/lit/ - Literature

>>18092942

>>18092942
Maybe a bit too dark and late but why not, seems to convey a similar spirit

I know what feeling you're describing, but unfortunately, I dont read books.

>>18092956
Well you would do well recommending me seperated works if you knew some :^)

>>18092942
It seems like "Over the garden wall" portraits this really well, the feeling of change as the unknown entity combined with desire of nostalgia and melancholia

>>18092942
Bömp et.

>>18092942
Ligotti. But his fiction is more degenerative mixed with mystique. Slavic horror will be up your alley as well.

>>18092942
Elizabeth Jolley's Lovesong quite a few times

>>18092942
the legend of sleepy hollow for a short story

>>18092942
The Willows, Algernon Blackwood

>>18092942
Georg Trakl

>>18094063
>>18094002
>>18093992

Noted, I have not heard of Ligotti and Jolley before. I have looked more into 18th to 19th century writings, where the movements started out with elements of romanticism (especially dark romanticism) and would fade into gothic novels/early classic horror. My current ideas were the obvious ones:

> Brother Grimms
> Hans Christian Anderson
> Nathaniel Hawthorne
> Edgar Allan Poe
> Washington Irving

And of course selected works from other writers, part of the romanticism time. What I am missing though is some sentimentality in most works I looked into, the feeling of nostalgia and even "memento mori" thoughts, I should maybe stop looking into the "dark romanticism/gothic" movement and delve into something more pure if I want to find works with that emotion. But for the general setting those writers would still be fitting.

little, big

Thomas Ligotti

>>18092942
Faulkner

>>18092942
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

>>18092942
Maybe you should just learn how to properly view paintings if you're that interested in aesthetics.

>>18092942
Sehnsucht?

>>18094418
This. I think OP would like the art of Grimshaw

>>18095081

>>18094337
>Brother Grimms
McCarthy's outer dark. You are fine with it not being outright horror, aren't you?

>>18095081
Wow, I really love those paintings, thank you very much for the recommendation! I always believed the setting to be bound to nature (woods, trees, autumn with comming winter season will inevitably cause one to feel that way) but now that I took a quick research of his other paintings I definitely see those emotions mirrored in his works, I can't believe I haven't found those on my own. Although woods are a perfect setting, his paintings have equal taste and sentiment attached to them.
Sehnsucht is a plausible word to describe those feelings, for me personally it is Sehnsucht or longing of past times, hence nostalgia and inevitable melancholia that follows from these thought. Imagine a walk in the rain, through pic rel, maybe at late sunset. The last sunlight slowly fading into the dark and cold. Beautiful, yet sad in some way.

>>18093126
wrong board fag

>>18095594
I am still looking and collecting fitting literature, OTGW was merely an example I had in mind that reflected the emotions I want to have in those books. Pic rel might satisfy you more.

>>18092942
Almost all romanticists

I find Emily Brontë's nature poetry beatifully haunting.

>>18092942
Abrose Bierce. In particular "The Death of Halpin Frayser" and "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"

>>18095794
>Abrose Bierce.
Ambrose*

>>18094418
how?

>>18095589
I feel the same way but I don’t know anyone with the same sentiments. I wish we could be frens

very nice thread :)

>>18092942
>>18093992
>>18094396

Like these 2 posters said... Ligotti.

A lot of his writing carried imagery of autumn scenes.

People liken his prose to hacking through dense underbrush with a machete.

I just finished Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe. There were stories in there I liked, but it was easy to get lost reading his prose and have to go back and reread... cuz I’m a brainlet

>>18095589
>The last sunlight slowly fading into the dark and cold. Beautiful, yet sad in some way.

>>18092942
For me this feeling is about the contrast between light and dark. The light makes me feel safe. It's odd, I feel like even if something horrible were to happen in places like those it would be okay, beautiful even.

Some books that I haven't seen mentioned yet:
-Tolstoy sometimes makes a bright day seem melancholic and sentimental, and that feels somewhat similar to me.
- The White People by Arthur Machen
- Sometimes All the pretty horses by McCarthy feels kinda like a western version of this.
- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
- Plato's Phaedrus
- Rimbaud's Poetry sometimes.

