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/lit/ - Literature

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6540453 No.6540453 [Reply] [Original]

Is he THE WRITER?

>> No.6540468
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6540468

>>6540453
I'm the writer

>> No.6540503

>>6540453
Yes. He was the best the world will ever had.

>> No.6540505

>>6540453

Yes, he is. There is only one writer that is a match for him, and that is Shakespeare. Both are completely different artists, but Tolstoy seems to be beyond comparison in the realm of the novel and the short-story, while Shakespeare is the supreme poet and playwright.

I guess that Tolstoy had one advantage to Shakespeare: more life-experience. Shakespeare, however, didn’t let any particular philosophy or thought system pollute his work, and the late-Tolstoy was always a mixture of artist and preacher bind together in war.

Shakespeare’s works are more varied: he deals with a greater range of subjects. His characters, however, are most of the time quite artificial. Tolstoy’s characters are the most life-like I have ever known.

But there is one thing that, to me, makes Shakespeare the winner: his language. The language of Shakespeare is a miracle; it is almost beyond believe that a single human being was capable of all that wealth of imagery and sound.

>> No.6540516

>>6540505
You've been posting the same thing in every Tolstoy or Shakespeare thread for years now you tedious cunt. And you're still wrong about Shakespeare's characters being more artificial than Tolstoy's.

>> No.6540520

>>6540516
He is right, anon.

>> No.6540534

Can we regard the narrator of the Sonnets a 'character'? If so, Shakespeare wins.

>> No.6540541

I'll start reading War and Peace next week. What should I expect?

>> No.6540551

>>6540541
Read the blurb, idiot.

>> No.6540562

No. Anyone who writes in that journalistic realist style is a hack.

>> No.6540579

>>6540505
>The language of Shakespeare is a miracle; it is almost beyond believe that a single human being was capable of all that wealth of imagery and sound.

fuck off

Marlowe is hardly any less great, and he died young. Most of what you are calling genius in Shakespeare's language is just the Elizabethan mode. I think that the language of Beowulf is a thousand times more sonorous, profound, melancholic, and beautiful than that artificial manner of the Elizabethan court.

>> No.6540583

>>6540579
le wild contrarian appears

>> No.6540594

why is reading about comparisons in literature like hearing christfags and muslims shitskins arguing which god is more powerful? you people are pathetic.

>> No.6540597

>>6540583
Nice argument.
I'm hardly the first person to think that this fellating of Shakespeare is out of order. It's the dilettantes who are terrified of being seen as uncultured that need to be seen fellating him at every opportunity.

>> No.6540604

>>6540579
>Marlowe is hardly any less great

The greatest thing in poetry is metaphor, and nobody beats Shakespeare in metaphor, not even close. There is a dictionary of Metaphors that even made a special category for him, listing 800 of his metaphors.
He creates poetic images with thousands of source materials, from grains of dust and the tender horns of snails to river reeds and the herbs of the files and up to dogs and cats and then to every sort of human occupation, to a lot of everyday things like food, the kitchen dishes, the fireplace and gardens and then to castles, cities, kingdoms, crowns, mountains seas, space, galaxies. And he is a master of fusing abstractions with concrete language, of giving human characteristics to things like honor, fear, desire, love, ambition, politics, etc.

To be honest I know that you probably only read the four mains tragedies and maybe one or two comedies, so you don’t know even the surface of the ocean. If you want a compilation of Shakespeare’s poetic capacities read this book:

>Shakespeare’s Imagery, by Caroline Spurgeon.

>> No.6540616

>>6540597


And if you want a challenge just choose any passage of poetry that you like, than go to the site Open Source Shakespeare and use the word-searcher to look for passages in Shakespeare’s works that deal with the same theme. Read the results and see for yourself who is the best.

>> No.6540626

>>6540604
>The greatest thing in poetry is metaphor

That's like saying that the greatest thing in piano is trilling.
Metaphor is just a technique of poetry, and not even an essential one. It's a way of embellishing a thought. Shakespeare actually uses too much metaphor, too much embellishment. It's sickening and shows a lot of taste/restraint, a desire to show off with clever conceits.

>> No.6540633

>>6540541
Rich people and their problems.

>> No.6540649

>>6540626

It’s like melody in music. Is music only melody? Of course not: there is also rhythm, harmony, etc. But to most listeners the most striking and memorable thing in music is melody; it’s the thing that stay with us for more time after a hearing.

Same in poetry with metaphor. A simple poet might deal very beautifully with a lot of themes (see Wordsworth), but a great metaphor will certainly be much more memorable. And the beauty of the thing is that metaphor-creation is incredibly hard to teach, which means: either you have it or you don’t.

Shakespeare was so gifted that he hardly could refrain his own powers. A lot of poets are proud of some especial metaphors in their books of poems, but Shakespeare, in a single speech, creates more striking images than all of the best moments in the books of other writers (even great writers).

If you want to be a pot of the highest order you need to be gifted with metaphor. Yes, Shakespeare liked to show off a lot of times, but it is much better to be drowned in exuberance than to starve in deserts.

