/lit/ - Literature

>>14202867
>don’t write about Russian poetry
dog he was talking about dostoevsky's poetic prose which can be more accurately reproduced than actual poetry. either way "translated poetry is not even worth discussing" is not a good sentiment it really means that you are effectively locked out from understanding most poetry, even if you know several languages. that sentiment wasn't even held by people who themselves wrote classic poetry. take for example shakespeare reading golding's ovid or keats reading chapman's homer.

>>14197305
this. also to impress girls. here's a selection from the rubaiyat i memorized a while ago:

>with me along some strip of herbage strewn
>that just divides the desert from the sown
>where name of slave and sultan scarce is known
>and pity sultan mahmud on his throne

>sometimes i think that never blows so red
>the rose as where some buried caesar bled
>that every hyacinth the garden wears
>dropped in its lap from some once lovely head

>how long, how long in infinite pursuit
>of this or that endeavor or pursuit
>better be merry with the fruitful grape
>than sadden after none, or bitter fruit

>ah, fill the cup, what boots it to repeat
>how time is slipping underneath our feet
>unborn tomorrow and dead yesterday
>why fret about them if today be sweet

>think, in this battered caravanserai
>whose doorways are alternate night and day
>how sultan after sultan with his pomp
>abode an hour or two and went his way

>'tis all a chequerboard of nights and days
>where destiny with men for pieces plays
>hither and thither moves and mates and slays
>and one by one back in the closet lays

>the moving finger writes, and having writ
>moves on, nor all thy piety nor wit
>shall lure it back to cancel half a line
>nor all thy tears wash out a word of it

>so leave the wise to wrangle and with me
>the quarrels of the universe let be
>and in some corner of the hubbub couch't
>make game of that which makes as much of thee

>ah, my beloved, fill the cup that clears
>today of past regrets and future fears
>tomorrow? why tomorrow i may be
>myself with yesterday's sev'n thousand years!

>oh, come with old khayyam and leave the wise
>to talk, one thing is certain: that life flies
>one thing is certain and the rest is lies
>the flower that once has blown forever dies.

>ah, make the most of what we may yet spend
>before we too into the dust descend
>dust unto dust, and under dust to lie
>sans wine, sans song, sans singer and sans end!

>one moment in annihilation's waste
>one moment from the well of life to taste
>the stars are setting and the caravan
>starts for the dawn of nothing, o make haste!

chicks love orientalism