Is there a country that can beat Russia in terms of literary merit?

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Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:25:21 2013 No.4044936 [Reply] [Original]

Is there a country that can beat Russia in terms of literary merit?

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:28:22 2013 No.4044940 Canada, Vietnam and New Zealand

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:28:22 2013 No.4044941 USA

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:29:22 2013 No.4044944 France

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:29:22 2013 No.4044947 >>4044936 Equatorial Guinea

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:30:22 2013 No.4044949 Finland

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:31:22 2013 No.4044951 File: 47 KB, 604x402, 1315586699411.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>4044941

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:32:21 2013 No.4044954 Belgium comes to mind.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:32:22 2013 No.4044953 >>4044940 >>4044941 >>4044944 Care to give some names? When I think about Russian literature, I think about Dostoyevsky Tolstoy Gogol Turgev Nabokov Bulgakov Pushkin Solzhenitsyn

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:34:21 2013 No.4044955 >>4044953 Nabokov's best work is American literature.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:36:21 2013 No.4044963 >>4044955 IRL no one thinks about Nabokov /lit/'s obsession with Nabokov is like /g/'s obsession with Richard Stallman

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:36:21 2013 No.4044965 Lesotho.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:36:21 2013 No.4044966 >>4044963 lolno

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:36:21 2013 No.4044967 >>4044941 Also China >>4044953 Salinger, Toole, Pynchon (kek), Twain, Steinbeck, Hemingway

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:37:21 2013 No.4044968 >>4044963 IRL no one thinks about books

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:38:21 2013 No.4044970 >>4044967 >China >that one guy who has read tao te ching and 2 other chinese works and pretends to know his shit every thread

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:42:22 2013 No.4044976 >>4044970 Why so cynical?

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:43:22 2013 No.4044979 >>4044953 >Care to give some names? Rabelais, Voltaire, Hugo, Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Maupassant, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Lautreamont, Zola, Proust, Gide, Celine

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:44:22 2013 No.4044984 France is stacked, they dont have the most Nobel Lits for nothing Proust Voltaire DeSade Satre Camus Celine Verne

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:47:21 2013 No.4044989 >>4044953 all mentioned and daumal and henny jahnn and huysmans and zurn and breton and his gang of assholes france is top dog

>>	twinshiggy Tue Aug 20 10:49:22 2013 No.4044993 Ireland.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:50:22 2013 No.4044996 >>4044936 Ireland. It's always Ireland.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:51:22 2013 No.4045002 >>4044936 US, France, England, Ireland, Argentina, Japan, South Africa.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 10:55:21 2013 No.4045012 >>4044936 India. Every human problem that has been conceived and answer given to has been written about in India.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:02:21 2013 No.4045035 Iceland

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:04:21 2013 No.4045039 >>4045012 >not enough cattle raids for genre content >too few boats in the flood >not enough baby eating questions or answers >lacks representative bicycle realism and/or surrealism Still Ireland.

Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:04:21 2013 No.4045041
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>>4044936
Italy:

Virgil;
Ovid;
Dante Alighieri;
Francesco Petrarca;
Giovanni Boccaccio;
Lorenzo de' Medici;
Ludovico Ariosto;
Niccolò Machiavelli;
Torquato Tasso;
Giovan Battista Marino;
Alessandro Manzoni;
Giacomo Leopardi;
Ugo Foscolo;
Giovanni Verga;
Umberto Saba;
Giuseppe Ungaretti;
Luigi Pirandello;
Primo Levi;
Italo Svevo;
Italo Calvino;
Pier Paolo Pasolini.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:08:21 2013 No.4045057 Britain, Italy, France and Germany all have richer literary traditions than Russia. Russia has a cluster of brilliant social realists in the mid–late 19th Century and that's pretty much it. Hell, even USA has more variety.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:28:21 2013 No.4045122 >>4044984 >France is stacked, they dont have the most Nobel Lits for nothing Ok, ok, i love french works but please don't use nobel as something to give value tu your opinion, it's just a recent prize.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:34:22 2013 No.4045140 >>4044979 >>4044984 France wins.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:35:22 2013 No.4045145 Russia -> XIX and XX centuries. So yes: France, England, Spain, Germany and Italy.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:37:21 2013 No.4045149 >>4045041 Shit. This guy has a point.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:40:21 2013 No.4045151 >>4044936 >>4044936 USA Faulkner Melville Steinbeck Hemingway Hawthrone Whitman Dickinson O'Connor Pynchon McCarthy

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:41:22 2013 No.4045155 >>4045151 Also Nabokov

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:44:22 2013 No.4045157 >>4045151 You forgot Eliot, Twain, Dos Passos, and James.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:46:21 2013 No.4045166 >there are people in /lit/ that read american books Really?

