/lit/ - Literature

>>21314395
>ever listening to critics
remember, anon. these people are like children who can only take things apart, and cry when it cannot be put together again. spend less time reading the words of these dissemblers, and more time reading shakespeare, and you'll be all the happier for it.

>>21314407
But how can I pretend to read something without critics?

>>21314407
OP here. Thanks for the words.
>>21314442
kek, nice one, Anon

>>21314395
Modern critics seem to favor simple, soulless prose. Hemingway ruined literature.

Which contemporary authors might you be talking about?

>>21314395
Bump

>>21314395
Shakespeare slowly set himself apart after already having established himself as a competent playwright. And he wasn't simply copying some famous style either.

You must remember to the average person Shakespeare is just a name and as a name has much more power than any of his actual writing, the universal praise of Shakespeare at this point is its own living entity almost distinct if not distinct from his actual writing.

People will speak and praise him all day then if asked if they read any of his contemporaries of similar style and quality will look at you funny, then pretend Shakespeare somehow invented the modes he used. Not to say he is bad, of course not, but people will really claim he did things like invent the sonnet or revolutionize the stage, which is not true, he’s simply a case of peak refinement not revolution.

In academia the clout of a Shakespeare makes speaking against him (regardless of your taste ) seem contrarian for its own sake, who could dislike the verse of the writer-God?

Mind you, he is absolutely a titan and many times more so a titan when put against a Hemingway for example, but the taste/values and aesthetic theories which leads to someone loving a Hemingway are very very different from what would lead someone to love Shakespeare.

>>21315293
Of course he was and that’s not a criticism that’s the normal state of writing for the majority of history, his style is well recognized as being highly based on Ovid, his pretentious characters highly based on lyly’s style, overall Euripides is either directly or indirectly through Jonson a point of pastiche, the influence of Christopher Marlowe is so heavy people think they’re literally the same person, the Petrarchism is again very heavy, the influence of Plutarch is again very heavy. There is obviously more, he pastiched modes, lines, styles, combined and mixed all the time.

>>21315372
>his style is well recognized as being highly based on Ovid
Original Ovid in Latin or Golding's translation?

>>21315352
I think most of Shakespeare's plays are overrated and his sonnets/poems are far too underrated.

>>21315394
Only the dark lady cycle. The rest is homosexual.

>>21314395
Everyone spoke like that in his time.

>>21315407
Not true.

>>21315402
No, I mean a majority of them, even the bad ones.

>>21315394
I think most of Shakespeare's sonnets/poems are overrated and his plays are far too underrated.

A not like saying why do people praise the sculpture of antiquity but then see it as banal when you do it. Shakespeare wrote using the conventions of his time. Victorian authors wrote using the conventions of their time. Pulp writers wrote using the conventions of their time. Our time has a certain rhythm and aesthetic, pioneering new forms of expression is meaningful but just reusing what went out of fashion for being used relentlessly and extensively makes no sense. Why read you when there are thousands of similar writers from Shakespeare’s epoch? He doesn’t stand out for using their mode of expression but for saying something new with it, hence they are all forgotten. You will never be as formidable in the use of it as even the weak writers of his time who lived and breathed it, wrote letters in it and wrote hundreds of poems a piece, 99% lost to history

>>21315375
Both.
>>21315394
I wouldn’t say most, Since no one’s talking about winter’s tale or merry wives of Windsor, I would say though that lear is better than hamlet, and that Romeo and Juliet is over recognized.

But what do you and >>21315442
Think of his poem the Phoenix and the turtle? That is by far my favorite of his short poems, you get that Royal highly aesthetic he’s so good at with none of the necessary elements surrounding it in a play, it’s also such an oddity because the metaphor and aesthetics are 1=1 with the Sufi tradition but as far as I can tell scholars don’t believe he read any of their lit, so either he did on the down-low know Persian lit through some manner, or he literally recreated an entire aesthetic whole-cloth. Both very fascinating ideas.

Poem in question.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45085/the-phoenix-and-the-turtle-56d2246f86c06

>>21315407
Not at all and the pastiche of more lowly speech and language in certain parts of Shakespeare demonstrates the contrast very clearly, if one studies Shakespeare in depth you’ll find a kind of pattern of interlocking similes especially in his latter work, how can anyone claim a metaleptic chain like this is common?


“ Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

>>21315447
Our times have a shit style. That's why people look at the past for inspiration. Spenser also did it.

