Underrated Genius ?

[Alexander III]

There have been a couple of poll threads recently and they have created great and enthralling discussions, I would like to kindle a new one. This poll shall concern whom do you think is the most underrated writer ? ( This poll shall solely concern European and USA writers, as all of us here have a sound knowledge in this area, and most of us lack as sound a knowledge in regard to other nations literature; therefore since a sound knowledge is required for this poll I limit it to only European and USA writers.)

The time period from which nominations can be made is from Homer's time until World War II. No writers who have published after WWII shall be included as that are to close to our times, for the poll to work.

In this thread I would like to hear your various nominations for most underrated writer.

For the sake of clarity I shall specify underrated writer. I mean a writer who is deemed to have been of great merit, yet our conception of his while in the intangible canon, is not as high as we believe he or she should deserve.

For instance if someone nominates Dante, Shakespeare or Homer for most underrated writer, they didn't understand what I mean by underrated. However if someone were to nominate Apuleius and use reason to back up said claim, that would be a valid nomination.

You may nominate as many as you wish for the poll, the writers who appear to have the general consensus of nomination shall later then be included in the poll, the poll shall consist of roughly 15 nominees.


For the love of Blue don't nominate in this manner :

I think Ugo Foscolo is the most underrated writer, because he is really good but not that popular.


So let the nominations and opinions begin ! Oh and you may also take the stance that all writers, have a place of greatness equal to their perceived greatness...if that is your opinion.

[OrphanPip]

Sure, I'll play.

I think Frances Burney is a hugely underrated writer. As a great admirer of Jane Austen, I can't help but find Burney highly appealing as well. She was a contemporary of Samuel Richardson, and after Richardson, was likely the greatest influence on Austen's work (Actually, she's not much of a contemporary but she is closer to Richardson stylistically than she is to Austen despite her being closer in age to Austen). As a result, I think she is a seminal figure in the development of the English novel, who has mostly been ignored for being a writer concerned with women's lives and experiences, despite being critically praised during her lifetime.

I actually think she was a more talented writer than Richardson, she is much too under appreciated. She's nowhere near the level of Shakespeare or Dante though.

[B. Laumness]

Paul Gadenne - Les Hauts-Quartiers
Hubert Selby - The Demon
Ernesto Sabato - his three novels
Tristan Egolf - Lord of the Barnyard
Romain Gary aka Emile Ajar

[LitNetIsGreat]

I’ll just mention Eliza Parsons, not as a genius, (so you don't need to add her to the poll) but as a writer who was once hugely popular in the gothic genre and it would seem influential to Jane Austen, but little known today. Here is an interesting selection from Austen’s Northanger Abbey:


“I will read you their names directly: Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont, Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell, Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries.”
And here is the introduction to the Mysterious Warning, written by Dr K Morton (who was once a fantastic tutor of mine, I hope she doesn’t mind my copying out this paragraph):


When Isabella Thorpe, in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, informs her friend Catherine Morland that she really must read “horrid” novels, seven of whose titles she lists, she gives no authors’ names, and indeed for decades afterwards, scholars assumed Austen had invented them, until one by one they were rediscovered. Their writers are largely forgotten, so it is intriguing for modern readers to learn that two of the novels were written by the same hand, suggesting a popularity long gone. Eliza Parsons is represented in the list by her 1793 text, Castle of Wolfenback, and by this one, The Mysterious Warning, first published in 1796.

It would appear that at one time Parsons was hugely popular and is thought to have penned around 19 novels. The suggestion is that while she works within the standard gothic framework, there is the argument and case for her (and others similar to her) as using the gothic framework as a way to express the philosophy’s, hopes and fears of women at the end of the 18th century. Although not everyone’s cup of tea perhaps, there is the strong suggestion that she is every bit as good, if not a better writer, than Ann Radcliffe, though little heard of.

[Alexander III]

Wow this is great, Neely and Pip, I have not heard of the writers you mentioned, but I just realized that this thread will be very usefull to find some lesser known writers to read. Good start :)



Paul Gadenne - Les Hauts-Quartiers
Hubert Selby - The Demon
Ernesto Sabato - his three novels
Tristan Egolf - Lord of the Barnyard
Romain Gary aka Emile Ajar

It would be useful if your read the opening post before you answered.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I also agree with Ophan Pip on Burney.

[kelby_lake]

Obviously opinions on writers change, as writers go in and out of fashion, but I think Algernon Swinburne has been underrated. Many people dismiss poetry as being 'effeminate' but Swinburne's poetry is full of passion. He wasn't exactly subtle.
His poetry interests me not purely because of the topic matters and the passionate way it's written because it sounds different from all the anthologised poetry I've read of that time. He's not the sort of poet you would anthologise but I don't think that this makes him irrelevant or inferior.

[Wilde woman]

My Renaissance drama class has introduced me to John Marston, an Jacobean satirist, whom I think is underrated. His most famous play, The Malcontent, is noted basically for its similarity to Hamlet, but there's more to him than just a passing semblance to Shakespeare. Like many of his contemporaries, Marston wrote revenge tragedies based on Seneca's plays, but he was at his best when playing with the genre of the tragicomedy. The tone of his plays swing wildly from heroic nobility to black humor, which is one of the reasons his work is criticized, but I think it portrays his vision of an era which was politically unstable. His strengths are definitely not in developing complex characters; in fact his characters are more generic, but - in his defense - character development wasn't his point. Instead, he used the well-established character types, combined them with the tragicomic genre, to very pointedly poke fun at the corrupt courts of his time.

Apparently, T.S. Eliot thought highly of Marston and even considered him a "genius" of his era.

[Mr.lucifer]

Pär Lagerkvist, a swedish writer who wrote the barabbas and the dwarf. He won the nobel prise for literature in 1951. I highly recommend barabbas for its potrayal of the man who was pardoned instead of christ.

[B. Laumness]

It would be useful if your read the opening post before you answered.

Sorry, I’ve stupidly skipped a paragraph. Other names:
Agrippa d’Aubigné, as great as Milton
Racine, as great as Shakespeare – he seems praised only in France
Alfred de Vigny, excellent poet
Villiers de L’Isle-Adam – who reads him today?
Drieu la Rochelle, for his masterpiece Le Feu Follet

[stlukesguild]

Agrippa d’Aubigné, as great as Milton

Ummmm.... I doubt he's that good. I haven't even read any French writers making such a claim.

Racine, as great as Shakespeare – he seems praised only in France

Not even close. Perhaps if you combined him with Cornielle, Moliere, and Montaigne you might get a serious challenge to Shakespeare

Alfred de Vigny, excellent poet
Villiers de L’Isle-Adam – who reads him today?

Yes. And throw in Nerval, José María de Heredia, and even Paul Valéry.

Of course it would seem that many writers may simply be underrated outside of their native culture and language. I rarely hear anyone speak of Novalis, Heine, or Holderlin outside of those of a German background, while Gongora, Bequier, Miguel Hernandez, and even Calderon seem largely ignored outside of the Spanish-speaking world. Tasso and Ariosto are both giants of Italian literature who had a major impact upon subsequent literature not only in Italy, but also in France and England... yet many here seemed to barely know of them except as a name in another recent thread.

Of the top of my head I would say that Luís de Camões may be the most underrated European writer when you consider his achievements with the epic Os Lusíadas as well as his wealth of shorter lyrical poetry which is unfortunately largely inaccessible to most because he wrote in what is essentially a minor language... a language known to few outside of Portugal and Brazil.

[dfloyd]

Bram Stoker - Dracula
Edmond Rostand - Cyrano de Bergerac
Anthony Hope - The Prisoner of Zenda
George Du Maurier - Peter Ibbetson
Theodore Dreisier - An American Tragedy
Owen Wister - The Virginian
Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Tarzan Novels
E. Philips Openheim - The Great Impersonation
Henrik Sinciewicz (sp?) - Quo Vadis?
H. Ryder Haggard - King Solomon's Mines
Lew Wallace - Ben Hur
Anatole France - Penquin Island
Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep
Dashiell Hammett - The Maltese Falcon
Baroness Orczy - The Scarlet Pimpernel
James Boyd - Drums
Frank Norris -The Octopus
Upton Sinclair - The Jungle
Petronius Arbiter - the Satyricon
Theophile Gautier - Mademoiselle de Maupin

This list could go on and on. I have read all of these, but probably none are taught by academia, unfortunately.

[mortalterror]

Agrippa d’Aubigné, as great as Milton

Ummmm.... I doubt he's that good. I haven't even read any French writers making such a claim.

Although I cannot find them now, I believe that Sainte-Beuve and Baudelaire had some nice things to say about him. His lack of press may owe something to his being a Protestant during the wars of religion, and a campaign of suppression perpetrated by the victors in that affair. I cannot read French with enough facility to properly judge, and Agrippa d'Aubigné doesn't appear to even be translated once in our language. However, a status equal to that of Milton is quite the claim. I am willing to grant that Tasso and maybe Camoes are his equals. Tasso I enjoyed more and Camoes quite a bit less. If what B. Laumness says is true, then Agrippa d'Aubigné breathes some rarefied air indeed.


Racine, as great as Shakespeare – he seems praised only in France

Not even close. Perhaps if you combined him with Cornielle, Moliere, and Montaigne you might get a serious challenge to Shakespeare.

Equal or nearly equal to Shakespeare seems like a perfectly reasonable assessment of Racine's talents. I'm not sure if you are overestimating Shakespeare or underestimating some major French writers. Honestly, I don't find Moliere funny, but he looms just as large in the tradition as Cervantes or Rabelais. And then to throw in Montaigne as well! You must be crazy. Did you feel you had to up the ante, after Laumness' claim?

For my part, I'd like to see Pushkin and Lermontov lauded more around here, along with Buchner, Calderon, and Lope de Vega.

[B. Laumness]

Agrippa d’Aubigné, as great as Milton

Ummmm.... I doubt he's that good. I haven't even read any French writers making such a claim.

Not a surprise. Actually, this is a statement said by teachers I had at the university and for whom I had respect. In the 19th century, French writers and critics “discovered” Agrippa d’Aubigné, forgotten of the literary history. Sainte-Beuve “revealed” his poetry in his review of the literature of the 16th century in 1828. Victor Hugo said he was close to him, a kind of cousin. In a first edition of Les Fleurs du Mal in 1855, the epigraph is these verses of Agrippa d'Aubigné (afterwards Baudelaire wrote an epigraph in honor of Gautier):

"On dit qu'il faut couler les exécrables choses
Dans le puits de l'oubli et au sépulchre encloses,
Et que par les écrits le mal ressuscité
Infectera les moeurs de la postérité.
Mais le vice n'a point pour mère la science
Et la vertu n'est pas fille de l'ignorance."