>> No.6540651

Anyone who thinks that Shakespeare's sickly modern poetry has even half of the grace or grandiosity of the greatest of ancient poetry needs to get a pair of ears. Shakespeare's poetry is full of petty rhetorical tricks and nasal-gazing absurdities, and lacks greatness and clarity of soul.
He wrote for the plebs on the Elizabethan stage, and it shows. These histrionic soliloquies don't impress me a fraction as much as the nobility of ancient poetry through which not just an effete Elizabethan poet speaks, but the soul of an entire people.

>> No.6540654

>>6540604

>The greatest thing in poetry is metaphor

Even if that was true, which it isn't, why are you ignoring all the other factors? You are narrowing the argument down to one simple ground where you think Shakespeare is superior, that's pretty narrowminded if you ask me. Not the guy you replied to either.

>> No.6540662

>>6540649

If melody is the most striking thing in music then I guess free-improvisation, most of freejazz, any sort of noise, any sort of ambient, any sort of textural music, any sort of EAI, any sort of drone are just inferior music?

Your arguments are very poor and only work if you essentialize art, which one should never do anyway. Have some respect.

>> No.6540668

>>6540597
>I'm hardly the first person to think that this fellating of Shakespeare is out of order.

literally the only remotely credible person who has ever accused shakespeare of being overrated was tolstoy, and he got btfo by orwell

>> No.6540670

>>6540649
>It’s like melody in music. Is music only melody?

No, the part of poetry that is like to melody is the various assonances.

This argument is over. It's ultimately a matter of taste. We will just continue to talk past one and other. Shakespeare's art is decrepit in my opinion. His soliloquies are constipated metaphysical ramblings and his plays are flashy linguistic tricks with a nihilistic philosophy flowing through them.
His poetry just stinks. I think Shakespeare's greatest strength is his ability to convince the vapid of his supposed genius.
Here's the best quote I have on Shakespeare, although it doesn't say enough:

>Search [in Shakespeare] for statesmanship, or even citizenship, or any sense of the commonwealth, material or spiritual, and you will not find the making of a decent vestryman or curate in the whole horde. As to faith, hope, courage, conviction, or any of the true heroic qualities, you find nothing but death made sensational, despair made stage-sublime, sex made romantic, and barrenness covered up by sentimentality and the mechanical lilt of blank verse.

>All that you miss in Shakespeare you find in Bunyan, to whom the true heroic came quite obviously and naturally. The world was to him a more terrible place than it was to Shakespeare; but he saw through it a path at the end of which a man might look not only forward to the Celestial City, but back on his life and say: ‘Tho’ with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get them.’ The heart vibrates like a bell to such utterances as this; to turn from it to ‘Out, out, brief candle,’ and ‘The rest is silence,’ and ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded by a sleep’ is turn from life, strength, resolution, morning air and eternal youth, to the terrors of a drunken nightmare.

>> No.6540673

>>6540668
Orwell's essay against Tolstoy is disgusting. It consists almost entirely of attacking Tolstoy's character, of diagnosing his psychology. His argument practically amounts to, "he doesn't like Shakespeare, therefore he must be insane."

>> No.6540677

>>6540662
>If melody is the most striking thing in music then I guess free-improvisation, most of freejazz, any sort of noise, any sort of ambient, any sort of textural music, any sort of EAI, any sort of drone are just inferior music?

Aesthetics are not a science. I can’t simply say to you that music A is superior to music B: there is no way to prove that. More than 3.000 years of philosophy never came to any mathematically-solid conclusion.

But you can be sure of one thing: Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Debussy will still be here long after all Jazz musicians have been forgotten. They are superior? Yes, for me is quite evident that they are, but there is no way to prove that.

The only form of evaluation (a flawed one, but still) is the test of time. So let’s wait and see.

>> No.6540678

>>6540673
which is nothing less than tolstoy's attack on shakespeare deserved

great writer; shit opinions

>> No.6540680

>>6540670
>All that you miss in Shakespeare you find in Bunyan

Lmao.

>> No.6540690

>>6540670
That idiot can't even distinguish between the aesthetic and moral qualities of a text. Super weak criticism and if that's all you have then you're done.

>> No.6540693

>>6540680
The only reason that Shakespeare is more popular than Bunyan is because Shakespeare's nihilism, moral relativism, epistemological subjectivism - are all very modern, whereas Bunyan's message of piety, spiritual journey, and sacrifice are not according to the spirit of the times. That's all.

>> No.6540702

>>6540690
>That idiot can't even distinguish between the aesthetic and moral qualities of a text.

Beauty and goodness are one. If a thing preaches a false morality to me, that's the same as saying that it's ugly. Shakespeare's art is grotesque. His "all the world's a stage / And all the men and women merely players" nihilism is repulsive morally and aesthetically.

>> No.6540707

>>6540690

This.

If you want high philosophy and theories of state and morals go read philosophy books (and if you really think you are smart go study mathematics and physics and stop pretending to be so by saying that you have read such and such philosophical treatise). Now, if you want verbal beauty, if you like poetry, if you want to see the best that language was ever capable of offering, then you can trust Shakespeare: he will not fail you.

>>6540670
>Shakespeare's art is decrepit in my opinion

How much of him did you read? Be honest.

