Which COUNTRY has produced the greatest literature?

[nayyarsarah]

Greatest literature? are you speaking in terms of quality or quantity? for one country can produce lesser publications containing a magnitude that can beat the literature of rest of the world, or the depth and heart-touching words of some countries cannot equal the humungous quantity produced by one place.
Besides the greatest literature, subjectively, would be the one that appeals to us the most, to which we return again and again for our pleasure and which complies with our fancies and individual tastes. Objectively, it would be unfair to accredit one nation as the producer of 'greatest literature', for every country has a differing history that situated authors accordingly to the sociopolitical scenarios, giving them thoughts they put to words. Influences vary, so if all the authors from the all ages, were experimented to be in one same condition, then I would pick one to the greatest. Its the versatility of many cultures, languages and history that makes literature Great as a whole.

[cafolini]

Greatest literature? are you speaking in terms of quality or quantity? for one country can produce lesser publications containing a magnitude that can beat the literature of rest of the world, or the depth and heart-touching words of some countries cannot equal the humungous quantity produced by one place.
Besides the greatest literature, subjectively, would be the one that appeals to us the most, to which we return again and again for our pleasure and which complies with our fancies and individual tastes. Objectively, it would be unfair to accredit one nation as the producer of 'greatest literature', for every country has a differing history that situated authors accordingly to the sociopolitical scenarios, giving them thoughts they put to words. Influences vary, so if all the authors from the all ages, were experimented to be in one same condition, then I would pick one to the greatest. Its the versatility of many cultures, languages and history that makes literature Great as a whole.

Agree. Partiality in this context cannot be but absolutely subjective and worse, merely because of ignorance.

[blazeofglory]

I do not think western literature is superior to eastern. India was a country of great literature. Take for example the Mahabharata. I am versed with both western and eastern literature. I do not find any book of literature more advanced in terms of its narrative style interweaved with philosophy. The Mahabharata is the greatest epic ever written and no creations of even Homer and Virgil can match the grandeur and splendor of the Mahabharata. The sanskrit language is indeed the mother of many languages and of course English, French and many other languages come from Sanskrit.

[blazeofglory]

Of course modern literature comes from America and Europe and this is mainly due to the fact that modern civilizations is steered by European explorers. But as far as ancient literature is concerned it is indeed through India and China that just birthed much better literature.

[blazeofglory]

Greatest literature? are you speaking in terms of quality or quantity? for one country can produce lesser publications containing a magnitude that can beat the literature of rest of the world, or the depth and heart-touching words of some countries cannot equal the humungous quantity produced by one place.
Besides the greatest literature, subjectively, would be the one that appeals to us the most, to which we return again and again for our pleasure and which complies with our fancies and individual tastes. Objectively, it would be unfair to accredit one nation as the producer of 'greatest literature', for every country has a differing history that situated authors accordingly to the sociopolitical scenarios, giving them thoughts they put to words. Influences vary, so if all the authors from the all ages, were experimented to be in one same condition, then I would pick one to the greatest. Its the versatility of many cultures, languages and history that makes literature Great as a whole.
I second your thought. Quantity is what matters today. Western literature is intrinsically poorer than the literature of ancient Indian literature.

[JBI]

Can people stop bumping old threads? Especially when they are not adding anything new to an already dead thread? We had these conversations years ago. IF someone wishes to revisit them, would it not be better to start a new thread?

[Ecurb]

That isn't the argument, and you know it. None of the authors you mentioned have written epics. Epics by definition need to represent societal values, The Lord of the Rings does not. It is simply a novel liked by a generation by accident. Nothing more. There is no epic about it, besides its laborious length. True epics have not been around since Milton (I would argue since before that, but Milton is generally considered the last true Western epic), and the Lord of the Rings doesn't break the trend. Even Wordsworth's Prelude isn't considered to be a true epic, and it was far more significant than the Lord of the Rings. You do not know what epic is, if you believe the rings are an epic. length isn't the only thing in the equation. Scope isn't the only thing, and adventure isn't the only thing.

Tolkien brought nothing beyond a center ground to fantasy literature. Lord Dunsany had already written a removed world romance, the Germanic north had already written most of Tolkien before he even put his pen down. His style is borrowed. His characters are regarded by most serious readers as flat. He may have created something interesting, but he clearly is not a major author. He is merely a cultural phenomenon which has survived by being raised on a cultural pedestal by the inhabitants of many a parents' basement. The ring is almost the same as Star Trek, or Star Wars, except that it evolved from a book, and not a T.V. show. That is the only difference.

Let’s see: if JBI likes a novel (or an “epic”) it is because of his refined good taste. If anyone likes Lord of the Rings it is “by accident”. That appears to be JBI’s suggestion, at least. What’s wrong with LOTR? For one thing, it isn’t at “true epic”.

There have (of course) been “true epics” (long poems celebrating a culture hero’s deeds) that have little literary merit. Only the best of them remain in our literary canon. So whether a work is a “true epic” has little to do with whether it has literary merit.
In addition, a great many “epic heroes” are “flat” as characters. Literary fiction (as JBI and every high school English teacher have long made teenage fantasy fans painfully aware) revolves around “character development”. Fantasy – and many epics – do not. The character of the hero is established from the start – the tale describes how that character will react to situations.

Phillip Larkin, one of Tolkien’s students, complained about the master’s “Beowulf” lectures: “I can just about stand learning the filthy lingo it’s written in. What gets me down is being expected to admire the bloody stuff.” To each his own.

Tolkien’s innovation in fantasy was twofold: he begins Lord of the Rings with a Birthday party for hobbits. As Adam Gopnik said in the New Yorker, the book represents a marriage between the “Elder Eddas” and “Wind in the Willows”.

In addition, Tolkien created a pre-modern, religious world-view in which the past is inevitably more glorious and advanced than the present, and in which the future will fade even further. Literary fiction concentrates on “character development” and moral dilemma, but fantasy concentrates on knowledge, which is equally important to teenagers being initiated into adulthood. The rings were forged by the wise, and their power can both create (look at the elven rings) and corrupt. Control of this magical technology is a form of power, as is knowledge of the past. The teenager must learn to control magical technology to become an adult (learning to drive a car, for example, is one rite of passage). He must also learn the lore of the land to possess adult power (that’s why he goes to school for all those years).

T.H. White in “Once and Future King” tried to tell an epic in the terms of literary fiction – character development and moral dilemmas abound. Tolkien (with a few exceptions, like Gollum) eschews both character development and moral dilemmas to concentrate on lore. Becoming an adult involves maturation in terms of character development and moral development. It also involves mastering a culture’s knowledge and technology.

Finally, JBI’s snarky and supercilious attitude (“(Tolkien) is merely a cultural phenomenon which has survived by being raised on a cultural pedestal by the inhabitants of many a parents' basement.”) is ridiculous. He is entitled to his preference for literary fiction over fantasy (or other forms genre fiction), and he is correct that fantasy appeals to teenagers. However, many literary critics (including the previously cited Gopnik) admire Tolkien, and parents’ basements are perfectly comfortable domiciles, that do not detract from their residents’ taste in literature. On the other hand, silly ad hominem arguments like JBI's SHOULD detract from his credibility on this board.

ETA: Whoops -- didn't see that JBI's post was several years old. Oh, well, I still had fun writing my critique of it.

[JBI]

Yours seems a pretty silly Ad hominem argument anyway. Besides which, Tolkien is boring and flat, and his characters have no growth or depth. Frodo is not Achilles. Get over it, his books are mediocre. Now my opinion has changed, it isn't even hippies reading him, merely disgruntled teenagers.

[Calidore]

Yours seems a pretty silly Ad hominem argument anyway. Besides which, Tolkien is boring and flat, and his characters have no growth or depth. Frodo is not Achilles. Get over it, his books are mediocre. Now my opinion has changed, it isn't even hippies reading him, merely disgruntled teenagers.

I'd agree that Tolkien's characters lack "growth and depth", but his world has a great deal of both. World-building was his main interest, developing fleshed-out characters as opposed to character types wasn't (though he did manage that occasionally also, when he cared to). Every author has strengths and weaknesses, and Tolkien's strengths were very strong indeed.

[JBI]

I'd agree that Tolkien's characters lack "growth and depth", but his world has a great deal of both. World-building was his main interest, developing fleshed-out characters as opposed to character types wasn't (though he did manage that occasionally also, when he cared to). Every author has strengths and weaknesses, and Tolkien's strengths were very strong indeed.
Coming up with an imaginary world is not a strength. Who cares about imaginary worlds? His prose and ideas all seemed borrowed. The more you read his source materials the more you feel his world is less impressive.

Stories tend to rely on characters and plot more than settings. Some books rely on settings more heavily, such as Japanese Samurai novels, American Westerns, or Chinese Wuxia novels. The reasons for this are complex, and I am exploring them in a paper I am writing, so I do not want to say too much. But anyway, we can say that these fictional settings, the Wild West, or the Jianghu, or the Samurai landscape, are rooted in a cultural tradition that expresses a sort of nationalistic, or "romantic" imagery. That is why many, many Western movies have extremely long shots of scenery - The Searchers, for instance, relies heavily on Monument Valley as a sort of visual metaphor.

My problem is that the setting of the Rings does not actually do that. Whereas the setting of space in Star Wars creates an infinite possibility, following the lead of Dune (which is in itself a highly flawed novel), The Rings lacks the characters that make Star Wars interesting - Luke is a far more heroic character than Frodo, the Emperor and Vader are more interesting than the non-present Sauron, or even his ring.

Generally epic-style novels or movies rely on settings in specific ways. First of all, the setting follows a growth - the wide expansiveness is for "exploration" a theme evoked but not demonstrated throughout the Rings. Second, it is to showcase a growth of character. Luke leaving his aunt and uncle in Star Wars becomes the Jedi by the end of the story - he has downed a death star, and redeemed his father. That is what we call the setting, and the adventure used to illustrate the development of a character - he leaves the familiar, and enters the infinite world of possibilities, and then reaches a maturity and fulfills his quest.

Virtually all heroic stories feature a similar trajectory. The hero Achilles is not Achilles until he slays Hector - he fights over a woman, loses his boyfriend, and then becomes the god-made armor clad hero. He is already established of course, but the reason for the conflict propels him from merely prowess to greatness - The same is to be said of Aeneas who if he remained in Carthage, would not be Aeneas. We then must interpret the stories as featuring a sort of plot trajectory.

The rings lacks this. The boys all return to the Shire in the end, except Frodo, who after a period goes off to die. There is no character there, despite the film's decisive inputting of it.

Likewise the villains hold to victorian children stereotypical goblins. We see no depth on their part, and therefore the conflict is rather shallow at best. In point of example, though a bit crass of one, the dwarf and the elf like to compete who can kill the most orcs. Strangely enough, the same contest was written about in Japan, about how two soldiers competed who could butcher the most Chinese people. When they tied, they even went into extra innings.

Now, how does that reflect the book? Which story hits harder, the Japanese or the Elf and the Dwarf. I see that problem throughout the book - the enemy is virtually without any personality, the characters don't grow or make difficult decisions, or actually do any thinking at all. There are so few female characters as to make that element even more silly, except for a sort of Macbeth style death for the Witch king where he is killed by a woman and not a man, which to me seems forced at best.

What are his strengths except for inventing a setting and filling it with languages and concepts and a history. My question is why do we care about his magical world in the first place - we have a far more magical world right here before our eyes, and we have far more persuasive and interesting imaginary worlds in our poetry and literature. The romance landscape of Tasso and Ariosto is far more powerful a setting than the Rings, as are the German mythological cycle settings he borrows from, or the Arthurian cycle he is obliquely referencing.

The main reason for this is simple - these are created out of culture, politics, and tradition - they have a resonance with the people. It is no surprise that Arthur becomes so English during the Victorian age of empire, despite the best original works being written in French mostly. Frye used the term National Pastoral for these settings, and Moorcock equates the setting or pastoral of the Rings to a sort of Winnie the Pooh, Beatrix Potter like world of noble savages, or whatever. We can see that clearly in the Shire, which is like a living thriving version of Lyrical Ballads (which to me all read like elegies in contrast). Such an idea is dated even from the outset, more than 150 years after Wordsworth and Coleridge mourned its death.

I don't see really anything in Tolkien to warrant a reading. It is amazing how he could invent so much, granted, but that does not satisfy the wants of reading a book for the sake of a book. I am not sure if setting alone can carry a novel, and certainly I would say this is an example of a failure.

Whats worse is his prose style which is just boring to read.

[JCamilo]

JBI, they are winding you up. And you write this: The main reason for this is simple - these are created out of culture, politics, and tradition - they have a resonance with the people.

That is not right and you know this. Tolkien do belong to his time. His linguistic game is not so fantastic, other writers were doing liguistic games at that and the study of modern idioms, the idea of that a idiom is itself a form of literature is from that time. His politics (pacifism, the commun men, etc) all from that time too.

And the book spawned Dungeons and Dragons settings where people play with those bland races, it is a best seller, a very popular movie, etc. It hooked on people (does not matter if hooked because it is aesthetic merits).

You cannot go and claim otherwise, because that would make Tolkien a genius, living above the world and writting a book which is popular for magic, since nothing conects with the reader, so it must be just the words.

[JBI]

JBI, they are winding you up. And you write this: The main reason for this is simple - these are created out of culture, politics, and tradition - they have a resonance with the people.

That is not right and you know this. Tolkien do belong to his time. His linguistic game is not so fantastic, other writers were doing liguistic games at that and the study of modern idioms, the idea of that a idiom is itself a form of literature is from that time. His politics (pacifism, the commun men, etc) all from that time too.

And the book spawned Dungeons and Dragons settings where people play with those bland races, it is a best seller, a very popular movie, etc. It hooked on people (does not matter if hooked because it is aesthetic merits).

You cannot go and claim otherwise, because that would make Tolkien a genius, living above the world and writting a book which is popular for magic, since nothing connects with the reader, so it must be just the words.

I'm reminded of something far simpler though - the childhood capacity to imagine. R. L. Stephenson evokes it in the beginning of Treasure Island in his poem to the reluctant purchaser. We all have this capacity to imagine ourselves off to our own sorts of Neverlands.

Dungeons and Dragons is not Tolkien, it is something far more basic - it plays on our desire for a world to invent stories. But lets be honest - we can do that in other settings - in truth, the Dungeons and Dragons world seems far more mirroring someone like Lord Dunsany's works, or the world of Disney Fairy Tales.

The sort of quest that dominates such games is not Tolkien's quest - it is something more directed through adventure. Such an adventure, or game is mirrored actually at the beginning of Peter Pan, far before Tolkien, where the boys are playing Pirates and Peter Pan in their room. Such a genre of games has almost always been popular - in fact, it was hardly invented by Tolkien. Tolkien just facilitated the invention of the 50 sided dice or whatever they use to randomize the game.

As for Tolkien's messages, they are flat in the novel. The one best picked up upon is his sort of environmentalism, which, though great in concept, is still not enough to carry the books.

As for connecting to the reader, I think you confuse the language and capacity of the individuals story-telling, with that of the text itself. Of course people like to go out and invent their own imaginary worlds, I gave three great examples of other genres which do the same thing, and have been immensely popular. My point is that though people go and play in their own worlds that may be Tolkien influenced, that does not credit his literature as particularly stimulating.

[ennison]

All fiction creates imaginary worlds.

[JCamilo]

Yes, Tolkien is an appeal to storytelling and all the Peter Pan, Alice, Wizard of Oz need to adventure in other worlds. Something not off with Conan's, Tarzan, Lovecraft, or Rossetti Goblin Market or even Anne and Emily Bronte sister imaginary world that survives in some of their poems or Dante's or 1001 nights, Once upon a time. But that is exactly putting him within a tradition, right? When you claim he created them out of tradition, you seems to just justify the fanboys that imply tolkien was a genius that created the whole fantasy genre. Not this and his work is after all, a huge children story he kept telling to his kids. There is nothing original about creating a world, eventually every author do it. Tolkien world is even a lot of realistic, nothing so special (of course, the ammount of details he added is unique, but this is not the point).

And yes, the mesage of tolkien is flat out in the surface. Again, it is a children story after all. But this implies he is conected with his time, not some alien thing that poppped out of nowhere.

And you understood wrong, D&D are indeed a form of oral storytelling, nothing to link to Tolkien here. But the rest? Tolkien is the basic reading of rpg players - the basic setting is all about tolkien but it is not that - when you get authors from TSR fantasy, you see tolkien. Margaret Weiss and all the Dragonlance writters were tolkien readers, they try to follow his rule. When people talk about the books, the model is Tolkien not Lord Dunsany, because the elements that come to Dunsany are more like there due to modern writers and Tolkien being use as reference. It is just like, you remember, when people think Harry Potter compared to Alice or Peter Pan, they do not make the reference. It is "Rowling creation". The D&D is basically a reader of Tolkien not Dunsany, just like they probally read Neil Gaiman and not Chesterton and Dracula and not Carmilla (Or even, Anne Rice and not Dracula). The movies even, are all a D&D adaptation of tolkien, Peter Jackson, a rpg player, changed the movie to a rpg game rhytim, battles and personification (moving a bit from tolkien, like the grump and funny dwarf that is more a D&D thing). Heck, i recall the first movie, people in the movies literary screamming "Vorpal" "He rolled a 20", "fumble" etc. The D&D players were all watching just like they do with today with Game of Thrones. It does not say much to the quality of any work - but people conected with Lord of the Rings.

Like I said once, you must look why Lord of the Rings do conect with people -their fanboys are an evidence of it - and why still being read for what is now? The third generation, denying it just help the fanboys to build arguments of how the sole fantasy was made up from thin air by tolkien, etc. I sustain, i think tolkien looks like Stoker - generate a popular work, that is very derivative, but put in modern terms with some captivating idea behind it that overcome the flaw and difficulty of the work. He will probally survive like this.

[mortalterror]

I still really like the movies and dislike the books. Tolkein had some really threadbare aspects which fans who were better artists have embellished and fleshed out over the years. The visual language of the films is so much beyond what Tolkein could do with language. Several generations of graphic designers have tried their hand at depicting Tolkein's world, among them the illustrators Alan Lee and John Howe, Queen Margrethe II, Tim and Greg Hildebrandt, Jimmy Cauty, and Ted Nasmith. And actors like Ian McKellen gave a depth and nuance to otherwise lifeless characters. People like what the stories have become more than what Tolkien actually wrote. He tapped into a zeitgeist that just got layered on top of his creation. You think anybody likes Bob Kane's Batman? No. But they like what it's become sixty years down the line.

When I saw The Hobbit recently, I really enjoyed the experience, even though at the back of my mind I was like "Every time these dwarves get in trouble Gandalf bails them out deus ex machina style. Then whenever he gets in over his head he just calls one of those giant eagles. It happens over and over again." The less the film leans on Tolkien's contributions the stronger it becomes.

[JCamilo]

I dislike the movies. Yes, they have great visual, but it is getting outdated every year. It is not a problem, overall movies advance faster on visual technique than anything else. But the movie is a Dungeon & Dragon take on Tolkien. Tolkien himself is not very dynamic as the movies, there is not much powerful show off (Gandalf is deux ex michina run by windows in the book, he often mumbles than solve anything. The books are amazingly poor in magic.). In the movies you jump from scene to scene, it is new roll of D20.

I keep think what are the merits of the books (i prefer Simarillion, as unfinished as it is) that sustain so much readings. And I think of Dracula. There is a handful of good chapters in the book, mostly the begining. Then the london part is a mess. Of course, Dracula got enriched too (as you suggests with Batman), Stoker prose is not good, he is copying from many sources. So, I guess Tolkien has momments on the book, mixed in the geography, which works as Dracula. Maybe Boromir betrayal, maybe the role one ring to rule them all appeal, maybe gollum... But tolkien is all in a tradition and has conected with people (he does not need to conect only with his books after all).

[ennison]

Bumping old threads? Is that like... mentioning Shakespeare n Blake n stuff?

