Where do I start with Carlyle?

Yep, he's a really beautiful writer

Actually, another user mentioned Emerson and I'd include him in the list, Emerson is another one where you are reading it and go "how the fuck did a human being write this?" It's not just stylistically good or effective, it's almost magical somehow.

rec me an Emerson text user

Any of the essays in his 2vol collection of essays that look interesting to you, since they're all short. Or you could start with Nature, the famous long one. Emerson is a really deep and philosophical thinker so it can seem deceptively prosaic or "self-help" at first, but there is a lot of subtlety going on even when he touches on seemingly simple things:
transcendentalism-legacy.tamu.edu/roots/rwe-othergerm.html

But I'd actually recommend Representative Men like the other user, if you get a chance. You can really see the German idealist inspirations subtly operative in that, but completely changed and replanted in whatever the hell American transcendentalism was - because it definitely wasn't just a derivation of German idealism. Something weird was going on in that circle.

Not only that but it has a crazy intimacy, rarely have I felt as close to an author as I did to Carlyle in this one- this kind of book just isn't written anymore. I liked it very much as well.

you don't, read Emerson instead.

I know what you mean. The way he writes feels to me like he is inviting you to marvel with him at the beauty of language and the world of ideas, the text stands alone and Carlyle sort of drifts over it as a personality also aware of the writing. It's so ornate and fluid that it becomes this crystalline ideal object he is conjuring into being, his detachment from it paradoxically making you feel closer to the imagined person writing it. It is a very personal and charged style of writing, but it is also so utterly crafted that it does not feel like bare interaction with a mind, but rather a joint observation of an object with a mind. That the object comes from the mind and carries its qualities of personality and outlook doesn't eliminate the distinction. It creates a sense of humility to me for some reason, like he isn't saying 'this art is me' he's just offering it and stepping back as a separate entity, not associated with it in terms of identity, which lends itself to a kind of convivial atmosphere. It all feels very honest and level.

Probably didn't express that properly but maybe you get what im saying

Sometimes perhaps the rhapsody itself best expresses what the mind of the auditor cannot otherwise wholly grasp. Well done, user.

What two volume collection would that be?

>Gibbon
This fucking board

what's the issue

Just an awful repetitive unoriginal writer imo

>Carlyle

you misspelled Burke

unoriginal compared to what, Samuel Johnson? Addison and Steele? Henry Fielding? You aren't fooling anyone pleb turd.

Yes, his style is wholly derivative. Fielding was more concerned with narrative and why bring up Steele? Addison was the great stylist.

Compare Gibbon to Algernon Sidney, Johnson at his strongest (Rasselas), Burke, Franklin, Jefferson.

>Yes, his style is wholly derivative.
care to back that up with anything?

I mean if you’ve read those writers then you know he’s just utilizing the balanced sentences and antitheses of the 18tj century.
“He brought Facts to the Aid of Enlightenment, even when he could not give Falsehood the antidote of Exposure”
It’s just constant use of that device to no purpose. Read Junius to see how it should be done.

>balanced sentences and antithesis
You mean the basic writing techniques that are used by almost every author in history?

>using your specialist knowledge for petty snobbishness and pedantry

shameful and embarrassing

>You aren't fooling anyone pleb turd.

kek

he has no specialist knowledge. he's just presenting his gay opinion as being based in anything real, even though it's not.

Greetings from Russia
(French revolution, History)

Attached: image.png (992x1322, 1.95M)

>You mean the basic writing techniques that are used by almost every author in history?
No, most authors of the 16th, 19th, 20th century do not balance their sentences.
If you think that sentence is typical of the 20th century, you know nothing about literature.

guv rusdian gf

you're making shit up.

>you're making shit up.
Show me five sentences like that from the 20th century.

your a retard

lol cope

burden of proof is on you, faggot retard. currently you just seem like a poser.

>burden of proof is on you
what if im half black tho

>rusdian
?

You mean examples of balanced sentences?
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote:
>“Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there.”
Coon Tree by E.B. White:
>“On days when warmth is the most important need of the human heart, the kitchen is the place you can find it; it dries the wet socks, it cools the hot little brain.”
MLK Jr. Quote:
“We are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
KFC slogan:
>“Buy a bucket of chicken and have a barrel of fun.”
Churchill Quote:
>“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessing; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

None of those is balanced save the last.
This is balanced:
>I believe there is yet a spirit of resistance in this country, which will not submit to be oppressed; but I am sure there is a fund of good sense in this country, which cannot be deceived

...

So you just don't know what a balanced sentence is. Cool.

A balanced sentence isn't every sentence that contains a parallel
First fucking result on google:
>A balanced sentence is made up of two segments which are equal, not only in length, but also in grammatical structure and meaning.

But this all strays from the point which is that the sentence I posted would not be at homes in any century save the 18th and that Gibbon was not adept in employing this device.

>would not be at homes in any century save the 18th
Well that would make sense, since it was written then, you fucking clod.

>you fucking clod.
uhh rude

Those techniques are used in tons of literature. They're basic techniques.
And how does using those things even make Gibbon a bad writer?

>imo

Get some sense of the chronology of the French Revolution from 1787-1792 and wiki Mirabeau (Carlyle's hero) and start with The French Revolution. This will prepare (you) for Sartor Resartus, a wonderful book (means 'the tailor re-tailored'- how the mind changes the way of its thinking- in this case from empiricism to a generalized german-style idealism- through clothes-changing metaphors or fashion. But it's far more than just this).

>wiki Mirabeau
this guy?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honoré_Gabriel_Riqueti,_comte_de_Mirabeau

The one and only; Carlyle was of course aware of all the scandal that surrounds him even now.

Chartism, then the Latter-Day Pamphlets, then Shooting Niagara, then the Occasional Discourse. And like other anons have said, being familiar with Schelling or Fichte will help (there’s a reason why Moldbug loves him)