>> No.6540711

>>6540453
>muh original christianity

>> No.6540717

>>6540702

lol

I hope you don’t plan to be a writer: you will certainly fail.

And if you study philosophy, do yourself a favor and choose some scientific field to work upon to actually be useful to the world.

>> No.6540718

>>6540693
Bunyan had his head in the clouds while Shakespeare spoke to actual lived experience. Your arguments are dogshit and you're convincing no one.

>> No.6540729

>>6540616
k, find my a section of Shakespeare that express piety better than this

>The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
>He makes me lie down in green pastures,
>he leads me beside quiet waters,
>he refreshes my soul.
>He guides me along the right paths
>for his name’s sake.
>Even though I walk
>through the darkest valley,
>I will fear no evil,
>for you are with me;
>your rod and your staff,
>they comfort me.
>You prepare a table before me
>in the presence of my enemies.
>You anoint my head with oil;
>my cup overflows.
>Surely your goodness and love will follow me
>all the days of my life,
>and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
>forever.

or divine love better than this

>Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

>And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

>And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

>Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

>Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

>Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

>Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

>Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

>For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

>But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

>When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

>For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

>And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

>> No.6540736

>>6540729
asking us to find a better example of piety than THE BIBLE, are you serious lmao

>> No.6540738

>>6540677

>will still be here long after all Jazz musicians have been forgotten

why do you think jazz music will be forgotten?

it is extra funny that you compared them to the great composers, because jazz music is the only thing that can touch those "greats" in matter of technicality and compositional ability. I see you are not too well-versed when it comes to music, that's okay.

>They are superior?
>Yes, for me is quite evident that they are, but there is no way to prove that.

why even make a point about the subjectivity of art and then call one superior? why not just admit that they are clearly different and therefore should not be held up against each other? very hypocritical if you ask me.

>> No.6540742

>>6540729

lol

You are a religious fanatic. Now all its explained.

>> No.6540744

>>6540717
>I hope you don’t plan to be a writer: you will certainly fail.

I don't plan on being a write, but I bet I know better the essentials of writing than you do. So far you've shown yourself to be nothing more than a common aesthete, a poetaster.

>>6540718
>Bunyan had his head in the clouds while Shakespeare spoke to actual lived experience.

Nonsense. It's precisely the other way around. Your thinking is based on hearsay. Shakespeare is the vapid dreamer, Bunyan cuts closer to the heart of things.

>> No.6540752

>>6540738
>because jazz music is the only thing that can touch those "greats"

Using " " when refering to Beethoven, Bach and Mozart.

You are a probably a politically correct hipster.

>> No.6540753

>>6540736
Alright, find me in Shakespeare a better expression of loss for a loved one than this translation of Petrarch:

She ruled in beauty o'er this heart of mine,
A noble lady in a humble home,
And now her time for heavenly bliss has come,
'Tis I am mortal proved, and she divine.
The soul that all its blessings must resign,
And love whose light no more on earth finds room,
Might rend the rocks with pity for their doom,
Yet none their sorrows can in words enshrine;
They weep within my heart; and ears are deaf
Save mine alone, and I am crushed with care,
And naught remains to me save mournful breath.
Assuredly but dust and shade we are,
Assuredly desire is blind and brief,
Assuredly its hope but ends in death.

Find me a better expression of proud defiance in Shakespeare than this translation of Homer:

Great Hector first amidst both armies broke
The solemn silence, and their powers bespoke:

"Hear, all ye Trojan, all ye Grecian bands,
What my soul prompts, and what some god commands.
Great Jove, averse our warfare to compose,
O'erwhelms the nations with new toils and woes;
War with a fiercer tide once more returns,
Till Ilion falls, or till yon navy burns.
You then, O princes of the Greeks! appear;
'Tis Hector speaks, and calls the gods to hear:
From all your troops select the boldest knight,
And him, the boldest, Hector dares to fight.
Here if I fall, by chance of battle slain,
Be his my spoil, and his these arms remain;
But let my body, to my friends return'd,
By Trojan hands and Trojan flames be burn'd.
And if Apollo, in whose aid I trust,
Shall stretch your daring champion in the dust;
If mine the glory to despoil the foe;
On Phoebus' temple I'll his arms bestow:
The breathless carcase to your navy sent,
Greece on the shore shall raise a monument;
Which when some future mariner surveys,
Wash'd by broad Hellespont's resounding seas,
Thus shall he say, 'A valiant Greek lies there,
By Hector slain, the mighty man of war,'
The stone shall tell your vanquish'd hero's name.
And distant ages learn the victor's fame."

This fierce defiance Greece astonish'd heard,
Blush'd to refuse, and to accept it fear'd.

