>Novels (Anna Karenina, War and Peace)>Novellas (Ivan Ilyich, Hadji Murat)>Short stories (After the Ball, How Much Land)>Nonfiction (A Confession, Kingdom of God is Within You)>Plays (Power of Darkness, Living Corpse)>Diaries (best of any author)He mastered everything a writer can possibly master except poetry which for some reason he disliked
Goethe mogs
>>25274283>no 800 page obscure metaphysical treatiseyeah no
>>25274372He did write several books about his religious views, including rewriting the Gospels
>>25274283>He mastered everything a writer can possibly master except poetry which for some reason he dislikedYeah everything except the superior form of composition which comprises vastly more distinct and varied forms than prose of different lengths (sometimes real sometimes imaginary.)
Your forgot his books and essays on art>What is art>On art>Introductions (Maupassant, Semyonov)>Schoolboys on artAlso he has books on religion
>>25274283Lol, just writing variations of 'novel' does not make a complete or versatile writer. They should at least be writing both poetry and prose, like Goethe, who created poetry, dramas, novels, philosophy, aphorisms, autobiography and fairy tales of the very highest quality.
>>25274283No mention of The Kreutzer Sonata?
>>25274283>He mastered everything a writer can possibly master except poetry which for some reason he dislikedThat's a bit like saying, "He mastered everything a tennis player can possibly master except the forehand which for some reason he could never play."Your post does raise the obvious question, though:Who WAS the most complete writer ever?You basically want:— Poetry— Drama— Prose fiction (Novel)— Prose fiction (Short Story)— Non-fiction (Essay)— Non-fiction (Long, e.g. autobiography)You also need— Comedy— Tragedy(Lots of people can only do one or the other of these. Cormac McCarthy for example couldn't write a happy ending to save his life. P. G. Wodehouse couldn't write an unhappy one.)Drama is the main problem. Lots of people have done pretty much everything else.I suppose Oscar Wilde did all the things I list, sort of. But he's very limited in tone. He's no-one's idea of a "great universal writer".Faulkner did it all (one real play as well as the Hollywood stuff which should count as drama). But his poetry was not any good; he just published one book of rather old-fashioned verse in his youth. Lots of novelists (e.g. Joyce) did that.Robert Graves isn't a bad shot. Lots of poetry, lots of novels. A decent amount of non-fiction. A few short stories and a couple of plays. But the plays are very minor.If we're looking non-Anglophone then Goethe, as someone mentioned, I guess. Also Victor Hugo did a lot of poetry, novels AND plays. Did he do much non-fiction? No idea.
>>25274875yes, goethe is the most "complete" writer ever and no one really comes close either. he mastered anything a human could do with a pen
>>25274900Hugo wrote extensively on Shakespeare and was active as a political polemicist in his day. I‘ve gotten the impression that in France he‘s remembered far less for his novels than many other things.
>>25275969I've heard that in France, it's his poetry that is mostly famous
>>25274283He also wrote stories for children.
>>25275908He was but a touche-à-tout.
>>25274900Beckett?
>>25274368>no poetry Yeah he's mediocre
>>25277051>Faust (/faʊst/ FOWST, German: [faʊst]) is a tragic play in two parts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, usually known in English as Faust, Part One and Faust, Part Two. Nearly all of Part One and the majority of Part Two are written in rhymed verse
>>25277051West-östlicher Divan, hello?
