/lit/ - Literature

>>17197232

>>17197232
Flaubert

Beckett in Texts For Nothing
Beckett in Molloy
Laszlo in Kamo-hunter
Joyce in A Painful Case

>>17197232
Cicero
Flaubert
Browne

Also Shakespeare. The prose sections in the Henriad are god tier.

>>17197232
Corncob in all of Suttree and most of Blood Meridian.

>>17197232
Hegel

>>17197232
Augustine. The Confessions have a beautiful and noble simplicity. Not very hard to read in the original either.

>>17197232
me

>>17197365
You are prose?

"Her antiquity in preceding and surviving succeeding tellurian generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellitic dependence: her luminary reflection: her constancy under all her phases, rising and setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to inaffirmative interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage: the terribility of her isolated dominant resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and of calm: the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence: the admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her splendour, when visible: her attraction, when invisible."

>>17197553
What is this reddit-tier purple prose poem bullshit?

>>17197553
Too purple. It's not good.

>>17197620
inb4 "it's Joyce you illiterate bitch"
That's the point. I prefer the sections of FW like "She was just a young, thin, pale, soft, shy, slim, slip of a thing then, sauntering by silva moon lake" to that overdone bullshit.

>>17197610
>>17197620
>>17197630
It's not purple if you actually read it you illiterate nogs

>>17197232
Nabokov
>inb4 Pater, Browne, Milton, Carlyle, Ruskin, Newman
Anyone can do it in essays. Fuck off and do it in a novel

>>17197648
Imagine being this illiterate.

>>17197648
>Nabokov
Pseudo intellectual purple prose tryhard.
>>17197620
>>17197610
The absolute state of /lit/. Zoomers haven't even read Ulysses, the board meme. You haven't read purple prose if you think that's purple in any way. Stop reading technical manuals, start reading books.

>>17197232
Baldwin

>>17197553
What's with Joyce and using multiple colons in a sentence?

>>17197678
Oh you must be so quirky and cool for liking Joyce. Aren't you just a unique, superior being, you braindead fuck. You accuse Nabokov of pseudo-intellectual purple prose, yet you defend Ulysses. The book is a meme because it's mediocre at best. I assure you, a good book doesn't consist of randomly picked words from the dictionary so it could have as many random, indecipherable parts and be too long for what it's worth.

>>17197754
Fuck off pedo.
>I assure you
You are a nobody. Bla bla bla! Keep it to yourself pseud.

>>17197843
Look at yourself.

>>17197312
>Beckett in molloy
It's perfect prose but it isn't beautiful don't be gay

>>17197331
Shakespeare isn't prose

>>17197232
Spinoza

>>17197232
https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/42/moby-dick/794/chapter-113-the-forge/

Not sure about literature, but here’s the most beautiful prose in music:

>Townes Van Zandt - (Quicksilver Daydreams of) Maria

[Verse 1]
Well, the diamond fades quickly when matched to the face of Maria
All the harps, they sound empty when she lifts her lips to the sky
All the brown of her skin makes her hair seem a soft golden rainfall
That spills from the mountains to the bottomless depths of her eyes

[Verse 2]
Well, she stands all around me, her hands slowly sifting the sunshine
All the laughter that lingered down deep 'neath her smilin' is free
Well, it spins and it twirls like a hummingbird lost in the morning
And caresses the south wind and silently sails to the sea

[Verse 3]
Ah, the sculptor stands stricken and the artist he throws away his brushes
When her image comes dancin', the sun, she turns sullen with shame
And the birds, they go silent, and the wind stops his sad mournful singing
When the trees of the forest start gently to whisperin' her name

[Verse 4]
So as softly she wanders, I'll desperately follow her footsteps
And I'll chase after shadows that offer a trace of her sigh
Ah, they promise eternally that she lies hidden within them
But I find they've deceived me and sadly I bid them goodbye

[Verse 5]
So the serpent slides slowly away with his moments of laughter
And the old washerwoman has finished her cleanin' and gone
But the bamboo hangs heavy in the bondage of quicksilver daydreams
And a lonely child longingly looks for a place to belong

PROSA

>>17197247
Bssed

>>17199035
>It's perfect prose but it isn't beautiful
???

