British Literature vs. American Literature

[Arrowni]

Well, with that context considered I get your point. Although I don't know exactly the context of the citation regarding Hugo and the English Romantics, I do know that Borges deeply appreciated Hugo's poetry and that he was an english language specialist. Of course it could be a personal affinity, but to explain the context, Borges is a very well read critic who put a lot of emphasis in the different evolutions of how we conceive literature, and in general it makes for a great read even disregarding the conclusion of his analyses. I'd recommend it personally if you ever take on reading literary criticism.

I'm sorry if I was too rude before as I was a little puzzled.

[stuntpickle]

Well, with that context considered I get your point. Although I don't know exactly the context of the citation regarding Hugo and the English Romantics, I do know that Borges deeply appreciated Hugo's poetry and that he was an english language specialist. Of course it could be a personal affinity, but to explain the context, Borges is a very well read critic who put a lot of emphasis in the different evolutions of how we conceive literature, and in general it makes for a great read even disregarding the conclusion of his analyses. I'd recommend it personally if you ever take on reading literary criticism.

I'm sorry if I was too rude before as I was a little puzzled.

I don't think you were rude at all, and it was never my intention to be rude to you. Unfortunately, when writing, I often seem ruder than I intend; I'm generally just passionate or simply trying to rib someone, which comes off better in person.

Frankly, I find it absurd that I'm railing against Dante whom I love, but I never expected to get into a Dante vs. Shakespeare discussion in the first place.

By the way, I have read a lot of criticism because I was forced to. But I often felt the critics were more interested in the works of Freud, Foucault or Derrida than in whatever I was writing a paper on. Have you ever had to sit through a lecture where Metamorphosis is examined as an expression of Kafka's homosexuality? Or Werther as Goethe's premature ejaculation? Or Dracula as a primal scene from Stoker's childhood? Or Humbert Humbert's pedophilia being a cover for his homosexuality? I'm fairly convinced that one could get an advanced degree in literature without ever learning what an unreliable narrator is. Maybe this has just been my experience. Still, I think the best cure for a love of literature is getting a degree in it.

[Arrowni]

I think that the best critic doesn't stray far from the main literature, like any other genre it needs to be concise and elegant, which many fail to do decently, even when their writings have substance -we only remember critics who managed to say something sensible, the rest are mercifully forgotten, unless they are too recent-. Frankly I'm not sure if I would qualify psychological rants and marxist debates as an actual element of critic, most of the time it seems more like a search for the quintessential philosophy of writing. I'd rather have Montaigne, thanks.

Borges is nothing like that really, he has read an amazing amount of books, but he's much more pragmatic. At times his essays read as if he was writing fiction, like his analysis of Hawthorne.

Personally I enjoy the discussion that has its disagreements without it devolving into a drunken fist fight. Not that fist fights are wrong, is just that we should enjoy delving into the things we enjoy.

I don't think that literature evolves in the sense that it becomes "better", instead it just develops traits. Stream of consciousness is a modern trait that won't make any previous literary form dated. The texts that are still read and analyzed in our era are all survivors from previous generations, they are winners of the evolutionary race. An organism may have changed its traits more often than the other, but since they aren't extinct none of them is more "adapted", until they effectively disappear or dominate completely. By the same token, neither Dante nor Shakespeare nor Tolstoy are more adapted than the other, readers developed tastes that are capable of including all of them disregarding the number of centuries that has passed between all of them. Since Dante and Shakespeare are hardly in the edge of oblivion, I'd say that suggesting one "advance" overcomes the another it's iffy.

(This is also how actual biological evolution happens, and natural selection would come from the readings that are supported by future readers and academics, regarding a certain amount of esthetic rules they chose over the others)

There is my rant

[stuntpickle]

I think that the best critic doesn't stray far from the main literature, like any other genre it needs to be concise and elegant, which many fail to do decently, even when their writings have substance -we only remember critics who managed to say something sensible, the rest are mercifully forgotten, unless they are too recent-. Frankly I'm not sure if I would qualify psychological rants and marxist debates as an actual element of critic, most of the time it seems more like a search for the quintessential philosophy of writing. I'd rather have Montaigne, thanks.

Borges is nothing like that really, he has read an amazing amount of books, but he's much more pragmatic. At times his essays read as if he was writing fiction, like his analysis of Hawthorne.

Personally I enjoy the discussion that has its disagreements without it devolving into a drunken fist fight. Not that fist fights are wrong, is just that we should enjoy delving into the things we enjoy.

I don't think that literature evolves in the sense that it becomes "better", instead it just develops traits. Stream of consciousness is a modern trait that won't make any previous literary form dated. The texts that are still read and analyzed in our era are all survivors from previous generations, they are winners of the evolutionary race. An organism may have changed its traits more often than the other, but since they aren't extinct none of them is more "adapted", until they effectively disappear or dominate completely. By the same token, neither Dante nor Shakespeare nor Tolstoy are more adapted than the other, readers developed tastes that are capable of including all of them disregarding the number of centuries that has passed between all of them. Since Dante and Shakespeare are hardly in the edge of oblivion, I'd say that suggesting one "advance" overcomes the another it's iffy.

(This is also how actual biological evolution happens, and natural selection would come from the readings that are supported by future readers and academics, regarding a certain amount of esthetic rules they chose over the others)

There is my rant

I feel certain that less than half of persons teaching literature at the university level in the US can actually scan a poem. The problem with evolutionary theories of literature and Dawkins's notion of memes is that they confuse what people end up choosing with some variety of fitness. Fit to what? Fit to theory or short attention spans, apparently. Post 1950s literature is written by people in service of theory; the result of this is stuff is the impenetrability of so-called language poets, whom only academics will ever read. On the other end of the spectrum, the greatest literary events of our lifetime will probably end up involving books for children. Twilight and Harry Potter, both of them being largely read by adults.

You refer to "certain aesthetic rules," which would imply that prevailing theories vaguely concern aesthetics, when the truth is that most theories concern peripheral fields and social issues. I mean there's obviously a problem when the most sane theory (pragmatism) implies every other theory is not just wrong, but nonsensical. Once upon a time, a person putting pen to paper was fairly familiar with various precise rhetorical figurations and possessed an adequate facility with them. Now, virtually no one knows what polysyndeton or analacouthon is at all. Is literature fitter because of this?