[Ecurb]

I’ll grant that Achilles is an interesting character, even in the terms of literary fiction. The same cannot be said about all other epic heroes, however. Roland is so “flat” a figure, that he has to go mad (I believe his “wits” were kept in a jar on the Moon until returned to him by Astolpho, who rode Pegasus to the moon and back to get them, or something like that) in order to add a little “character” to the proceedings.

Personally, I love Lord of the Rings. I read it first when I was ten or 12 years old, and doubtless it has particular appeal to youthful tastes. However, the notion that a novel should appeal ONLY to mature tastes is faulty, I think. In “On Art” Tolstoy argues that universal appeal is a sign of the best art. That art which appeals only to those with a specialized education is, in Tolstoy’s opinion, consigned to the category of second-rate.

I wouldn’t go as far as Tolstoy. Nonetheless, I don’t think novels that appeal to children are automatically lesser than more sophisticated novels. When I was a kid, I liked spaghetti, and hated most other dinners. I have since trained my palette to enjoy rotten cheese, wine, curry, and any number of other foods. None of this, however, diminishes the excellence of spaghetti. I think my youthful taste in literature was excellent: I still love “The Treasure Seekers”, “The Narniad”, “Treasure Island” and “Kidnapped”, “The Jungle Books”, and, yes, “Lord of the Rings” (also the Charlemagne cycle that included the madness of Roland).

Indeed, I wouldn’t trust the sophisticate who renounced his teenage literary favorites any more than I would trust the man who was no longer in love with his high school girlfriend. No literary love is stronger than one’s first literary love – just as no Eros is more powerful than one’s first sexual love.

As far as JBI’s specific criticisms of LOTR, the debate has gone on for decades. Some “literary” critics side with JBI; some side with me. Obviously, Tolkien fans don’t find his prose style “just boring to read”, but if JBI does, I’d suggest he refrain from reading it. However, the notion that the fault is with the novel instead of the reader is a bit self-serving, considering how many people of undoubted good taste have loved the book. I’ve read a great many canonical novels, and agree with the general praise most of them have garnered. I’ve tried to read “The Brothers Karamazov” twice, getting more than halfway both times, and have never been able to finish it. Nonetheless, I believe my inability to appreciate the book is my failure, not Dostoevsky’s.

In addition, one principle of literary criticism is that it is unfair to criticize a book for failing to be a different book. Criticizing LOTR for failing to be literary fiction violates this principle. (I agree with JBI, however, about the Gimli vs. Legolas orc-slaying contest. It's out of character with the rest of the novel.)

[Ecurb]

I dislike the movies. Yes, they have great visual, but it is getting outdated every year. It is not a problem, overall movies advance faster on visual technique than anything else. But the movie is a Dungeon & Dragon take on Tolkien. Tolkien himself is not very dynamic as the movies, there is not much powerful show off (Gandalf is deux ex michina run by windows in the book, he often mumbles than solve anything. The books are amazingly poor in magic.). In the movies you jump from scene to scene, it is new roll of D20.

I keep think what are the merits of the books (i prefer Simarillion, as unfinished as it is) that sustain so much readings. And I think of Dracula. There is a handful of good chapters in the book, mostly the begining. Then the london part is a mess. Of course, Dracula got enriched too (as you suggests with Batman), Stoker prose is not good, he is copying from many sources. So, I guess Tolkien has momments on the book, mixed in the geography, which works as Dracula. Maybe Boromir betrayal, maybe the role one ring to rule them all appeal, maybe gollum... But tolkien is all in a tradition and has conected with people (he does not need to conect only with his books after all).

I agree, Camilo. The LOTR movies were better than "The Hobbit" (which is horrible), but they suffered from the following:

1) Too many endless battle scenes. It's as if the filmmakers couldn't resist playing with their new, digital toys. It's not that the battle scenes were bad; they weren't. But every one of them should have been half the length.

2) The Frodo sections in the last two movies were butchered. First of all, they changed the plot of the Faramir plot, nd the Frodo - Sam relationship. Second, as Frodo came under the Ring's power, he looked like a ridiculous zombie, with his eyes rolled up in his head. It was so overplayed as to be assinine. It was as if the directors were unwilling to let the audience figure out what was going on, and decided to beat their viewers over the head with it all.

3) Just as the Ring's power was overdone, so were the silly "wizard fights" between Gandalf and Saruman. Part of the intrigue of the books is that the magical "powers" of characters like Gandalf, Saruman, Galadriel, Sauron, and even Aragorn are powers of character, wisdom and psychic influence, as when Aragorn commands the Dead. They do not involve using staffs as ray-guns.

4) ON the positive side, the sets were great and the scenery was excellent.

[hannah_arendt]

I agree, Camilo. The LOTR movies were better than "The Hobbit" (which is horrible), but they suffered from the following:

1) Too many endless battle scenes. It's as if the filmmakers couldn't resist playing with their new, digital toys. It's not that the battle scenes were bad; they weren't. But every one of them should have been half the length.

2) The Frodo sections in the last two movies were butchered. First of all, they changed the plot of the Faramir plot, nd the Frodo - Sam relationship. Second, as Frodo came under the Ring's power, he looked like a ridiculous zombie, with his eyes rolled up in his head. It was so overplayed as to be assinine. It was as if the directors were unwilling to let the audience figure out what was going on, and decided to beat their viewers over the head with it all.

3) Just as the Ring's power was overdone, so were the silly "wizard fights" between Gandalf and Saruman. Part of the intrigue of the books is that the magical "powers" of characters like Gandalf, Saruman, Galadriel, Sauron, and even Aragorn are powers of character, wisdom and psychic influence, as when Aragorn commands the Dead. They do not involve using staffs as ray-guns.

4) ON the positive side, the sets were great and the scenery was excellent.

I didn`t like both ( LOTH and Hobbit". I think that Tolkien deserves better dramatisation.

[kelby_lake]

Lord of The Rings was just not my thing at all. After I watched the trilogy, I just sat there and thought "They spent 9 hours to tell me that?". I have to re-watch the first film though as I watched them before I got into Sean Bean :)

[Ecurb]

To get back to the OP, I don't know which country has the best literature. However, as a wild guess, I'm going with Palau for the worst literature. The population is only 21,000, and it's been a country for only 18 years. I'm guessing -- but the odds are with me.

[hannah_arendt]

Lord of The Rings was just not my thing at all. After I watched the trilogy, I just sat there and thought "They spent 9 hours to tell me that?". I have to re-watch the first film though as I watched them before I got into Sean Bean :)

I think that the main disadvantage is that film is full of superficial effects. We know that everything is changing, mainly technology so in a 10 years for example "Hobbit" would also have this problem.

[Inky]

For me, it would have to be -

Britain

Russia

America

[stlukesguild]

Personally, I love Lord of the Rings. I read it first when I was ten or 12 years old, and doubtless it has particular appeal to youthful tastes.

I loved the Lord of the Rings when I was young... before I had a good deal of experience in reading all the other marvelous books that were out there.

However, the notion that a novel should appeal ONLY to mature tastes is faulty, I think. In “On Art” Tolstoy argues that universal appeal is a sign of the best art. That art which appeals only to those with a specialized education is, in Tolstoy’s opinion, consigned to the category of second-rate.

Tolstoy was an artistic genius... but a critical idiot. Remember he also dismissed most of Shakespeare... partially because of Shakespeare's amorality (the good guys don't always win... "bad" isn't always punished) but also due, I suspect, to his own petty jealousy and recognition he could not surpass the Bard. Tolstoy... a nascent Socialist/Communist imagined literature and art as having some great social worth that could only be realized if the work is universally accessible. The problem is that accessibility has absolutely no bearing whatsoever upon the aesthetic or artistic merits of a work of art. The Harry Potter and Twilight novels are more accessible than anything Tolstoy wrote... yet surely third-rate works of literature by way of comparison.

I wouldn’t go as far as Tolstoy. Nonetheless, I don’t think novels that appeal to children are automatically lesser than more sophisticated novels.

This would depend upon the book and the child. I read (and loved) a rather highly edited version of the Arabian Nights as a kid. I also read Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, the OZ books, Kipling, and Edward Lear. But I also read a lot of second-rate fantasy and science fiction. I'll agree that there is a degree of bias against works of art that are deemed by some as "childish" because they appeal to the child. There have been such critical comments leveled not only toward the great Lewis Carroll, Kipling, and H.G. Wells novels, but also Mozart's Magic Flute, Engelbert Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, films such as The Wizard of OZ and entire genre such as comic books. This doesn't seem to be the issue with JBI and others who have offered intelligent, well-though-out, criticisms of Lord of the Rings which have nothing to do with the notion that the book was written for children.

Indeed, I wouldn’t trust the sophisticate who renounced his teenage literary favorites any more than I would trust the man who was no longer in love with his high school girlfriend.

Many of the TV shows, books, comic books, and music that I listened to as a child, I would be embarrassed to admit to having once loved. I once loved Spaghetti-Os with Franks, Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches, and Cap'n Crunch and Lucky Charms cereal. These are no longer a part of my diet than is much of the music I listened to as a pre-pubescent.

No literary love is stronger than one’s first literary love – just as no Eros is more powerful than one’s first sexual love.

Ummm... how old are you? I can quite assure you that there are books, films, works of music, paintings, etc... that I passionately love... far more than my first loves in literature, music, film, and art. I also suspect that my feelings for my wife are far greater than those for my "first love."

As far as JBI’s specific criticisms of LOTR, the debate has gone on for decades. Some “literary” critics side with JBI; some side with me. Obviously, Tolkien fans don’t find his prose style “just boring to read”, but if JBI does, I’d suggest he refrain from reading it. However, the notion that the fault is with the novel instead of the reader is a bit self-serving, considering how many people of undoubted good taste have loved the book.

One can level that critical escape clause at virtually anything. My inability to really appreciate James Joyce is my fault. But then again... so is my inability to appreciate Harry Potter, Twilight, Dan Brown... and Lord of the Rings.

[FenwickS]

Russia is number 1 for me. Specifically Dostoevskii.

[cafolini]

Russia is number 1 for me. Specifically Dostoevskii.

Dostoevski was good, but Chekhow was the best representative of the Russian situation.
How little you must know of British, Irish and USA literature in order to make that statement.

[stlukesguild]

Unfortunately, cafolini is right. I've never gotten the obsession with Russian literature. basically, the Russians had one great century from Pushkin and Lermontov until the rise of Stalin... with a few exceptions thereafter. Even ignoring Beowulf, the Brits produced major players in every century from Chaucer onward (Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Marlowe, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Thomas Traherne, John Donne, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, Lawrence Sterne, Daniel Defoe, Lord Byron, William Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Dickens, Austen, Bronte, Hardy, H.G. Wells, Wilde, the Rossettis, Lewis Carroll, Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, etc...). The Greeks and the Italians have a body of literature that is more than impressive and so do the Germans. Within the context of the West, the French are perhaps the closest in terms of achievement to the Brits... but then we have China, India, Japan, Persia, and the rest of the Middle East with a body of literature barely known to most of us.

[hannah_arendt]

Russia is number 1 for me. Specifically Dostoevskii.

Without any doubt, Dostoyevski, Tolsoy were great writers. But they don`t represent russian literature as a whole.

[Ecurb]

Tolstoy was an artistic genius... but a critical idiot.

Tolstoy was a critical genius as well as an artistic genius, and “On Art” is a great work of criticism. It is true that Tolstoy disliked Shakespeare (and Beethoven, and Wagner, and many other great artists – I haven’t read the book in a few years, so I can’t remember all the details). However, critiques should be judged on their own merits, not on the basis of the extent to which the critic’s taste is similar to his readers’. If you haven’t read “On Art” – give it a try. The first half (in which Tolstoy demolishes a number of philosophers of Art and Aesthetics that I’d never heard of) is a little dull and dated. But Tolstoy’s own theories are so interesting and so well stated that the book is well worth reading, even if one disagrees with much of it (as one always does).

My memory, by the way, is that Tolstoy’s objections to Shakespeare are not based on the Bard’s amorality, but on the derivative nature of the stories (almost all the plays are derivative) and Tolstoy’s notions about the distinction between “art” and “artifice”. He correctly posited that Shakespeare could never resist a fancy speech, even when it was out of character for whoever was making it. Tolstoy also had his own prejudices about how art “should” be created: his antipathy for Beethoven’s later work was (as far as I can tell) largely based on his belief that no deaf person could write great music.

To each his own, stluke. My mature judgment suggests that I had excellent taste as a child (I never liked spaghetti Os, but I liked peanut butter and jelly, and still do – it’s a classic). One’s early great literary novels seem like an experience that will completely alter one’s life (back to Tolstoy, I’m thinking of reading Anna Karenina for the first time, as a teenager). Of course, no one novel completely alters one’s life (or, at least, the alteration is more ephemeral than one had believed at the time). My urge to become another Levin, so strong when I first read the book, weakened over time, and I realized that no mere novel is quite as life-altering as I believed it to be as a teenager. This experience has an impact on all the novels (even the very best) that I read today – my belief that they are life-altering is tempered by my memory that they are not.

It’s the same with one’s first love. First of all, adolescent insecurity (or modesty, if you prefer) makes you wonder if any woman can ever love you. Then, someone does. It’s like a hormonally-charged miracle. More mature loves can (of course) be longer lasting. The relationships they involve often have more depth. But the miraculous intensity of teenage love – the Eros of it -- is rarely surpassed. At least, that’s how it was for me.

Lord of the Rings was roundly criticized when it was first written. However, it has stood the test of time for 60 years – which Harry Potter, Twilight and Dan Brown have not. JBI’s critique of it was similar to that of the literary critics of 60 years ago – LOTR lacks character development, nuance, etc. However, I think this violates the critical principle that a work should be criticized for what it is, not for what it is not. It is a bit like a critic objecting to minimalist abstract painting because it “doesn’t tell an emotionally expressive story”, or “it doesn’t portray nuances of personality”. (I’m sure JBI said some other things about LOTR, too, and I didn’t look back at what he said – I’m simply making a general comment, not trying to reopen the argument about LOTR.)

The extent to which a work of art becomes canonical—loved by a great many art lovers who have demonstrated their taste and expertise – is the extent to which it becomes reasonable to fault oneself for failing to appreciate the work. Harry Potter and Twilight aren’t quite there yet. (Personally, I thought the first couple of Harry Potter books were pretty good, combining two excellent genres of children’s literature – fantasy, and the British Public School story. The series went downhill when it deemphasized the Public School soap opera, and concentrated on the boring war with Voldemart. I never read Twilight.)

I do think that an inability to appreciate “Harry Potter” is a failure of taste. However, that does not suggest that Harry Potter is a great novel, or even a very good novel. It simply means that breadth of taste is a valuable thing – and he who continues to love peanut butter as an adult has more opportunities for gastronomic enjoyment than he who has learned to be bored by it.

[FenwickS]

Dostoevski was good, but Chekhow was the best representative of the Russian situation.
How little you must know of British, Irish and USA literature in order to make that statement.

It's called an opinion. How little you must know of not being condescending.


Without any doubt, Dostoyevski, Tolsoy were great writers. But they don`t represent russian literature as a whole.

Who do you believe are good representatives? I have read works of 19th century Russian literature (Dostoevski, Tolstoy, Gogol, Goncharov, Lermontov...) but I am quite unfamilier with what is the general view of upon Russian Literature as a whole. Thanks!

[hannah_arendt]

Who do you believe are good representatives? I have read works of 19th century Russian literature (Dostoevski, Tolstoy, Gogol, Goncharov, Lermontov...) but I am quite unfamilier with what is the general view of upon Russian Literature as a whole. Thanks!

They are just very good, excellent writers. I don`t like looking at their works as a Russian literature. It`s not important where for example Gogol was born.

[stlukesguild]

Tolstoy was a critical genius as well as an artistic genius, and “On Art” is a great work of criticism. It is true that Tolstoy disliked Shakespeare (and Beethoven, and Wagner, and many other great artists – I haven’t read the book in a few years, so I can’t remember all the details). However, critiques should be judged on their own merits, not on the basis of the extent to which the critic’s taste is similar to his readers’.

What are the merits of any work of criticism or art beyond that which are our own? I can acknowledge, for example, that James Joyce is considered by a great many well-read individuals as being a brilliant writer but I cannot think of him as a a "brilliant" writer myself if his work does not speak to me. Ultimately all criticism is subjective and individual opinion... albeit some opinions are better than others.

So what do we make of Tolstoy's opinions? It seems that he is unable to appreciate artists... no matter how universally acknowledged... if they do not suit his taste. And how good is his taste? He doesn't like Beethoven, Wagner, Shakespeare... any art based upon the idea "beauty" or aesthetics. For him art is merely a means of transmitting emotions... ideally universally shared emotions... and the measure of art is how powerfully or well these emotions are conveyed. Thus the more universally accessible a work of art is (or the more it reaches the lowest common denominator) the better it is. Yet even here there are exceptions. Tolstoy has issues with art that conveys emotions that he is uncomfortable with. Beethoven and Wagner raise the spectre of passions he feels are inappropriate to art (and Tolstoy could be quite the Puritan) and so they are to be deemed "bad art" in spite of the strength of the emotions they communicate.

If you haven’t read “On Art” – give it a try. The first half (in which Tolstoy demolishes a number of philosophers of Art and Aesthetics that I’d never heard of) is a little dull and dated. But Tolstoy’s own theories are so interesting and so well stated that the book is well worth reading, even if one disagrees with much of it (as one always does).

Certainly anything by Tolstoy is worth reading. But are you not suggesting that the merits of Tolstoy's criticism counters his own aesthetic arguments. In other words, you are suggesting that his critical writings are worth reading because of their aesthetic merits... for how well written they are more than for the actually merits of his arguments.

My memory, by the way, is that Tolstoy’s objections to Shakespeare are not based on the Bard’s amorality, but on the derivative nature of the stories (almost all the plays are derivative) and Tolstoy’s notions about the distinction between “art” and “artifice”.

This would suggest that Tolstoy had little concept of the development of literature, as most literature of Shakespeare's time was derivative. This would be rather like criticizing Michelangelo or Rubens for being "derivative" for basing their paintings upon well-known narratives unlike 20th century painters.

He correctly posited that Shakespeare could never resist a fancy speech, even when it was out of character for whoever was making it.

I doubt anyone would have been shocked to recognize that no one in Shakespeare's time spoke like Shakespeare. Of course Tolstoy lacked Shakespeare's mastery with language... and would have seen it as something "elitist". Again, this is rooted in a concept of art for the masses with a message that is ennobling and uplifting... which puts Tolstoy at odds to a great many... one may even say a majority of artists and critics.

Lord of the Rings was roundly criticized when it was first written. However, it has stood the test of time for 60 years – which Harry Potter, Twilight and Dan Brown have not.

60 years is not a great passage of time when it comes to art. A great deal of Modernism is still open to debate. personally, I suspect that Lord of the Rings will survive as something of a minor classic... akin to the novels of Alexandre Dumas or the Sherlock Holmes books... as works beloved by the larger reading audience... but little loved by critics, academics, and subsequent generations of writers.

I do think that an inability to appreciate “Harry Potter” is a failure of taste. However, that does not suggest that Harry Potter is a great novel, or even a very good novel. It simply means that breadth of taste is a valuable thing – and he who continues to love peanut butter as an adult has more opportunities for gastronomic enjoyment than he who has learned to be bored by it.

One may appreciate Harry Potter as one appreciates trashy TV, most pop music, and most summer blockbuster movies... with the full recognition that they are what they are... mindless entertainment.

[Ecurb]

When I said that Tolstoy was a great critic, I simply meant that his critical writing is provacative, interesting, enjoyable to read, and brilliantly argued. I (like most other readers) disagree with many of his judgments -- but what makes a good critic is the quality of his writing -- his ability to entertain, enlighten, and enthrall his readers. My restatements of Tolstoy's positions do not do him justice, in part because I don't remember his arguments well enough to restate them properly. My guess is that since he wasn't a native English-speaker, he probably didn't appreciate the poetry in Shakespeare as much as native-English-speakers do. However, this guess is suspect because Shakespeare's plays are very popular in translation. Tolstoy's evisceration of Wagner's Opera (one of the Ring Cycle Operas, I forget which one) at the end of "What is Art" is hilarious. His basic theory -- about infection of emotion -- is suspect. But part of the fun of reading his criticism is getting an insight into how he crafted his own great novels (which, by the way, he also claimed were second rate in "What is Art", so at least he wasn't self-serving).

