Pessoa is the greatest of the Modernists. Eliot and Joyce are disappointed romantics, whereas Pessoa was an actual modern with a vision entirely distinct from romanticism.
Joyce was literally a failed romantic poet in that he idolised Byron and Shelley but couldn't compete. His Dubliners and Portrait are romantic in content. Ulysses is not romantic but it is modernist in the most obnoxious sense, as a mere experiment with form/style.
Eliot's entire corpus is one, long, sustained whine at the decrepitude of modernity with a kind of nostalgia for the good old days.
What separates Pessoa from all the other moderns is that all the other moderns are bogged down in "historical consciousness", in the consciousness of what came before. Ulysses is a pastiche of all Western literature up to that point. Eliot's The Waste Land is also a literary pastiche. Pessoa does not deal with this idea of history. This is why Ricardo Reis' epigram to Alberto Caeiro's works reads:
>O rejoice, all you weeping >In History, our worst disease! >Great Pan is reborn!
Pessoa does not so much care about "modernity" as an historical period or literary movement; this is all accidental to him; he just takes man as he is, and if he happens to be modern he accepts it. It's a lot like Kafka in this sense, in the sense that Kafka uses a modern setting to tell an eternal truth about man; whereas the typical modern is always a relativist who is only ever speaking about the "modern condition" as a mere historical period. It's like the battle between Hegel and Kierkegaard; Hegel asserts the inexorable march of the historical dialectic which eats up the individual; Kierkegaard asserts the eternal validity of the individual irrespective of any historical conditions. Most moderns are historicists who see their allegiance as being primarily to their "era", to summing up their "times", to being the "voice of a generation"; Pessoa, like Kierkegaard, does not give a shit about an era, times, or a generation, he is more concerned with eternity than the times, and with the individual than the generation.
There's a part in Joyce's Ulysses where Stephen says that history is just a shout in the street; this insight is ironic and doesn't really belong to Joyce, because his whole work is obsessed with that shout in the street called history. Joyce, Eliot, and other moderns are conscious of themselves as belonging to a literary movement belonging to a historical period; whereas Pessoa is an independent literary man who just happens to borrow some of the popular literary forms in his day in order to express what concerns HIM, rather than what concerns his era or generation.
The Book of Disquiet is the greatest work of modernist literature because it captures all those feelings of modern fragmentation, ennui, etc., without being pretentious about it whatsoever. Unlike Joyce or Eliot, there is no claim to extraordinary genius, no great effort to produce a monumental masterpiece. It is completely natural and it's a pleasure to read. It seems to flow effortlessly from the man's consciousness, like Homer. Beside that, there's something that I can't articulate about his work that I think really makes it classical. Here's something from Kierkegaard:
"The reason I cannot really say that I positively enjoy nature is that I do not quite realize what it is that I enjoy. A work of art, on the other hand, I can grasp. I can - if I may put it this way - find that Archimedean point, and as soon as I have found it, everything is readily clear to me. Then I am able to pursure this one main idea and see how all the details serve to illuminate it. I see the author's whole individuality as if it were the sea, in which every single detail is reflected."
This "Archimedean point" in Pessoa's works is something like the fact that amid all the hustle and bustle of the modern world with its great ambitions and its triumph of progress and its liberation of the individual, all that it's really come to is the isolation of the individual who now instead of being subject to some tribe or religion, is lost in the sea of his own dreams. He can't find his identity because there is no more objective correlation between the inner world and the outer world, because there is no more religious or political authority imposed from above that determines who one is - everybody is left to "be themselves", and this means that everyone is free to be at once everybody and nobody.
Pessoa is one of the greatest literary writers of all time. He was a true talent with true inspiration.
Daniel Roberts
I would say William Carlos Williams is the same. What is the entry to Pessoa?
Brandon Jackson
The Book of Disquiet. You shouldn't neglect his poetry either though, he's my favourite poet. I like William Carlos Williams but I don't think he was as good as Hart Crane.
Aaron Sullivan
To dismiss Eliot you have to a address Four Quartets, not just the Wasteland.
Brandon Foster
Pessoa transcends any schools of thought or literary periods. He can just as easily be said to be (or accused of being) a post-modernist. My favorite writer by far. No book has influenced me like the Book of Disquiet.