His masterpiece Les Tragiques, a long epic poem written in alexandrines, is a very difficult, very challenging work for a modern reader, because of the language (middle French), hard to understand and appreciate in comparison with the prose of the 19th century; because of all the historical, biblical, mythical references (the author was very erudite) so that if you don’t have a very solid knowledge you are lost; because of the subject itself (the war between Catholics and Huguenots) and of the position of the poet (he is even considered as a fanatic of the Protestant cause) .

However, his verses are beautiful and powerful, his apocalyptic visions awesome and his purpose is spectacular. But Les Tragiques was published a first time in 1616, when the war was over, when his contemporaries would not hear such a terrific voice. During two centuries, he was unknown, till some French Romantics recognized his genius. Right now, I have in hands two French textbooks, used in high school and in college, and they say Les Tragiques may be compared with the Divine Comedy or Paradise Lost.

An extract, if you know French:



Je veux peindre la France une mère affligée,
Qui est, entre ses bras, de deux enfants chargée.
Le plus fort, orgueilleux, empoigne les deux bouts
Des tétins nourriciers ; puis, à force de coups
D'ongles, de poings, de pieds, il brise le partage
Dont la nature donnait à son besson l'usage ;
Ce voleur acharné, cet Esaü malheureux,
Fait dégât du doux lait qui doit nourrir les deux,
Si que, pour arracher à son frère la vie,
Il méprise la sienne et n'en a plus d'envie.
Mais son Jacob, pressé d'avoir jeûné meshui,
Ayant dompté longtemps en son cœur son ennui,
À la fin se défend, et sa juste colère
Rend à l'autre un combat dont le champ est la mère.
Ni les soupirs ardents, les pitoyables cris,
Ni les pleurs réchauffés ne calment leurs esprits ;
Mais leur rage les guide et leur poison les trouble,
Si bien que leur courroux par leur coups se redouble.
Leur conflit se rallume et fait si furieux
Que d'un gauche malheur ils se crèvent les yeux.
Cette femme éplorée, en sa douleur plus forte,
Succombe à la douleur, mi-vivante, mi-morte ;
Elle voit les mutins, tout déchirés, sanglants,
Qui, ainsi que du coeur, des mains se vont cherchants.
Quand, pressant à son sein d'une amour maternelle
Celui qui a le droit et la juste querelle,
Elle veut le sauver, l'autre qui n'est pas las
Viole en poursuivant l'asile de ses bras.
Adonc se perd le lait, le suc de sa poitrine ;
Puis, aux derniers abois de sa propre ruine,
Elle dit : "Vous avez, félons, ensanglanté
Le sein qui vous nourrit et qui vous a porté ;
Or, vivez de venin, sanglante géniture,
Je n'ai plus que du sang pour votre nourriture !"



Racine, as great as Shakespeare – he seems praised only in France

Not even close. Perhaps if you combined him with Cornielle, Moliere, and Montaigne you might get a serious challenge to Shakespeare

About Racine, I’ve already said that those who are well-read and who speak French as English don’t hesitate to compare Shakespeare with Racine. Read Errata by George Steiner for example – I think he speaks elsewhere about these two playwrights, but I don’t remember in which book. And do you know, on a desert island, George Steiner would take only the Divine Comedy and Bérénice. Note I admire Shakespeare, I have a profound admiration for his genius.

As you say it, there are many great writers who are unknown or underrated outside of their national language.

[Alexander III]

I shall add some nominatiosna and opiniosn myself.

First of st.lukeguild, I think you are making a large error of judgment, in either regard to Shakespeare or racine, as Mortal and Laumness have pointed out. I have only read 2 of Racine's plays, while having read about 8 of Shakespeare's. However I do believe that Racine is inferior to Shakespeare, but it is a slight inferiority. If we were to sum Racine and Molliere together, they would be vastly worth more than Shakespeare by himself.

Also as Mortal said, I would definitely nominate Tasso. After Dante, the greatest epic in Italian literature goes to him, though Ariosto is definitely in competition for that too. The thing about Tasso is, that due to a less than stable and sane life, after his death he was very much discredited. I would risk to say that Gerusaleme Liberatta, is superior to paradise lost, due to two main things. Firstly Tasso explores the human condition with far more preciseness and scope of breath than Milton ever could, and while Milton's has the more beautiful verse, Tasso's verse always seems to be perfectly adapted for the specific contexts within his epic, his verse has beauty, but it is more of a contained beauty, it is not one which forces itself upon the reader, it subtly hides and waits for the reader to discover it. Thus I find Milton's verse to be vulgar in some aspects while Tasso's seems elegant, not vulgar.

Another nomination I would like to make is Richardson. While in academia in england he is very well known, outside of academia, 19th century english writers dominate compared to 18th century, with the exception of Swift and Pope. I honestly believe that Richardson deserves to be considered and equal to swift and pope, and superior to defoe. He has a elegant beautiful prose, his style is the most accomplished and beautiful of 18th century england.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Another nomination I would like to make is Richardson. While in academia in england he is very well known, outside of academia, 19th century english writers dominate compared to 18th century, with the exception of Swift and Pope. I honestly believe that Richardson deserves to be considered and equal to swift and pope, and superior to defoe. He has a elegant beautiful prose, his style is the most accomplished and beautiful of 18th century england.

That's not the Richardson of Pamela fame you're talking about is it? Oh, no, shudder, shudder.

[kelby_lake]

I'm not that keen on Moliere. It's of its time but it's not relevant in the way that Shakespeare, or even Racine, is relevant.

[Mr.lucifer]

How about G.K. Chesterton, his works have admired by artists such as kafka and hemingway.

[OrphanPip]

That's not the Richardson of Pamela fame you're talking about is it? Oh, no, shudder, shudder.

I have to agree with Neely on this. Richardson was painful for me to read, but he is highly influential for the development of the English novel.

[stlukesguild]

Although I cannot find them now, I believe that Sainte-Beuve and Baudelaire had some nice things to say about him. His lack of press may owe something to his being a Protestant during the wars of religion, and a campaign of suppression perpetrated by the victors in that affair. I cannot read French with enough facility to properly judge, and Agrippa d'Aubigné doesn't appear to even be translated once in our language. However, a status equal to that of Milton is quite the claim. I am willing to grant that Tasso and maybe Camoes are his equals. Tasso I enjoyed more and Camoes quite a bit less. If what B. Laumness says is true, then Agrippa d'Aubigné breathes some rarefied air indeed.

I agree that it is impossible to offer a judgment of Agrippa without having read him... and of course I haven't read him for the simple reason that it appears he has never been translated into English. Considering that French is one of the languages well-served in translation into English one cannot help but be skeptical of inflated claims. One would assume that any writer on par with Milton would be translated more than once into nearly all the major European tongues.

Equal or nearly equal to Shakespeare seems like a perfectly reasonable assessment of Racine's talents. I'm not sure if you are overestimating Shakespeare or underestimating some major French writers. Honestly, I don't find Moliere funny, but he looms just as large in the tradition as Cervantes or Rabelais. And then to throw in Montaigne as well! You must be crazy.

OK... Montaigne was certainly thrown in a bit tongue-in-cheek... especially considering my own admiration for his writing. Moliere I have quite admired, but I must admit that Racine has yet to grab hold. I'll admit that this may be due to the translation, and I shall look into alternatives. On the other hand, it may be that the rigid classical formalism of both structure and language leave me a bit cold in contrast to the rich sensuality of Shakespeare... or Spenser, or Dante, or Proust for that matter.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I have to agree with Neely on this. Richardson was painful for me to read, but he is highly influential for the development of the English novel.

He's certainly influential in the development of the novel form and for that he should be read - even I can't take that away from him. However, in terms of a writer of any merit, aside from this, I would argue nay.

[mortalterror]

OK... Montaigne was certainly thrown in a bit tongue-in-cheek... especially considering my own admiration for his writing. Moliere I have quite admired, but I must admit that Racine has yet to grab hold. I'll admit that this may be due to the translation, and I shall look into alternatives. On the other hand, it may be that the rigid classical formalism of both structure and language leave me a bit cold in contrast to the rich sensuality of Shakespeare... or Spenser, or Dante, or Proust for that matter.

Sainte-Beuve said once that passing from Shakespeare to Racine was like looking at a Rubens and then looking at a painting by Ingres: "as the eye is filled by the brilliant picturesque truth of the Flemish master one sees in the French artist a fairly uniform color from soft and diffused light. But when approached more closely and carefully observed: a thousand subtle nuances will hatch under the eyes, a thousand scholarly intentions reach into your deep tissues and tighten; you cannot look away."

Indeed, they are very different, and so it is hard to compare them, in the same way as it is difficult to compare Milton to Shakespeare. With Shakespeare you have a pageant of characters. With Racine you have one or two characters exhibiting the entire gamut of emotions. They are exemplars of passion versus precision, expansion versus compression, and the overall effect must needs be different.

If you do not trust the words of Sainte-Beuve, possibly the greatest literary critic of the 19th century, then who's opinion will you support? Stendhal, who wrote an entire book comparing the two? Or maybe your beloved Proust? Racine's name appears eight or nine times in the text of Swann's Way alone.

[stlukesguild]

A more apt comparison... from my experience... would seem to be Rubens/Shakespeare as opposed to Jacques-Louis David/Racine. While I admire David and do not question his position in art history... he largely bores the hell out of me.:D

[mortalterror]

A more apt comparison... from my experience... would seem to be Rubens/Shakespeare as opposed to Jacques-Louis David/Racine. While I admire David and do not question his position in art history... he largely bores the hell out of me.:D

I don't know what to make of that, bro. I think you might just have a problem with the French, or that time period. You have no such reservations when it comes to Romantic era Germans. In fact, your estimations seem to be off the other way when it comes to any of them. I think that David is a pretty righteous dude, although I do not think as highly of him as I do of Racine. His Death of Marat, Sabine Women's Intervention, Death of Socrates, Napoleon Crossing the Alps, Oath of the Horatii, Self Portraits in 1791 and 1794, Napoleon in his Study, Portrait of Lavoisier and his Wife, and Patroclus aren't boring by any stretch of the imagination.

Here's a funny thought. Which painter do you imagine Goethe would be?