>>21315394
Same, but that's partially because I'm too retarded to follow the plays.
I think Shakespeare is very emotionally evocative in his language, which fits well the form of a sonnet.
I liked the sonnets and Venus and Adonis.
I want to say in his own time Venus and Adonis was actually his most popular work.

>>21315394
The sonnets are properly rated.

>>21315493
>>21315447
Also yeah, the great poets often had no concern for their own time period and often were anachronistic to older works even if they were on the bleeding edge avant garde types, the poems of Spenser absolutely were nothing new and all of the Elizabethan’s absolutely had a common more popular mode called the masque which was much more low class and even further, which some did (Jonson’s are best imo ) but they absolutely put all of their effort into pastiching and copying the styles and instructions of Seneca, Sophocles, Aristotle, Horace and Cicero, this idea of new equals good is rather relatively new, the historical idea was that you being based on a fusion of older authors IS GOOD and how you GET GOOD, this is why you can find in someone like Melville Homeric, Shakespeareian, miltonic and romantic layers, the continuous of tradition and ever standing higher on the shoulders of giants by continuing the common images and stories but in more and more refined modes is the historical way in basically every culture. Even when you get things like the “sweet-new style” like Dante, it’s absolutely based on combination-pastiche,

>>21314395
Shakespeare is pretty to the point imo. He is poetic and wordy but his work also doesn’t drag.

Also randoms on /lit/ aren’t really indicative of much. You should never take peoples words here too heavily. Do you think the average person here is a Shakespeare scholar? Or that they even know what they’re talking about? Come on bruh. Plus there’s plenty of posters who just get a kick out of riling you up. Your frustrations seems at least partly misplaced to me.

>be me in S’peare class
>cutie I was interested in
>get to Macbeth
>her and several other classmates express how they really liked lady Macbeth and find her heckin powerful
>take this red flag as final
Based Shakespeare exposing the bad ones. It’s like the greatest litmus test ever, just ask people what their thoughts are on various Shakespeare topics. I also enjoy how he portrays love as this maddening blindness of passion. Really helps me COPE. I love my chill philosopher-king life, love gives me anxiety. I love Shakespeare, very visceral.

>>21315501
Yes, his skill and wit become diffuse in his plays, but in his poetry, you can see their magic and splendor distilled in his sonnets. Before I read Shakespeare's works, I listened to Venus and Adonis in audiobook, and you listening to it is, at times, more stunning than simply reading it.

>>21315507
I don't agree.

>>21315484
I don't know anything about the Sufi tradition, but are these lines similar to it?
Here the anthem doth commence:

>Love and constancy is dead;
>Phoenix and the Turtle fled
>In a mutual flame from hence.

>So they lov'd, as love in twain
>Had the essence but in one;
>Two distincts, division none:
>Number there in love was slain.

I'd like to add that the phoenix and turtle being joined together in love joins beauty with truth, suggesting (neo-?)Platonic thought. Then these lines:

>That it cried, "How true a twain
>Seemeth this concordant one!
>Love has reason, reason none,
>If what parts can so remain."

make me think of relating them (love and reason, illogically I might add) back to the phoenix and turtle somehow.

>>21315657
>I also enjoy how he portrays love as this maddening blindness of passion.
Same, anon. SAME.

>>21315691
>I don't agree.
Well, they are shilled to hell and back. They get fancy editions with commentary. Authors quote them. People use stuff from them at their weddings. What more do you want?

>>21315703
Really? I always figured that they were ignored more than his plays. If that's the case, then I retract my disagreement.

>>21315734
Sonnet 18 is incredibly popular, I’m sure most people have heard it in some context before ever actually reading a word of Shakespeare.

>>21315691
> >Love and constancy is dead;
>Phoenix and the Turtle fled
>In a mutual flame from hence.

>So they lov'd, as love in twain
>Had the essence but in one;
>Two distincts, division none:
>Number there in love was slain.


Absolutely, the idea of god and man uniting in a burning flame, like the moth to flame is absolutely a fire sufi image, as is the depiction of god like the Phoenix/simurgh, further the Phoenix and dove are clearly the divine and more common, allah and the man, this also recalls the nightingale in sufi material, and btw in the common Christian thought at this time the soul of man is the image of god WHICH IS reason, so the marriage of truth and reason is again the marriage of god with the soul.

Like, I’ll throw some random sufi verse at you which are very typical.

