Thread 24710175

why is western literature/writing in general so much better than any other region?
not just books, but really any medium. seems like no other region of the world is able to output something meaningful,
except asia on rare occasion, but they still can't hold a candle to western works.

>durrr u just don't know bcuz u only speak english!!!
most of the greatest western thinkers ever didn't speak english either. anything worth reading or watching has been translated by now,
this is a solved problem. there is no library of great works in a distant land that hasn't been printed in english.

how many works of other regions have you read

>anything worth reading or watching has been translated by now
I didn't know Les Deux Étendards got an English translation.

In terms of literary fiction, I think Western culture is highly individualist, and fiction novels are usually some form of exploration within that individual, interior world. We are very focused on the self: whether it be our emotions, personal beliefs, convictions: we value those highly and seek to explore them in ways most cultures don’t really seem interested in engaging with.

Eastern cultures are highly collectivist: the best for the state is the best for the individual, if the individual is to be considered at all. Even the more personal literature is focused on families, generational drama and woes: you’d be hard pressed to find many hardcore individualist Chinese writers until much later in history. Most lit we get from the east is focused on politics, statecraft, religion: and even their religions are more focused on the individual’s impact on the greater community, not solely the individual’s spirituality.

>>24710193
so they just write less because they don't give a shit about stories in general?

>>24710199
I think it’s less that they don’t give a shit, and more like they aren’t given an opportunity to give a shit. A highly stratified culture and government means you’re stuck tilling the fields like your great-grand chinky did long long ago. Even if you could somehow read and write, where is your literary canon? What authors will you be inspired by?

In the East, it’ll mostly be Confucian gobbledygook and statecraft tomes. So not a lot of room for what we would view as compelling stories. Also, if they were too compelling, too individualist, the emperor would probably feel threatened and axe you like any other underling.

>>24710175 (OP)
Racial and cultural superiority.

>>24710208
is this in any way related to guilt vs shame morality?

>>24710219
perhaps fierce christian guilt is the pressure that turns western soul to diamond

>>24710219
What exactly is the difference between guilt and shame? If one is guilty they probably ashamed and if one is ashamed they are probably guilty
also
>the black sea

>>24710175 (OP)
The west is best in all forms of art, even modern ones like video games

>>24710219
Wtf is going on in svalbard and Suriname(?)
>>24710234
Guilt is inherently more individualistic

>>24710239
what else would you call it, other than shame? the actual name of it is not as important as the fact that it demarks it as a distinct concept.
>>24710242
i was watching a trailer for an anime that seemed neat conceptually,
but then they showed a scene of this scantily-clad high school girl with super powers.
how are the japanese themselves not tired of this awful trope? it completely undermines everything.
imagine if daniel plainview in "there will be blood" was a loli. it would be fucking retarded.

>>24710239
I shouldn’t take money from the tip jar because
Guilt
>it’s not mine and I would be a bad person for stealing
Shame
>someone might see me do it

>>24710208
ehh nah you're being waaay too simplistic and materialist about this

the western quest to discover the self is basically a borderline religious journey. like when you begin reading & see how western writers approach it, you understand that we are GRASPING for some kind of attainment, some truth, like how hesse novels are a depressed guy searching for something, that is a desperate plea that is paralleled in all of western literature, we're trying to speak something into existence. this is something that other peoples don't understand when they take up the written word because they think nothing needs to happen, everything is already perfect. there is something religious & desperate about how westerners approach writing, we need and depend on it, progress is our burden and we need something to help get us there. non whites just almost never get literature because they are so self-satisfied and think they figured it out

>>24710184
what should we be reading, other than the obligatory religious texts and folk tales that every region has?
are you gonna suggest obvious shit like "the art of war"?
does ANY region have their own equivalent of the western canon?

>>24710175 (OP)
>place that was able to exploit the printing press to a hitherto unseen level writes well
Gee anon I wonder why

>>24710310
>obligatory religious texts
if you're asking for secular art there's not gonna be much

>>24710175 (OP)
I like western literature too. Blood Meridian is awesome.

