What is the absolute peak of literature? Something like the Sistine Chapel equivalent of literature...

What is the absolute peak of literature? Something like the Sistine Chapel equivalent of literature. Can anything in literature even match the pure sublimity found in the best of fine art and music? Can it top or match the beauty of a Beethoven symphony, or a painting by Van Gogh? So far, I haven't been able to find this book, and I'm starting to get disillusioned with literature. So show me what you got, Veeky Forums.

Other urls found in this thread:

theguardian.com/world/2002/may/08/humanities.books
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

Sistine Chapel is ugly, especially the Last Judgment.
I mean, I appreciate the technical skill- one half of art- that went into it, but a bunch of flatly-painted, over-muscled naked men and bulldykes isn't the peak of beauty by any means.

you're fucking ugly

I'm prettier than that sodomite's insult to Mary.

Ecclesiastes
non-religious btw
or pic-related
ehhhhhhhh, no

Sisten Chapel sucks

But I get what you're getting at, and it's War and Peace. Or possibly On Women

>middlemarch

what specifically makes this book special?

Divine Comedy
Paradise Lost
Ulysses

Its dedication to empathizing with every character in a meaningful way, while keeping the overall narrative of sweeping change intact. Her clear love of people shines through unambiguously, especially when she interacts with the 'villains' in the text.
It wouldn't be some impressive if there weren't so many characters that are so deeply intertwined.

>Sisten Chapel sucks
go fuck yourself you contrarian faggot

kill youre selfes

The Divine Comedy desu.

why is human interaction the nadir of literature? does she incorporate more than that?

Dante. Jesus Christ, the Comedy is incredible. if you've read it and haven't fallen in love, read Charles Williams' The Figure of Beatrice.

Sistine?

Oh, dear. I always thought it was Sixteen.

The individual parts of the Sistine Chapel are nice but the whole thing is kind of a clusterfuck. What book is like this?

War & Peace

My diary, desu.

>Sistine Chapel
>peak of visual art
>Van Gogh
>comparable to Michelangelo
>(You)
>not a pseud

Van Gogh is easily comparable you 'aesthete'

Finnegans Wake

St. Thomas' Summa

>Can it top or match the beauty of a Beethoven symphony, or a painting by Van Gogh
Got any specifics mister peak of art?

Yeah no

>nadir
That word etc.

That said, music and (for some people) the visual arts are indeed more "direct," perhaps, than literature. And of course like anything it deals in large part with what moves you personally. Still, for a shorter work, perhaps I could recommend Wordsworth's Great Ode, or Yeats's Lapis Lazuli, or something like that. For a longer work, as people have said, Shakepeare's best, the Commedia, Paradife Loft, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, Don Quijote, are all just as great and (for me personally) greater than the Sistine Chapel, and greater even than Beethoven's 9th or the Diabelli Variations. But of course there's a great difference in effect between a work that can be read in 15 minutes and a work that requires many hours to read through and thoroughly comprehend. And the grandest works are not always long.

...

Don Quijote is the peak of literature.

says who

I says

i agree with

t. fat ass gmo eating cunt who doesn't create but just whines

>Murrican education

I don't think il sodomo worked on the ceiling

The complete works of Shakespeare. I know this is a pleb opinion. But it's also right.

>michelangelo detected
you guys are all plebs, Sistine chapel is nowhere near the prettiest church in Rome, let alone the world. its only famous because of the paintings

Homer
Divine Comedy
Shakespeare
Don Quijote
Goethe's Faust
Moby Dick
Dostoyevsky
Tolstoy
Ulysses
In Search of Lost Time

The sublimity of literature comes from elements very different from music and visual arts so, in practice, comparing them is impossible. Maybe you're just looking for the wrong thing in books.

theguardian.com/world/2002/may/08/humanities.books

what should I be looking for, then?

+rabelais
+virgil
-dosto
+petrarch
+ovid

>Baroque

You know what you're talking about, but please calm down with the retarded memes.

I don't know, I don't know how you read now anyway. I've been reading intensely for the last three years and I'm still not 100% sure what I'm supposed to look for. I just try to follow each aspect (characters, philosophy, prose etc) to the best of my ability. And I'm greatly enjoying some difficult yet highly regarded books, so I guess I'm doing something right.

It's essentially practice, I think, and trust in the canon. If you think a canon novel like Moby Dick is just boring and unenjoyable you're not reading well enough.