>> No.6540758

>>6540579
marlowe is definitely less great lol. if you can't tell the diffference you are just not familiar enough with elizabethan writing and so you just get distracted by the archaic language

>> No.6540761

Why does there have to be 'THE WRITER'? and if so why not Nabokov? Or Bellow? Or George Eliot? Literature isn't that simple,

>> No.6540770

>>6540729
so how long are you going to keep posting here instead of getting your shitty life together? i mean all this religious stuff is great and all if it helps you but you're still posting about it on 4chan. seems quite hypocritical

>> No.6540771

>>6540758
FAUSTUS. Ah, Faustus,
Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damn'd perpetually!
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come;
Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent and save his soul!
O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd.
O, I'll leap up to my God!—Who pulls me down?—
See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul, half a drop: ah, my Christ!—
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!
Yet will I call on him: O, spare me, Lucifer!—
Where is it now? 'tis gone: and see, where God
Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows!
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!
No, no!
Then will I headlong run into the earth:
Earth, gape! O, no, it will not harbour me!
You stars that reign'd at my nativity,
Whose influence hath allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus, like a foggy mist.
Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud[s],
That, when you vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths,
So that my soul may but ascend to heaven!

This is probably better than anything in Shakespeare.

>> No.6540778

Fisrt things that came to my head

>>6540753
>Alright, find me in Shakespeare a better expression of loss for a loved one than this translation of Petrarch:

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then, have I reason to be fond of grief?
Fare you well: had you such a loss as I,
I could give better comfort than you do.
I will not keep this form upon my head,
When there is such disorder in my wit.
O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
My widow-comfort, and my sorrows' cure!

>Find me a better expression of proud defiance in Shakespeare than this translation of Homer:

No more, no more! Worse than the sun in March
This praise doth nourish agues. Let them come.
They come like sacrifices in their trim,
And to the fire-eyed maid of smoky war
All hot and bleeding will we offer them.
The mailèd Mars shall on his altar sit
Up to the ears in blood. I am on fire
To hear this rich reprisal is so nigh
And yet not ours. Come, let me taste my horse,
Who is to bear me like a thunderbolt
Against the bosom of the Prince of Wales.
Harry to Harry shall, hot horse to horse,
Meet and ne'er part till one drop down a corse.

>> No.6540779

>>6540771

shakespeare needs only 6-10 lines to write something totally better, you little bitch ass

>> No.6540780

>>6540770
>>6540742
>>6540736
>these pathetic schoolyard responses after being proven wrong

>> No.6540782

>>6540771
For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews,
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
Make tigers tame and huge leviathans
Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.

In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets
At stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun, and the moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.

Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter, and confounds him there;
Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness every where:
Then were not summer's distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was:
But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

if you can't see this images are more potent i dont know what to tell you. marlowe is one of the best english writers. you're biased by your religious views, which is actually funny because marlowe is far more of a religiously rebellious "modern" type than shakespeare. his best passages reach for shakespeare:

Now that the gloomy shadow of the earth
Longing to view Orion’s drizzling look,
Leaps from the antarctic world unto the sky,
And dims the welkin with her pitchy breath,

but he simply has far less breadth.

>> No.6540783

>>6540778
If you think those are better then you are deaf to poetry.

>> No.6540784

He's a man of God. That's something we must respect. Unless you're doomed, of course.

>> No.6540786

>>6540783

Imagery is much more important than sound.

>> No.6540787

>>6540780
im serious dude. i think we've had this conversation before and you told me you were going to leave this board and get your life together. if you're going to be moral and upstanding why are you posting arrogant little shit arguments on 4chan.org? it's so ridiculous. go hug your mom and start volunteering somewhere.

>> No.6540788

>>6540786
If you think that those are more vivid then you are blind to poetry as well.

>> No.6540789
File: 391 KB, 1366x842, xupicuqui.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6540789

>>6540752

Why are you attacking me personally? Why not just tackle the points I made? I love Beethoven, I love Tchaikovsky. Why assume things for no reason? I simply put " " around greats, because there are "greats" of jazz music aswell. You are embarrassing yourself.

>> No.6540791

>>6540778
deeeeeyummmmm

>> No.6540793

>>6540753
>Alright, find me in Shakespeare a better expression of loss for a loved one than this translation of Petrarch:

I don't remember any Shakespeare sonnets about a death of a loved that has already happened, but he speaks at times of his love's inevitable deterioration, for example in Sonnets 63 and 65.

Against my love shall be, as I am now,
With Time's injurious hand crush'd and o'er-worn;
When hours have drain'd his blood and fill'd his brow
With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn
Hath travell'd on to age's steepy night,
And all those beauties whereof now he's king
Are vanishing or vanish'd out of sight,
Stealing away the treasure of his spring;
For such a time do I now fortify
Against confounding age's cruel knife,
That he shall never cut from memory
My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life:
His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
And they shall live, and he in them still green.

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

And his own deterioration in Sonnet 73.

That time of year thou mayst in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day,
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

>> No.6540794

>>6540787

Who is this guy? Is he really a religious fanatic?

>> No.6540800

>>6540782
>For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews,
>Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
>Make tigers tame and huge leviathans
>Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.

These lines are so awful they sound like parody.

>> No.6540805

>>6540794
he's posted like a million threads about why shakespeare isn't good because he's immoral. iirc he used to think shakespeare had poetic genius but was immoral but now he's apparently decided there is no genius. he's super obvious because he always posts the same passage from psalms. he's also participated in some very tips fedora threads about women where he claims to understand them completely because he like cuddled with two girls in high school or whatever

>> No.6540806

>>6540789

Sorry

Just thought that you were those kinds of people who hate classical music because “hur dur white dead old man” and praises jazz as “supreme proof of the genius of the black man”. I should not have offended you. I am sorry.

