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So, for people to stop arguing about unfair list because Flaubert is better then Dostoevsky; how come Crime and Punishment is above Madame Bovary ; name your top 5 authors. I will count it this time; so Dark Muse can rest a little bit :D Poet, novelist or drama - they all count.
The deadline is...one month, so it's Valentine's Day!
Modern, Classic or a mix of both?
yikes! i won't be able to sleep at night now! top 5? and you're counting? double yikes.
Everyone!
My list:
1. Dostoevsky
and with no particular order:
2.Tolstoy,
3.Hugo,
4.Selimovic,
5. Krleža
1.Ernest Hemingway
2.Jean Racine
3.Ovid
4.Shakespeare
5.Dante
Only 5?
Nutz......going to have to think
Your personal favourite top five or the top five authors you think are best?Quote:
Originally Posted by bazarov
Dante Alighieri
Jane Austen
Giacomo Leopardi
Emile Zola
T.S. Eliot
Notice, I didn't include Shakespeare, because I am sure he will make the top ten without me, given these boards. But Oh my god, five is so darn difficult. I keep thinking should Eliot go, should Zola go, is Leopardi to big a stretch - so many choices, though I doubt Leopardi places - I doubt he gets another vote but mine, despite being regarded as perhaps the second best poet in the Italian language.
1 Shakespeare
2 Dickens
3 Agatha Christie
4 Conan Doyle
5 Hugo
I really wanted to put Eliot up, and if it was a top 6 he'd be there. But who am I going to displace? Shakespeare? Dante? I know they'll both make it in spite of my vote but I figured we were supposed to be honest and not just root for obscure figures we think ought to be better represented. As far as Leopardi goes, he's also sort of a bottom ten list figure for me, along with Calderon if I had the room. Honestly, I think you are more likely to get another Leopardi vote before I see another Racine. The dude is a second Shakespeare in the French language and nobody around here has heard of him.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
If I had more familiarity with Firdawsi or Tu Fu I'd like to add them as well. As good as the Greeks are I doubt we'll see many of them. Chances are, this is just going to be another love fest for the Russians.
1. Charles Dickens
2. Marcel Proust
3. Henry James
4. John Steinbeck
5. Thomas Hardy
This is order of enjoyment, not in order of who I think is "best".
That's why I didn't put Shakespeare, and I was debating replacing Dante as well. Like always on this board, prose > verse, English > rest of the world, but, Dostoevsky > English novelists, West > East (even in my post, but the problem is, most East-Asian cultures seem to associate more with the work than with the artist, and don't seem to embrace a figure-head cult as we do here).Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
I really wanted to put Zola on there, and also the French Canadian Anne Hebert, and a Latin American, probably Borges, amongst others, but really, five is quite difficult to negotiate.
I personally admit I don't particularly care for Racine. He has beautiful moments, as he was definitely the accomplished verse stylist of his time, but I think the classical grid which he stuck to, so adherent to Aristotelian structures, and French tastes (for instance, the five act structure being more pragmatic than one would think, given that aristocrats loved intermissions, and the chandelier's needed their wicks trimmed), not to mention that strict adherence to bienseance makes, I would think, Racine's range rather limited. I mean there are particularly moving moments of his that I have read, my favorite being Aricie's discovery of Hyppolyte's body after he has been destroyed by the Sea Beast, but the dependence on one plot line, and no action away from that line, nothing unrelated to the one setting, one direction, one thread of action, is troubling to me.
Of course, we must say what Racine is particularly good at - I would argue, he was an even greater master of time than Shakespeare was - his pacing, and compacting of action into one day, or a few hours, is particularly good. Also, like I said before, his language, and I would add, his formation of characters, and the way he manipulates his source material is fantastic, but even so I am troubled by him, as I am by Alexander Pope, and John Dryden, given that they are so cemented to the classical model that I feel their overcorseted, and rather limited.
In no order...
1- F Scott Fitzgerald
2- Tennessee Williams
3- Charles Dickens
4- Franz Kafka
5- Vladimir Nabokov (sorry Austen!)
It's hard to know who to choose- some I've read one of their books and been impressed but I don't know what their others are like.
I assume you're choosing Eliot for his poetry because I read one of his plays and it was preety boring.
PS- I know Racine! We have some at home!
Here we differ, and I fear you are a little too modern in your tastes to correctly appreciate this period. It's precisely the way that his genius soars within the prescribed bounds that I find so attractive. He takes something that is already there and makes it better while conforming to all the conventions of his day. He reaches deep and finds his own originality, his own personality inside of a community. Racine or Shakespeare will take a well worn topos and make it purely their own. The man is re-writing Euripides and improving on every play. But then, I already love the classical period he's imitating and I believe in the unities.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
When I was younger, I didn't like Pope, Dryden, Johnson, or Milton either for that matter. The Enlightenment was too dry, too old, too intellectual, the way the Romantics would later come to feel too wet, too young, too emotional. But when you look at what they were trying to do it's astonishing. If you judge them by their own artistic values, what they were trying to do, their level of achievement is very high.
