/pt/ – Petrarchan

This is a rather rich list, are you reading these all in the original language as depicted in the topster?

currently im reading Perfume by Suskind. apparently this was Kurt cobains favorite book. no spoilers

>>13189

currently im reading Perfume by Suskind. apparently this was Kurt cobains favorite book. no spoilers

They all die at the end

Oh, I created this thread by mistake. I was going to add a brief observation about the "flavour" shared by some of my favourite works (An evening with Claire, La porte étroite, Adolphe, etc.), but I changed my mind. >>13183

This is a rather rich list, are you reading these all in the original language as depicted in the topster?

I only read Spanish, English, French and (with great difficulty) Italian. I read Handke in translation. As for the list, I had to make a considerable effort not to add more titles by Papini, or an excessive number of Argentine authors (although Gálvez and Cambaceres are the only ones who do not enjoy significant popularity in the Spanish-speaking world).

>>13196

Oh, I created this thread by mistake. I was going to add a brief observation about the "flavour" shared by some of my favourite works (An evening with Claire, La porte étroite, Adolphe, etc.), but I changed my mind. >>13183 I only read Spanish, English, French and (with great difficulty) Italian. I read Handke in translation. As for the list, I had to make a considerable effort not to add more titles by Papini, or an excessive number of Argentine authors (although Gálvez and Cambaceres are the only ones who do not enjoy significant popularity in the Spanish-speaking world).

Recomendame algunos autores o libros sureños. Solo he leído Onetti, Cortazar, Borges, Sábato y un poquito de Quiroga (solo algunos cuentos). También he oído cosas buenas sobre Pizarnick.

Extracción de la piedra de la locura es lo único que he leído de Pizarnik. Me ha parecido de una gran calidad, aunque, como no suelo leer poesía, mi juicio no posee demasiado valor. Si manejás bien el español, te recomiendo a Leopoldo Marechal. Adán Buenosayres y El banquete de Severo Arcángelo son obras muy complejas, extremadamente ricas en referencias históricas y culturales. Dicha densidad es aligerada por un humor muy particular.

I wish more people spoke about Handke. I find nearly all his work incredibly interesting (if only intermittently successful), and the Slow Homecoming series has probably the most immersive prose stylistics I have ever seen.

>>13197

>>13196 Recomendame algunos autores o libros sureños. Solo he leído Onetti, Cortazar, Borges, Sábato y un poquito de Quiroga (solo algunos cuentos). También he oído cosas buenas sobre Pizarnick.

Añado a esta recomendación (>>13198

Extracción de la piedra de la locura es lo único que he leído de Pizarnik. Me ha parecido de una gran calidad, aunque, como no suelo leer poesía, mi juicio no posee demasiado valor. Si manejás bien el español, te recomiendo a Leopoldo Marechal. Adán Buenosayres y El banquete de Severo Arcángelo son obras muy complejas, extremadamente ricas en referencias históricas y culturales. Dicha densidad es aligerada por un humor muy particular.

) a Eduardo Mallea. La capacidad que demuestra de entrelazar el paisaje con la psicología de los personajes en "Todo verdor perecerá" es magnífica. Un autor más próximo a nuestro tiempo: Piglia. Especialmente "Respiración artificial".

/lit/ thread is dead. So is Petrarchan.

>>13519

/lit/ thread is dead. So is Petrarchan.