>> No.6540815

>>6540793
They aren't half as beautiful. They're tedious and dull.

>> No.6540829

>>6540815
>>6540800
i like your method of just saying things are worse because you want to believe they are.

>> No.6540830

>>6540815
You have no taste. And here's another beautiful Sonnet that laments loss.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.

>> No.6540834

>>6540800
>These lines are so awful they sound like parody.

Ok. I don’t know who is the guy who posted this. I don’t know if it is a troll or if it is serious. But, if it is serious, man, please, don’t you ever try to write poetry in your life: you don’t have a single grain of sensibility to it in your mind. You really don’t have any chance of being a good writer.

>> No.6540835

>>6540793
>>6540753
Get an independent voice to examine these sonnets of Shakespeare's and compare them with that of Petrarch.

>> No.6540839 [DELETED] 

>>6540835
You can't even read Italian you moron.

>> No.6540846

>>6540805

I wonder where he is from and what kind of creation he received from his parents. I actually pity him.

>> No.6540850

>>6540815
>They aren't half as beautiful. They're tedious and dull.

Ok, but what about this sonnet:

SONNET 33

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all triumphant splendor on my brow;
But out! alack! he was but one hour mine,
The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.

>> No.6540867

>>6540815
Says the guy who can't even write a four word sentence without pleonasm.

>> No.6540868
File: 558 KB, 548x856, k.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6540868

Hey /lit/

thought's on these books?

>> No.6540874

>>6540850
no better, really

>> No.6540887

>>6540874

You are a lost case, seriously. How can you be so blind to the beauty of all those wonderful metaphors? Have you ever read so beautiful a description of the rising of the sun as in the first quatrain of that sonnet?

I am starting to think you are a troll, or just too proud to admit that you might be wrong sometimes.

>> No.6540892

>>6540850
That was incredible. I had chills reading this

>> No.6540893

>>6540867
Why can't you highly cultured appreciators of Shakespeare explain his merits in anything but the most platitudinous of terms, and then resort solely to ad hominem when someone criticizes your idol?
Can you great appreciators of Shakespeare please explain to us what hidden merit these sonnets of Shakespeare have than that humble translation of Petrarch does not?

>> No.6540911

>>6540893
>hidden merit

The merit is not hidden to anyone except you, you deluded idiot. I'm not going to denigrate Petrarch because he is great too.

>> No.6540923

>>6540806

No need to be sorry ol' chap. We all make baseless assumptions from time to time.

>>6540834
>>6540846
>>6540867
>>6540887
>>6540788
>>6540783

Why so much asspain over opinions? I can see you steaming from here. Whenever a tiny drip of sweat rolls down your face it instantly evaporates because of the sheer heat. Gone with a "pouff".

>>6540868

Pretty sure those were on some joke "babbies first existentialist" chart, but I love The Stranger (as a novel, not as a philosophical maniphesto) and Crime and Punishment is a timeless classic everyone should have read.

>> No.6540948

>>6540893

Better metaphors, more original imagery. Petrarch uses mostly the same images of the Renaissance tradition (many clichés). Shakespeare constantly creates similes and metaphors that have never been used before. He fuses the concrete with the abstract, and constantly refers to inanimate things in human terms. He makes ample use of personification, in so bold and original ways that Petrarch could even dream off.

Also, Petrarch, as most of the other great poets, constantly repeats himself in his work, while Shakespeare is always using new plots, new ideas and new settings for his plays. He somehow remembers of older metaphors that he made and takes care to use different ones or to dress the old ones in new robes. He is so prolific in poetic imagination that the images actually pile up, in pyramids of metaphors and similes.

Look this sonnet:

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st,
And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets;
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:
O! carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.
Yet, do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.

Have you ever read so beautiful lines like: “And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood”; nobody ever spoke more beautifully of this legendary bird. And how about this: “To the wide world and all her fading sweets”? Is there a more beautiful way to describe the melting of the golden and fresh glories of the world, all in a concise phrase: “fading sweets”.

>> No.6540988
File: 154 KB, 850x850, image.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6540988

>yfw all this shakespeare and no mention of miltonm

>> No.6541001

Shakespeare was an Elizabethan neckbeard who wrote bad romcoms and even worse poems.

>> No.6541005

>>6540786
Stupid comment. "The lungs are more important than the heart." Sure nigga.

First post iit btw.

>>6540834
Honestly I can understand how you could see those verses as goofy or borderline cartoonish, though you could also see some strange beauty in them, depending on the mood. Your reaction is ridiculously overblown, disliking four verses from Shakespeare doesn't suddenly make you unfit for writing poetry.

This is also the reason most (not all) of this thread is shallow and cringeworthy. People shouting back and forth, demeaning each other's favourites pieces with little more argument than "I don't like it" or "metaphor>all". Fortunately there are a few people to notice than, yes, you can have different tastes sometimes, and that ranking the essential functions and devices of poetry on how "great" they are is as retarded as asking wether amplitude or wavelength is greatest in a wave.

