/lit/ - Literature

>>14770651
Shakespeare.

This shakespeare meme went too far.
How can you compare him to Dante or even placing him as one of the top 10 writers of this world if he only wrote THEATER?
It makes me think

>>14770651
Cervantes. Dante's most famous work is literally him chasing a girl and destroying himself for it, and Shakespeare made theater plays or some shit, like lol.

>>14770669
>le wacky knight adventures
grow up, kid

>>14770669
pleb

They both belong to a different age, only pretentious nerds read them now and they don't even enjoy them

>>14770651
Dante or Virgil. Which one?

>>14770651
Dante.

>>14770669
You never read Dante.

>>14770682
Imenso, de fato, porém Dante é maior.

>>14770666
He wrote 154 sonnets and a few longer narrative poems as well, you satanic deceiver.

Everyone here is a plebian. This is why mass education was a mistake. Some souls were destined to be made of mud. l

>>14770674
>>14770676
>Don Quixote is Cervantes only work
>Don Quixote is about "knights".
How does it feel to have a double digit IQ?

>>14770702
I read Hell and Purgatory. Was bored by the end of those and didn't finish Heaven.
I also read the biography of Dante and how he came up with Beatrice, and it's pretty god damn embarrassing.

>>14770710
Ah, ok. So do you prefer Dante or Shakespeare?

Shakespeare. I'd never pick an Italian for anything, least not something related to the arts.

>>14770766
you better watch it pal

>>14770730
>Cervantes is famous for his other work not Don Quixote
>Don Quixote isn't about chivalry
feeling pretty good

>>14770748
Dante never wrote a 'Hell' nor a 'Purgatory', but rather an Inferno and a Purgatorio, and you have to beware of what biography you read.

It's not even known for a fact if Beatrice really did exist or was just an allegory, or a mixture of both.

Idiot.

>>14770766
Caravaggio

>>14770779
Not even him, but the Novelas Ejemplares are very famous and D. Quijote is not about knights.

>>14770748
No-one will take you seriously if you don't call them Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, even if you didn't read them in the original. Reading Dante in translation, I also think he is boring, but I recognise that what he's doing is also highly intricate and brings together an incredible amount of theology, history and classical references in a brilliantly ordered design. So, I think Dante is incredibly important to read even if I don't especially like reading him (or rather what I am able to read of him, since I don't really want to learn medieval Italian).

>>14770766
bait or do I need to remind of the teenage mutant ninja turtles?

>>14770779
>Don Quixote isn't about chivalry
It literally isn't. Did you read it?

>>14770788
>>14770829
its about a few different things
one of those things is chivalry and knighthood romance
ok? ok

>>14770813
His Italian is the almost the same one they use today. Like Spanish, it has hardly changed throughout the centuries unlike English that gets an overhaul frequently.
As for not liking his work, that's fair. You may come to enjoy it later in life.

The one that isn't an anglo conspiracy.

>>14770875
Shakespeare was loved by Voltaire, Goethe, Chekhov, Pessoa, Flaubert, Cavafy, Borges, Cioran, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Hegel, Strindberg etc. etc. etc.
Be quiet

>>14770893
>Voltaire
Literally who?
>Goethe
Literally who?
>Chekhov
Literally who?
>Pessoa
Literally who?
>Flaubert
Literally who?
>Cavafy
Literally who?
>Borges
Literally who?
>Cioran
Literally who?
>Schopenhauer
Literally who?
>Kierkegaard
Literally who?
>Hegel
Literally who?
>Strindberg
Literally who?

>>14770901
Based monolingual Angloid Chad. Literature outside of English doesn't exist.

>>14770893
yeah right you angl* zionist

>>14770916
worthless foreigner

>>14770666

Lol you're goddamn right they don't compare. Shakespeare basically invented modern narrative structure. Writing one epic, no matter how good, does not compare to that.

>>14770927
>Shakespeare basically invented modern narrative structure

What? That makes no sense.

