What are the most Schopenhauerian works of literary fiction? I don't mean "depressing" or "miserable" (that's just a caricature of pessimism), but works that actually reflect Schopenhauer's philosophy:>lucid pessimism>detachment from illusions>moments of transcendence through art (music) or nature>compassion as the highest moral gestureWhich novels or stories would you put in most of these categories?
La Creatividad...
>>24726068Beckett, Thomas Bernhard, Andrei Platonov.
Houellebecq is the most self-consciously Schopenhauerian. Proust probably has the most interesting reinterpretation of Schopenhauer I've every read, focusing much more on aesthetics and de-emphasizing the pessimism to an extent.
>>24726068>>>moments of transcendence through art (music) or natureSwann’s way/ Vinteuil sonata obviously
>>24726068El Criticon, his favorite novel. Too bad monolingual anglos only have a translation made in 1681.
>>24726170I'm not a monolingual anglo but I don't speak Spanish. Is the English translation good enough?
>>24726228It seems intelligible enough but at a heavy price.
>>24726095>>24726124Very interesting. I'd like to hear more. What about the sonata is Schopenhauerian?Very much agree with the Houellebecq comparison!I would add Thomas Hardy.
>>24726095>>24726124>ProustDamn it, I've already read that one and it was the greatest novel I've ever read. Makes perfect sense now, since I'm attracted to Schopenhauer's ideas.
>>24726068I’m surprised no one’s said Tolstoy. Harold Bloom (absurdly but insightfully) said Anna Karenina was such a pure distillation of Schopenhauer that it rendered World as Will and Idea redundant. They also strike me as similar personalities. Wagner was most taken up with Schopenhauer, really really enthusiastic about it, but he was a very different person by my judgement.
>>24726068Obvious answer is Wagner. The Ring Cycle, in its gigantic mythos which was intended to include every element of nature, sets forth the tragic progress of select individuals towards enlightenment and renunciation. Even though it was written before Wagner had read Schopenhauer, like Wagner's other early works it is thoroughly Schopenhauerian in spirit. Meistersinger too is concerned with renunciation, but in the much smaller world of conservative bourgeois society, with the added reflections on art and the irrationality of human life. It is the most overtly Schopenhauerian of Wagner's works. Tristan und Isolde takes Schopenhauer's philosophy and turns it on its head with the Tantric idea of liberation through eros. Was very important in allowing Nietzsche to depart from orthodox Schopenhauerian aesthetics in The Birth of Tragedy and later move away from his philosophy entirely. Parsifal is the grand drama of religious asceticism and compassion. It goes without saying that these are not only great works of literature, but also musical compositions of the very highest worth.>As we return home through the palace gardens, he says: “It does not say much for Schopenhauer that he did not pay more attention to my Ring des Nibelungen. I know no other work in which the breaking of a will (and what a will, which delighted in the creation of a world!) is shown as being accomplished through the individual strength of a proud nature without the intervention of a higher grace, as it is in Wotan. Almost obliterated by the separation from Brunnhilde, this will rears up once again, bursts into flame in the meeting with Siegfried, flickers in the dispatching of Waltraute, until, we see it entirely extinguished at the end in Valhalla.” At supper he returns to this and says: “I am convinced Sch. would have been annoyed that I discovered this before I knew about his philosophy—I, a political refugee, the indefensibility of whose theories had been proved by his disciple Kossak on the basis of his philosophy, since my music is supposed to have no melody. But it was not very nice. It’s the way Goethe treated Kleist, whom he should have acclaimed, as Schumann acclaimed Brahms—but that only seems to happen among donkeys.”
>>24727399Not what I'm looking for even if I didn't already listen to Wagner, anon. I'm well-versed in classical music. The Ring and Tristan are transcendental, but I'm yet to listen to Parsifal. Anyway, I'm looking for literary fiction, not opera/music drama.
>>24727409Wagner's dramas are just as much literature as music. Indeed, there's no reason why many libretti shouldn't be considered literature, but especially in the case of Wagner. I know of no other poetry that so brilliantly and beautifully expresses the moment of enlightenment than the unused Schopenhauerian ending to the Ring:>Trauernder Liebe>tiefstes Leiden>schloß die Augen mir auf:>enden sah ich die Welt. –
>>24727427Wagner intended it to be a total work of art, which means that even though his libretti are literature on their own, they are meant to be staged and sung with music. Like I said, not what I'm looking for. In any case, I'm already quite familiar with Wagner.
>>24727297I don't think he knows what he's really talking about
'the joker' by thomas mann, I'd
>>24727473You'd what???
>>24727463You can start the thread but you don't own it, nigga
>>24727466It's these kind of dismissive and empty comments that irritate me most about people here, and why I will soon leave /lit/ for good. It's well established that Tolstoy was totally taken up with Schopenhauer, hailing him as the greatest genius. Schopenhauer and Tolstoy's sexuality were both largely of a gross nature. Anna Karenina depicts the most sublime, inexorable pessimism imaginable.
>>24727531>said Anna Karenina was such a pure distillation of Schopenhauer that it rendered World as Will and Idea redundantI think that's what anon referred to.
>>24727540Fuck off. You are all gay fops, only kept alive by little quantum of vanity.
