/int/ - International

>>7076 Hölderlin is the greatest German poet who has ever lived, yes. I'm glad he's gotten some recognition in the last 100 years.

>>7068 >Btw which translation did you read? Reschke, actually. But I didn't compare to any other ones. There also seems to be this new one. https://www.penguin.de/content/edition/excerpts_extended/Leseprobe_978-3-7306-0912-5.pdf https://babelwerk.de/essay/die-unendliche-leichtigkeit-des-schwerpunkts-der-meister-margarita-und-ich/ >>7073 >I might give Bulgakov another chance with "The White Guard" Definitely do, it's an amazing novel, again basically a first hand account of the time and place, and an extremely vivid at that. In contrast with Master and Margarita, it's very realistic and dramatic. Also, try reading some of his novellas, namely Heart of a Dog and Morphine.

>>7080 >There also seems to be this new one. Ah right, I try to avoid Anaconda books though. They just shit out books for a low price without doing any meaningful quality control. >Also, try reading some of his novellas, namely Heart of a Dog and Morphine. Thanks.

>>7074 I don't really enjoy poetry, that much, but also it doesn't translate well, so I'm mostly stuck wit English and Spanish, and especially avoid any other as a I think it won't be as good as the original. Wasn't Hyperion the novel took inspiration from from Keats? >>7075 Well, I find that hard to do, the whole point of the setting is to get to the Shriek, it doesn't makes sense for them to be there without it, the stories have no ending without it and their histories all include a reference of some sort to it's nature, also the stories (except for the priest's weren't that good, the poet's is too goofy, Lamia's noir novel was ruined for me by the magical nature of the clone and the Consul's is downright nonsense

>>7073 The House of the Dead, while not directly psychological indeed, is in itself a great study of human soul reflected in the prisoners, all the more so magnified by Dostoyevskiy's immediate personal presence among them. The novel is relatively rarely talked about, which is unfortunate.

>>7082 >as a I think it won't be as good as the original. Sure, but you can still get something out of it. But poetry especially is untranslateable, you're right. Although Hölderlin's Hyperion is a novel, so you could read it in translation alright. Don't know about the influence on Keats.

>>7073 >Maybe some day I will read a full version of it, but I doubt I will do it soon, I imagine it to be pretty boring for the most part. Not in the slightest. The poetry and imagery is just otherworldly good. The issue with Paradise lost that I personally have is literally the same as the issue I have with Divine Comedy: the first halves of them, that focus on Lucifer and Hell respectively, are impeccable, interesting, engrossing and any other epithet that you can find; but the second halves very quickly lose all that glamour and glint and become ponderous, borderline boring even. It's my personal preference, and attribute this to the first halves being very clearly character-driven, while the second halves turning into some sort of a more abstract hymn or ode.

>>7084 Oh, I thought it was a poem like the Keats one. Also, maybe not "not as good" but muddied by the translator's bias Quick question, like, modern German is kind of a new language, as I understand it, some amalgamation of rather different regional dialects with the prestige one (I wanna say Prussian) taking the lead. Isn't it hard to read a 250 years old novel? I know it is kinda difficult in Spanish with 1800s novels and we mostly have always spoken the same language

>>7084 I think he means that Simmons was inspired by Keats. He mentions him a lot in his Hyperion, kinda to the point of fanboyism, lol. I didn't read Keats, but he appears to be a very inspirational for a whole layer on English writers.

>>7086 >Isn't it hard to read a 250 years old novel? No, 250 years is still pretty easy, there will be individual words that are uncommon today, but most of it is completely understandable. I think you could go back to around 1500 and still understand most of the German as a modern speaker who is halfway literate and educated.

>>7085 It's the problem with all epics. In general they're great, but there are parts that are just tedious to get through. Just think of the Iliad where Homer mentions all the ships and commanders for pages and pages without getting to an end. Milton is doing the same with the Hell commanders. >Divine Comedy I tried to read it a while ago in the translation by Falkenhausen and found it terribly hard to read, so I dropped it. Instead I got this prose translation by Hartmut Köhler now that also has extensive commentary, I think without that it's pointless to read it, because Dante makes many allusions I won't understand otherwise. Excited to read it, then I may be able to judge your criticism.

>>7087 Also, Keats has an unfinished poem called Hyperion >>7088 Thanks

>>7086 >Isn't it hard to read a 250 years old novel? You'll be bloody surprised. I thought the same before reading Don Quixote and Aristophanes. I will never be thinking so again.

