Why does IQfy hate masculine noble literature and prefers 20th century gay novelists instead ? Stendhal isn't very popular in the UK/US but is a refuge for any 120 IQ+ young man who loves novels that aren't about triviality. My favorite is Lucien Leuwen.
Did this guy ever finish a novel? Seems like everything I look at is unfinished.
He finished "The Red and the Black", so yes.
I prefer Dostoevsky. His protagonists tend to realize the futility of materialistic pursuit.
Dostoevsky is shilled to death on IQfy and his characters are all hysterical and insane. Stendhal is more realistic. I still agree that Dostoevsky is a better writer at the end of the day.
It's relevant to cite Dostoevsky and Tolstoy when talking about Stendhal because he is a novelist of the same nature. He's what I call a philosophy-adjacent novellist. His books really are at an intersection between literature, philosophy and psychology. The reverse would be Nietzsche who is a literary-adjancent philosopher. It's not a coincidence if Nietzsche said Dostoevsky was his greatest literary discover since Stendhal. There really is a deep connection between the works of these three and they were at the forefront of the political thinking of their time : French, German and Russian.
Aren't his beliefs the opposite of those of Tolstoy and Dosto? He was an Atheist Jacobin, wasn't he?
I'm not saying they agreed or had similar idelologies. They were just of the same kind.
>literal neckbeard lol
He looks like his books and that's a good thing.
Stendhal and Balzac seem underrated on here.
I love Stendhal. I need to get my hands in a copy of the Charterhouse of Parma. When I read The Red and the Black it was a fun book, and didn't think much about it but it has had an impressive permanence in my head. Little acts I see irl constantly remind of parts of the book, Tolstoy had a similar effect on me.
I don’t. I prefer 19th century literature to later and I prefer 18th century literature to that, and pre-modern literature to that. I see the peak of Western literature as no later than the 18th century. I just don’t see the peak as any further back than Dante.
Top ten 18th century novels, GO!
Something about wearing wigs and aristocrats fricking behind a bush in a garden
I recently read The Red and the Black and loved it. I want to read that Parma book but I want to give it some time.
This board never had much love for romanticism. I suppose that's because it's thought of as too basic? Both ancient and modernist literature have a higher prestige around here. Plus with Stendhal in particular he's kind of a blinkered libtard so that's obviously not going to help his case.
Plus the world of two hundred years ago is in that awkward space where it is too early to concern itself with true modernity and topics that are still floating around in the contemporary zeitgeist, but too late to really act as a door to a distant, bygone era. It is too old to be modern and too new to be ancient.
This is true. I understand that world almost completely and… it is just not very interesting. It has none of the exotic comfy world-spanning appeal of the ancients like Plato, Aristophanes, Dante if he can be considered such, and none of the dynamism and headswirling novelty of moderns like Joyce or Melville.
No shit.
That's why it's the best period. It's the peak of human civilization because they had to build modernity from scratch. I prefer to spend my time reading about how France went from revolution to revolution for a 100 years to build its modern republic than obsess over it's decadence and post modern degeneracy in the 20th century. The same happened in England but there wasn't the same effort to ducument it in literature like there was in France. The 19th century isn't as exciting style wise, but it's an inspiration. The same could be said about the classical music of the 19th century by the way. It's the classic era of modernity.
>>That's why it's the best period. It's the peak of human civilization because they had to build modernity from scratch. I prefer to spend my time reading about how France went from revolution to revolution for a 100 years to build its modern republic than obsess over it's decadence and post modern degeneracy in the 20th century.
Yeah but why? this specific era has ended completely and it's just outdated.
I think you have to be born into the naivety of the post-Napoleon, pre-Hitler era in order to be into romanticism. We are simply not romantic enough. We are practical realists, and appropriately depressed…or nihilistic.
>we
Speak for yourself.
"We" aren't, but you can still enjoy romantic art from an aesthetic perspective. The world is ugly, yet more traditional romantic music is immensely more popular than stuff like Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg.
But romanticism was born in an europe that just emerged from the napoleonic wars which killed millions for nothing. Napoleonic europe was as close as pre-WW1 europe got to being a devastated wasteland of a continent since the fall of rome, it wasn't this lost arcadian paradise where hardship did not exist and the muses whispered songs into everyone's ears who were willing to listen.
>Stendhal isn't very popular in the UK/US
Is any French writer popular in the anglosphere?
I can only think of Camus
Victor Hugo, Marcel Proust, Houellebecq
One of those is only popular in phd level university courses and even then his work is excerpts, One of those is known for a musical movie which heavily bastardizes and condenses the source material, and the last one is only known by incels.
Similarly we could say a lot of "classics" aren't read in France at all : Vriginia Wolfe, Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, basically all the useless women novelists.
I've been working on my French and recently shifted the focus in my novel reading to French language novels. I've been eyeing Stendhal, so I suppose I'll put The Red and Black down for one of my next reads.
Get ready to use the dictionary a lot.
Proust is only phd level ? I read that shit entirely when I was 18. Im a french native though. What would be an anglo equivalent of Proust in terms of "reader's achievement" ?
>inb4 not Ulysses and not Tolkien
Charterhouse of Parma is (marginally) better.