The problem is that you enter a feedback loop based on either commercial viability or academic inscrutability, both of which work to ensure that everyone loses the capacity to distinguish any aesthetic attributes because they are irrelevant to Marxism or being a best seller. My most startling realization occurred when I joined an extra-curricular reading/study group and discovered that someone who was fairly conversant in post-colonial mumbo jumbo didn't even recognize a narrator was unreliable and liked stories simply based on whether the protagonist reminded her of herself.

If your evolutionary theory is at all reliable, literature will soon be replaced by videos of falling grandmas and hypertext novels written upside down.

[JCamilo]

Borges is an excellent critic. Quite better than Eliot, because, put frankly, Borges capacity of interpretation and to find something new on old works is much superior than the capacity of Eliot. No wonder, many of the "professional critics", carry Borges under their arm. And it is hilarious to think he is anything but very competent to talk about the romantic poets. Any know of his love towards Blake, that he was fascinated by Ode to a Nightingale (the poem that taught him what poetry is), Coleridge Kubla Khan and literary biographia, Byron poetry and, albeit this is veiled, he liked Wordsworth a lot. Only reggarding Shelley I have seen him without some enthusiams. Yet, he, as people who study french litterature deeply consider Hugo first and foremost a poet. And a great one. (Borges would deliver similar attacks on Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Shakespeare, Milton, Poe, meaning, poets he liked to read and knew well. And Borges approach is always aesthetical).

But anyways, the point is How utter ridiculous are arguments as "any critic who disagree with me does not deserve to be named a critic." It is laughable.

Wordsworth inovation is what? Writing about a cottage???? That is nice. So, when Pope wrote about hair, he must have changed all world! Modern Confessional poetry owes to him (as if he was the first who did something similar) ? But Modern Confessional poetry is hardly the most representative bulk of moderm poetry. Yeats alone (Who own much to romantics indeed) is more relevant than the moderm confessional poetry. But it says nothing to Neruda, Pessoa, Lorca, or other heavy heights of modernism which own much more to Baudelaire, Verlaine and Rimbaud? That is the best you can give about Woodsworth? Ad we are not even talking about a nobody! It should be quite easy to point really the merits of Woody man... But instead you try to "show-off" mentioning Aristoteles (of course I saw it was a pointless, I know classic theory of drama, as it said nothing to your argument at all, but you seem to really have a problem to get irony). And yet, you try harder, and the first romantics are going to be german, they are those spreading to russia, france and england itself, because this guy Schiller is the one that came up with the romantic aesthetic and it is not wonder almost all mentions him over and over. This when they are not dealing with french politics, but since this is more less aesthetic, lets put this apart, right?

Okay, before you offer more hand-waving, you need to understand that what you are doing fails to examine anything remotely aesthetic, which is the entire problem. Who read who, doesn't deal with the artifact, itself--the text. I never said "neo classicism is backwards," so stop putting words into my mouth. The word "revert" has none of the pejorative connotations of "backwards." Neo-classicism is explicitly a return to something that happened previously; that's not an insult, but a definition. To suggest something neoclassical is somehow as original as something entirely new is irrational--by definition. Your point that Spencer and Chaucer wrote before Shakespeare is moot. Are we even having the same discussion here?

I find this priceless. First, you are the english talker. You should know that backward means moving back to the past. The negative is your mind. So, you claim the neo-classic (I suppose the name gave you a clue) is a backward movement of the past, as if there is no creation on the entire movement. It is a cute old dated critic. Typical non-sense but very romantic indeed. And Coleridge and Wordsworth loved it because it was a way to release the limitations of neo-classic style on english poetry. But one step foward, and Byron would be all for neo-classicism and Keats would be praising Champman and Homer, etc.
But this would lead to two ridiculous idea, Neo-classicism was a return to the past, as If Dante or Ariosto, or Voltaire or Racine, are just copying the model and waiting Milton to free them or that Romantics are such rupture that all about them was original. (This from a guy who come quoting Ariostoteles).

The idea is ridiculous. Not only romantics have as much of the past as neo-classics, as neo-classics are as a rupture as romantics. You seem to not graps it well, it is neo-classicism that break with middle age. It is an entire new man, organizaiton, philosophy that was born. They play with the models of the past? Of course, just like any great artist, they modify those models to their needs. Just like the romantics hardly forgot the classics (enough references to them in all their poetry), didnt recovered the celtic past (albeit, it was first with Mcpherson), dealt with biblical themes (like Blake did, not to mention Swenderborg), oriental exotism (plenty of 1001 nights references), Milton and Shakespeare (albeit your early crazy contemporary line), Dante himself, and the list go on. It would be quite hard for a movement that is often looking back ot the past, to break with this past completely. Wake up, as Adorno pointed: Romanticism is just a development of the enlightment.

Listen, that model of character isn't mine, but Aristotle's, you know, the guy who started the whole aesthetic theory thing. Take it up with him. Don Quixote the character is hardly the equal of Hamlet. Quixote is hardly the equal of Anna Karenina. There's a reason the largely episodic work of Don Quixote is only praised as the quintessential novel by persons who have staked their careers on it. Moliere is mostly an historic example of Enlightenment thinking in drama, aesthetically he's just not that important. Of course, you could always demonstrate how that is wrong, rather than pretending to divine the opinions of a dead man who lived centuries before Cervantes or Moliere--if he even lived at all.

Really? Are you joking? Lets remember that Wordsworth himself placed Quixote references in his Prelude. Not of... Oh, I forgot, he is original, he didnt read as a kid.
You are really making a big effort to be clumsy? Moliere is not just historical, his aesthetic merit is widely reckonized. Because lets put simply: he was more funny than Shakespeare. (And what is the dead man thing? Are you lost?)

There's is absolutely nothing in history before Shakespeare demonstrating as robust a character as Hamlet--nothing that suggests the intricacy of intellect and humor, which is to say nothing as convincingly human. To mention the cartoon of Don Quixote, who does little more than get bopped on the head through an endless string of episodes, as approaching Hamlet's complexity is just--I don't know--unconscionable.

This is what a kid would say. Don Quixote just a dude that is bopped in the head (it is when you should say: sorry, I forgot my pantalones in the bathtub or something else, because it makes no sense) and then the funny part that people have read for 2500 years or so, but all characters looked less human to them, which imply the writers that Shakespeare copied are so clumsy that they are unable to represent humanity. Of course, this is when we laugh together. But I will be reading a book with Hamlet.