[B. Laumness]

Although I cannot find them now, I believe that Sainte-Beuve and Baudelaire had some nice things to say about him. His lack of press may owe something to his being a Protestant during the wars of religion, and a campaign of suppression perpetrated by the victors in that affair. I cannot read French with enough facility to properly judge, and Agrippa d'Aubigné doesn't appear to even be translated once in our language. However, a status equal to that of Milton is quite the claim. I am willing to grant that Tasso and maybe Camoes are his equals. Tasso I enjoyed more and Camoes quite a bit less. If what B. Laumness says is true, then Agrippa d'Aubigné breathes some rarefied air indeed.

I agree that it is impossible to offer a judgment of Agrippa without having read him... and of course I haven't read him for the simple reason that it appears he has never been translated into English. Considering that French is one of the languages well-served in translation into English one cannot help but be skeptical of inflated claims. One would assume that any writer on par with Milton would be translated more than once into nearly all the major European tongues.


Who will translate 10000 alexandrines of an anachronistic author whose language is violent, whose purpose is not to offer an enjoyable reading but to impose an apocalyptic vision, and whom very few French read except scholars, writers and lovers of poetry? And Les Tragiques is not really a narrative, this is rather a series of pictures, which requires a particular reading, not a fast reader interested only by the narrative and hurried to reach the end. The first edition of his work is in 1616, after forty years of composition, the second in 1627 before his death, and the third in 1857.

Is La Légende des siècles by Victor Hugo translated? Have the complete works of majors writers been translated in English? The first time I went on this this forum, I learnt that Leopardi's Zibaldone was not translated in your language; it was in French. I've already read that the Americans don't translate the works enough... I think that it was recently said by the president of Nobel Foundation.

[mortalterror]

Is La Légende des siècles by Victor Hugo translated?
Once or twice. Here's a link to a complete version of Hugo's works, in English, in 30 volumes. http://www.archive.org/stream/victorhugosworks19hugouoft/victorhugosworks19hugouoft_djvu.txt Hugo is as popular as Charles Dickens over here.


Have the complete works of majors writers been translated in English?
I've seen complete copies of Victor Hugo's works in libraries, along with complete editions of Balzac, and Flaubert.



The first time I went on this this forum, I learnt that Leopardi's Zibaldone was not translated in your language; it was in French.
To be fair, we have everything else he wrote.


I've already read that the Americans don't translate the works enough... I think that it was recently said by the president of Nobel Foundation.
Personally, I'm often frustrated at how hard it is to find a suitable translation of foreign authors. But I don't think it's a uniquely American problem. We've probably translated just about everything at one time or another, but it's keeping up the commercial demand to keep these works in print, and in the bookstores that is the great difficulty. I could walk into a university library and find just about anything, but if Borders or Barnes and Noble stocked all these niche items they would go out of business.

There is probably a greater demand for Leopardi's Zibaldone where you are because Italy is right on your doorstep. Living in California, there is a far greater market for Octavio Paz and Pablo Neruda.

[stlukesguild]

I don't know what to make of that, bro. I think you might just have a problem with the French, or that time period. You have no such reservations when it comes to Romantic era Germans. In fact, your estimations seem to be off the other way when it comes to any of them. I think that David is a pretty righteous dude, although I do not think as highly of him as I do of Racine.

Of course my judgment is based upon my experience as an artist and my experience of looking at art for a good many years... and often in real life. Yours is the opinion of a dilettante who probably also thinks Frank Frazetta and Boris Valejo are real art.:D

By the way... I quite love French art as a whole: Watteau, Boucher, and Fragonard are guilty decadent pleasures... but then there's Courbet, Manet, Degas, Monet, Bonnard, Vuillard, Gauguin, Redon, Matisse, and quite a number of others. Indeed... while I acknowledge that Picasso was the giant of the 20th century, I personally prefer Bonnard and Matisse... and I lean toward the French-influenced Americans of the mid-century: Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff, etc...

[mal4mac]

Zola is underrated, at least in the UK. Sartre, Camus, Proust and Balzac tend to get pushed here - maybe just so we can crow about how much better Hardy, Dickens and Austen are :) For me, Zola (who I just discovered this year!) us up the the Brit. pack, and complements their strengths - he doesn't have Dickens' humour, Hardy's phatasmagoric bleakness, Austen's cleverness, but he has superb "grand-guignol" characters & situations, and he moves his plots along faster than any detective novels I've read, and with more realistic villains!

I have just read La Bête Humaine (trans. Oxford), which is knockout - I'd recommend starting with that, or his first major novel Therese Raquin.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Yes, I loved Therese Raquin too and I have La Bête Humaine on the top of my bookcase waiting to be read. Unfortunately I have a few politics/history books to read, though I'm finding John Stuart Mill compelling stuff indeed.

[Alexander III]

Im sorry to say laumness, but if Les Tragiques was of considerable literary value, it would have been translated at least once.

Oh and Neely, I must disagree with you on both counts. I love Richardson's work, mainly Clarissa, that is his true masterpiece, Pamela is merely his first attempt at a novel. And while I do agree that Zola is underrated outside of france, I find his stories to be rather dry, and he does not make up for it with beautiful prose, if anything his prose seems journalistic and clunky.

But alas ! it seems only I find Richardson underrated :D

[B. Laumness]

Indeed, they are very different, and so it is hard to compare them, in the same way as it is difficult to compare Milton to Shakespeare. With Shakespeare you have a pageant of characters. With Racine you have one or two characters exhibiting the entire gamut of emotions. They are exemplars of passion versus precision, expansion versus compression, and the overall effect must needs be different.


Yes, the aesthetic and the vision of the world are even opposite. Considering that poetry is a combination of images, sounds and rhythms, and that it is often said that Racine's poetry is untranslatable, I'll add that the metaphorical style of Shakespeare seems more translatable (of course, his poetry also relies on the two other features), whereas Racine's poetry relies more on the sounds and the rhythms, creating a kind a music, and it appears more difficult to translate this music of words. In a play like Bérénice, nothing happens, only lovers who speak, in a admirable way by the art of the poet, but how can you savour what they say when you hear instead of a pure and elegant music that only a French ear has learnt to appreciate (and not at fourteen, but later...) an altered copy?


Personally, I'm often frustrated at how hard it is to find a suitable translation of foreign authors. But I don't think it's a uniquely American problem.

You're right. I guess that in each western country there are still many good or even great writers who are not entirely translated, and some are probably unavailable despite their talent.


I have just read La Bête Humaine (trans. Oxford), which is knockout - I'd recommend starting with that, or his first major novel Therese Raquin.

My favourites are Germinal, La Fortune des Rougon, La Faute de l'abbé Mouret and La Conquête de Plassans.


Im sorry to say laumness, but if Les Tragiques was of considerable literary value, it would have been translated at least once.

That doesn’t mean he has not a high literary value; at least, that proves he is hardly known and possibly underrated. Personally, although I admit that his literary qualities are impressive and that no second-rate writer could conceive and achieve such a work, I don’t enjoy it much, I even find it boring. But my personal preferences have not to interfere with qualities that I can objectively see and explain. I don’t like Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Paul Claudel, but I understand their purpose and I know they are not without value.

[Alexander III]

"That doesn’t mean he has not a high literary value; at least, that proves he is hardly known and possibly underrated. Personally, although I admit that his literary qualities are impressive and that no second-rate writer could conceive and achieve such a work, I don’t enjoy it much, I even find it boring. But my personal preferences have not to interfere with qualities that I can objectively see and explain. I don’t like Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Paul Claudel, but I understand their purpose and I know they are not without value."

You are right simply because he has not been translated, doesn't mean he was average, he might have been a talented writer. But you said he was and equal to Milton, and there a line must be drawn, if he was an equal to Milton, he would have been translated at least once.

[stlukesguild]

There is probably a greater demand for Leopardi's Zibaldone where you are because Italy is right on your doorstep. Living in California, there is a far greater market for Octavio Paz and Pablo Neruda.

Yes... I agree that this is true. But there are also political considerations. The Louvre, for example, has a miserable collection of English art... because of the French aversion to their old rivals at the time when English art was a major player. The Prado, for all the depth of its collections, has little art by the Dutch but a wealth of Flemish (Belgian) art... no Vermeer and no Rembrandt of any worth whatsoever... but this makes sense considering the history between the Dutch and the Spanish.

While the tensions existed between France and Britain we still find a good amount of French literature is translated into English... but as for that which is not, we might do well to remember that French was the lingua franca... literally... and it was expected that most scholars and educated persons could converse and read French. A good majority of French literature of the late 19th and early 20th century has been translated into English for the simple reason that France was then recognized as "the" cultural center of the West. One must presume that the rise of the Soviet Union and its rivalry with the United States resulted in the wealth of Russian literature in translation. By the same token the rise of Japan... and now China as major economic powers certainly has led to a greater effort at translation of Japanese and Chinese literature, while the political turmoil of the Middle-East has certainly resulted in a greater effort to translate Arabic and Turkish literature.

[mortalterror]

Of course my judgment is based upon my experience as an artist and my experience of looking at art for a good many years... and often in real life. Yours is the opinion of a dilettante who probably also thinks Frank Frazetta and Boris Valejo are real art.:D
Whatever helps you sleep at night, dude.

What I'm referring to is your championing and obvious preference for all things Goethe, Holderlin, Novalis, Heine, Mann, and Rilke in literature. But you don't seem sensible to Racine, Corneille, Moliere, Dumas, Boileau, Lafayette, Voltaire, Laclos, Chateaubriand. Everything before the decadents you have no use for. Who are your favorite classical musicians: Germans. You kind of give short shrift to the Russians as well the way you routinely snub Tchaikovsky, Ilya Repin, and Chagall by omission, while taking every opportunity to gush about Schumann, Strauss, Wagner, or Max Beckmann.


By the way... I quite love French art as a whole: Watteau, Boucher, and Fragonard are guilty decadent pleasures... but then there's Courbet, Manet, Degas, Monet, Bonnard, Vuillard, Gauguin, Redon, Matisse, and quite a number of others. Indeed... while I acknowledge that Picasso was the giant of the 20th century, I personally prefer Bonnard and Matisse... and I lean toward the French-influenced Americans of the mid-century: Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff, etc...
Again, that's not really surprising. Everybody likes the Impressionists. That's about as safe and bland a statement as loving the Beatles. I'm not sure what it proves. I mean, that says almost nothing about you as a person. It doesn't take taste or insight to like them.

Returning to the OP, I'd like to see Statius more esteemed. I wouldn't go so far as to put him on a par with Milton, although I wouldn't necessarily object either if someone else were to do so. Dante thought him a worthy successor to Virgil and makes him a companion in The Purgatorio. Also, his Thebaid is chalk full of awesome, small surprise since it took him 12 years to write. Statius is probably the least appreciated of the great Latin poets.

