What is the greatest work of literature you have ever read?

Madame Bovary

Chuck Tingle's works, check em out
here is his site with like most of his books

chucktingle.com/ebook.html

My Immortal, unironically.

Moby D

In search of lost time
The Scarlet Letter

This

np

explain to me why did the church dudes in 16th century, or w/e when it was when they axed half of it, leave all that nonsense in about what to wear and what jew was whos father? I liked all the mythical stuff btw, very timeless

You mean when they removed 7 books? That's still in Catholic Bibles.

ok but why is that dumb shit still there? the metaphors are really good but then you run into some shit about getting stoned for wearing cotton with wool and I'm trying my best to find a deeper meaning to it, but bleh

How's it dumb? That's entertaining to me. You think books should just be about a girl looking in the lab looking at water under a telescope who grabs her nuts all day drinking coffee and anephetamines

Can someone explain why Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is a meme around here? It's one of the books I want to read to get into Veeky Forums

Also, sorry for bumping this thread with a post that has nothing to do with the discussion

lmao how is that entertaining? at times it's like an ancient semite phone book

Yeah I bet you think in search of missing time by gay jewish man who is Marcel Proust was a boring book as well because well guess you're a brainless who can't read a phonebook? I'm not saying you're brainless just asking because I'm not ad jomineming you because my arguments are at the top tier like Shinichi in Liar Game, biatch.

no need to get all pissy if I don't fall to my knees and confess my love to your special book's time wasting yellow-pages parts, why don't you make like a jew and turn the other cheek huh?

I'll worship my kike on a stick now. Thank you. BTW, Shakespeare was Catholic ;). Let that one sink in. Proust was a fag. And he was French, so he was also a homosexual. Not that there's anything wrong with homosexuals. But he was also a Catholic Jew, and an atheist. Let it sink in. Catholic Jews can be atheist. Jesus was a Jew... Hmm... Which means even if you're an atheist or Jewish then Catholicism will make you a great literary figure. Since you're on a literature board maybe you should lick my feet.

The Library of Babel

cool it with the passive agressiveness, why do you get so mad if someone doesn't like reading a through a list of names and the names of their donkeys had? it'd be a better book without it

In Search of Lost Time
Ulysses

King Lear
The Bible
The Story of the Stone
In Search of Lost Time
The Divine Comedy
The Homeric epics
Ulysses

The Adventures of Kavilier and Clay. It was really fun, though the beginning was a little confusing.

Hamlet is the objectively correct answer.

Either Moby-Dick, the Divine Comedy, the Book of the New Sun, or Faust.

With historical context? Probably The Brothers Karamazov
Purely based on quality? The Book of the New Sun

The Old Man and The Sea.

Montaigne's Essays, Shakespeare's Plays, Goethe's 2-part Poem and Travelogue (to Italy), Cervantes' Novel, the poems of Whitman and (perhaps the lone surprise?) Paz.
This doesn't even begin to exhaust 'literature' however.

Recommend any readings before Gilgamesh or should I just dive right in?

bc they're pretentious and have to hate what's beloved by edgemasters.
it's the weird christian kick.
suck augstine's dick off but can't stand something decent.

This and Faust, probably cant take their respective languages farther lyrically than those two did. absolutly must read both in their original language or your not getting anything out of it.

Don Quixote followed by the Bible

Are you arguing with yourself? Stop being asses take that shit to /b/

...

Lear > Hamlet

Ok Genesis and Exodus - not the rest of the Jewy covenant shite and definitely not the new testament. Obviously King James. The KJV will make you believe in God. You realise what divinely inspired means.

Medieval - Dante, Shakespeare.

Modern - Dickens best novels are the archetype for modern narrative, so possibly something NN.

Joyce for Dubliners and the 10% of Ulysses thats readable.

Then the canonical Sci Fi for its illustration of the ambition of contemporary novels when done well. Too many better written contemp lit fiction is so banal and solipsitic and genre is the antidote to that

Wow you sound fun at parties

the Zhuangzi

It's not the objectively correct answer, it's just what the most literary critics can agree on.

Just read the Illiad and picked up Gilgamesh and Beowulf a few days ago. And WCW is my favorite poet. Gonna save the rest of your list. TY

Cool, Pink Locust is my favorite poem by WCW.

HD is a much colder, more classicist approach to imagism, but I think her technique offers some astounding moments that are more emotional than just about anyone I've read. I think you'll like her if you like both Eliot and him.

>Shakespeare
>Medieval
Oops.

Zero Escape series.

Definitely The Iliad

War & War or The Remains of the Day

Moby-Dick

>the 10% of Ulysses thats readable
Silly goose if you can reader letters then all of Ulysses is readable. Unlike Xiansheng Pound, there's not even any Chinese characters in it!

How is it that Pound's only written one good work (which is 2 lines long) and is canonized?

Guys, I want to get into reading, but I've become very sad upon realizing that so many of the greatest writers in the world are from non-English backgrounds and therefore wrote in their native language, and I hate knowing that I won't be able to fully appreciate most of the works that I read, especially for those which feature "aesthetic" writing (and not merely functional, like a straightforward philosophical text for example) like poetry or elegant fiction, due to the imperfect convertibility of language. I want to read The Iliad/Odyssey, Dante's Inferno, and so many more books, but it sucks so much knowing that I'd have to learn Greek, Italian, etc. in order to fully appreciate and understand these books. How do you guys deal with this?