One is obviously more multi-dimensional than the other. The fact that you think the word "Divine" is any kind of stumbling block for anyone or anything, makes me think you completely misunderstand its use. Whoever smashed Dante and Shakespeare doesn't matter. Are you even slightly aware of how to judge a work aesthetically? I only ask because you haven't yet demonstrated it, and when I actually did you basically insulted Aristotle's aesthetic theory.

No, you have not showed any capacity to judge any work aesthatically, You have been shouting names. Your clumsy quoting of Aristoteles (get a clue, Aristoteles is reasonable accessible, it does not impress anyone) didnt showed anything. Even because your online description of protagonist is not relevant, can be just applied to dramas without you raising the aesthetical quality of the work, can be applied to Hamlet, albeit Shakespeare is inovative enough to break classical drama traditions. And If you think it is offensive, saying that your line applies to Hamlet (which it does), good for you. Aristoteles won't mind at all.

As your argument, it is the kind of argument kids have. "Hey, who will won, Wolverine or Batman?". Of course, if DC publiishes, Batman win, if Marvel, Wolverine steals batmobile. It is not a show of aesthetical judgment, knowledge or anything. It is fanboyism. One could point that Hamlet, outside his play, is nobody. Without Shakespeare voice, he would be mute, perhaps waiting Godot. If you to write fanfiction go ahead, but before coming with the pretencious idea of your almighty aesthetical capacity of judgment, do not build such ridiculous arguments.

I'm saying Shakespeare made Dante look dated. Despite Dante's innovation, his work seems to hew more closely to an explicitly classical tradition of epic poets, whereas Shakespeare seems thoroughly original, despite having influences. There's a reason Shakespeare's characters are used even today and Dante's are not. Dante's characters simply aren't intellectually sufficient to pass muster with a modern audience. They're about as complex as Odysseus. To rewrite a Dante type character would seem like archaism today. Hamlet is still clever as ever.

Odysseus is one of the characters of Dante, but you probally didnt paid attention did you? Again, your argumentantion seems silly. First, Dante still used to today. He is a model to Eliot, Borges and suprise... Even X-Men! So, what would happen if Hamlet meets Wolverine?
Second, both Shakespeare and Dante excells in more than just character creation, and the simple fact that you do not read latim anymore, would tell you Dante lasting influence is quite bigger than you think. The very notion of how hell or heaven is belong to the Comedy. Of course, nobody can (albeit they try) bring Dante-Virgil pair, it would look ridiculous, because it was a one shot thing. Bring simple the greatest poet ever and pretend he is our equal while you have done something equal to him yet... And Dante managed it out. And surprise, who even placed himself as Dante placed as in the narrative before? Oh, you mean, the samething Borges did in XX century with himself????

Now, I wont say you have not touched the "artifact", but this is not reading. Better read more.

I never said Vita Nuova was printed inside the Commedia. I meant that it is generally read as an introduction to Dante and Beatrice. If all Dante had written was Vita Nuova, we might not even know who he was. If all Shakespeare had written was Hamlet, we would still know him. If all he had written was King Lear, we would still know him. I daresay if all he had written was Macbeth, we would still know him. I never said I stopped at Inferno; again, stop putting words in my mouth to make yourself feel better. I said that Paradiso was an aesthetic disaster in comparison to Inferno and even explained why. In case you don't know, that's essentially what you have to when examining a particular work: pick a particular section and examine it in the particular.

But you seem unable to do it. Because you cannt even read what that particular phrase "And bad readers stop on Inferno." does not makes reference to you. If you cannt understand a simple phrase like this (do not blame my english, Bad readers is not a mispelling of stuntpickle) what good you will do analysing anything more complex like Dante, Shakespeare or Cervantes (some of commentaries suggest that no good, but I am more than willingly that you are trying to be sarcastic or just, as you said, too passsionate)?
And you know, this is another kid idea. I love Star Trek and they could defeat Star Wars. But they have Jedis. But if you remove Jedis, then Star Trek would won. Dante was already famous before the Comedy, he would be remembered, but of course, if Shakespeare had written only Pericles, who would remember him?

Satan is part of the landscape of hell, and as far as character goes, he might as well be a rock. Dante, the character, says any number of things explicitly all throughout the Commedia, which I presume you have read.

You should be carefull and read yourself. Satan is part of the scenary (Hell) or really a character? You know, if you see woods moving, it is because they are not woods. (You know, someone who know how to analyse works, do not demands to its elements to act out of the pressumed function. Is Satan ever suppose to pop out, give us a monologue and invite Dante to a drink? Or he is doing exactly the fuction pressume in Dante's work?)

And Yes, I read. And still, Dante explicitly in the Comedy is something funny, considering he explicitly said he didnt write poetry as such. You know, Dante, the one who loved medieval alegories, that wrote a treatise on the inner obscure meanings of the texts (his own texts by the way) writing things explicitly (which ,as you know since you speak english since birth, expressing without vagueness)? Another thing good when you analyse works is not claiming, I asked you where he claims explicitly he cannt describe good and this should imply that he offers us very little at the end. (The use of alegory is of course a clue, if you really want to go after aesthetics of medieval age, not Aristotele).

I think it's fairly obvious that Yahweh is the archetype for Shakspeare's Lear--a figure terrible in his power, who relinquishes his power to his children who then promptly forsake him. You say Dante had no intention of describing God, but then showing up at his house seems a little ridiculous. The equivalent is like Stoker's Dracula being invisible throughout the entire novel. Muse, muse, muse, you act like having a muse is something more than pedestrian by Dante's time. Muses were fairly stock items insofar as epic poems were concerned. There's hardly anything original in Dante having one. That's just Dante strictly writing in the epic mode. If you think Dante having a muse is some critical marvel, then you are obviously bereft of the necessary tools to aesthetically judge anything. That a muse is so central to Dante's work indicts it, rather than praises it.

The problem is quite simple, When does Yaweh is a forsaken god? Of course, Bloom nails right, the Jewish's relation with God after the jews without kingdom and he is latter without temple, the jews without kingdom and there is a short of "revision" and change of relation between jews and god. But that is Jewish text and culture and Shakespeare had considerable other sources from irish/celtic culture closer than show the same type of King (the lost, mad abandoned King) which are much closer to King Lear. Of course, they are all similar, just like Ulysses is similar to Simbad, Achilles to Sigriefid, etc. Bloom can make this reading, Shakespeare, complete out of jewish culture and their abandon didnt.