[stlukesguild]

What I'm referring to is your championing and obvious preference for all things Goethe, Holderlin, Novalis, Heine, Mann, and Rilke in literature. But you don't seem sensible to Racine, Corneille, Moliere, Dumas, Boileau, Lafayette, Voltaire, Laclos, Chateaubriand.

Again... I might counter that you are simply stuck with your admiration of classicism. I believe that you have earlier spoken of your preference for the 18th century English poets over the Romantics. Shakespeare is obviously closer in spirit to Romanticism than classicism... and Shakespeare is where German literature takes off after dumping the restrictive French models... or rather the model that was restrictive in that it was unsuitable to the Germanic literary temperament. Of course later French poetry picks up on a similar Romanticism itself albeit it is held in check with a formalism that leads to what you call "decadence". Of older French writers I prefer Rabelais, Rousseau, Marivaux, Ronsard, Montaigne, Moliere, de Tocqueville, Hugo, Gautier, Flaubert, etc... I can't say I've read enough Voltaire to do him justice, although surely Candide and his poem of the Lisbon Earthquake suggest a writer of real merit.

Everything before the decadents you have no use for.

No... I have a preference for the more Romantic strain over the classicists... but there are exceptions. I love Swift and obviously Borges, and I'll take any number of far more "classical" or "formalist" poets over the gushing schmaltz of the Beats any day.

Who are your favorite classical musicians: Germans.

Who are the greatest classical composers? The Germans. That would seem to be a no-brainer. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Brahms, Handel, Schubert.... The majority of my favorite painters are Italian and French... again for a clear reason.

You kind of give short shrift to the Russians as well the way you routinely snub Tchaikovsky...

No... I don't underestimate Tchaikovsky. He is a great composer. His opera, Eugene Onegin is especially wonderful... but he is far from Mozart, Bach, or Beethoven. Perhaps, rather, you give him too much credit.

Ilya Repin, and Chagall...

Hmmm let me pull out my big tome on World Art History and what do ya know... no mention of Repin... and Chagall gets but a passing nod. Why do you suppose that is? Of course Repin is probably as good as Bellows or Homer or any number of 19th century American painters that are included for the simple reason that they are American in a book writen and published by Americans for use in American schools... but this is no different from the great French tome on 20th century art history which places Soulages, Mimmo Rotello, Yves Klein, Niki de Saint Phalle, Nicholas de Stael, Hans Hartung, Serge Poliakoff, and Georges Mathieu right along side Pollack, DeKooning, Motherwell, and Rothko... although no one outside of France imagines they hold a similar importance. I you want an important Russian painter, its Kandinsky, not Chagall or Repin.

...while taking every opportunity to gush about Schumann, Strauss, Wagner, or Max Beckmann.

Wagner dwarfs any Russian composer. Chagall is a lightweight in comparison to Beckmann. That doesn't mean I don't like Stravinsky, Shostakovitch, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky... to say nothing of composers and artists from Spain, Italy, France, Norway, Poland, Japan, etc...

But if we wish to talk about someone's shortcomings with regard to the appreciation of art, why not discuss your own inability to appreciate the vast majority of Modernism in art, music, and literature?

Again, that's not really surprising. Everybody likes the Impressionists. That's about as safe and bland a statement as loving the Beatles. I'm not sure what it proves. I mean, that says almost nothing about you as a person. It doesn't take taste or insight to like them.

I don't like an artist or group of artists simply to prove something about myself as an individual. I'll leave that to the dilettante who imagines that carrying about a copy of The Brothers Karamazov, Maldoror, or Howl or Iphigenia will establish their personal credentials as a deep thinker and appropriately disaffected individual.

Again... why do you presume that Impressionism is so popular... not simply with the masses, but also with artists and the serious art public? This was one of the last movements that focused upon sheer visual splendour and spectacle... and did so masterfully... while at the same time building upon an iconography that was intentionally non-elitist... drawn from everyday experience. It may just be that it is admired by so many artists and so many with a real eye for art with just reason.

R.B. Kitaj, a post-Modern painter, spoke of the Impressionists and of the old masters such as Rembrandt, Michelangelo, and Giotto, admitting that as a young artist he admired the Old Masters, Monet, and Cezanne... but they were like trees with roots far too deep for him to get at. Instead he was drawn to the wispy art of the surface... to Surrealism, Duchamp, Warhol, and the like. With time he recognized that there was really little to these artists, while Cezanne and Monet were still inspiring artists 100 years after the fact.

I went through that period of seeking out the unknown and the obscure imagining them as being unfairly ignored and myself as "oh so deep" for having recognized their genius rather than sticking with the obvious figures such as Michelangelo, Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Raphael, Titian, Durer, Ingres, Manet, Monet, Degas, Matisse, etc... that every Philistine liked because they were supposed to like them. Of course I still admire some rather more obscure artists... but the more I look at Monet, Manet, Degas, Ingres, Raphael, etc... the more it becomes obvious why they hold the position they hold.

[mortalterror]

Shakespeare is obviously closer in spirit to Romanticism than classicism...
Ooooooh, got to stop you there. One of things I dearly love about Shakespeare is how classical he is. You can't go more than a few lines in his plays without finding some allusion to Lucan, Seneca, Plautus, Terrence, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Plutarch, or Cicero. His passion for rhetoric is much more a product of the classical age than the romantic.


Of course later French poetry picks up on a similar Romanticism itself albeit it is held in check with a formalism that leads to what you call "decadence".
No, I don't call them that. Usually I call them romantics, but I'm simply referring to them by the moniker they used for themselves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decadent_movement And I think that it is telling that you are far more fond of Baudelaire, Huysman, Wilde, Gautier, Nerval, and Lautreamont than you are of earlier French Romantics like Dumas, Stendhal, or Balzac.


No... I don't underestimate Tchaikovsky. He is a great composer. His opera, Eugene Onegin is especially wonderful... but he is far from Mozart, Bach, or Beethoven. Perhaps, rather, you give him too much credit.
No more than you do Wagner.


Hmmm let me pull out my big tome on World Art History and what do ya know... no mention of Repin... and Chagall gets but a passing nod. Why do you suppose that is?
Antisemitism? How should I know why an editor of a book I haven't ever seen did or didn't choose to include somebody? It could be nearly anything from personal prejudice to wanting more space for Picasso. Maybe, you have an old edition. Maybe, your copy isn't as big or authoritative as you're pretending it is. Maybe, any of those reasons you mentioned earlier about museums, class bias, nationalism, regionalism, academism... Maybe, you bought that book because it bolstered your own opinions. There could be any number of reasons, but you're going to act like it's all cut and dry. Well let me tell you something. I've seen lots of books that didn't have Max Beckmann in them and you're going to have to do better than that.


Wagner dwarfs any Russian composer.
That's just a ridiculous inflammatory statement. Tchaikovsky made just as much great music as Wagner: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, 1812 Overture, Romeo and Juliet, Marche Slave, Eugene Onegin, The Queen of Spades, Manfred Symphony, the Pathétique symphony. 7 symphonies, 10 operas, 4 concertos, 103 songs... It goes on and on.

[Alexander III]

Any other nominations which spring top mind ?

Another interesting notion to consider, is that we know how foreign writers are perceived of in anglophone countries but not in other countries, the difference can be huge.

And example was early-mid 19th century, in america Poe was just another writer who had achieved fame with the poem The Raven, yet that seemed a one hit wonder, and he was but a dilettante. Same time, but in france, and Poe is revered as a genius, and is considered the founder along with Baudelaire of the new age of writing.

Another example I can think of is Leopardi's perception at the turn of the 20th century. In Italy he was and still is deemed the greatest Italian poet after Dante. Yet in the anglophone world, he was just another romantic poet, definitely not the second greatest italian poet since dante; and in many ways this perception still stands.

Another one I can think of is Steinbeck. Nowadays in America he is considered one of their greatest writers, and even arguably their greatest. Yet in Europe he is gives much less consideration, and the conception of him being america's greatest writer is very of-beat. Personally in this regard I leave with europeans, Steinbeck seems but a writer of tolerable talent next to American names like Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Whitman, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Hemingway.

[mortalterror]

Stlukes, I apologize. For an artist, you exhibit exceptional intelligence and common sense. You must be their king.

[stlukesguild]

Ooooooh, got to stop you there. One of things I dearly love about Shakespeare is how classical he is. You can't go more than a few lines in his plays without finding some allusion to Lucan, Seneca, Plautus, Terrence, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Plutarch, or Cicero. His passion for rhetoric is much more a product of the classical age than the romantic.

Mere references to your beloved Romans do not make one a classicist. Sheely and Keats make use to such references, and Delacroix even painted classical themes... yet all were arch-Romantics. The richness... the sensuality... the descriptiveness of Shakespeare's language and his rejection of the strict classical form were certainly far more in line with Romantic ideals than Racine. Of course one era will always interpret the art of the previous generation in light of their own goals as can be seen with the Romantic interpretations of Milton and especially the concept of Satan as hero.

And I think that it is telling that you are far more fond of Baudelaire, Huysman, Wilde, Gautier, Nerval, and Lautreamont than you are of earlier French Romantics like Dumas, Stendhal, or Balzac.

Hmmm... and I wonder how many others here also prefer Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Nerval, Flaubert, etc... to Balzac, Dumas (a minor writer at best), Racine, and Corneille or Blake, Keats, Shelley, Wilde, Yeats, etc... to Pope, Dryden, the Earl of Rochester, etc...?

No... I don't underestimate Tchaikovsky. He is a great composer. His opera, Eugene Onegin is especially wonderful... but he is far from Mozart, Bach, or Beethoven. Perhaps, rather, you give him too much credit.

No more than you do Wagner.

If I overestimate Wagner, I would seem to be in good company with a vast majority of those who follow classical music, have written the texts on the history of classical music, as well as with the later composers (and writers ans artists) who followed in Wagner's wake. The Nutcracker is some good fun with lots of catchy tunes... quite a tradition at the holidays... but I don't recall it deeply impacting all that followed in the same manner as the Ring, Tristan und Isolde, or Parsifal.

Hmmm let me pull out my big tome on World Art History and what do ya know... no mention of Repin... and Chagall gets but a passing nod. Why do you suppose that is?

Antisemitism?