Nowadays we tend to compose poems with an eye toward the entire text. We talk a great deal about form. Our units of composition are rather long, a novel, a page, or a paragraph instead of a single sentence. But at that time Pope was composing for the line. He had this idea that you could take any line from a great poet and his greatness would show. Line for line, he created more great poetry than any other English poet. This makes him very quotable, which is important to note as aphorisms were very popular at the time. T.S. Eliot agrees with me on this. I forget which one of his essays he mentions Pope in, but he held him in very high regard. Don't try to enjoy an entire poem of Pope's. That's almost impossible. They are not like a single perfect gem, but more like jewel encrusted bracelets.
As for Racine, I believe you may be judging him by a poor translation. As a person who reads a little French, and briefly tried to translate him myself, I recommend John Cairncross's translation, or failing that George Dillon's, or even Robert Bruce Boswell's. I do not recommend his most famous play Phaedra. I do recommend Andromache, Iphigenia, Athalia, or The Thebaid.
What makes Racine different from his contemporaries is his passion. He is a poet of love, and his characters are unconstrained and obsessive. They frequently can't control themselves for love, even knowing that it will lead to their doom. Here he departs from the Greeks, who cared almost nothing for love, and from his contemporaries who are often incredibly cerebral. There is nothing rational in his plays beside their design. You could say that he is a forerunner of the Romantics, but I think that he's more likely wedding his Greek structure with the courtly love poetry of the Renaissance. But his vision of love as destructive untempered passion is very different from my other favorite love poet Ovid, who has a more easy going attitude to his subject. Racine's vision of love is a dark one. Often the characters are caught up in abusive relationships beyond their control. Love triangles are not infrequent and the characters are pulled this way and that like puppets, although I think Racine is much more convincing than say Dryden was in his play All For Love.
I sometimes wonder if what makes a poet great might be their unique approach to the subject of love. Take the Italians for instance. Dante's poem is a wonderful treatise on sacred or platonic love. Petrarch is known for unhappy, unrequited love. Boccaccio and Cavalcanti are known for their celebrations of physical and sensual love. But perhaps I'm making too much where there is nothing. It is a pleasant thought though, if perhaps a touch errant.
No cheating now ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by kelby_lake
In no order...
1- Victor Hugo
2- Charles Dickens
3- John Keats
4- Shakespeare
5- Charlotte Bronte
Five is certainly not enough.
Never actually read any Racine admittedly, I was showing off. However it is true that we have some at home :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Thespian1975
I meant you chose 6 authors.Quote:
Originally Posted by kelby_lake
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kelby_lake
It's interesting that you should point that out while referring to Racine as unoriginal. Racine is following a play that had been done famously several times before. Euripides' and Seneca's versions of the play are both extant, but neither includes the character of Aricia. She is one of Racine's own particular touches. In Euripides' play, Hippolytus is an ardent follower of Artemis, the virgin goddess of the hunt, and he is punished by Aphrodite with a perverse love for not giving Aphrodite her due. His abstinence offends the gods and he is justly or unjustly punished. The inclusion of Aricia in Racine's version is a characteristic departure of his own invention, which allows him to set up one of his patented love triangles. When he adapted Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis he includes another original character which allows him to craft an altogether different ending than the earlier version of that play.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
What is great about this kind of following in a tradition and adapting the classics is the narrow range one has for departures. When the audience is already familiar with the tale, they are looking for a novel approach to the story, and each slight variation is amplified, imbued with a special meaning. That's why Euripides, Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Seneca can tell the exact same plot and each one is a masterpiece and totally different from the others. It's a little like the way that no two performances of a play can be the same. An emphasis is shifted. Something is changed. The movie The Godfather has the exact opposite moral from the theme in the book. The Merchant of Venice is an anti-semitic comedy, but when Al Pacino did it recently for the screen he made the character of Shylock sympathetic and it became a tragic warning tale. Racine is all about re-interpretation, and when you already know the plot the other details such as character, and language are pushed to the foreground.