C.S. Lewis once wrote an interesting essay in which he disagreed with the distinction between "high-brow" and "low-brow" art (what you call "Trashy" TV). So-called high-brow art is not different in kind from low-brow art (he argues) -- it is simply more satisfying and entertaining -- different in degree. Lewis talked about how much he loved H Rider-Haggard's "She" as a child, and how much he still loves it. However, it didn't provide him with as many hours of entertainment as really good novels, because great novels entertain and enlighten even when you are not reading them. Of course, for many fantasy fans, this is true of Tolkien, too. I'll grant that the hours they spend translating Sindarin or compiling geneologies may not be an identical form of entertainment to thinking about whether one can live one's life eternally questing for truth and goodness, like Levin, but the Tolkien fans aren't so very different from Joyceans who head off to Dublin on Bloomsday to retrace Leopold's journey through the city, spotting landmarks like Tolkien fans spot new Sindarin words. Novels that encite that degree of interest (it seems to me) have *something* going for them. (Harry Potter fans spent many hours thinking about those books, too, but very few of those enthralled were more than 12 years old.)

I forget which painters Tolstoy likes and which he despises in "What is Art" -- but he definitely takes on some famous names, there, too. For those who have read Anna Karenina, some of Tolstoy's ideas are similar to those in the Book where Vronsky is learning to paint in Italy.

e.t.a -- I looked it up and the short book is generally translated as "What is Art" not "On Art" as I had previously written.

[Adolescent09]

From what I've read, and honestly, I've only read a little over 100 books from authors of various ethnic heritage I would say that my favorite literature comes from Russia.

I've read books from 11 different countries (I only just realized that by looking at my shelf! lol). Here would be my top 6 countries and/or continents

1. Russia
2. France
3. UK
4. Italy
5. China
6. America

[hannah_arendt]

Why do you have Russian in the place? Which authors have you read from this country?

Which writers from these countries have you read?

[Adolescent09]

So what do we make of Tolstoy's opinions? It seems that he is unable to appreciate artists... no matter how universally acknowledged... if they do not suit his taste. And how good is his taste? He doesn't like Beethoven, Wagner, Shakespeare... any art based upon the idea "beauty" or aesthetics. For him art is merely a means of transmitting emotions... ideally universally shared emotions... and the measure of art is how powerfully or well these emotions are conveyed. Thus the more universally accessible a work of art is (or the more it reaches the lowest common denominator) the better it is. Yet even here there are exceptions. Tolstoy has issues with art that conveys emotions that he is uncomfortable with. Beethoven and Wagner raise the spectre of passions he feels are inappropriate to art (and Tolstoy could be quite the Puritan) and so they are to be deemed "bad art" in spite of the strength of the emotions they communicate.

A gap exists in your logic.


"For him, art is merely a means of transmitting emotions"?
You overtly downplay the relevance of the human emotion. The act of being content with a work, feeling happy with it, being able to empathize with its characters, laughing with them, venting at them and escaping into their world(s) all comprise a cut from the fabric of our emotions. Without emotion there is no enjoyment. Without enjoyment, the incentive to read does not exist. Also, the only reason beauty is held in high regard is because of the very emotions you seem to dismiss.


Thus the more universally accessible a work of art is (or the more it reaches the lowest common denominator) the better it is
I am not entirely sure of how you were able to link your previous sentence with this one by using the word "thus". You appear to claim that the emotions felt by a broad readership correlate to the quality of the work. Case-in-point, I used to read trashy romance fiction novels while being well aware of the fact that they were abysmal in a grammatical/rhetorical sense and yet I thoroughly enjoyed them because however cheesy their ideas of love were, they were ideas that resonated with me. Another ex.: I love Tyler Perry's 'Madea' plays even though the humor is crude, the acting is abysmal, and racism sticks out like a sore thumb. On the other hand, I believe the characters truly mean what they say, and therefore, their raw emotion clicks with me. I love Citizen Kane, It's a Wonderful Life and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (universally considered outstanding pieces of visual art) because the emotion I feel with these classical works mirrors the emotion I feel with the "Madea" and trashy romance novels. Many critics may see a blurred line separating quality from emotional interpretation in the context of visual/literary art but some people, myself included, can't make the difference. I would ramble on with more examples using my favorite video games but this reply would go on forever.

---

I have more to say but I've been up over 26 hours. Insomnia is an insatiable harlot. Time to force myself to bed.

[hypatia_]

[/B]

It's true, particularly in the 19th Century, Russia produced a great number of excellent writers : Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Gogol, Chekhov, etc. who all had to say profound things about human nature and whose works are still well-known in the West and have been frequently used as a basis for other artistic productions such as films, theater, etc.


Rand fits in with that description quite well also.

[stlukesguild]

A gap exists in your logic.

As opposed to the huge gaping hole left by such a comment as this? So you have undoubtedly read enough of Tolstoy... including his critical essays... among the 100 or so books you admit to having read... in order to make an assessment of where I'm wrong about his critical opinions?

You overtly downplay the relevance of the human emotion. The act of being content with a work, feeling happy with it, being able to empathize with its characters, laughing with them, venting at them and escaping into their world(s) all comprise a cut from the fabric of our emotions. Without emotion there is no enjoyment.

Nearly all art conveys emotions... or rather should I say all art is capable of stirring emotions in the audience. In reality, it is the audience that brings the emotions to a work of art. What is tragic or heart-breaking to you, I may find comic and cliche-ridden. The notion that the central aim of art is "self expression"... the expression of emotions... is a Romantic notion often held firmly by adolescents. The teen-age girl's diary in which she gushes on about the boys she likes is surely "self-expressive"... laden with emotion. The baby crying because he is hungry is "self-expressive"... but I doubt either achieve the level of great art.

Tolstoy argues that the measure of art is how well it conveys emotions... and the more universally accessible the greater the art. But this is nonsense. We have probably all seen films in which the grand climax is reached... where the underdog finally triumphs... accompanied by the soaring strings of lush Neo-Romantic orchestral music... and almost no-one fails to be moved... in spite of the cliches. Again, accessibility is no measure of artistic merit. But Tolstoy adamantly rejects this idea because he is looking at art through a socio-political lens. He feels that those works of art that demand a certain degree of background information... or which challenge the audience... are inherently "elitist"... and "elitism" is bad.

Then we have the inconsistency in Tolstoy's theories in the sense that he can reject art (Beethoven and Wagner) that is powerfully "expressive" of emotions... and has reached a large (universal?) audience when that art conveys emotions/ideas that Tolstoy is uncomfortable with or feels are inappropriate to art.

You appear to claim that the emotions felt by a broad readership correlate to the quality of the work.

That was Tolstoy's aim. In spite of having been born into a privileged aristocracy, he wished to model himself as a Christ-like man of the common people. Historically, most art was the domain of the "elite"... a wealthy and educated elite. This began to change in the 19th and 20th centuries with increased literacy, access to the arts through the means of mechanical reproduction, and increased education of the larger populace. Even so the percentage of the population as a whole who put forth a great deal of effort in the appreciation, promotion, creation, and preservation of the arts is still a limited number... an "elite" by choice or elective affinity. The notion that an artist "should" strive to communicate with the largest possible audience (which essentially translates to the lowest common denominator) or that a "universal art" can exist is naive at best.

All of this says nothing of Tolstoy the writer. Undoubtedly, his novels and short stories place him in the company of an "elite" that he would deny: Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Milton, Goethe, and a few others.

[stlukesguild]

Rand fits in with that description quite well also.

:smilielol5:

[stlukesguild]

One thing that is interesting in this thread is the focus upon the novel. Who are the great Russian poets? There are a number... but can they rival the French or British? What of non-fiction (Montaigne, Gibbons, Borges, Rousseau, Johnson, Goethe, etc...). What of theater? Yes, we have Checkov... but any other major players? Arguments concerning the "greatest" national body of literature must consider all of these elements.

[hypatia_]

Rand fits in with that description quite well also.

:smilielol5:

Not a 19th century writer, but she's Russian, wrote solely about human nature, works are still well known in the West, and her works have been adapted to many other formats of art including film and video games.

Please elaborate if you find this inaccurate.

[stlukesguild]

I'm questioning the term "excellent" as applied to Rand.

[hypatia_]

I'm questioning the term "excellent" as applied to Rand.

Ah. What is your definition of excellent?

[JBI]

Ah. What is your definition of excellent?
Well mine wouldn't include Rand (assuming you mean Ayn Rand?).

As for St. Lukes' comment on genre, well that is true, but what of other genres besides novels etc. that do not exist in other traditions. For instance, what we call Chinese "novels" are not exactly novels in the Western sense, in that they combine verse and fiction (Jin Ping Mei), or combine oral accounts with folk legends (Romance of the 3 kingdoms), or communal exercises (Japanese Tanka as a product of social sphere), or any other number of diverging strands in tradition.

Either way, this whole idea is so Western-focused that it is almost ridiculous. To even suggest that a country (which is a new invention mind you) can produce the "greatest" of anything is absurd. Can we even call Goethe a German anyway? what of Aristotle, should we call him Egyptian? See how absurd this is?

Then, we can narrow this - which language has the best literature. This is a valid question, and the one we should be exploring, as it basically removes the artificial borders that preoccupy post 1800 literature.

[hypatia_]

Well mine wouldn't include Rand (assuming you mean Ayn Rand?).

Yes, Ayn.




Then, we can narrow this - which language has the best literature. This is a valid question, and the one we should be exploring, as it basically removes the artificial borders that preoccupy post 1800 literature.

Language is an improvement over geography, but it is still senseless and in fact a tad egotistical to try and say one language's expression was superior to all others.

[Ecurb]

I think stluke is mischaracterizing Tolstoy’s theories about art. It’s been years since I read “What is Art” – and if I can find my copy, I’ll look at it again. However, Tolstoy’s theory (as I remember it) is more complicated than “that the measure of art is how well it conveys emotions.” The film endings in which stirring music combines with trite plot-lines to yank an emotional response from the audience are precisely what Tolstoy would deplore – indeed, they are similar to what he deplored in Shakespeare and Beethoven.

Neither does Tolstoy say that “elitist” art is bad art. Instead, he (reasonably) asserts that although art which is accessible to only those with specialized education can be good art, it cannot rise to the very top artistic level of ‘universal’ art. (I remember Tolstoy offering the story of Joseph and his Brothers as one example of universal art.)

Tolstoy particularly rejects as “false art” derivative art in which the artist, instead of “infecting” the audience with original emotions that have affected the artist, infects the audience with emotions “derived” only from viewing other works of art.

I’ll look for my copy of the book this evening, and (if I find it) report back in more detail.

[stlukesguild]

Language is an improvement over geography, but it is still senseless and in fact a tad egotistical to try and say one language's expression was superior to all others.

How is it "egotistical"? Perhaps if one were to blindly champion the achievements of one's own language/nation. I can pretty much say with a near absolute degree of certainty that the greatest art produced in Western culture from 1300-1550 was that of the Italians and the greatest body of music produced in the West from 1650-1930 was that of the Germanic-Austrian tradition. Limiting myself again to Western culture, I'd have to go with the English language as having produced the greatest body of literature. We are speaking here of the literature of Great Britain, Ireland, the United States, Canada, Australia, etc... Within Western culture what other language could compete?

[hypatia_]

Language is an improvement over geography, but it is still senseless and in fact a tad egotistical to try and say one language's expression was superior to all others.

How is it "egotistical"? Perhaps if one were to blindly champion the achievements of one's own language/nation. I can pretty much say with a near absolute degree of certainty that the greatest art produced in Western culture from 1300-1550 was that of the Italians and the greatest body of music produced in the West from 1650-1930 was that of the Germanic-Austrian tradition. Limiting myself again to Western culture, I'd have to go with the English language as having produced the greatest body of literature. We are speaking here of the literature of Great Britain, Ireland, the United States, Canada, Australia, etc... Within Western culture what other language could compete?

That is the exact fashion I meant as far as egotistical. I'm not saying you are; I'm saying having a discussion about the greatest language to produce literature would inevitably produce biases as people simply can't read every language, and if they check out a translated version, it often-times will not hold the same weight.

I guess that becomes a discussion about human nature, whether or not people will resort to saying "well i only have read british literature but it is clearly the greatest," when there has been an enormously influential body of work from India, for example.

[stlukesguild]

The film endings in which stirring music combines with trite plot-lines to yank an emotional response from the audience are precisely what Tolstoy would deplore – indeed, they are similar to what he deplored in Shakespeare and Beethoven.

Let's face it. Tolstoy was one of the worst critics of art ever. Among those he disliked were all of the Greek playwrights, Dante, Tasso, Milton, Shakespeare, Goethe, Zola, Ibsen, Beethoven, and Wagner. It is difficult to afford Tolstoy's criticism any serious consideration when he is so consistently wrong.

Tolstoy declares, in What is Art that "art is the transmission to others of a special feeling experienced by the artist."

There have been other critics who have been notoriously wrong. Johnson dismissed Lawrence Sterne and Nabokov famously wrote off Dostoevsky... but these were but single failings among a body of criticism that was far more often accurate than not. And then there were the infamous rants of Mark Twain... but then again Twain was usually aiming toward satire. Tolstoy was deadly serious when he writes of Beethoven:

“…not only do I not see how the feelings transmitted by this work could unite people not specially trained to submit themselves to its complex hypnotism, but I am unable to imagine to myself a crowd of normal people who could understand anything of this long, confused, and artificial production, except short snatches which are lost in a sea of what is incomprehensible. And therefore, whether I like it or not, I am compelled to conclude that this work belongs to the rank of bad art.”

Tolstoy's criticism has nothing to do with trite plot twists and saccharine efforts at stirring the emotions... which are rare to non-existent in either Shakespeare of Beethoven. They have far more to do with the rants of a grumpy old fart who envisioned himself as a Christ-like messiah infuriated by the fame and achievements of others.

[Ecurb]

Let's face it. Tolstoy was one of the worst critics of art ever. .

I couldn’t disagree more. Very few books of criticism are as much fun to read as “What is Art”. A critic should be judged on whether his critiques are stimulating, enjoyable, and illuminating. To call Tolstoy “one of the worst critics of art ever” is, I think, to completely misunderstand what good criticism comprises. However much most of us may disagree with Tolstoy’s theory of art, or his ratings of Dante, Beethoven, Shakespeare, the Greek playwrights, Michaelangelo, and Raphael, “What is Art” is a classic.

If you read the entire book (I looked through it quickly again last night) you’ll see that Tolstoy does complain about trite plot twists and saccharine efforts at stirring the emotions. He particularly dislikes derivative art – art that either copies the techniques of other works (he despises art schools), or art that infects others with inauthentic emotions (for example emotions that derive from other art).

I’ll agree that Tolstoy was a crotchety old man (he wrote “What is Art” in 1896, I think, when he was pushing 70 years of age. He may or may not have been “infuriated by the fame… of others.” However, his motives or psychological profile are irrelevant to the quality of his criticism. Tolstoy is guilty (like stluke) of the “personal heresy”. He thinks that how the work of art gets done is important to the quality of the work – and he goes overboard in descrying works of art because of the motives and tactics of the artists rather than because of the quality of the work itself. He goes on about how Beethoven’s later work suffers from the composer’s deafness (he actually likes some early Beethoven).

As seen in the Beethoven passage stluke quotes above, Tolstoy compares one form of “false art” with hypnosis. It is, he thinks, a parlor trick (perhaps a very well done parlor trick) rather than true art. He also thinks that universal art that creates holy feelings is superior to more prosaic and mundane art. (I’m not describing this exactly right, Tolstoy’s religious feelings were complicated – he believed in God as an abstraction, not as a personal deity, and he denied the divinity of Jesus, although he considered himself a Christian.)

However, stluke is, like Tolstoy, guilty of the personal heresy. Whether Tolstoy was jealous, or a “grumpy old fart”, is irrelevant to the quality of “What is Art”. Plenty of grumpy old farts are great writers, and Tolstoy was one of them. In addition, such universally acclaimed critics as George B. Shaw shared Tolstoy’s opinion of Shakespeare. Surely the extent to which a critic’s taste coincides with our own is of little relevance to the quality of his critiques.

I think Tolstoy’s theory of the nature and purpose of art is incorrect (even preposterous) – but it is never dull. I think Tolstoy’s judgments about the quality of other artists are wrong – but they are always fascinating. Stluke has stated that he doesn’t like Joyce. Does the fact that he dislikes the writer generally considered the greatest English novelist of the 20th century make him “one of the worst critics of art ever.” I don’t think so. We may look for a newspaper movie reviewer who shares our tastes, but surely a critic should be expected to offer us something more stimulating. Tolstoy does.

[JCamilo]

He dislike Dante for a dumb reason, but then it is was a fashion to dislike Dante.

Now, his ideas (hardly a theory, Tolstoy is preaching, not analysing) of art are hardly "wrong", his notion of canon formation is wrong. But What is Art is not that influential, Tolstoy is hardly more relevant in art treatises than Schiller or Baudelaire, to mention two writers that also went on Aesthetics). Tolstoy is basically anti-romantic, overall, he has a great notion of language, he spotted Tchekhov talent quite well and Dostoievisky flaws too. But Tolstoy is just doing the same mistake many do, start defining art, propose an universal definition but when he applies, it is goes to his personal taste or more, what he would do as an artist.

[Ecurb]

I agree, jCamilo. His critiques of some of the philosophers then in fashion (most of whom I'd never heard of) seem, to me, a philosophical novice, persuasive. However, his own "universal definitions" are no better. Nonetheless, I'll defend his ability as a critic -- because the first (and perhaps only) responsibility of a good critic is to write critiques that are entertaining, enlightening, enthralling, and energizing. Despite its weaknesses, "What is Art" qualifies.

[hypatia_]

I agree, jCamilo. His critiques of some of the philosophers then in fashion (most of whom I'd never heard of) seem, to me, a philosophical novice, persuasive. However, his own "universal definitions" are no better. Nonetheless, I'll defend his ability as a critic -- because the first (and perhaps only) responsibility of a good critic is to write critiques that are entertaining, enlightening, enthralling, and energizing. Despite its weaknesses, "What is Art" qualifies.

So we are in agreement that good criticism lies not in it's truth, but in it's ability to stimulate discussion (which therein could lead us in the direction of truth)?

[stlukesguild]

To call Tolstoy “one of the worst critics of art ever” is, I think, to completely misunderstand what good criticism comprises. However much most of us may disagree with Tolstoy’s theory of art, or his ratings of Dante, Beethoven, Shakespeare, the Greek playwrights, Michaelangelo, and Raphael, “What is Art” is a classic.

What makes "What is Art?" a classic? It is by and large an irrelevant rant not taken seriously by anyone. I don't see very many individuals quoting Tolstoy as critic as they do any number of other writers.

If you read the entire book (I looked through it quickly again last night) you’ll see that Tolstoy does complain about trite plot twists and saccharine efforts at stirring the emotions. He particularly dislikes derivative art – art that either copies the techniques of other works (he despises art schools), or art that infects others with inauthentic emotions (for example emotions that derive from other art).

But it seems he is unable to define what trite plot twists and saccharine efforts at stirring the emotions are. Essentially it comes down to "What I don't like is bad."

I’ll agree that Tolstoy was a crotchety old man (he wrote “What is Art” in 1896, I think, when he was pushing 70 years of age. He may or may not have been “infuriated by the fame… of others.” However, his motives or psychological profile are irrelevant to the quality of his criticism.

They are relevant when the criticism is continually off-base and devoid of any real logic.