Now that one's good for a laugh when one considers the dominance of Jewish collectors, dealers, curators, critics, etc... in the visual arts for most of the last century (Kahnweiler, Vollard, Gertrude and Leo Stein, Harold Rosenberg, Clement Greenberg, the Guggenheims, Alfred Barr, Larry Gagosian, Charles Saatchi, Nicholas Serota, the Mugrabi family. It might be more likely that Chagall was given more recognition than is due for the very reason that he was Jewish and openly employed Jewish themes. Antisemitism has not damaged the reputations of Rothko or Guston or even such art stars as Julian Schnabel.

How should I know why an editor of a book I haven't ever seen did or didn't choose to include somebody? It could be nearly anything from personal prejudice to wanting more space for Picasso. Maybe, you have an old edition. Maybe, your copy isn't as big or authoritative as you're pretending it is.

The major art historical texts used in most college introductory courses include Janson's History of Art, Gombrich's Story of Art, and Gardner's Art Through the Ages and H. H. H Arnason's History of Modern Art and Robert Hughes' The Shock of the New as leading texts for Modern Art History. None of these texts would argue for Chagall as a major figure and few if any even mention Repin in passing. The same can be said for most of the rest of the serious books on Art History. I don't need to pretend. My experience and knowledge of art is based upon years of formal and informal studies, years of traveling to museums and galleries and looking at art in person, years of teaching art, and years of making... and even selling art. Taking an Introduction to World Art History 101, skimming over a few other books on the subject, and browsing the internet isn't going to make you the expert with alternative views you would have others believe you are.

Well let me tell you something. I've seen lots of books that didn't have Max Beckmann in them and you're going to have to do better than that.

Of course you have... because you largely avoid any book having to with Modernism at all. What do you know of Beckmann? The fact is that quite contrary to your lame attempt to play the race card with suggestions of antisemitism, the rise of Hitler and World War II did much to sweep the reputation of many German artists under the rug... as might be expected. In other words... it was the reputations of many German artists, not the Jewish Chagall or Rothko, that suffered.

As the situation in Europe worsened, Alfred Barr, the powerful director of the Museum of Modern Art, and the Guggenheims did much to purchase many Modern art works and to bring many of the strongest artists to the United States. There was an intentional focus, however, upon formalism, Surrealism, and abstraction. The collections of MoMA and the Guggenheim centered upon formalism and the School of Paris. Germans such as Joseph Albers and Paul Klee were collected, but Schiele, Munch, Kirchner, Dix, Grosz, Beckmann... and even French Expressionists such as Rouault were largely ignored... and no efforts were made to rescue these artists whose works were all deemed too Germanic and provincial.

Emile Nolde spent over a decade limited to watercolors which he hid under the floor boards as a result of the ruling by the Nazis that he was not to paint under penalty of death. The smell of turpentine and linseed oil would have spelled certain death. Dix and Grosz churned out innocuous landscapes. Kirchner snapped and committed suicide after the Nazi's began to seize and destroy all of his works in German museums, while Beckmann rode out the war in Holland with a few close friends smuggling in food and art supplies. When the war ended, it was presumed that the German artists who had stayed behind would be recognized in the same manner as Picasso who had stayed in occupied Paris while Matisse fled to Canne and his collection of beautiful young mistresses culled from the French film industry. Such, however, was not the case. Neither the Germans nor anyone else wanted as art that was "too Germanic". Abstraction became the new International Style with the American Abstract Expressionists leading the way.

In spite of this, Beckamnn secured several major teaching posts in the US... in California, St. Louis (where he was nominated for the position by the leading Abstract Expressionist, Philip Guston) and in New York. His works were avidly sought by collectors in Los Angeles and St. Louis, and his masterful triptych, Departure was hung opposite of Picasso's iconic Geurnica... as two comments on the horrors of war in the 20th century:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4131/5188410024_8d6810bd04_b.jpg

Beckamann was a major influence on many West Coast figurative painters, on Philip Guston... who became the most influential of the Abstract Expressionists in 1969 when he rejected abstraction and returned to bold, expressionist, figurative art. He was clearly a major inspiration upon Francis Bacon, who is certainly one of the most important post-war British painters, and he was a giant influence upon Neo-Expressionism, which rejected Minimalism, Conceptual Art, Performance Art, and brought back rich sensuous painting, bold colors, etc...As a result Beckmann has been the subject of numerous books and any number of major museum exhibitions in Paris, London, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Munich, Berlin, and New York... including the huge retrospective in 2003 which traveled from the Pompidou Centre in paris, to the Tate Modern in London, to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

But all of this is but an illusion... all these museums, galleries, collectors, artists are wrong and it's your virtually unknown Werner Tübke who is the real giant, right? We are to simply take your word for it... based of course solely upon your experience with art in reproduction and your profound grasp of the subject gleaned over the last year or two.:smilielol5:

Wagner dwarfs any Russian composer.

That's just a ridiculous inflammatory statement.

No... its a fact. But what do you base your judgment of classical music upon?.. a few snippets from Music Appreciation 101... the greatest hits of Mozart, Brahms, and Mussorgsky? Any cursory survey of music history reveals just how profound an impact Wagner made upon the whole of music... both upon those who followed in his footsteps, and those who rebelled against him. There would surely be a great loss of beautiful music if Tchaikovsky had never existed... but there would be little or no change in music as a whole. This cannot be said of Wagner... and the only Russian composer it can be said of is Stravinsky.

Tchaikovsky made just as much great music as Wagner: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, 1812 Overture, Romeo and Juliet, Marche Slave, Eugene Onegin, The Queen of Spades, Manfred Symphony, the Pathétique symphony. 7 symphonies, 10 operas, 4 concertos, 103 songs... It goes on and on.

Yes, yes... we can all quote Wikipedia. And how many of these have you actually listened to completely? The ballets contain many great melodies (in this Tchaikovsky rivals Mozart) but a lot of filler. Most are now performed as edited suites. Of the 6 symphonies (the seventh is little more than a reconstruction employing a few sketches and fragments taken from other works... including the piano concerto no. 3) only the final 3 are "essential" works. He has some beautiful songs... but doesn't seem to have excelled in this form... even to the extent of Mussorgsky and Rachmaninoff. His violin concerto, Piano Concerto no. 1, Symphonies 5 and 6, Eugene Onegin and Queen of Spades seem to be his most admired works... although the Marche Slav, the Capriccio Italien, the Nutcracker, and the 1812 Overture are all good fun. But this doesn't place you as a rival to Wagner.

It is interesting to look at Phil G. Goulding's book, The 50 Greatest Composers and their 1000 Greatest Works. This is not because Goulding in such an unassailable expert upon classical music. Quite the opposite is true. Rather, Goulding... wishing to explore the subject... set about to discern just which composers were acknowledged as the "greatest" by making an objective counting of composers by tallying the number of articles in the music press, the number of biographies, the length of chapters afforded to composers in published surveys of music history, the number of works and time given to composers in university surveys of music history, and the number of recordings of given composers by major music labels and performers, Goulding came up with the following pecking order:

1. J.S. Bach
2. W.A. Mozart
3. L.v. Beethoven
4. Richard Wagner
5. F. J. Haydn
6. Johannes Brahms
7. Franz Schubert
8. Robert Schumann
9. G.F. Handel
10. P.I. Tchakovsky

Interestingly enough, a survey of on-line discussions and sites devoted to composers led to a list that is quite similar:

1. Johann Sebastian Bach
2. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
3. Ludwig van Beethoven
4. Richard Wagner
5. Franz Schubert
6. Robert Schumann
7. Frederic Chopin
8. Franz Liszt
9. Johannes Brahms
10. Giussepi Verdi
11. Gustav Mahler
12. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
13. Sergie Rachmaninov
14. George Fredrick Handel
15. Franz Joseph Haydn

Again... the same first four. Certainly one may debate Brahms (place too low), Chopin (too high), Handel and Haydn (too low) and surely Rachmaninoff and Liszt... and if one were to offer alternatives, surely Debussy and Monteverdi ought to be in line. But for some reason... those who love and follow classical music place Wagner well above Tchaikovsky... Hell, I might note that as someone who frequents several music discussion boards, Tchaikovsky's name rarely pops up. But we should take your word for it... along with your other recommendations for Metallica and Anthrax.:sosp:

[stlukesguild]

Stlukes, I apologize. For an artist, you exhibit exceptional intelligence and common sense. You must be their king. :rolleyes:

How many artists have you met? I frequent forums on art, literature, and music and have found the classical music forums to be the most intelligent and educated. The art site (of which you know) is the worst... but then again, the membership absolutely dwarfs that of a lit site like Lit Net or any classical music site. As such, the vast majority of members are but weekend hobbyists or self-proclaimed visionaries. The book and literature sites I have frequented range from those dominated by teens gushing over Twilight or middle-aged house wifes proudly declaring that "Good in Bed is the greatest book I ever read," to something a bit better. LitNet has a great range of reader and more than a few who really know their stuff and can make the discussions interesting. Hell, the members here are better at the "name that painting" game than those on the art sites, and many are quite familiar with classical music... which suggests that they have a degree of a well-rounded education/knowledge. At times I have seen an even greater example of this over on the classical music boards... perhaps because it demands a real education to play classical music... but almost anyone can declare themselves a painter or a poet. Most of the artists I know in real life are highly and broadly educated, quite professional and pragmatic (far from the naval staring pseudo-visionaries or flighty dreamers) and incredibly resourceful and hard working.

[mortalterror]

Mere references to your beloved Romans do not make one a classicist. Sheely and Keats make use to such references, and Delacroix even painted classical themes... yet all were arch-Romantics.
Where they are consciously employing classical influences, they do some of their best work. I think it's wrong to create a false division between classicism and romanticism, since classical authors can be full of passion and write sappy nature stuff while romantics can be very formal and write about classical themes. Are you prepared to say that Ovid, Petronius, Catullus, Sappho, or Propertius aren't sensual, or that Virgil, Hesiod, and Theocritus couldn't write about nature?


The richness... the sensuality... the descriptiveness of Shakespeare's language and his rejection of the strict classical form were certainly far more in line with Romantic ideals than Racine.
Do you mean the way he departed from classical form by using Seneca's five act structure, or the way he ransacked classical literature for his subjects, or the way he would actually quote and paraphrase famous passages from Virgil, or Lucan in his dialogue? Both Shakespeare and Racine are intensely classical. Shakespeare's influences are Latin while Racine's are Greek.


Hmmm... and I wonder how many others here also prefer Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Nerval, Flaubert, etc... to Balzac, Dumas (a minor writer at best), Racine, and Corneille or Blake, Keats, Shelley, Wilde, Yeats, etc... to Pope, Dryden, the Earl of Rochester, etc...?
After Racine, I do prefer Baudelaire to all French writers, and Flaubert not long after. But as to why many people here prefer 19th century works to 18th and 17th century works, it's probably for similar reasons to why in a recent poll here King Arthur gave Rostam, Roland, and Sigurd a 15 to 2 drubbing. They vote for the one they are most familiar with, without a full appreciation of the various candidates.