petrarchan is a welwitschia

I read "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" by George Orwell (Victor Gollancz, 1936). (Pictured: some Victorians with Aspidistras) Downwardly mobile Gordon Comstock works as an ad copywriter in 1930s London. He quits his job in the hope of making it as a poet and escaping the leg-irons of the 'money god', but finds himself unable to work productively or support himself by his poems. Instead, he scrapes together a £2-a-week living working in a bookstore. His landlady is a tyrant who denies him even the right to a kettle in his own room, and his life is an endless grind of penny pinching and self-denial. Comstock has a girlfriend, Rosemary, whom he met at his place of employ and a solitary friend in Ravelston, an upper-class socialist who feels obliged to help Comstock on the grounds of class guilt. Despite his impoverished existence, Comstock insists on upholding his notions of respectability, paying for his dates with Rosemary and the first round of drinks with Ravelston, though doing so invariably leaves him flat broke. One does not need to be a feminist to feel that Comstock's "chivalrous" policy towards his dates with Rosemary are shaded with more than a little chauvinism, and he suffers abiding angst over the fact that she won't put out. Finally he takes her on a day out in the country and despite getting corralled by propriety into an unpleasant and expensive hotel luncheon, he finally gets her naked in a meadow. But there has been a misunderstanding and she pushes him away at the cusp of intercourse because she dares not to pregnant. Comstock is enraged, feeling again thwarted by his lack of money. Some time later, Comstock is delighted by the unexpected arrival of a cheque from an American magazine for a poem that he had submitted. When cashed the cheque comes out at over £10. He promises to himself that he will give £5 to his sister, whom he has long 'borrowed' cash from, but it is clear from the outset that this is a promise he is destined to break. He sets out determinedly to blow his windfall, first getting halfway drunk on gin and then inviting Rosemary and Ravelston to an indulgent dinner. They are anxious that he will not waste his obvious, though unmentioned, windfall, but they are plied by the good food and wine, and the dinner carries on at first in high spirits. Comstock is resolved to go on a bender, though, and is soon drunk, to the embarrassment of the others, who try and encourage him home. He will hear none of it and treats Rosemary brutishly. She runs off, though not before issuing a well-deserved slap. Ravelston is too ridden by class neuroses to do the right thing and strong-arm his friend into a taxi home. Instead, he is coerced by Comstock into a scheme to pick up a pair of hookers and fuck them in a grim hotel. Comstock, still drinking, is too drunk to fuck, and blacks out with his face down on the carpet. Comstock comes round the next morning in a jail cell having lost all his money. He is informed by the officer on watch that he had been charged with Drunk and Disorderly, having punched a police sergeant in the street. Ravelston turns up and is sympathetic, paying off his magistrates' fine. Gordon is in too much of a bind to even pretend that he doesn't need the help. A local journalist in the courtroom pricks up his ears at Comstock's stated occupation 'poet', and turns the case into a news story, which loses Gordon his job. Comstock is turned out of his room and stays for a time in the relative luxury of Ravelston's. He gets a new, worse paying job in a for-profit lending library, and a new, worse room in a squalid boarding house. But having seemingly fallen out of the very bottom end of middle-class propriety, he lives in relative freedom, having escaped the petty tyrannies of his former landlady, and without even the pretence of being able to pay for anything other than absolute necessities (naturally, this includes a ration of cigarettes). It seems that Gordon could live this life forever, but one day he is visited by Rosemary. For her own unclear reasons she now wants to have sex with him, which they do, in his filthy bedsit. Neither of them seem to find it fulfilling. Some time later she visits him at his job and makes the unsurprising announcement that she is pregnant. Although she feels that she must not force his decision, Gordon realises he faces the choice between marrying her, and returning with his tails between his legs to the ad firm, and refusing to marry her, with the concomitant outcome that she will abort their child. Gordon Comstock marries Rosemary and returns to his copywriting job. He is not unhappy in his work and turns out to be a star employee. He moves into a flat with Rosemary and they delight in the minor domesticities of it. They have their first marital row in their new kitchen, when to her total incomprehension, he insists on the purchase and installation of a large potted aspidistra in the window. ------ This is an enjoyable book, recommended to anyone with an interest in Orwell, or in interwar Britain. Like the other Orwell novel from this period I read, Coming up for Air, it is remarkable how clear-eyed he is about the imminence of war. The three main characters of the story are all believable and drawn from life. Although Comstock's peculiar brand of patronising chivalry is certainly shown to be self-defeating in the narrative, the modern reader would probably like his misogyny to have wider reaching consequences than a one-time slap around the face. Those who have familiarity with Orwell's biography and character will conclude that Comstock's attitudes towards women are perhaps not entirely the result of novelistic invention. In fact, much of this book is obviously biographical, but though that limits its capaciousness, it is still an immensely enjoyable read. Not every novel has to be ambitious and Orwell was, I think to his credit, aware of his limitations. There are no failed epics in his oeuvre. The realism here and the depictions of love on the never-never presage later developments in English media such as the post-war 'kitchen sink dramas'. (Speaking of which, why don't we use these excellent phrases 'hire-purchase' and 'never-never' anymore? In a world where you can get your DoorDash on easy terms, perhaps we should stop falling into the trap of using words like 'credit', as if paying for your burrito in instalments makes you a man of business). As a final thought, I will leave you with this excerpt, which begins chapter 11. > Spring, spring! By tuene Mershe ant Averil, when spray biginneth to spring! When shaws be sheene and swards full fayre, and leaves both large and longe! When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces, in the spring time, the only pretty ring time, when the birds do sing, hey-ding-a-ding ding, cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, ta-witta-woo! And so on and so on and so on. See almost any poet between the Bronze Age and 1850. > But how absurd that even now, in the era of central heating and tinned peaches, a thousand so-called poets are still writing in the same strain! For what difference does spring or winter or any other time of year make to the average civilised person nowadays? Now this is not perhaps the best satire or pastiche in the world, not quite Oxen of the Sun, but what's interesting is that arguably making the same point as the beginning of Eliot's the Waste Land ('April is the cruellest month'). What are we to make of this? Is Comstock a fraud? We imagine he must have read Eliot. Is he cribbing by accident? Is it Orwell who is cribbing, unconsciously? Or was every 'modern' writer between the wars obsessed with the unreasonableness of the traditional poetic treatment of the month of April?