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:47:21 2013 No.4045168 >>4045151 I don't understand. These authors are nothing special.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:48:21 2013 No.4045170 >>4045151 and dfw

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:48:21 2013 No.4045172 >>4045168 ok please stop posting

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:50:21 2013 No.4045176 >>4045157 I was going to bring up Eliot but then there is the whole "British Subject" thing since he moved to the UK pretty young.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:51:21 2013 No.4045179 >>4045166 99% here are Americans. That's why Hemingway and others are so fucking discussed on /lit/. American litarature doesn't have that weight in the History of literature. But it's still good.

Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:52:21 2013 No.4045184
File: 211 KB, 323x810, britain strong.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Ahem.

Shakespeare
Milton
Blake
Chaucer
Spenser
Marlowe
Jonson
Keats
Donne
Wordsworth
Tennyson
Byron
Shelley
Shelley
Coleridge
Pope
Browning
Swinburne
Dryden
Fielding
Rosetti
Rosetti
Burns
Hopkins
Austen
Dickens
Hardy
Defoe
Woolf
Brontë
Brontë
Brontë
Eliot
Chesterton
More
Bacon
Johnson
Boswell
Gibbon

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:55:21 2013 No.4045192 1910's Portugal.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:57:21 2013 No.4045198 >>4045184 >tfw we sent a poet to declare our independence from you Ireland. Always.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:57:22 2013 No.4045195 >>4045184 Any book set in Victorian England or dealing with British high society is unbelievably boring and unreadable.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:58:21 2013 No.4045199 >>4045184 Also Orwell & Huxley (even if you don't like them they are influential)

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:58:21 2013 No.4045200 File: 500 KB, 987x766, working class scum.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>4045195

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 11:59:21 2013 No.4045207 >>4045199 Don't forget Tolkien and H.G. Wells. And Forster, Greene, Waugh, Wodehouse and Shaw are three more names worth mentioning, I think. Britain kind of has every base covered.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:00:21 2013 No.4045208 >>4045184 >dem Bronte lol nope, only one is ok.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:00:21 2013 No.4045210 >>4045207 Oh, and Lewis Carroll. And arguably Conrad, Sako, Eliot and Auden.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:01:21 2013 No.4045212 >>4045210 >Sako Saki*

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:02:21 2013 No.4045216 >>4045184 that list isn't as impressive when you take out all the boring poets I could list a bunch of Beats and Imagists but everyone would call me a fag

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:04:21 2013 No.4045220 >>4045216 Yeah, Ginsburg is totally the same as Keats. You uncultured swine.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:04:22 2013 No.4045223 >>4045207 >Shaw >not Irish

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:08:21 2013 No.4045230 >>4045223 You're right, sorry. He did live in Britain for the majority of his life though.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:13:21 2013 No.4045243 >>4045184 >implying anything good that came out of Britain wasn't derivative of the classics.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:16:21 2013 No.4045253 russian lit is mainly just hacks with a political agenda. where exactly is the merit in that if you don't care about social causes like race, gender, politics?

Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:17:22 2013 No.4045258

D.H. Lawrence, Thomas De Quincey, Ford Madox Ford, Anthony Trollope, James Hogg, Matthew Lewis, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ian Fleming, Rudyard Kipling and Henry Fielding are some more great and influential Brits that haven't been mentioned yet. It really is no content.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:17:22 2013 No.4045261 File: 1.13 MB, 2589x3665, wildeboy.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>4045195 >Any book set in Victorian England or dealing with British high society is unbelievably boring and unreadable. Ireland says no.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:18:21 2013 No.4045269 >>4045253 this

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:18:22 2013 No.4045262 >>4045258 >It really is no content. I'll say.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:19:21 2013 No.4045270 >>4045258 >It really is no content. That should be "no contest" lol.

Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:20:22 2013 No.4045274
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Every major European country has a decent list of authors to offer.
Even the smaller ones have great writers of beautiful, moving literature - they just don't receive as much attention.
When it comes to Eastern lit, I'm a little bit less well-informed but Korea, China, and Japan have all produced excellent writers.
America, though much younger than the rest, has also birthed some powerhouse authors and works.

In terms of my favorites, I'd rank them like this:
America (muh cultural bias)
Great authors: O'Conner, Vonnegut, Pynchon, Hemingway, etc

France (muh existentialism)
Great authors: Camus, Celine, Voltaire, Flaubert, etc

Russia (muh doorstoppers)
Great authors: Bulgakov, Zamyatin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:20:22 2013 No.4045275 Sweden.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:22:22 2013 No.4045277 French lit is edgy bullshit. Race of utter degenerates.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:22:22 2013 No.4045279 File: 30 KB, 350x221, 350px-Waterhouse_decameron.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>4045041 >>4045149 These + Galileo Galilei and Leonardo Da Vinci.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:23:22 2013 No.4045282 >>4045274 >America >Younger than Joyce's Ireland

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:25:21 2013 No.4045287 1. Greece 2. Italy/Ancient Rome 3. Great Britain (big gap) 4. Germany 5. France Don't even try to argue.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:25:21 2013 No.4045290 "Classic" American fiction is overrated. American Poetry from different movements is god tier, though

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:26:22 2013 No.4045295 >>4045287 >not enough neolithic Ireland

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:27:22 2013 No.4045296 File: 732 KB, 500x350, backtopol.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>4045277 >degenerates You know the drill.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:27:22 2013 No.4045299 Russian Existentialism > French Existentialism

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:28:22 2013 No.4045304 >>4045287 lol Germany. Fuck outta here. Take away Goethe and who's left aside from a few poets?