>>14770651
Shakespeare.
Can someone explain why Divine Comedy is supposed to be good? I know that it's influential and all that but it seems a shallow work imo.

>>14770988
there's a part where he goes up to the moon lmao

>>14770988
Looks like you have a shallow mind.

>>14770651
Imagine comparing The Bard with a self insert fanfiction writer.

>>14771042
>b-but the theology!!!

>>14770979
Listen here, Shakespeare didn't just invent modern story-telling, Shakespeare invented YOU, you pathetic subhuman. You think you can post on this board your little shitty comments: "uhhhhh yeah shakespeare's not THAT good i don't think" and mock the meat that you feed on? Without Shakespeare, you would not fucking exist. Think about that for just a minute. You wouldn't be typing out your pathetic little comments, you wouldn't be posting on 4chan, you wouldn't even be... breathing! at ALL! You think your parents invented you? Not a chance, bucko. They didn't know what they doing, it was just Shakespeare with his supercomputer giga-brain who predicted that you would come into the world and then interlaced that idea into hidden cryptic patterns in the self-evolving algorithm of meaning that are his complete works. Terry Eagleton, world-famous Marxist scholar, theorised that Shakespeare was so smart that he must've gone into a time-machine (or maybe built one himself) and then read "Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Wittgenstein and Derrida". Of course, Terry Eagleton is a fucking crackhead, but the point is that he didn't merely preempt them, he retroactively refuted all of them. You want the answer to life? It's all hidden in Shakespeare, but it's only open to people who have read his plays so many times, and actually understood them, so that his sememes start literally to interlace their blood. People who are such dullards and so non-introspective that they lack the Hegelian recognition to realise how Shakespeare is really a part of their own Spirit, those people never get anywhere in life, let alone to the Absolute. They've failed. You've failed, kiddo.

It's quite clear Dante is the patrician choice and Shakespeare is the pseud choice. any other 3rd party meme answer has a room temperature IQ

Should I read the Greeks and Romans before Dante and Shakespeare?

>>14771115
no just watch the BBC michael horden performance of King Lear online
its fucking incredible

>>14770893
>non-anglos are immune to anglo conspiracy

No one here could even begin to justify why Dante is good but just does it anyway to seem smart.
God it feels good not to be a pseudo intellectual.

>>14771126
a black dude as King Lear? based

>>14771177
no

>>14771175
>t-the structure and th-the theology......
yeah he's dull as shit

>>14770988
>>14770992
>>14771042
>>14771095
>>14771101
Reminder that if you haven't read Dante in the original you haven't read him. Dante is one of those authors who really cannot be translated. 50% of the joy in reading the Commedia comes from the music. Dante was extremely well-educated in provençal poetry and his most important foreign master was Arnaut Daniel. You can't possibly translate someone whose poetry was composed inside that tradition. There's no way.

«Tan m'abellis vostre cortes deman,
qu'ieu no me puesc ni voill a vos cobrire.
Ieu sui Arnaut, que plor e vau cantan;
consiros vei la passada folor,
e vei jausen lo joi qu'esper, denan.
Ara vos prec, per aquella valor
que vos guida al som de l'escalina,
sovenha vos a temps de ma dolor»

How can you possibly translate that into English? We are talking about two entirely different worlds, two entirely different conceptions of life and ways of apprehending the human condition. One is coarse, barbarian, monosyllabic (therefore more journalistic than philosophical, which explains why Anglos spread such harmful viruses as ''show don't tell''); the other is refined, educated, free, musical, inebriated with life. One makes you think of a lawyer, of a judge passing a terrible sentence; the other makes you think of a young woman in love or Caravaggio finishing a portrait.

And that is Dante writing in a foreign language, mind you! When he decides to put all of his poetic power in a given passage, such as often happens in the Paradiso Terrestre, well... Then not even the Italian language feels strong enough to hold his vision! The words seem to lead you into a secret sphere, above the realm of language, into the world of the pure, Pythagorean music, of the pure, Platonic image, in which the only thing resembling ordinary thought is the Eternal Logos.