It's like reading Chaucer and then reading Boccaccio. Boccaccio wasn't even the originator of most of his stories. While I was reading Apuleius' The Golden *** over Christmas I found two of Boccaccio's tales in the novel, which is also a source of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. However, Apuleius was already ripping off an earlier Greek novel of the same name by Lucian, and so on and so on. This is the format of all Greek literature. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides derive their plays from stories in Homer. Then Ovid writes them down later and every writer of any worth tries his hand at them for two thousand years. They invite the comparison. It's like a rite of passage. Each new telling of the familiar text is like a new draft, or a new chapter in an ongoing conversation, and we are all connected like links in a chain to this vital and ongoing tradition. Isn't that beautiful?
A format is not restricting. It is liberating, for when everything is permitted nothing is extraordinary. We need certain boundaries in order to feel our liberty, in order to have something to push or measure our freedom against. Traditions and conventions give us license to test those traditions and conventions, to re-invent them, to define ourselves in relation to what is other. It gives direction and focus to what would otherwise be misshapen blurtings.
1. Poe
2. Shakespeare
3. D.H. Lawrence
4. Jean-Paul Satire
5. Umberto Eco
1.James Joyce
2.Friedrich Nietzsche
3.Marcel Proust
4.William Shakespeare
5.Vladimir Nabokov
Lets see, today my favourites are:-
Jane Austin
Shakespeare
Tolstoy
Tolkien
Homer
Next week who knows?
OK, after a little thought:
1 Shakespeare
2 Dante
3 Milton
4 Euripides
5 Homer
Beat that!
I have based my five on the grounds that they all must have more than one great work to their credit and that I have must read and studied them to some degree personally. I have thought about the translation issue but that is something that can't be helped and I didn't want to limit myself soley to those writing in English, though I have to include a Western bias, simply because this is what I have read.
I choose Euripides above Aeschylus and Sophocles as it seems to be Euripides offers a little more, is a little more experimental (though I am not an expert in this area) though maybe that has something to do with him coming a little later. Regardless of this I just seem drawn to Euripides more than the other two for some reason.
The rest stand on their own and need no explanation.
I realise there is no sole prose works on the list, if there had have been I would have included Austen, over Flaubert, for sheer consistency if for nothing else.
If it was for love alone I would have included Wilde and Keats.
These lists are truly absurd and prove nothing but the tastes of those who participate... and I would almost think that these would change for each individual depending upon when they responded. My first two would never change... but I can certainly imagine replacing the next three with Aeschylus, Virgil, Spenser, Montaigne, Cervantes, Firdowsi, Tolstoy, or any number of others... but what the hell:
1. Shakespeare
2. Dante
3. Milton
4. Blake
5. Homer
By the way... do you really find Leopardi that great, JBI? I certainly admire what I have read... but I can't imagine placing him on any list of the 10 greatest writers ever... let alone 5.
When I was talking about one plot, I didn't mean that he couldn't follow one plot, I meant that, by Aristotelian thought, a good play only has one plot line. Everything is centered around Phaedre. Even Aricia is just there to be a foil for Phaedre, and not to be an actual full, or even central character. The plot doesn't breathe, there are no sub plots, only one plot, as was the fashion. Aricia, I knew, was a Racine invention (having read Euripides's version, though not Seneca's), but really the problem I have is he doesn't allow for anything to not be part of the plot. The plot is so absolute, so demanding, as to disallow breathing.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
O.K., one could say the same about Othello, but really, Shakespeare allows us the beautiful opening speeches from Othello, and the love scene at the beginning of the play - the play can breathe. Racine on the other hand trades that off for drama - makes everything so time-strained, which limits things, as much as develops things. I think my problem is I like a less fast paced, more reflexive story, and with Racine, I think, being drama, the action is too quick - too driven, too compact into too little time, if that makes any sense.
There don't seem to be any subplots in Racine. Even the romances in Andromache, and the triangles only enforce the central plot line, only build upon one idea, one direction. I think it becomes complicated, when quite frankly there are more than 3 actors on the stage, and more tools available, yet the structure is still following a 2000 year old model.
You know, it is just for fun, you needn't take everything so deathly seriously. If you are so against lists you needn't partake, but no need to be a humbug on everyone else for having a little fun.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
He sucks in translation - try picking up a real copy of the Canti - they are Eliot-dense, there is more to him than a few idylls, and some conversations. Quite frankly, he doesn't really translate well, and doesn't really sit well outside of his context. Certainly though, a lot of it has to do with my taste, but I wager your championing of Blake has the same thing to do with your taste. I still think though, that if more people were exposed to Leopardi, they would think better about poetry. These boards are so prosaic that poetry is often pretended to be liked, and never really embraced - I think the furthest we can get in a discussion is generally the standard "Ooh, that was lovely, he's soooo moving." etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
Some things just don't translate.
In no order...