You think it is ridiculous Dante showing up to his house? So, Mister thinks one of the most praised works of all time, the trip of a man from hell to heaven, is ridiculous? Put the head to rest and think: Am I wrong or 700 years of culture that have been impacted by this ridiculous idea?

And of course, God is not visible. (Godot arrives? Moby Dick is a show off? and Ahab?) The work is not about showing God, but a little bit of knowledge of middle age aesthetic and metaphysics easily answer this one (This also answers the process that turned Jesus in a divine being).

Having a Muse is quite important, a feature of epic poetry. But the process of creation of Beatrice (which influence is notable, after all Dante is not the only one who tries to create a muse and she became the model, just like Shakespeare made models, after all many of his characters, Romeo, Juliet, Hamlet, Lear, etc are not just stock models, but already present in early works) is unique. And she does mean more than a line in the text. If you think, Beatrice equates Callyope, then sorry, you have to read more books.

I never said there wasn't a book in Hamlet. I said that saying "Hamlet reads a book before he sees a ghost" makes me think you've never read the play. It would be like me saying Dante goes to heaven before he meets Virgil. The book has nothing to do with the ghost, and you have the chronology all wrong--mistakes that seem likely only if the person making them has never read the play.

That is funny as hell. You think I never read a play because when I mention that Shakespeare didnt bothered (and I should not judge it as failure, because it is a play) to fill descriptions of scenary, etc. I mention the irrelevance of it by mentioning of his few descriptions (and obscure line, I think in second act) and you are arrogant enough to read "You diddnt read a play, because the chronology is wrong"? Dro you think I bothered with chronology? Do you think someone who have not read hamlet remembers that one of the few details described is him holding a book? Not that I quote Shakespeare back and forth, or any poem for what matters, but I find this detail funny. Make me think of Quixote, of course, the guy which your absurdly equated with 3 stooges. Get yourself a hold dude.

Don't pretend to insult my reading, especially when you can't even get Hamlet anywhere close to right.

I am not insulting your reading, but I will. Unless you quote where I claimed '"scenery is somehow an inherent property n of poetry", proving I am wrong and you actually can read.

Apparently, you have no idea what a rhetorical figuration is. I'm beginning to think, more and more, that you simply don't have the tools to critically analyse anything.

You didnt said a single word about "rhetorical figuration", You used both imagery and figuration. So, I am starting to imagine you not only have problems reading others, but yourself. You have the arrogance to repeat it over and over and give the most infantile question about God representation in Dante. Any kid now what the main aesthetic purpose of alegory is, any would know the answer quite easily. You get how lost you are?

Trying to judge a work, because in a different work, elements used with different purpose, would not fit in this specific work is not comparite literature, dude. It is fanboyism.

Let's make a aesthetical Analyse: Who would win a fight? Romeo or Harry Potter. This is the kind of "analyse" you have been suppling us. If we have hamlet written by Rowling, how well would his monologues go?

[stuntpickle]

Listen, J, the discussion is at this point ridiculous. I had to spend two or three posts explaining how you had completely misread what I meant about British imperialism with you basically repeating my own argument back to me over and over. You completely misunderstand what I said about Aristotle, as you seem to think it had something to do with Wordsworth. I never said Wordsworth was great because he wrote about a cottage, and, frankly, I just don't know if your inability to understand this has to do with your English or some other more fundamental problem. There simply isn't any point in discussing the merits of Dante or Shakespeare with someone who keeps reiterating that "Dante had the bestest muse!" or that "it's called the DIVINE Comedy for a reason!"--which has to be, by the way, the lamest defense of Dante ever. If you can't understand why saying "Hamlet reads a book before he sees a ghost" makes me think you might not have read the play, then discussing Hamlet or anything else with you will largely be fruitless. If you can't understand that saying something is "backwards" is hardly the same thing as saying something constitutes a return, then perhaps we face complications of language we cannot overcome.

Were I to properly respond to your post it would look like this:

That's not what I said.
That's not what I said.
That's not what I said.
That's not what I said.
That's not what I said.

I can't tell if you're purposely making straw man arguments or are simply incapable of deducing my meaning. In either case, I no longer care. So whatever......

Whenever you see yet another reproduction of Shakespeare or an award winning novelization of his plays, just keep telling yourself "it's called the DIVINE Comedey for a reason" and "Dante was in a comic book."

I hope it helps you sleep better.

[Arrowni]

I feel certain that less than half of persons teaching literature at the university level in the US can actually scan a poem. The problem with evolutionary theories of literature and Dawkins's notion of memes is that they confuse what people end up choosing with some variety of fitness.

Luckily we aren't teachers and we actually try to understand the facts, that's why this discussion won't hit the wall by some misunderstanding

We agree that the concept is confusing, but it's essentially true, which should be enough for us to consider it teaching it or using it as basis for a discussion. I don't know this Dawkins man, but if what I heard is correct, he doesn't even understand himself nor his theories, his personal interpretation of surviving traits seems actually distorting and juvenile.

Fit to what? Fit to theory or short attention spans, apparently. Post 1950s literature is written by people in service of theory; the result of this is stuff is the impenetrability of so-called language poets, whom only academics will ever read. On the other end of the spectrum, the greatest literary events of our lifetime will probably end up involving books for children. Twilight and Harry Potter, both of them being largely read by adults.

Yet certain ascending countries have managed to find their success among less complex audiences, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Cortazar are hardly impenetrable, some critics may even rise the question of the actual dept of their works. Literature has always been a marginal way of approaching a text, not to the point that it only exists in schools, but never it has been a truly popular phenomena. Purely distracting texts will always exists, as there will always be people who won't like true literature even if they like reading.

I'd assume that the point is specially hot if we are to discuss poetry, but it's a point that I cannot really discuss from the time being. People who actually love poetry tend to detach it from the circle of excessive analysis using social tools, they look at the language more often. That's why poets tend to be more prized for their sensibility.

You refer to "certain aesthetic rules," which would imply that prevailing theories vaguely concern aesthetics, when the truth is that most theories concern peripheral fields and social issues.