>2021
>I am forgotten

Joyce's "A painful case", "The counterparts" and "A little cloud" are comprised of almost all perfect sentences.

>>17199035
some parts are beautiful, like this one for instance

> “For in me there have always been two fools, among others, one asking nothing better than to stay where he is and the other imagining that life might be slightly less horrible a little further on. So that I was never disappointed, so to speak, whatever I did, in this domain. And these inseparable fools I indulged turn about, that they might understand their foolishness. And that night there was no question of moon, nor any other light, but it was a night of listening, a night given to the faint soughing and sighing stirring at night in little pleasure gardens, the shy sabbath of leaves and petals and the air that eddies there as it does not in other places, where there is less constraint, and as it does not during the day, when there is more vigilance, and then something else that is not clear, being neither the air nor what it moves, perhaps the far unchanging noise the earth makes and which other noises cover, but not for long. For they do not account for that noise you hear when you really listen, when all seems hushed. And there was another noise, “that of my life become the life of this garden as it rode the earth of deeps and wildernesses. Yes, there were times when I forgot not only who I was, but that I was, forgot to be.”

>>17197247
haha
who else

>>17200036
Trifles are unironically masterfully written. So is Normance.

>>17197553
This prose is shit
>but it's Joyce!
Like I said, this prose is shit.

>all these verbose, purple flowery paragraphs
None of you are ever gonna make it

>>17200882
Why?

Saramago, in Portuguese. I would oftentimes cry reading his books due to the beauty and poeticism of his writing. Not sure if the translations are able to capture that

>>17200986
Good prose should be clear and simple. Not Hemingway simple, but should be a combination of words and phrases that accurately describe things in a precise and meaningful way. Tolstoy is the best example of this. Dostoevsky too when he's describing the psychology of his characters. Joyce's prose sounds like a bunch of strung up nonsense, as if he wasn't striving to mean or represent anything but to use up as many different words as possible.

>>17199056
You're an imbecile. He has prose sections, as the anon specified.

>>17201047
Haha, Russian realism is utter midbrow trash. Have fun reading 800 pages of nobles having arguments devoid of any linguistic or poetic elegance, my man.

>>17201047
>Joyce's prose sounds like a bunch of strung up nonsense, as if he wasn't striving to mean or represent anything but to use up as many different words as possible.
I feel he recognised this though, isn't that basically what Finnegans Wake is?

"There’s no beauty in fucking a head, though there may be some romance to be found, somewhere between fingers digging through clumped strands of hair towards roots, plug-like and littered with flakes of skin, plates of dried blood, pushing it deeper until it hits the back of the throat, big for his age, hits that bend, that drop, forcing the tip down, pressing it into an area that once would’ve provoked life in the most primal of ways by making her, it gag and the throat convulse around this awfully familiar alien intrusion, giving it exactly what it wants, jerking, grasping, clasping it in wetness and growing the engorgement further, at least a living throat would, a living being would, but not a head become bust decorated by a beaded red curtain, become an empty eyed stump, mouth agape, silent voice of a wind that does not matter to the pumping motion, the mechanical back and forth of a ten-year-old boy frothing at the lips, gritting childish curses, a “fudge”, a “barnacles” and a “balderdash” infused with mindless hate, while fidgeting with the head’s eyelids, fingerpicking at them to expose that which is underneath, that which only slumbers there, he imagines, that which, as some remnant of a being in the back of the boys head hopes, could help make sense of why he cannot stop ramming his, for such a young young boy, huge cock, into his, as of no more than ten minutes, late mothers face."

>>17201047
Thank goodness you're here to bestow everyone with the facts on what makes good prose. What would we do without you, champ.

>>17201151
de Sade?