I know I've read more, I just can't think of them at the moment.

A couple films you might want to check out:
- La Belle et la Bete by Cocteau
- Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

>>18096159
Memeing aside, this story was dripping with autumn/Halloween aesthetics. Very comfy.

>>18094403
Came to say this

>>18092942
Not only does Faulkner invoke that dying of the light, changing of the seasons feeling, he also vividly describes plant life settings extremely well and uses them to add to the feeling of the novel. Not just to create a visual setting, but to make you feel that heavy air, the musty decay of life in your soul. It might be a little heavier than what you were going for, maybe you wanted a more cool, calm feeling. Faulkner is more August through October than October through December, if that makes sense. But I think Faulkner at least captures an aspect of what you're looking for very well

October Country by Ray Bradbury

>>18094063
Also The Man Whom the Trees Loved by Blackwood

>>18096397
Another Arthur Machen recc

Harvest Home

Mickelsson's Ghosts

>>18096397
just curious about why you think phaedrus fits in here, i imagined it to be clear and sunny and found it quite relaxing

>>18095976
anons, i know exactly what you're talking about and i have an innate inclination to those moods too. going to sleep, hope the thread doesnt die by morning

not very related to op pic but very in tune with yours:
Evenings on farm near Dikanka by Gogol. comfy ukrainian folk surrealism

>>18096159
Came here to post this.

this thread is too infp

>>18097895
yeah people are actually talking about books

Walter Pater

All of Arthur Machen. That guy couldn't get through writing a story without describing "some secret woods".

>>18097735
I included it for a similar reason that I included Tolstoy. Despite it being set in broad daylight, the topics discussed (love, madness, mystery, secrecy, eroticism, divinity, etc.) makes it feel stranger the more that you read it. The fact that it is presented in such a clear, unmediated manner, and yet they discuss the most mysterious of subjects, should make you suspicious. As I said in my previous post, to me the feeling is about contrast, and there is a lot hidden in the shadows of the Phaedrus.

>>18092942
I know what you mean anon this vibe is something I crave as well.

I got it quite a bit from Gene Wolfe’s Wizard Knight books but not the whole time.

Also the Hidden Life of Trees was a great book but not spot in the vibe you’re looking for.

I will say Over the Garden Wall gave me these vibes a ton and I’ve since been looking for literature that matches this feeling.

>>18096397
I am glad I started this thread and got so many recommendations. There is something fascinating about those feelings, it seems like everyone has their own special kind of sentiment associated with those pictures, yet noone can deny not feeling the perspective of others at least partialy. Some (including me) might claim that going out into gloomy woods would elicit slight fear or atleast alertness, especially when it is about to turn dark, and others would tell you how soothing and calm it is, which I could not deny either. It is like standing on a big cliff at night, moon is shining bright and lit and the waves are curling beneath you. Seeing the vast fields of darkness in front of me going beyond the horizon will make me uneasy of the unknown but there is also something relaxing in it, as if I wanted to submit to all those feelings. I think I feel as you described it, in those moments I just blend everything out, as if time stopped, and focus on those unknown sentiments that constrict me and give me trouble to share with you a definite explaination. I will focus on the now, yet for some reason long for past times. Fear the unknown in those settings, yet desire it. I will neither feel sad nor happy, as if I stood at someones grave at some outcast place, that lived long ago and has been forgotten over the time or as if I had to say goodbye, happy to remember the good times but feeling sad that a chapter ends, maybe for eternity. I must admit how foolish it was to assume that only dimly lit woods could elicit such feelings and I have also highly underestimated how diffuse and unquantifiable those are in terms of categories, because they span over such a broad range of emotions and while everyone feels differently, we do somehow share this common essence that I struggle so much to bring into words.

>>18093126
You should check out Taylor Swift's Safe and Sound and Nomadland.

As for books who reads them for the aesthetic?

>>18092942
Fuck books.
Go to those places.

