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/lit/ - Literature

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14673097 No.14673097 [Reply] [Original]

Who got the best prose in your opinion?

>> No.14673114

Henry James, James Joyce are good.
Nietzsche and Kleist.

>> No.14673201

>>14673097
Flaubert has no flaw but he doesn’t take as many risks

I think Melville and Joyce have the best prose

>> No.14673371 [DELETED] 

>>14673201
You're right I've read Flaubert in french and I consider him to be the best in the french language but Melville and Joyce are marvelous to read in english, need to try Henry James though

>> No.14673431

>>14673201
You're right Melville is the best, reading about his unrecognized genius was disgustingly heartbreaking

>> No.14674885

>>14673097
In English I like Kipling and Ruskin.

>> No.14674896

>>14673114
Joyce had the best prose when he wanted to
The prose in Dubliners and Portrait are average, and only a few sections in Ulysses even utilize coherent prose.
I hardly even consider Joyce a prose writer

>> No.14674909

>>14674896
I agree. He was more of a prose-poet hybrid.

>> No.14674923
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14674923

>> No.14674972

>>14674923
Can vouch, beautiful book. Aside from the retelling of Cupid and Psyche general /lit/ will hate it , though. That conclusion, however- Marius fading out of consciousness and being mistaken entirely by those around him's priceless.

>> No.14674977

>>14673097
Nabokov

>> No.14674999
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14674999

>>14674923
B A S E D

I love this one. One of the first novels written 2000 years ago in an ambitious poetic style and goes hand in hand with that one.

>> No.14675068
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14675068

Im kinda new to reading, can some one explain translations to me? does the prose get lost when reading joyce in german or proust in english? or can you appreciate it as well. cant get to wrap my head around that.

>> No.14675080
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14675080

>> No.14675131

>>14675068
Depends on the writer/book. Some books are about wordplay, regional vernacular, and the “melody” of the words themselves; others, however, are about ideas, metaphors, and the plot. The greatest books are, of course, a mixture of the two, but while the former - Finnegans Wake, for example - cannot be translated well, the latter - a la Dostoyevsky - can more or less be brought into another language. It really depends on the individual author, but one should check about a writer’s style when concerned about things being lost in translation.

>> No.14675156

>>14675068
Depends. Nietzsche does just fine in English, whereas Freud suffers, for instance. Going the other way the Schegel brothers' Shakespeare is fantastic, as is Paul Celan's work on Emily Dickinson, but auf Deutsch I've never encountered an adequate Charles Dickens.
t. in before pseud Dickens bashing

>> No.14675181

It depends on the language (anyone suggesting shit they read in translation should kill themselves) and personal opinion. Most /lit/tards will suggest entry-level literary fiction.

>> No.14675190

Pushkin

>> No.14675263

>>14675181
You can suggest a translation but only to rate the translator's prose.

>>14673097
In French, among those I've read, Flaubert, Stendhal, Hugo, Giono, Pascal, and I think Baudelaire in his essays. I also remember being very impressed by an extract of Brasillach Diary of and Occupied Man, dunno if that count. And I really like the prose in Villiers de l'Isle Adam's The Future Eve but I'm not sure I'd put it on par with the others. Francis Ponge poetic prose is also intringuing and general well-done as are, similarly puzzling but with other concerns, the prose poems of Lafforgue's Legendary Moralities.

In English, probably Joyce and Evelyn Waugh, I haven't read that many great novelist or short story writers in the original.

If I had to narrow id down I'd say Flaubert for a perfectly mastered style that doesn't draw attention to itself, Hugo for some epic surges of descriptions that are as exhilarating as a Shakespeare monologue or a Joyce's ramblings in his best pages, or Giono for his highly surprising style, inspired from the oral speech of his home region, which is at worse corny and repetitive but at best really enchanting.
Stendhal would also deserve a spot but I'd rather keep a less obvious choice there.