Whats this obsession with beauty in language among some English-first speakers? Aren't meaning, insight and import of more consequence than beauty? Every single time I hear someone wax poetic about beauty and elegance in things it immediately sets off my bs meter. If you haven't got much of anything substantive to say, you use flowery artifices to mask it.
Also non-English-first speakers, do you see this to be a very English-thing or is this sort of fixation if not fetish with beauty in language and other things present in your current day language too?
This is a bizarrely anti-English take. There's appreciation for the beauty of the language for literature/poetry in every language, as far as im aware. Look at Japanese poetry for one obvious example that takes appreciation
of beauty in language to its absolute extremes.
Same thing in all languages I know well enough to read books in.
I can't at all explain how or why it works, but certain kinds of writing style have an almost magical effect on me. This feeling of well-rounded beauty, even when the content is barely relevant, is just amazing. One could maybe describe it as a kind of brain hacking, which is also what drugs do.
That’s completely fine, but hopefully you can take people’s word on that it can be very beautiful to them.
It feels a bit like saying “if you don’t have meaningful lyrics, why even sing a song”: Different people can appreciate different layers of literature differently.
> Aren't meaning, insight and import of more consequence than beauty?
You are close to setting up a false dichotomy here. It isn’t those qualities or beauty, it’s those qualities and beauty.
I first experienced it when I read Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. I was able to enjoy the book on the usual axes of plot, character, etc… but there was another level that had me rereading pages because every chapter, paragraph, and sentence felt perfectly constructed. Some of it I read out loud to myself because the rhythm of the words and sounds were musical. It is a great story, beautifully told.
That said, I’m not a fan of Ulysses and I’m sure a lot of people here would call me an uncultured rube for enjoying Odaatje’s writing like I did.
This happens in every language. I'm Norwegian, and there's an old Danish translation of Whitman I much prefer over the English original, not for ease of reading (Norwegian and Danish are close to mutually intelligible without much effort) but because the translation is beautiful.
I wish I could remember the edition.
There are books I prefer in one language or other. English tends to feel like it has a "darker" texture to me (no, it makes no logical sense) and so the same book - Lord of the Rings is an example I've read in both English and Norwegian - will hit me very differently emotionally depending on language.
Sometimes I'll read something just for the beauty of it. Other times I just want to get at the ideas.
For me, reading fiction is all about beauty. I liken it to listening to good music. It isn't really to learn anything "substantive." It is to experience a feeling or be transported to another place. In fact, I like to listen to (typically instrumental) music while I read as a sort of "soundtrack." I would liken reading a good book to watching an epic movie. I guess you might occasionally gain some insight into the human condition, but it isn't primarily an informational medium.
I feel the same way about reading beautiful language that I feel about reading a beautiful mathematical proof. It's not that it doesn't have substance, it's that the substance is put together in such such an elegant way that you don't just marvel at the content but also at its presentation.
It is very different, indeed possibly the opposite of a show off of cleverness. It is beautiful because it feels that it's just the right way to do it.
As a writer, I think I can speak to this. I can certainly understand a non-native speakers frustrations with the complexity of english grammar, the enormous number of synonyms and colloquialisms, the variety of 'codes' and kinds of 'jargon' that must make learning and reading English profoundly difficult. Especially where the non-native speaker or reader's mother tongue isn't a romance language. I get that it must make certain forms of English - from the dense AAVE of the wire, to Elizabethan sonnets all but impenetrable.
However, I see this 'pragmatism in all things, including art' perspective quite a bit on hackernews, and rarely enough anywhere else. Most often concerning fiction, but also contemporary and modern art. I'm not sure if it's a neurodiverse perspective, or a philistine one, but I can confirm that it's missing the aesthetic function of art. i.e.: the pleasure many people obtain from creating and experiencing it. There seems to be a frustration that some people who don't or can't engage in producing or enjoying certain kinds of art have - that becomes a denial of the value of the work altogether. 'I don't get it, so there's nothing there to get'.
Specific to Joyce and the modernists is an absolute mastery of the complexity and nuance of a wide breath of kinds of English (and in Joyce's case numerous other European languages). To a native speaker with a strong grasp of language, and a love of words, reading Joyce or TS Elliot, or Yeats etc, is like listening to a complex piece of classical music. The use of reference, of meter, of onomatopoeia, the play with homonyms and antonyms, and at a higher level with the structure of stories and narrative traditions etc - all give the reader pleasure. In the hands of a truly great writer, like those above, they also serve to create layers of meaning in the way a koan or painting can contain complex fractal patterns of meaning. Reading a great writer, working with the nuances of language and narrative can literally lift the reader into a state of heightened consciousness. A place where new realisations about society, the self, the emotional depths and nuances of other people are elucidated in a way that's genuinely mind expanding.
It's absolutely fine if you don't find this in literature - whether in a second language or your own. It's naive to assume that it doesn't exist because you personally can't perceive it. Aptly enough - that's a contradiction many writers have explored. Our tendency to diminish the inner lives of others, or the worth of things we cannot appreciate. One piece that springs to mind is David Foster Wallace's essay 'This is Water' - https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/
Far too many of these supposed greats works of literature get an easy pass from uncritical also-rans of the world, who just want to move on in the name of different-strokes-for-different-folks without ever calling out the bs for what it really is. I'm not saying there aren't valid detractors of these works - there are - but far too often they're drowned out.
Far too many of these works hide behind the crutch of 'fiction' to spew utter hogwash without making an ounce of sense to the regular, impartial and non-dyed-in reader.
Far too many of these books - when coupled with a lackadaisical populace in general who are more concerned about seeming non-fussy - get that stellar mythical hallowed status and lore.
I'm not saying that there are not enough people who genuinely get entranced with these works (although if you run that through a fine comb your results may vary) - its that the gatekeepers of education seem to be entirely made up of these uncritical clowns who will nod away in affirmation, decade after decade in cementing the undeserved status of these works.
I agree with your take on the literature. My point wasn’t in response to Ulysses or criticism of it, but of your statement regarding over-obsession with the English language.
Whats this obsession with beauty in language among some English-first speakers? Aren't meaning, insight and import of more consequence than beauty? Every single time I hear someone wax poetic about beauty and elegance in things it immediately sets off my bs meter. If you haven't got much of anything substantive to say, you use flowery artifices to mask it.
Also non-English-first speakers, do you see this to be a very English-thing or is this sort of fixation if not fetish with beauty in language and other things present in your current day language too?