/lit/ - Literature

the exhaustion is finally setting in. maybe i will dream tonight. admittedly, i am less interested in your dreams now. i think i'd rather think about the lady of the whisps. she was occupied with me without truly noticing me. oh god, how i truly did pine for her. i suppose that is my real, true, abhorrent admission.

>>16437631
Yes and yes. He also showed serious skill with storycraft - the opening of Romeo and Juliet dumps a ton of exposition in a way that feels perfectly natural and engrossing.

He could also argue completely contrary points of view in compelling ways. He could defend cowardice and cruelty and make them sound noble. At the same time, he could argue in favour of mercy and bravery just as well.

As for the last point, I disagree. Shakespeare was a mediocre poet, and the Sonnets are one of the most overrated works of literature. He was enormously successful as a playwright, and there's no reason to elevate poetry over the stage.

>>16437968
>Shakespeare was a mediocre poet,
/lit/ pls

>>16437631
>anglo
>genius

>>16437979
espseud

>>16437977
There's like three sonnets worth the time they take to read, sandwiched between a hundred insipid coagulations of shit.

Venus and Adonis starts very well, before falling into mediocrity.

No one has read the Rape of Lucrece, with good reason.

He's not DREADFUL, he's just a minor poet, at best, and not even a very impressive one.

Just reminding you that Shakespeare is an overrated hack shilled by anglos
https://youtu.be/vfbrIrD_Kso

>>16437979
>>16438012
Basado

>>16438012
>>16438020
>And den da man charge at da windmill, wow genioso jajaja.

>>16438051
soulless a*glo appears

>>16438051
>sancho fat peasant on donkey say oh no, old man get bonk on da head, fantastico mmm si si

>>16438056
Si onions Anglo pero yo vivei en España por un año y fue suficiente para ver cuán desalmada es gran parte de España (even in Quixote's La Mancha).

>>16437631
>What is the basic genius of Shakespeare?
Pretty sure it's the combination of his technical brilliance and innovation with the psychological depth he gives his characters. I think the latter of these is his one unique contribution to wider European literature and what made him popular on the continent but I might also be wrong. Of course, Cervantes was writing at the same time as Shakes and I haven't read much of ancient playwrights besides Sophocles to compare them to Shakespeare.

>>16437631
His works show an intuitive understanding of mimetic desire and rivalry.

Amid grandees of times Elizabethan
you shimmered too, you followed sumptuous customs;
the circle of ruff, the silv’ry satin that
encased your thigh, the wedgelike beard – in all of this
you were like other men … Thus was enfolded
your godlike thunder in a succinct cape.

Haughty, aloof from theater’s alarums,
you easily, regretlessly relinquished
the laurels twining into a dry wreath,
concealing for all time your monstrous genius
beneath a mask; and yet, your phantasms’ echoes
still vibrate for us: your Venetian Moor,
his anguish; Falstaff’s visage, like an udder
with pasted-on mustache; the raging Lear …
You are among us, you’re alive; your name, though,
your image, too – deceiving, thus, the world –
you have submerged in your beloved Lethe.
It’s true, of course, a usurer had grown
accustomed, for a sum, to sign your work
(that Shakespeare – Will – who played the Ghost in Hamlet,
who lived in pubs, and died before he could
digest in full his portion of a boar’s head) …

The frigate breathed, your country you were leaving.
To Italy you went. A female voice
called singsong through the iron’s pattern,
called to her balcony the tall inglese,
grown languid from the lemon-tinted moon
amid Verona’s streets. My inclination
is to imagine, possibly, the droll
and kind creator of Don Quixote
exchanging with you a few casual words
while waiting for fresh horses – and the evening
was surely blue. The well behind the tavern
contained a pail’s pure tinkling sound … Reply –
whom did you love? Reveal yourself – whose memoirs
refer to you in passing? Look what numbers
of lowly, worthless souls have left their trace,
what countless names Brantôme has for the asking!
Reveal yourself, god of iambic thunder,
you hundred-mouthed, unthinkably great bard!

No! At the destined hour, when you felt banished
by God from your existence, you recalled
those secret manuscripts, fully aware
that your supremacy would rest unblemished
by public rumor’s unashamèd brand,
that ever, midst the shifting dust of ages,
faceless you’d stay, like immortality
itself – then, in the distance, smiling, vanished.

Shakespeare is without any doubt the greatest writer who has ever lived, and it isn't close. Anything else is cope.

The only thing this thread accomplishes is proof of how poorly read and unintelligent the average poster here is.

>>16438005
>this level of contrarianism

>>16438521
Someone got drunk off of the english department koolaid

>>16438051
based

>>16438538
t. seething ESL

>>16438787
What a sharp riposte. I can't even begin to fathom the eloquence with which you wrote your essays and the profound insights you received from a single culture while I majored in the classics and drank from the many founts of antiquity.

>>16437631
there is no explanation. sHACKespeare is a genius because he is a genius, and if you don't accept this dogma you're an incel pseud. Meanwhile, 0 innovations came from the quill of that man.

>>16437631
Is it me or have there been way too many pol crossposting scum in the last 2 years? Especially this summer the shitposting was ridiculous.

>>16438851
>0 innovations
Well, ca. 1700 (new) words

>>16438911
Ok, and? Is that relevant for a non-English speaker?

>>16438278
Based Bokov

>>16438923
Begone! You unreal*, lonely*, green-eyed*, dauntless* critic* with your lackluster*, yet still dwindling* swaggering*.

*words which are invented or in its modern use first coined by Shakespeare.

>>16438923
>non-English speaker
Come again?

>>16438923
Are non-English speakers relevant?