>>7091 You speak 17th century Spanish and Ancient Greek? Of course, in translation everything gets understandable no matter how old it is.

>>7088 I concur. If you read Luther's original bible, you can understand more than 90%. A lot of the grammar is different from modern German, but you understand most things.

>>7089 >there are parts that are just tedious to get through I still love both Paradise Lost and Divine Comedy, and fortunately they only have these parts in the end. I can't enjoy Beowulf, however. I just can't, it doesn't flow for me. I get that it's cool, I get the significance, but it's just not doing it for me. >Just think of the Iliad where Homer mentions all the ships and commanders for pages and pages without getting to an end. I actually didn't mind that that much, heh. Iliad has this meditative pace to it, especially the German translation. >I think without that it's pointless to read it, because Dante makes many allusions I won't understand otherwise. Oh yeah. You can still read it without commentary and it will still be perfectly great as an epic, but you really need commentary to truly understand and appreciate how much does Dante go through his whole surrounding society in the Comedy.

>>7093 Here's an example, Luther bible from 1534. Still completely intelligible.

>>7094 >especially the German translation. What did you read, the GOAT Voß? Or a modern prose translation like Schadewaldt?

>>7092 >Of course, in translation everything gets understandable no matter how old it is. It's not a matter of translation, it's a matter of lexicon used. Go and try reading Kant, Hegel, or even Heidegger. Regardless of the century in question, there's easy to understand language, and then there's academic tangle, which in the case of Heidegger is at least justified by the complexity of the discussed topics, but with Kant and especially Hegel takes the form on intentionally speculative gibberish.

>>7096 Voß, of course.

>>7097 But that's a different question. Mexican Bernd initiated a conversation about the age of language and the understandability linked with it. What you're saying about Kant, Hegel etc. is a matter of complexity of language that doesn't really have anything to do with how old it is. What I meant to say with that translation statement is, that the translator has liberties, he can give the ancient original a more modern, easier to understand form. We Germans have to take Kant and Hegel as they are, because it would be ridiculous to read a translation of them, I guess for some people their complexity and confusion of language makes them particularly charming. When I studied Hegel at university the lecturer already made fun of Hegel's intentionally encoded writing style. Well, it is how it is.

>>7098 I read Voß as well, but I think the next time I read it, I will try a prose translation. Goethe already wished for a proper prose translation of Homer's works.

>>7099 >What I meant to say with that translation statement is, that the translator has liberties, he can give the ancient original a more modern, easier to understand form. I mean, it's true in the sense that one indeed can not "translate" something like Beowulf into another language without the translation ceasing to be in Old English. You are indeed factually not reading the very letters that the author himself originally wrote. But the lexicon, for the most part with some rare exceptions of wordplay or multiple meanings, is perfectly translatable word for word into the appropriate type of modern spoken or written language, colloquial and academic alike. I genuinely do not think that reading this in German is in any way simplified compared to the language used by Aristophanes in the original.

>>7100 I'm open to trying prose translation, but personally I think it's anywhere from unnecessary to damaging. It's Homer, it mustn't even be read, but instead told and with music at that, to be quite honest.

Old vs. new.... https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeit-Bibliothek_der_100_B%C3%BCcher

>>7103 >Kafka I can not stand how overrated he is. Nabokov coincidentally wrote a better Kafka novel than Kafka himself.

>>7105 Nabokov slandered my boy Dostoevsky, I'll keep my distance

>>7106 Nabokov was unfathomably pretentious, which was worsened by his insufferable attitude. But he did write some good stuff that one can enjoy without delegating any worth to him as a critic. From what I know, he was banally jealous of Fyodor Mikhailovich.

>>7110 Do you only read (fiction) literature or also philosophy/religious (non-fiction) books?

Ordered these from Berliner Zinnfiguren It's a great little shop if you're into historical books (English ones too) and miniatures and they ship worldwide

Very depressing, but great novel overall. Really enjoyed Hesse‘s lucid prose that enabled me to vividly imagine Roßhalde and the psychological situation of the various characters. Made me think about my own family a lot, how things remain unsaid and how that hurts the relationship. Man this book is really underrated.

>>7118 Religious as in stuff like Tolstoy's religious works, or Solovyov's Three Conversations. I started to develop a taste for philosophy in the recent years, but I find the obtuse academic gibberish of the likes of Hegel simply insufferable. The only readable thing from him that I've found was his Lectures on the History of Philosophy. And its factual worth is about the same as for Gibbon's Fall of the Roman Empire: purely of literary nature, with borderline zero historic value. I did greatly enjoy reading Dugin and Guenon, and Russel's A History of Western Philosophy is an interesting dive into how positivists perceive the history. Also, Russel's Marriage and Morals is an absolute must read for anyone who wants to understand the roots of the absolute shit state of the modern sexual relations. The root is there, among positivist cunts like him that were butthurt about the Victorian era puritans. Plato and Aristotle are an absolute joy to read.