>>13527

I read "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" by George Orwell (Victor Gollancz, 1936). (Pictured: some Victorians with Aspidistras) Downwardly mobile Gordon Comstock works as an ad copywriter in 1930s London. He quits his job in the hope of making it as a poet and escaping the leg-irons of the 'money god', but finds himself unable to work productively or support himself by his poems. Instead, he scrapes together a £2-a-week living working in a bookstore. His landlady is a tyrant who denies him even the right to a kettle in his own room, and his life is an endless grind of penny pinching and self-denial. Comstock has a girlfriend, Rosemary, whom he met at his place of employ and a solitary friend in Ravelston, an upper-class socialist who feels obliged to help Comstock on the grounds of class guilt. Despite his impoverished existence, Comstock insists on upholding his notions of respectability, paying for his dates with Rosemary and the first round of drinks with Ravelston, though doing so invariably leaves him flat broke. One does not need to be a feminist to feel that Comstock's "chivalrous" policy towards his dates with Rosemary are shaded with more than a little chauvinism, and he suffers abiding angst over the fact that she won't put out. Finally he takes her on a day out in the country and despite getting corralled by propriety into an unpleasant and expensive hotel luncheon, he finally gets her naked in a meadow. But there has been a misunderstanding and she pushes him away at the cusp of intercourse because she dares not to pregnant. Comstock is enraged, feeling again thwarted by his lack of money. Some time later, Comstock is delighted by the unexpected arrival of a cheque from an American magazine for a poem that he had submitted. When cashed the cheque comes out at over £10. He promises to himself that he will give £5 to his sister, whom he has long 'borrowed' cash from, but it is clear from the outset that this is a promise he is destined to break. He sets out determinedly to blow his windfall, first getting halfway drunk on gin and then inviting Rosemary and Ravelston to an indulgent dinner. They are anxious that he will not waste his obvious, though unmentioned, windfall, but they are plied by the good food and wine, and the dinner carries on at first in high spirits. Comstock is resolved to go on a bender, though, and is soon drunk, to the embarrassment of the others, who try and encourage him home. He will hear none of it and treats Rosemary brutishly. She runs off, though not before issuing a well-deserved slap. Ravelston is too ridden by class neuroses to do the right thing and strong-arm his friend into a taxi home. Instead, he is coerced by Comstock into a scheme to pick up a pair of hookers and fuck them in a grim hotel. Comstock, still drinking, is too drunk to fuck, and blacks out with his face down on the carpet. Comstock comes round the next morning in a jail cell having lost all his money. He is informed by the officer on watch that he had been charged with Drunk and Disorderly, having punched a police sergeant in the street. Ravelston turns up and is sympathetic, paying off his magistrates' fine. Gordon is in too much of a bind to even pretend that he doesn't need the help. A local journalist in the courtroom pricks up his ears at Comstock's stated occupation 'poet', and turns the case into a news story, which loses Gordon his job. Comstock is turned out of his room and stays for a time in the relative luxury of Ravelston's. He gets a new, worse paying job in a for-profit lending library, and a new, worse room in a squalid boarding house. But having seemingly fallen out of the very bottom end of middle-class propriety, he lives in relative freedom, having escaped the petty tyrannies of his former landlady, and without even the pretence of being able to pay for anything other than absolute necessities (naturally, this includes a ration of cigarettes). It seems that Gordon could live this life forever, but one day he is visited by Rosemary. For her own unclear reasons she now wants to have sex with him, which they do, in his filthy bedsit. Neither of them seem to find it fulfilling. Some time later she visits him at his job and makes the unsurprising announcement that she is pregnant. Although she feels that she must not force his