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:29:21 2013 No.4045306 >>4044936 Realism is so bad. Russian literature won't be remembered 100 years from now.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:35:21 2013 No.4045329 >>4045258 >Arthur Conan Doyle, Ian Flemin ......... the list could go on

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:36:22 2013 No.4045335 >>4045304 Schiller, Hölderlin, Novalis, Hoffmann, Büchner, Mann, Kleist, Heine, Schlegel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Döblin, Brecht, Wedekind, Hesse, Jünger, Remarque, Hauptmann, Grass, Müller, Sebald, Böll...

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:37:22 2013 No.4045341 >>4045299 mmhmm

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:38:22 2013 No.4045342 >>4045335 >schiller jesus christ how could he forget.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:39:22 2013 No.4045344 >>4045216 Why are Americans so pleb? Your cook is fastfood as well as your literature and all your culture. Wondrous literature brings jealousy

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:39:22 2013 No.4045347 >>4045335 I implied the poets, but why did you include philosophers? Philosophers have nothing to do with this thread.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:40:22 2013 No.4045348 >>4045344 Nobody but the yanks know.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:53:21 2013 No.4045379 >>4045347 philosophers can have literary merit. nietzsche and schopenhauer in particular were very literary writers and had a profound influence on subsequent literature. i also count plato for the greeks and cicero for the romans etc.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 12:56:21 2013 No.4045389 >>4045379 I don't disagree, but it's not typically classed with literature and the thread so far has been devoid of philosophy up until that post. If we included it, it'd probably change a bunch of people's votes.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 14:29:21 2013 No.4045660 >>4044936 imo, 4: greece, india, israel, england.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 14:31:21 2013 No.4045664 >>4044984 sartre and camus are not great literature, nor de sade.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 14:33:21 2013 No.4045667 >>4045168 >melville, dickinson and whitman >nothing special

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 14:36:21 2013 No.4045673 china. having the oldest literature counts for nothing, apparently.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 14:38:21 2013 No.4045678 >>4045335 haven't read most of those. but sebald isn't very good and hesse is average

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 14:39:22 2013 No.4045679 What are the chances anybody in this thread has actually read something of the names they are arguing over, for or against? Jesus Christ...

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 14:39:22 2013 No.4045682 >>4045287 britain > italy

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 14:41:21 2013 No.4045683 >>4045389 of course philosophy is literature

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 14:44:21 2013 No.4045691 >>4045274 >O'Conner, Vonnegut, Pynchon, Hemingway, Those are strange picks to me. I wouldn't have any of them as Great. I'd take: Whitman, Melville, Dickinson, Hawthorne, Burroughs.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 14:45:21 2013 No.4045693 >>4045691 Burroughs is a stranger pick.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 14:47:21 2013 No.4045696 >>4045683 Not typically, no.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 14:54:21 2013 No.4045707 France or England

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 15:03:22 2013 No.4045722 Ireland >joyce >beckett >wilde >swift >yeats

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 15:08:21 2013 No.4045728 File: 1.99 MB, 214x162, have it your way.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Bukowski is considered American right?

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 15:10:22 2013 No.4045733 Who are Chinas most significant literary figures? I guess Confucius, Mencius, Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu and people like that?

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 15:12:21 2013 No.4045739 >>4045733 The people who wrote the Three (Four) Great Chinese novels should be included too. I am busy right now and don't remember the names, but google should help.

Anonymous Tue Aug 20 19:39:21 2013 No.4046282
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>>4044936
Hungary, is nearly as good I'd say. Although the fact that Hungarian can't be very effectively translated (like most languages I guess) sort of takes from the literature.
I really like:
Imre Madách
Attila Jozsef
Miklós Radnóti
Dezső Kosztolányi
Endre Ady
Sándor Petőfi
János Arany
Zsigmond Móricz
Géza Gárdonyi
István Örkény
Bálint Balassi

I suppose what country you think has the best literature is sort of subjective though.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 19:53:21 2013 No.4046313 >>4046282 lol

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 19:58:21 2013 No.4046338 >>4046313 How do you mean?

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 20:01:22 2013 No.4046343 >>4046338 the thread is about naming good writers, not namedropping all the writers you know from your mother land. i found your delusion funny

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 20:02:22 2013 No.4046346 >>4044936 Britain, France, USA, Greece, Italy (if you count Rome in that), and arguably China. Russia is still top tier though (and Dostoyevsky is god-tier).

