/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.23363249]

The only readon you think Homer's Iliad is a masterpiece is because of social pressure. You fo not have any more or less taste for pretending to like a 2000+ year old piece of fiction which is very much of its time and not "timeless" or whatever pseudocompliment you can think of. Hell, you cannot even properly relate to any of these cartoonish characters as you have never experienced bronze age combat (doubt even Homer did). You probably don't even understand it in the way that Homer and his more than dead culture intended it to be understood.

[Anonymous No.23363258]

>>23363249
I only know so much of it for classical history studies. Quotes from it abound in ancient works and on fucking tombstones. Baffles me why /lit/ is so into it desu

[Anonymous No.23363278]

>Try to breathe artificially or carry out consciously one of those many actions that are done naturally—you will not succeed, or only with difficulty and not so well. In the same way too much art harms us, and what Homer naturally said so well, we are able consciously and with infinite artifice to say only moderately well, and in such a way that the effort is almost always more or less apparent.
>We no longer have the simplicity of the Greeks and Romans or the writers of the 14th and 16th centuries, because we have passed through the time of corruption and have become cunning in our art.
>These are by those writers who remain untouched by corruption, cannot be admired by many, etc.

[Anonymous No.23363282]

>>23363258
>Baffles me why /lit/ is so into it desu
/lit/ is naturally a conformist board and seeks to look smart and cultured in the eyes of the paragons of the culture they claim to hate, regardless of political views. They, like many others, also erroneously think that they have any relation or connection to the old, dead traditions

[Anonymous No.23363290]

>>23363278
What corruption? How fo you know these works are as simplistic as you describe and the finer details are simply lost on you because you, of course, do not belong to Homer's culture, much less have anything in common with him?

[Anonymous No.23363301]

>>23363249
Homer’s knowledge or lack of knowledge of combat isn’t why people appreciate the Iliad. Read Plato’s Ion though it likely will also be wasted on you.

[Anonymous No.23363309]

>>23363290
>And we have a great deal more judgment and art than the ancients, who made endless mistakes (without recognizing them) that would not be made today by a schoolboy. Homer’s flaws, Petrarch’s conceits, Dante’s failures of taste, the seventeenth century flourishes of Ariosto, of Tasso, of Caro’s translation of the Aeneid,1 etc. And so our great works of today (very few because we are still in the midst of corruption from which very few writers stand out) will all be flawless, perfect, but in the end no longer original: we won’t have any more Homers, Dantes, Ariostos
>The arts among the Greeks and Romans, once corrupted, never recovered, now they are rising again among us
> And now anybody, even with the most basic schooling, can see at first sight that those are errors and that the ancients erred. For example, who cannot now see how ridiculous and affected Olympia’s lament, etc., is in Ariosto, and Erminia’s, etc., in Tasso? And yet these great poets fell into such errors in good faith because their art was young and inexperienced, while we, because we are old in the art with the experience and judgment of these corrupt times, laugh at them and shun them. But this judgment and this experience is the death of poetry

[Anonymous No.23363318]

>>23363301
I did not imply that that was the reason they read him. I implied that people don't actually read him for any real reason at all outside of mindless social habit. But are you implying that people read Homer because they want to see whether he has any knowledge at all being a poet?

[Anonymous No.23363328]

>>23363309
>we read them because they are bad
Mind you, I never said he was even bad. I'm talking about the people who read Homer

[Anonymous No.23363366]

>>23363249
i never understood the saying "ahead of its time"
like moby dick and brothers karamazov are "ahead of their time" how when literature keeps getting worse and worse?

[Anonymous No.23363374]

Guys, what's your favorite ancient play? I really like Amphitryon, myself.

[Anonymous No.23363421]

I prefer the Odyssey. The Iliad has too many filler battles, but it's a great story. You're a huge pleb if you don't appreciate it.

[Anonymous No.23363496]

>>23363249
I agree frog, The Odyssey is better.

[Anonymous No.23363516]

>>23363249
Maybe you have read a bad translation?
Read it in a good translation in the way you read epic poems and it is very good.