decision, Gordon realises he faces the choice between marrying her, and returning with his tails between his legs to the ad firm, and refusing to marry her, with the concomitant outcome that she will abort their child. Gordon Comstock marries Rosemary and returns to his copywriting job. He is not unhappy in his work and turns out to be a star employee. He moves into a flat with Rosemary and they delight in the minor domesticities of it. They have their first marital row in their new kitchen, when to her total incomprehension, he insists on the purchase and installation of a large potted aspidistra in the window. ------ This is an enjoyable book, recommended to anyone with an interest in Orwell, or in interwar Britain. Like the other Orwell novel from this period I read, Coming up for Air, it is remarkable how clear-eyed he is about the imminence of war. The three main characters of the story are all believable and drawn from life. Although Comstock's peculiar brand of patronising chivalry is certainly shown to be self-defeating in the narrative, the modern reader would probably like his misogyny to have wider reaching consequences than a one-time slap around the face. Those who have familiarity with Orwell's biography and character will conclude that Comstock's attitudes towards women are perhaps not entirely the result of novelistic invention. In fact, much of this book is obviously biographical, but though that limits its capaciousness, it is still an immensely enjoyable read. Not every novel has to be ambitious and Orwell was, I think to his credit, aware of his limitations. There are no failed epics in his oeuvre. The realism here and the depictions of love on the never-never presage later developments in English media such as the post-war 'kitchen sink dramas'. (Speaking of which, why don't we use these excellent phrases 'hire-purchase' and 'never-never' anymore? In a world where you can get your DoorDash on easy terms, perhaps we should stop falling into the trap of using words like 'credit', as if paying for your burrito in instalments makes you a man of business). As a final thought, I will leave you with this excerpt, which begins chapter 11. > Spring, spring! By tuene Mershe ant Averil, when spray biginneth to spring! When shaws be sheene and swards full fayre, and leaves both large and longe! When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces, in the spring time, the only pretty ring time, when the birds do sing, hey-ding-a-ding ding, cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, ta-witta-woo! And so on and so on and so on. See almost any poet between the Bronze Age and 1850. > But how absurd that even now, in the era of central heating and tinned peaches, a thousand so-called poets are still writing in the same strain! For what difference does spring or winter or any other time of year make to the average civilised person nowadays? Now this is not perhaps the best satire or pastiche in the world, not quite Oxen of the Sun, but what's interesting is that arguably making the same point as the beginning of Eliot's the Waste Land ('April is the cruellest month'). What are we to make of this? Is Comstock a fraud? We imagine he must have read Eliot. Is he cribbing by accident? Is it Orwell who is cribbing, unconsciously? Or was every 'modern' writer between the wars obsessed with the unreasonableness of the traditional poetic treatment of the month of April?

p.s. please forgive all the missing words and grammar I need to go to bed and didn't want to bother proofreading.

>>13196

Oh, I created this thread by mistake. I was going to add a brief observation about the "flavour" shared by some of my favourite works (An evening with Claire, La porte étroite, Adolphe, etc.), but I changed my mind. >>13183 I only read Spanish, English, French and (with great difficulty) Italian. I read Handke in translation. As for the list, I had to make a considerable effort not to add more titles by Papini, or an excessive number of Argentine authors (although Gálvez and Cambaceres are the only ones who do not enjoy significant popularity in the Spanish-speaking world).

¿Cuánto te demoraste en leer francés? ¿Qué libro recomiendas para partir? Te pregunto porque estoy aprendiendo. Llevo algunos meses, con suerte llego al A2 jajjfdjj, pero algún me gustaría llegar a leer a Rimbaud o Proust.