Kayden Foster
I have a theory which places Pessoa on one extreme of a scale on which Hitler occupied the opposite extreme. Evola writes in Ride The Tiger about how damaging it is for French existentialists to denounce the "essence" of a person and suggest he is more than just himself, and even jokes that some people may begin to claim there are a multitude of selves. Pessoa takes this to an extreme and simply does away with Fernando Pessoa (TM) and creates instead his own universe of fictional characters (as many writers of course do) but then kills the author of that universe leaving only the imagined characters to exist. Pessoa is all about subjectivity, resignation, anonymity, the undermining of ideologies or enforced meaning, a sort of amorphous mental observational entity which refuses to engage with the external, real world in any meaningful sense. Adolf Hitler on the other hand, despite (I imagine) being the kind of sensitive soil (initially at least) who may have in more peaceful times enjoyed the works of Pessoa, turned both himself and Germany into an entirely external, objective, theatrical stage saturated with meaning, ideology, imposed values and so on. Adolf himself has been described by many people as being entirely conscious of the image he projected (Mein Kampf being a good example of this self-mythology) and demanding that external reality, the portion of it he governed at least (Germany) reflect his preferences and ideals. Whereas Pessoa abandoned his external world (even his photographs make it looks like he's wearing a set of joke glasses and nose) and instead expanded his internal empire, Adolf (not only via Lebensraum but also through the yearning for more power and control) can be said to have abandoned his internal empire (despite being an isolated, imaginative, eccentric artist-type as a youth - but claiming after 1919 that he "couldn't bear" to be as isolated any longer) and instead developed it externally. Pessoa developed his sensitivity until the smallest thing could bring him to tears, while Adolf can be said (whether you think he was aware of the genocide of Jews or not) to have developed his callousness until nothing could bring him to (sincere) tears. I believe it's why so many artists are discovered to have admired "fascist", or at least highly ideological and dictatorial regimes. Even Pessoa was a fan of Salazar until 1935, and Knut Hamsun and many other European writers (American ones too) were found of Adolf. It is I believe in part due to their fascination with the power of an individual who does not use his power to have es ee ecks with women or simply buy a ton of mercedes vehicles but instead forces his vision of aesthetic beauty and purity onto the external world. Adolf Hitler played a central role in choosing the swastika, choosing the Roman salute, designing the "roman eagle" standard bearaers, and then to defining what made a German, what constituted a German "tradition", what clothes its citizens wore
Levi Gomez
Good write-up, but use paragraph breaks next time
Nolan Kelly
Great post, and I agree. Hitler was just an artist, once homeless and starving, and then he let his passion flow freely... maybe the greatest artist the world has ever seen.
Jordan Miller
and of course many other aspects of German culture and society that a politician would otherwise have little interest in or desire any responsibility for. While Pessoa may claims that an artist has a duty not to know who the leader of his country is, Hitler instead demanded that everyone should know. Adolf Hitler may be thought of as an author would could not bear to immerse himself in dictating the lives of fictional individuals when the world around him was being dictated in such a reckless, ugly and unjust manner. To contrast Pessoa's approach to art, we can look at the majority of writers who are keen to establish their Self (TM) and either develop a brand (some writers always wear a scarf, or the same hat, or weather edgy leather jackets in their photoshoots) both IRL and via various social media platforms, and their writing is often highly ideological if only in the "life's really hard but actually kind of beautiful / worthwhile / hilarious too" manner. In other words they rely on fairly mundane, bourgeois axioms to construct their fictional narratives (narrative itself being a consequence of such axioms). Pessoa, at the risk of repeating myself, refuses narrative, refuses identity, refuses dialogue too for the most part. He, or rather the protagonist through which his voice is aired, exists in an internal world of private ideals and detached, highly subjective experiences. Hitler, I believe, on the other hand, provided a very appealing offer to the German people, if a quixotic one (another thing Adolf was very often accused of being); the opportunity to become a Character in a political-cultural stageshow he himself would direct with the intention of allowing everyone to play an important role and to be dressed in the finest costumes. Pessoa's character could barely manage to leave an impression on a colleague he had worked alongside for several years, while Adolf imposed himself on every single man, woman and child not only in Germany but across the world. Hitler demanded immortality, Pessoa barely acquiesced to the imposition of his morality. Both are interesting for their respective approaches to life, which are, I conclude, opposing extremes of how one may live their life.
Gavin Hughes
To summarize my point after reading your post, I could summarize my position by claiming that Pessoa is the master of repression and Adolf the master of expression.