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 20:02:22 2013 No.4046347 >>4044936 Nope. Russia wins. Saying this as a Britfag. >>4044953 Don't forget: Gorky Shalamov Grossman

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 20:03:22 2013 No.4046351 >>4044951 The blonde girl looks like she's yawning.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 20:04:21 2013 No.4046355 >>4044996 This.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 20:06:21 2013 No.4046358 >>4045279 Neither of whom are of literary merit. I agree with the post you're responding to though.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 20:07:21 2013 No.4046363 >>4045296 Seriously, what a divide-and-conquer fag.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 21:03:22 2013 No.4046478 >>4046343 How do you figure that the authors that I listed aren't good writers? I'm also not from Hungary.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 21:06:21 2013 No.4046483 >>4045041 >Italy >Virgil >Ovid

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 21:24:21 2013 No.4046503 >no one mentioned Brazil

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 21:28:21 2013 No.4046511 >>4046503 Why would they?

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 21:30:21 2013 No.4046515 >>4046511 Because their literature is incredible.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 21:45:21 2013 No.4046542 >>4046515 Care to back your statement up?

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 21:45:21 2013 No.4046543 >>4044967 +Henry James

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 21:45:21 2013 No.4046544 USA Whitman Dickenson Twain the beats Hemingway Vonnegut DFW

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 22:10:21 2013 No.4046589 >>4044963 You must be new.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 22:26:21 2013 No.4046616 >>4046343 >Implying Jozsef Attila isn't the best poet of the first half of the 20th century

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 22:29:21 2013 No.4046621 File: 198 KB, 1024x887, Hungary.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 22:41:21 2013 No.4046630 >>4046544 >not listing Melville

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 22:44:21 2013 No.4046635 >>4044963 Having studied literature, I can say with certainty that you're wrong. /lit/'s obsession with Nabokov has probably stemmed from their literature professor's obsession with him.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 23:01:21 2013 No.4046659 England, Ireland, USA, China,Italy Argentina and France.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 23:20:21 2013 No.4046686 Italy. Russia's got a bunch of pleb shit.

Anonymous Tue Aug 20 23:40:21 2013 No.4046719

>>4045168
>Faulkner, Melville, Steinbeck, Whitman, Dickens
>nothing
dear fucking god, your privilege to have a valid opinion has been revoked. You can not like them, but for chrissake don't be so fucking stupid to think that they are bad because you're retarded ass can't comprehend a goddamn fucking thing.
holy fucking shit.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 23:46:21 2013 No.4046730 >>4044936 Dostoyevsky is highly overrated

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 23:50:21 2013 No.4046736 >>4046282 >>4046621 I keep this image. Great post. Thanks.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 23:52:22 2013 No.4046741 >>4046730 No, Tolstoy is.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 23:53:22 2013 No.4046742 >>4044936 Yes, lots. /lit/ just circle jerks all over the Russians because they read two great books by two different authors who happened to be russian.

>>	Anonymous Tue Aug 20 23:53:22 2013 No.4046743 >>4046741 Him too.

Anonymous Wed Aug 21 00:10:21 2013 No.4046779

>>4046742
What an ill-informed opinion. Russia has produced many of the greatest poets and novelists, a statement that stands even if Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are excluded. There's Chekhov, Tyutchev, Pushkin, Bely, Turgenev, Gogol, Lermontov, Zhukovsky, Tsvetaeva, and countless others, many of whom are lesser known yet still of similar (or in some cases, better) quality. I think the UK is the only country that can compete with Russia.

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 00:27:22 2013 No.4046803 >>4046779 see >>4046742 /lit/ is proving your point

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 05:31:21 2013 No.4047271 Russia was relevnat only between 1850-1950

Anonymous Wed Aug 21 05:49:22 2013 No.4047283

>>4045041
>Virgil
>Ovid
It is Virgilius and Ovidius, dammit!

Sweden is pretty based:
Verner von Heidenstam
Fredrik Ström
August Strindberg
Ola Hansson
Selma Lagerlöf
Göran Tunström
Fabian Månsson:

>Sedan tiotals år hade det svenska riksrådet mest i var socken och stad sett växa upp sticklingar av sitt eget brödraskap. Det var i dessa gillen allsköns lackare, smilare och herrehyllare, som varken brydde sig om sitt eller de sinas väl, bara de fick slicka frälsegunstens solsken några timmar … narrar havande med fåfänga och högfärd …. Små rävar höljda i dubbla skinn … åsnor som voro glada om de fick fara med på herrarnas fester

From the trilogy Sanckte Eriks gård.

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 05:50:22 2013 No.4047284 >>4047271 What about Viktor Pelevin?

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 05:52:22 2013 No.4047286 >>4047284 Or Vladimir Sorokin?

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 06:03:21 2013 No.4047299 >>4047284 >>4047286 They are highly irrelevant

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 06:06:21 2013 No.4047307 Ancient Greece.

