/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15869010]

>The fact that so many books still name Shakespeare as "the greatest or most significant or most influential" English poet ever only tells you how far English literature still is from becoming a serious art.
Was he right?

[Anonymous No.15869024]

>greatest
>most significant
subjective, debatable

>most influential
objective, factual

[Anonymous No.15869025]

Absolutely

[Anonymous No.15869036]

>>15869024
>quality is subjective

[Anonymous No.15869045]

>>15869010
Yeah. Tolstoy is the greatest and most influential writer.

[Anonymous No.15869050]

>>15869045
weird way to spell Dostojesvekski

[Anonymous No.15869120]

>>15869050
Tolstoy is definitely more influential than Dostoyevsky

[Anonymous No.15869129]

newfags

[Anonymous No.15869165]

>>15869129
cant blame them for not being up to date with /mu/ faggotry

[Anonymous No.15869200]

>>15869010
>By the time Tolstoy finished What Is Art? some eight or nine years after his “religious conversion” in 1880, he had developed a deep disdain for the artistic “canons” of the time. He disliked the works of the Greek tragedians, Dante, Tasso, Milton, Shakespeare, almost all the works of Goethe, Zola and Ibsen.
>In music, Tolstoy particularly disliked the later works of Beethoven – feeling that the musician, having gone deaf, was creating patterns devoid of feeling. He devotes a couple of pages to dissing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, including this indignant and regretful passage:
>“…not only do I not see how the feelings transmitted by this work could unite people not specially trained to submit themselves to its complex hypnotism, but I am unable to imagine to myself a crowd of normal people who could understand anything of this long, confused, and artificial production, except short snatches which are lost in a sea of what is incomprehensible. And therefore, whether I like it or not, I am compelled to conclude that this work belongs to the rank of bad art.”
>He also greatly disliked the music of Wagner:
>“It is the same when listening to an opera of Wagner’s. Sit in the dark for four days in company with people who are not quite normal, and, through the auditory nerves, subject your brain to the strongest action of the sounds best adapted to excite it, and you will no doubt be reduced to an abnormal condition and be enchanted by absurdities.

He sure had an artists eccentricity.

[Anonymous No.15869215]

The author's close friend Ivan Bunin, winner of the Nobel prize in literature in 1933, recalls in the new biography how Chekhov would tell him about Tolstoy: "I admire him greatly. What I admire the most in him is that he despises us all; all writers. Perhaps a more accurate description is that he treats us, other writers, as completely empty space. You could argue that from time to time, he praises Maupassant, or Kuprin, or Semenov, or myself. But why does he praise us? It is simple: it's because he looks at us as if we were children. Our short stories, or even our novels, all are child's play in comparison with his works. However, Shakespeare … For him, the reason is different. Shakespeare irritates him because he is a grown-up writer, and does not write in the way that Tolstoy does."

[Anonymous No.15869233]

>>15869215
Well put.

[Anonymous No.15869273]

>>15869010
>he hypocritical Russian who cannot speak English
>thinks his opinions on English literature matter
These people are great at laying themselves with pretention, not so much at writing or being skilled

[Anonymous No.15869302]

>>15869273
I'm pretty sure he could speak English, I believe he even said he specifically taught himself better to understand Shakespeare. Didn't he speak like 20 or 40 languages or something? Or at least have knowledge of them wherein he would be able to speak them after a repeated short study.

[Anonymous No.15869308]

>pretentious newfags not understanding the meme calling other people stupid
holy shite

[Anonymous No.15869315]

>>15869302
I don’t know, I was just shitposting. I would hope he could speak English being such a decadent intelligesta

[Anonymous No.15869336]

>>15869215
>he is a grown-up writer, and does not write in the way that Tolstoy does
What does that even means?

[Anonymous No.15869341]

>>15869200
>>15869215
A story has never made me as uncomfortable as The Death of Ivan Ilyich; it took me back to times of fear for being ill.

What does 'grown up' in this respect mean? It seems like Tolstoy's appreciation of art was an appreciation of how consistently it could elicit specific feelings, and while there is clearly a distinction to be drawn, it sounds like he would've thought of propaganda as art. Unless that's about twisting rationale, rather than feelings, but they feel inexorable to me.