Julian Perry
I could also, for the sake appeasing Veeky Forumss large demographic of teeny-bopper meme addicts, suggest the dichotomy of:
The Virgin Dreamer VS The Chad Dictator
Josiah Baker
And what are you the master of? Impression?
Easton Sullivan
I am the master of shitposting.
Josiah Baker
Depression then.
Jordan Stewart
Perhaps.
Brayden Morales
Have a nice life. And make sure to read "Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny" by RHS Stolfi if you haven't already.
Charles Young
>choosing the Roman salute It wasn't roman
Zachary Thomas
Overrated, Machado de Assis and Guimarães Rosa were much better. >t. Portuguese speaker
Camden Scott
your description of Eliot is unfair, anyway here's the greatest modernist.
Elijah Ramirez
Gertrude Stein is the greatest of the Modernists. Eliot and Joyce are disappointed romantics, whereas Stein was an actual modern with a vision entirely distinct from romanticism.
Joyce was literally a failed romantic poet in that he idolised Byron and Shelley but couldn't compete. His Dubliners and Portrait are romantic in content. Ulysses is not romantic but it is modernist in the most obnoxious sense, as a mere experiment with form/style.
Eliot's entire corpus is one, long, sustained whine at the decrepitude of modernity with a kind of nostalgia for the good old days.
What separates Stein from all the other moderns is that all the other moderns are bogged down in "historical consciousness", in the consciousness of what came before. Ulysses is a pastiche of all Western literature up to that point. Eliot's The Waste Land is also a literary pastiche. Stein does not deal with this idea of history. This is why Stein's Alice B. Toklas reads
>There Ain't No Answer >There Ain't Gonna Be Any Answer >There Never Has Been An Answer >There's Your Answer
Stein does not so much care about "modernity" as an historical period or literary movement; this is all accidental to her; she just takes man as he is, and if he happens to be modern she accepts it. It's a lot like Kafka in this sense, in the sense that Kafka uses a modern setting to tell an eternal truth about man; whereas the typical modern is always a relativist who is only ever speaking about the "modern condition" as a mere historical period. It's like the battle between Hegel and Kierkegaard; Hegel asserts the inexorable march of the historical dialectic which eats up the individual; Kierkegaard asserts the eternal validity of the individual irrespective of any historical conditions. Most moderns are historicists who see their allegiance as being primarily to their "era", to summing up their "times", to being the "voice of a generation"; Stein, like Kierkegaard, does not give a shit about an era, times, or a generation, he is more concerned with eternity than the times, and with the individual than the generation.
There's a part in Joyce's Ulysses where Stephen says that history is just a shout in the street; this insight is ironic and doesn't really belong to Joyce, because his whole work is obsessed with that shout in the street called history. Joyce, Eliot, and other moderns are conscious of themselves as belonging to a literary movement belonging to a historical period; whereas Stein is an independent literary woman who just happens to borrow some of the popular literary forms in her day in order to express what concerns HER, rather than what concerns his era or generation.
Alexander Gutierrez
I'm actually scared to read Stein.
Charles Howard
The Making of Americans is the greatest work of modernist literature because it captures all those feelings of modern fragmentation, ennui, etc., without being pretentious about it whatsoever. Unlike Joyce or Eliot, there is no claim to extraordinary genius, no great effort to produce a monumental masterpiece. It is completely natural and it's a pleasure to read. It seems to flow effortlessly from the man's consciousness, like Homer. Beside that, there's something that I can't articulate about her work that I think really makes it classical. Here's something from Kierkegaard:
"The reason I cannot really say that I positively enjoy nature is that I do not quite realize what it is that I enjoy. A work of art, on the other hand, I can grasp. I can - if I may put it this way - find that Archimedean point, and as soon as I have found it, everything is readily clear to me. Then I am able to pursure this one main idea and see how all the details serve to illuminate it. I see the author's whole individuality as if it were the sea, in which every single detail is reflected."
This "Archimedean point" in Stein's works is something like the fact that amid all the hustle and bustle of the modern world with its great ambitions and its triumph of progress and its liberation of the individual, all that it's really come to is the isolation of the individual who now instead of being subject to some tribe or religion, is lost in the sea of his own dreams. He can't find his identity because there is no more objective correlation between the inner world and the outer world, because there is no more religious or political authority imposed from above that determines who one is - everybody is left to "be themselves", and this means that everyone is free to be at once everybody and nobody.
Stein is one of the greatest literary writers of all time. She was a true talent with true inspiration.
