I got the 4 volume Pléiade set
I'm excited bros

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>reading novels
Yikes

>>24848122
You're in for a real treat, anon. Truly excellent stuff

>>24848106
After the Greeks, only Proust comes close to the supreme aesthetic experience. No other novelist matches him in style, and In Search of Lost Time is the most Schopenhauerian work I've ever read — in the best way possible.

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Pourquoi on parle Anglais alors que tous les gens ou presque qui vont commenter ce sujet sont Français ou le parlent? On dirait des colonisés.
Parlons Français.

HE'S A FAAAG

>>24848254
>In Search of Lost Time is the most Schopenhauerian work I've ever read — in the best way possible.
Care to elaborate on that? I love Schopie and I'm French, but I've never read Proust cause I thought it only was gay Dandy tales

>cause I thought it only was gay Dandy tales
dw about it just adopt the takes from a catty russian aristocrat spook living in burgerland

>>24848286
Because it's une heure du matin faggot

>>24848286
This is the only thing the French language is for: complaining

>>24848106
he is considered one of the greats but my hate for modern jews keeps me from diving in, I do enjoy kafka tho

>>24848286
this reads very much like an Anglo writing French… or you ran it through g translate

>>24848286
ta gueule bro

>>24848106
Bloom said some great things about him, but it's on the back log

>>24848304
Ooh you poor thing :(

>>24848304
he was another mulatto raging against his conflicting identities as a jew (from his ma) and a catholic (from his pa), hence the cathedral structure of his work with its subversive critiques

>>24848135
Having you considering shutting up because you're an insufferable faggot?

>>24848106
>t.

>>24848342
yeah it sucks being hateful, but every time I forget it the algorithm keeps making me hate them more, maybe when I become even more isolated from the internet I might become less prejudiced
>>24848347
Thats interesting, I always hear there is a lot of drama in being a mixed race individual growing up exactly because of what you said but I never knew jews felt like that since they always striked me as 100% sure they are jewish regardless what the father is

>>24848381
well if you actually read the work, you'd recognize that Bloch (the jew par excellence) was lampooned into the abyss, as was Le Baron de Charlus for being a depraved faggot

>>24848106
Honestly he's too long-winded. It took me a while to realize that economy of language is more impressive and appealing than sprawling verbosity. Wordsworth was able to say in a poem what Proust did in a million words if we're gonna be brutally honest and objective here. But Swann in Love is among the peaks of prose and I do highly respect Proust.

>>24848421
The portrayal of Bloch is not without sympathy and nuance.

the two most soi words to have been conjured in the 21st ce

>>24848381
You are correct in saying that in Jewish tradition, anyone born to a Jewish mother is considered part of the faith by birth, but in spite of this Proust was raised in his father's Catholicism. He still obviously would've been aware of his Jewish heritage, which certainly would have affected him living through the Dreyfus affair, which is pretty directly addressed at myriad points throughout the entirety of In Search of Lost Time

>>24848106
Corncob said he didn't like him nor understand him and according to this board Corncob is the greatest author who can do no wrong so he must suck and that's all there is to it and also have you read Blood Meridian and isn't the best villain of all time Judge Holden?

>>24848106
He's French, thats why. The Perdifious Gaul.

>>24848423
I could never understand verse. Shakespeare is one of the worst things I've read and I truly can't comprehend the praise he receives. Proust is easily my favorite author. Does this make me retarded, or what? How can I get into poetry?

>>24848924
Read the Iliad kr reread. Preferably a translation with great poetic beauty; for me it was Fitzgerald, but you might find Merrill or Lattimore more to your taste. Pope's rhymes may inhibit your ability to hear the internal rhythm of the verse, so I'd avoid him.
The Iliad's sheer volume, combined with its seemingly repetitive nature (death after death after death) will force you to confront the real driving force of the narrative - the language. Focus on trying to feel the rhythm, the groove, read it to yourself out loud. That's how verse first clicked for me - Homer's roots in music (his poems, according to scholarship, were meant to be sung out loud).
Once you've got the Iliad down, read the Aeneid. Vergil had the luxury of writing things down instead of having to memorise the whole thing like Homer, so the Aeneid is a denser, more refined poem. Again, focus of feeling the rhythm, but also pay attention to word order, the syntax, any alliteration. Read slowly and read to yourself out loud. I used Fitzgerald here again.
Afterwards, tackle Paradise Lost. Milton takes after Vergil and is refined to the extreme and makes heavy use of enjambment, his verse's meaning flows from one line to another. This gives his verse a looser feel, but it's able to create more complex rhythms. Again, read slowly, reread passages you don't fully understand (Milton's syntax is fucked) and read to yourself out loud from time to time.
By this point you should be hooked on poetry, Milton's verse is frankly unmatched in what it's trying to do. Shakespeare is denser (he uses some extremely compact metaphors where Milton is more long winded), more versatile, more ambiguous (inspires multiple competing readings of the same line) and, on top of that, funnier. He makes copious use of puns and irony. Maybe read some Carroll (Hunting of the Snark) to get an ear for humour too before you tackle Shakespeare.
For Shakespeare, I recommend trying out his Love's Labour's Lost and Macbeth. LLL is Shakespeare at his punniest, playing with wordplay until it's stretched to its very limit: "Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile". It felt very Carrollian to me. Macbeth is moody, simpler to understand and with a tight construction, making it a very easy entry point. Though it's not without its fair share of Shakespeare's incredibly condensed metaphors:

Whence is that knocking?
How is ’t with me when every noise appalls me?
What hands are here! Ha, they pluck out mine eyes.
Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.