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 06:07:21 2013 No.4047312 >>4047307 >literary merit

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 06:13:21 2013 No.4047313 >>4047312 Then its Amuruca.

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 06:14:21 2013 No.4047314 >>4045041 >this also, the list goes on

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 06:15:21 2013 No.4047320 >>4045678 >Hesse >average pick one

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 06:16:21 2013 No.4047322 >>4045682 how?

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 06:22:21 2013 No.4047330 >>4045379 >nietzche >literary merit he merely tried

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 06:39:21 2013 No.4047359 >>4045140 Yeah i know. Gee, if homer and aristotle had just worked on their prose a bit more im sure they might have won a nobel prize. They just didn't put any effort in

>>	Fabulous !!GXZe+d0RTva Wed Aug 21 06:41:22 2013 No.4047364 >western literature >literary merit they don't go together

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 07:15:22 2013 No.4047400 >>4047364 >>>/pol/

>>	Fabulous !!GXZe+d0RTva Wed Aug 21 07:18:21 2013 No.4047406 >>4047400 I'm not going there!

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 07:19:21 2013 No.4047408 >>4047406 >>>/fa/

Anonymous Wed Aug 21 07:26:21 2013 No.4047420
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ok, so far, we all agreed that russian, france, italy and ireland are pretty cool, german has a lot of value but not so much literary merit in general, england is kind of mediocre and usa basically a joke

what about spain? any value in general except for a few big names? what about south america any country standing out or just some value spread around them?

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 08:23:21 2013 No.4047592 >>4046282 In the 20th Century (and beyond), Hungarian lit is certainly superior to Russian lit.

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 08:44:21 2013 No.4047663 >>4044949 EBIN ::::::::::::DDDD

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 08:51:21 2013 No.4047677 UK USA FRANCE

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 08:56:22 2013 No.4047684 >>4046542 Not him, but Machado de Assis is truly brilliant and that's all I read from Brazil. I mean really above just "good".

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 08:59:22 2013 No.4047685 >>4047684 Rosa and Lispector are also literary giants

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 09:00:22 2013 No.4047688 >>4047299 Please elaborate.

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 09:02:22 2013 No.4047691 >>4047420 >ok, so far, we all agreed that ... england is kind of mediocre I didn't get that from this thread at all. Seems to me that Britain actually has the most depth in numbers and variety.

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 09:05:22 2013 No.4047696 >>4047684 >Not him, but Machado de Assis is truly brilliant Liar. You are Machado de Assis, aren't you?

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 09:07:22 2013 No.4047699 Germany, if we count philosophy as literature.

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 09:15:21 2013 No.4047712 Many of the greatest authors to have written in German were Swiss or Austrian.

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 09:35:21 2013 No.4047754 >>4047691 true that, the problem is that the guy who namedropped a million english authors put a lot of mediocrity to bloat the list, but after filtering all the shit there's still a lot of great authors that stand strong

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 10:09:21 2013 No.4047850 >>4046282 lol list of names no one outside Hungary has ever heared of

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 10:11:22 2013 No.4047858 >>4046478 if they were good writers, people would know them. Russian is harder to translate but everybody knows who Esenin is.

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 10:15:21 2013 No.4047871 >>4047420 Llosa, Neruda, Cervantes

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 10:37:22 2013 No.4047966 >>4047871 those are from 3 different countries

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 10:42:21 2013 No.4047984 >>4047754 The writers named in >>4045184 are all canonised, and it's not even an exhaustive list.

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 10:44:22 2013 No.4047991 >>4047858 >if they were good writers, people would know them who do you mean by 'people'? there are people who don't know who dostoyevsky is. i assure that the people 'in the know', know those hungarian writers. hungary is a literary powerhouse.

>>	Anonymous Wed Aug 21 10:47:21 2013 No.4048000 >>4047850 I've heard of three of them (plus Krasznahorkai and Nádas) and I'm not Hungarian or even particularly well read.

>>	SAGE Wed Aug 21 12:54:21 2013 No.4048041 >>4044936 Every country ever. SAGE

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 01:57:22 2013 No.4050012 >>4046635 No, no one outside of these pedophile forums mentions Nabokov. If your literature professor was a pedophile, I think you wasted your money.

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 04:30:03 2013 No.4050242 >>4044963 Untrue. B4 I found /lit/. Five seperate people told me to read it. Honestly, I got through 55 pages and threw it away.

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 05:09:03 2013 No.4050302 >>4050242 why

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 05:14:01 2013 No.4050308 >>4047420 Spain has a novel that I think is one of the best selling of time, or best selling for its genre, the one about the man who rides the donkey.

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 05:47:01 2013 No.4050350 God Tier Literature Countries: Russia, USA, UK, Japan, Germany

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 05:51:01 2013 No.4050355 >India >China >Greece >France >England >Germany >Russia >Every single other fucking country Jesus Christ, guys. Do you see the pattern forming?