>>24710193
China could never print at the volume the West did because of their logographic written language and they got railed by Mongolian and Manchu nomads for half of the last millennium that didn't give a rat's ass about literary development unlike the Han, Tang, and Song in the former half of its history.

>>24710320
it's more about affluence. the west has been modernized, industrialized and affluent for far longer than anybody else, and it also coincided with a period where books were far more important. today they are less important as a medium and the countries growing wealthy now are skipping over books and going straight to movies and other media. there are other factors but economic development is the most important one.

>>24710329
China probably did not have high enough literacy to sustain much of a popular writing tradition. The West woudl have had greater reason for literacy because of the book-based religion, and people could aspire to own and read a Bible. There is nothing analogous to that in the East. While the Koran is always written in Arabic which isn't going to do much for local literature either.

>>24710337
>the west has been modernized, industrialized and affluent for far longer than anybody else, and it also coincided with a period where books were far more important.
China was affluent as well and was on the cusp of early industrialization before it got crippled by the Mongol invasion from which it reverted to a more sclerotic structure under the Ming that was suspicious of enterprise and innovation in hopes of achieving stability above all. Europe also had that environment of competition that wasn't present in Asia, in which despite attempts by the clergy and by rulers to control the press you'd have printers just moving to a rival kingdom and printing their works there. Don't forget that prior to the discovery of the New World most of Europe was piss poor compared to the Ottomans or the Far East, and even after gold flooded in from the New World it was concentrated in some areas morseo than others, yet even though Britain and Germany didn't share in the spoils of the Spanish one could argue that they developed a more robust culture of letters in the end, and thus affluence and the means of production alone don't suffice for an explanation. With the internet we can reproduce text in ways the ancients would have never imagined, yet literacy is dropping; "modernity" is meaningless to point to as to why a people are literary.

>>24710175 (OP)
>anything worth reading or watching has been translated by now
It's very difficult to translate Chinese chengyu or Japanese yojijukugo without losing either the meaning, the literary symbolism, or both. Even simple novels in these two languages make use of such terms frequently.

Chinese and Japanese stories also follow kishotenketsu which is a kind of four-act structure that differs from the Western three-act structure. This often makes Westerners feel as though East Asians don't understand pacing.

Asian books don't tend to aspire to the same level of universality as Western works. Every Japanese student reads Soseki because he represents a particular period of Japanese society well. Yu Hua is a famous modern Chinese novelist who is well liked because of his cultural commentary. Asian works tend towards societal introspection and are perhaps comparable with Jane Austen or Charles Dickens. But when /lit/ praises a Western author, it's typically because they perceive that author touching on something universal or sublime.

>>24710351
>China probably did not have high enough literacy to sustain much of a popular writing tradition.
They had their system where if you wanted to advance in their hierarchy you were expected to study the Confucian canon and pass their stringent examination system to get some magistrate position that the literature only incidentally prepared one for in an overly centralized bureaucracy that became rife with malfeasance due to how it was constructed around the idea of a chain of veneration with no checks of balances. It's a disease that one could almost see in the modern West in a way.

>The West woudl have had greater reason for literacy because of the book-based religion, and people could aspire to own and read a Bible. There is nothing analogous to that in the East.
This.

>While the Koran is always written in Arabic which isn't going to do much for local literature either.
Also, the Koran is literally a recitation; in places that had low literacy it was taught as an oral tradition where locals were not necessarily expected to understand the meaning of it so long as they could recite it as a divine transcendental incantation.

>>24710351
They had their system where if you wanted to advance in their hierarchy you were expected to study the Confucian canon and pass their stringent examination system to get some magistrate position that the literature only incidentally prepared one for in an overly centralized bureaucracy that became rife with malfeasance due to how it was constructed around the idea of a chain of veneration with no checks or balances. It's a disease that one could almost see in the modern West in a way.

>The West woudl have had greater reason for literacy because of the book-based religion, and people could aspire to own and read a Bible. There is nothing analogous to that in the East.
This.

>While the Koran is always written in Arabic which isn't going to do much for local literature either.
Also, the Koran is literally a recitation; in places that had low literacy it was taught as an oral tradition where locals were not necessarily expected to understand the meaning of it so long as they could recite it as a divine transcendental incantation.

