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Secondly, the last discussion thread went so well, I’ve decided to turn them into a regular feature here on Monday mornings, so we can start off our weeks with some literary debate!
My question for this week is naturally very subjective, but it’s the kind of 3-beers-deep philosophical question that I like to indulge in myself, so I’m very interested to hear your thoughts:
Which country has produced the greatest literary output?
Probably if I were more familiar with how the Russian canon informs Russian culture I would agree; my bias is of course to my native language and culture. I can see how a book such as, say, Oliver Twist interacts with the culture I've grown up in; I don't have that perspective with The Brothers Karamazov, much as I would like to.
You make a good point. I suppose I was really only thinking of my own taste, rather than impact on the country as a whole, which is an interesting wrinkle to consider.
I'd add to that list Vladimir Nabakov, even if he was an expatriate Russian (but then so was Solzhenitsyn for a while), and who knows how many lesser known literary lights Russia produced. I am reading Remembering the Darkness, a collection of diary excerpts, essays and letters from women who endured the Gulag, edited by Veronica Shapovalov. Heartbreaking, raw, brutal.
And if by Russian, we are also talking about the Soviet Union, we can't fail to list best selling authors Lenin and Stalin, although some might have preferred to use their books for not just a book burning event, but an involuntary suttee of the two monsters.
Can’t believe I missed Nabakov off the list when Sam wrote about Lolita here last week! 🙈
Now you mention it, I’d be curious to read Lenin and Stalin actually. I remember seeing some of their books in Ceaușescu’s former home in Bucharest last year. I’d presume Lenin would be an excellent writer, while Stalin would be a bore. I wonder if they’d fit my expectations or not
No, they wouldn't. I've waded through some of each, Stalin and Lenin, and it was like watching the movie Titanic! You know how the story will end. I read Che Guevara's Africa journals and was amazed by his full throated racism, but eventually saw variations of it in most doctrinaire Soviet writing. Lenin surprised me with his hatred of everything outside his orbit. I even took time to read Ghadaffi's Green Book and Mao's Red Book, and all I learned was that I must have a lot of determination to finish reading that shit. When you know that what they were pushing ended with the deaths of over 100,000,000 people, what good can come from their bilge? For reasons I don't understand, people still brag about being trained Marxists, but try to find someone bragging about being a trained Nazi or Fascist, or who really enjoys Mein Kampf. They are scarce.
And don't get me started about the ghost written books by candidates during campaign season. Haven't read one; won't read one.
Fun fact: Virginia Woolf (the highest tide of English modernism, I think) would agree with you.
For the contemporary continuation of this list, I'll add Eugene Vodolazkin. I've also heard that Vladimir Sorokin is a talented Russian novelist and satirist, but haven't read him.
Well you know me, Kevin, I like to hobnob with the highest tides of all things literary. Though I’m fairly sure Virginia Woolf would find me deeply irritating.
In terms of influence relative to the amount that's been published in their language, it must be Russia. God knows what they had in the water in 19th century petersburg
I‘d just like to ask everyone in this thread to bear in mind even for just one moment the intrinsic bias of this conversation, hinging not just on taste and various metrics, but less obviously on cultural supremacy (I find „imperialism“ too tough a word). We can only compare and discuss the great literatures that were endorsed by a political (and military) power which made it possible for its cultural products to circulate or be translated. The „big“ languages. Before we go into classifying (and comparing) the quality of literature by climate or continent, perhaps we take a moment to appreciate the countless writers we‘ll always be ignorant of.
If we're evaluating literatures by the number of enduring masterpieces — books which are considered true works of art in their own right — my vote would have to go with England. The people of that island have been producing masterpieces with regularity from Gawain and the Green Knight to the present day. But if our metric is the endurance of ideas, characters, stories, and moods, taken apart from the works in which they are featured, I would say that Greece has to be the winner. I haven't read a single Greek literary work, but I know all the stories and characters simply from cultural osmosis. Actually, if I'm thinking along those lines, the Hebrews with their Bible would have to take the prize.
Curious how cultures with an independent literary tradition, with no ties to the west, would view this question. Would Chinese or Indian readers admit the excellence of Greek and English books?
Think you’ve identified several very interesting ways of looking at the question. The Greek point is an excellent one. Considering how Homer and Herodotus invented their respective literary traditions, not to mention the philosophy and plays, it’s hard to look past them as originating the entire Western cultural tradition.