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 05:55:02 2013 No.4050358 >>4050350 >Japan >but no France Weeaboos never cease to embarrass themselves

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 05:56:02 2013 No.4050359 >>4050355 >China Why is that?

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 06:43:01 2013 No.4050413 >>4050308 shrek?

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 06:43:01 2013 No.4050416 >>4050355 >Do you see the pattern forming? No.

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 07:11:02 2013 No.4050464 >>4050355 Only aryans can write good books?

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 07:34:02 2013 No.4050490 >>4050308 lmao

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 08:33:02 2013 No.4050546 America. >Melville >Hawthorne >Emerson >Poe Etc. These are pretty fucking good authors. I love Dostoyevsky though. The Brothers Karamazov remains a monument. It was instrumental in taking my fedora off my silly head and making me a Christian.

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 08:35:02 2013 No.4050547 >>4050546 >trying to fit into the /lit/ hivemind this hard

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 08:36:02 2013 No.4050551 >>4050547 You think so? Because that's not my idea of what /lit/ likes as a whole. At all.

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 08:51:01 2013 No.4050583 >>4050355 >Do you see the pattern forming? No

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 08:52:01 2013 No.4050588 >>4050547 I thought /lit/ always made fun of the idea of america have a solid literary tradition

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 08:53:01 2013 No.4050590 File: 22 KB, 423x283, ear-training-intervals-tricks-1.1-800x800.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>4050546 >The Brothers Karamazov >making you a non-russian christian >missing the point

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 11:11:02 2013 No.4050865 Hungary of course. >>4046282 Not listing Nobel prize winner Imre Kertész

Anonymous Thu Aug 22 11:32:02 2013 No.4050896

>>4050865
>Kertész Calls Schindler's List "kitsch"
I regard as kitsch any representation of the Holocaust that is incapable of understanding or unwilling to understand the organic connection between our own deformed mode of life and the very possibility of the Holocaust.

Seriously, what does this even mean, besides being 2edgy4 Spielberg?

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 12:58:01 2013 No.4051172 >>4050896 what is it that you dont understand in that sentence?

Anonymous Thu Aug 22 14:23:01 2013 No.4051416
File: 1.61 MB, 230x172, 1370241245078.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>tfw when russian
>tfw growing up and having russian literature classes in school, trying to analize classics beloved by all civilized people
>tfw being too young, too stupid, 2kewl4skewl to get the messages and lessons from great books, appreciate rich writing in my own rich language

Good thing I'm not a pikey (at least I think I'm not) and reread everything worth reading from classic russian literature when got older

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 14:27:02 2013 No.4051425 >>4050546 >becoming Christian from TBK Moron.

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 14:29:02 2013 No.4051428 >>4051172 >incapable of understanding What in Schindler's List is incapable and unwilling? What is "the organic connection between our own deformed mode of life and the Holocaust?" What is meant by Kertesz's phrase "our deformed mode of life" period?

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 16:03:03 2013 No.4051678 >>4051416 >Good thing I'm not a pikey (at least I think I'm not) Does your home have wheels? If not, I don't think you have anything to worry about m8.

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 16:13:02 2013 No.4051693 >>4050012 Lolita isn't Nabokov's only novel.

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 16:14:02 2013 No.4051697 >>4051693 but it is the only good one.

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 16:31:02 2013 No.4051722 For a small country like The Netherlands we have good lit. >Multatuli >Couperus >Nescio >Reve >Hermans >Mulisch I'm not saying we can compete with the big boys though

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 16:33:02 2013 No.4051725 >>4051722 nooteboom

Anonymous Thu Aug 22 16:34:02 2013 No.4051726

>>4047858
>if they were good writers, people would know them
That's a pretty stupid thing to say. If Anglophones don't know certain writers, they're not good? Just look at the list of Nobel Prize lit winners and you'll see most of the non-Anglos are obscure in the Anglophone world.

America is not the world

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 16:36:02 2013 No.4051727 >>4051697 okay, philistine

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 17:29:03 2013 No.4051815 File: 25 KB, 1100x733, het verdriet van belgie.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>4044954

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 17:32:03 2013 No.4051820 File: 293 KB, 480x480, SM1ND.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] all you faggots rating russian literature without knowing russian :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDdddddddddddddddddddddddd

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 17:36:02 2013 No.4051824 >>4051820 >подразумевая мы не знаем России

Anonymous Thu Aug 22 17:43:03 2013 No.4051840

>>4050302
>why?
Why did I stop reading it? Well, I know everybody disagrees here and is going to give me shit, but...
1. I don't care for his prose. I find it neither beautiful nor compelling. I find it droll.
2. I'm uninterested in the subject matter. I know hurrdedurr seperate the author from his work, but Nabokov seems like he likes and justifies his characters behaviour, as well as gives hh's innate urges a backstory.
3. I believe personally that it's predatory. It's a story depicting the life of a child molester and shows Lolita to be a precocious participant in the relationship. Child molesters always justify themselves like she wanted it or she has urges too, and it sickens me to think about it. Like a 12 or even 16 year old has any idea about anything at all the way someone older than 25 does. It's retarded and I don't need to read about Nabokov's secret desire to have sex with children.