Tolstoy is guilty (like stluke) of the “personal heresy”. He thinks that how the work of art gets done is important to the quality of the work – and he goes overboard in descrying works of art because of the motives and tactics of the artists rather than because of the quality of the work itself.

That's a funny criticism... considering that I fall clearly withing the Art pour l'Art/Formalism camp in which the only measure of art is the art work itself.

He goes on about how Beethoven's later work suffers from the composer’s deafness (he actually likes some early Beethoven).

And focusing solely upon his critical comments, almost anyone knowledgeable of classical music would tear Tolstoy's comments to shreds. Beethoven's late works, rather than suffering as a result of his increasing deafness, rise to an ever more profound and innovative level. His late piano sonatas, late quartets, and 9th symphony (among other works) are recognized as towering works within the whole of classical music... pushing the form toward Romanticism.

But what are the insightful criticisms that Tolstoy offers?

"…not only do I not see how the feelings transmitted by this work could unite people not specially trained to submit themselves to its complex hypnotism, but I am unable to imagine to myself a crowd of normal people who could understand anything of this long, confused, and artificial production, except short snatches which are lost in a sea of what is incomprehensible. And therefore, whether I like it or not, I am compelled to conclude that this work belongs to the rank of bad art.”

Where exactly are the critical analysis of the 9th Symphony as a work of music? Tolstoy personally finds the work incomprehensible and confused and thus cannot fathom how others might be of a different opinion.

And he applies similar critiques to the music of Wagner:

“It is the same when listening to an opera of Wagner’s. Sit in the dark for four days in company with people who are not quite normal, and, through the auditory nerves, subject your brain to the strongest action of the sounds best adapted to excite it, and you will no doubt be reduced to an abnormal condition and be enchanted by absurdities.

Again, rather than offering any real criticism he dismisses those whose opinions may differ as "not quite normal"... "enchanted by absurdities."

Later, he again attacks the opinions of the audience... undoubtedly morons, unlike the enlightened Tolstoy... rather than the artwork in question:

“…around me I saw a crowd of three thousand people, who not only patiently witnessed all this absurd nonsense, but even considered it their duty to be delighted with it.”

As seen in the Beethoven passage stluke quotes above, Tolstoy compares one form of “false art” with hypnosis. It is, he thinks, a parlor trick (perhaps a very well done parlor trick) rather than true art. He also thinks that universal art that creates holy feelings is superior to more prosaic and mundane art. (I’m not describing this exactly right, Tolstoy’s religious feelings were complicated – he believed in God as an abstraction, not as a personal deity, and he denied the divinity of Jesus, although he considered himself a Christian.)

And this is criticism that should be taken seriously?

I think Tolstoy’s theory of the nature and purpose of art is incorrect (even preposterous) – but it is never dull.

One might say the same of the political analysis of Rush Limbaugh. The major weakness, again, that I see is that restated by JCamilo... and that is Tolstoy's attempt to define what art is or should be... and then dismiss all that doesn't meet his definition. To merely make the attempt to define Art is a fool's game... but Tolstoy isn't even consistent here. There are artists who meet his professed ideals as to what Art should be who he still dismisses... solely because he doesn't like them.

I think Tolstoy’s judgments about the quality of other artists are wrong – but they are always fascinating. Stluke has stated that he doesn’t like Joyce. Does the fact that he dislikes the writer generally considered the greatest English novelist of the 20th century make him “one of the worst critics of art ever.” I don’t think so.

It seems to me that there is an essential difference between stating "I don't particularly like Artist X," and "I don't particularly like Artist X, thus his work must be bad art and all those whose opinions differ must be fools." I have stated I don't particularly like Joyce... but I haven't suggested that Joyce sucks or that all those who like Joyce are idiots.

[lichtrausch]

When I read criticism, what's most important to me is that the critic has meaningful insights and makes strong, coherent arguments. Whether he is right or not is secondary. But if he is wrong most of the time, that would indeed cast a shadow over his criticisms.


and of course English, French and many other languages come from Sanskrit.
What!?! Sanskrit, English and French belong to entirely separate branches of Indo-European. Their only relation is through their common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European.

[JBI]

When I read criticism, what's most important to me is that the critic has meaningful insights and makes strong, coherent arguments. Whether he is right or not is secondary. But if he is wrong most of the time, that would indeed cast a shadow over his criticisms.


What!?! Sanskrit, English and French belong to entirely separate branches of Indo-European. Their only relation is through their common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European.
But to borrow an idea from Northrop Frye, easily one of the biggest and most important critics of English literature this last century, it is generally the lowest form of criticism that focuses on evaluation and judgment.

The view of criticism should not be a two thumbs up or a thumbs down, but merely to shed light on particular ideas. We don't really need the thumbs up, especially for already canonical authors who neither benefit from more thumbs up, or are hurt by a thumbs down.

[JCamilo]

I think even Frye said what he thougth good or bad, but his writtings were not simple "this is bad or good". A critic that tries to be on the fence all time will not have the same aura of true... you know there is something negative and he keeps walking in circles to avoid mentioning it? And of course, a critic that for some reason keep writing about what he does not like is just a vulture. Good literature must be the muse of all critic.

Anyways, I think provoking discussion is way too easy. Anyone can. And yes, many criticism have status as good because the critic was a good writer himself. Good writers are persuassive, they will look as true, even because you need to be way lost to be "wrong", as you are basically setting the conditions for truth for the particular universe of crticism you are following. Basically, criticism also need some suspension of disbelief.

[JBI]

Frye's lectures according to my professors, who for the most part were trained by him directly or worked with him, generally were the same as his writings. Though he passes a sort of critical judgment he does not ever seem to two thumbs up or whatever books. In truth, when finding out how things work, it is hard not to say if they are effective or not. But for the most part, his career was focused not on evaluation, as his subject matter was an already established canon. There is no need for a critical judgment of the Bible, or of Shakespeare, or whatever.

Besides which, his writings on Canadian literature are strangely nonjudgmental, in that he is not critically dismissive of any number of mediocre works.

[JCamilo]

Yes, if he was a member here, he would not be not posting in the thread "Overated/underated books'" or "Worst books of all time", etc, but i think it is in the end pretty obvious to see what books he liked.

[Ecurb]

Tolstoy’s forceful, clearly stated opinions make for good reading. “What is Art” is still in print – of how many other works of 19th century criticism can this be said? Perhaps “classic” is slightly overstated – but only slightly. As for “anyone knowledgeable of classical music… tear(ing) Tosltoy’s comments to shreds,” that might be easier today, since Leo has been dead for 100+ years. However, his rhetorical talents were such that the “tearing to shreds” might be dangerous if he were still alive to defend himself. Also, while Tolstoy’s critique of Beethoven amounts to a couple of paragraphs of tangential opinion (he is using Beethoven to exemplify the application of his theories, rather than arguing how those theories apply to Beethoven), he does criticize Wagner over the course of several pages. Criticizing Tolstoy for failing to successfully ARGUE that Beethoven was mediocre is silly, because Tolstoy never attempts that argument. He is merely using Beethoven as an example.

If “the only measure of art is the art itself”, then surely it is irrelevant to the quality of Tolstoy’s critique whether Tolstoy was jealous of the artistic success of others, or whether he was a “grumpy old fart.” I wonder why you brought it up?

As far as “attacking the audience”, Tolstoy specifically says that as a member of the elite, he was particularly susceptible to the hypnotic charms of some forms of “false art”. Far from differentiating himself, he places himself within the group whose reaction he is criticizing.

Is defining “art” “a fool’s game”? If it is, a great many philosophers, from Plato on, have played the fool.

Finally, Tolstoy’s opinion of Beethoven led to “The Kreutzer Sonata”, one of the best (long) short stories ever written. Those of us who have read it can only be grateful for Tolstoy’s animosity toward the composer.

[JCamilo]

We can criticize Tolstoy for falling to argue about Beethoveen because he pretends to be doing a logical analyses. He is doing nothing of sort. But the work is in print, because it is very valuable to understand Tolstoy, one of the major authors of our story. His opinions on Dante, Shakespeare, etc. say little of them but they talk loads about himself. The critic - you said it was a old man's work - shows much of how Tolstoy lived between an idealism (despite his anti-romanticism) and a reality, the count vs.the man, as Tolstoy also denies his own earlier (and best work). You may quote Tolstoy, simple because some ideas he repeats about what is art works for intrduction, but it is hardly considered something serious.

Again, I recall a letter - between Gorki and Chekhov, not sure who to who - where they describe the reaction of Tolstoy to the early Dostoievisky fanboys. Tolstoy is aghast with Dostoievisky careless language, etc. They say the old Count was back. Then Tolstoy softens and talks with some admiration of how Dostoievisky was "Human" or "accessible". The idea was that Tolstoy was able of sharp criticism, had the sensibility for it, but in the old age he just didn't consider it important anymore. What is Art is a product of this period, it is preaching, tolstoy trying to find a balance about the aceticism of his old age and the great writers of young times. What is art is valuable work of Tolstoy about Tolstoy, not about art itself. Not a bad reading at all, but just it.

[stlukesguild]

Tolstoy’s forceful, clearly stated opinions make for good reading. “What is Art” is still in print – of how many other works of 19th century criticism can this be said?

Come on. The literary criticism of nearly any important writer is likely still in print. On my own shelves I can find the critical writings of Baudelaire, Gautier, Zola, Pater, Coleridge, Emerson, Johnson, T.S. Eliot, Octavio Paz, J.L. Borges, Ezra Pound, Victor Hugo, Goethe, Schiller, Edgar Allen Poe, G.B. Shaw, Ruskin, Hazlitt, Stevenson, Novalis, William Morris, etc... AS JCamilo has suggested, Tolstoy's critical essays are important primarily in gaining a full understanding of Tolstoy. They have little relevance upon critical thought... far less than some works by writers such as Wilde, Pater, and Gautier... who are admittedly far less important writers than old Leo.

The Kreuzer Sonata is indeed a brilliant story... rooted in Tolstoy's animosity toward Beethoven. But is it at all likable? Does it reveal a side of Tolstoy that is at all likable or suggests a thinker worthy of serious consideration? Pozdnyshev is in many ways a stand in for old Tolstoy himself: a prudish, unlikable man who dismisses the whole or eroticism... sexuality... and love as "animal excess" and "swinishness". The story can be seen as an argument for sexual abstinence with Pozdnyshev portraying marriage and love and love-making as part of a "swinish life" that is only of value in the production of children. He rails against Beethoven's "Kreuzer Sonata" for its ability to inspire intense human emotions which he feels are inappropriate... animalistic. In an epilogue to "The Kreuzer Sonata" Tolstoy further promotes the idea that carnal love, infatuation, attraction, and sexuality are detrimental to humanities "higher" goals... and he goes on to write further articles/essays in defense of abstinence.

Again, I can appreciate Tolstoy the writer for his great novels and tales... but Tolstoy the literary... and social critic leaves much to be desired.

[Ecurb]

I'll grant that one of the fun things about "What is Art" is figuring out how it fits with the Great Man's personality as an artist and as a prophet. Wouldn't it be cool if Shakespeare and Beethoven had written their own treatises on the subject? Also, I agree that "What is Art" is primarily a work of philosophy, not a critique. I don't think philosophers take it seriously, although very few of them can write anything as interesting, accessible or enjoyable to read. Tolstoy does attempt to make a logical argument -- but I disagree with you that Beethoven is essential to his argument. He is merely using Beethoven as an example of what he means. His references to Beethoven are enjoyable because they help us to figure out where Tolstoy was coming from in "The Kreutzer Sonata".

I disagree that "Tolstoy pretends to be doing logical analyses". Tolstoy IS doing logical analyses. His premises may be bizarre, but there's nothing wrong with his logic, and his reasons for disapproving of Beethoven, Shakespeare, et. al. are consistent, however much we may disagree with the premises upon which they are based. Also, although it is true that Tolstoy probably never equalled his seminal novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877), he continued to write excellent (even great) fiction. "The Kreutzer Sonata" was published in 1889, "Master and Man" in 1895, and the great novella (so timely today) "Hadji Murat" was published posthumously in 1912. He also wrote an entire pamphlet on Shakespeare, which I either haven't read or can't remember. I'll see if its available on line now.

[JCamilo]

Yourself said Beethoven is not even fundamental to the argument, he is not analysing Beethoven, rather targeting him with his own ideas, in the end, Beethoven is not Beethoven, just an Anti-Tolstoy.

Edit: Yes, Tolstoy did not turned into a bad writer at all. His "christians" themes tales are not worth, but he had good works. I think Khostomer (sp) short story, a fable about a horse, ranks up there with the best short stories. It is a bitter, cynical, critical Tolstoy. Excellent

[WyattGwyon]

And focusing solely upon his critical comments, almost anyone knowledgeable of classical music would tear Tolstoy's comments to shreds. Beethoven's late works, rather than suffering as a result of his increasing deafness, rise to an ever more profound and innovative level. His late piano sonatas, late quartets, and 9th symphony (among other works) are recognized as towering works within the whole of classical music... pushing the form toward Romanticism.


Today Beethoven's late works are recognized as works of genius, but to many great professional musicians and critics among his contemporaries and among the next couple of generations, they were problematic and challenging. Long after the 9th Symphony was composed, as astute a critic as Eduard Hanslick described it as like a torso in white marble with a green head attached (bad paraphrase from memory, sorry)—meaning it didn't gel as a unified work. So Tolstoy's opinion of late Beethoven was not particularly eccentric and certainly not indefensible. (Attributing its alleged aesthetic defects to deafness seems dumb however.) Now if he had made such statements about the big middle-period masterpieces, that would be another matter.

Also, Beethoven was considered by many among his contemporaries and successive generations to be the quintessential Romantic artist. It is a modern convention to lump him with Haydn and Mozart.

[hypatia_]

You can't take a critique seriously if it is of a "masterpiece" but by a person from the same era. Genius work will always be considered so unique to the time that even the best known artists that lived at that period would have strong opinions about it.

It makes perfect sense that well-respected artists would often-times judge other masterpieces from the same time period as horrid.

[Ecurb]

Tolstoy's essay on Shakespeare is available on this very site! Here's a short exerpt. Although most of us may disagree with it, to call it illogical, irrational, irrascible or silly seems inappropriate. It is plainly, logically, and simply written and argued:


Dramatic art, according to the laws established by those very critics who extol Shakespeare, demands that the persons represented in the play should be, in consequence of actions proper to their characters, and owing to a natural course of events, placed in positions requiring them to struggle with the surrounding world to which they find themselves in opposition, and in this struggle should display their inherent qualities.

In "King Lear" the persons represented are indeed placed externally in opposition to the outward world, and they struggle with it. But their strife does not flow from the natural course of events nor from their own characters, but is quite arbitrarily established by the author, and therefore can not produce on the reader the illusion which represents the essential condition of art.

Lear has no necessity or motive for his abdication; also, having lived all his life with his daughters, has no reason to believe the words of the two elders and not the truthful statement of the youngest; yet upon this is built the whole tragedy of his position.

Similarly unnatural is the subordinate action: the relation of Gloucester to his sons. The positions of Gloucester and Edgar flow from the circumstance that Gloucester, just like Lear, immediately believes the coarsest untruth and does not even endeavor to inquire of his injured son whether what he is accused of be true, but at once curses and banishes him. The fact that Lear's relations with his daughters are the same as those of Gloucester to his sons makes one feel yet more strongly that in both cases the relations are quite arbitrary, and do not flow from the characters nor the natural course of events. Equally unnatural, and obviously invented, is the fact that all through the tragedy Lear does not recognize his old courtier, Kent, and therefore the relations between Lear and Kent fail to excite the sympathy of the reader or spectator. The same, in a yet greater degree, holds true of the position of Edgar, who, unrecognized by any one, leads his blind father and persuades him that he has leapt off a cliff, when in reality Gloucester jumps on level ground.

These positions, into which the characters are placed quite arbitrarily, are so unnatural that the reader or spectator is unable not only to sympathize with their sufferings but even to be interested in what he reads or sees. This in the first place.

[stlukesguild]

Beethoven died in 1827. Tolstoy's "What is Art?" was written 70 years after. By this time Hugo Wolf, Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz, Richard Wagner, Piotr Tchaikovsky, Anton Bruckner, and even Johannes Brahms were all dead, and Mahler had composed his first three symphonies, Richard Strauss had composed almost all of his major "tone poems" including "Also Sprach Zarthustra", and Debussy had already churned out a good portion of his oeuvre, including Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and Pelléas et Mélisande. By this point in time, Hanslick was recognized for what he was, a conservative critic who championed the structure and form of "classicism" believing that music began with Mozart, reached its culmination in Beethoven, and continued in the work of Schumann and Brahms. He was the most influential critic in Austria in the mid-to late 1800s and was known for abusing his power with his endless attacks upon the so-called "New Music" School... including Liszt, Bruckner, Wolf, and Richard Wagner first and foremost. Of course Wagner was not known for taking any criticism lying down, and viciously attacked Hanslick as part of a Jewish/anti-German element that was most certainly detrimental to music.

Beethoven's music was almost wholly absorbed and recognized as the work of genius by this time... with the possible exception of the Grosse Fugue. The late quartets served as the model for the chamber works of Schubert and Brahms. The 9th Symphony was the model for Berlioz' grand symphonic/operatic/choral constructions, Bruckner's and Mahler's greatly expanded symphonies... and even Brahms' First Symphony.

By the time of Tolstoy's "What is Art?" old Tolstoy was far out of the loop concerning contemporary music. Wagner had become quite possibly the single most influential artist... not merely composer... of the second half of the 19th century, and we were but a decade of so from the earth-shattering Modernist innovations of Stravinsky, Bartok, and Schoenberg.

I agree that our notion of "Romanticism" is not the same as that of the Romantic period... but then this is commonly true across history. I doubt that the Renaissance artists themselves as "Renaissance Artists." Beethoven, however, is most certainly part of the "Classical" tradition moving toward Romanticism. As innovative and daring as he can be, he retains the traditional classical structures. It is Schubert (who lacked Beethoven's formal training) and Schumann who really break outside of this mold and might be seen as the first true Romantics.

One wonders what Tolstoy's take was on the painting of the era. Degas? Monet? Gauguin? Van Gogh? Munch? Was he, like the German Expressionist, Emil Nolde, repulsed by the sight of a nude woman?

[Ecurb]

Was Tolstoy repulsed by the sight of a nude? Need you ask? Although Tolstoy had 13 (I think) children, he became abstinent later in life. In that respect, he resembled his disciple, Mahatma Gandhi, who also refused to have sex with his wife, as reported in G. Orwell's superb essay "Reflections on Gandhi". In Tolstoy's case, his rejection of prurient interests seems based on a rejection of his own highly sexual nature. One need not give up drinking (or tempatations to drink) unless one has a tendency to dypsomania.

[WyattGwyon]

Luke, the version of the story as you recount it is widely accepted in its general outlines. But it is simplistic and misses a lot of important nuance and factual detail.


Beethoven died in 1827. Tolstoy's "What is Art?" was written 70 years after. By this time Hugo Wolf, Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz, Richard Wagner, Piotr Tchaikovsky, Anton Bruckner, and even Johannes Brahms were all dead, and Mahler had composed his first three symphonies, Richard Strauss had composed almost all of his major "tone poems" including "Also Sprach Zarthustra", and Debussy had already churned out a good portion of his oeuvre, including Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and Pelléas et Mélisande.

This is all true. But none of these composers had fully grasped, let alone gotten beyond, the conception of musical structure and its relation to content and expression that Beethoven explored in even his middle-period works. Sergei Rachmaninoff, widely acknowledged as one of the greatest pianists and conductors of his age, a genius of musical interpretation and a man who had met Tolstoy and whose first symphony is based on Anna Karenina, never worked late Beethoven into his repertoire, though he performed the big middle-period sonatas with regularity. The music didn't speak to him and he apparently didn't grasp it. It is difficult music—it was difficult then and it is difficult today. I don't think one can fault a non-musician like Tolstoy for not understanding it.


