>6 days
Are you ready /lit/?
>>7235531
He;s still alive????
>>7235531
>Falling for the Wolfe meme
Ayyyy
>>7235552
Its not a meme
>cover of the book depicts setting or character
>>7235435
great haram meme lol
>>7235441
Hehe there's more
ask and you shall receive
>>7235452
lmfao!!!
got any more?? preferably about jews and muslims
How did you interpret In The Penal Colony? I am perplexed
>tfw dumb
I have not gone to the effort of trying to reconcile my interpretation with academia but here goes
I got a very strong impression that the officer could be looked at as a christ like figure, obviously implying that the machine represents the crucifix. Building from this I reasoned that the text also may have been making a humorous commentary on the apparently incongruous nature of Yahweh in shifting from the old testament to the new testament and his almost bipolar shift in disposition. This is summarized by the office of Commandant. The old commandant and the new commandant are an exaggeration of the two gods; with the old commandant being a martinet and the new commandant going so far as to coddle the condemned of the penal colony, stuffing them with candy. It is almost as if the first commandant is defined by his chastisement of humanity and his reverence for ceremony and the second commandant is not only forgiving of hedonistic excess but actively encourages it. Both characterizations of God are probably going to offend but as I say, these are probably intended as humorous exaggerations. And in exaggerating the two Gods I think Kafka makes a very apposite remark on the nature of the officer. Somehow he has to redeem humanity in the name of the old god, a wanton disciplinarian. This situation as you might imagine, naturally would create some cognitive dissonance in someone charged with such a destiny. This is why he comes across as such an incongruous character himself, apologizing for minor offences while committing a monstrous ritual on a regular basis. He is not a bad natured guy but he is also not inclined to apostasy and therefore upholds the brutal system, as the patriarchal figure of the old commandant can do no wrong. He justifies the machine's efficacy in "enlightening" the condemned and treats this enlightenment as something to be envied.
>>7235481
That shit is fire
>>7235361
a lot of very small interesting things, I don't think there is a big overall theme.
As >>7235481 says, there is the religious topic, which is quite obvious with the religious epiphany that the victims of the machine experience.
The plans of the machine and the instructions of the old Commandant could refer to the Bible (similar to this >>7235481 interpretation), but also just to the power of words, that is also emphasized by the method of killing (writing the sentence on the victim). In that way you can see (as often in Kafka's work) a biographical influence, as he stated several times that he suffered a lot when writing because he felt that his writings were never as good as he wanted them to be and as he imagined them to be (a topic that is discussed in The Hunger Artist as well).
I don't remember the story too well though, else I could write more. The most interesting character for me has always been the guy who was sentenced to death and his strange behaviour towards the end of the story.
Why does /lit/ consider nonfiction, specifically philosophy nonfiction, to be "patrician?" It is not a matter of taste. It is a matter of a) did you understand what was said and b) did you agree with it or not. It has nothing to do with art.
bump .
>>7235277
>It is not a matter of taste. It is a matter of a) did you understand what was said and b) did you agree with it or not. It has nothing to do with art.
Maybe if we're talking about a list on Wikipedia, but most nonfiction is prose text composed to varying quality by researchers of varying ability.
Why do you assume your preposterous presuppositions based on observing the behaviour of an uncountable number of anonymous users posting ironically and sincerely and simply for the sake of it is worth questioning like that? /lit/ as a gestalt entity barely qualifies as a spook, it should be so obviously transparent.
The most moving or haunting passage you ever read.
All my misfortune in life—I don’t want to complain, just make a generally instructive observation—derives, one might say, from letters or from the possibility of writing letters. People have hardly ever deceived me, but letters always have, and as a matter of fact not those of other people, but my own. In my case this is a particular misfortune which I do not want to discuss further, but it is nevertheless also a general one. The easy possibility of writing letters—from a purely theoretical point of view—must have brought wrack and ruin to the souls of the world. Writing letters is actually an intercourse with ghosts and by no means just with the ghost of the addressee but also with one’s own ghost, which secretly evolves inside the letter one is writing or even in a whole series of letters, where one letter corroborates another and can refer to it as witness. How did people ever get the idea they could communicate with one another by letter! One can think about someone far away and one can hold on to someone nearby; everything else is beyond human power. Writing letters, on the other hand, means exposing oneself to the ghosts, who are greedily waiting precisely for that. Written kisses never arrive at their destination; the ghosts drink them up along the way. It is this ample nourishment which enables them to multiply so enormously. People sense this and struggle against it; in order to eliminate as much of the ghosts’ power as possible and to attain a natural intercourse, a tranquility of soul, they have invented trains, cars, aeroplanes—but nothing helps anymore: These are evidently inventions devised at the moment of crashing. The opposing side is so much calmer and stronger; after the postal system, the ghosts invented the telegraph, the telephone, the wireless. They will not starve, but we will perish."