I'm a filmfag, film is my main art, and while the translation issue is still somewhat present (the subtitles do not perfectly capture what the characters are actually saying), the visuals, sound, sets, etc make up for this and allow the film's essence to be perceivable by virtually anyone of any background. Literature is not like this, it is exclusively writing, and this makes it much less universally comprehensible when foreign works are in the question.

Do you guys agree with me here? How do you deal with it? Am I just overthinking it? Is there nothing wrong with reading everything in English, given that it's impractical/impossible to learn all the languages needed to absorb all the classic literature out there?

My diary desu?

You need to understand that the revered translators understand your concerns and have addressed them to the point of a non-issue in most longer texts. (short lyrical poems may be a different issue).

Is there a Veeky Forums chart you could give me that contains the universally-agreed upon "best" translations for all the major literary works? Do I simply look up "best translation" for any non-English book I ever want to read, and then see who seems to be considered the most respected translation, and then read that?
Is that what you do? Thanks for the response btw.

...

looking at translators that are celebrated by the native country of the work is my current thing.

look at how much Mandelbaum's dick has been sucked by Italy

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Mandelbaum

I figure the Italians know what they're talking about

Der Tod in Venedig or Buddenbrooks

smart idea dude, i'll try this. thanks

King Henry IV part 1
Marx's theory on Alienation
The Ego and his own
Paradise Lost
Dracula
Macbeth
King Richard the III
American Psycho

Hamlet
Don Quixote
Faust
Paradise Lost
Madame Bovary
The Red and the Black
Darconville's Cat
JR
Mason & Dixon

If I had to pick one, I'd go with Don Quixote (yes, over Hamlet, Faust, and Paradise Lost, which would probably be part of the Top 4 in that order)

The genealogies trace the lineage of Jesus Christ. The point is the these books spread out over thousands of years lead to the same thing.

Some authors retain most of their original quality in translation (like Proust), some lose most of what's essential (like Céline). Overall you'll be fine with translations, except if you focus exclusively on poetry where translations are more often than not underwhelming.

With translations, my experience is generally the following:

>older = better

Bible

truly the best

Herzog

Journey to the West

1,2,3,4,5,6

Eragon by Christopher Paolini.

It was so great that I've only managed half the first chapter, and that is after two attempts to digest it.
Since I'm curious to study the people that give it raving reviews on the Internet, I really wish I could finish it.
In the end I'm afraid this book might be too great for me.

Ramadan Mubarak

... I really... Really like house of leaves. I haven't been on this board long, but I get the feeling that's a bad thing...

>Darconville's Cat
Have you really read it? I've tried to shill it on here recently

A translation can be good or bad. A very few translations by real enthusiasts are sometimes considered better than the original.

Compare translations to how an editor sometimes rewrites huge parts of an authors work to make it readable. (Raymond Carver in his original form was unbearable so his editor almost rewrote every sentence from scratch.)

In general, people who work with TV and film are deemed less capable than those who translate books. (At least that's what people who translate books tells me.)

The quality of translation for a film also suffers from the fact you can't take the same liberties as when you're translating a book. You need to match tempo and the visual queues.
The deadline for working on a film is usually tighter than a book, and with only audio to work with. It can explain those moments when a translator interprets "Beam me up Scotty" as "Beat me up Scotty" (it has happened at least once).

Yeah, about two months ago. Tried to make some threads talking about it, got no responses, lol. Fucking great book, man, more than worth of the novels I put there after and including Madame Bovary. Maybe not the level of the first 4 though, but still one of the best modern novels (after 1800s) I've ever read

>I'm p big into modernist poetry like WCW

The smashing of folding chairs against skulls forming a staccato punctuation to the natural rhythm of grunting and spandex rubbing against sweaty skin

What a shame that so few of our fellows can relish the sublime splendor of modern wrestling

>I'm trying my best to find a deeper meaning to it, but bleh
that only means you are dumb

>I'm trying my best to find a deeper meaning to it, but bleh
that only means you are dumb lol

Read Meditations then read Beyond Good and Evil.
You're welcome.

...

Meg and Mog.

My nigga

Either Life a user's manual or Invisible Cities. I've read Cities a few times now, but Life only once, I'll know better after a re-read.

>enter the thread intending to say book of the new sun
>its already been said
>twice
darn, no choice but to change my mind

No Longer Human then, although fuck the English translation

Crime and Punishment

Please don't bully.

I remember picking this book up a long while ago from the library. I must've been like 12 at the time. I got so scared by it for some reason that I has to return it before finishing it.
I've never met another person who has ever spoken about it.

book of the new sun blows mule cock.

nah user, that's a pretty good pick for a literary favorite.

t. Brainlet

Read meditations, and really derive as much pleasure as you can out of it. Think about how it has all the answers to every possible problem, and how beautiful each thought it.

Then let Nietzsche fuck it all up and ruin your newfound happiness.

The two compliment each other perfectly. They're both super fun to read.

>some lose most of what's essential (like Céline)
What's essential on Céline that gets lost in translation? I've been meaning to read him.

How the fuck did you actually enjoy Gilgamesh?

Maybe I used a shit translation, but it was just uninteresting. It's not like the symbolism was lost on me either.

Celine's writing is very much colloquial, vulgar french. A lot of its force and dirtiness is dried up and blanched by its translation into English, or its made slapstick.

What is the timeline of the apocrypha in conjunction with the the rest of the bible? I would like to know, as I would like to read the bible in linear order.

What is the timeline of the apocrypha in conjunction with the the rest of the bible? I would like to know, as I would like to read the bible in linear order.

Between Walls is one of my favorites, though I'm not sure why.

I'm definitely interested as I do like both WCW and Eliot, excited to try her.