Realism and psychology work in the exact same way than most aesthetic rules do, only from beyond the text they can pretend to be any more concise or relevant than any internal analysis, this is part of what they do wrong.

The second reason would be that they use the wrong tools and the third that they use it for the wrong reasons. People want to marry critical thought with limited speech exercises such as ethnology and sociology, in critical thought is beyond such notions, and its part of what limits current critics which are very bad at text analysis. They fail at understand the most basic mechanics of speech: by making the text stir from somewhere other than itself they are limiting the text instead of making it bigger. They try to be scientific which is an entire misunderstanding of what art is about.

I don't even think such academics could deserve to be called critics, they are just theorists and teachers.

The problem is that you enter a feedback loop based on either commercial viability or academic inscrutability, both of which work to ensure that everyone loses the capacity to distinguish any aesthetic attributes because they are irrelevant to Marxism or being a best seller. My most startling realization occurred when I joined an extra-curricular reading/study group and discovered that someone who was fairly conversant in post-colonial mumbo jumbo didn't even recognize a narrator was unreliable and liked stories simply based on whether the protagonist reminded her of herself.

There is a way beyond those two mismatches, which in my opinion is self evident: actual readers. Literature is the art of reading much more than actual writing. That's exactly what I meant when I said Borges was a great reader -not the fair amount of books he read, but the conviction he had in how reading and finding new interpretations of text nourished literature, Borges metaphysical thought, if there is any, circles entirely this notion of a writer-, and it's also the lament that Derrida expressed at his death when he said about ten people could actually read him.

Being an academic doesn't make you a good reader, it doesn't translate into genuine conviction and ability to see through texts by evaluating their objective strengths. I cannot possibly think of jumping into a text from the Victorian Age and hope to absorb it entirely without trying to understand the victorian man. Post-modernists fell short because when they uncovered that past speeches weren't enough, they assumed that their new shinny tools would be enough. You just don't sit on your tools, you develop new ways of reading and revitalize old ones. A post-colonial critic that can only see through post-colonial shades didn't learn the lesson from colonialist, he's a future fatality waiting to happen.

If your evolutionary theory is at all reliable, literature will soon be replaced by videos of falling grandmas and hypertext novels written upside down.

Everything comes down to what fitness really means, the truth is that the precise definition eludes us, but the evidence that literature is still here and that people like Bolaño can still pull a decent enough book, should suffice for us to adhere to its functionality. There are not less great critics endowed with knowledge in metric only because we're going collectively stupid, is that some people who are fit to employ that skill are also busy developing other ways of reading. The proof for evolution is variety: more ways of reading, more people able to develop new ways of reading. Any limited view, academic or popular, will just be in the way of getting things right.

This is also why, despite our discussion about who is the very best poet of all time, we don't encourage people becoming Shakespeare or Dante. The lack of similarities in what we enjoy and absorb is proof that we are good enough readers to pass on that knowledge and than enjoyment to others. Literati will always be a minority, but ideally we should be several minorities.

That's why I like to see intelligent people that disagree with me.

[JCamilo]

Listen, J, the discussion is at this point ridiculous. I had to spend two or three posts explaining how you had completely misread what I meant about British imperialism with you basically repeating my own argument back to me over and over.

Everyone understood what you meant, you did not had to explain anything. What you do not understood is how Alexander pointed to you you seem to be trolling, not only because the blabla fathers, but because you had to claim something as obnoxious as the english language because of imperialism, something which, hellooooooo, everyone in this forum know. And like I pointed, your discuss lacked incoherence, why it had to mentioned if you were not worried with patriotism or anything. Nobody misunderstood you, you that has a inherent flaw on argumentation.

You completely misunderstand what I said about Aristotle, as you seem to think it had something to do with Wordsworth.

As this. Can you read?
"albeit Hamlet is a high-born person of generally good character which critical flaws lead to his downfall, your simple idea is already a laughable paradoy." That is my reply about your aristotle. How does it leads to Wordsworth? Really? And there is nothing to misinterpret, nobody needs a be a genious, bright, to read much to understand what your one line about Aristotle meant. Get over it: people do not argue with you because what you say is special, bright, or obscure.

I never said Wordsworth was great because he wrote about a cottage, and, frankly, I just don't know if your inability to understand this has to do with your English or some other more fundamental problem.

Your english is worst than mine. I do not even try, but I do know the meaning of words which you seems to have missed. You did reply when Stlukes asked about romantic beakdrown: I think the Romantics instigated an inward turn in that Wordsworth could happen upon a cottage, have little more than his thoughts and still have a poem.
And I mock again, this is the best you can come? To explain how romantics have caused such break? Some non sense about a cottage? You can do better than this, or you will ask how Hamlet would go in a Wordsworth poem?

There simply isn't any point in discussing the merits of Dante or Shakespeare with someone who keeps reiterating that "Dante had the bestest muse!" or that "it's called the DIVINE Comedy for a reason!"

Dude, I never called he had the best muse. But the process of creation of Beatrice as muse is unique, a merit reckonized by any half it that does not consider the merits of different works will resume with comical scenarios like "Can you see Hamlet in the iliad? He would own it". Sorry, but I wish you to find a single critical work whose merit is the creation of What If wacko scenarios worth of Sci-fic fan meetings to analyse the works. You are reproved, with big 0 because it is not a matter of english or not, it is matter of proposing a ridiculous argument then boasting about how others cann't analyse a work by aesthetic merits. Batman meets Hamlet. Batman punches Hamlet. Hamlet is gone.

--which has to be, by the way, the lamest defense of Dante ever. If you can't understand why saying "Hamlet reads a book before he sees a ghost" makes me think you might not have read the play, then discussing Hamlet or anything else with you will largely be fruitless.

Really? You cannt grasp simple irony and loves Hamlet. Oh, the irony.
I am not discussing who reads more or not, I would not even need to have read Hamlet, but your argument is that I could not have read hamlet? This is how he would owns Iliad???

If you can't understand that saying something is "backwards" is hardly the same thing as saying something constitutes a return, then perhaps we face complications of language we cannot overcome.

No, according the Merriam Webster dictionary for english users, one of the meanings of backwards is "b : toward the past or the part behind or past ". Of course, you have a complication with the language. You do not know it. (I do not need to explain, that past is a place we have been, so going towards the past is obviously a return.". I suggest you to learn english. It is not just reading, it is understanding. That is why you have such problem with Dante to the point to ask where is God (albeit you insist to see Satan in the hellish landscape and cannt grasp God is the Comedy's landscape, such failure of reasoning and understandment of medieval aesthetic, but to do this, you would need to leave english behind...)