>>7280 What do you think about Guenon‘s perennialism?

>>7345 In what sense? I'm not a studied philosopher, I won't be able to give you an analytical essay on it. I think that it's remarkable that already a century ago Guenon was able to decipher all the faults and sins of the Modernity so to say in the bud that were being planted for several centuries at his time, that we nowadays reap as the rancid fruits of globalism. I think that his idea of perennialism is the last saving grace of all human people on earth. This style of integral traditionalism is able to address literally every traditional culture on earth at the same time due to its ability to rally them around the idea of, if you will, denying the metalanguage of the Modernity a right to exist. He's absolutely groundbreaking, and is quintessential to the existence of modern European anti-globalism. Even if the majority of Europeans dissatisfied with the globalist milti-kulti farce have never and will never read him, in their every angried emotion about imigrants, in their every moment of realising the emptiness of the modern materialistic life, in their every day of wondering why consumerism can not replace the hollow left by the removal of the transcendent from their lives — Guenon lives.

>>7121 Medieval assburger.jpg Is it just guys from the shop posing for pics in their book?

>>7348 Thanks. Do you know this book? If not, I wholeheartedly recommend it. It convinced me of the truth of the perennial philosophy. He also quotes the likes of CooPestswamy and Guenon.

>>7357 I actually did not, thank you, will read.

>>7367 As you seem to be interested in Russian spirituality, you might also like this book. Maybe you already know it, I absolutely love it.

>>7374 This should be interesting indeed, I find the traditional folk faith much more fascinating than the religious theology.

>>7376 Well, the second part goes a bit heavy on theology, but it's still being told in the context of a casual talk between startsy and priests, so it's fine. The first part though is as good as any Tolstoy novel.

>>7377 Have you read Tolstoy's philosophical and religious works? His translation and compilation of the Four Gospels is incredible.

>>7378 No, but I ought to.

I couldn’t stop smiling while reading this and I think that’s all the praise it needs.

>>7349 No, they're members of the Kurfürstl. Sächsische Kriegsknechte, a late 1400's living history/reenactment group.

Gertrud was the last novel by Hesse that I hadn’t yet read. It’s rather similar to another early novel like Roßhalde than to his later novels. I feel his later great novels which are the most popular are always focused on one character, the protagonist, the alter ego of Hesse. Sure, in Gertrud that’s the case as well in a sense, but the psychology of other characters in addition to the protagonist is more pronounced I‘d say. Yet again it‘s the story of an artist, a composer this time, that was brought to paper. I felt that aspect came a bit too short in comparison to the psychological aspect, but still not a bad book. Not my favorite Hesse though.

>>7378 Have you ever read this book by Tolstoy‘s wife and if so, is it worth reading? It seems to have been written in response to the Kreutzersonata, but this time from the perspective of a woman.

For history oriented Bernds, I recommend City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish by Peter Parsons >Why? Because it provides an intimate look into the lives of every-day inhabitants that lived ~2000 years ago, and that is actually very unique for a period in such a distant past. Most of the stuff we know from antiquity comes from writings that were preserved during the medieval era by being copied. The actual original sources are long gone. This also means that the things that survive are mostly written by important people considered worthy enough to copy and maintain--famous classical writers like Cicero, Seneca, Xenophon, and so on. To the extent we know about lives of commoners during the era, it is mostly through the view of those writers, who would have been the elites of their time. The extremely dry climate of Egypt however allowed the preservation of massive troves of written documents, letters, scribblings, and such from ordinary people in various towns and cities adjacent to the Nile. The book collates them and provides context behind them, giving you hundreds of little snapshots from their every day lives. Personal letters to friends and family, business-related arguments, etc. It's a very fun read if a detailed look into the common life back then is of any interest to you.

>>7642 Thanks Bernd, this is extremely interesting. Reminds me of this a little: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onfim

>>7651 It's very much like that, or the famous tablet to Ea-Nasir, just on a much, much larger scale. Mundane writings and drawings of people who most likely completely forgot about them soon after they were made, unaware they had inadvertently created invaluable fragments of cultural heritage that would be put into books and museums for countless people to look upon and read about centuries later, thereby immortalizing a part of their lives by sheer luck.