>>18100464
Sorry anon, we are too incapable in expressing ourselves tmo tell you what we want to feel. We can only use pictures and related media, it’s frustrating

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
’Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:—
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,’ he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

I’m an artist but I’ve just realized I know of very few pictures that convey this feeling of sehnsucht. There’s Grimshaw, John Bauer, Cotman, and the Ancients (small artistic movement influenced by Blake). The Forest Scene with Saint George Fighting the Dragon by Altdorfer. Sometimes the feeling comes upon me, a desire for something but it’s so ‘faraway’ that you can barely know the fringes of it. Like something you love but have almost forgotten. It’s sweetly melancholic, yes, and it also has an association of in-between-things (evening, twilight, fleeting moments). In art - golden ochre, muted primaries, moss green colors, and compositions that have a strong dark grounding element.

https://youtu.be/T5oVgqIbOqw

it may not be nature-oriented enough for what you seek (he hated nature), but I seem to detect something of this feel in baudelaire's chant d'automne (autumn song)
>I love the greenish light of your long eyes,
>Sweet beauty, but today all to me is bitter;
>Nothing, neither your love, your boudoir, nor your hearth
>Is worth as much as the sunlight on the sea.

>Yet, love me, tender heart! be a mother,
>Even to an ingrate, even to a scapegrace;
>Mistress or sister, be the fleeting sweetness
>Of a gorgeous autumn or of a setting sun.
https://fleursdumal.org/poem/208 (with english translations)

I think some others of his, too, but I can't remember their names now

good thread btw; will check out the other recommendations in a sec

>>18100816
Anon, I can fully relate. I have been wandering through such places and crave for those feelings. I enjoy rain, it is a rather rare occurrence and further drives the melancholia. A beautiful musical work that perfectly reflects my feelings is Schuberts, I have been listening to him often during my walks.

https://youtu.be/dgkDhlhwrME

>>18100873
This is beautiful anon, I’m surprised I haven’t heard this piece before

>>18100892
It is possibly the best work that describes my mood when trying to explain it. Another one that is not an old piece but still hits me everytime I hear it is the music from Over the Garden Wall, especially the Intro. I know I have mentioned it before, and yes it is not my intention to derail this thread into something not related to literature, yet I feel like I have to mention it here because it just captures the feeling really well. Pic rel is an artwork from the show. It is - again - this incapability to say with certain that those works (be it art, music or literature) are sad or happy, they are both and this fact makes them so beautiful. You can hear it in both works, how the mood oscillates back and forth. My intention was to find literature that inhibit those feelings, since they are so prevalent in art/music.

https://youtu.be/bFQAcogDYvs

Bump

>>18096159
>>18096527
>>18097889
die shill

>>18092942
There was nothing to alarm him at first entry. Twigs crackled under his feet, logs
tripped him, funguses on stumps resembled caricatures, and startled him for the
moment by their likeness to something familiar and far away; but that was all fun, and
exciting. It led him on, and he penetrated to where the light was less, and trees
crouched nearer and nearer, and holes made ugly mouths at him on either side.
Everything was very still now. The dusk advanced on him steadily, rapidly, gathering
in behind and before; and the light seemed to be draining away like flood-water.
Then the faces began.

The primary flavor notes are mystery, melancholic dark nature and non-humanity, you’re probably most interested in the darkness and mystery, some portions of Swinburne and poe will do it as will some of Blake, the song harvest dawn would be rather nice, some of the art of Austin Osman spare and of bresdin would do you well, pic related would be one example. Here’s A poem I wrote a long while ago.

1. Surrounded by willows, spirits hiding with blades
2. Myriads of twigs twisting, contorting malefic braids
3. the Ancient moon and roaring river, million hands and golden forms
4. formless shapes surround me, Hamartic willow Shades

>>18100622
very nice

>>18101963
I knew the Frater would appear in this thread kek

>>18101963
That’s enchanting. How do you write your poems - do you get a flash of inspiration or is it a more labored process?

>>18103747
Depends, most of them are very much labored more or less beginning from the end (what feeling do I want, what ideas, how many syllables, what would be correspondent imagery, then finally begin writing.) though sometimes you just get lines that you desire to write. The above poem was my attempt at condensing the feeling that blackwood’s “Willows” story (at around 23? Pages) made me feel, to capture the aesthetic.

The Fall of the House of Usher

Parts of Gide's The Immoralist

>>18104748
was just about to rec this. one of my favs from poe.