By this point in time, Hanslick was recognized for what he was, a conservative critic who championed the structure and form of "classicism" believing that music began with Mozart, reached its culmination in Beethoven, and continued in the work of Schumann and Brahms. He was the most influential critic in Austria in the mid-to late 1800s and was known for abusing his power with his endless attacks upon the so-called "New Music" School... including Liszt, Bruckner, Wolf, and Richard Wagner first and foremost.

I might start by pointing out that Hanslick was pretty much right about Liszt and Bruckner and to some extent about Wolf as well:-). And his treatise On the Musically Beautiful (or The Beautiful in Music, whichever you prefer) had more influence on twentieth-century music theory and musical aesthetics than any other work of nineteenth-century criticism. Hanslick was in fact a champion of some of Wagner's early work and I'm not sure the conservative vs. new school opposition is particularly helpful in getting at his problems with late Wagner. His critique of Tristan and Isolde, for example, focuses primarily on the libretto, which he found to be full of tedious and infantile symbolism (light/dark, day/night, blah blah) and about two hours too long. It wasn't really conservatism per se that made him prefer Mozart's operas over Wagner . . . but this post is going to be long already so let's not get too far into those weeds.



Beethoven's music was almost wholly absorbed and recognized as the work of genius by this time... with the possible exception of the Grosse Fugue.

Most critical opinion had acknowledged the greatness of the late works, but, once again, many did not really grasp it and very few if any composers of the nineteenth century followed up on it or adequately responded to it.


The late quartets served as the model for the chamber works of Schubert and Brahms.

This is simply incorrect. Schubert was just coming to terms with middle-period Beethoven at the time of his death and I see no particular influence of the late works. In matters of form, Brahms was far more conservative than Beethoven and composed nothing in the realm of chamber music that even begins to grapple with the issues raised in Beethoven's late quartets.


The 9th Symphony was the model for Berlioz' grand symphonic/operatic/choral constructions, Bruckner's and Mahler's greatly expanded symphonies... and even Brahms' First Symphony.

Berlioz ran with the idea of fusing vocal and instrument symphonic music, but the term "model" isn't really appropriate in any but the most vague and general sense. Mahler's and Brahms's first symphonies, on the other hand, and countless other works, were in fact modeled on the Ninth. The influence of the Ninth is undeniable.


I agree that our notion of "Romanticism" is not the same as that of the Romantic period... but then this is commonly true across history. I doubt that the Renaissance artists themselves as "Renaissance Artists." Beethoven, however, is most certainly part of the "Classical" tradition moving toward Romanticism. As innovative and daring as he can be, he retains the traditional classical structures. It is Schubert (who lacked Beethoven's formal training) and Schumann who really break outside of this mold and might be seen as the first true Romantics.

Everyone in the nineteenth century (excepting Liszt) retains the traditional classical structures, more of less, when it comes to any kind of sonata cycle (sonata, symphony, string quartet). In fact, it is a general criticism of this music that they held too slavishly to classical forms (see Charles Rosen's The Classical Style). Many of Beethoven's works in these genres are indeed fully within the classical tradition. Others are more radically Romantic in the most essential sense than any composed over the next fifty years. Beethoven doesn't fit neatly or simplistically into either era. Schubert and Schumann are indeed true Romantics, especially in their emphasis on songs and song cycles, solo piano cycles, small genre piano works, etc.


One wonders what Tolstoy's take was on the painting of the era. Degas? Monet? Gauguin? Van Gogh? Munch? Was he, like the German Expressionist, Emil Nolde, repulsed by the sight of a nude woman?

Oddly enough, considering how much time I just spent disagreeing on musical issues, but I essentially agree with your position on Tolstoy as a critic. I would have been inclined to tell him: "Oh shut up and write another novel already."

[mona amon]

Let's face it. Tolstoy was one of the worst critics of art ever. Among those he disliked were all of the Greek playwrights, Dante, Tasso, Milton, Shakespeare, Goethe, Zola, Ibsen, Beethoven, and Wagner.

Which artists did Tolstoy actually like?

[Emil Miller]

Also, Beethoven was considered by many among his contemporaries and successive generations to be the quintessential Romantic artist. It is a modern convention to lump him with Haydn and Mozart.

Is it a modern convention? To my mind, Beethoven is usually seen as the composer who effectively broke the mould that Haydn and Mozart's classicism had come to represent.

[JBI]

Is it a modern convention? To my mind, Beethoven is usually seen as the composer who effectively broke the mould that Haydn and Mozart's classicism had come to represent.

transitioned not broke. Art is constantly changing.

[Darcy88]

Excluding the non-Western cultures I am not well acquainted with, I want to say that Great Britain has the greatest literature, but that is the country whose literature I've consumed the most of, and so I am wary of making such a declaration. Others have mentioned Russia, and while Russia certainly has a great literary tradition, it having produced two of my favourite writers in Dostoevsky and Chekhov, I don't think the overall stature of that tradition can compete with the likes of England, France, Italy, Germany and America. England has Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Marlowe, Johnson, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, the Brontes, Dickens and so many, many more. Spain is one country I don't know where I would rank, not having explored its literature near enough, though Don Quixote may just top my list of greatest ever novels.

If instead of nation the discussion was about which LANGUAGE possesses the greatest literature I believe it could be argued that it is English. That would add American, Irish, Canadian and Australian literatures to what is already arguably the greatest literary nation in England.

[Ecurb]

Which artists did Tolstoy actually like?

I believe he praises the Bible (especially the story of Joseph and his Brothers and the psalms), Victor Hugo’s Les Miserable (we can only guess what he might think of Ann Hathaway’s Oscar winning performance as Fantine, which induced me to hide my eyes because it was so embarrassingly bad), Dickens (he places some of Dickens’ stories in the first class of great art with a religious message of brotherly love, and others in the second class of great non-religious art), and George Eliot’s “Adam Bede”. He also like some of Dostoevsky’s work. Although he doesn’t say so in “What is Art”, I believe he was a Chekov fan, too (he admired Chekov as both an artist and a person).

[WyattGwyon]

Is it a modern convention? To my mind, Beethoven is usually seen as the composer who effectively broke the mould that Haydn and Mozart's classicism had come to represent.

I meant convention in the sense that if one is studying music history, he will always be classified as a composer of the Classical era, along with Haydn and Mozart. By contrast, some influential contemporary critics (E.T.A. Hoffman, for example) were way out in front in declaring him a Romantic.

Some of his works broke the mold, others were happily constructed using it.

[JCamilo]

He admired Chekhov talent, we can see even some short Tolstoy stories playing with Chekhov theme. But Tolstoy once told Chekhov that his plays were worst than shakespeare. Chekhov once said:

"I admire him greatly. What I admire the most in him is that he despises us all; all writers. Perhaps a more accurate description is that he treats us, other writers, as completely empty space. You could argue that from time to time, he praises Maupassant, or Kuprin, or Semenov, or myself. But why does he praise us? It is simple: it's because he looks at us as if we were children. Our short stories, or even our novels, all are child's play in comparison with his works. However, Shakespeare … For him, the reason is different. Shakespeare irritates him because he is a grown-up writer, and does not write in the way that Tolstoy does."

Overall he was very well learned man, reader of Plato, Homer, Rosseau, Pascal, Stendhal, Lao Tzu, admire Madame Bovary, etc. In a way, his sensibility is all turned to the novels. I am not so sure, but Tolstoy disdain towards Shakespeare and Dante seems an echo of Voltaire, so the french dude was probally a favorite of Tolstoy. (altough voltaire in his style, does not care about explaning anything, he will just use his witty). He was ambigous towards Dostoievisky, not a real fan, but like I said, Tolstoy perhaps felt that Dostoievisky had the freedom, he Tolstoy wanted. He started well with Turgeniev, but latter had personal issues. Admired Gogol. Also liked some Pushkin.

[WICKES]

England probably has the deepest literary culture out of any country.

Yes, that's the extraordinary thing about the literature of England- the timespan. England's culture over the last 600 years is pretty much unbroken. Being an island it wasn't subjected to invasions or colonisations, which meant its literature was able to sort of snowball, with each new writer linked into and drawing upon a common past. Plus it has remained free of any profound revolutionary change (communism or fascism). It is a unique culture in many ways- an island somewhat detached from the European continent, with its own church (which in itself has a rich literary tradition- think of the King James Bible and book of common prayer) and now, because of a common language, access to the best of American culture. Then of course there is Shakespeare, who is both a universal genius and yet also a very English poet, deeply rooted in the English countryside, seasons and history.

[Ecurb]

He admired Chekhov talent, we can see even some short Tolstoy stories playing with Chekhov theme. But Tolstoy once told Chekhov that his plays were worst than shakespeare. Chekhov once said:

"I admire him greatly. What I admire the most in him is that he despises us all; all writers. Perhaps a more accurate description is that he treats us, other writers, as completely empty space. You could argue that from time to time, he praises Maupassant, or Kuprin, or Semenov, or myself. But why does he praise us? It is simple: it's because he looks at us as if we were children. Our short stories, or even our novels, all are child's play in comparison with his works. However, Shakespeare … For him, the reason is different. Shakespeare irritates him because he is a grown-up writer, and does not write in the way that Tolstoy does."

.

However we rank Tolstoy as a critic (I still think any critique he wrote is entertaining, at least), I think we can safely say that he was himself unlikely to be influenced by the critical opinions of others. As some hack playwright might have had one of his foolish characters say, "To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou cans't not then be false to any man."

Since I looked at Tolstoy’s essay on “King Lear” (available on this site), I discovered that George Orwell wrote an analytical essay, "Lear, Tolstoy, and the Fool" in which he suggests a motive for Tolstoy's hostility towards Shakespeare - with particular reference to the character of Lear.

Lear brings about his own tragedy by foolishly relinquishing his property and power. Though he has renounced his throne and authority, he still expects to be treated like a king. He is not.

Lear's folly is strikingly similar to Tolstoy's own bad judgment. In his old age, Tolstoy also renounced his estates, his title, and copyrights in order to escape from his privileged status and live the life of a simple peasant. This act of abdication did not bring the happiness he expected. On the contrary, Tolstoy was almost driven insane by vulgar people who persecuted him because of his renunciation.

There is no direct evidence that Tolstoy was consciously aware of his resemblance to Lear, and perhaps he would have rejected the idea if it had been pointed out to him. But Orwell emphasizes that his attitude towards the play must have been influenced by its theme - even if only at an unconscious level.

Whether Tolstoy actually regretted his "bad judgment" is questionable -- he seems a man generally confident in his decisions.

[stlukesguild]

This is all true. But none of these composers had fully grasped, let alone gotten beyond, the conception of musical structure and its relation to content and expression that Beethoven explored in even his middle-period works. Sergei Rachmaninoff, widely acknowledged as one of the greatest pianists and conductors of his age, a genius of musical interpretation and a man who had met Tolstoy and whose first symphony is based on Anna Karenina, never worked late Beethoven into his repertoire, though he performed the big middle-period sonatas with regularity. The music didn't speak to him and he apparently didn't grasp it. It is difficult music—it was difficult then and it is difficult today. I don't think one can fault a non-musician like Tolstoy for not understanding it.

Well... I will agree that to suggest that Beethoven's late works were "fully digested" is something of a exaggeration... but this would be true of many works of towering genius. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Shakespeare, Dante, Tolstoy, Goethe, Michelangelo, Titian, Rembrandt, Matisse are all still being studied by subsequent artists who are delving deeper into the work and discovering or emphasizing elements not yet fully grasped or recognized. Having said this, we can't pretend that among the majority of composers and classical music aficionados that Beethoven's late works were not appreciated or dismissed as bad art in the manner as seen in Tolstoy.

I might start by pointing out that Hanslick was pretty much right about Liszt and Bruckner and to some extent about Wolf as well:-).

Well... this obviously depends upon personal opinion. In many ways Liszt is one of the most underrated composers... and one whose reputation is often based upon but a small portion of his output. Bruckner, like Brahms, can be very dense... so that a little goes a long way. Wolf I find quite marvelous... but he cannot be seen simply as building upon the tradition of German lieder of Schubert and Schumann. His works are more "dramatic"... the text being more of an essential part of the whole to the extent that I cannot really listen to him without following the lyrics... which is not true of Schubert or Schumann.

And his treatise On the Musically Beautiful (or The Beautiful in Music, whichever you prefer) had more influence on twentieth-century music theory and musical aesthetics than any other work of nineteenth-century criticism. Hanslick was in fact a champion of some of Wagner's early work and I'm not sure the conservative vs. new school opposition is particularly helpful in getting at his problems with late Wagner. His critique of Tristan and Isolde, for example, focuses primarily on the libretto, which he found to be full of tedious and infantile symbolism (light/dark, day/night, blah blah) and about two hours too long. It wasn't really conservatism per se that made him prefer Mozart's operas over Wagner . . . but this post is going to be long already so let's not get too far into those weeds.

I can't argue about the importance of Hanslick's treatise upon subsequent music theory, but I would question how influential this was upon the actual development of subsequent music... in comparison to the influence of actual composers such as Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner... and even Brahms. Wagner remained the lynch pin for most subsequent composers... even those such as Debussy, Puccini, and Schoenberg who eventually broke from his influence and headed in a different direction.

The late quartets served as the model for the chamber works of Schubert and Brahms.

This is simply incorrect. Schubert was just coming to terms with middle-period Beethoven at the time of his death and I see no particular influence of the late works. In matters of form, Brahms was far more conservative than Beethoven and composed nothing in the realm of chamber music that even begins to grapple with the issues raised in Beethoven's late quartets.

You may be right with regard to Schubert. Schubert spoke of the Op. 131 as Beethoven's most perfect work and requested to hear it once again upon his death bed. Then again... in response to this same work, he remarked "After this, what is left for us to write?" Schubert is always problematic in comparison to Beethoven due to his lack of formal training and virtuosity as a performer (which would impact his compositional style). Schubert was profoundly enamored of late Beethoven... but takes a different, more lyrical direction so that his late piano sonatas and quartets were often dismissed as "lightweight" in comparison to Schubert... which seems like dismissing Debussy or Ravel in light of Wagner.

Brahms chamber works, on the other side, clearly seem to build upon the tradition of Beethoven... and in many ways act as a link between Beethoven and Schoenberg (for better or worse... not being a Schoenberg fan myself).

I was actually quite surprised... just browsing some comments on late Beethoven... that Wagner was quite influenced by the late quartets. I was quite aware of the impact of the 9th... but considering the manner of Wagner's compositions, this quite surprised me.

Berlioz ran with the idea of fusing vocal and instrument symphonic music, but the term "model" isn't really appropriate in any but the most vague and general sense. Mahler's and Brahms's first symphonies, on the other hand, and countless other works, were in fact modeled on the Ninth. The influence of the Ninth is undeniable.

I agree with regard to Berlioz... but then every artist picks and chooses his or her predecessors... and what aspects of their works to build upon. I question the possibility of Berlioz symphonic/operatic/choral constructions without the examples of Beethoven and Liszt.

Everyone in the nineteenth century (excepting Liszt) retains the traditional classical structures, more of less, when it comes to any kind of sonata cycle (sonata, symphony, string quartet). In fact, it is a general criticism of this music that they held too slavishly to classical forms (see Charles Rosen's The Classical Style). Many of Beethoven's works in these genres are indeed fully within the classical tradition. Others are more radically Romantic in the most essential sense than any composed over the next fifty years. Beethoven doesn't fit neatly or simplistically into either era. Schubert and Schumann are indeed true Romantics, especially in their emphasis on songs and song cycles, solo piano cycles, small genre piano works, etc.

There seem to be debates even on the classical music sites as to whether Beethoven is a Classical or Romantic composer. I think many mistake his employment of the minor key, the emotional expression, and drama as making him inherently a Romantic... but we might then presume that Mozart's Don Giovanni is also a Romantic work. Personally, I agree with the usual notion that Beethoven is a transitional figure... pointing the direction from Classicism to Romanticism much as Monteverdi is the lynch-pin from the Renaissance to the Baroque.

Oddly enough, considering how much time I just spent disagreeing on musical issues, but I essentially agree with your position on Tolstoy as a critic. I would have been inclined to tell him: "Oh shut up and write another novel already."

I'm surprised at how bad some artists can be in judging art (Van Gogh had taste that was notoriously middling at times). But then there are those who are quite astute as critics. I think Zola, Baudelaire, Octavio Paz, and J.L. Borges fall within this category. Tolstoy...? Not. Perhaps it has much to do with the fact that Tolstoy is closer to an artist like Van Gogh than an artist like Degas or Picasso who recognizes that Art begets Art. As Cezanne put it it, The Road to the Louvre is through Nature, but the road to Nature is through the Louvre.

Whether Tolstoy actually regretted his "bad judgment" is questionable -- he seems a man generally confident in his decisions.

In this he strikes me as not unlike another visionary or messianic writer: William Blake.

[JCamilo]

Perhpas because we do not have neither Tolstoy was an essaist and he barely talked about the subject he best knew about: the work of a novelist. If we see his favorite works and writers of genres or those he had critics but even so, was draw to them, we see he knew exactly what was happening with the Novels in XIX century.


Whether Tolstoy actually regretted his "bad judgment" is questionable -- he seems a man generally confident in his decisions.

In this he strikes me as not unlike another visionary or messianic writer: William Blake.

There is a difference, which is Tolstoy longevity and his supper status. In the end of XIX century he was Russia Literature and he was like a guru for other writers mixed with his social status, but yes, he had a "prophetic" sense on his work, perhaps he is the most like a biblical patriarch like Moses while Blake was a rejected prophet.

[stlukesguild]

Yes, that's the extraordinary thing about the literature of England- the timespan. England's culture over the last 600 years is pretty much unbroken. Being an island it wasn't subjected to invasions or colonisations, which meant its literature was able to sort of snowball, with each new writer linked into and drawing upon a common past. Plus it has remained free of any profound revolutionary change (communism or fascism). It is a unique culture in many ways- an island somewhat detached from the European continent, with its own church (which in itself has a rich literary tradition- think of the King James Bible and book of common prayer) and now, because of a common language, access to the best of American culture. Then of course there is Shakespeare, who is both a universal genius and yet also a very English poet, deeply rooted in the English countryside, seasons and history.

And yet, at the same time, Britain's insularity also prevented them from becoming leading figures in the realm of music or the visual arts... until much later. I'll say there is the exception of the early British tradition of choral music (Tallis, the Eton Songbook, Purcell, Taverner, Dowland, etc...) and the British developed the some of the greatest orchestras and musical ensembles as well as museums... but until the late 19th into the 20th century they are not really serious "players" in the realm of creating original music, painting, or sculpture.

The insular nature of Britain... and their love of nature... often reminds me of the Japanese... who like the British have had an impact upon culture that far outstrips their size and population.

There is a difference, which is Tolstoy longevity and his supper status. In the end of XIX century he was Russia Literature and he was like a guru for other writers mixed with his social status, but yes, he had a "prophetic" sense on his work, perhaps he is the most like a biblical patriarch like Moses while Blake was a rejected prophet.

Yes. Blake's impact doesn't happen until later... but then he's a rather iconoclastic prophet. Tolstoy's a rather conservative Puritanical prophet. Blake's like a true Old Testament visionary... an iconoclast challenging the traditional and conservative views in many ways.

[JCamilo]

Yet, it is a bith of myth that english literature was that isolated. Arturian Myths? French influence. Latin had a huge influence even after Milton. Classic Roman all over the translations. King James is from old bible and was just happening when many vulgar versions would happen. Dante. Petrarch and Bocaccio huge influence. 1001 nights. Dom Quixote. Rousseau huge influence. Wordsworth and Coleridge had to travel by France and Germany to bring romanticism. Modern english writers under Dostoievisky and Chekhov influence. And there goes.

They do not seem to be so apart of the rest of the world.

[cafolini]

English is more than 60% rooted in classical Roman Latin. The Normands destroyed the language in order to reconstruct it later. Regardless of argument as to whether it was intentional or not, that's how it happened.