Robert Foster
>There are many that I know and I know it. They are many that I know and they know it. They are all of them themselves and they repeat it and I hear it. Always I listen to it. Slowly I come to understand it. Many years I listened and did not know it. I heard it, I understood it some, I did not know I heard it. They repeat themselves now and I listen to it. Every way that they do it now I hear it. Now each time very slowly I come to understand it. Always it comes very slowly the completed understanding of it, the repeating each one does to tell it the whole history of the being in each one, always now I hear it. Always now slowly I understand it.
John Carter
Is thta some famous pasta I'm unaware of? I literally printed OPs post thinking he was serious, fuck...
Jose Morgan
TRue
Jeremiah Clark
>literally printed Wtf why would you want to do that
Jacob Diaz
I was simply making the point that 90% of his rant is addressed against Joyce and Eliot (also ignoring Four Quartets and Finnegan's Wake), and the brief remarks about Pessoa are so general and unsubstantiated that you can swap them out for any other modernist of your choosing
Landon Gomez
Post in my wall for inspo like my Veeky Forums fits
Bentley Nguyen
True, although the Nazis adopted it from Mussolini's fascists, who claimed it was Roman. It is often referred (and exists as such in the public consciousness) as the Roman salute.
Matthew Gonzalez
it was from the oath of the horatii, and became associated with the romans
Luis Peterson
i.e. it's not roman
Julian Gomez
Well done, mr autist. What do you want, a pat on the head?
Cameron Nguyen
No
But thanks :3
Sebastian Fisher
*turns head away* *brushes tear from eye*
Th-that's, that's okay. I-I didn't want to pat your head anyway, haha!
*rushes from the room*
Andrew Moore
How wasn't?
Zachary Flores
>DUDE I COULD INVENT PHILOSOPHIES LIKE KANTS I JUST CHOOSE NOT TO Pessoa was a typical spic, full of gassy bombast and melodrama.
James Nelson
Interesting thesis, user. You've at least convinced me to read Book of Disquiet. it was the Kierkegaard vs. Hegel bit that pushed me over the edge, desu
Carson Russell
Except literally no one thinks Gertrude Stein is the greatest of the modernists. And both The Wasteland and Ulysses are regarded as Eliot's and Joyce's masterpieces respectively.
Liam Morales
You convinced me to read Pessoa.
Liam Martinez
Marcel though. Marcel.
Nathaniel Rodriguez
except you're wrong.
Matthew Moore
Only Gass thinks Gertrude Stein has any merit nowadays, which makes sense since they both have written some of the most choked, turgid, and meandering prose of all time.
Andrew Diaz
you're wrong on that joyce quote - it's god, not history
Jackson Watson
LITERALLY incel Derrida
Jose Rogers
>'
Robert Price
> No book has influenced me like the Book of Disquiet.
so you're the mopey depressive downer in your limited circle of friends?
Leo Nguyen
this man knows
Caleb Thomas
AS IF DERRIDA WASNT INCELOLOLO
Bentley Morris
Do you really have to denigrate Eliot and Joyce to say that Pessoa is great? That is a sign of a weak mind.
I would say Pessoa is at the highest level of art possible but how you pathetically tried to argue that should embarrass you.
Josiah Allen
could you defend this? The Modernist period is my specialty and I cannot understand how Williams is in the same league as Crane or Eliot or Zukofsky etc.
Gavin Robinson
One doesn't have to appreciate everything, theres nothing wrong with ppinting out that Eliot and Joyce are vastly overrated.
Chase Rodriguez
except they are not you mindless ape
i bet you are either young or havent even read Eliot and Joyce
Nathan Jones
to continue, I could provide a rigorous defense against your claim, but frankly calling them vastly overrated is so stupid I'm not sure you would even understand what I would write
Ethan Perry
Except they are. WOW someone has a different opinion than you what a shocker, go back to sucking off Bloom canonslave
Gavin King
Who is over-rating them and why should I care?
Connor Rogers
The academic-media-publishing-industrial complex and their assorted array of goons and canonslaves and you should care because it's infinitely more rewarding to develop your own taste rather than parroting the opinions of whatever higher authority you're obsessed with this time.
Alexander Wright
dont bother she's nothing but aimless bourgeois rambling, an idle rich daughter who played around with form for no reason other than it suited her fancy, and her work reflected this vapidity; her prose truly is the emperor's new clothes
Daniel Miller
Have you read every poem published by the Poetry magazine from the inception to the early 1920s? Didn't think so. I have. The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock is the best one. Only Orrick Johns and John Gould Fletcher come close. I bet you haven't ever heard of those two.