Steinbeck
Hemingway
Dostoevsky
Salinger
EDIT: After some thought, taking out Nietzsche and adding Brett Easton Ellis (also mentioned right below me)
Dickens
Sir Walter Scott
Vonnegut
Robert Louis Stevenson
Brett Easton Ellis
1.Dostoevsky
The rest are in no particular order:
2. Shakespeare
3. Ibsen
4. Kafka
5. Hamsun
Two dramatists and three novelists - and of course two of them are norwegians...
:D
Ok, Shakespeare is in second place.
I have a feeling that Dostoevsky and Shakespeare will be at top three when this list is finish. Hehe.
1. Faulkner
2. Shakespeare
3. T.S. Eliot
4. Proust
5. James Joyce
Yes, I'm very fond of the early 20th century.
1. J.R.R. Tolkien
2. Fyodor Dostoevsky
Can I come up with my other three later?
The focus and stripping from the play of all non-necessities is why I prefer him to Shakespeare. That is how a good play should be written, as opposed to a novel, which our modern authors make a Christmas tree out of and hang all kinds of junk on. A play should be nothing but essentials. Take Hamlet for instance. In Aeschylus the play is about 1200 lines and has a third as many characters. The play within a play is 1000. Shakespeare's play ambles all over the place for four hours and to this day nobody knows what it's about. It's a good play, but do you really want them all to be like that? It's a lucky Frankenstein, a mismatched patchwork quilt, made of loose and disparate parts.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
Drama is not like a novel where you can describe clouds, or go on a twenty page interior monologue through a character's past; so long as eventually you get back to the conflict. That's why I've found the drama more appealing in recent years. It knows what it is and it has a form, whereas with the novel we don't have any structure yet. The strength of a Shakespearean Sonnet is the confining structure: 14 ten syllable lines, iambic pentameter, ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. I've seen you talking about there being a twist 2/3's in and a point driven home in the concluding couplet; so I know you know what I'm saying. Each part of the sonnet has a point, has a purpose, has a task. Writing one is like building a house to code.
Choosing to write in verse at all is to put one's head under the yoke. The shackles of meter and the tyranny of a rhyme scheme are too much for most people, but what wonders are contained therein! There is no free verse in drama because one can't afford to look like one's just screwing around.
You don't like the brevity, the compactness, the clarity, the economy of every word. That may be why you don't like my favorite writer of all, Ernest Hemingway.
Oh, and I'm with you on Leopardi. He is better than Blake.
You see, that's the point though - you are so fixed on Aristotle's notion of drama, that you have a "this is how it is supposed to be" notion. I think the opposite. I think more along the lines with Maesterlinck, a playwright who I don't particularly like, but who wrote some interesting essays. The drama should be more about the subtle, quieter things, than the epic, heroic things. It all comes down to taste though. I think Hamlet better because the ambiguity allows for a wider range of impression, and the depth allows for more reaction with the reader/viewer. Racine on the other hand seems so fixated on one path that it is hard to bend around him.
1. Dante
2. Shakespeare
3. Homer
4. William Faulkner
5. Joseph Conrad
1. Dostoevsky
2. Tolstoy
3. Maugham
4. Shakespeare
5 Chaucer
Well that is a very contemporary, a very recent point of view, that has no bearing on how plays were actually constructed for the majority of history. That thinking comes out of the naturalism movement, which emphasized small everyday details, plebian characters, and realism. From that tradition you get Chekhov and Ibsen. You get Strasburg and Stanislavski. This kind of writing and acting will produce a Hedda Gabler proficiently enough, but you can never get an Oedipus. In our theater we have many fishmongers but few kings. Arthur Miller bemoaned that the American theater did not have the actors to do a decent version of Electra and I agree.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
1. Dostoevsky
2. Wilde
3. Tolstoy
4. Turgenev
5. Gogol
JBI... I'll have to trust you on your assertion that Leopardi is much better in the original Italian than in translation... or rather that he sucks in translation. But then again... that would leave you open to arguments that any number of other writers are far better than we imagine... but that they merely suck in translation.:D Of course... I have no doubt that the original language is always to be preferred... but I am not so quick to dismiss the merits of translation out of hand.
Nevertheless... I questioned your pick of Leopardi knowing your current and recent fascination with him because it would seem one might easily argue that he is but one of any number of Romantic/Post-Romantic lyric poets any one of which (including Shelley, Byron, Keats, Wordsworth, Holderlin, Heine, Hugo, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Whitman, Dickinson, Tennyson, Rilke, Garcia-Lorca, etc...) may be marvelous (at times), and any one of which might arguably be put forth as a favorite... but on par with Shakespeare or Homer? Doubtful. I could probably argue that Blake is something larger than a mere lyric poet... but your point is fair. I should most probably have gone with Goethe... but I didn't think of him, for some reason, at the time.