But then as you say, those of other great literary traditions, the Chinese or Indians, have founders of their own. Hard to say how much we’re blinkered by our particular cultural inheritance.
I would vote China. It has thousands of years of literary output. In addition to the big four that were already mentioned (Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, and Dream of the Red Chamber) you also have critical works like The Analects (sometimes called the Sayings of Confucius) Laozi's Dao De Jing, and all the poets and travel literature. In the west, the best know of the ancient poets are probably Li Bai, Du Fu, and Wang Wei. But there are also many, many brilliant modern poets like Ai Qing and Xi Chuan.
One thing I love about Chinese literature is that it shows others ways to tell compelling stories beyond the typical Hero' Journey.
Chinese literature has not only influenced almost all of the literature produced in East Asia for the past five hundred years, these works have also had profound influenced western writers, often without their even knowing it.
I have a special place in my heart for The Dream of the Red Chamber which is one of the weirdest things I've ever read. It's deeply symbolic and if you can make it through all five volumes of the Penguin classics version, it will change the way you understand Chinese culture. I encountered this work in college, after I had already lived in Taiwan for two years, learned Mandarin and returned to the U.S. It was a transformative experience working my way through the meandering story.
I feel like I’ve just gotten a deeper understanding of your poetry reading this comment. Had no idea you were so well read in Chinese literature! And can speak Mandarin! 🤯 Will have to move Red Chamber further up my list
I used to be able to read at about a 8th grade level in Chinese as well, but I'm extremely rusty on my characters. My speaking has also atrophied, but I can still get by when needed.
The Dream of the Red Chamber is a little like if The Lord of the Rings happened in a single neighborhood. It's an odd combination of epic and domestic. Like LOR it's filled with mythology, and countless digressions, but none of the swashbuckling adventure.
Okay I'm going to be biased. For me the UK just about pips all the others. Shakespeare, Dickens, Chaucer, Woolf, and even the more modern giants such as Amis, McEwan. I think overall I'd say the UK. But I am seeing people saying Russia and Ireland etc and you can most definitely make an argument for them!
I think there’s an argument to be made that we could just send in Shakespeare to the metaphorical fight to literary death and he’d still beat every other country.
Richard Linklater. I know he's a screenwriter, but I'm throwing him on the list for his movies' personal effect on me.
Writers from England, Ireland, and Germany have also profoundly affected me. I've also read Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Pasternak, Checkov, and Gogol, but they didn't have the same impact on my life. However, my partner speaks Russian, and when she explained all the inaccuracies of the English versions, I started to get more into Russian literature.
I’ve often thought about learning Russian just to read all their great books.
If only there was more time in the day. I have an impossibly long list of things I tell myself I’m going to do once I can substack full time and give up the day job. There’ll never be enough time for it all!
I'll brave a thread full of Brits and be that guy: for its relatively short history and relatively-deep well of Nobel Laureates, I think Ireland has the greatest (Western) literary output.
In the span of one century, three writers rethought literature in three successive traditions: W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett. Each remain influential through today, Joyce especially. I'd argue that the influence has to do with their concern with form, which each of them pushed to the limits. Joyce essentially posed and answered the question of what a novel is with Ulysses, and Beckett (his former disciple) later unmade it once more in the postmodern tradition (and while writing in French, no less). That's difficult to imagine, much less describe, much less accomplish.
But that quick summary would be incomplete without mentioning more contemporary heirs, like Edna O'Brien, Joseph O'Neill, John Banville, and Anne Enright.
Yes, can’t believe no one else mentioned it until now! Dante alone would rank them amongst the greats, let alone all the other great writers you’ve mentioned
Germany can sometimes feel underrated in literary concerns, which is extremely strange given the names you mention and the country's historical output in philosophy, the sciences, and others.
Also for the German pantheon: Thomas Mann, something of a giant in my mind.
“It’s my own so I’m partial to it.” A professor I had said that about American Lit, and I’ve repeatedly found that true in my life. There’s something about the localism in Faulkner and Wendell Berry, the pure philosophy of Thoreau, the epic of Cormac McCarthy and Melville, the craft of Hemingway, and the poetic spirit of Eliot and Twain that I obsess over. They have their flaws for sure. I don’t know if they stack up to the Russians, but they’re mine and I love them for that.