[Anonymous No.15869368]

>>15869315
>decadent intelligesta
It's okay, but why do you say this? I don't know too much about Tolstoy's personal life.

>>15869341
>A story has never made me as uncomfortable as The Death of Ivan Ilyich; it took me back to times of fear for being ill.
Thinking of reading it, I gather it's good?

[Anonymous No.15869373]

>>15869165
Up to date? This shit is at least 10 years old.

[Anonymous No.15869409]

>>15869368
>Thinking of reading it, I gather it's good?
I was ill for years with undiagnosed illnesses, and as I was going downhill, I began to reconcile the possibility of death. It's really harrowing, because it feels like people blame you for being ill, like you're crazy for insisting it's more than psychosomatic, and at the same time, inadequate because nobody believes you're not as fit or able as others. It's a very, very lonely feeling. It's hard to reconcile with your family seeming to despise you as you grow weaker.

Ivan faces a similar sort of circumstance. It captured feelings I wasn't sure anyone else, really knew of; they felt like the sort of feelings that only dead men should know.

It likely resonated with me heavily due to my own circumstances, hence why it made me so uncomfortable. For you? Who knows. Going into it, it might be easy to question the validity of his knowledge: how would Tolstoy know the experiences of those approaching death? The untold and embarrassing? Perhaps my anecdote will give it that tint of reality.

[Anonymous No.15869447]

>>15869341
>>15869409
The Death of Ivan Ilyich didn't evoke any strong feelings in me. But I have never been terminally ill, so I can imagine that having lived such an ordeal makes it a lot easier to connect with the book.

[Anonymous No.15869451]

>>15869336
Shakespeare was a genius, like Tolstoy. But his writings cristalized another perspective on art and that bothered Tolstoy.

[Anonymous No.15869471]

>>15869368
>why do you say this?
Well, aside from my personal philosophy (in which every participant of civilization is decadent), he owned lots of land, he serfs, and had enough to write for a living (I think he had enough money that he didn’t have to do anything... he was an aristocrat after all)

[Anonymous No.15869475]

>>15869447
>The Death of Ivan Ilyich didn't evoke any strong feelings in me. But I have never been terminally ill, so I can imagine that having lived such an ordeal makes it a lot easier to connect with the book.
Yes, I figured that might be the case; as I said, they seem to be feelings that perhaps only dead men should know.

[Anonymous No.15869482]

>>15869471
*he had serfs
Might as well add that I have only superficial knowledge of him

[Anonymous No.15869738]

>>15869482
you can tell. he gave away all his serfs, he tried to give away everything he had. he wanted to sign away the copyright to all his works. he was crazy but he was principled and a good man

[Anonymous No.15869757]

>tfw read Tolstoy and Chekhov in Swedish
>Was illuminated by it and thought it was the best literature had to offer
>Learned Russian over a period of 7 years

Now I speak russian and having read them in their original language FUCKING SUCKS, they're so garbage. Russian needs to be abolished its a barbaric language that shouldnt exist

[Anonymous No.15869782]

>>15869010
Yes ! It is well known that anglos are subhumans and their writer are excessively overrated.
Shakespeare < Racine
Austen < Madame de Sévigné
Wilde < Baudelaire
Orwell < Raspail
Dahl < Saint-Exupéry
Dickens < Balzac
Joyce < Proust
de Quincey < any fucking junkie
Eliot < Saint-John Perse
Defoe < Le Clezio
Milton < Le Tasse
Scott < Hugo
Swift < Rabelais
anglo Beckett < French Beckett
And this is without even mentioning the German, the Russian or the Italian. Funnily enough, for once the Americans are alright: Melville, Poe, Faulkner, Whitman or Thoreau are masters of their crafts.

[Anonymous No.15869808]

is that the Scaruffi thing or am i having a brain fart. why is no one mentioning it.