It's a good example of how 4chan thinking doesn't only creates memethreads, but contaminate serious opinions and argumentation as well.

I mean, we've had that Shakespeare argument many times over, everytime it's the same circus.

First this faggots >>6540505
show up with his musings on Tolstoy and Shakespeare, using posts that read like copypastas of what he's been posting the past 2 years, except he actually composes new ones every time, which makes it even worse (thinks like being only able to write rehashes of the same thing over and over). Seriously nigga, don't your opinions even evolve ? Have you any idea how listening to yourself looptalking like that is damaging to your ability to form critical judgement ?

Second the Christianfag comes to the rescue with the obligatory Tolstoy quote and the two same single passages of the Scriptures. And by "rescue" here, I mean rescuing the idiocy of thread, just in case the discussion manages to evolve into something actually interesting.

And while those faggots resume their helldance once again, little anons bounce around and make sure to repeat everytime the same comedy: "-But wait no anon are you saying Shaky's overrated ? How dare ! -But oh anon look, Tolstoy says the Shak is an idiot -Then anon he must be the idiot for saying that ! Ahah !".

I wonder is we'll ever have a decent thread about why it's so important for us to rank writers, and why we go about it in this or that particular way, and to which extent and for whom one can make a ranking that make sense. I'll try to create one later tonight, if I can be assed into doing it.

>> No.6541006

>>6540948
Petrarch invented or at least perfected many of those clichés. Shakespeare's Sonnets are a direct response to Petrarch's Sonnets.

>> No.6541024

>>6540850
>Anon permit the basest clouds to ride

But I don't permit that Shakespeare you fucking liar.

>> No.6541032

>>6541005

Even if you call me an idiot (in your gentle manner, of course) I still like you a lot :)

I am writing again now; I was able to beat the anxiety. Let’s hope it will never return. I will have to stay firm with my writing routine to make my brain learn to desensitize to the effects of adrenaline.

If you want to see a piece of my new writing efforts just tell me and I post for you.

>> No.6541047

some of the christians on /lit/ are truly shitposters

>> No.6541062

>>6540948
Honestly most of your appreciation of Shakespeare seems to consists of "here's that metaphor, have you ever seen such a beautiful metaphor ?". This is really poor argumentation and after the second time it starts being quite distasteful. Either explain why that metaphor is "da best evar", or link other metaphor on the same theme by others poets, or simply say you like it. Also, what happens to the construction, the rythm, the sonorities and reccurring themes of the poem ? Is a poem merely a list of isolated metaphors ?

Your way of dealing with Shakespeare is shabby and does not do him justice, even though you pile hyperboles on his poor shoulders.

This kind of discourse is particularly annoying, because it creates an environment of Shakespeare being forced into every discussion, and copiously showered with admirative liturgy, without him being really analysed, discussed, or even made relevant to the topic at hand. Just see this thread for instance, and yet it's much better than most "wild shakespeare suddenly appears" thread we've had. Meanwhile less discussed but very interesting authors get drown in the ambient noise. That's how you create sanctioned narrow-mindedness and make it pass as culture.

>> No.6541073

>>6541062
>Also, what happens to the construction, the rythm, the sonorities and reccurring themes of the poem ?

and these things matter because you used them vaguely and arbitrarily? do you have any proofs as to why the above matters to you in poetry?

>> No.6541078

>>6541032
Good to see you're still working. I'm not against seeing your writing, but honestly the better would be for you to leave this place and only return every once in a while.

Non-writers like me waste enough time here, but for people who aspire to write and already have developed preferences it's the worst, sucking up your writing energy without providing much in return.

That being said, I've spend enough time on the chens. Back to work.

Despite my ranting above, this was a somewhat interesting thread, but the discussion was too sparse and buried under rhetoric.

>> No.6541085

>>6541062

The best thing I can do is point good books. There is not enough time and space here for me to discuss every single detail. A book that I highly praise for the appreciation of Shakespeare’s poetry is this one:
>The Poetry of Shakespeare’s Plays, by F.E. Halliday.

http://www.amazon.com/Poetry-Shakespeares-Plays-F-E-Halliday/dp/1842321250/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1431638211&sr=1-1&keywords=the+poetry+of+shakespeares+plays

Here he gives a full appreciation of metaphors, similes, assonance, alliteration, the play of phrase and line, syllabic games and accentuation, etc.

>> No.6541122

>>6541078

I have leaved 4chan for a while (3-4 months), but now I was forced to undertake a surgery and stay in bed and eventually was sucked back in. I like this place, but I think my influence here is actually quite pernicious. You are right: I just keep saying the same things on and on and on. That’s a very stupid way of living one’s life.

>> No.6541131

>>6541078
>>6541122

I wrote this monologue a few days ago. A dictator realizes that his life is just the act of killing and torturing his way forward, that everything he does now is simply crawling through a swamp of blood and violence and that living has no more flavor, but it's just an endless web anxiety and boredom. The original is in Portuguese, as always.