Were I to properly respond to your post it would look like this:

That's not what I said.
That's not what I said.
That's not what I said.
That's not what I said.
That's not what I said.

No, lets refresh: I had to reply it because you claimed you said something, and when we looked, you didnt. Remember, Retheorical figuration.

I can't tell if you're purposely making straw man arguments or are simply incapable of deducing my meaning. In either case, I no longer care. So whatever......

Straw man argument: "Don't insult my reading capacity, I never said I stopped at Inferno" coming from "Bad readers stop at Inferno" ?
Or "You are saying descriptions are the basis of poetry" coming from "The scenary and narrative description? Of course, superior to all Shakespeare did."? Sure...

Whenever you see yet another reproduction of Shakespeare or an award winning novelization of his plays, just keep telling yourself "it's called the DIVINE Comedey for a reason" and "Dante was in a comic book."

I hope it helps you sleep better.

No, but everytime some claim a falsehood like the Comedy can not entertain a modern audience or that his characters are not re-writen, I can say: False. Even pop stuff like comic books did it. And end with such clueless absurd argument that ignores a short story like Aleph is a re-writing of The Divine Comedy. Go and read a book. (The extra irony of the Nabokov joke is that this guy claimed to have a telepatic link with Borges, so similar some of their ideas were. But I do not suppose someone who does not go beyond Harold Bloom would know it).

[B. Laumness]

Are we talking about Victor Hugo? If we are, I will admit to having read a fair portion of his work. My understanding, however, is that his fiction is better than his poetry. I haven't read that much of his poetry, as what I did read seemed not particularly special. But then again, his novels didn't greatly impress me either. I am, however, willing to revise my opinion. If you will select what you think is his best poem, I will certainly read it. To be honest, I am not impressed by comparisons to Goethe.

In the 19th century, Hugo was admired mostly for his poetry. His poetic works are less read nowadays in France, not because they are become mediocre or archaic, but because there are less and less readers for poetry, and that Hugo’s is probably too abundant, not contained in a single volume, so that the potential readers do not know where to start. Nevertheless, some of his poems are well known and taught in high school and at the university, where I never studied his novels (which are impressive, at least Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris), but always his poems. I also had a great interest in his plays, which are probably not as immortal as Shakespeare ones, but are still very good. The comparison with Goethe seems to me valid. But unless you read a poem in the original text, it is hard to fully appreciate it.

Here are two quotes about Hugo: the first is by a French critic, Claude Roy, in 1974; the second by Paul Valéry (the excerpts are translated by myself). You can read also what Baudelaire wrote in his Réflexions sur quelques-uns de mes contemporains (available in English in Baudelaire as a literary critic):

It is surprising that no critic has yet noticed what is blindingly obvious: Victor Hugo cannot be the author of Victor Hugo’s works. The scholars have already raised many other problems about the identity of the “great men”. As it is unlikely that a poor actor of Stratford-upon-Avon had about politics, history, passions, and philosophy, lights that blaze in William Shakespeare’s works, it has been irrefutably showed that those works had for authors more commendable persons: Francis Bacon, the Earl of Derby, and five or six other “pretenders”. As it was impossible that a poor shepherdess from Domrémy was in the same time a politician, a mystic, and a lord of war, it has been showed that Joan was not Joan, but an illegitimate child of the king and a princess of the blood. But we still wait for a scientific solution to the more disturbing problem of the identity of Hugo. Anyone with common sense will not believe that an ordinary man could have been what Victor Hugo was, namely the greatest poet and one of the best draftsmen of his century, a politician and a Don Juan, a philosopher and a businessman, the most important playwright and the most popular novelist amongst those who were not serial writers, an inventor of religion and the guru of his era. The most likely hypothesis is actually that the called Victor Hugo is an impostor who covered by his fake identity a literary and graphic studio made up of brilliant hoaxers; that he just signed drawings performed by Delacroix, Turner, and Corot (when he was secretly chewing hashish); that he shoulders poems that a group consisting of Lamartine, William Blake, Vigny, Byron and Baudelaire wrote during inspired evenings; that he gave his visiting card to about fifteen libertines who impersonated him in the bed and in the heart of Adèle, Juliette, Léonie Biard, Esther Grimont, Alice Ozy, Thérèse, Marie, Sarah Bernhardt, Judith Gautier, and one thousand and one unknown women; that his speeches and his political texts have been written by a committee that brought together all the representatives of the republican left; and that, at last, the body that rests at the Pantheon prolongs in the fallacious immortality of the marble an unprecedented hoax.

Never in our language the power to tell everything in exact verses was possessed and practiced at that extent. To excess, perhaps. Hugo is sort of too strong not to abuse power. He transforms anything he wants into poetry. He finds in the use of the poetic form the way to convey a strange life to every thing. There is no inanimate object for him. There is no abstraction that he cannot make speak, sing, complain, or threaten. And though, there is with him no verse that is not a verse. No mistake in the form. Indeed, with him, the form is quite masterful. The act that makes the form entirely dominates within him. That supreme form is somehow stronger than him: he is like the possessed of the poetic language. What is called Thought becomes within him, by a strange and enlightening reversal of function, the means and not the end of the expression. The development of a poem often seems the deduction of a wonderful accident of language that appeared in his mind.

It’s almost impossible to say what his best poem is. My favorite are “Clair de lune”, “Demain dès l’aube”, “Melancholia”, and many other texts of Les Contemplations. There are excellent passages in Les Châtiments, La Légende des siècles or elsewhere. Here are three famous stanzas of the long poem called “Fonction du poète”:

Peuples ! écoutez le poète !
Écoutez le rêveur sacré !
Dans votre nuit, sans lui complète,
Lui seul a le front éclairé.
Des temps futurs perçant les ombres,
Lui seul distingue en leurs flancs sombres
Le germe qui n’est pas éclos.
Homme, il est doux comme une femme.
Dieu parle à voix basse à son âme
Comme aux forêts et comme aux flots.