If Ezra Pound had spent 100 years trying to translate the Commedia, then maybe he would have achieved a good translation of the first two, three cantos or so. But even this is a blind hope. He would profit more by translating it into Latin or French.

Not all is lost if you are an Anglo: if you can read Spanish or Portuguese (but French? Maybe, just maybe) then you can try to absorb some of the Commedia in a good bilingual edition. A good part of the music will be preserved, provided it's a really good translation, and you can always check the original. Dedicate six months to reading it and, unless you have serious brain damage, you will succeed.

It's not Finnegans Wake. In Italy, it can be read in High School.

>>14771226
fucking based. where do I start with provençal poetry? I remember Nietzsche said the Provençal singing knight was the highest type of men in Europe

>>14771226
First time I felt good having Portuguese as my mother tongue.

>>14771226
>pure, Pythagorean music, of the pure, Platonic image, in which the only thing resembling ordinary thought is the Eternal Logos.

>>14771237
>Nietzsche

>>14771239
>>14771226
shit i'm a southern burger with a southern accent. how can I cope?

The only fact they don't put Cervantes in this is because Spanish is not an universal language. Simple as that.

>>14771226
>m-m-muh untranslatable
Cope.

>>14771175
Dante is the greatest poet I have ever read, for a variety of reasons. I'll mention only five.

1 - he was as concise as possible, without being over-concise, i.e., without being journalistic like many Anglo authors who try to be concise usually are; he mastered the art of rhetoric and knew how to use rhetorical devices of repetition, emphasis, and so on. ''Selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte''. You can feel the ''asprezza'' increasing in those words, with the first strong ''a'' being tempered by the ''ggi'', then the second one being made stronger by the ''pra'' then finally the strong word ''forte'' (pronounce it like an Italian would).

2 - he was the ultimate master of the poetic image. As Otto Maria Carpeaux said, Dante was the West's major creator of worlds since Plato. Dante invented an entire mythology which is as strong as traditional mythology because it is not imbued with kitsch, but rather with a very profound understanding of the tradition he was inserted in as an author. There are thousands of passages I can quote to illustrate this point, so just go and look for them. For instance, he forever changed the myth of Ulysses, enabling a new ulyssean tradition to spring up from it, with Tennyson's poem being the best example. If you look at his images, you will see how he was a master descriptor, able to avoid rhetoric when necessary and to emphasize the most memorable aspects of any given image.

3 - he was a genius of condensation, who could make a character eternal in just two or three verses:

"Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia;
Siena mi fé, disfecemi Maremma:
salsi colui che 'nnanellata pria

4 - Dante was one of the few authors who explored the whole possibilities of literature, and in the Commedia you will find everything from love poems, to hate poems, to visual descriptions, to prayers, to short scientific treatises in verse. The variety is enormous and Dante excelled in all of them. As T.S. Eliot said in one of his essays, Dante turned science into poetry.

5 - The Commedia's very architecture is a work of abstract art in itself, equal in this aspect to the great fugues and cantatas of Bach and the great cathedrals of Dante's time. It is perfect: nothing is in the wrong place, everything fits. It's like a supreme mathematical formula that leads you into a world of splendor.

I could mention many other reasons, such as the way in which he manages to fit not only his poetic self, but also the spirit of the age into a poem; the way he was able to absorb and renovate the epic tradition in the West, so much so that he was the model for even many 20th century epics; the way he elevated the Italian language into a new level, enabling the rise of such great writers as Boccaccio and Petrarch, who were both directly influenced by him and changed the course of literature (in fact, there would be no Shakespeare without Petrarch).

>>14771237
There is a bilingual website with troubadour poetry.

>>14771239
Sim.

>>14771226
This right here gentlemen is a man who has truly acquired the tradition of the Roman empire. Bravo, anon, bravo. Never can the frigid English language, which is for science and commerce, capture the warmth of the Romance languages, which is for describing the all-embracing sunlight breaking through parting, fleecy clouds upon a verdant field of blue flowers.