My delights are now all dead.
My grape-bunch of tomorrows, my suns yet
Unborn, they are already all abortions
Of boredom, anxiety and violence,
An eternity of slaughtering and mold
In the bloody womb of the future:
My horizon hibernates in rotten wine.
From wreck to wrack I drag my creeping spirit,
I force my moldy carcass to chew
Every minute and to ignore the heartburn of existence.
I wander in an anemic desert
And endless procession of rachitic suns.
Time coagulates in a dimmish
Wandering of corpses: my apathetic days,
For dead days do hatch dead days,
And dead days do hatch dead days,
In an endless march in which fresh tortures,
Still hot and sweating blood and pus
(The warm dew that raw flesh cries)
Walk upon the fossils of ancient agonies
Of the past, ancestor pains, and this big and rotten
Open Pustule that is my kingdom never silences
Its bloody canticle, that will continue to flow
And gush, echoing horrors, until the breaking of the misterious
Hourglass that we know by the name of time.
My life is also my prison; breathing is an incarceration of the mind;
To get up from the bed is a torture:
The gummy and blear light of dawn invades me
With nausea, to the point that I want
The night to crown herself eternal and that the sun,
With his smile, will no longer erode the darkness,
But that the blanket of the dark drown all humanity
And that all the bud-button of life
Would be suffocated in silence. Life, what is life?
Life is a brief dream and dirty shadow,
A nightmare that creates flesh and, for
A grain of dust and ephemeral spark
Of time, shrieks, howls and contorts
In the polluted stage of existence
Until a single blow do solve it in smoke:
The breath of dying do melt the flame
And all that remains, sited on top of the candle-wick, is an eclipse.
Life is a disease that stings
The coarse scarecrow of inanimate
Matter and makes its aware of itself, makes it notice
The very absurdity and meaninglessness of its own existence;
It is a lightning roaring the fleeting
Rumble and chaos of its voice and then dives
Again in the eternal swamp of darkness
And infinite silence of emptiness;
It's a frantic spark and confused torch,
A chimpanzee modeled in fatuous fire,
Stranded and lost in a dark jungle, that reabsorbs him again
Even before the poor beast invents
Any form of sense to the sudden flash
Of being, his existence: the soap-bubble
Caravel that, without any destination or port,
Navigates through a sea off savourless mists;
A ship of nothing, that nothing has conceived
And that, after floating for a few seconds, will drown in nothingness.

>> No.6541142

>>6541078

Also, if you don’t mind me asking: what’s your age? What do you do for living? You seem to be quite mature and wise. I always recognize your posts when you criticize me, and to be honest I feel bad to let you down. I guess you are the only Anon who has some sort of influence upon me.

>> No.6541169

>>6541073
Just as much proofs as you have that metaphor is the most important thing. Using "vaguely and arbitrarily" as a comeback in the context of this thread is rather laughable honestly, do you seriously think it doesn't matter how you build have a line suceed to another in a poem ? Do you think you can take any Shakespeare sonnet, shuffle the lines randomly, and come out with something just as good as the original ?

But it's quite simple, really. If we're talking about verse poetry, for instance, what are we talking about ? In most cases a succession of verses that are not merely superposed to one another but together build a discourse. For instance you can expect a sonnet to be made up of one or several sentences. The order of those sentences, and the way each builds from the last, is part of the construction.

For instance the poem here >>6540948
starts by describing the sovereignty of time (understood as change and decay) over everything then moves on to single out the narrator's lover and his verses as exceptions. And indeed Shakespeare dedicates one sentence for each of those twp phases. So a mere glance gives us an idea of how the poem is built in order to convey a point.

As for rythm and sonority, mind that poems used to be written to be recited out loud, and even this is not always the case nowadays, most people read poems using their inner voices. So unless you want to insist that not sbvocalizing is the proper way to read Shakespeare, and that people stop playing Shakespeare onstage because it involves actors uttering his words, you have to take into account how verses are pronounced and heard.

Although this depends on the speaker and reader, the writing of the poem can also influence way the verses are cut (using periods, commas, and rythmic scheme like the iambic pentameter) and inflected upon (again, that's the purpose of accentuation and rhyme schemes). Actually, the very difference between verse and prose is not the use of metaphor (metaphors are a device common to most type of discourses and description prose, to name just one, is no exception) but the use of a structure that changes the sonority of the discourse (rhyme schemes is a type of such structures, meter schemes another).
Notice that it's relatively easy to write versified stage lines with little to no metaphors (for instance when the lines are supposed to be those of a character that insist on calling thing planly and only by their names) but very difficult to write them with no particular emphasis on pronunciation (when you do that it's usually not called verse).

TL;DR: That's basically the root of the distinction between verses and prose, and when for stage play it's particularly important since the lines are spoken by actors.


I should already be out, fuck you for triggering me into writing this.

>> No.6541180

>>6541169
>Just as much proofs as you have that metaphor is the most important thing.

I'm not that guy Also, you're wrong, but i didn't read all of your post; i can tell by reading a few sentences of it/

>> No.6541203
File: 70 KB, 580x436, James_Joyce_in_1915.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6541203

>>6541169
Triggering you? Calm down Tumblrfag, just take a nice deep breath and deal with your vaginal cramps.

>> No.6541217

>>6541203

He is a nice guy, no need to act like this.