C’est lui qui, malgré les épines,
L’envie et la dérision,
Marche, courbé dans vos ruines,
Ramassant la tradition.
De la tradition féconde
Sort tout ce qui couvre le monde,
Tout ce que le ciel peut bénir,
Toute idée, humaine ou divine,
Qui prend le passé pour racine
A pour feuillage l’avenir.

Il rayonne ! il jette sa flamme
Sur l’éternelle vérité !
Il la fait resplendir pour l’âme
D’une merveilleuse clarté.
Il inonde de sa lumière
Ville et désert, Louvre et chaumière,
Et les plaines et les hauteurs ;
À tous d’en haut il la dévoile ;
Car la poésie est l’étoile
Qui mène à Dieu rois et pasteurs !

[stuntpickle]

Everyone understood what you meant, you did not had to explain anything. What you do not understood is how Alexander pointed to you you seem to be trolling, not only because the blabla fathers, but because you had to claim something as obnoxious as the english language because of imperialism, something which, hellooooooo, everyone in this forum know. And like I pointed, your discuss lacked incoherence, why it had to mentioned if you were not worried with patriotism or anything. Nobody misunderstood you, you that has a inherent flaw on argumentation.

Apparently you did misunderstand and still do. All you ever did was tell me I was wrong and then summarize exactly what I said as a correction. If you can't understand that, then your grasp of the language is insufficient to engage in a conversation.

And like I pointed, your discuss lacked incoherence.

Like you pointed? My discuss? Lacked incoherence? Dude, what are you even trying to say? To think later in your post you talk about irony.

As this. Can you read?
"albeit Hamlet is a high-born person of generally good character which critical flaws lead to his downfall, your simple idea is already a laughable paradoy." That is my reply about your aristotle. How does it leads to Wordsworth? Really? And there is nothing to misinterpret, nobody needs a be a genious, bright, to read much to understand what your one line about Aristotle meant. Get over it: people do not argue with you because what you say is special, bright, or obscure. "

As this? Can YOU read?

quite easy to point really the merits of Woody man... But instead you try to "show-off" mentioning Aristoteles

Those are your words, ridiculous instance of "Woody" included. Stop pretending that you don't even know what you said. If you think I tried to "show off" with Aristotle in any connection with "Woody," then you need to try again. If you think I was "showing off" at all with Aristotle, you need to try again. IF you think discussing Aristotle's ideas about antique tragic characters is somehow unrelated to discussing classical character, then you don't know what you're talking about.

Your english is worst than mine.

That's a good one. Do it again, please.

I do not even try, but I do know the meaning of words which you seems to have missed. You did reply when Stlukes asked about romantic beakdrown:

A breakdrown? I didn't even mention a breakdown? Sounds like you, again, have no clue what you're talking about.

I think the Romantics instigated an inward turn in that Wordsworth could happen upon a cottage, have little more than his thoughts and still have a poem.
And I mock again, this is the best you can come? To explain how romantics have caused such break? Some non sense about a cottage? You can do better than this, or you will ask how Hamlet would go in a Wordsworth poem?

You know, I would try to explain it with the word "introspection," but then your translator might explode.

Dude, I never called he had the best muse.

Hey J, Dante "called" and told me you were a liar.

Or the ultimate muse of all literature, a certain Beatrice? .

This equate to making the ideal of perfect muse, .

Dante do what Shakespeare never could: he creates a Muse. .

You know, I hear the reason Nabokov changed the title of his memoir from Speak, Mnemosyne to Speak, Memory was that he didn’t want to embarrass Shakespeare.

But the process of creation of Beatrice as muse is unique, a merit reckonized by any half it that does not consider the merits of different works will resume with comical scenarios like "Can you see Hamlet in the iliad? He would own it". Sorry, but I wish you to find a single critical work whose merit is the creation of What If wacko scenarios worth of Sci-fic fan meetings to analyse the works. You are reproved, with big 0 because it is not a matter of english or not, it is matter of proposing a ridiculous argument then boasting about how others cann't analyse a work by aesthetic merits. Batman meets Hamlet. Batman punches Hamlet. Hamlet is gone.

Dude, if you can’t figure out how asking you to place a character into the context of another so as to demonstrate lack of comparable complexity is, itself, a figuration, I can’t help you. Besides, if Hamlet showed up in Dante’s work it wouldn’t look like Gotham city, but rather the yellow brick road. After all, isn’t Dante off to see the wizard?

Really? You cannt grasp simple irony and loves Hamlet. Oh, the irony.
I am not discussing who reads more or not, I would not even need to have read Hamlet, but your argument is that I could not have read hamlet? This is how he would owns Iliad???

If at this point, you are still under the impression it is I who cannot grasp something, then it is a marvelous display of irony. He would owns it? But I didn’t even know it was down for sail? That Dante, I here he very high wordsmote.

No, according the Merriam Webster dictionary for english users, one of the meanings of backwards is "b : toward the past or the part behind or past ". Of course, you have a complication with the language. You do not know it. (I do not need to explain, that past is a place we have been, so going towards the past is obviously a return.".

While you’re busy clicking through Webster’s maybe you should ask your freshman comp teacher what connotation is, and maybe he’ll also explain to you how anyone who defers to a dictionary or encyclopedia as the definitive arbiter of meaning is probably a nincompoop. Let me just help out here. “Those backward hicks” is altogether different from “those reverted hicks.”

I suggest you to learn english.

Are you thoroughly positive I shouldn’t three learn it?

It is not just reading, it is understanding.

You’re absolutely right, and I have no idea how I could suggest you might have misunderstood Shakespeare.

That is why you have such problem with Dante to the point to ask where is God (albeit you insist to see Satan in the hellish landscape and cannt grasp God is the Comedy's landscape, such failure of reasoning and understandment of medieval aesthetic, but to do this, you would need to leave english behind...)

You’re right: I have zero understandment of medieval aesthetic—not to mention undersitment or overstandology. If you think Dante chose not to depict God because of aesthetics or metaphysics, you’re wrong. He simply couldn’t figure out how to rationally depict the trinity. It’s so obvious, but because Dante constitutes the inner core of your mind, you have to rattle off loads of garbled rationalization.