>>24710351
>China probably did not have high enough literacy to sustain much of a popular writing tradition.
They had their system where if you wanted to advance in their hierarchy you were expected to study the Confucian canon and pass their stringent examination system to get some magistrate position that the literature only incidentally prepared one for in an overly centralized bureaucracy that became rife with malfeasance due to how it was constructed around the idea of a chain of veneration with no checks *or balances. It's a disease that one could almost see in the modern West in a way.

>The West woudl have had greater reason for literacy because of the book-based religion, and people could aspire to own and read a Bible. There is nothing analogous to that in the East.
This.

>While the Koran is always written in Arabic which isn't going to do much for local literature either.
Also, the Koran is literally a recitation; in places that had low literacy it was taught as an oral tradition where locals were not necessarily expected to understand the meaning of it so long as they could recite it as a divine transcendental incantation.

>>24710175 (OP)
Europeans were miles ahead of every other race. That's coming to an end now because we created an environment that doesn't select for intelligence. IQ and birth rate have been inversely correlated for as long as we have been taking measuring them, and who knows for how long before that.

>>24710419
aesthetics in other words
man asian lit is just dripping with vibes sometimes

>>24710419
This is a good take. Even if the translation is done by the best of translators, quite an amount can be lost. The fact that so many terrible translators are somehow keeping their jobs does not help. Sometimes I read western literature translated into Korean. If I were not aware the novel has been put through the torture that is translation I would consider them garbage. Do try reading some of the earliest Korean copies of Demian, they’re utterly ridiculous.
>author touching on something universal or sublime
I’m genuinely curious, what are some things you consider universal and sublime?(of course i feel the natural answer here should be porn) I would also argue that different people find different things to be as such.

>>24710506
>I’m genuinely curious, what are some things you consider universal and sublime?(of course i feel the natural answer here should be porn) I would also argue that different people find different things to be as such.
not him but the criteria for excellence and truth in western philosophy has always been universality

>>24710511
I’m not sure true universality exists. Then again maybe I just need to get high more often

>>24710192
maybe it isn't good?

>>24710310
i don't know what your standard is for "equivalent", but yes there are other major highly sophisticated literary traditions aside from the western one. not to mention the more primitive but still reasonably well-developed tradition of the near east in the bronze age, which plays no small part in the genesis of the western tradition and the ways in which it was changed later on.

Because literature is a mostly western concept. Japan had good pre-occidental literature though

>>24710286
So are westoids just much more neurotic and this makes their writing good?

>>24710175 (OP)
Because culture is the byproduct of leisure. Someone living in the third world needs to work all day long just to fill his stomach

>The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture, and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends. - Oscar Wilde

>>24710175 (OP)
>why
WHITE POWERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

>>24711100
>Because culture is the byproduct of leisure
Leisure doesn't produce great art

>>24711100
Western civilization was built on slavery. There's no denying that

>>24710637
One of the French masterpieces of the 20th that got wilfully ignored by critics because the author was a bit too enthousiast about a certain austrian painter invading the country.

>>24711813
Is there any civilization that wasn't?

>>24711870
East Asia?

>>24710175 (OP)
Didn't read most of your post, but i agree. I'm only interested in writers like Raymond Chandler or Hammett, and from where i'm from those are non-existent. Gotta be the change you want to see in the world i suppose.

>>24710720
>Japan had good pre-occidental literature though
japan being the only point of reference is so funny to me. post-occidental is the only period where japan really stands out, because they aped the west harder than everyone else, which is why you're so aware of them in the first place. well, that and anime/porn.
before western influence, japan was a high quality but unmistakably second-tier tradition, subordinate to china.
>literature is a mostly western concept
you are extremely ignorant.

>>24710310
>>24710719
what you should be reading:

china:
>book of songs
>songs of chu
>tao qian
>du fu
>li bai

india:
>rigveda
>mahabharata
>ramayana
>kalidasa
>tamil anthologies

middle east:
>hanging odes
>quran
>ferdowsi
>rumi
>hafez

these are the absolute essentials & the analogues to the bible, homer, virgil, shakespeare and dante. note that i am weighting poetic value heavily, as opposed to e.g. philosophical worth.

