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.

Jon McGregor - if nobody speaks of remarkable things. Truly beautiful.

Someone is bound to mention Cormac McCarthy, though i think he gets a bit samey after a while.

Ali Smith, also. Like (that's the name of the book).

I've always thought Herman Hesse had great prose, specifically Narcissus and Goldmund

Fitzgerald's decadent and destructive lifestyle absolutely did not hold him back as a writer. Quite the contrary, actually...If Fitzgerald did not live a life of complete oblivion, then he would not have been able to write the way that he did. There would be no Gatsby if he had lived any other way.

Anyways...I would certainly second Gatsby, which I recently reread and got much more out of than I did on my first reading. It really blew me away.

I also think that Henry Miller writes in a masterfully poetic language, although I know that he's none too popular around these forums.

Moby Dick and Heart of Darkness.

Maybe parts of Henry James, like this:

"He projected himself all day, in thought, straight over the bristling line of hard unconscious heads and into the other, the real, the waiting life; the life that, as soon as he had heard behind him the click of his great house-door, began for him, on the jolly corner, as beguilingly as the slow opening bars of some rich music follows the tap of the conductor’s wand."

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.”

From the opening chapter of Bleak House by Charles Dickens:

"Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.

Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time — as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.

The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery."

Think of George Osborne as he sits in the fog of the latest economic collapse in No 11 Downing Street, sucking on a chicken legs, as he dines with his banker friends and doles out the latest £1000 000 bonuses for wrecking lives...

All this just to not read poetry, oh how impoverished :p. If you want poetic prose, why not just try poetry.

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Originally Posted by JBI

All this just to not read poetry, oh how impoverished :p. If you want poetic prose, why not just try poetry.

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I've read Paradise Lost. It's beautiful. Its use of English language is unmatched.

But poetic prose supported by strong plot and believable characters are what make the best of literature, in my opinion.

Not saying that poems don't have narrative, because some poems do.

I've always thought Herman Hesse had great prose, specifically Narcissus and Goldmund

Ummm... Hermann Hesse didn't write in English... neither did Gabriel Garcia Marquez:shocked:

But poetic prose supported by strong plot and believable characters are what make the best of literature, in my opinion.

It could be that your opinion is far from reality. The novel is a rather recent development in terms of the history of literature, while poetry is far older. Member Mortalterror threw up a list of literary works on another thread including:

1.The Iliad
2.The Odyssey
3.The Divine Comedy
4.The Plays of Shakespeare
5.The Shahnameh
6.The Mahabharata
7.War and Peace
8.The Dream of the Red Chamber
9.The Aeneid
10. The Ramayana

I might add the Bible, Paradise Lost, The Canterbury Tales, Les Fleurs du mal, Leaves of Grass, and a good many others all ranking among the greatest works of literary art ever. Of these, only War and Peace and The Dream of the Red Chamber are novels... concerned primarily with character development and plot conveyed through prose.

I'm not suggesting there aren't great novels out there or that that narrative (story telling) and character development are not of merit... but the novel... the art form that is most centered upon these elements... is a relatively new development and certainly doesn't account for anywhere near the majority of the strongest literature out there.

I would also suggest that it would be difficult to define "poetic prose" when you consider that poetry itself varies greatly in style. There's another thread on "prose stylists" that explores a similar idea:

http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=64397

And that's why I do not like Dickens. It annoys me, it is too obvious, it is too poor, his choice of words is unoriginal.

Much as I was annoyed by the too obvious nature of The Picture of Dorian Gray (for a novel), Wilde's descriptions were worth the name. Original in wording and flowing like the river in Dickens's piece should have flowed, but did not really.

George Eliot sometimes does well too.

And Hardy, of course. Sometimes he has weird ideas and images, which make his descriptions interesting.

I wish i could list Dutch writer Marcellus Emants, but he didn't write in English, although he works remarkably well in it.

The most famous parts of Dream of the Red Chamber are mostly found in its poetry. In truth, the poetry has been paid far more attention by scholars than much of the plot development, with the exception of the scholarly field designated to try to guess the correct ending.

Traditional Chinese novels in general make extensive use of poetic interjection - most of which is mediocre.

The novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms for instance relies heavily on poetry, as the book was assembled from readings of storyteller's books, which would open with poetry describing what was going to be narrated that day, and close with a summary - as well as use poems for flavor and to keep people interested.

Red Chambers offers a different poetry, where Cao has imbued each character with its own poetic sensibility, which is perhaps the most interesting part of the book, and what in general has made it so enduring and famous.

As for poetic prose - that's an oxymoron. Prose fiction in English really developed out of a mentality of neo-Platonic neo-Classicism that tried to regulate. Our whole idea of novel in English prose fiction is rooted in morality and rigidity.

Seriously, most people are just afraid of verse - I am yet to meet someone who understands it yet doesn't enjoy it.

We are unfortunately lost in a world of English and Americanism. Go beyond that narrow periphery to embrace the more beautiful prose of ancient Sanskrit texts. Can you compare any book ancient or modern with the Mahabharata and the Ramayana? Can you find anything to match with the philosophy o f the Mahabharata? All get dazzled. Our blinkered attitudes made us marginal thinkers

The Panchatantra - have you ever heard about it? -is such a beautifully written poetic prose work this is simply matchless

War and Peace is only one of several novels of similar stature. Middlemarch, Bleak House, Moby Dick and Don Quixote would not look out of place on MortalTerrors list, and are (surely) at least as worthy to appear as Les Fleurs du mal or Leaves of Grass.

MortalTerrors list seems biased towards Ancient Literature. I don't see that 'Ancient = Strongest', only that 'Ancient = Most Influential'. This has to be the case as Ancient Literature has had more time to influence matters! Creating a more even balance with post 17th century literature would have to include several novels.

I'm certainly nor arguing that one shouldn't try some other literature, but one shouldn't despair if you end up reading mostly novels. There is no one who can say that such a diet is impoverished, except yourself. If you feel that your reading is impoverished then maybe it's time to try something else...

I read mostly novels and feel far from impoverished. I do dip into poetry now and again - I'm doing five pages a day of Milton at the moment - about all my poor little brain can take before retreating to a novel... and *yes* I can see there is beauty in the language, and power in the narrative, but I still can't wait to get back to the current novel.

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Originally Posted by kiki1982

And that's why I do not like Dickens. It annoys me, it is too obvious, it is too poor, his choice of words is unoriginal.

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The London fog is a fairly obvious metaphor for the fog of legal proceedings, I agree, but that is no reason not use it, if you have the powers of prose-poetry that Dickens can command.

Can you point to a similar passage by an earlier writer that has such power to evoke an atmosphere of hidden corruption? Or simply just the atmosphere of an atmosphere - that captures the smoggy London of Victorian times so well?

I can't see how you can call the passage poor - I can only think you are deaf to that particular music.

Where is the original for his choice of words?