Finish up with Hamlet and King Lear, which I consider Shakespeare at his best. Their construction is much looser, Hamlet's hesitation is legendary, but it also allows for more reflection, for more of his famous monologues and for more variety.
Lastly, go see his plays, they hit different in person. (1/2)
Captcha: K4NG2

>>24849070
(2/2)
If you don't have the ability to or want to see Shakespeare performed on the silver screen, then don't watch the play recordings, go for movie adaptations instead. I found Fassbender's Macbeth brilliant, though a bit hard to understand due to Scottish accent.
You could also look up performances of his famous monologues on youtube, to get an ear for his rhythm and see how differently people interpret them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn955417swY

>>24849070
>>24849072
I wasn't expecting a response with this amount of depth. I already read The Iliad, The Odyssey and everything by Milton (including Samson Agonistes, which reminded me of Faust). I never made it to Roman poetry, but I always wanted to read Virgil since reading Dante. I'll try your recommendations of different translations. Maybe the ones I read were simply off tempo. Thank you, anon. It means a lot to be on the receiving side of a high quality post.

>>24849081
The fall of effortposting is one of the saddest things about /lit/.
To me, poetry is a mix of two things - music (rhythm, tempo, metre, alliteration, rhymes) and information density - just how much interpretative power can you put in each little word. Some poets focus more on one than the other, with Shakespeare being arguably the perfect balance between the two.
Faust is a display of virtuosity - Goethe jumps freely between different styles and genres (the Helen segment is a classic example) - mixed with heavy symbolic and interpretative difficulty. Is Faust's final speech (He only earns both freedom and existence / Who must reconquer them each day. [...] My path on earth, the trace I leave within it / Eons untold cannot impair.) meant to be sincere or ironic? Is his redemption earned or unearned? And the whole classical walpurgisnacht segment is one great filter. It's one of the strangest books I've ever read, matched only by Melville's Pierre and Ulysses.

Homer, if poorly handled, can feel very flat. There's a lot of formulaic and repetitive elements, especially in the Iliad. He requires a fine poet's touch, and the more popular translations (Fagles, Wilson) seem to trade his poetic spirit for prosaic readability. Which is important for students and laymen, but I think their translation loses too much of Homer's power.
Fitzgerald to me is the most touching, Merrill the most musical and Lattimore the grandest in its diction:

>Fitzgerald
Anger be now your song, immortal one,
Akhilleus' anger, doomed and ruinous,
that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss
and crowded brave souls into the undergloom,
leaving so many dead men—carrion
for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.
Begin it when the two men first contending
broke with one another— the Lord Marshal
Agamémnon, Atreus’ son, and Prince Akhilleus.

>Merrill
Sing now, goddess, the wrath of Achilles the scion of Peleus,
ruinous rage which brought the Achaians uncounted afflictions;
many the powerful souls it sent to the dwelling of Hades,
those of the heroes, and spoil for the dogs it made their bodies,
plunder for all of the birds, and the purpose of Zeus was accomplished-
sing from the time when first stood hostile, starting the conflict,
Atreus' scion, the lord of the people, and noble Achilles.

>Lattimore
Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilles
and its devastation, which put pains thousand-fold upon the Achaians,
hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls
of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting
of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished
since that time when first there stood in division of conflict
Atreus’ son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus.

Should I get Jean Santeuil or Les Plaisirs et les Jours?
What are his essays/critiques like?

>>24848106
Joyce exists
But second place ain't half bad

>>24848106
Gets tiresome how he has to reveal all his male characters are actually faggots in the second half. Also, what was with the child abduction storyline?
All the same, preddy gudd.

>>24848106
he's gae

>>24848924
I was kind of baiting but also being partially sincere. I actually don't like Shakespeare much either lel but I do love Wordsworth. I find his imagery and themes so powerful and elegant. He gives me goosebumps often. Maybe look for themes that interests you and see what poets write a lot about them; I love nature so much of thr romantic appealed to me. Also poetry doesn't need to be "hard" like with Shakespeare, the modernists, Dickenson, etc. Wordsworth said poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and that's what I like about some poetry. Prose for me on rare occasions can achieve this intensity of feeling, passages of Swann in love come to mind and great dramatic execution and somwtimes great use of language, but I get bigger feels from poetry in general. So idk man maybe you haven't found the right poet or maybe it's just a difference of preference or temperament, nothing wrong with it either way.

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>>24848135
are we really claiming The Great Gatsby is "accommodated to the ordinary train of events?" Half of the allure of the book is how strange Gatsby is, made even stranger given that despite his social stature he's been consistently obsessed with the one that got away through all that time, even as an elusive elite.

>>24848880
Seethe

>>24848106
This sounds very gay.

>>24849140
>What are his essays/critiques like?
Against sainte beuve is a must read. On reading is alright and iirc it also contains the neat inciting incident that lead to the recherche. The rest is not life changing but if you like him so far you will like the rest as well
Haven't read his other novel and only skimmed his verses which I found unimpressive but tbf I don't really get poetry generally

>>24848297
You've been missing a lot

>>24848423
>sprawling verbosity
Is that really what you got from his prose?