/lit/ - Literature

Btw can you think of any other authors which differ so wildly between the appreciation their native country has for them compared to the appreciation of foreign countries?
Dostoyevsky and Pushkin seem pretty unusual, I can't think of a German or French author who can have this said of them

>>22209797
Joyce hated the Victorian novel for its "ordered commonplaces" and praised Dostoevsky for breaking out of them. To extrapolate, he disdained convention - which is understandable, but it is a very modern opinion and one which cuts one off from the full appreciation of the vast majority of literature: epics, tragedies, odes, comedies, sonnets, satires, novels, all of them had their conventions. Same goes for, e.g., classical architectural or musical forms. The value was in the execution and in the many variations that could be explored within an orderly framework. Point being, I'm not sure he quite understood traditional aesthetics and how they functioned. That being said, I haven't read much Pushkin so I don't really know - I would imagine his aesthetic value is unassailable but I don't know how much of it is on a macro-scale (i.e. perfection of dramatic/thematic structure) and thus capable of being rendered by a translation. Afaik he's very similar to Byron (was heavily inspired by him), so maybe try reading him and find out if you're interested in reading more in the same vein.

>>22209803
Victor Hugo as a poet, anon. Huge in France, bigger than Baudelaire

>>22209797
I have no idea what Joyce read of Pushkin at all, beside Captain's Daughter, to come to that conclusion - the description doesn't at all resemble Onegin, Godunov, Queen of Spades, Little Tragedies, much of Pushkin's late poetry... Focusing on comparing him with Tolstoy is ridiculous, their ethoses (ethe?) could hardly be more different. Pushkin is closer to Lermontov, though IMO Lermontov is usually better, more philosophical and more depressed.
Regarding translations, I don't know too much about them, but be wary of Nabokov's Eugene Onegin. It appears impressive, but sometimes deforms the original style in completely unnecessary ways (despite Nab's insistence on being literal), and the commentary has plenty of irrelevant, bizarre, or false statements - it's invaluable to a critic who can check it and competently judge it against other sources (usually in Russian), but for an ordinary reader looking to experience the text itself it's skippable.
Not that other translations are faultless, far from it, but they usually read better.

>>22211037
ethoi

>>22211185
https://el.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%A6%CE%B8%CE%BF%CF%82
>τὰ ἤθη - ἤθεᾰ

>>22209797
Joyce had shit taste in literature, retard.

>>22209797
I don't know, Pushkin seems to be only for Russians. I mean, it has everything for me, but I don't think it will impress you in the same way, especially in prose.

>>22209797
>he is only worth reading as a native Russian
This is the traditional opinion. He's the undisputed master of the Russian language, but he has never been rated highly outside of Russia because his poetry translates poorly.

I don't think this is uncommon either. Spenser is one of my very favourite poets in the English language, but I wouldn't expect anyone who couldn't read him in English to have the slightest interest in Spenser, because his form and lyrical facility is what makes him an outstanding poet, and that expands the content. French people tend to rate Hugo's poetry higher than his prose, but foreigners normally only read him for Les Mis. There are Spanish critics who claim Cesar Vallejo is the greatest poet of the 20th century, while he's almost unknown in the Anglosphere. Etc, etc..

>>22212769
Based Spenser reader. I think the allegory element is fun and interesting and not entirely without merit even in translated form but yeah it's not especially profound, just a well-put-together medievalesque picture of virtues, vices and national myth. The versification is what really allows it all to "work" properly and makes the endless cantos fly by as lightly as a gentle, sweet-smelling breeze. Honestly though I'm less than halfway through The Faerie Queene, but I'm reading multiple other things and I'm also just trying to savor it.

>>22210666
Interesting

>>22209797
Pushkin is a great poet, his prose is "the prose of a poet." His poems are poorly translated into other languages, although his poetry is not brainless, on the contrary, his poems are very smart and meaningful, but the translation kills everything.
Pushkin adopted the sentimentalism of his elder brothers and the classicism of his grandfathers, bringing the Russian poetic language to perfection. He adopted European romanticism (although Pushkin cannot be considered a completely romantic) and when he played enough with him, Pushkin began to develop Russian realism, but here he did not have much time, but became the godfather of realism. And realism gave rise to that "classical Russian literature" (Tolstoevsky), which is known abroad. That is, this is the Pushkin line of Russian literature, which ended approximately with the death of Chekhov, when the "revolution" of 1905 happened and modernism began. Or non-classical Russian literature, if I may say so.
>Firstly is Pushkin worth reading?
Stupid question - stupid answer: Yes, even if you don't like it.

>>22209797
>famous writers say he's not worth reading
>let's see what my anonymous frens say
>aaah how can I decide whether those 20-90 page stories are *worth* reading?! I NEED ADVOOOOICE!!!
you're veering dangerously close to learned helplessness by endless internal debate anon. Just fucking sit down and read

Joyce has not read much Pushkin, who was very versatile. Definitely Eugene Onegin is as essential to Russian literature as Faust is to German literature, as the Divine Comedy is to Italian literature, as Shakespeare is to English literature and as Homer is to Greek literature. Nabokov’s literal translation gets a lot of hate but that is because the line breaks look extremely ugly, but read aloud it is remarkably good

>>22209803
There's ferdowsi in iranian countries, talked to a tajik cab driver and he sad everyone read him, Aelius Donatus is a big deal for latin literature, Fuzuli in Turkey maybe