I disagree with Bloom, if he is the only critic you know, on several books and I generally don't care for his reviews I agree with.
You are so stuck rebelling against critics you cannot even develop your own taste. The irony of this is truly pathetic.
Brandon Lopez
not anti-eliot guy here plz rec me your favorite issues! This year's april issue was wonderful, but the rest have been lack luster. wouldn't mind going through some of their older ones
Jose Young
Crane's The Bridge demolishes anything Eliot ever wrote, dont ever reply to me or my posts again, fuck off with your stupid ass opinions,l i want nothing to do with it.
this is the first 10 years of the magazine I like: Volume III. No. 5. February, 1914 Volume IV. No. 6. September, 1914 Volume VI. No. 3. June, 1915 Volume VI. No. 6. September, 1915 Volume XIV. No. 5. August, 1919
Highlights: John Gould Fletcher Conrad Aiken T.S. Eliot Orrick Johns
Juan Roberts
I've read everything Crane has written and I just finished a biography of him...would you like to provide a single defense of your position?
Jack Morris
Thanks, bud!
Nolan Allen
>best modernist Not much of a compliment desu.
Luke Barnes
You have provided nothing to back up your opinion except that you read poetry magazines a lot and you still think Prufrock is a good poem, you're too far gone can't be saved... and didnt i say not to respond to me again my dad works at 4channel HQ and he'll have you banned in a zip hahaha already got your ip on lock SEE Ya WOULDN'T wanna be YA
Thomas Johnson
What is my opinion? That T.S. Eliot is not vastly overrated? It seems to me that the burden of proof is on you. Frankly, I'm not looking forward to anything you have to say because I obviously know more about the era than you. If you ask nicely I will convince you of how you are wrong.
Christian Flores
modernists are rad
Angel King
Burden of proof is on no one you dumb nigger, you have provided zero analysis to back up your opinion either, the truth remains that Eliot fucking sucks and Crane and Stevens are a million times the poet he will ever be.
Henry Watson
heh, most modernism is just prententious drivel
Nicholas Cooper
i trust this guy
Parker Reyes
Very interesting user
Benjamin Miller
>printed OP >Veeky Forums fits it just keeps getting worse
Gavin Wood
>regarded >masterpieces >respectively >regarded here is a man who lacks a single opinion of his own, and simply thinks what others tell him to think
Michael Jenkins
jesus dude, turn off the autism for a hot minute
Robert Butler
Ow, my head hurts.
Colton Green
You really are an incredibly dumb macaco >t. Another Portuguese speaker
Anthony Brown
>not Döblin >not Céline
Brandon Powell
Pessoa fucking loved romantism, what are you rambling about? He translated Shelley and Keats, had complete editions of all the major english romantics in his personal library, his own poetry was heavily influenced by the romantic ideals and the aesthethics of the pre-raphaelites. Portuguese scholars even accept Pessoa & the Orpheu generation as the first clear evidence of the influence of english romantic poetry (besides Byron) on portuguese literature. I love Pessoa but he was a huge romantic lit lover, and it clearly shows on his poetry
Asher Myers
not him, but you're a dumby At least you didn't say Pound was good though
Kevin Green
A little larger than the entire universe, then Disquiet and finally Message
Jayden Garcia
>Crane >not vastly overrated by a certain group of people while thought as not quite first rate at best by literally everyone else and by a certain group of people I mean effete cretins in their twenties and one freudognostic hack
Cameron Barnes
Fuck off, reddit.
Eli Jenkins
v healthy guffaw at this
Christopher Phillips
this wasteland is for teenagers
Colton Smith
Crane and Stevens are vastly better than Pound and Eliot. Romantic modernism is superior.
Grayson Bailey
Nice try, The Bridge isn't even Crane's best poem.
Camden Price
i'll admit to being an effete duodenarian who will who will wail Bloom's passing (though not cretinous), but this argument against one's poetry based on his proponents (or even themselves) should be kept to politics and other grounded spheres. recommend me a poet with a higher density of thrusts towards the sublime, regardless of their prophetic value, and more spirit, please, i'd really like it very much
that said there are certainly poems in the bridge that i'd rather never read out loud again, but i'll rip them out of my copy, if you command (though of course not if there's a grand one on the verso)