>>24711920
Post Han China was flooded with slaves. They had so many they created a new word for them, Jianmin. Not super versed in Korean history but I know enough that the Joseon dynasty had a shitton of Nobi.

>>24710262
Svalbard is a Fear-based culture as the free roaming polar bears instill a sense of common moral duty in the inhabitants. It's basically the Arctic Sharia Police.

>>24712016
>Direct equivalents to large scale slavery such as classical Greece and Rome did not exist in ancient China
ANd that is from wikipedia, fren.

>>24710175 (OP)
How is fair that West is able to encompass
>All of European early works like Greek and Roman
Then it's able to take
>All of the works of the middle ages during the height of British colonism
and still
>All of the works produced by Pax Americana

And despite all 3 cultures being radically different, they still encompass
>The west
While East is basically
>China and some islands through it's entire history

>>24712096
Well if China was a dozen countries instead of one country you might say something different.

>>24712118
>3 continents of writing history
>DA WEST
vs
>1 continent and you have to exclude all of Russia because it's European and considered "the west" as well
>DA EAST

STACKED ODDS
NOT FAIR

>>24712127
How bout India and Arabia

In China the only forms of writing you were supposed to care about was
>poetry
>history
>essays and letters
>certain forms of philosophy, mainly political and ethical philosophy
There wasn't much room for fiction and when fiction was written, for example the classic novels, they were written in the vernacular language

>>24712118
>Well if China was a dozen countries
It already is.

>>24710175 (OP)
>why is western literature/writing in general so much better than any other region?
Because you've read more of it and you are familiar with it.

>>24712244
>Yeah we'll take Italians, Greeks, Slavs, All of South America
>And you guys can have india :^) ,Fair?

>>24712279
who is yunnan supposed to go to?

>>24712272
they had short stories and drama which flowered prior to the novels. they were closer in spirit to the poetic tradition than the novels were.
the main thing to understand is that, for reasons at least in part material, history for the chinese took the place of the great narrative "fictions" of other lands.

>>24712512
i think the tai-lao people considered themselves to be of yunnanese origin? but the map is saying it should be independent, same as the others barring mongolia.

>>24712512
It has its own ethnic groups. Plus geography naturally isolates it.

I backpacked through Yunnan for a month about a decade ago (Jesus its been that long?). Magnificent country. I'd like to go back some day.

>>24710175 (OP)
>seems like no other region of the world is able to output something meaningful,
except asia on rare occasion, but they still can't hold a candle to western works.

Correct. If anything the biggest treasure trove we're missing is all the lost Greek/Roman literature. Plus not being able to translate Linear a.

>>24712532
>yunnanese origin
not really. the urheimat of lao/tai people is said to be in guizhou but there are speakers in yunnan (mostly xishuangbanna--the tai lu) and elsewhere (the chuang, who got sinicized).

>>24712569
oh ok, thank you.

>>24712551
why is it correct?

>>24712625
Actually it might be Guanxi

>>24710175 (OP)
>why is western literature/writing in general so much better than any other region?
Lol. Western lit is greatly held back by the English language itself.
>anything worth reading or watching has been translated by now,
>Translations
Lmao even

>>24710175 (OP)
We have jews.
When it comes to writing and smoked fish products. you go and see the jews.

I'm studying Japanese and will eventually study Classical Japanese and Classical Chinese even though I think French has the greatest literary canon and English the second greatest

>>24710175 (OP)
Getting good enough at war to have the security to create enough leisure to develop high material and intellectual culture for long enough periods of time that we all find ourselves here today. Why are Subcontinentals drawn to trains like moths to a flame? The Chinaman to eating vermin? The Uzbek to sodomy?

>>24712244
Do Salman Rushdie or Rohinton Mistry count as Indian? They wrote in English and were living in the UK and Canada when writing.

>>24713148
Why do simpletons believe memes?

>>24713156
It's more about what they write about.

>>24712000
Japan has a long history of Haiku, with the most famous author being Matsuo Bashō (1644 - 1694).

I wouldn't place the tradition of Haiku or Hokku as "second-tier", it's one of the most well respected poetic traditions in the world.