Antisemitism?

Now that one's good for a laugh when one considers the dominance of Jewish collectors, dealers, curators, critics, etc... in the visual arts for most of the last century (Kahnweiler, Vollard, Gertrude and Leo Stein, Harold Rosenberg, Clement Greenberg, the Guggenheims, Alfred Barr, Larry Gagosian, Charles Saatchi, Nicholas Serota, the Mugrabi family. It might be more likely that Chagall was given more recognition than is due for the very reason that he was Jewish and openly employed Jewish themes. Antisemitism has not damaged the reputations of Rothko or Guston or even such art stars as Julian Schnabel.
I was being facetious. When you ask a ridiculous question, expect a ridiculous answer.


Of course you have... because you largely avoid any book having to with Modernism at all. What do you know of Beckmann?
I know you have a lot invested in his mythology since you did your college thesis on him and other early 20th century German artists.


And how many of these have you actually listened to completely?
All the ones I mentioned by name and each is fantastic. I haven't heard all of his symphonies, operas, concertos, and songs though. How much of him have you heard?


It is interesting to look at Phil G. Goulding's book, The 50 Greatest Composers and their 1000 Greatest Works.
His book didn't strike me as particularly impressive or the final word on anything. You say he's objective, but I'd need to know more about his methodology and sample size before I could pass a judgement on that.


But for some reason... those who love and follow classical music place Wagner well above Tchaikovsky... Hell, I might note that as someone who frequents several music discussion boards, Tchaikovsky's name rarely pops up.
I saw that thread. You were embroiled in a discussion of whether JS Bach should even be on there. Fighting broke out between rival camps of Modernists, Romantics, and Classicists. So don't tell me there was any kind of consensus.

[stlukesguild]

After Racine, I do prefer Baudelaire to all French writers, and Flaubert not long after. But as to why many people here prefer 19th century works to 18th and 17th century works, it's probably for similar reasons to why in a recent poll here King Arthur gave Rostam, Roland, and Sigurd a 15 to 2 drubbing. They vote for the one they are most familiar with, without a full appreciation of the various candidates.

Obviously that is true... and it must be admitted that Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and other later French writers have been better served by translators than even a writer as clearly iconic to French (and European) culture as Voltaire. But with regard to the preference for English Romantics to English 18th century poets you have a great many here who have read both... including not only myself, but also JBI (among others) who still prefer the Romantics. The same preference exists in the visual arts: the Romantics and the Impressionists (19th century) are far more admired than the Rococo or the Neo-Classicists. Many seemingly find Ingres an acquired taste... in spite of his absolute brilliance. Even my daughter, who knows little of art, was enthralled by his portrait of Pauline Eleanore de Galard de Brassac de Bearn, Princesse de Broglie in the Met to the point she took multiple photographs and wanted herself photographed standing along side of the painting.

I haven't heard all of his symphonies, operas, concertos, and songs though. How much of him have you heard?

Tchaikovsky was one of my absolute favorite composers when I was a teenager and first exploring classical music. I owned a box set of his complete symphonies as well as recordings of the 1812, Swan lake, Sleeping Beauty, Marche Slav, Capriccio Italien, and the Nutcracker on LP. Today I have CDs of Eugene Onegin, Mazeppa, The Queen of Hearts, Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliette, The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, the Piano Concerto 1 & 2, the Violin Concerto (several versions), the Overture and Incidental Music to Hamlet, Symphonies 4, 5, and 6 (several versions), and several collections of his songs. I've listened to all of them... most more than once. I still have a soft spot for his Symphony no. 1 (the "Winter Dreams") which I loved on LP and I must get around to purchasing it (Oh what the hell... for a little over $4 I just bought it on Amazon). I also must get Marche Slav again (which I quite love). AS for the other work... I'll admit that I have a limited experience with his chamber work... but it doesn't seem to rank among his greatest by reputation... and I'm not overly fond of the chamber music format as a whole.

So how much of Wagner have you listened to, since he is at the center of the dispute?

[mortalterror]

But with regard to the preference for English Romantics to English 18th century poets you have a great many here who have read both... including not only myself, but also JBI (among others) who still prefer the Romantics.
According to JBI all of the best Romantics were Canadian, and according to you they were all German. Neither of you is a really good example of the public at large.


[So how much of Wagner have you listened to, since he is at the center of the dispute?

I thought Racine was at the center of the dispute.

Honestly, I like parts of Wagner. I don't like to listen to whole operas by him. I also think that he comes off a lot better with subtitles so I can follow the lyrics. I've seen/heard all of The Rhine Gold, but I usually lose patience with him about a half an hour to an hour into stuff like Parsifal, or The Valkyrie. I've liked the famous stuff excerpted from his operas like the Tannhauser overture, a part of the Flying Dutchman, Ride of the Valkyries. I like them, but I don't appreciate them if I have to slog through three hours of blah blah blah to reach them.

Besides, I'm not really an opera fan. Even Mozart and Handel get on my nerves sometimes with their librettos. I want to yell at them "Stop saying the same things over and over!" With Wagner, I want to yell at the actors, "Speed this crap up! All those pauses, and god they're ugly." With John Adams, I want to wring his neck for writing in the English language but making his actors sing the words in a German or Italian style. Gluck kind of just bored me. Puccini has a few nice songs situated in a couple of bad operas.

The four guys I've seen who don't annoy me at all are Verdi, Monteverdi, Rossini, and Purcell. All told, I gave Wagner about eight hours of my life to wow me, and he didn't. That wasn't enough to give an authoritative opinion on his entire corpus of work, but it was enough to realize I didn't really have a taste for him.

I don't say that he isn't great. I know that he has his place in music. However, in my estimation he isn't the fourth greatest musician of all time, and he doesn't dwarf Tchaikovsky. I've been more bowled over by stuff by Dufay, Ockeghem, Vivaldi, and Mussorgsky.

[JCamilo]

I shall add some nominatiosna and opiniosn myself.

First of st.lukeguild, I think you are making a large error of judgment, in either regard to Shakespeare or racine, as Mortal and Laumness have pointed out. I have only read 2 of Racine's plays, while having read about 8 of Shakespeare's. However I do believe that Racine is inferior to Shakespeare, but it is a slight inferiority. If we were to sum Racine and Molliere together, they would be vastly worth more than Shakespeare by himself.

Mostly due to Moliere, no?
The problem of Shakespeare is not even that there is no writer who could write as well as him. There is many who did. The problem is more that Shakespeare wrote more as good as him as anyone else. Others seem to do it once or twice, shakespeare a handful of times. Racine Fedra could have been written by Shakespeare, sure. And frankly,it is easy to compare both, not that hard.

Anyways, Stlukes, Voltaire poetry is just meh... He was more like a bad Racine. Or a bad Pope. He did of course know all the metrical aspects, but it was not just the right format for his speed and witty. Not like his prose, which thanks to his poetry and drama training, were as precise and swift as Italo Calvino would ask... or Flaubert. In this Voltaire is often "Underated".

Well, I also think the XIX century is a bit unique, in the sense we still have a considerable poetical production alongside a huge prose production. Only century that this really happen. So the variety is also big. You may not find the best ever there, but a collection of great names. Plus the century you have the introduction of america and russia as major players.

And a big hoho, for the poor untranslatable Agrippa. The guy is obscure even in french for people who read his language. His problem is not being translated, is being as influntial as Milton or one half of the as hard to be translated Camoes, who manages to be overshadowing portuguese poetry until today, to be influent even on other idioms and be put side by side for real with likes of Milton or Petrarch.

As a side not, it would be easy to list Eça, Pessoa, Gil Vicente, Boccage as underated, Portuguese idiom helps (or not) here, as much as the spanish authors, but this goes easily with Andersen (much more than just a children author), Poe (what does americans do with him?), Sade (a very good prose writer), Elizabeth Browning (she was easily as good as Tennyson, but today is just some maiden in distress elloping elsewhere), H.G.Wells (a bit more than just a genre writer), Schiller (a shoulder to shoulder with Goethe), Stevenson and Chesterton...

And frankly, Shakespeare was nothing.

[Cunninglinguist]

Michael Drayton. His work is held highly in academic circles - I wish he was read more.

Also Spenser for a kind-of supreme mastery of poetic form.

[B. Laumness]

Anyways, Stlukes, Voltaire poetry is just meh... He was more like a bad Racine. Or a bad Pope. He did of course know all the metrical aspects, but it was not just the right format for his speed and witty. Not like his prose, which thanks to his poetry and drama training, were as precise and swift as Italo Calvino would ask... or Flaubert. In this Voltaire is often "Underated".


In the 18th century, Voltaire was mostly known as a playwright. His plays had a phenomenal success, more than Corneille’s and Racine’s ones together. I’ve read his Œdipe, Mahomet and Zaïre, they’re not bad and I wouldn’t say Voltaire is a “bad Racine”. It’s true that his model remains the Racinian tradedy, that formally he keeps the alexandrine and the rigid rules, that many of his subjects have a Roman and Greek inspiration, and that he wants to precisely observe the passions. But he also tries to renew this form, firstly under the Shakespearean influence with a little more action and in the treatment of themes such as jealousy and revenge; secondly with a bit of exoticism and the shock of religions and ideologies (see in Mahomet a fight against fanatics); thirdly by a larger part given to the emotions and tears (the audience was crying during the performance of Zaïre) and to the morale. These two last characteristics announce the historic dramas (or histories) and the bourgeois tragedy. Interesting to see that Voltaire admired Shakespeare, giving a commentary on him, and even translating him, before rejecting what he called his vulgarity and his lack of taste, and eventually preferring the classic French playwrights. Today, his plays are almost unknown by the French public. New ideas were demanding literary forms other than the classic mould of the Racinian tragedy.

Nowadays, Voltaire is mainly known for his short novels, Candide of course, the excellent Zadig and others. I like his style, swift, concise, precise, full of irony, sometimes touching. I never grow tired of reading Candide, finding every time something that amuses me.

It is often said that Voltaire is a philosopher, at least in France. Let’s be serious, he is surely an expression of Enlightenment, he is even an intellectual who actively defended tolerance, but he is not a philosopher who handles concepts and whose works show a profound and rigorous reasoning.