[JBI]

Yes, that's the extraordinary thing about the literature of England- the timespan. England's culture over the last 600 years is pretty much unbroken. Being an island it wasn't subjected to invasions or colonisations, which meant its literature was able to sort of snowball, with each new writer linked into and drawing upon a common past. Plus it has remained free of any profound revolutionary change (communism or fascism). It is a unique culture in many ways- an island somewhat detached from the European continent, with its own church (which in itself has a rich literary tradition- think of the King James Bible and book of common prayer) and now, because of a common language, access to the best of American culture. Then of course there is Shakespeare, who is both a universal genius and yet also a very English poet, deeply rooted in the English countryside, seasons and history.

What a non-historical load of wish-wash.

England's literature was no isolated. England is not Japan post Mongol invasion.

[ennison]

And obviously not geographically accurate since England ain't an island - unfortunately.

[Ecurb]

I've been reading "Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shalespeare", by Stephen Greenblatt. It's a literary biography, speculating about how the events of the time may have influenced Shakespeare's plays. Greenblatt writes at length about the lack of motivation for the main characters in Lear, Hamlet, and Othello. In the story of Leir (on which King Lear is based), the king poses the question of which of his daughters loves him the best in an attempt to get Cordelia to agree to a marriage arranged by Leir. IN the Hamlet story (I forget what it's called) the murder of Hamlet's father by his uncle is public knowledge, and young Hamlet is still a boy. Hamlet has to feign madness until he grows up, at which time he can seek his revenge. In the Othello story (it's an Italian short story), Iago secretly lusts after Desdemona.

I mention this in support of Tolstoy's ability as a critic. His main complaint about "King Lear" was that there is no reasonable motive for the King's bizarre behavior. Obviously, for most of us (including Greenblatt), this doesn't ruin the play, as it apparently did for Tolstoy. My point, though, is that other Shakespeare scholars agree with Tolstoy's perspicacious complaint, if not with the notion that it makes the play lousy art. So it seems Tolstoy the critic was making perceptive and reasonable comments about the play, even if his overall evaluation is strange. Perhaps this lack of motive is a well known feature of three of Shakespeare's four famous tragedies (MacBeth's motives are clear), and perhaps it was well known even in 1896 (or whenever Tolstoy wrote his essay on King Lear). I'm insufficiently knowledgeable about Shakespeare criticism to know. It seems likely that for those who read the works from which Shakespeare gleaned his plays, the elimination of motive would be fairly clear.

[JCamilo]

So, Tolstoy was complaning about Shakespeare for something he didn't want to portray? Isn't, as you say, saying a Flaubert was not a good writer because he could not rhyme?

Plus, this critics of Tolstoy are not just for motivation of them, he go for greek playwritters. Tolstoy as a novelist fails to reckognize fate and accident, he controled the next chapter, etc. Again, he is telling: the art of novel is about controling fate, not allowing accidents, being rulled by the unseen god that is the novelist. It is his critic on Shakespeare of what he, tolstoy, would do or not... Not really insightful.

[Ecurb]

I just found it interesting that a modern scholar (and a huge fan of Shakespeare) agreed with Tolstoy's critique, although not with the extent to which, as Tolstoy wrote in his essay,
"Dramatic art, according to the laws established by those very critics who extol Shakespeare, demands that the persons represented in the play should be, in consequence of actions proper to their characters, and owing to a natural course of events, placed in positions requiring them to struggle with the surrounding world to which they find themselves in opposition, and in this struggle should display their inherent qualities.

In "King Lear" the persons represented are indeed placed externally in opposition to the outward world, and they struggle with it. But their strife does not flow from the natural course of events nor from their own characters, but is quite arbitrarily established by the author, and therefore can not produce on the reader the illusion which represents the essential condition of art.

Lear has no necessity or motive for his abdication; also, having lived all his life with his daughters, has no reason to believe the words of the two elders and not the truthful statement of the youngest; yet upon this is built the whole tragedy of his position.

Greenblatt (who is a Harvard professor) agrees that "their strife does not flow from the natural course of events...." So (I contend) Tolstoy made a reasonable, logical and perceptive critique, although many of us may disagree that the principles of dramatic art (the laws of which are established, acc. Tolstoy, by the very critics who extol Shakespeare) demand that they do. Tolstoy's observation is an interesting one, whether or not we agree about the demands of dramatic art, and interesting observations about works of art are the essence of good criticism -- far more important to the quality of a critique than "correct" judgments.

[JCamilo]

This is not even a critic, it is like saying "Romeo and Juliet are not addults". It is just mentioning a fact. Shakespeare didnt want to show natural ordem of events, then mentioning it is pure waste. Do not tell me anything about the play. Aka, since it is not in the place, it is not an observation about King Lear but about what Tolstoy thinks is good.

You must understand, if Tolstoy was such valluable critic, he would have influence in posterior criticism of shakespeare but pretty much, people shrug at this.

[Ecurb]

As Greenblatt (and Tolstoy) point out, Shakespeare altered the story to eliminate the motive for the protagonist's action in three of his greatest tragedies. Of course, if you didn't know the stories from which the plays derived (as I didn’t, before reading Tolstoy’s and Greenblatt’s essays), this alteration might not be remarkable. However, I continue to find it an interesting insight.

I have no idea if Greenblatt's interest in this issue was influenced by Tolstoy. I imagine a renowned Shakespeare scholar would have read Tolstoy's essay. However, you say Tolstoy "would have inflence in posterior criticism (if he was a valuable critic)." I'd suggest that to the extent that Greenblatt (in his highly acclaimed book) discussed the issue at some length, Tolstoy probably DID and DOES have "influence". I certainly didn't notice Greenblatt "shrugging".

[JCamilo]

Iago and Hamlet have motivations. Lear's lack of apparent motivation was already mentioned by Dr.Johnson who justify the "improbability of Lear's conduct" by which was accepted by the public at the time. And yet, it is irrelevant to see anything in the play. Really, Tolstoy seems just to repeat Voltaire, which caused at his time a uproar because he is muc more relevant for SHakespeare story than Tolstoy (not hard, Tolstoy is not relevant).

[lawpark]

Anyone mentioned India yet? They clearly will win with a little bit of anachronistically stretching what "India" as a country means.

[Dante]

Definitely FRANCE !

[Pierre Menard]

Definitely FRANCE !


I don't think it's possible to say 'definitely' any country.

[hannah_arendt]

Definitely FRANCE !

Why France?

[nooshi]

I am so shocked that no one named the persian literature here!! Iran or the same persia, has the greatest literature in the whole world. It is not even compatible with european literature. Go and have some research about it.


Have your say as to which nation has produced the greatest literature throughout time, whether it be Rome and Greece with the old classics or Britain with Shakespeare and the Victorian writers.

[Whosis]

England's Shakespeare is generally considered by professors to be the best. However, in recent years, it has been said that American authors continue to beat out British authors, which is not entirely true. James Joyce was considered the best novelist of the 20th century with Ulysses. You have to give England credit for inventing the language.

[mal4mac]

England's Shakespeare is generally considered by professors to be the best. However, in recent years, it has been said that American authors continue to beat out British authors, which is not entirely true. James Joyce was considered the best novelist of the 20th century with Ulysses. You have to give England credit for inventing the language.

Joyce was Irish.

I'm British, but I can't think of any modern British author who can match Roth or Bellow. Martin Amis places Bellow above all other modern authors, but I can't think of a top American author or critic who praises a British author so highly. I have to go back to the likes of Conrad, Hardy and Kipling before I can think of anyone matching these American greats. Maybe it's a loss of Empire thing, we just haven't the energy or ambition any more!

[Poetaster]

I'm British, but I can't think of any modern British author who can match Roth or Bellow.

What about Ian McEwan?

[DystopianGypsy]

Russia, by far! Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Tergenev, Chehkov! Need I say more? This, however, is just aesthetic preference, not an objective submission of any kind of logical line of thinking.

[stlukesguild]

Russia, by far! Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Tergenev, Chehkov! Need I say more?

Yes. You would need lots more. Britain can field Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Blake, Joyce, Dickens, Keats, Spenser, Wordsworth, Sterne, etc... France has Hugo, Baudelaire, Rousseau, Montaigne, Rimbaud, Proust, Ronsard, Moliere, Racine, Voltaire, Genet, etc...

Russia has been a major player in literature for all of 200 years... at most. France and Britain for far longer.

The reality is that most of us can only speak of the literature we are familiar with... and largely that which we can read in its native tongue. The same is true of the above claim for Persia which suggests little more than nationalistic jingoism. Persia, undoubtedly has a rich literary heritage: Omar Khayyam, Ferdowsi, Daqiqi, Attar, Rumi, Hafiz, Sana'i, Sadi, Nizami, and the Thousand and One Nights. But little is translated beyond these major works... and little past the "classical" eras. One might make similar claims for India and China most certainly, but also Japan. The idea that Persian literature surpasses the whole of Europe... or Asia... is simply ridiculous... and ignorant. I wouldn't even make such a claim for the Austro-Germans with regard to classical music... and they surely have a far larger claim to such a hegemony than any single national/linguistic group with regards to art or literature.

[Whosis]

United Kingdom is what I was looking for as far as a nationality for James Joyce. Huh. Maybe that means he's an Irish author and not an English author. So strange.

[nooshi]

I am was not familiar with persian ( I am Bulgarian) but after I read the translation of Khayyam, I started to learn! Then I feel like I am born again. I gave my life to literature reading from east to west.. First, I agree with you about the translation... There is no enough translation for Persian classic books.. Actually there is NO translation for some of them ( Saeb Tabrizi, Parvin etesami and etc.. ). The only translated works are those you mentioned but compared to European, because I am quite familiar, Persian literature is far better and richer. Also you find totally different styles which makes it so interesting. For me, it is so exciting to read a beautiful story based poem which comes back to 100 to 700 to thousands years ago and it is filled with cultural thoughts and beautiful picturing of that era... each book was a gift of life for me and I am so sorry that I did not start reading Persian literature sooner. There is another problem about it and that is their government that wants to remove anything which is not islamic and only keeps the works that came after Islam to persia. So their government does not try hard to get other nations become more familiar with the rich literature, I think there are more events and tributes about rumi and hafiz outside Iran in comparison to inside or if it is not like that, others do not hear about it and this is so sad. One thing that was so sad is that no one even mentioned Persian in this topic! The literature which is the best in many people's thought! Even if you don't agree with that, at least one person had to mentioned that! this means the members should educate themselves more about one of the greatest literature in the world.


Russia, by far! Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Tergenev, Chehkov! Need I say more?

Yes. You would need lots more. Britain can field Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Blake, Joyce, Dickens, Keats, Spenser, Wordsworth, Sterne, etc... France has Hugo, Baudelaire, Rousseau, Montaigne, Rimbaud, Proust, Ronsard, Moliere, Racine, Voltaire, Genet, etc...

Russia has been a major player in literature for all of 200 years... at most. France and Britain for far longer.

The reality is that most of us can only speak of the literature we are familiar with... and largely that which we can read in its native tongue. The same is true of the above claim for Persia which suggests little more than nationalistic jingoism. Persia, undoubtedly has a rich literary heritage: Omar Khayyam, Ferdowsi, Daqiqi, Attar, Rumi, Hafiz, Sana'i, Sadi, Nizami, and the Thousand and One Nights. But little is translated beyond these major works... and little past the "classical" eras. One might make similar claims for India and China most certainly, but also Japan. The idea that Persian literature surpasses the whole of Europe... or Asia... is simply ridiculous... and ignorant. I wouldn't even make such a claim for the Austro-Germans with regard to classical music... and they surely have a far larger claim to such a hegemony than any single national/linguistic group with regards to art or literature.

[stlukesguild]

You would be surprised to discover that there are more than a few members here who have championed Persian and Arabic literature here over the years. Quite some time back we had a member who was fluent in Farsi... and I believe Arabic as well to a certain extent. When asked to give our choices for the 50 or 100 greatest books or writers, a number of members (myself included) have placed Firdowsi and the Shahnameh, the Thousand and One Nights and several others writers and books quite high on our list. Personally, as a visual artist, I am quite fond of Persian/Turkish/Arabic/Byzantine/Mughal/Arab-Andalusian arts and culture (which all weave in and out of each other). I have made any number of posts recognizing the achievements of these cultures here. Having said that, I have no illusions that any single national/linguistic body of literature can be deemed to surpass that of all others... except in one's own personal opinion... and the more one reads... the more likely one will discover the incredible richness and wealth of literary achievements across all eras and cultures.

[WICKES]

It's hard to think of a country that beats England overall. Russia and France would probably beat England on the novel alone, but when you add in poetry, essays and drama I'd nominate England. James Joyce (no friend of the English) once said that the 3 greatest figures in literature were, for him, Shakespeare, Shelley and Wordsworth.

Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, The King James Bible, Blake, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Dickens...the list is endless. When you also consider how small England is, its cultural/ literary inheritance is extraordinary. Rather than being arrogant and boastful about this, the English seem oddly indifferent, even embarassed. When I look at my own bookshelves they are dominated by English writers: Huxley, Waugh, Wodehouse, Lawrence, Dickens...

I think Martin Amis once said that the two nations/ cultures to have produced the greatest body of poetry were Persia and England- odd when you consider how different the two places are (one a cool, damp island, the other a large desert country). Sadly, England seems to have totally lost confidence. I guess because it has been replaced as the dominant English-speaking culture by the USA.

[Poetaster]

For me, and this is purely my own personal opinion, it has to be Ancient Greece. Sorry to be boring, and I could be wrong technically, but I do think that's true.

[ajvenigalla]

Britain, France, the United States, Russia

[Pike Bishop]

I'm pretty much in agreement with Ajveigalla

1. America: Melville, Faulkner, James, Emerson, Poe, Twain, Whitman, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Hughes, Pound, Eliot, Stevens, Stein, Bishop, Williams, R. Lowell, Baldwin, Roth, DeLillo, Pynchon, McCarthy, Morrison, Rich, Dick, Auster, Gibson, Plath, A. Lowell

2. Britain: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Marvell, Donne, Milton, Carlyle, Blake, Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Keats, Eliot, Austen, Dickens, Swinburne, Waugh, Greene, Rushdie, Mitchell, Auden

3. France: Montaigne, Moliere, Racine, Rousseau, Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarme', Proust, Camus, Maupassant, Sand, Baudelaire, Bergson, Valery, Genet, Bataille, Barthes, Derrida, Cixous, Robbe-Grillet

4. Russia: Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Gogol, Turgenev, Bulgakov, Lermontov, Akhmatova, Mayakovsky

[ajvenigalla]

Thanks Pike

[ajvenigalla]

I would personally add Tolkien to Britain and Hugo to France.

Pike, do you personally think Hugo is a literary master and one of the greatest of all time?

[Pike Bishop]

No, he wasn't a master stylist, a particularly gifted structuralist, or a deeply profound thinker. What he was was--like Stephen King--was an extremely gifted cultural commentator with a keen grasp of his zeitgeist. It's why he's no longer held in the same regard as he was and has been surpassed by superior novelists like Flaubert, Balzac, and Proust.

[ajvenigalla]

^OK, cool. I appreciate Hugo as a great writer, but thanks for sharing your thoughts, Pike

[Pike Bishop]

No problem, Avenaglia. I'm sure I'll be asking you for your thoughts soon.

[JCamilo]

I would personally add Tolkien to Britain and Hugo to France.

Pike, do you personally think Hugo is a literary master and one of the greatest of all time?

Hugo was a great poet, considered in higher reggard than giants like Baudelaire or Rimbaud. His status insidee francee still huge. The idea to consider him otherwise must be similar to Tolstoy attacking Shakespeare.

[Pike Bishop]

Hugo was a great poet, considered in higher reggard than giants like Baudelaire or Rimbaud. His status insidee francee still huge. The idea to consider him otherwise must be similar to Tolstoy attacking Shakespeare.

I read your post, JCamilo, since I knew you'd make a questionable response to mine. Thank you for not disappointing. Hugo is not considered a greater poet than Baudelaire or Rimbaud by most current French scholars or by most French scholars of the last 60 years. If you want to back up your silly claim and prove otherwise, knock yourself out. And at least try to get the syllogistic logic of your erroneous analogies correct, nobody like Tolstoy said those poets were superior to Hugo...;)

[ajvenigalla]

Thanks Pike. I may not always be prompt in my own participation in this board, but I will try to give my thoughts and add my own contributions to this wonderful forum (which is becoming one of my own favorites)

[JCamilo]

I read your post, JCamilo, since I knew you'd make a questionable response to mine. Thank you for not disappointing. Hugo is not considered a greater poet than Baudelaire or Rimbaud by most current French scholars or by most French scholars of the last 60 years. If you want to back up your silly claim and prove otherwise, knock yourself out. And at least try to get the syllogistic logic of your erroneous analogies correct, nobody like Tolstoy said those poets were superior to Hugo...;)

you read my post because you are like a 5 years old who claims to not be talking with his mommy because she give him a few slaps on his butt but does not stop answering her. The threads are filled with you answering when you see it quoted me or leaving one lines about those you ignore. Grow up, kid.

Syllgistic logic of your errouneous analogies is one of most pedantics ways to show pretencious knowledge and it is even more ridiculous to think you that managed to show your usual incapacity to read. The analogy is in consideration of ajvenigalla question, which i was answerig, not to you (otherwise I would just point your list of french great literary masters without Rabellais, Voltaire, Monstequieu, Corneille, Pascal, Villon, La Fontaine, Margueritte de navarre, Hugo, Artaud, Troyes, Gallant, Ronsard is telling more about your ignorance about french literature and bias than the ridiculous comparassion of Hugo to stephen king... seriously wtf): do you personally think Hugo is a literary master and one of the greatest of all time?

And :The idea to consider him otherwise must be similar to Tolstoy attacking Shakespeare.

Got it, Carlo Collodi fan?

[stlukesguild]

America, France, Britain, and Russia certainly have an impressive number of major writers. But one could add any number of other national bodies of literature that are quite impressive in their own rite:

Italy- Dante, Cavalcanti, Tasso, Boccaccio, Goldini, Machiavelli, Petrarch, Leopardi, Foscolo, Saba, Pavese, Quasimodo, Montale, Primo Levi, Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, etc...

Greece- Homer, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Thucydides, Hesiod, Sappho, Theocritus, Cavafy, Nikos Kazantzakis, George Seferis and Odysseas Elytis

German- Nibelungenlied, Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, Grimmelshausen, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Friedrich Hölderlin, Novalis, Kleist, Eichendorf, Heinrich Heine, Georg Büchner, Eduard Mörike, Gottfried Keller, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Kafka, Georg Trakl, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Rilke, Walter Benjamin, Frank Wedekind, Joseph Roth, Gunter Grass, Boll, Max Frisch, Durrenmatt, Paul Celan, etc...

Persian- Ferdowsi, Sa'di, Hafiz, Attar, Nizami, Rumi, Omar Khayyam, and One Thousand and One Nights

Of course the list of the major Persian... as well as Indian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, etc... writers that most of us are familiar with is grossly limited to the few works available in quality translation.

[stlukesguild]

Break out the popcorn. Now where's JBI? ;)

[Pike Bishop]

1. you read my post because you are like a 5 years old who claims to not be talking with his mommy because she give him a few slaps on his butt but does not stop answering her. The threads are filled with you answering when you see it quoted me or leaving one lines about those you ignore. Grow up, kid.

2. Syllgistic logic of your errouneous analogies is one of most pedantics ways to show pretencious knowledge and it is even more ridiculous to think you that managed to show your usual incapacity to read. The analogy is in consideration of ajvenigalla question, which i was answerig, not to you (otherwise I would just point your list of french great literary masters without Rabellais, Voltaire, Monstequieu, Corneille, Pascal, Villon, La Fontaine, Margueritte de navarre, Hugo, Artaud, Troyes, Gallant, Ronsard is telling more about your ignorance about french literature and bias than the ridiculous comparassion of Hugo to stephen king... seriously wtf): do you personally think Hugo is a literary master and one of the greatest of all time?