>>24710219
I didn't know the Black Sea is a country acting out of guilt. Hope the jellyfish that stung me feels guilty about what it did.

Also, matriarchal post Communist countries like Bulgaria never operate out of guilt, it is mainly shame and fear. Guilt (and maintenance) are not a concept there.

>>24715174
your evidence does not support your claim. i am not talking about the quality of the tradition per se, i'm not even sure traditions vary too significantly in actual quality independent of other factors. what i am saying is that it's a minor tradition in comparison to that of china, in terms of size and significance, and highly derivative of china's tradition.
>most well respected
by whom? average modern literary readers? they don't know anything about actual traditions, the modern reader's lens is extremely limited.

>>24710175 (OP)
Western literature will forever be cucked by the inferior English language. Which doesn't lend itself well to either poetry or prose and is forever plagued by the most milquetoast liberal individualistic Anglo opinions.

>>24715575
You are just privileging your own opinion with a total disregard to either (1. Influence on world culture or (2. Artistic merit. If you want to just presume your conclusion, go ahead, but don't pretend that you're being honest.

>>24715723
i don't even have a personal opinion, i haven't read much japanese literature and what i've read is modern. what i'm talking about is essentially a historical question, which i tried to be very clear about by saying it's a question of *significance* and direction of influence, not one of quality.
what does influence on world culture mean to you? is this a modern or pre-modern phenomenon? because we are talking here about pre-modern literature and culture.

I think Spengler said that the reason why muslims have such an underdeveloped tradition of belles-lettres compared to their economic development is that muslims believe the koran to be the greatest book there ever could be, and as a consequence, see little sense in trying to write anything when the best and the greatest book ever has already been written according to their worldview. The same idea applies to jews as well.

I think christianity also plays a huge part in the west's literary dominance. Oriental religions, islam and judaism included, are all about ritual and authority. No religion outside of christianity, save for some forms of buddhism, has the same degree of inward focus and self-critique that christianity does, and as a consequence, they never discovered the concept of the individual, either. The idea of the individual is a strictly western phenomenon, outside of the west, there is only the collective.

>>24715921
it's partly because of the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit which permits for fallible humanity's participation in the divine and therefore it is able to have access to and express transcendental truth

>>24715575
>>24715174
>>24712000
Why would we treat China and Japan as separate literary traditions while lumping everything from Greece, Rome, France, Britain, etc. into a single Western culture.

>>24710219
>@india.in.pixels

>>24716440
it isn't "lumping" because it's the opposite of arbitrary and it has a lot of predictive power. i was treating them as separate because i was trying to make sub-distinctions, they're obviously genealogically related and should be conceived of together.

>>24715921
epigonism happens in every tradition. the cure is political and cultural chaos, but it comes at the price of lost sophistication.
>underdeveloped tradition of belles-lettres
what do you know about the traditions of the major languages of islamic polities? i think one could probably argue this point in a certain, very limited way, but i bet ultimately it would come down to something more along the lines of a different direction of development, rather than a stunting in absolute terms.
>Oriental religions, islam and judaism included, are all about ritual and authority.
this makes me think that you will not be able to prove any knowledge whatsoever of the tradition, because while this may have some validity with respect to the original religious texts themselves, it's utterly laughable in the context of discussing the literary tradition. like, seriously, it's a ridiculous thing to say.
>No religion outside of christianity, save for some forms of buddhism, has the same degree of inward focus and self-critique that christianity does, and as a consequence, they never discovered the concept of the individual, either. The idea of the individual is a strictly western phenomenon, outside of the west, there is only the collective.
you're completely lost on this one, sorry. just taking the absurdity of your previous statement and extrapolating it without the slightest hesitation that you might be working with incomplete information.
and also even if you were to accept the (demonstrably false) idea that the individual exists only in the west, to ascribe its discovery to christianity would be just as absurd. seems like motivated reasoning.

>>24710219
"Fear culture" is just the absence of any culture whatsoever, and exists in pockets throughout the world, not just in two place in Guyana and Svalbard or whatever the fuck. Silly map should just be divided in two. Lmfao

>>24710273
serious hat award

>>24715921
tbf the actual muslim epics like Attar are barely translated