At last, we often forget that Voltaire was an historian, one of the first modern historians. Indeed, he refuses to simply tell fables and to focus only on the diplomatic history (though he thinks that the great men play a decisive role); he takes into consideration social, cultural, artistic factors. The amount of his historic works is enormous: many volumes, hardly available except in university libraries. I read Le Siècle de Louis XIV and his Essai sur les mœurs, and it was an instructive and enjoyable reading.


Another interesting notion to consider, is that we know how foreign writers are perceived of in anglophone countries but not in other countries, the difference can be huge.

And example was early-mid 19th century, in america Poe was just another writer who had achieved fame with the poem The Raven, yet that seemed a one hit wonder, and he was but a dilettante. Same time, but in france, and Poe is revered as a genius, and is considered the founder along with Baudelaire of the new age of writing.

Another example I can think of is Leopardi's perception at the turn of the 20th century. In Italy he was and still is deemed the greatest Italian poet after Dante. Yet in the anglophone world, he was just another romantic poet, definitely not the second greatest italian poet since dante; and in many ways this perception still stands.

Another one I can think of is Steinbeck. Nowadays in America he is considered one of their greatest writers, and even arguably their greatest. Yet in Europe he is gives much less consideration, and the conception of him being america's greatest writer is very of-beat. Personally in this regard I leave with europeans, Steinbeck seems but a writer of tolerable talent next to American names like Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Whitman, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Hemingway.


Honestly, if Baudelaire had not translated Poe, this latter would not have met such a reception in France. Milton had the privilege to be translated by Chateaubriand, one of the finest French stylists; Goethe's Faust by Nerval; Hölderlin and Musil by the poet Philippe Jaccottet, etc.

The American novelists of the 20th century were praised in France as you can't imagine. It seems to me barely understandable that guys like Sartre and Deleuze felt such an admiration for writers who actually don't rival great European authors like Proust or Kafka (this sentence is voluntarily provoking or calling to discussion).

[Kyriakos]

I could also suggest Robert Walser, and interesting swiss writer who is still somewhat unknown. He was an influence on Kafka.

[JCamilo]

In the 18th century, Voltaire was mostly known as a playwright. His plays had a phenomenal success, more than Corneille’s and Racine’s ones together. I’ve read his Œdipe, Mahomet and Zaïre, they’re not bad and I wouldn’t say Voltaire is a “bad Racine”. It’s true that his model remains the Racinian tradedy, that formally he keeps the alexandrine and the rigid rules, that many of his subjects have a Roman and Greek inspiration, and that he wants to precisely observe the passions. But he also tries to renew this form, firstly under the Shakespearean influence with a little more action and in the treatment of themes such as jealousy and revenge; secondly with a bit of exoticism and the shock of religions and ideologies (see in Mahomet a fight against fanatics); thirdly by a larger part given to the emotions and tears (the audience was crying during the performance of Zaïre) and to the morale. These two last characteristics announce the historic dramas (or histories) and the bourgeois tragedy. Interesting to see that Voltaire admired Shakespeare, giving a commentary on him, and even translating him, before rejecting what he called his vulgarity and his lack of taste, and eventually preferring the classic French playwrights. Today, his plays are almost unknown by the French public. New ideas were demanding literary forms other than the classic mould of the Racinian tragedy.

Well, lets make Voltaire turn in his tomb by calling him popular, but well, he was quite popular about everything he ever did. La Henriade (his best poem) was popular, his short stories were popular, his afforisms, his panflets, everything. Considering Goethe was a timid genius and Lord Byron would still happen, Voltaire was easily the most popular writer of his century. And mostly, he was popular as being Voltaire, his most precise, unique creation. You will find even those who disagree with him wanting to be him, which would mean a person of pure intelect. But his plays were forgotten because of that: he was a bad Racine. Which is something quite rich. If we think well, the french literature has this tradition of "popular" humor, of damned writers, of profane thinkers. We can see it with Villon, Rabelais, Moliere, Voltaire, Baudelaire, Sade, Lautreamont, Bataille... well there goes. Racine was something else, something elegant, another field of french literature. Voltaire is something representantive because on him you find both Racine and Rabelais. He could write easily, but it was like he had a hurry to let his thoughts flow (hence the voltairian speed of text, which I find a bit constrained under the classical model) and he cannt resist to laugh. Even his position towards Shakespeare reveal his "frenchness", "love the england, but hate them."
This also shows a bit of Voltaire effect: his renew of french drama had not the breath of Racine and Cornielle, so it soon got stuck and this opened field for foreign influence. Then Voltaire turned against it to preserve what was good in french drama before it could be turned in a "pseudo-shakespearean drama".



Nowadays, Voltaire is mainly known for his short novels, Candide of course, the excellent Zadig and others. I like his style, swift, concise, precise, full of irony, sometimes touching. I never grow tired of reading Candide, finding every time something that amuses me.

Well, the truth is that irony is better served in prose, specially when the prose is done by someone which poetical capacity is good enough. You can have some good Popes, but most of all were quite good in prose (Voltaire, Wilde, Machado de Assis, Flaubert, Borges). Anyways, being a playwriter first, having his poetical ambitions allowed Voltaire to develop a style in prose which had the necessary flow for all his witt. Also, while writing in prose, Voltaire was rather careless (at least much more while writing poetry), so less restrained. And he could get his better, because after all a conversation with Voltaire was probally the best thing most people could find and I doubt Voltaire style of conversation was with classical metric.


It is often said that Voltaire is a philosopher, at least in France. Let’s be serious, he is surely an expression of Enlightenment, he is even an intellectual who actively defended tolerance, but he is not a philosopher who handles concepts and whose works show a profound and rigorous reasoning.

If Voltaire was not a philosopher, then we need to re-invent the term. He was not original of course, but who suggested more ideas on himself, who represented them, who put them in pratice?


At last, we often forget that Voltaire was an historian, one of the first modern historians. Indeed, he refuses to simply tell fables and to focus only on the diplomatic history (though he thinks that the great men play a decisive role); he takes into consideration social, cultural, artistic factors. The amount of his historic works is enormous: many volumes, hardly available except in university libraries. I read Le Siècle de Louis XIV and his Essai sur les mœurs, and it was an instructive and enjoyable reading.

Yes, this until he starts to invent fables with form of statistic, create facts, numbers to prove his point of view. Lets be frankly, it is not for nothing that Gibbons and Carlyle both take cheap jabs at Voltaire precision. Of course, he is a moderm historian (by the same account, Herodothus did not used fables, he avoided them, but we that decided what was real or not) but Voltaire is above all a liar with a half smile on his lips. You cannt think him otherwise, but reading his philosophical books or historical, you better search Voltaire, the god, on the text. Sometimes, one or another tune will be out of place and he did it knowing about that.



Honestly, if Baudelaire had not translated Poe, this latter would not have met such a reception in France. Milton had the privilege to be translated by Chateaubriand, one of the finest French stylists; Goethe's Faust by Nerval; Hölderlin and Musil by the poet Philippe Jaccottet, etc.

Well, Baudelaire service to literature was correcting the american judgment of Poe. But Poe is not this "Monster" only in france. He is easily the most influential north-american writer of all time be in South America, Portugual, Russia, England, German, Italy... But of course, this duality Poe-Baudelaire is quite strong because it goes beyond translation. Baudelaire is also quite underated if you think well,most of his fame goes to the Fleurs and the reading made by the School of Frankfurt of his poems (which lead to the funny sittuation of the pseudo-intelectual who walks with Fleurs on his pocket to impress chicks because Baudelaire is a rebel and all, but forget the muse of Baudelaire is sick). Sometimes his prose poems appear, but he was also a quite good critic (his defense of Wagner is famous, Delacroix too, not to mention his challenge of the romantic ideal of beauty).

[B. Laumness]

JCamilo, I agree with everything you've said, notably with that image:


Voltaire is above all a liar with a half smile on his lips.

But I doubt Voltaire was an authentic philosopher, as we say Spinoza, Hegel or Husserl are philosophers.



If Voltaire was not a philosopher, then we need to re-invent the term. He was not original of course, but who suggested more ideas on himself, who represented them, who put them in pratice?

He handles ideas or ideals, those of Enlightenment, he doesn't handle concepts. The philosophers doesn't see him as one of them, they see him as an intellectual. They rarely cite him, he rarely inspires them. Human, all too human is published 100 years after his death, in his honor, but later Nietzsche will say Voltaire is an incarnation of dumb ideals ("ô bêtise", he says). Actually, Voltaire is rather a modern thinker like those we see in the media. His caricature of Leibniz's philosophy reveals how little he understands this philosophy, how little he is a true philosopher.

But you point another problem, which is very interesting: the philosophy in pratice. You're right, Voltaire fights intolerance by actions and endeavours to promote liberty. He is near the "philosopher king" Frederick II. He defends the civilized way of life against Rousseau and shows by his own life what it means to be a civilized man. But we may also interpret his behavior just like that of an educated aristocrat (or "grand bourgeois" to be correct). And his sojourn in the Prussian court maybe reminds Plato and Denys, but also announces our modern thinkers close to the governments, who are not always lovers of wisdom, who ideologically protect the interests of a class. And what does it mean to denounce slavery when a part of your ressources is in the triangular commerce?

About Baudelaire, we don't forget that he also wrote poems in prose and that he was a fine critic. But I don't think that we underrate him when we consider Les Fleurs du Mal as his best achievement, in which he puts all his pain, all his ideals, in which he gives his best in verses noblest and more beautiful than prose. By the way, I was struck by his correspondance: his letters don't reveal a very interesting man, who talks about his art for instance, they show most of the time his financial troubles... as if a great poet could be a mediocre man... But there are two funny anecdotes about his life.

One day, he colored his hair in green, because you know he was eccentric, and he met some friends, but these friends were already aware of his new colour and, before Baudelaire's coming, they even agreed to behave as if there was nothing; then, Baudelaire comes in silence, waiting for a reaction, but the others keep talking as usual and pretend not to notice he dyed his hear; and then Baudelaire goes out without a word.

In 1848, during the revolutionary days, Baudelaire is seen in Paris in the streets with a board in his hands, on which it is written "Down with General Aupick". Who is this general Aupick? His father-in-law. I find that hilarious. Baudelaire, the rebel.

[JCamilo]

But I doubt Voltaire was an authentic philosopher, as we say Spinoza, Hegel or Husserl are philosophers.

Well, authenticy is not an issue to Voltaire, but his lack of system is almost a belief on itself. And obviously, he is a master of irony, plenty much like some Socrates dude would be, and he mosty used this irony to be rich and defy concepts he did not trusted. And this is being philosophical.



He handles ideas or ideals, those of Enlightenment, he doesn't handle concepts. The philosophers doesn't see him as one of them, they see him as an intellectual.