[Anonymous No.15869956]

>>15869808
This board is fucking dead

[Anonymous No.15870139]

>>15869782
Ah yes, the seething Frenchman, always a pleasure to laugh at the depths to which your anti-Anglo sentiment and intellectual dishonesty can reach

[Anonymous No.15870153]

>>15869782
>Thoreau
His prose is everything that's wrong with anglos

[Anonymous No.15870155]

>>15869782
>anglo Beckett < French Beckett
Kek

[Anonymous No.15870177]

>>15869010
what an absolute retard

[Anonymous No.15870198]

>>15869200
>dislikes Wagner
opinion discarded

[Anonymous No.15870235]

>>15869782
Based and PefidiousAlbionpilled

[Anonymous No.15870283]

>>15869409
>It likely resonated with me heavily due to my own circumstances, hence why it made me so uncomfortable. For you? Who knows. Going into it, it might be easy to question the validity of his knowledge: how would Tolstoy know the experiences of those approaching death? The untold and embarrassing? Perhaps my anecdote will give it that tint of reality.
I have had, similar fears in my own life. Though undoubtedly small and only few a few days or week in comparison to your suffering. Where I also reconciled the extreme likelihood of death, but somehow it gave me a depth of knowledge, creative bursting, and wisdom of heart; a general goodness, which I must focus on again.

Thank you for this anon, I will read it the next book order.

[Anonymous No.15870301]

>>15869757
I feel sorry for you anon, are you sure it's just not your lack of a familiarity with the language? It's prime impulse, the instinctual familiarity to rest into the language; even the race(which produced it), and all that?

[Anonymous No.15870306]

>>15869010
What does this mongoloid even know about English literature, lol

[Anonymous No.15870310]

>>15869782
Do Australia next!

[Anonymous No.15870472]

yes.
English is not a language suitable for writing.
maybe at chaucers time it was but not for the past after.

[Anonymous No.15870479]

>>15869010
Shakespeare is shit, read Tolkien.

[Anonymous No.15870485]

>>15870479
>Tolkien
>better than Shakespeare

[Anonymous No.15870587]

>>15869024
Which tells you how far English literature still is from becoming a serious art.

[Anonymous No.15870619]

>>15870485
The prose and thematic elements of the Ainulindalë alone are god tier compared to anything Shakespeare diarrhead on.

[Anonymous No.15870678]

>>15869129
>>15869165
>>15869308
>>15869373
>>15869808
>>15869956
What the fuck are you turbofaggots trying to communicate? Spit it out.

[Anonymous No.15870886]

>>15869120
>Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had read Dostoevsky since his youth and considered the author as a great psychologist. His copy of The Brothers Karamazov reveals extensive highlights and notes in the margins that he made while reading the work, which have been studied and analyzed by multiple researchers.[29][30] Russian politician Vladimir Putin has described The Brothers Karamazov as one of his favorite books.

[Anonymous No.15870891]

>>15869200
>>He sure had an artists eccentricity.
Not really. That's the feeling most people have, he just put it into words.

[Anonymous No.15870911]

>>15870891
You think you know better than Wagner and Shakespeare?

[Anonymous No.15870930]

>>15870911
>feeling
Don't reply to me if your mind can't conceive of anything but authority and submission, insect.

[Anonymous No.15871063]

>>15870678
>nobody recognizes my /mu/ meme bawww
That's what's going on.

[Anonymous No.15871102]

>>15870930
>hey are you sure your calculation isn't just wrong and the computer right?
>Don't reply to me if your mind can't conceive of anything but authority and submission, insect.

[Anonymous No.15871291]

>>15870886
>Two Russians really like dostoyevsky

Your point is? Tolstoy is more influential especially in the 20th century

[Anonymous No.15871389]

My origins extend back to England, with the earliest recordings of my family names showing up in the Domesday Book in 1087, but I've never been to England, and grew up half the world away. Still, I am drawn to all forms of art that originate there, even before knowing that's where the art came from. I'm not surprised a Russian doesn't feel the same connection. It's fine.

[Anonymous No.15871578]

The fact that so many newfags still name /lit/ as "the greatest or most significant or most influential" board ever only tells you how far shitposting still is from becoming a serious art.