3. And :The idea to consider him otherwise must be similar to Tolstoy attacking Shakespeare.

1. I read your post because I knew you would make a ridiculous response to mine...you proved me more than correct. And only a child--and an odd child--could come up with that hiliariously twisted scenario you dreamed up. So, the only one who needs to grow up, kid, is you...and perhaps get some therapy about those spanking fantasies as well...;)

2. Syllogistic logic is what you continue to fail to use in any of your arguments, and you continue to do so here. You absolutely addressed my post, since I was the one who criticized Hugo, not Aveniglia. Your pretending otherwise just makes you look even more foolish. You even read your own posts poorly. And thank you for showing you can't provide evidence supporting your ridiculous assertions about Hugo. We'll just chalk that away as further proof you were wrong.

3. Thank you for repeating your illogical analogy; it just shows again you can't even construct a basic comparison...or much else for that matter.

Got it, kid?


P.s. Since you seem so concerned about education levels, what exactly is yours? I hope you're not ashamed to share it with us.

[JCamilo]

I quoted Ajvenigalla post, not yours. I had no reason to answer you, as you claimed in a handful of threads you had me in your ignore list and would be unable to read me. And frankly what worth is to deal in an argument that says Victor Hugo is like Stephen King? It is so ridiculous that it is not worth. You may believe your belly button is the center of the universe, but at the moment you claimed you had me on ignore, I declined to address to you, despite the fact you still address to my posts or to me (with childish "they are in my ignore list, but they keep following me", as if you owned threads or the forum). You call fantasy? Sure, Pike, watever suits your boat.

I cannot sustain the claim about Hugo Status? What about Harold Bloom in the book Poets and poems, calls Hugo the greatest french poet ever? Paul Valéry that claims Hugo achived the highest point of poetical power? Borges who said Hugo was the best french poet? Do I need anyother company or do someone needs anyone else to help me to live in the world where Hugo status is considerable huge? Ah, ok.

Yes, really comparing someone to say Hugo is not one of the greatest ever of all times is bad analogy to tolstoy saying Shakespeare was not one of the greatest ever. They cannot be compared. Really. Very illogical. I am impressed. Really.

And where do I even mention about educational levels? I talk about your display of knowledge and the desperate use of academic therminology to disguise narrow-minded view of world literature and you want to come with degree gloating again? For god's sake Pike, this is an internet forum, your degree, my degree, have no vallue here. It is only about what you post.

[JCamilo]

Break out the popcorn. Now where's JBI? ;)

A huge list of chinese writers, but of course, someone must bring the list of Roman writers, after all latim still the most dominant language of western literature. Cicero, Ovid, Virgil, Horace, Tacitus, Suetonios, Pliny, Seneca, Catullus, Petronio, Lucan, Juvenal, Apulleio (and however i forgot here) and this only in the early empire days...

[Pike Bishop]

1. I quoted Ajvenigalla post, not yours. I had no reason to answer you, as you claimed in a handful of threads you had me in your ignore list and would be unable to read me. And frankly what worth is to deal in an argument that says Victor Hugo is like Stephen King? It is so ridiculous that it is not worth. You may believe your belly button is the center of the universe, but at the moment you claimed you had me on ignore, I declined to address to you, despite the fact you still address to my posts or to me (with childish "they are in my ignore list, but they keep following me", as if you owned threads or the forum). You call fantasy? Sure, Pike, watever suits your boat.

2. I cannot sustain the claim about Hugo Status? What about Harold Bloom in the book Poets and poems, calls Hugo the greatest french poet ever? Paul Valéry that claims Hugo achived the highest point of poetical power? Borges who said Hugo was the best french poet? Do I need anyother company or do someone needs anyone else to help me to live in the world where Hugo status is considerable huge? Ah, ok.

3. Yes, really comparing someone to say Hugo is not one of the greatest ever of all times is bad analogy to tolstoy saying Shakespeare was not one of the greatest ever. They cannot be compared. Really. Very illogical. I am impressed. Really.

And where do I even mention about educational levels? I talk about your display of knowledge and the desperate use of academic therminology to disguise narrow-minded view of world literature and you want to come with degree gloating again? For god's sake Pike, this is an internet forum, your degree, my degree, have no vallue here. It is only about what you post.

Well, you've completely lost it on this thread. So, I'll address your barely coherent "responses" incisively and succinctly.

1. I was the only one who criticized Hugo. So, either your post defending Hugo addressed mine, or you were responding like a madman. I'm good with either. And I never compared King to Hugo in quality; I said they shared the same talent. I'm not surprised that went by you. And stop fantasizing about me; it is really disturbing and doesn't speak well of your mental state.

2. No, you can't sustain your claim about Hugo and you still haven't. Harold Bloom is one critc, kid. The fact all you have is him and Valery proves you have nothing and your assertion about Hugo is wrong.

3. Again you don't grasp the silliness and bad logic of your analogy. You said my preferring other poets to Hugo was like Tolstoy attacking Shakespeare. Here's a hint, big guy, I wasn't attacking anybody, and Tolstoy wouldn't be attacking anyone either. So, your analogy was so fractured it was almost adorable...;)

4. You talked about knowledge levels, and education is a big part of knowledge. And I didn't gloat about anything of mine, I asked about yours. And it's clear from your answers--as it is clear from your illogical, ignorant answers and hostile frustration--that your education and knowledge levels are very low.


So, you and I are done here, kid. And you are most certainly done, since everything you said has been proven wrong and humorous. So, I'm putting you back in time out and back on ignore until I see fit to look at one of your posts again. I assure you, I am hardly looking forward to it...;)

[mortalterror]

Hugo's status as a great poet and dramatist above his work as a novelist in France is my understanding as well. I have heard it said by French posters on this board that he is held in greater esteem than Baudelaire, I believe primarily for his epic The Legend of the Ages, which sadly I have not read. However, I have read Les Miserables and I personally feel it is a better book than Tolstoy's War and Peace. I wouldn't say that Hugo was surpassed by Flaubert and Balzac so much as I'd say that their shorter novels were more focused and had fewer flaws, as shorter novels tend to do. In fact, when I read Hugo's Les Miserables it looked like he was trying to synthesize Balzac and Dickens with some of the Romantic flavor of Flaubert thrown in. The revolutionary struggle bore a strong resemblance to Dicken's Tale of Two Cities, and the ending felt like Hugo's version of Balzac's Father Goriot. But the overall structure I felt was Dante's Divine Comedy, the progression of a sinner to a saint. Plus, the man just had fantastic style. You wanted to read the next page or chapter. It was always a pleasure that paced itself well and didn't drag. In that respect, I suppose it was kind of like Dumas' Three Musketeers. There was so much incident, a real storehouse of invention, seldom equaled except by Lope De Vega, Shakespeare, or Ariosto.

There are a couple of ways to compare different countries' production. We could write the countries names out and then list their great writers. Another way, which I did several years ago when this thread was young is to place the great epics, novels, tragedies, comedies or other genres side by side. But the one I'd favor at the present time is one that takes into account the manner in which empires wax and wane. The center of power shifts, and a country once great for it's literary output is great no more. I think of successive golden ages: the Greeks, then the Romans, Italians during the Renaissance, British during Elizabethan times, the French during Louis XIV, etc. They are hothouse flowers flourishing at different hours.

[JCamilo]

Hugo's status as a great poet and dramatist above his work as a novelist in France is my understanding as well. I have heard it said by French posters on this board that he is held in greater esteem than Baudelaire, I believe primarily for his epic The Legend of the Ages, which sadly I have not read. However, I have read Les Miserables and I personally feel it is a better book than Tolstoy's War and Peace. I wouldn't say that Hugo was surpassed by Flaubert and Balzac so much as I'd say that their shorter novels were more focused and had fewer flaws, as shorter novels tend to do. In fact, when I read Hugo's Les Miserables it looked like he was trying to synthesize Balzac and Dickens with some of the Romantic flavor of Flaubert thrown in. The revolutionary struggle bore a strong resemblance to Dicken's Tale of Two Cities, and the ending felt like Hugo's version of Balzac's Father Goriot. But the overall structure I felt was Dante's Divine Comedy, the progression of a sinner to a saint. Plus, the man just had fantastic style. You wanted to read the next page or chapter. It was always a pleasure that paced itself well and didn't drag. In that respect, I suppose it was kind of like Dumas' Three Musketeers. There was so much incident, a real storehouse of invention, seldom equaled except by Lope De Vega, Shakespeare, or Ariosto.

I have no idea how Hugo was surpassed by Balzac, Proust or Flaubert, unless someone will only read literature as a darwinian struggle. So the newest author will be always surpassing others? It is no wonder that french culture, which by tradition refrain from crowning a national author, almost did it with Hugo. He has a great french mix, popular and at sametimes a bit classicist (as much he was building an anti-classicist model), a sort of disnasty that had to leave the city, etc.

Obviously, that is the strength of France and weakness when you compare those lists: they have lots of kings, probally more than england, spain, germany, italy, in all genres, yet, it is hard to say someone Shakespeare-Cervantes-Goethe-Dante level/reputation.

Anyways, forget the dude. Last reply to me he managed to misquote twice (as claiming I said he compared King and Hugo by quality, when i just said he compared them; and other, funny enough, he misquoted himself, when he was claimming about his comparassion between hugos and other poets, while he mentioned novelists balac, flaubert and proust and I was the one mentioning Baudelaire and Rimbaud) to have his "victory". It is really not worthy. JBI would go nuts arguing with him.

[R.F. Schiller]

I'm Chinese-Canadian so I've read extensively in Chinese and English with a decent background of reading some other (mostly European) languages in translation. How do we measure this? Should we go by "pound for pound" like in prize-fighting? Because it seems awfully unfair to compare China, which has such a long literary history to the United States, which has only been around for ~250 years.

China has a very impressive canon of poetry and philosophy but is somewhat disappointing in regards to fiction, so I don't know how high they would rank. America is very, very impressive in terms of literary output considering their short length of existence.

[mortalterror]

I'm Chinese-Canadian so I've read extensively in Chinese and English with a decent background of reading some other (mostly European) languages in translation. How do we measure this? Should we go by "pound for pound" like in prize-fighting? Because it seems awfully unfair to compare China, which has such a long literary history to the United States, which has only been around for ~250 years.

China has a very impressive canon of poetry and philosophy but is somewhat disappointing in regards to fiction, so I don't know how high they would rank. America is very, very impressive in terms of literary output considering their short length of existence.

I think it's more fair to think of different dynasties of China as different countries. Besides, it's probably best not to think of China as a continuum what with things like the Three Kingdoms and Warring States periods. Especially since modern Chinese has drifted so much from ancient Chinese that they wouldn't be intelligible to each other. Same goes for France and England. England isn't exactly an unbroken line from William the Conqueror what with the Plantagenets, Tudors, that Civil War, Cromwell etc. You might say the same of France before and after the Revolution. It's probably more equitable to compare literary output by things like language rather than by national borders and political structures.

[WICKES]

I think it's more fair to think of different dynasties of China as different countries. Besides, it's probably best not to think of China as a continuum what with things like the Three Kingdoms and Warring States periods. Especially since modern Chinese has drifted so much from ancient Chinese that they wouldn't be intelligible to each other. Same goes for France and England. England isn't exactly an unbroken line from William the Conqueror what with the Plantagenets, Tudors, that Civil War, Cromwell etc. You might say the same of France before and after the Revolution. It's probably more equitable to compare literary output by things like language rather than by national borders and political structures.

In the case of England, I do think it is accurate to speak of 'English Literature' (meaning literary works of all kind written in England, including essays, biographies and even perhaps scientific classics like Darwin's Origin of Species) as forming an unbroken line from Chaucer up to the modern day. Blake, for example, was hugely influenced by Milton and Milton was influenced by Shakespeare. The English themselves have traditionally dated their literature from Chaucer, and that 600 year body of writing is, so far as I can see, unbeaten. Other cultures and civilizations (Ancient Greece for example) have equalled it, but I'm not sure any have surpassed it.

[Pike Bishop]

In the case of England, I do think it is accurate to speak of 'English Literature' (meaning literary works of all kind written in England, including essays, biographies and even perhaps scientific classics like Darwin's Origin of Species) as forming an unbroken line from Chaucer up to the modern day.

I have no problem with this, but you would have to extend the courtesy of such genre expansion to other countries, so their lists would now include:

America: Mather, Thoreau, Emerson, Howells. Mill. W. James, Henry Miller, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, August Wilson, David Mamet, Sam Shepard, Tony Kushner, Richard Feynman, Thomas Kuhn, Frederic Jameson, Cornel West, Barbara Johnson, John Hillis Miller, Pauline Kael, Brian Greene, Lionel Trilling, Douglas Brinkley, David Halberstam, Henry Louis Gates, John Carlos Rowe, Kenneth Burke, Cleanth Brooks, Northrop Frye, Stanley Fish, Jonathan Culler, Houston Baker, Judith Butler, Leslie Fiedler, Stephen Greenblatt, Irving Howe, Peter Mathiessen, F.O. Mathiessen, Edward Said

France: Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gabriel Marcel, Maurice Merlau-Ponty, Georges Bataille, Antonin Artaud, Julia Kristeva, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Paul Ricouer, Andre Breton, Luce Irigaray, Emmanuel Levinas

Germany: Schiller, Husserl, Heidegger, Jurgen Habermas, Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Horkheimer, Schopenhauer

[stlukesguild]

A huge list of chinese writers, but of course, someone must bring the list of Roman writers...

I left that intentionally for Mortal Terror... our native Roman/Latin aficionado. I'm admittedly less knowledgeable and less enamored of Roman culture than he... unless we're talking architecture or the Byzantine.

[mortalterror]

Oh, in that case...

254-184BC Plautus- The Pot of Gold
195-159BC Terence- The Brothers
106-43BC Cicero- Dream of Scipio
100-44BC Caesar- The Gallic War
86-35BC Sallust- The Catiline Conspiracy
84-54BC Catullus- Poem 107
70-19BC Virgil- The Aeneid
65-8BC Horace- Odes
59BC-17AD Livy- History of Rome
55-19BC Tibullus- Elegies
50-15BC Sextus Propertius- Elegies
43BC-17AD Ovid- Metamorphoses
4BC-65AD Seneca- Thyestes
23-79AD Pliny the Elder- Natural History
27-66AD Petronius- Satyricon
34-62AD Persius- Satires
35-100AD Quintillian- Institutes of Oratory
39-65AD Lucan- Pharsalia
40-104AD Martial- Epigrams
45-96AD Statius- Thebaid
55-138AD Juvenal- Satires
56-117AD Tacitus- Annals
61-112AD Pliny the Younger- Letters
69-130AD Suetonius- Lives of 12 Caesars
95-165AD Appian- Roman History
121-180AD Marcus Aurelius- Meditations
125-180AD Apuleius- The Golden ***

[mortalterror]

As for China

Qu Yuan (340-278BC) and Song Yu (290-223BC) Chu Ci
Tao Qian (365-427) Poems
Xu Ling (507-583) New Songs From the Jade Terrace
Li Bai (701-762) Tianmu Mountain Ascended in a Dream
Du Fu (712-770) The Song of the Wagons
Han-shan (730-850) Cold Mountain Poems
Han Yu (768-824) Essays
Bai Juyi (772-846) Song of Unending Sorrow, Song of the Lute Player
Yuan Zhen (779-831) Biography of Ying Ying
Li Houzhu (937-978) Poems
Su Shi (1037-1101) Poems
Li Qingzhao (1084-1151) Poems
Guan Hanqing (1225-1302) Injustice to Dou E
Bai Renfu (1226-1306) Rain on the Paulownia Tree
Wang Shifu (1250-1307) Romance of the Western Chamber
Ma Zhiyuan (1250-1321) Autumn in Han Palace
Shi Nai'an (1296-1372) Water Margin
Gao Zecheng (1305-1368) Romance of the Lute
Luo Guanzhong (1330-1400) Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Wu Cheng'en (1500-1582) Journey To the West
Tang Xianzu (1550-1616) The Peony Pavilion
Feng Menglong (1574-1645) Stories to Awaken the World
Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng (1610) Jin Ping Mei
Pu Songling (1640-1715) Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio
Wu Jingzi (1701-1754) The Scholars
Cao Xueqin (1715-1763) Dream of The Red Chamber
Yuan Mei (1716-1798) Poems
Shen Fu (1763-1825) Six Records of a Floating Life
Liu E (1857-1909) The Travels of Lao Ts'an
Lu Xun (1881-1936) Ah Q - The Real Story
Qian Zhongshu (1910-1998) Fortress Besieged

I was looking for JBI's Chinese Canon and found this list I made breaking down top ten works by language.
Ancient Greek
1.Homer- Iliad 2.Aeschylus- Orestea 3.Sophocles- Theban Plays 4.Euripides- Bachae 5.Aristophanes- Lysistrata 6.Hesiod- Works and Days 7.Apollonius of Rhodes- Argonautika 8.Sappho- Poems 9.Callimachus- Poems 10.Anacreon- Poems
Latin
1.Virgil- Aeneid 2.Ovid- Metamorphoses 3.Horace- Odes 4.Seneca- Thyestes 5.Petronius- Satyricon 6.Catullus- Poems 7.Statius- Thebaid 8.Apuleius- The Golden *** 9.Lucan- Pharsalia 10.Juvenal- Satires
English
1.Shakespeare- Hamlet 2.Milton- Paradise Lost 3.Chaucer- Canterbury Tales 4.Spenser- Faery Queen 5.Dickens- Tale of Two Cities 6.Wordsworth- Poems 7.Eliot- The Wasteland 8.Melville- Moby Dick 9.Shelley- Poems 10.Hemingway- The Old Man and the Sea
French
1.Baudelaire- Flowers of Evil 2.Flaubert-Madame Bovary 3.Hugo- Les Miserables 4.Racine- Phaedra 5.Moliere- Tartuffe 6.Balzac- Pere Goriot 7.Rabelais- Gargantua and Pantagruel 8.Proust- In Search of Lost Time 9.Maupassant- Short Stories 10.Dumas- The Three Musketeers
Russian
1.Tolstoy- War and Peace 2.Dostoyevski- The Brothers Karamazov 3.Pushkin- Eugene Onegin 4.Chekov- Uncle Vanya 5.Turgenev- Fathers and Sons 6.Goncharov- Oblomov 7.Lermontov- A Hero For Our Times 8.Gogol- Dead Souls 9.Bulgakov- The Master and Marguerita 10.Pasternak- Dr. Zhivago
Italian
1.Dante- Divine Comedy 2.Tasso- Jerusalem Delivered 3.Petrarch- Canzoniere 4.Boccaccio- Decameron 5.Leopardi- Cantos 6.Ariosto- Orlando Furioso 7.Manzoni- The Bethrothed 8.Calvino- If On a Winters Night a Traveler 9.Foscolo- Last Letters of Jocopo Ortis 10.Boiardo- Orlando In Love
German
1.Gothe- Faust 2.Kafka- Metamorphoses 3.Holderlin- Poems 4.Rilke- Sonnets to Orpheus 5.Mann- Death in Venice 6.Brecht- Threepenny Opera 7.Hesse- Steppenwolf 8.Buchner- Danton's Death 9.Hoffman- Short Stories 10.Schiller- William Tell
Farsi
1.Firdawsi- Shahnameh 2.Rumi- Masnavi 3.Hafiz- Divan 4.Nezami- Layla and Majnun 5.Sa'di- Rose Garden 5.Khayyam- Rubaiyat 6.Attar- Conference of the Birds 7.Jami- Yusuf and Zulaykha
Sanskrit
1.Vyasa- Mahabharata 2.Valmiki- Ramayana 3.Kalidasa- Sakuntala and the Ring of Recollection 4.Jayadeva- Gita Govinda 5.Anonymous- Panchatantra 6.Bhartrhari- Śatakatraya
Chinese
1.Xueqin- Dream of the Red Chamber 2.Cheng'en- Journey to the West 3.Guanzhong- Romance of the Three Kingdoms 4.Various- Complete Tang Poems 5.Various- Classic of Poetry 6.Su Shi- Poems 7.Anonymous- Plum in the Golden Vase 8.Jinzi- The Scholars 9.Shifu- Romance of the Western Chamber 10.Nai'an-Water Margin
Japanese
1.Shikibu- Tale of Genji 2.Various- Manyoshu 3.Basho- Poems 4.Mishima- The Temple of the Golden Pavilion 5.Soseki- Kokoro 6.Murakami- A Wild Sheep Chase 7.Shonagon- The Pillow Book 8.Kenko- Essays in Idleness 9.Anonymous- Tale of the Heike 10.Akutagawa- Rashomon
Spanish
1.Cervantes- Don Quixote 2.Calderon- Life is a Dream 3.Neruda- Poems 4.De Vega- Fuente Ovejuna 5.St John of the Cross- Poems 6.Marquez- 100 Years of Solitude 7.Anonymous- Lazarillo de Tormes 8.Gongora- Poems 9.Rojas- Celestina 10.Borges- Short stories
Portugese
1.Camoes- Lusiads 2.Pessoa- A Little Larger than the Entire Universe
Scandinavian (I know it's several languages)
1.Ibsen- The Doll House 2.Strindberg- Miss Julie 3.Various- Kalavala 4.Hamsun- Hunger 5.Anderson- Short Stories 6.Dinesen- Out of Africa

[Pompey Bum]

Oh, in that case...