He was well seem as philosopher, Rousseau never said something different from him and Voltaire was responsable for articles about philosophy in the Encyclopedia. He was pretty much his own image of philosopher king that he build.


They rarely cite him, he rarely inspires them.

Schopenhaeur was inspired by him. Rosseau and Diderot too. This to not to mention all the correspondece he produced during his lifetime and his obvious influence of law and civil rights. His rethoric is probally his strongest trait. This and his appreciation of chinese philosophy.



Human, all too human is published 100 years after his death, in his honor, but later Nietzsche will say Voltaire is an incarnation of dumb ideals ("ô bêtise", he says). Actually, Voltaire is rather a modern thinker like those we see in the media. His caricature of Leibniz's philosophy reveals how little he understands this philosophy, how little he is a true philosopher.

I would argue otherswise. He is more like a pre-modern thinker, those who can do a lot of things, not a specialist. He meddled with Physics, Law, Literature, Drama, Politics, Religion, history, etc. If there wasnt Goethe after him, he would be probally the symbol of such kind of man. And Leibniz is much to show his influence, Voltaire propaganda was much decisive for the latter reckoningtion of Leibiniz.


But you point another problem, which is very interesting: the philosophy in pratice. You're right, Voltaire fights intolerance by actions and endeavours to promote liberty. He is near the "philosopher king" Frederick II. He defends the civilized way of life against Rousseau and shows by his own life what it means to be a civilized man. But we may also interpret his behavior just like that of an educated aristocrat (or "grand bourgeois" to be correct). And his sojourn in the Prussian court maybe reminds Plato and Denys, but also announces our modern thinkers close to the governments, who are not always lovers of wisdom, who ideologically protect the interests of a class. And what does it mean to denounce slavery when a part of your ressources is in the triangular commerce?

Voltaire defense of freedom was not the extreme vallues we have today. He is always conservative. Cynical in many aspects. And of course, he twisted the means for his own ends.


About Baudelaire, we don't forget that he also wrote poems in prose and that he was a fine critic. But I don't think that we underrate him when we consider Les Fleurs du Mal as his best achievement, in which he puts all his pain, all his ideals, in which he gives his best in verses noblest and more beautiful than prose. By the way, I was struck by his correspondance: his letters don't reveal a very interesting man, who talks about his art for instance, they show most of the time his financial troubles... as if a great poet could be a mediocre man... But there are two funny anecdotes about his life.

It is his major work, but the vast majority of readers only know him for it and mostly under the light of the modernity criticism derivated from Walter Benjamin. I have lost count of the ammount of photographers who deslike Baudelaire because of that. But Baudelaire writings on photography was not against tecnology of photography itself but the use of the burgoise portrait, which replaced painting. He was not against technology at all. Few would not understand Baudelaire is almost like a rebel without a cause, a teenager all his career.

[mortalterror]

JCamillo mentioned that Edward Gibbon took a jab at Voltaire's histories, but from what I recall of his memoirs he was passionately fond of Voltaire. His first attempts at writing a history of his own were based upon the style of Voltaire's Age of Louis XIV and later he would have occassion to actually meet with the man in person.

Before I was recalled from Switzerland, I had the satisfaction of seeing the most extraordinary man of the age; a poet, an historian, a philosopher, who has filled thirty quartos, of prose and verse, with his various productions, often excellent, and always entertaining. Need I add the name of Voltaire?
He became Voltaire's guest and had several opportunities to see the man act in his own plays. His opinion was ever charitable.

For my part, when I looked into Voltaire's play Merope, I was more disappointed by it's quality than when I checked out his contemporary Alfieri. Even Goldoni was better than either of these supposed luminaries of the stage. I think that again JCamillo's judgment is correct, when he praised Voltaire's prose above his verse.

At the risk of further inflating JCamillo's ego, I have to agree that other people have written plays as good as Shakespeares. Shakespeare's superiority, like Homer's, consists in doing it more often than anyone else has. Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Racine, Calderon, De Vega, and possibly others, which for the moment slip my mind, have written plays as good as Shakespeare's. Yet there is cause to doubt that he is completely unique in his mighty output. Of the 97 plays that Aeschylus wrote 90 are lost. Euripides wrote 92 plays and only 18 remain.

When you consider the extant works of Dante, Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Milton, Firdawsi, Vyasa, Valmiki, Tasso, and Tolstoy; Shakespeare no longer appears to be this unique phenomenon, this aberration in history.

[JCamilo]

Lets say the Jabs between Gibbon and Voltaire were like the jabs between you and Stlukes. :D
I do not know if you recall, Gibbon had to correct some informations from previous writers in his Rise and Fall, a few corrections are aimed at Voltaire, at some point he said something alike "the gentleman of Ferney", which is where Gibbon visited Voltaire.

Now, beware, if I am not mistaken Alfieri and Goldoni were the two playwritters who were named by Voltaire as more memorable than Shakespeare, who supposedly insular :D

And yes, it is an accident the Shakespeare apparent domination, he still need to be like Virgil, the model for more than 1000 years...

[mortalterror]

The American novelists of the 20th century were praised in France as you can't imagine. It seems to me barely understandable that guys like Sartre and Deleuze felt such an admiration for writers who actually don't rival great European authors like Proust or Kafka (this sentence is voluntarily provoking or calling to discussion).

I think we had as fine a crop of novelists in the early 20th century as there's ever been. Hemingway was just as great a stylist as Proust was, but his method was one of compression whereas Proust's was one of expansion. Writing a 3,000 page novel was beyond the scope of Hemingway's talents just as writing The Old Man and the Sea was beyond Proust. I've seen Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Steinbeck do some pretty amazing things as well. Too bad none of them could write poetry or plays, but for that we had T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Eugene O'Neill.

[B. Laumness]

Well, authenticy is not an issue to Voltaire, but his lack of system is almost a belief on itself. And obviously, he is a master of irony, plenty much like some Socrates dude would be, and he mosty used this irony to be rich and defy concepts he did not trusted. And this is being philosophical.

All the philosophers are not ironic. Irony is not the essence of philosophy.



He was well seem as philosopher, Rousseau never said something different from him and Voltaire was responsable for articles about philosophy in the Encyclopedia. He was pretty much his own image of philosopher king that he build.

Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Dumarsais, Montesquieu, etc., called themselves philosophers. Are they so in the meaning given today to this word? The problem is we are often reticent to accept the idea that a talented writer can be a true philosopher. Apologie de Raymond Sebond is an extremely profound text, but in college Montaigne is said too literary to be studied in class of philosophy, and too philosophical to be studied in class of literature.



Schopenhaeur was inspired by him.

Of course, he was raised in a Voltairian context. But his main influences were Plato, Kant and Indian philosophy. He read Voltaire in the way he read moralists such as La Rochefoucauld and Chamfort: satirists who despise the conventions, who confirm him in his misanthropy and his Weltanshauuung, but it's probably not enough to build a philosophical system. Nietzsche too was fond of these French moralists, but later, not in his years of formation, and he was particularly interested in their style (aphorism).



I would argue otherswise. He is more like a pre-modern thinker, those who can do a lot of things, not a specialist. He meddled with Physics, Law, Literature, Drama, Politics, Religion, history, etc.

When I said modern thinkers, I was referring not really to specialists, but precisely to guys who can talk about everything, not always with great abilities, like Bernard-Henri Lévy for instance in France (of course, this latter is a dwarf in comparison with Voltaire).

[mortalterror]

When I said modern thinkers, I was referring not really to specialists, but precisely to guys who can talk about everything, not always with great abilities, like Bernard-Henri Lévy for instance in France (of course, this latter is a dwarf in comparison with Voltaire).

Bernard-Henri Levy is a tool. He came here in 2006 for nine months to write a book about what America is like and all he saw was prisons, mega churches, and super malls. He's almost as bad as Baudrillard.

[JCamilo]

Well, I did not said anything about all philosophers being ironic. But about using it as part of the phislophy, as would live Socrates, which is of course, Voltaire model all around. Socrates is and Voltaire have much of the attitude thing.
The reason why those guys called themselves philosophers was simple because they were. Nobody disputed such claim. They may not be very keen on metaphysics or religious philosophy, but on political, ethical or aesthetic level there were very active. Like Schopenhauer who wrote mostly about ethics and aesthetics.
I think most people think others, a good philosopher is an example of good writing. (And according to Coleridge, a good poet must be a good philosopher too). Nietzche himself, if he wasnt a good writer he would be a bit of nothing, adding very little to what happened before. Didnt Bertrand Russell even won a nobel?
I do not mind much the class of philosophy, they would expell Decartes from there, probally Bacon. Plato, who was a fine writer, would probally get low grades. I do not see the academy producing anything interesting except all those anti-liberalism, anti-imperialism, etc thinkings.
Who you see today? Psedo Foucault (which survives much because wrote well), Bourdieus, language thinkers like Chomski, Frankfurt schools, maybe Russells and Derridas, a little of Wittengenstein... And wait, many of those developed out of academy and returned there. Nah, what the academy teaches or studies is not philosophy. No Philosopher would be remembered if in his discuss therent isnt some talent, style, capacity of persuation. Those who had ideas and can not express them are nothing.

[Alexander III]

Well this discussion has been fruitful indeed, and as for the last point made I agree with JC, most great philosophers would have been mediocre in modern Philosophy classes.

But I think I shall leave this thread for two more days to see if there are any last minute nominations and then I shall open up a poll.

[JCamilo]

Well I can see the poll options forming: Stlukes, Mortal, Artists, Fans of Frank Frazetta, Romantics, Moderns, Classicists, Philosophy students, people who speak portuguese, and a chinese dude.

[B. Laumness]

For a neophyte, L'Être et le Néant by Sartre is "badly" written. But complex thoughts demand an adequate language.

[Alexander III]

For a neophyte, L'Être et le Néant by Sartre is "badly" written. But complex thoughts demand an adequate language.

Everyone has complex and profound thoughts, for example everyone has contemplations of vastness and eternity when gazing at the stars, thats human; being able to express those exact thoughts using language; which is a crude tool compared to thought and emotion, now that is talent. Its like this. Though and emotion is like music, language is like sign language, and we are all deaf. He who can show music to the deaf with solely sign language, that is genius; and philosophy is like that, and poetry is also like that, two streams which sprout from the same lake.

[JCamilo]

Sartre was not a bad writer, considerable more smart than his own text, (aint him another philosopher?) but sometimes he tried too much. He should have tried to stick to the traditional french aforism tradition, but having to live with Simone is probally punishment enough.