/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16009920]

Post the most well read authors in history
I'll start with pic related

[Anonymous No.16009980]

>>16009920
Borges? He was well-read, but up to a point. He became blind and therefore didn't read as much as others did. Furthermore, he didn't know Greek and eventually forgot his Latin (I think he also forgot his German later in life - it's hard to remember languages when you're blind).

As for the most well-read authors... Well, I think critics are often more well-read than authors: Harold Bloom, Erich Auerbach, George Steiner... The most well-read critic that I know of is perhaps the Austro-Brazilian Otto Maria Carpeaux, who wrote a gigantic history of Western literature in eight volumes, besides tons of other stuff. He was so erudite that he knew Brazilian literature probably more than anyone alive at his time and was immensely respected among Brazilian writers, even though he only came here when he was, I don't know, around 40 years old or so, fleeing the war - eventually he even became a very fine stylist himself, like Conrad, in a foreign language which he only learned after adulthood. He was one of the best Brazilian essayists of the past century.

>Perhaps the peak of Carpeaux's production was his eight-volume História da Literatura Ocidental (History of Western Literature),[6] available only in Portuguese, in spite of being in public domain. Carpeaux took eight years to write his masterwork, from 1941 to 1947. Late critic José Lino Grünewald labelled it one of the brightest moments of the language in prose, despite the fact that Carpeaux was not a native speaker. It is also unique in that it focuses on creating links between all periods, in order to create an organic vision of the literary history he is telling. The book also include more than 8,000 brief criticisms and expositions of the majority of the figures discussed along the way, minus the ones cited in passing; all are dealt with in their original languages, both in expositions and quotations and in the bibliography offered. The total bibliographical amount of cited works is on the merge of 30,000 books or more.

>In this series, Carpeaux begins with an analysis of classical Greek and Latin literatures and proceeds until the twentieth century avant-garde movements such as surrealism and dadaism, encompassing every major literary establishments in between. For this reason, it has been called "definitive, encyclopaedic and multidisciplinary, a fundamental work in Brazilian literary and cultural bibliography".[7]

Among authors, Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, and Robert Graves were very well-read.
In my country (Brazil), the Campos brothers and Bruno Tolentino were well-read in many languages. Manuel Bandeira and Machado de Assis too.

[Anonymous No.16010038]

>>16009920
Jung.

[Anonymous No.16010044]

Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford

[Anonymous No.16010051]

>>16009980
This, critics will always have a greater technical knowledge of literature than authors because they've largely chosen to devote themselves to the study of other authors.

The person who'll really take the cake is the critic-turned-artist. Someone who read without the bias of an active cultural creator and only later turned to capital-a Art. This is largely what the success of New Wave directors and (later) Quentin Tarantino is based on in film.

I would personally volunteer W.G Sebald as a potential contender. Sebald was originally an academic and professor of literature who only became an author in his 50s.

[Anonymous No.16010061]

>>16010044
What about 3rd earl of shaftsbury?

[Anonymous No.16010128]

>>16009920

Mostly Anglosphere:

>Thomas Browne
>Samuel Johnson
>Richard Burton (the explorer & adventurer. Supposedly he spoke 29 languages)
>Ezra Pound
>T.S.Eliot
>W.H.Auden
>Aldous Huxley (like Burton, knew a lot of languages)

More recent (and tentative):
>Umberto Eco
>Gore Vidal
>Clive James

[Anonymous No.16010208]

>>16009920
I know this is probably a troll but Borges admitted he didn't actually read full books, he just skimmed them and looked for the exciting parts because he only cared about the general outlines. Literally Tai Lopez tier

[Anonymous No.16010237]

Benedetto Croce seems to have been quite erudite, and had the means to dedicate his whole life to intellectual matters:

>In 1883, an earthquake occurred in the village of Casamicciola on the island of Ischia near Naples, where he was on holiday with his family, destroying the home they lived in. His mother, father, and only sister were all killed, while he was buried for a long time and barely survived. After the earthquake he inherited his family's fortune and—much like Schopenhauer—was able to live the rest of his life in relative leisure, devoting a great deal of time to philosophy as an independent intellectual writing from his palazzo in Naples (Ryn, 2000:xi[4]).

In earlier times, there's Schlegel, Mommsen, the famous case of John Stuart Mill etc. And, of course, Goethe.

Literary authors, however, usually live as much as they write, so they don't have the time be as well-read as critics and intellectuals. Many of the greatest writers have been soldiers, sailors, politicians, or held unrelated day-jobs that didn't allow them so much time for reading. Authors such as Hemingway, Faulkner and McCarthy, although they certainly read more than your average professor, don't strike me as erudite at all. Shakespeare himself wasn't very good at Latin and Greek, which meant he had to rely on translations, very scarce back then.

Recent intellectuals and authors who showed vast erudition (many books, many languages, sometimes in different fields) include: Umberto Eco, Roger Scruton, Octavio Paz, Jacques Barzun, Geoffrey Hill.

Among the living, now that Bloom, Steiner, Scruton, Eco, Hill, Todorov and Bonnefoy are all dead, I can honestly think only of Nassim Taleb; maybe Simon Schama too, who's both a fine historian and an art critic, and perhaps the historian Paul Johnson as well, but I don't think any of them are quite at the same level as those who have recently passed away.
Everyone who was truly important seems to have died in the last decade. Very few people left.

[Anonymous No.16010261]

>>16010208
Is that true? That'd be absurdly based if so.