From al-hallaj

Is this you or is it I in two deities?
Far be it from you, far be it from confirming duality
Forever there is Hu-ness for you in my La-ness
Over all, my pain is the confusion of two faces

You are the life of my soul! You are my faith and my world!
Tell me, upon my life, you who are my hearing and my seeing,
Why this going back and forth in my farness and exile?
If you are veiled from my eye in the unseen
This heart still keeps you in farness and in nearness.
I saw my Rabb with the eye of my heart
I said: who are you? He said: You
“Where” with you has nowhere
And there is nowhere where you are
Illusion with you has no illusion
Can illusion know where you are?
You are the one who gathers every “where”
To nowhere, so where are you?
In my annihilation my annihilation perished
And in my annihilation I found you
In the effacement of my name and the outline of my form
I asked about me so I said: You.
My inmost secret pointed to you
Until I was annihilated to myself, and you remained
You are my life and my heart’s secret
Wherever I may be, you are.
You encompass everything with knowledge
All that I see is you
So grant forgiveness my God
For there is nothing I wish for other than you.

Another from the common sufi story of majnun

“ Who do you think I am? A drunkard? A love-sick fool, a slave of my senses, made senseless by desire? Understand: I have risen above all that, I am the King of Love in majesty. My soul is purified from the darkness of lust, my longing purged of low desire, my mind free from shame. I have broken the teeming bazaar of the senses in my body. Love is the essence of my being. Love is fire and I am wood burnt by the flame. Love has moved in and adorned the house, my self tied up its bundle and left. You imagine that you see me, but I no longer exist: what remains is the beloved”

I could post more but I do not wish to over spam the thread. Like it’s very strange Shakespeare was able to basically fully replicate the Sufi aesthetic.

>>21315557
I like your view that pastiche is not inherently bad and shouldn’t be seen as something to be spit upon and disdained, and also that many great artists had a great deal of pastiche and kitsch on their own writing.

It’s something that always irks me that accusation that something is nothing but a pastiche of old writing. Why should this be viewed as a flaw if the new work has new elements on itself and is also trying to do what the greats as well as they dis, or even better?

>>21315950
I've been meaning to read al-hallaj, where do I start and what translation would you recommend?

>>21314395
1. Don't ask them for advice to begin with
2. Confuse them with your writing
3. Be more ambiguous
4. Leave more room for interpretation

Shakespeare didn't write prose, he wrote stylized plays and poetry. Modern writing is not without it's successful and celebrated analogues. See Tarantino and David Mamet for a couple obvious examples. See Cormac Macarthy for examples of flowery prose that works. All that being said, i agree that modern critics and educators are too averse to experimenting with prose and using complex language for effect.

>>21314395
Melville, the Captain of American Literature, was apeing Shakespeare's speeches in his quintessential anthropocentric anti-hero, Ahab, someone on the level of Lear or Hamlet in their feverish yet perhaps still sane pursuit of revenge. I think Shakespeherian style and mode can be done in prose form, though a bad example of this might include that turgid novel, which is an obese novel only supported by a single allusion, Infinite Jest. I think it's more of a sign of general illiteracy and Idiocy which has sunk deep into the infantile, narcissistic culture of postmodern man, who is like Narcissus by a pool of simulacra, taking in the images bereft of origin.
>If these are the criteria for good literature then all these people have to stop talking great things about Shakespeare and start honoring just plain straight prose. It is unfair to enshrine great poetry as the greatest of aesthetic achievements and then work to prevent other authors from doing the same.
Poetry sales are dipping to an all time low generally, although it has spiked recently with instapoetry and spoken word, the two nails which shall seal Poetry's rotting grave. But, alas, we shall see the emergence of a mummer mummy, a Pharaoh to lead us into the age of timeless Ozymandian Literature.
Further, the love of Shakespeare (which we shall here call Bardolatry), was really born out of Romanticism, which was trying to grasp the past which was sailing away at full mast! The love of the late medieval to early modern period was brought to new heights, and we crowned Billy Shakespeare the King of poesie and plays. But, as has been said in previous replies, he wasn't that much different to Kit nor even Spenser in regards to Style and Wit. It was a retrospective projection into the Past which brought Shakespeare to new heights.
>But, anon, do you not think Shakespeare has international purpose?
Aye, that. I do think that he appeals to universal truths, particularly to the Chinese. But universals are not to be trusted, dear reader, for we are to have petit recits that create glocal becomings.

>>21316008
Absolutely and this is what the works on aesthetics say that are older than modernism, though even the modernists aren’t opposed to this if we’re being honest.