>>14771237
Here's the website. There are many translations.

http://www.trobar.org/troubadours/

Best website on the internet. That stuff is rare to find in book form.

>>14771313
grazie mille

>>14771309
>parting, fleecy clouds upon a verdant field of blue flowers.
disgusting anglo poetry fuck off

>>14771304
based

>>14771304
i'm gonna now learn italian because of you anon

>>14771304
>like many Anglo authors who try to be concise usually are
name some examples

>an entire mythology which is as strong as traditional mythology
he sees sees farting devils and goes to the moon lol

>make a character eternal in just two or three verses
there are no eternal characters in dante like shakespeare
paolo and francesca? no

>love poems, to hate poems, to visual descriptions, to prayers, to short scientific treatises in verse.
Shakespeare is easily more diverse in his plays dante says nothing about virtually nothing about human life

>very architecture
"muh structure" meme on

>the spirit of the age into a poem
a medieval and dated spirit that no one in 2020 still really relates to without larping

pointless post don't know why i read the whole thing

>>14771309
In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings,
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard,
With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break.

>>14771343
Those are shallow criticisms.

Farting devils belong to the realm of the grotesque, a very peculiar characteristic of Medieval aesthetics. It is there and should be there.

Going to the moon carries a vivid and strong metaphysical and divine meaning which you do not seem to grasp.

Shakespeare had ghosts, witches and fairies in a time when Cervantes had already gotten rid of all such phantasy. Does it diminish his value in your view?

As I said, your criticisms are shallow. You are obviously being dismissive of a value which you cannot properly grasp.

I believe Dante's characters are more eternal than Shakespeare's, but this is too subjective. All we can do is analyze how they have survived throughout art, and yes, Dante's characters did survive. Not only that, but Dante develops them in much smaller spaces. As Eliot said, if you wish to compare Dante to Shakespeare, then you better compare a single Dante canto with an entire Shakespeare play, such is the level of Dante's condensation.

As for your dismissal of structure in art, well, I don't think it deserves an answer. Anyone who has ever tried to write a poem understand the importance of structure.

>>14771343
really an awful post
>>14771395
>Cervantes had already gotten rid of all such phantasy
they were contemporaries, no?

>>14771395
have you read guido de giorgio?

>>14771395
>Farting devils belong to the realm of the grotesque
>Shakespeare had ghosts, witches and fairies
The difference is that Shakespeare didn't really believe in fairies and ghosts - he was writing to please an audience. Dante thought he was literally explaining the ultimate reality when he wrote about naughty demons.

>which you do not seem to grasp.
please explain. dante did believe in ancient astronomy so I'm interested in the metaphysical point you think he was making.

>are more eternal than Shakespeare's
name ONE that is at the level of Hamlet or King Lear or Cleopatra
bonus points if its a woman - beatrice is just an abstract idea she isn't a real character

>too subjective
cope on - everything you've said so far is ""subjective""


>dismissal of structure in art
I'm saying that it doesn't make up for the total boring slog that is the divine comedy
structure is just an abstract thing for critics to bitch about it doesn't engage a real-life reader

>>14771427
>reads for entertainment
Never gonna make it.

>>14771427
What matters what the author believes in? Homer thought lightning came from Zeus. Your point is?

Furthermore, we can't actually be sure what any of them believed in. Maybe Shakespeare really did believe in ghosts and Dante probably didn't believe in the particular devils he invented but rather saw them allegorically (he explains the point of allegory in one of his poetical treatises in the Convívio). If It turns out that Shakespeare really thought Prospero's magic was true, will it diminish the literary value of The Tempest? It won't .

And structure engages me. Maybe it doesn't engage you, but it does engage me.

Anyway, I repeat: your criticisms are shallow.

>>14771411
I haven't. Good?

