The most poetically beautiful English prose?( Fiction)
What is the most beautiful and poetic prose work in the English language have you ever read? (fictional)
Personally for me, it's The Great Gatsby.
Please do note that this thread concerns itself only about the quality of the prose, not the story nor the characterization.
It's a shame that Fitzgerald led a decadent and oblivion-assuring life. Had it been otherwise -you know. That is why Faulkner is the greater writer to me -The greater prose weaver, for he had lived longer than the former and therefore, had had the opportunity to write a lot more awe-inspiring passages. However, none of Faulkner's work, at least to me, touches The Great Gatsby prose-perfection wise. (though I would argue that most of his work come close)
I thank you all.
One of the most beautiful I have ever seen
A very old man with enormous wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
By the end of the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside de house that Pelayo had to walk across his flooded patio to throw them back in the sea, because the newborn had spend the night with high fever and they all thought the crab pest was the cause. The world was in the saddest grey since Tuesday. The sea and the sky were both made of the same ash, and the sands at the beach, which in March showed the radiance of sun powder, now showed the broth of a swamp with putrid seashells. The light was so tame at noon that when Pelayo made his way back to the house after having finished his chore with the crabs, he had a hard time figuring out what was moving with lamentations, in the back of the patio. He had to walk very near to discover that it was a very old man, laying on his chest and sinking in the mud, who in spite of his great effort could not get up because his enormous, wet wings, were too much for his age. Scared by what he believed was a nightmare, Pelayo run into the house to look for Elisenda, his wife, who was trying to cure the baby with mustard patches, and he took her to the back to look at his finding. Both observed the fallen body with terrified stupor. He was dressed like a hobo. He had just a few pieces of discolored cloth left on his body and a completely bald skull, very few teeth, and his condition of miserable great grandfather sunk in the crab broth had evaporated all his greatness. His enormous wings, dirty and close to featherless, appeared to be anchored forever. Pelayo and his wife observed him for such a long time that at last they overcame their amazement and ended up thinking he had been very familiar from the beginning. Then they dared speak to him, and he answered with a unheard dialect but with a good navigator’s voice. It was thus that they no longer thought so much about the wings' inconvenience, and concluded with very good judgment that the old man was a solitary victim of a foreign shipwreck battered by the storm. Nevertheless, they called on a clarevoyant neighbor who knew all things about life or death, and she needed no more than a quick look to rescue them from any bits of terror that were still left in their souls. “It’s an angel,” she said. “I’m sure he was coming for the baby, but the poor thing is so old, so old, that he was downed by the rain.”