Ah I love the way you’ve put that, “they’re mine and I love them for that.” It is remarkable how good American literature has been in such a short time period. McCarthy passing last month was tough to bear
I have never read it. Definitely been on the list since every McCarthy obituary compared the two writers. My girlfriend tried it earlier this year and hated it so I’m excited to enjoy it and tell her she’s wrong!
Have fun! There are a few chapters devoted solely to the history and art of whaling that seem dense and pointless but just keep pushing on. It’s so worth it. Melville had an almost Shakespearean sense of epic and drama.
Whether it’s England, China, or Russia, these countries have an underlying commonality. Something is going on subconsciously. They’re all relatively cold climates. Books in hot and humid countries were harder to come before humans invented air conditioners. Look up the history of Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein. She was stuck in a cabin because there was bad weather. When there’s bad weather outside, humans tend to write more.
China has a lot of different climates. From the hot, arid western deserts, to the tropics in the south. Only in the north does it have cold winters, and the winters in Beijing are nothing like the winters in Moscow or Minneapolis. I would also argue that Egypt and Greece have some great literature, and they are famously not cold places.
I've had this debate with my wife before, and we always settle on Russia. There are certainly other places which punch well above their weight, like Ireland or those who fully master a niche like Belgium and the B.D.
For me though Russia fields a team of greats where most other countries offer a single genius level maestro.
Awh you beat me to it! Clearly Russian writers with Dostoyevsky taking the prize. The depth of thoughts explored and the outlining of human nature is like no other writer. Pasternak wrote my favorite love story with the Russian revolution as the backdrop. Who can forget Solzehenitsyn and his powerful tales of the gulag, man's inhumanity to man.
I don’t know enough about literature to have a very credible opinion but it’s gotta be England or Russia (although Russia’s style is so dense and niche - albeit brilliant - while Great Britain seems to have impacted the world of literature the most widely in general)
With the pedantic caveat that this sort of sports fan literary discussion is always a little ridiculous, I’m going with Russia, and adding Babel to your list of luminaries.
The overwhelming bulk of my reading is American writers, but given my native bias, it’s hard to argue against the Russian list. I could name dozens of Americans I love that I think are great, but-- how many of them are better than Babel? Better than Dostoevsky? Chekhov? Gogol?
There are also quite a few writers among my favorites who are the only writers from their country I read, or one of a small number. Javier Marias, Georges Simenon, de Maupassant, Jaroslav Hasek, etc.
To add to your list at the bottom, I very much enjoyed Mircea Cărtărescu of Romania and Ismael Kadare of Albania. Shame greats like these are left out of debates because their nations are so often overlooked
when you started this publication, told you about the book that "made" me, a short novel called "the secret of dr honigberger" by mircea eliade. as an author, cartarescu is ok but to me eliade is ten times above. it is a pity that he is not know enough. eliade was a philosepher, fiction writer but mostly an historian of religions. and oh, he was a professor at the university of chicago. there are other romanian writers: eugene ionescu (theatre and essays), nichita stanescu (poetry) and so on.
to me the greeks and the chinese are the greatest influencers in literature
You make a great point on Chinese literature. We in the West are so divorced from their entire literary canon, it’s easy to overlook. My intention is to read the big four some day: Water Margin; Romance of the Three Kingdoms; Journey to the West; and Dream of the Red Chamber.
Also, please tell me more about you think England is the best 🇬🇧😂
It's also worth noting how Chinese poetry has influenced the literature of other countries such as Japan; and not only the literature, but other arts as well. 19th-century Japanese Ukiyo-e prints continually reference famous Chinese poems.
I’ll kick things off.
For me, it has to be Russia:
- Dostoyevsky
- Tolstoy
- Pushkin
- Pasternak
- Checkov
- Gogol
- Bulgakov
- Solzhenitsyn
- Nadezhda Teffi
Need I go on?
Probably if I were more familiar with how the Russian canon informs Russian culture I would agree; my bias is of course to my native language and culture. I can see how a book such as, say, Oliver Twist interacts with the culture I've grown up in; I don't have that perspective with The Brothers Karamazov, much as I would like to.
You make a good point. I suppose I was really only thinking of my own taste, rather than impact on the country as a whole, which is an interesting wrinkle to consider.