>>14771466
>I haven't. Good?
idk, neither have I but i've seen Italian anons shill it here as him being superior to Rene Guenon and that it's all about Dante, Dante, and Dante.

>>14771471
Interesting. I might look it up then (though I know nothing about Guenon).

>>14771466
You've said nothing. Dante has no eternal characters, has nothing to say about life, and no interest in women or love or the world that we really live in. A pointless historical relic that people defend because of 'structure' and influence. If thats what you enjoy then fine but don't write huge essays defending stale and lifeless old poetry because 'you just don't get it bro.'

>>14771381
No, Jeremy, I don't want to buy your lilac-bushels.

>>14770651
Shakespeare never wrote anything as sublime as The Divine Comedy.

>>14771481
Jesus Christ.

At any rate, if that is what you wish to believe, it does not matter to me.

>>14771481

Um... hello? Based department?

>>14771502
Continue making no arguments if you want
Dante really is not the patrician choice

>>14771487
IN THE SWAMP IN SECLUDED RECESSES,
A SHY AND HIDDEN BIRD IS WARBLING A SONG.

SOLITARY THE THRUSH,
THE HERMIT WITHDRAWN TO HIMSELF, AVOIDING THE SETTLEMENTS,
SINGS BY HIMSELF A SONG.

SONG OF THE BLEEDING THROAT,
DEATH’S OUTLET SONG OF LIFE, (FOR WELL DEAR BROTHER I KNOW,
IF THOU WAST NOT GRANTED TO SING THOU WOULD’ST SURELY DIE.)

>>14771509
cringe. Dante has had the best depiction of Satan and nobody else comes close.
>In Dante's Inferno, Satan is portrayed as a giant demon, frozen mid-breast in ice at the center of Hell. Satan has three faces and a pair of bat-like wings affixed under each chin. As Satan beats his wings, he creates a cold wind that continues to freeze the ice surrounding him and the other sinners in the Ninth Circle. The winds he creates are felt throughout the other circles of Hell. In his three mouths, he chews on Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius. Scholars consider Satan to be "a once splendid being (the most perfect of God's creatures) from whom all personality has now drained away". Satan, also known as Lucifer, was formerly the Angel of Light and once tried to usurp the power of God. As punishment, God banished Satan out of Heaven to an eternity in Hell as the ultimate sinner. Dante illustrates a less powerful Satan than most standard depictions; he is slobbering, wordless, and receives the same punishments in Hell as the rest of the sinners.

>>14771512
this is high fantasy garbage
not great human poetry

>>14770666
No, influence != quality

>>14771226
>>14771304
>>14771395
>>14771466
>>14771502
Just like the "sublime Florentine", you are reddit-spacing wop. Exile yourself from here, please.

Greetings everyone. With a sad heart, I see many who are uninitiated and therefore have such a profane view on Dante. This work can act as an initiation for those who wish to lift the veil they have before their eyes. It is a short work and should take no longer than two hours to read. As a wise man once sung, "I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old." Life is brief brothers; embrace the world soul. Both Shakespeare and Dante did; they represent the same thing differently. That is all.

>>14771226
>>14771304
>>14771395
>>14771466
>>14771502
Just like Dante, you're a reddit-spacing wop. Kindly exile yourself from here.

>>14771481
I don't know how you came to that conclusion as Dante is known as one of the great realists of Western literature. I urge you to read Erich Auerbach's chapter on Dante in Mimesis. My guess is that you haven't actually read The Divine Comedy. He says as much about life as anyone.

>>14771541
Actually I've read both Dante and Auerbach. Dante is for scholars, not real people.
Shakespeare is the poet of our modern age, please read him properly.

>>14771537
Oh shit I didn't know Guenon(pbuh) had a whole book on this!!! fucking based!!!!!

>>14771537
should I read it before or after divine comedy?

>>14771594
Before brother so that you may begin Dante with an open heart and sharper eyes.

>>14771616
b-b-based

>>14771537
what is the meaning of Guenon's autistic art on his book covers?