>> No.6541235

>>6541142
>I guess you are the only Anon who has some sort of influence upon me.

That's rather scary, I'm not sure I can handle that responsibility.

I'm 23, studying maths in uni. I'm not wise, but I started 4chan after turning 20, so I had already had formed opinions before coming. Hence why I have less patience than most with some aspect of this site.

A good way to see if you're full of shit is to try to see how someone could disagree with you, searching for any flaw or dead angle in your own stance. It's not only about argumentation (is my reasoning sound), but about perspective as well (am I tackling thing from an interesting/useful point of view ?). Minding context (what is this thing for ? in what kind of world does it exists ?) and necessary conditions can help. For instance, what are the possible purposes of literature ? Even when you sayit exists "for itself", people who write must write with some objective or standard in mind. What can be those standards ? Minding that books are written by people (sometimes several) in a given time and place, for specific reasons, and then re-written, edited, published and read by other people (how this unfold depends wildly on place and era) will help you see literature more distinctly as something not abstract but very concrete, though diffuse, like an ant colony or a species occupying an ecological niche.

I try to do that often, that helps clarifying things (and muddling them, but it's a necessary muddling).

Hope that helped.

Just saw

>>6541131

No time to read it right now, I should have started rehearsing for my oral 4 hours ago, but I'll copypaste it and give it some time.


Well, this was more interesting than expected, but I'm really be out now. Good night all, and good luck >>6541142. If you ever feel in need of advice, instead of coming to 4chan, remember what Mallarmé said for young Valéry:

"As for advices, only solitude gives them"

and I can't do any better than that.

>> No.6541236
File: 259 KB, 1200x684, proust.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6541236

No. This guy is.

>> No.6541241

>>6540654

that frase is an actual quote from aristotle tho

i mean, i hate aristotle

but that quote tho

>> No.6541260

>>6541235
>I'm 23, studying maths in uni.

No wonder that you sound more calmly rational and intelligent than most of us.

>>6541235
>No time to read it right now, I should have started rehearsing for my oral 4 hours ago, but I'll copypaste it and give it some time.

if you want my e-mail, is this one:

martini_spier@hotmail.com

No need to evaluate or anything, but if you want to talk I will be there. I sincerely like you.

>> No.6541288

>>6541203

you're the biggest faggot on the internet right now. though guy, huh?

>> No.6541295

>>6541241

I love aristotle, hate that quote, still don't see myself ever agreeing with it. You're pretty cool, tho.


>>6541260

sometimes I think about abandoning 4chan alltogether and them some magic happens.. i'm happy for your & mathguys bromance, friend. keep the love flowing, this place has enough hatred already.

>> No.6541319

>>6541295
>i'm happy for your & mathguys bromance

I think that I am the one who really acts like a bitch (don’t know if he cares about me), but I can’t help it. When he criticizes me he never uses any vulgar word or expression, and always tries to make me see why I am wrong in his opinion. After I think about what he said I generally discover that he was actually right, and so I respect him.

His argumentation is always calm, and he tries to present proves to his allegations.

Also, he is one of the few people in 4chan that I have seen giving praise to other peoples work without any sign of envy. He actually reads what other people write and, if he enjoys it, he will not hide that from you: he will be honest with you and encourage you to keep moving forward.

Most of the time he criticizes me, but I can’t help liking him.

>> No.6541373

>>6541319

must say i really enjoyed your conversation. did it feel a little cathartic at the end? i sometimes have that

>> No.6541400

>>6540670

please be a troll

i could understand, well, barely understand, if you said shakey wasn't the goat. but now you're saying he totally sucks. just eugh. the way you say it makes you sound like some delusional narc

>> No.6541621

>>6541203
>Em7 confirmed most patrician chord

>> No.6542235

>>6541131
it's not so bad, anon!
I don't want to give it a detailed analysis, but post it in one of those critique threads.
I did like it, though. Not as much as some of the Sonnets above, obviously, but where say, >>6540793, spec. 63 and 65, are, for the moment, arguendo, 10/10, yours is somewhere at an 6-8/10.
so, good on ya.

>> No.6542256

>>6541005
>I wonder is we'll ever have a decent thread about why it's so important for us to rank writers

(after thinking about this for about a minute) it seems to me that it is at least based in the petty apelike posturing that our species and its relatives are known for

"My writer is better than your writer" or "I am smarter than you because I see the TRUE genius of Shakespeare and you are so dumb you can't see it"

is not different than two politicians walking around with ad hominems or two gorillas chest beating to show who is "better"

but with art it is even more retarded, Art should not be divisive, it should only be used to connect humans, positively

>> No.6542257

Can Tolstoy really be appreciated in all his glory in >translation?

>> No.6543741

>>6540520
>>6540505

samefag

>> No.6543839

>>6542235
>I did like it, though. Not as much as some of the Sonnets above

Well, to be fair he says that the original is in Portuguese, not English, so I guess that the translation probably fucks a lot of the original beauties and effects of the speech. The real thing is probably much better. I know that because I myself need to translate my shit when I post here on /lit/ - my native language is Spanish.

Not trying to compare him to Shakespeare, tough.