>>21316184
Really love the tawasin in the Aisha Abd Ar-Rahman At-Tarjumana translation, for his verse otherwise, there is one anthology which includes a bit of his verse by Reynold A Nicholson which is really nice, there’s a complete works of his which is really nice and has a purple cover but I honestly can’t remember the name of the translator I’ll try to find it later if the thread is still up.

But yeah tawasin begin there.

>>21316379
Thanks

>>21315950
I'm bumping because I'll be responding some time later today

You still have not named any "contemporary writers", OP.

>>21315950
If Shakespeare did have any access to Persian Sufi literature, then it would have probably been encountered via one of the romantic languages, either Italian or French. Italian seems the likelier of the two as there is evidence that he drew real life experience from Italy, e.g., the painting of a battlefield of Ilium described in the Rape of Lucrece is a real piece. I’ve only read Shakespeare and Donne; did one of his contemporaries write anything similar, even a minuscule metaphor in one of their plays?

Originally I didn’t associate the phoenix with God and the turtle with man, but rather simplistically, lovers, one being higher in rank than the other, so with that in mind, the interpretation can be culturally found and theologically drawn from the hypostatic union in Jesus Christ, divine and human. The union of the two being here but momentarily and why Threnos gives, well, a threnody and elegy lamenting and celebrating their unique albeit short occurrence, and resurrection being common to both Christ and phoenix might be why the text refrains from that happening with phoenix—Christ who was resurrected is “dead” in the sense that he is no longer present directly on earth. The phoenix is gone from this world. This can be further expanded and linked with beauty and truth; they too, like the phoenix and the dove, are gone, consumed in fiery death, no linger present on earth. I’d like to refer back that it makes sense that God/the divine would be figuratively associated with the phoenix, a mythological imperishable bird, and man with ghe dove, an ordinary bird (although it would still point to Christ as the dove is associated with peace as he is typically, I believe).

A question that emerged to me before that analysis was: which bird has which virtue/idea? Arguments can be made both about the commonness of beauty and truth and their rarity in the world.

On your poem, there are some differences between the two which make them thematically dissimilar. Is one with the nightingale more comparable?

>>21317546
The thing is no, his contemporaries as far as I’ve seen had no knowledge either, on the Phoenix being symbolic of Christ, while yes This is common enough due to the Phoenix dying and resurrecting it’s never used in the context of lovers and the dove, which is in Christian symbolism more than peace, the Holy Spirit, is being used for the man, and as for which bird is which, to me the Phoenix is truth and turtle beauty due to the obscurity of the first and the delicate nature of the latter.

As for the poems cited, it’s not that there’s one with the nightingale or these two specific poems, but rather, to compare it, the symbols are as plentiful in sufi lit as the rose or the hard to win lover is in European poetry, so is the commonality of god as simurgh, the theme of duality dissolving in the flame of annihilatory love and so forth, like the weirdness of it is seen most by large study of Sufi lit.

>>21316238
A lot of Shakespeare is in prose and stylized prose was absolutely an ideal, the largest book for a good portion of English history is Phillip Sidney’s prose work for example.

I think rather, as even your post shows, the average writer and reader is going in expecting a film in book format and not a book as a book, when you go into a book expecting drama, twists and turns and narrative; which are historically not the point really, like obviously you’re not gonna focus on the things that others uncaring about this cinematic style would focus on. Someone like a tarantino is absolutely point a to point B action as is cormac If we compare them to a de Quincey or Walter pater or if you want Elizabethan, certainly not John Lyly.

It’s genuinely that our western literate changed a lot following romanticism in a way that’s pretty a-historical.

I'm going to go to sleep. But I will be reading some shakespeare when i wake up. recommmend some plays.

>>21318351
Macbeth
Hamlet
Othello
King Lear
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Tempest
Anthony and Cleopatra
Coriolanus
Henry IV

Keep in mind that the syle is quite different from work to work, so you will not really know how great Shakespeare is by just reading Hamlet or King Lear.

I would start with Macbeth, because is one of the great example of the tragic in Shakespeare (it's siad to be one of the most gigantic pictures of horror in poetic writing since the Oresteia) and also contains some of his greatest poetry.

>>21314395
>Why do some critics and readers speak of Shakespeare as the greatest literary genius of all time yet accuse contemporary writers who try to write prose as poetic as Shakespeare's verses of being pretentious, purple, bloated and self-centered?
Have you tried to read what they're saying?

>>21314395
Sir Henry Neville was probably the real author of Shakespeare's plays.