>>14771651
It deals with sacred geometry in the harmony of proportion brother. In the same way poetry does in structure and sound. That which is visual may be transmuted to sound. This is what Dante does.

>>14771674
interesting, I just ordered the book, i'll post in a Guenon thread later this week with my thoughts

>>14771537
(Canto 28):

>No barrel, not even one where the hoops and staves go every which way, was ever split open like one frayed Sinner I saw, ripped from chin to where we fart below.
>His guts hung between his legs and displayed His vital organs, including that wretched sack Which converts to shit whatever gets conveyed down the gullet.
>As I stared at him he looked back And with his hands pulled his chest open, Saying, "See how I split open the crack in myself! See how twisted and broken Mohammed is! Before me walks Ali, his face Cleft from chin to crown, grief–stricken.

>>14770651
Neon Genesis Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop divide the world between them. There is no third.

>>14772134
Excellent example my brother. This is a magnificent passage to display the mixing of the high and low, following the Scripture, "As above, so below." Using scatological humor within his divine poem parallels with him using the vulgar tongue Italian as well, instead of Latin, in which he had already written scholarly work and poems. He was bringing divine knowledge down to the masses who knew not Latin but Italian, who would appreciate this low brow humor.

>>14770666
Theatre is peak literature, as you well know Satan.

>>14771226
How am I supposed to read Dante in the original if I don't know Italian?

>>14772199
Samurai Champloo is better. I see a lot of myself in Jin.

>>14772199
I feel like Lain fits better than Bebop.

Odd to see no mention of Schelling, one would think in a discussion of Dante his name would be made appeared.

>“Many of the most bizarre features of [Heidegger’s] ontology appear to have been lifted right out of the occult aether wherein Schelling developed them: [such as] the historical destiny of the artist-scholars of a coming apocalyptic generation to build a new world whose architectonic is established by singing together their own epic poem.”
If you want to read more about this, here: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3000288/1/Schelling's%20Poetry%20Preproof.pdf
>"God lets the oppositional will of the ground operate in order that might be which love unifies and subordinates itself to for the glorification of the Absolute. The will of love stands about the will of the ground and this predominance, this eternal decidedness, the love for itself as the essence of being in general, this decidedness is the innermost core of absolute freedom."
>"Philosophy will not be able to effect an immediate transformation of the present condition of the world. This is not only true of philosophy, but of all merely human thought and endeavor. Only a god can save us. The sole possibility that is left for us is to prepare a sort of readiness, through thinking and poeticizing, for the appearance of the god or for the absence of the god in the time of foundering [Untergang] for in the face of the god who is absent, we founder. Only a God Can Save Us."
>"For us contemporaries the greatness of what is to be thought is too great. Perhaps we might bring ourselves to build a narrow and not far reaching footpath as a passageway."

>The phenomenon of dwelling was one research theme in architectural phenomenology. Much of the way it was understood in architecture was shaped by the later thought of Martin Heidegger as set in his influential essay: "Building Dwelling Thinking." He links dwelling to what he refers as the "gathering of the fourfold," namely the regions of being as entailed by the phenomena of: "the saving of earth, the reception of sky (heavens), the initiation of mortals into their death, and the awaiting/remembering of divinities." The essence of dwelling is not architectural, per se, in the same manner that the essence of technology for him is not technological per se[12][13].

Shakespeare has a great body of work but Dante my nigga.

>>14770651
Dante, of course.
>>14771554
>Anglos
>modern age
Retroactively refuted by René Guénon (pbuh).

>>14771516
Half of literature is basically just genre fiction but old.

>>14774092
your memes have no power here

>>14773404
Who cares what you see
>>14773536
Lain is too derivative of Evangelion.

>>14770686
Not of an age.

>>14773598
Thanks anon, quality

>>14771101
I believe this

>>14770651
The chad Dante vs the virgin Billy

>>14771226
Extremely based post. Englando was a mistake.