>>17197754
If we define purple prose as
>In literary criticism, purple prose is prose text that is so extravagant, ornate, or flowery as to break the flow and draw excessive attention to itself.
I don't think Ulysses meets this definition. It is arguably overlong for its "meaning", the basic narrative content, but that's not really due to an abundance of "flowery" language, adjective saturation, etc. It's due to the minute detail the days events (and that these events include every little thought of the narrators at times) are summarized in, and the obscure way that detail is exposed in prose, which again is not particularly adjective heavy in my recollection.

>>17199099
That's not prose you dumb fuck

>>17201151
>>17201179
>No results found for "There's no beauty in fucking a head"
bros...

>>17201358
jokes aside that anon isn't a bad writer (if it is his)

>>17201162
sed to harry.

they could see her gaudy drapeary cocked to the right. bfg
he could hear the sirens going off as the kush met his balls. the full 20 under the cap.

a800 year old swan mixed with the flesh of a pheshant

>>17201365
thanks, anon. not a native speaker so means a lot. also ye, ya caught me red-handed, hehe.

>>17201047
>using translated russian as an example of prose

>>17197553
baaased

>>17201552
How the fuck would you know that?

PROUST

>>17197610
>calling one of the best passages from Ulysses reddit-tier purple prose
You just fucked up big time, anon

>>17202053
based

>>17197247
>most beautiful prose
>post a work that is necessarily read in translation

>>17197232
Rene guenon

>>17199056
>the prose sections in [otherwise non-prose work]
based imbecile

>>17202053
Moncrieff's translation into English has been called one of the best translations in existence and a monumental work in it's own right, so even English speakers can somewhat agree with this

>My great blue bedroom, the air so quiet, scarce a cloud. In peace and silence. I could have stayed up there for always only. It's something fails us. First we feel. Then we fall. And let her rain now if she likes. Gently or strongly as she likes. Anyway let her rain for my time is come. I done me best when I was let. Thinking always if I go all goes. A hundred cares, a tithe of troubles and is there one who understands me? One in a thousand of years of the nights? All me life I have been lived among them but now they are becoming lothed to me. And I am lothing their little warm tricks. And lothing their mean cosy turns. And all the
greedy gushes out through their small souls. And all the lazy leaks down over their brash bodies. How small it's all! And me letting on to meself always. And lilting on all the time. I thought you were all glittering with the noblest of carriage. You're only a bumpkin. I thought you the great in all things, in guilt and in
glory. You're but a puny. Home! My people were not their sort out beyond there so far as I can. For all the bold and bad and bleary they are blamed, the seahags. No! Nor for all our wild dances in all their wild din. I can seen meself among them, allaniuvia pulchrabelled. How she was handsome, the wild Amazia,
when she would seize to my other breast! And what is she weird, haughty Niluna, that she will snatch from my ownest hair! For 'tis they are the stormies. Ho hang! Hang ho! And the clash of our cries till we spring to be free. Auravoles, they says, never heed of your name! But I'm loothing them that's here and all I lothe. Loonely in me loneness. For all their faults. I am passing out. O bitter ending! I'll slip away before they're up. They'll never see. Nor know. Nor miss me. And it's old and old it's sad and old it's sad and weary I go back to you, my cold father, my cold mad father, my cold mad feary father, till the near sight of the mere size of him, the moyles and moyles of it, moananoa ning, makes me seasilt saltsick and I rush, my only, into your arms.

Best passage in English lit coming through

>>17202143
is this Finnegans Wake?

>>17202167
Yeah, it's from the last couple pages

>>17197610
>>17197620
>>17197630
>>17197715
>>17197754
>>17200882
>>17201047

>>17202205
>

>>17197754
>he got filtered by Joyce
A shame, to be sure

>>17202077
Even the translation blows everything else away.

>>17197607
STOP JESUS

>>17197610
I am convinced that people who say 'purple prose' simply don't like literature. Even when someone fucks it up I kind of like it

>>17197232
The Anatomy of Melancholy

>>17197247
how hard is to read this? I'm picking up french mostly for literature
>spanish as native language

>>17197232
Cicero, Tolstoy, Cervantes.

