Leaves of Grass is so pregnant with ideas and rich in language that it's almost overwhelming. I've never read anything like it before.
>People of the future,>This poem goes out to you:>I am the greatest.>I identify with everyone,>Anyone and everyone from all walks of life,>I am you,>And I will teach you what True Art is,>Because I am the greatest.
>>25423791Real semenal work
>>25423791As a European, I read this as a testament to what the US could have been, culturally, in the world, and it contains all the beautiful ideas that it actually (somehow) disseminated in bastardized form. A beautiful individualism, to be intended as a celebration of selfhood in all its forms, a materialism and pragmatism that isn't reductionism and simplification. A genuine mysticism of everyday life, open to the modern man. I often imagine what the world would have been if this had become truly a classic, a culture-defining text, like the Homeric poems had been for the Greeks... The preface moves me to tears every time.But there is one thing I think he grossly underestimated - he talks about the production of novels and popular literature in the US, and isn't able to see it as a competitor: he believes that Americans will start reading it and then move towards his works, while the opposite is (has been) true. The pull of stupid, simplified, pleasure-inducing addictive narratives, diffused on a capillary level through cinema and television and now immortal in the library of the internet where no work is ever totally "forgotten", factually created an environment where true works of art like Leaves of Grass live a diminished life. They do not stand the test of time because everything now does, and when they generate critique they do it within an environment where even the stupidest piece of pop culture is critiqued and discussed ad nauseam on new and more addictive medias.He didn't see how merchant mentality, and the compulsion to sell bullshit at all costs and feed people "what they (already) want(ed)" (the paternalistic and conservative mantra of the seller, opposite to all art and invention of the new) would have competed with his work for the attention of americans.
>>25423791Why does it have so many apostrophes (‘)?
>leaves of .... GRASS?dewed wead lol
>>25423791Imagine eagerly anticipating a class discussion about this work, one of the rare moments when a group of people all are reading in sync for a purpose and is supposed to bring their most cogent opinions and diverse perspectives and then everyone is all>Homo eroticism this>Burgeois thatAnd if you admire the work or praise it at all you're uncritical and colonized and fascist.It's fucking exhausting and ruins the spirit.I paid thousands in rubles to tread water in a river of disappointment after disappointment such as this, to inevitably slowly lose interest each and every semester, ultimately wasting my money after not turning in any work because of the lack of intellectual stimulation. My greatest enjoyment and the most I ever learned was reading works like this alone and journaling about them.Not the assignments.Not the interaction with other students.Not the participation in discussion.Not any of the shit uni profs jack themselves off over.Reading alone, which was free the whole time.I played myself and am warning others
>>25424100Apostrophes are just more fun
>>25423893Good post.
>>25425437that's rough nigga. I got filtered hard the first time I tried reading it and quit. Then I tried reading it outside with my doggie and loved it.
>>25425437its a beautiful poem. sorry you were stuck with cretins and weirdos