>>16438959
>invented or in its modern use first coined by Shakespeare.
maybe but probably not, just because the words have their first recording in Shakespeare doesn't mean he "coined" them. More likely he was just using slang that hadn't been printed before, or if it was printed the copies were lost.

>>16439079
perhaps in some of these cases. in my book that is still innovation.

>>16439070
For thinking that you deserve a cathedra in world literature, obviously you need some merits that can be objectively appreciated outside of england and the english. But you obviously don't give a fuck about what constitutes a universally recognizable merit, you just put your hack there in the middle of the history of literature by the grace of your frecked anglo ass and you expect us to make the justification you never gave for his geniality.

>>16439100
Sir Thomas Browne is credited with over a thousand; among them
medical
pathology
coma
electricity
computer
exhaustion
suicide
like Shakespeare he was born on the day he died, October 19th.

>>16437631
If you have to ask you have no real aesthetic sensibility. Shakespeare is a genius because his plays are beautifully written and incredibly emotional. He can be funny, sad, tragic, witty, evocative, incisive, etc. more so than most other poets.

>>16438534
>>this level of contrarianism
having read the sonnets cover-to-cover carefully, it's not an insane take imo
the sonnets are often impressive but only intermittently, in my view, good
i like venus and adonis a lot but thats probably mostly because venus in it is exactly my type (hyperverbal, overseductive) so it panders to me perfectly. Its a nice work but prob not one at the highest tier of world literature
i honestly haven't really read the plays since school (relax, i'm gonna get around to it) but i'm pretty sure the genius of shakespeare, whatever it is, has to mostly reside there

>>16439371
>Shakespeare literally gives us songs and sonnets to get laid
>/lit/ reads them cover to cover like it's a scientific paper

>>16438005
>There's like three sonnets worth the time they take to read
which are they, in your opinion

>>16438534
it's not really that contrarian desu

>>16437631
Didn't Bloom refute a Fruedian reading of Shakespeare by saying something like, "Shakespeare contains all of Freud, including a critique"?

>>16437631
shakespeare is so far beyond everyone else that I sometimes wonder if we are part of one of his plays.
the "Illuminati" will turn out to be just him.

>>16439070
>Are non-English speakers relevant?
lowly /lit/izen, scoundrel, ask ye not
of shakespeare's relevance to you --
rather humbly ask of yours to him.

>>16439391
>>/lit/ reads them cover to cover like it's a scientific paper
being made fun of for actually reading literature on /lit/? yeah, that tracks
>>16439392
>it's not really that contrarian desu
also true
i don't think the sonnets were very highly regarded until about the 20th century or so
>which are they, in your opinion
i'm not the one you're asking, but 12 is a perfect gem
don't have my copy at hand and can't be bothered to look up/recall which others i liked

>>16437631
His inspiration on other writers is immense, he is qouted more than any other.

Let's be honest the only reason people on here don't like him is they don't understand him so they act like slaves and scream he's overated.

>>16439685
>they act like slaves
Yikes...
Now I know why my prof said that white nationalists like him so much

>people having an issue with shakespeare's poetry being mediocre as if it's not the common opinion

>>16437631
>What is the basic genius of Shakespeare?
There isn't any. Shakespeare happens to be the only anglophone poet that isn't complete and utter dogshit, so dumb anglos pretend like he's the hottest shit since the invention of writing.

tldr - anglo parochialism.

>>16438005

>>16437631
>Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one; I think the best judgment not of this country only, but of Europe at large, is slowly pointing to the conclusion, that Shakspeare is the chief of all Poets hitherto; the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has left record of himself in the way of Literature. On the whole, I know not such a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, if we take all the characters of it, in any other man. Such a calmness of depth; placid joyous strength; all things imaged in that great soul of his so true and clear, as in a tranquil unfathomable sea! It has been said, that in the constructing of Shakspeare's Dramas there is, apart from all other "faculties" as they are called, an understanding manifested, equal to that in Bacon's Novum Organum That is true; and it is not a truth that strikes every one. It would become more apparent if we tried, any of us for himself, how, out of Shakspeare's dramatic materials, we could fashion such a result! The built house seems all so fit,—every way as it should be, as if it came there by its own law and the nature of things,—we forget the rude disorderly quarry it was shaped from. The very perfection of the house, as if Nature herself had made it, hides the builder's merit. Perfect, more perfect than any other man, we may call Shakspeare in this: he discerns, knows as by instinct, what condition he works under, what his materials are, what his own force and its relation to them is. It is not a transitory glance of insight that will suffice; it is deliberate illumination of the whole matter; it is a calmly seeing eye; a great intellect, in short. How a man, of some wide thing that he has witnessed, will construct a narrative, what kind of picture and delineation he will give of it,—is the best measure you could get of what intellect is in the man. Which circumstance is vital and shall stand prominent; which unessential, fit to be suppressed; where is the true beginning, the true sequence and ending? To find out this, you task the whole force of insight that is in the man. He must understand the thing; according to the depth of his understanding, will the fitness of his answer be. You will try him so. Does like join itself to like; does the spirit of method stir in that confusion, so that its embroilment becomes order? Can the man say, Fiat lux, Let there be light; and out of chaos make a world? Precisely as there is light in himself, will he accomplish this.

>>16439706
Filtered and mad about it, the western cannon rolls on, every writer knows there Sheakspeare. He wouldn't be famous otherwise, coping calling him crap is a slaves move where you should either learn to like it or ignore it. Your opinion won't change Sheakspeare's fame.

>>16438521
>the greatest writer who ever lived
Um, no sweetie, that would be Πλατων.