Of course in any discussion like this the talk can easily get bogged down in definitions, but that's no fun!
Right where my mind went haha
Russia.
I'd add to that list Vladimir Nabakov, even if he was an expatriate Russian (but then so was Solzhenitsyn for a while), and who knows how many lesser known literary lights Russia produced. I am reading Remembering the Darkness, a collection of diary excerpts, essays and letters from women who endured the Gulag, edited by Veronica Shapovalov. Heartbreaking, raw, brutal.
And if by Russian, we are also talking about the Soviet Union, we can't fail to list best selling authors Lenin and Stalin, although some might have preferred to use their books for not just a book burning event, but an involuntary suttee of the two monsters.
Can’t believe I missed Nabakov off the list when Sam wrote about Lolita here last week! 🙈
Now you mention it, I’d be curious to read Lenin and Stalin actually. I remember seeing some of their books in Ceaușescu’s former home in Bucharest last year. I’d presume Lenin would be an excellent writer, while Stalin would be a bore. I wonder if they’d fit my expectations or not
No, they wouldn't. I've waded through some of each, Stalin and Lenin, and it was like watching the movie Titanic! You know how the story will end. I read Che Guevara's Africa journals and was amazed by his full throated racism, but eventually saw variations of it in most doctrinaire Soviet writing. Lenin surprised me with his hatred of everything outside his orbit. I even took time to read Ghadaffi's Green Book and Mao's Red Book, and all I learned was that I must have a lot of determination to finish reading that shit. When you know that what they were pushing ended with the deaths of over 100,000,000 people, what good can come from their bilge? For reasons I don't understand, people still brag about being trained Marxists, but try to find someone bragging about being a trained Nazi or Fascist, or who really enjoys Mein Kampf. They are scarce.
And don't get me started about the ghost written books by candidates during campaign season. Haven't read one; won't read one.
Fun fact: Virginia Woolf (the highest tide of English modernism, I think) would agree with you.
For the contemporary continuation of this list, I'll add Eugene Vodolazkin. I've also heard that Vladimir Sorokin is a talented Russian novelist and satirist, but haven't read him.
Well you know me, Kevin, I like to hobnob with the highest tides of all things literary. Though I’m fairly sure Virginia Woolf would find me deeply irritating.
Fair point. Though, if her journals and letters are sincere, I'm pretty sure she found everyone deeply irritating.
Russia's hard to compete with!
In terms of influence relative to the amount that's been published in their language, it must be Russia. God knows what they had in the water in 19th century petersburg
I‘d just like to ask everyone in this thread to bear in mind even for just one moment the intrinsic bias of this conversation, hinging not just on taste and various metrics, but less obviously on cultural supremacy (I find „imperialism“ too tough a word). We can only compare and discuss the great literatures that were endorsed by a political (and military) power which made it possible for its cultural products to circulate or be translated. The „big“ languages. Before we go into classifying (and comparing) the quality of literature by climate or continent, perhaps we take a moment to appreciate the countless writers we‘ll always be ignorant of.
100%. Excellent point very well made. There is a good reason so many European countries feature in this thread.
If we're evaluating literatures by the number of enduring masterpieces — books which are considered true works of art in their own right — my vote would have to go with England. The people of that island have been producing masterpieces with regularity from Gawain and the Green Knight to the present day. But if our metric is the endurance of ideas, characters, stories, and moods, taken apart from the works in which they are featured, I would say that Greece has to be the winner. I haven't read a single Greek literary work, but I know all the stories and characters simply from cultural osmosis. Actually, if I'm thinking along those lines, the Hebrews with their Bible would have to take the prize.
Curious how cultures with an independent literary tradition, with no ties to the west, would view this question. Would Chinese or Indian readers admit the excellence of Greek and English books?
Think you’ve identified several very interesting ways of looking at the question. The Greek point is an excellent one. Considering how Homer and Herodotus invented their respective literary traditions, not to mention the philosophy and plays, it’s hard to look past them as originating the entire Western cultural tradition.
But then as you say, those of other great literary traditions, the Chinese or Indians, have founders of their own. Hard to say how much we’re blinkered by our particular cultural inheritance.
You got me on "the Hebrews with their Bible" — I'm obligated to cede prime storytelling to that one, for binding reasons.
