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/
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/