>We'll make the tyrants feel the sting
>O' those that they would throttle;
>They needn't say the fault is ours
>If blood should stain the wattle!"

Behold the most beautiful thing you'll ever read.

>>17197232
Non translated classics of fiction

>>17204891
you haven't read any of these in the original

kjv bible
old testament hebrew is pretty mindblowing too

>>17197349
The translation by Pusey always brings me close to tears. A section on adultery.
>"Viewing a picture, where the tale was drawn,
Of Jove's descending in a golden shower
To Danae's lap a woman to beguile."
And then mark how he excites himself to lust as by celestial
authority: -
"And what God? Great Jove,
Who shakes heaven's highest temples with his thunder,
And I, poor mortal man, not do the same!
I did it, and with all my heart I did it."

>>17205994
My disappointment is immeasurable

>>17206583
based beyond belief

>>17197336
bugman

>>17197678
Nabokov makes Joyce a fucking hack.

>>17197843
the absolute state of this shitty board

>>17197678
There can hardly be anyone more pseud, tryhard or pretentious than joyce, You little illiterate nigger.

>>17206664
>>17206670
t.pedo niggers
>"Nabokov makes Joyce look like a hack"
Literally a third rate Joyce imitator. He knew it himself

>>17206670
You, my good sir, are the illiterate faggot here.

>>17206662
Who do you like bitch?

>>17206670
>

>>17206662
Let me guess, you like Nabokov? Don't you? Retard.

>>17202077
>translations can't have good prose

>>17197232
most beautiful prose: Proust
best style: Céline
best prose: Flaubert

>>17201047
>Good prose should be clear and simple.

You're right and wrong. Everything should be as clear and simple as possible, but there are some effects that can only be achieved by piling vocabulary and clauses atop one another, and when that's done by a good writer it works.

I do agree a thread like this tends to get swamped by purple prose, so as a corrective, let's have some that's beautiful yet simple.

Here's half-a-dozen random examples that come immediately to mind. And not a semi-colon to be found:

---

Then I saw Caddy, with flowers in her hair, and a long veil like shining wind. Caddy Caddy
[FAULKER]

---

It isn't often that Aunt Dahlia lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.
[WODEHOUSE]

---

Now her hands are empty, not a ring or a bracelet, bare as God made them, and I wonder where the money's coming from. Still with that prim look she lifts a folded dollar bill out of the hollow at the centre of her nubbled pink top. The jar went heavy in my hand.
[UPDIKE]

---

Outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that harbor yet a few last wolves.
[MCCARTHY]

---

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock.
[NABOKOV]

---

It seemed to me for an instant that there was no sound in the bar, that the sharpies had stopped sharping and the drunk on the stool stopped burbling away and it was just like after the conductor taps on his music stand and raises his arms and holds them poised.
[CHANDLER]

---

>>17206751
This.

>>17197232
mine retard

>>17202077
>he cant read in at least english, french, german, russian and japanese

>>17206372
I haven't read Tolstoy in the original. I can read Latin and Spanish.

The simplest prose is the cleanest prose and thus the most appreciable prose. I fucking hate when a story gets too convoluted. Why would you harm your own storytelling flow? I don't understand. Isn't storytelling the purpose of a book? Are you writing this because you sincerely believe that someone will appreciate reading your mess and call it 'art'? What's the point of writing a book that no one except (You) will ever read?

Oh, you see and I see insideth -most of insideness and underthneanesstly- but who'll see, free of though, thought and thoughness of thinking about and above the fatal condition, of arrogance, of mediocrity -and all mediocriness of mediocremost- and the mediocrity that ultimate gift of intelectual intelectual intelectualism robs yourself and meself or the upmost God recognition of his eternal and mernal and doernal gift.

>>17197232
>caring about beautiful prose
the best prose is that which you do not notice at all either for its eloquence or awkwardness.

>>17197553
dude the moon lmao

>>17208541
Kek I came to post the same exact thing.

>>17208541
where's this from?

>>17208728

>>17207943
>>17207980

>>17208740
oh, kek. I thought it was The Wake at first