[Anonymous No.16010289]

>>16010208
You are partially correct. He did say that, but: 1) he was certainly joking, to some extent; 2) he published prefaces, essays, and other writings, about many books throughout his life, and there was also much that he could quote from memory.
But yes, Borges was known to be a hedonic reader, which probably only increased after his blindness.

[Anonymous No.16010327]

>>16009920

[Anonymous No.16010347]

>>16010327
Why?

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!oI3er5KKetj No.16010369]

[Anonymous No.16010754]

>>16009920
It is said that John Milton was the last person to have read every book written up to his time

[Anonymous No.16010759]

>>16010754
Literally impossible lol

[Anonymous No.16010772]

[Anonymous No.16010787]

Coleridge.

[Anonymous No.16010794]

I consider myself well-read but let's face it, I got at most a quarter of the references in Against the Day

[Anonymous No.16010889]

>>16010051
>capital-a Art
you're not DFW

[Anonymous No.16010961]

>>16010772
sad

[Anonymous No.16010970]

>>16010038
Based, look at this niggas head. 16 books is quite a lot.

[Anonymous No.16011078]

>>16010970
>16 books is quite a lot
it's not really, I've read more than 16 this year alone
read more

[Anonymous No.16011116]

>>16011078
its a joke you fcking moron

[Anonymous No.16011276]

>>16011116 (You)
>its a joke you fcking moron
no it's not, have you seen the screencap faggot?

[Anonymous No.16011280]

>>16010038
Probably correct

[Anonymous No.16011489]

>>16009980
Most of the people in your list also didn't know Greek. Weird thing to hold that against Borges. He also didn't forget his Latin. He even mocked his English translator for not knowing basic Latin. Called him a pleb.

[Anonymous No.16011501]

>>16010759
It was the 1600s. Very possible if you dedicated your life to it loke Milton did.

[Anonymous No.16011653]

>>16011489
Borges himself said he forgot his Latin, though.

I am not criticizing him. I think he was immensely well-read, considering that he started having vision problems at a relatively early age (in his 30's, though he only became really blind much later, but, even then, as soon as the problems start I guess you need to reduce your reading).

However, in his interview with Buckley he said he didn't know who Patrick White was, even though White had won a Nobel by then. So it seems that, after he went blind, he mostly reread (listened to) the books he already knew, which in a sense is also a way of being well-read. If Borges was not the most erudite reader, he was certainly one of the most creative readers of the 20th century anyway, if not the most. Few have read as well as him, regardless of quantity.

>>16011501
Still impossible. He didn't read all books. He didn't even have the money to buy all books, nor did he know all the languages.
But yes, Milton was immensely erudite.

[Anonymous No.16011813]

>>16011501
He literally would not have access to every book that was in English, much less access to every book in Latin or Greek

[Anonymous No.16013139]

bump

[Anonymous No.16013159]

>>16010128
>>Samuel Johnson
this guy has my vote

[Anonymous No.16013539]

[Anonymous No.16014244]

>>16009920

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/books/review/Heilbrunn-t.html

The author of Mein Kampf was well read and he should have done better in his formal schooling so that he could get into art school instead of starting World Wars.

[Anonymous No.16014663]

>>16010772
Spanish kek

[Anonymous No.16015323]

>>16011501
>>16011501
It's impossible you git. Milton did not even read in all Semitic, Indic, Sinitic, or other Asiatic languages, but even within Europe, the medieval ages alone had an underratedly large surviving output that would take several lifetimes to absorb.

[Anonymous No.16015345]

>>16010237
>Among the living, now that Bloom, Steiner, Scruton, Eco, Hill, Todorov and Bonnefoy are all dead, I can honestly think only of Nassim Taleb;

Have you heard of the handful of internet writings by a handful of scholars who worked on projects comparable to Bloom's canon? I forget the name, but one of them overrates Haruki Murakami, so we can discount at least him, but the rest are also quite erudite, competitive to Bloom's project, with similar levels of personal bias and weakness.

[sag No.16015784]

>>16009980
Who cares about critics? Only a pseud would.

[Anonymous No.16015961]

>>16015784
Authors themselves cared and still care about critics.

Aristotle alone was one of the most influential authors in the history of theater, though he was not a playwright.

[Anonymous No.16016156]

>>16015961
Good post, and was not expecting anyone to take that faggot seriously.

[Anonymous No.16016179]

It would probably not be an Aglo desu, since english became the lingua franca of the world Anglo writers and critics tend to only really read english literature and vastly ignore the rest. This is the way you get authors like Bloom who was very very deeply immersed in english lit and other very canonical works but had a very superficial understanding of other language literature. In contrast, authors and critics in other languages like spanish tend to be very familiarized in their own language literature and also be more willing to explore other literatures not in their language.

[Anonymous No.16016199]

>>16009920
It would probably not be an Aglo desu, since english became the lingua franca of the world anglo writers and critics tend to only really read english literature and vastly ignore the rest. This is the way you get authors like Bloom who was very, very deeply immersed in english lit and other general canonical works but had a very superficial understanding of other language's literature. In contrast, authors and critics in other languages tend to be very familiarized in their own language's literature and also be more willing to explore other literatures not in their language.

[Anonymous No.16017148]

>>16016199
That is one of Steiner's and Carpeaux's advantages over Bloom, as they were both very international and wrote in more than one language.

Bloom's canon is immensely Anglo-centric, even if the list was done in haste. He lists mediocre stuff like Joyce Carol Oates, but ignores all the troubadors (who are very essential, and without whom our literature would have been entirely different), as well as many important authors from other languages.

[Anonymous No.16019427]

>>16010038
lmao good