*algún día

Empecé a aprender francés para verificar si las formas de adquisición de idiomas propuestas por Kato Lomb y las diferentes comunidades en línea que decían basarse en las investigaciones de Stephen Krashen eran preferibles a métodos más convencionales. De esta manera, aprendí a leer leyendo (sirviéndome, por supuesto, de diccionarios --primero bilingües y después monolingües-- y de programas SRS como Anki para memorizar palabras y expresiones). Creo que la respuesta a tu primer pregunta varía enormemente según el tipo de texto del que se trate. Es increíblemente fácil para un hispanohablante adquirir la capacidad de leer noticias o artículos académicos (en general, "no-ficción") en francés, a pesar de que, en mi opinión, las similitudes son frecuentemente exageradas, pudiendo los primeros meses de aprendizaje ser terriblemente frustrantes. Sin embargo, la diferencia entre la "no-ficción" y la "ficción" es muy grande, por lo que a veces puede sentirse que ni siquiera son el mismo idioma (repito que estas consideraciones dependen del texto, y que son absolutamente autorreferenciales). Si habré llorado con À rebours... En mi caso, entonces, leer no-ficción con relativa "fluidez" (o "funcionalidad") me llevó seis-ocho meses (o trece libros, aproximadamente, sin contar decenas de papers); tratándose de ficción, aún después de dos años y medio no me siento completamente cómodo, a pesar de conocer la mayor parte de las palabras y las estructuras gramaticales utilizadas. Supongo que es una cuestión de leer más. Por otra parte, mi dedicación en este período fue más bien mínima (veinte páginas diarias). Pienso que el aprendizaje va a ser más fácil si leés algo que te interesa, independientemente de su dificultad lingüística. Ahora bien, el lenguaje utilizado por De Maistre, Lamartine, Baudelaire, Lautréamont y Cioran (una lista demasiado heterogénea, ciertamente) no es excesivamente intimidante, y, una vez comprendido, es hermoso. En términos más generales, quizá empezar con los Evangelios (la traducción de Port-Royal o de Sacy me parece la mejor, seguida por la de Jerusalén) y algunos artículos o tesis sobre un tema que te llame la atención sea una buena idea. ¡Mucha suerte con el idioma! Si te interesa, sería genial que en algún momento compartas tus progresos.

Gracias anon!!! Le daré duro a los evangelios!!!

>>13552

>>13196 ¿Cuánto te demoraste en leer francés? ¿Qué libro recomiendas para partir? Te pregunto porque estoy aprendiendo. Llevo algunos meses, con suerte llego al A2 jajjfdjj, pero algún me gustaría llegar a leer a Rimbaud o Proust.

También llevo tres meses mal contados aprendiendo francés. Ahora mismo estoy leyendo El Extranjero de Camus con alguna dificultad. A mi juicio, puedo entender un 90% de las palabras sin tener que recurrir a un diccionario. También hablo inglés como lengua materna, lo cual ayuda. Por mi lado, puedo recomendar la plataforma de SRS "Clozemaster." También me gusta mucho ver la serie belga "Strip-Tease" (entre otras). >>13198

Extracción de la piedra de la locura es lo único que he leído de Pizarnik. Me ha parecido de una gran calidad, aunque, como no suelo leer poesía, mi juicio no posee demasiado valor. Si manejás bien el español, te recomiendo a Leopoldo Marechal. Adán Buenosayres y El banquete de Severo Arcángelo son obras muy complejas, extremadamente ricas en referencias históricas y culturales. Dicha densidad es aligerada por un humor muy particular.

¿Usted por casualidad vive en el exterior? Desafortunadamente no he encontrado alguna tienda (virtual o física) en EE.UU. que ofrezca esos libros de forma accessible (la oferta mas "barata" que he encontrado parece ser de $90). Lo mismo me pasa con otros libros que no están de por sí en el "canon" latinoamericano. Es decir que cada vez que viajo a Colombia regreso con un maletín lleno de libros jaja. ¿Quizás algún tipo de freight-forwarding? De antemano le agradezco cualquier consejo que me pueda dar.