Oh, and by the way, earlier, when I was still trying to tolerate you, I let the whole “our modern conception of Hell owes to Dante” thing slide. But now that I don’t care, I don’t mind mentioning that Dante’s gratuitous fetishistic circles are curiously absent, as is the philosopher antechamber and the mute Satan. Your notion that our modern conception of Hell owes to that poem simply betrays the fact that you never read the poem actually responsible for our conception—you know, the one where Satan actually talks, and is, in fact, a deceiver, and crashes onto a lake of fire with his compatriots, and is actually regarded as a well fleshed out character—the one Tennyson based his Ulysses on. You know, THAT one.

No, lets refresh: I had to reply it because you claimed you said something, and when we looked, you didnt. Remember, Retheorical figuration.

The fact that you think my use of “rhetorical figuration” is somehow a conspiracy to trip you up is a tad funny—as is the fact that you think “rhetorical figuration” is somehow mutually exclusive with being an image. You know, BYU has an online resource that might help educate you in that regard—meaning Rhetoric, you know, the other thing that silly Aristotle started. What’s even funnier though is that you never really came up with anything to match the example I provided, as you were too busy trying to convince yourself that Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were somehow the equivalent of Hamlet.

Straw man argument: "Don't insult my reading capacity, I never said I stopped at Inferno" coming from "Bad readers stop at Inferno" ?
Or "You are saying descriptions are the basis of poetry" coming from "The scenary and narrative description? Of course, superior to all Shakespeare did."? Sure...

I now understand that a grasp of tone and implication are beyond your grasp, as directly stating something is difficult for you. And by the way, I never said anything about “descriptions are the basis of poetry,” but scenery (not being an inherent property), which you brought up as proof of Dante’s unlikely superiority.

No, but everytime some claim a falsehood like the Comedy can not entertain a modern audience or that his characters are not re-writen, I can say: False. Even pop stuff like comic books did it. And end with such clueless absurd argument that ignores a short story like Aleph is a re-writing of The Divine Comedy. Go and read a book. (The extra irony of the Nabokov joke is that this guy claimed to have a telepatic link with Borges, so similar some of their ideas were. But I do not suppose someone who does not go beyond Harold Bloom would know it).

Comic books are exactly where Dante’s characters belong. Dude, if you think I dislike Borges as a writer, you’re wrong. If you think Vladimir Nabokov would ever agree that Hugo was the poetic equal of the English Romantics, you’re wrong—regardless of any telepatic teletouchic links. If you are under the impression I think Harold Bloom is vastly important, you are wrong. I agree with Epstein when he says that for someone so concerned with aesthetics, all that reading hasn’t done Bloom’s writing much good.

Try getting back to me when you learn what a rhetorical figure is.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Seeing as JCamilo's third language is English, I think you should cut him some slack. If you seriously can't understand what he meant by "And like I pointed, your discuss lacked incoherence," I don't know what to say.

And, after reading this lengthy discussion, I've come to one conclusion. Stuntpickle seems to be another of those people who suffers from the "If I don't like it, it's obviously not as good as what I do like" mindset.

Also, the ellipses are just a part of StLuke's style.

[stuntpickle]

In the 19th century, Hugo was admired mostly for his poetry. His poetic works are less read nowadays in France, not because they are become mediocre or archaic, but because there are less and less readers for poetry, and that Hugo’s is probably too abundant, not contained in a single volume, so that the potential readers do not know where to start. Nevertheless, some of his poems are well known and taught in high school and at the university, where I never studied his novels (which are impressive, at least Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris), but always his poems. I also had a great interest in his plays, which are probably not as immortal as Shakespeare ones, but are still very good. The comparison with Goethe seems to me valid. But unless you read a poem in the original text, it is hard to fully appreciate it.

Here are two quotes about Hugo: the first is by a French critic, Claude Roy, in 1974; the second by Paul Valéry (the excerpts are translated by myself). You can read also what Baudelaire wrote in his Réflexions sur quelques-uns de mes contemporains (available in English in Baudelaire as a literary critic):





It’s almost impossible to say what his best poem is. My favorite are “Clair de lune”, “Demain dès l’aube”, “Melancholia”, and many other texts of Les Contemplations. There are excellent passages in Les Châtiments, La Légende des siècles or elsewhere. Here are three famous stanzas of the long poem called “Fonction du poète”:

The content of the stanzas you quoted--the sort of poetic means of achieving the divine--reminds me of a poem by an English Romantic, which I will quote for you. Tell me honestly whether you think they compare.

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Have you ever read Longinus' On the Sublime? The reason I ask is because I am reminded of his comparisons between what he thinks are overwritten, vague examples of exaggerated rhetoric and what he considers to evince more precise and convincing imagery. The whole part from "people listen to the poet" to the end seems precisely what Longinus was talking about. Can you see what I mean?

What about this:

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

I'm not simply trying to argue here; I'm interested in what you think.

[stuntpickle]

Seeing as JCamilo's third language is English, I think you should cut him some slack. If you seriously can't understand what he meant by "And like I pointed, your discuss lacked incoherence," I don't know what to say.

And, after reading this lengthy discussion, I've come to one conclusion. Stuntpickle seems to be another of those people who suffers from the "If I don't like it, it's obviously not as good as what I do like" mindset.

Look Mutatis, I appreciate your private message and popping into the middle of my discussions to declare, in mock outrage, that I apologize, but I'm quite sure you understand, like I do, that the "friendly" warning is a tool used by scoundrels the world over. So go ahead and report my post. I simply don't care. And I'll cut J some slack whenever he ends the discussion as I suggested and ceases to have the gall to tell me that "my English is 'worst' than his."

And don't get confused. Your "aw shucks" routine doesn't fool me.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Look Mutatis, I appreciate your private message and popping into the middle of my discussions to declare, in mock outrage, that I apologize, but I'm quite sure you understand, like I do, that the "friendly" warning is a tool used by scoundrels the world over. So go ahead and report my post. I simply don't care. And I'll cut J some slack whenever he ends the discussion as I suggested and ceases to have the gall to tell me that "my English is 'worst' than his."

And don't get confused. Your "aw shucks" routine doesn't fool me.

**** you too, buddy. Interpret what I say however you like, I really don't give a ****. That I put on an "aw shucks" routine is completely ludicrous, as any member who who pays attention to anything will tell you.

[stuntpickle]

**** you too, buddy. Interpret what I say however you like, I really don't give a ****. That I put on an "aw shucks" routine is completely ludicrous, as any member who who pays attention to anything will tell you.

Oh, I see I had it all wrong!

Your psyche is about an inch thick.