

>>22918398
Same reason the CIA is spending time publishing Obama's favourite books every year

[Anonymous No.22918790]

>>22917198
I'll ignore the parts where you're replying to other anons' posts, or youtubers, or the voices in your head (jk, I'm being good faith, I promise, and I appreciate the serious reply).
Yes, European literature wins out in terms of novelty and exploration. If you beg the question that these are the highest literary values, then of course Europe is the best bar none. But not everyone believes that to be the case, and how you can be a reader of Pound and still not be able to conceive of any model of literature outside of this progress-based one is beyond me. If you want to talk about your relative judgments on medieval lit with reference to qualities other than mere technical advancement, though, I'll be very interested and grateful for the discussion.
>Leopardi on the differences betwn. Biblical and Homeric imagery is quite conclusive for me
You're gonna have to give a qrd on this, I'm not willing to sift through 2500 pages for this argument.

[Anonymous No.22918802]

>>22918487
I don't know why they do that ether.

[Anonymous No.22918806]

Yeah it's probably best to not focus on the worst examples of a huge population, same with India

BTW, why did you post Anne frank, Chinese wouldn't find her appealing, probably some Indians though

[Anonymous No.22919223]

>>22918242
I am intimidated by them, I figure I lack the cultural knowledge to appreciate them
>>22918357
What did you know going into Red Chamber?

[Anonymous No.22919425]

>>22917768
Hilariously wrong post

[Anonymous No.22919460]

>>22918331
I don't know the time frame of this post, she probably would have a harsher opinion later on given what has happened; but that is a surprising sober take about us. Maybe that saying that Jewish women are the only women intelligent enough to be worth holding conversation with is true.

[Anonymous No.22919639]

>>22917830
Wrote that as more of a satiric shitpost than anything else.
What's the actual state of Hanja nowadays though? Is it still used in a few specific cases or is it completely defunct?

[Anonymous No.22919680]

>>22919639
So from what I can gather as someone who just learnt of this, someone correct me if I'm wrong:
>men would use hanja (chinese characters, considered to represent masculinity and strength) and women and children hangul (native, beauty, kindness)
>but hanja is not used much anymore, only to differentiate between words that have the same pronouncation, or in advertising to look fancy

[Anonymous No.22920378]

>>22919223
>What did you know going into Red Chamber?
That my translation was the state approved translation (Beijing Foreign Press) even though the husband and wife duo were briefly imprisoned during the cultural revolution and only finished the translation after being let out. Also that the last 40 chapters were either lost or never finished and a second editor/author finished the book.
Other than that the only other background I had was what is written on the back of the book, or in the first couple paragraphs of the wikipedia article.

[Anonymous No.22920386]

>>22920378
The penguin translation is the best. The Story of the Stone.

[Anonymous No.22920406]

>>22920378
Also that Mao Zedong said it was on of his favs, and that he read it a bunch of times too

[Anonymous No.22920437]

>>22910226
>China has 4000 years of literary tradition.
What are the feats of those 4000 years of literary tradition?

[Anonymous No.22920742]

>>22919680
Hangeul was only developed around 500 years ago, and to my knowledge it was only fully popularized after the Japanese colonial period in Korea was over. I had not heard of any distinction between men using it and women. If there was any distinction it was probably just by virtue of the fact that Hangeul is tremendously easier to learn than Hanja, and probably served as a way to make sure women could at least use that rather than just being illiterate. Not sure though.

>>22919639
For some reason, the most common usage of Hanja now in South Korean society is when they are talking about a country on the news. For instance, they will use 美 ("미") when talking about the US or 日 ("일") when talking about Japan.
Other than a few very specific cases, such as advertising as >>22919680 mentioned, it is mostly defunct outside of an academic setting. To my knowledge, Koreans still learn it in school, and I can tell you from experience that a certain level of familiarity with Hanja is a huge help in understanding written Korean as a non-native, but it isn't something most Koreans are adept in anymore.

It might be comparable to how Latin root words feel to us. The average English speaker might not be very familiar with Latin, but we can still kind of "feel" it when we see it and use it to conjure up new words or guess the meaning of a word we don't know.

[Anonymous No.22921084]

>>22918189

Read To Live by Yu Hua if you want something from the 20th century.

[Anonymous No.22921132]

>>22910226
commie burn books. LOL they couldn't even find a copy of Dream of the Red Chambers until a westerner brought a copy back.

[Anonymous No.22921142]

>>22910226
>China has 4000 years of literary tradition.
The oldest piece of written Chinese is 3400 years old, but the literary tradition only really starts some 2500 years ago.

Please do basic research before starting a thread

[Anonymous No.22921213]

>>22921132
That's fucked up. Commies are subhuman.

[Anonymous No.22921594]

>>22921132
>they couldn't even find a copy of Dream of the Red Chambers until a westerner brought a copy back.
That isn't true

[Anonymous No.22921675]

>>22911606
>人 木 日 = 東
Your image is wrong. What book did you get this from? The only radicals (部首) which make up 東 are 木 and 日, and even then, most dictionaries won't even list 日, but only the 木部. And even if whoever wrote this was trying to say that 人 is a radical in 木, they'd still be wrong; they are two entirely different radicals.

[Anonymous No.22922381]

>>22911529

[Anonymous No.22922394]

>>22910226
that's a man

[Anonymous No.22922397]

>>22921675
It's all bullshit anyway. Many radicals are made from smaller ones but still counted as radicals for no reason.

[Anonymous No.22922458]

Check out the book Nirvana in Fire. Or the TV series.

[Anonymous No.22923365]

The united states even is older than China. Go fuck yourself you CCP shill.

[Anonymous No.22923670]

>>22910226
i want to read truly esoteric texts, something untranslated and something that has only been read recently by few people. I have an old penguin book on the russian language but should i learn a chinese language instead

[Anonymous No.22923682]

>>22923365
I know this is bait, but

[Anonymous No.22924633]

[Anonymous No.22925306]

>>22911529
What I don't get about Pound and Confucius is why was the arch-modernist, "make it new" guy so enamored with Confucius who is practically the complete philosophical antithesis of him.

[Anonymous No.22925364]

>>22923682
Did greece spend 50 years destroying all of their culture?