254-184BC Plautus- The Pot of Gold
195-159BC Terence- The Brothers
106-43BC Cicero- Dream of Scipio
100-44BC Caesar- The Gallic War
86-35BC Sallust- The Catiline Conspiracy
84-54BC Catullus- Poem 107
70-19BC Virgil- The Aeneid
65-8BC Horace- Odes
59BC-17AD Livy- History of Rome
55-19BC Tibullus- Elegies
50-15BC Sextus Propertius- Elegies
43BC-17AD Ovid- Metamorphoses
4BC-65AD Seneca- Thyestes
23-79AD Pliny the Elder- Natural History
27-66AD Petronius- Satyricon
34-62AD Persius- Satires
35-100AD Quintillian- Institutes of Oratory
39-65AD Lucan- Pharsalia
40-104AD Martial- Epigrams
45-96AD Statius- Thebaid
55-138AD Juvenal- Satires
56-117AD Tacitus- Annals
61-112AD Pliny the Younger- Letters
69-130AD Suetonius- Lives of 12 Caesars
95-165AD Appian- Roman History
121-180AD Marcus Aurelius- Meditations
125-180AD Apuleius- The Golden ***

Great suggestions, Mortal, but was there some reason you left out Polybius, Plutarch, and Josephus? True they wrote in Greek rather than Latin, but so did Marcus Aurelius, who made it onto your list. Also, why only Catullus 107? Why not his greatest hits: 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 16, 58, etc? Aw heck, why not all of them?

It's nice to see that you have included the perennially underrated historian Appian of Alexandria (another Greek writer), but in that case, why not Cassius Dio/Dio Cassius (depending on when you went to school)? Neither is entirely satisfactory, but both are worth reading. And you don't mention Ammianus Marcellinus, who was twice the historian that either Appian or Dio Cassius were; likewise Procopius, again, since writing in Greek shouldn't leave you out of the club.

[mortalterror]

Great suggestions, Mortal, but was there some reason you left out Polybius, Plutarch, and Josephus? True they wrote in Greek rather than Latin, but so did Lucan and Marcus Aurelius, who made it onto your list. Also, why only Catullus 107? Why not his greatest hits: 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 16, 58, etc? Aw heck, why not all of them?

It's nice to see that you have included the perennially underrated historian Appian of Alexandria (another Greek writer), but in that case, why not Cassius Dio/Dio Cassius (depending on when you went to school)? Neither is entirely satisfactory, but both are worth reading. And you don't mention Ammianus Marcellinus, who was twice the historian that either Appian or Dio Cassius were; likewise Procopius, again, since writing in Greek shouldn't leave you out of the club.

I didn't include Polybius, Plutarch, and Josephus because I didn't want to get into a fight over what category they fit in: Greek or Roman and in Josephus' case Jewish literature. I dropped Arrian and some others too. As far as I'm concerned, Greece was a province of Rome after a certain point but that's a discussion for another time. Besides, I didn't want to get greedy like some Brits do claiming T.S. Eliot. They can have him after 1927 when he get's British citizenship. Ash Wednesday and Four Quartets are British but The Wasteland, Prufrock, and Hollow Men are American. I cut the poet in two, like Solomon.

Why didn't I include Cassius Dio? Shameful to say, I've never read him. Ammianus Marcellinus and Procopius were omitted because I'm less interested in the later periods and I felt I'd already made my point with my first 27 examples. I didn't include Boethius or Augustine either. Besides, it's not necessary to be exhaustive with these lists. That's why I didn't feel the need to add Ennius, Silius Italicus, or Aulus Gellius.

Are you sure that Lucan's Pharsalia isn't Latin? Are you thinking perhaps of Lucian the Greek satirist?

I chose Catullus 107 because it's my favorite of his. Sometimes I'm more fond of minor works than majors. With Ezra Pound I'm more in love with Make Strong Old Dreams Lest This Our World Lose Heart, or the Nightingale than I am even of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley.

[Pompey Bum]

I didn't include Polybius, Plutarch, and Josephus because I didn't want to get into a fight over what category they fit in: Greek or Roman and in Josephus' case Jewish literature. I dropped Arrian and some others too. As far as I'm concerned, Greece was a province of Rome after a certain point but that's a discussion for another time.

Okay, but you're going to have a hard time doing that with Marcus Aurelius. :) Rome was a dominium with two major languages (at least), so I'll let those who wrote in Greek into my canon in any case.


Ammianus Marcellinus and Procopius were omitted because I'm less interested in the later periods

Do yourself a favor and check out Ammianus Marcellinus sometime (available for free and in English at Gutenberg, btw), who is only writing in the 4th century anyway. He was a Latin writer who was trying (and rather succeeding) to emulate Tacitus. And his history features the career of the perennially fascinating Julian the Apostate. Procopius is fun, too.


Are you sure that Lucan's Pharsalia isn't Latin? Are you thinking perhaps of Lucian the Greek satirist?

Yes, my bad. I meant Lucian of course. Thank you, I've fixed it. Lucian wasn't a Greek, by the way, but an ethnic Assyrian (born in a part of Roman Syria now in Turkey) who rambled the Roman world as far as Gaul, entertaining people with his loopy sense of humor. As a native of the Roman east, though, he was of course a Greek speaker (and probably a Syriac speaker, too--he confesses at one point to knowing a "barbarian" language).


I chose Catullus 107 because it's my favorite of his.

I like it, too. Catullus is usually either such a smooth talker or (in his other typical mood) such a raging force of nature that it is enjoyable sometimes just to find him being reflective.

Thanks you for your comments. I'm rereading Plutarch and Livy at the moment and loving every moment. :)

[WolfLarsen]

I am my own country! And I produce the greatest literature!

[Ecurb]

Trinidad and Tobago. If you live in a country with a name that sounds THAT COOL, you tend to become a writer. (On a per capita basis, of course.)

[JBI]

The problem with much of Chinese literature is two fold; firstly, it is far vaster than the entirety of Western literature up until the modern age, in terms of volume, which is countered by the incredible publishing industry in China which makes it too available. Secondly, much of it is repetitive and dull, and unsifted, so if you want to find the 20 chestnuts within the collection of 1000 poems, you kind of have to do so yourself, since nobody really does selections.

The general problem with Chinese fiction is it is quite repetitive, and hardly put any emphasis on evolution or development. So to take the common critical axiom as each dynasty having its own representative genre - Han Fu (rhyme prose), Tang Shi (verse), Song Ci (songs), Yuan Qu (arias), and Ming-Qing novels - we still must acknowledge that each succeeding dynasty published more of every form than the dynasties that preceded it. So that Fu writing was most prolific under the Qing Dynasty, as were poems, songs, and arias.

So how do we evaluate? Do we say by necessity of being first, the former pieces contain a higher achievement? Or do we do the logical thing, like marxist scholarship suggests, that the genre develops and comes to fruition over time? Or is it just a mere question of fashion, which never had any real driving force encouraging innovation.

The fact of the matter is, most of Chinese literature is dry and boring. Most of the issues discussed are dry, and the contexts removed. It has not fared well in the modern era, as it is increasingly removed from modern life, which is a combined experience of modernity and western modes of thought (western in the sense of modern science).

As for pound for pound though, as far as I'm concerned, with China you have two choices; China was established as a republic in 1911 and as a Communist republic in 1949. That being said the classical language has not been a language of composition since that time.

As for the classical language itself, it was commonly used for historical, poetical, and religious documents throughout the East and Southeast Asian world until the 20th century. It is as much the Vietnamese Latin as it is the Japanese scholarship language. As such, we can say the classical period through the Han, when the vast majority of East Asian texts came to fruition, and the tradition established itself, is similar to the period from Ancient times through medieval times in Europe and the near-East. Japanese culture is a response to this, and the significant dynasties of Korea and Vietnam all made sure to choose a Tang Dynasty ancestor the establish legitimacy (the two major dynasties being founded by persons with the surname Li 李 as similar to the Tang Emperors). This identity as the dynastic inheritors of Chinese culture is interesting, particularly when their were rival foreign and regional claimants in the body of land which is now China throughout the duration of this history. The Song Dynasty was hardly a Northern dynasty like the Tang itself, and the Mongol and Manchu dynasties that followed it were hardly composed of an ethnic Chinese tradition. For the entire region, rather classical Chinese was the language of bureaucracy and history (including ghost stories which were collected as history, and medical texts, and religious texts), while vernaculars began to emerge.

The first vernacular was actually written Japanese, which more or less in the early stages was confined to the lowest forms of literature, though are now highly esteemed. Something like the Tale of Genji is not a masterpiece in the sense of Virgil when it was released; it was a piece of female literature, restricted to a court writing not Japanese poetry (the language of love and occasional poems, not formal works) but actually mediocre Chinese works.

Slowly, however, vernaculars did emerge, so that by the Yuan dynasty you already had some forms of an intelligible Chinese written vernacular based on Pekingese. These vernaculars also had less written forms, or exact forms based on other languages, which are still somewhat preserved in local Chinese operas. In Vietnam and in Korea by the 15th century these vernaculars were emerging fast; faster than even China itself. However, the major genres, the ones that were esteemed, were still written in classical Chinese well into the 20th century, including novels, poetry, and the like. In Vietnam, for instance, poetic conventions around the four seasons abound throughout the verses, despite the complete lack of those seasonal Changes, or even those seasons in the tropical Vietnamese climate.

China, as such, is more like the last standing empire, than the long tradition it preaches itself to be. If you wish to draw a history of Chinese literature, that is, the literature of the country of China, the earliest date should be 1911; everything else is not Chinese, but the remnants of classical traditions and various imperial and conquering dynasties.


This is a general answer to the assumptions of a grouping of China as a single country with 5000 years of history. The irony of the fact is that most places in the world, including China have more than 5000 years of cultural history, whereas the area of China, in terms of written history, has about 3500 years or less, far fewer than the oldest near-Eastern civilizations. In addition to this fact, the formed Chinese language, which came about a little bit later than that, was far less sophisticated or useful than the more practical alphabetic languages developed in the Near-Eastern ancient world (this is in response to the myth that Chinese characters are pictographs, which they aren't, but rather are a representation of a sound which is used to connote a meaning, or an ideograph). This language has developed much like, lets say, the language of Sanskrit or of Ancient Sumerian into modern forms over thousands of years. A fluency in modern Chinese does not let you even approach classical texts in modernized forms (that is, the editions received by way of Han dynasty editors and so forth) and even specialized knowledge in the received textual language will not give you the requisite skills to approach unearthed or original inscribed documents. The vast majority of texts published in China, in classical language, or in unearthed language, are highly glossed edited and reformed into modern Chinese scripts. The same is true of books most people read, which are almost always accompanied by a translation into the modern vernacular (with most of the textual difficulties and problems omitted). Even with these glosses, the Classical language is highly different, and the pronunciation of key words and phrases - virtually all the characters - are completely different from even their forms 100 years ago. That is, with the exception of Tang poetry and subsequent literature based on Tang rhymes, there are few dialects that maintain the sound of the so called Ancient Chinese texts. Tang poems can be more or less reconstructed, and are read with more accurate rhymes in a highly standardized literary form of major dialects, particularly Cantonese. Most classical Chinese writers in the following dynasties, however, were writing poems that rhymed perfectly, that is, in a language they couldn't pronounce or speak, but merely "knew" was correct by means of memorizing rhyme tables. They couldn't read their poems out loud in the intended language until linguistic reconstruction in the 20th century.


So what's a country then? If the question was which language, it perhaps would have worked more, but which country is problematic to say the least. Confucius was not from China, as China didn't exist at the time he was alive. Shakespeare was English, but perhaps not British. Was Dante Italian? Well, 500 years of history seems to disagree with this point.

[ennison]

Willy S was English and European. As a geographical area he was born within the British isles but on its own that doesn't make him British. Nigel Farage would deny he was European

[WICKES]

. Besides, I didn't want to get greedy like some Brits do claiming T.S. Eliot. They can have him after 1927 when he get's British citizenship. Ash Wednesday and Four Quartets are British but The Wasteland, Prufrock, and Hollow Men are American. I cut the poet in two, like Solomon.

.

OK, but we're having WH Auden back!

Personally I see T S Eliot as an anglo-American. It's not a bad group to be in. Christopher Hitchens identified himself as one, and you could make a case for Winston Churchill, Henry James and Ezra Pound among others.

[mortalterror]

OK, but we're having WH Auden back!

Personally I see T S Eliot as an anglo-American. It's not a bad group to be in. Christopher Hitchens identified himself as one, and you could make a case for Winston Churchill, Henry James and Ezra Pound among others.
I don't think that England has the same claim on Pound as it does on Eliot. For one thing he never renounced his citizenship. For another, he only spent a dozen years in England. He spent 35 years of his life in Italy and 36 years in America. If any country besides the USA has a claim to him it's Italy. A Polish immigrant to England like Conrad definitely belongs to England because he doesn't start writing until he gets there and only writes in his adopted language. Expatriots like Nabokov are really hard to pin down that way though since he has a Russian period a German period and an American period of roughly even chunks of time. I generally think of him as Russian though, for the sake of his formative years. It makes one wonder though, if perhaps Rudyard Kipling or George Orwell don't belong to the Indian subcontinent as much as they do to England.

[ennison]

This thread is interesting but it is an odd question to begin with. It's a bit like asking which country has the nicest views. It is too subjective to have a definite answer. Personally ( And here's tuppenceworth of opinion) I cannot see past America for both quantity and quality of prose fiction in the last sixty years. However my own country is unsurpassed in terms of song over the last three centuries (And that is literature too) Hmm I think that was fourpenceworth!

[biblophile]

that is a loaded question. My opinion is Russia

[EmptySeraph]

America, France, Britain, and Russia certainly have an impressive number of major writers. But one could add any number of other national bodies of literature that are quite impressive in their own rite:

German- Nibelungenlied, Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, Grimmelshausen, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Friedrich Hölderlin, Novalis, Kleist, Eichendorf, Heinrich Heine, Georg Büchner, Eduard Mörike, Gottfried Keller, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Kafka, Georg Trakl, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Rilke, Walter Benjamin, Frank Wedekind, Joseph Roth, Gunter Grass, Boll, Max Frisch, Durrenmatt, Paul Celan, etc...


Why would Celan represent Germany? He was born in a Jewish Romanian family. If it's because he wrote in German, then Cioran, Ionesco and Fondane are French authors? And what about Mircea Eliade? Is he French? Or German? Or Romanian? Or North-American? Because he wrote in them all. And Beckett? What is he? Irish, or French?

[ennison]

He was Irish but wrote in French. There are enough real problems.

[EmptySeraph]

He also wrote in English. And in German too. But he still is Irish. So, then, what exactly makes Celan a German?

[ennison]

I can't answer that as I don't know anything at all about Celan. I cannot recall ever hearing about him/ her.

[EmptySeraph]

Too bad, he's one of the greatest XXth century poets. Not saying that you should've heard about him, as there are a lot of famous writers that don't, in fact, deserve any attention, but you should really have a look upon Celan's work, it really is something else, pure poetry at its finest.

[Red Terror]

I'd say England has the best writers in the world. Then followed by Italy and France --- in that order.

[Danik 2016]

I wouldn´t chose a country and not even a language. There are several issues, besides personal preferences as for example there are older and newer literatures, there are literatures that more readers have acces to, because of the language they are written in and the comercial distribuition of the books.

[stlukesguild]

...what exactly makes Celan a German?

He's not a German, but rather a Romanian-born German poet in that his poetic oeuvre was largely written in German.

[Danik 2016]

Some poems of Celan in English (don´t know if the translation is good.)
http://poetsofmodernity.xyz/POMBR/German/Celan.htm

[stlukesguild]

The best translations of Celan into English are probably those by Michael Hamburger who is one of the finest translators of German poetry.

http://www.english.txstate.edu/cohen_p/postmodern/Literature/Celan/Hamburger.html

[EmptySeraph]

The title of the thread is Which COUNTRY has produced the greatest literature?, thus including Celan in the same bracket with Goethe, Schiller, Novalis and Hölderlin is an aberration, for he was born in Bukovina (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bukovina) to a German-speaking Jewish family, and he later studied in France and Romania, only to spend nearly his entire adult life in Paris, having French citizenship. The use of a German idiom and the recollection of his mother's tongue (which could be directly traced to the Holocaust) were the sole things that linked Celan to Germany, to that one country in which the official language was the language of his mother's assassins. You cannot atribute an author to a country merely on account of his choosen language.

While Cioran's assertion that One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other, is basically true, understanding that Celan was indeed inhabiting the German language (his use of language is unrivaled as far as I'm concerned regarding the German language in the XXth century, hence the dificulty translators are confronted with when trying to transpose his poetry into another tongue), but to imply that Celan was a product of Germany borders on the preposterous.

[Danik 2016]

The best translations of Celan into English are probably those by Michael Hamburger who is one of the finest translators of German poetry.

http://www.english.txstate.edu/cohen_p/postmodern/Literature/Celan/Hamburger.html
Thank you very much for this thread stluke. Both translations are very interesting.

[Danik 2016]

The title of the thread is Which COUNTRY has produced the greatest literature?, thus including Celan in the same bracket with Goethe, Schiller, Novalis and Hölderlin is an aberration, for he was born in Bukovina (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bukovina) to a German-speaking Jewish family, and he later studied in France and Romania, only to spend nearly his entire adult life in Paris, having French citizenship. The use of a German idiom and the recollection of his mother's tongue (which could be directly traced to the Holocaust) were the sole things that linked Celan to Germany, to that one country in which the official language was the language of his mother's assassins. You cannot atribute an author to a country merely on account of his choosen language.
While Cioran's assertion that One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other, is basically true, understanding that Celan was indeed inhabiting the German language (his use of language is unrivaled as far as I'm concerned regarding the German language in the XXth century, hence the dificulty translators are confronted with when trying to transpose his poetry into another tongue), but to imply that Celan was a product of Germany borders on the preposterous.
You are right but because he wrote in German he is considered a German poet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Celan
A similar example is Prague born Kafka, who also wrote in German without living in Germany.

[New Secret]

I would say that Great Britain and the United States produced a greater number of recent classic literatures than any other country. As far as ancient literature I would guess Greece or the Roman Empire. I'm sure it could be measured statistically instead of using guesswork.

[oscarlv]

According to the Washington post, France is by far the country that has produced the most renowned writers internationally speaking (since the nobel prize exists).
We shouldn't forget that this is a English speaking forum so we're all biased.
You can check, France won 17 Nobel prices in literature while the US only won 11 prices.

[EmptySeraph]

It's only to be expected in all fairness, for France is inherently a literary nation. From their minstrels to the moralists and later realist writers, and ultimately to their relentless, indefatigable avant-garde, the French constantly delivered very precious literature.