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 17:58:02 2013 No.4051875 >>4051840 Correction >I don't need to read about Nabokov's secret desire to have sex with children ,especially if it's poorly written.

>>	Anonymous Thu Aug 22 18:10:02 2013 No.4051903 >>4044936 gross or per capita?

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 08:37:03 2013 No.4053447 >>4051840 go back to mumsnet, fucking retard.

Stavrogin Fri Aug 23 08:53:03 2013 No.4053465

France:
Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Valery, Flaubert, Balzac, Zola, Voltaire, Rosseau, Tournier, Victor Hugo, Verne, Camus, Dumas, Moliere, Proust, Maupassant, Perrault, Sade, Stendhal, Gide, Cocteau, Céline, Chautebriand, Apollinaire, Rabelais, Genet, Lamartine, Montaigne

Anonymous Fri Aug 23 09:00:04 2013 No.4053479

>>4045306
What makes you say that with so much certainty? That seems like a huge assumption to make, based upon very little.
What would lead you to believe that Tolstoy/Dostoevsky/Turgev etc are to be forgotten? You said Russian lit in general won't be remembered, which I think is an erroneous statement. Maybe Russian realism will lose popularity, but tone down your implications a bit, or explain yourself.

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 09:22:03 2013 No.4053522 >>4051697 No, just his most popular. Pale Fire, The Gift, and Ada are all "good".

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 09:25:03 2013 No.4053529 >>4053522 pale fire is not good. mildly amusing at best.

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 09:29:03 2013 No.4053536 >>4053529 A shallow reading of the book might produce your opinion, I'll concede.

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 09:31:03 2013 No.4053537 Germany: Goethe /thread

Anonymous Fri Aug 23 09:32:03 2013 No.4053539

>>4053536
don't worry, i got all the schizophrenia crap, it just didn't move me at all. nabokov's just a show off, his work has no genuine emotional core. when he does try to insert a bit of pathos it just comes across as hopelessly forces, like he's just going through the motions. i appreciate that he moved the form forward but i don't enjoy his books.

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 09:32:03 2013 No.4053540 >>4053539 Fair enough.

Anonymous Fri Aug 23 09:49:03 2013 No.4053571

So I think from this thread, the only definitive statement that we've come to make is that Russian, American, French, British, Irish, German, Italian, and Chinese literature are all the best countries, Netherlands is okay, and only Hungarians care about Hungary.

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 10:25:03 2013 No.4053618 >>4045253 Yeah, if only Tolstoy had turned his attention to the struggling urban black women of mother Russia. A pressing issue then as it is today.

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 10:43:04 2013 No.4053648 >>4053571 I've seen no proof that China can measure up to the great European powers. I think people are just name-dropping them to seem cosmopolitan and clued-up.

Anonymous Fri Aug 23 10:53:03 2013 No.4053672

>>4053648
>I've seen no proof that China can measure up to the great European powers. I think people are just name-dropping them to seem cosmopolitan and clued-up.
Eh, you've not read any great Chinese novels, seeing as you don't read Chinese and nobody ever translated them properly.

Anonymous Fri Aug 23 11:49:03 2013 No.4053740

>>4053672
i don't think it's possible in any conceivable way to translate logosyllabic writing into a phonographic language.

taking that in account i have only read a translation of Water Margin (or Outlaws of the Marsh or whatever).

That being said probably not even modern chinese readers can extract all the value from a text like that without having studied old language, i guess it depends to what degree has chinese evolved lately

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 11:51:03 2013 No.4053742 >>4053672 >>4053740 i guess you could say the same to a lesser degree about russian or arabic writings, all of the translations probably lose a lot

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 12:15:04 2013 No.4053782 >>4045274 does doorstopper mean long book?

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 12:28:04 2013 No.4053796 >>4053540 lel this guy brought literally no arguments for why that book is good, and only gambled on receiving no replies

Anonymous Fri Aug 23 14:20:04 2013 No.4054002

>>4053740
>i don't think it's possible in any conceivable way to translate logosyllabic writing into a phonographic language.
What? That's absolutely retarded.

>That being said probably not even modern chinese readers can extract all the value from a text like that without having studied old language, i guess it depends to what degree has chinese evolved lately
You have to study old language if you want to read Chinese, like it or not. Modern Chinese writing preserves all sorts of ancient linguistical features. (This is by design, to make reading old texts easier.)

>>4053742
Anyways, to get back on topic: I read English and Russian natively, French fluently and I can struggle through Chinese with a dictionary. I'd rather be reading a Chinese novel than a French one, no contest about it. For one, it seems like almost everything written in Chinese is humorous and/or irreverent, while writing funny books in French seems to be forbidden by law. For another, Chinese writing has a way of putting across intensely vivid imagery in a super-condensed fashion, while in French, the more verbose your writing is, the more brownie points you score.