—Kafka, Letters to Milena, September 1922
"Witches I'm spooked"
--Banquo, Macbeth 3:16 Carnage
"This is what it amounts to: on the one hand, he constantly hopes for something he should be remembering, his hope is constantly disappointed, but on its being disappointed he discovers that the reason is not that the goal has been moved further on but that he has gone past it, that it has already been experienced, or is supposed to have been, and has thus passed over into memory. On the other hand, he constantly remembers something he should be hoping for; for in thought the future is something he has already taken up, he has experienced it in thought, and that which he has experienced is something he remembers instead of hopes for. Consequently what he hopes for lies behind him, and what he remembers lies before him. His life is not backwards but back-to-front in two directions. He will soon notice his misfortune even if he does not grasp what it really consists in. But to make sure that he really gets the chance to feel it, that misunderstanding comes along which every moment in a remarkable way casts ridicule. He enjoys, for everyday purposes, the reputation of being in his right mind, yet he knows that were he to explain to a single person just how things were with him, he would be declared mad. This itself is enough to drive a person mad, yet he does not become so, and that is precisely his misfortune. His misfortune is that he has come to the world too soon and is therefore constantly arriving too late. He is forever quite close to the goal and the same moment at a distance from it; he now discovers that what it is that makes him unhappy, because now he has it, or because he is this way, is precisely what a few years ago would have made him happy if he had had it then, whereas then he was unhappy because he did not have it."
1/4
How does a Jew
in the modern era
reconcile the fact
that the Yiddish
language is essentially
German written in
the Hebrew alphabet?
Gezeine Gezint,
Annie F.
>>7235179
Have you considered just being a white atheist like everyone else instead of trying to be a super special breed of German?
by reminding themselves that nobody has cared about yiddish literature since the wrong singer brother won the nobel prize
>>7235179
Just make peace with the fact that Yiddish only exists because rich Jewish people donate money to universities to teach it so that young Jewish people will meet in Yiddish class and have Jewish babies.
The entire language has become a tool of eugenics. Think about that.
I'm about a 100 pages into this and it's pretty crazy. It doesn't seem like a story one can follow too closely. I've just been kind of going along with it. It's also one of the few books that's made me laugh out loud. What does /lit/ think?
>>7235169
Very good, but I didn't end up finishing it because I would read it stoned and restart over and over again. I need to try again now that I don't smoke.
>>7235172
This book is like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Infinite Jest combined.
>>7235169
>!
fucking dropped
Where could I find the best translation for the Romance of Three Kingdoms?
China
>>7235113
Everywhere but China.
What is the ECW of literature?
Trashy literature with a strong liking for violence and strong fanbase? Max Stirner?
Plato's dialogues and Republic
Basic writings of nietzsche
Is Lermontov's "A Hero of Our Time" the greatest Russian novel?
More focused than Dostoyevskii, funnier than Tolstoy, cleverer than anything Pushkin wrote. A masterpiece that so many readers "familiar" with Russian lit have no idea about.
>>7234950
It's literally read in school here and everyone knows about it.
I love it, but Dostoevsky is in a league of his own.
>>7235055
In Russia, yeah. I was talking more about Western readers
>>7234950
It's like Great Gatsby. Meritable, filled with prose gems, a good novel regardless of whether you have found its acclaim overbearing, a fine novel, but not great, not especially sophisticated.
I can't write anymore. In the morning I'm in uni, in the afternoon I must study, in the evening I have to do things that don't need my brain like browsing 4chan.
I'm just working on a poem during the weekends. My novel deserves more attention, but I write well only when I don't have anything else to do. I need time and patience.
I must become rich with some years of very good work and then I'll go far away from the city and its madness.
Why is it so difficult to write during daily routine?
Also, general writer's problems thread.
bump as someone who is having trouble just getting started.
>>7234918
fucking anime-faggot, die
>>7236260
No, you die
I'm getting a bunch of books in the next few days. Any suggestions?
Infinte jets
I'm Watermelon Sugar
>>7234865
Crime and Punishment
What do you make of Paglia?
Stupid opinions on pop culture
A slightly more sane representation of feminism, but that's not saying alot.
She's got some pretty redpilled views. Her interview with reason.tv is charming
My first short story.
http://www.docdroid.net/toiyu8Z/jesuschristinspace.pdf.html
>JESUS CHRIST IN SPACE
MY SIDES.
>>7234492
>what if I was more powerful than Jesus Christ herself
Further proof of transexuals' inherent narcissism
Oh là là! What does /lit/ think of this genius?
>>7234354
Hipster before it was cool.
would fuck boipussi
he was insane, all his poems are satire written by his sister
![1marilyn[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/J0YBZO7.jpg "1marilyn[1]")