The point is that there's a lot of very good stuff out there which you're deprived of, as a monolingual English speaker, because of language barriers. English is _not_ the universal language, lots of very goods things are never and will never be properly translated into English.

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 14:47:03 2013 No.4054065 >>4047858 if you're going from Russian->English, Russian is certainly easier to translate.

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 14:53:03 2013 No.4054076 >>4054065 Easier than what?

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 14:59:03 2013 No.4054094 >>4054076 Hungarian. Russian and English are at least in the same language family.

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 15:06:03 2013 No.4054104 File: 80 KB, 492x559, TARD.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>4054094 >Russian and English are at least in the same language family.

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 15:07:03 2013 No.4054106 >ctrl+f Artaud >0 results I'm disappoint and I'm not even french

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 15:08:03 2013 No.4054108 >>4054094 lol

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 15:11:03 2013 No.4054116 >>4054104 English and Russian are both Indo-European. Hungarian is not.

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 15:11:03 2013 No.4054117 Britain.

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 15:12:03 2013 No.4054118 >>4054106 The Theater and Its Double was kind of disappointing actually.

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 15:13:03 2013 No.4054120 >>4054104 >>4054108 see >>4054116

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 15:13:03 2013 No.4054121 >>4054120 lol

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 15:15:04 2013 No.4054126 >>4054120 Lol

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 15:22:03 2013 No.4054141 >>4054118 Heliogabale is completely different, maybe it's more your thing also 0 results for Bataille why

Anonymous Fri Aug 23 15:25:04 2013 No.4054148

>>4054094
First of all, not really.

Second of all, that doesn't matter. Russian and English have completely different "mental frameworks". English is one of the quintessential Standard Average European languages, while Russian evolved in isolation from other PIE languages and works with completely different and very unique ways.

Thirdly, Russian literature has a long-standing and important tradition of using colloqualisms, dialect, and double-entendre (of the punnish, not sexual kind). That makes translating a big pain in the ass.

Anonymous Fri Aug 23 15:35:03 2013 No.4054163

>>4054148
You probably know more than I do. I was just thinking that because English and Russian both evolved from PIE and Hungarian did not, that English and Russian are more similar than English and Hungarian. (Even though I agree that English and Russian are still very different).

Also, I don't that you could call English 'quintessential Standard Average European.' What's your basis for that?

Anonymous Fri Aug 23 15:47:03 2013 No.4054175

>>4047850
Petofi is pretty well known in Europe (Nietzsche actually wrote music to some of his poems before he started with philosophy) and so is the play the Tragedy of Man. As well is the poet Attila Jozsef who Ted Hughes described as one of his favourite poets, ugy hogy edd meg a faszom

Anonymous Fri Aug 23 15:58:03 2013 No.4054189

>>4054163
>You probably know more than I do. I was just thinking that because English and Russian both evolved from PIE and Hungarian did not, that English and Russian are more similar than English and Hungarian.
Language families are based on having similar vocabulary, while ease of translation depends mostly on having similar grammar.

Languages become similar grammatically from language contact, not from being in the same language family.

>Also, I don't that you could call English 'quintessential Standard Average European.' What's your basis for that?
'Standard Average European' is a linguistic term, a particular sprachbund that is pervasive in Western (and most of Eastern) Europe.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Average_European

BTW, Hungarian seems to be somewhat closer to English, grammatically, than Russian is.

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 16:05:03 2013 No.4054207 >>4054189 not that person, but Hungarian grammar is pretty drastically different than English grammar

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 16:29:03 2013 No.4054255 >>4054207 >not that person, but Hungarian grammar is pretty drastically different than English grammar The point is that Russian grammar is even more drastically different from English than Hungarian.

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 17:14:03 2013 No.4054366 India has been mentioned a few times: care to recommend some novels from indian authors?

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 17:15:03 2013 No.4054368 >>4054255 >The point is that Russian grammar is even more drastically different from English than Hungarian. No it isn't.

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 17:17:03 2013 No.4054375 >>4054189 >Language families are based on having similar vocabulary Did whoever told you this follow it up by telling you translating the word gullible is a good benchmark of relatedness?

>>	Anonymous Fri Aug 23 18:00:03 2013 No.4054479 >>4053447 See you on Dateline, faggot.

Anonymous Fri Aug 23 19:08:03 2013 No.4054620

>>4054189
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Average_European
This link (which may not be accurate) says that English, Slavic languages, and even Hungarian are considered part of the sprachbund, with english being the most central member.

>Language families are based on having a similar vocabulary
partly, yes, but
>Languages become similar grammatically from language contact, not from being in the same language family
I'd say both are true, depending on how you word it. All IE languages started as one, and they gradually developed different grammars over time.

>Hungarian seems to be somewhat closer to English, grammatically, than Russian is.

At this point, Im accepting that you're right, I would just like to know what makes you come to that decision.

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/lit/ - Literature