I would vote China. It has thousands of years of literary output. In addition to the big four that were already mentioned (Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, and Dream of the Red Chamber) you also have critical works like The Analects (sometimes called the Sayings of Confucius) Laozi's Dao De Jing, and all the poets and travel literature. In the west, the best know of the ancient poets are probably Li Bai, Du Fu, and Wang Wei. But there are also many, many brilliant modern poets like Ai Qing and Xi Chuan.
One thing I love about Chinese literature is that it shows others ways to tell compelling stories beyond the typical Hero' Journey.
Chinese literature has not only influenced almost all of the literature produced in East Asia for the past five hundred years, these works have also had profound influenced western writers, often without their even knowing it.
I have a special place in my heart for The Dream of the Red Chamber which is one of the weirdest things I've ever read. It's deeply symbolic and if you can make it through all five volumes of the Penguin classics version, it will change the way you understand Chinese culture. I encountered this work in college, after I had already lived in Taiwan for two years, learned Mandarin and returned to the U.S. It was a transformative experience working my way through the meandering story.
I feel like I’ve just gotten a deeper understanding of your poetry reading this comment. Had no idea you were so well read in Chinese literature! And can speak Mandarin! 🤯 Will have to move Red Chamber further up my list
I used to be able to read at about a 8th grade level in Chinese as well, but I'm extremely rusty on my characters. My speaking has also atrophied, but I can still get by when needed.
The Dream of the Red Chamber is a little like if The Lord of the Rings happened in a single neighborhood. It's an odd combination of epic and domestic. Like LOR it's filled with mythology, and countless digressions, but none of the swashbuckling adventure.
Okay I'm going to be biased. For me the UK just about pips all the others. Shakespeare, Dickens, Chaucer, Woolf, and even the more modern giants such as Amis, McEwan. I think overall I'd say the UK. But I am seeing people saying Russia and Ireland etc and you can most definitely make an argument for them!
Yes Tom. 🎶Rule Britannia 🇬🇧🎶
I think there’s an argument to be made that we could just send in Shakespeare to the metaphorical fight to literary death and he’d still beat every other country.
Completely agree here!
I wanted to give a different answer, but––
The United States
Kate Chopin
Mark Twain
Walt Whitman
Joseph Heller
Kurt Vonnegut
Maya Angelo
Toni Morrison
Richard Linklater. I know he's a screenwriter, but I'm throwing him on the list for his movies' personal effect on me.
Writers from England, Ireland, and Germany have also profoundly affected me. I've also read Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Pasternak, Checkov, and Gogol, but they didn't have the same impact on my life. However, my partner speaks Russian, and when she explained all the inaccuracies of the English versions, I started to get more into Russian literature.
I’ve often thought about learning Russian just to read all their great books.
If only there was more time in the day. I have an impossibly long list of things I tell myself I’m going to do once I can substack full time and give up the day job. There’ll never be enough time for it all!
I feel that! If I could make a living on Substack, I’d spend much more time learning languages.
Cormac McCarthy, Tom Wolfe, and William Gay are among my favorite more or less contemporary writers.
I'll brave a thread full of Brits and be that guy: for its relatively short history and relatively-deep well of Nobel Laureates, I think Ireland has the greatest (Western) literary output.
In the span of one century, three writers rethought literature in three successive traditions: W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett. Each remain influential through today, Joyce especially. I'd argue that the influence has to do with their concern with form, which each of them pushed to the limits. Joyce essentially posed and answered the question of what a novel is with Ulysses, and Beckett (his former disciple) later unmade it once more in the postmodern tradition (and while writing in French, no less). That's difficult to imagine, much less describe, much less accomplish.
But that quick summary would be incomplete without mentioning more contemporary heirs, like Edna O'Brien, Joseph O'Neill, John Banville, and Anne Enright.
Don’t forget Oscar Wilde too!
Good call (though in his time, I'm pretty sure he was larger in London than in Ireland). And in the playwright vein, I'll add J.M. Synge as well.
I *must* include Italy:
-Virgil
- Dante
-Petrarca
-Boccaccio
-Virgilio
-Machiavelli
-Umberto Eco
-Italo Calvino
-Alessandro Manzoni
-Luigi Pirandello
-Italo Svevo
-Giacomo Leopardi
-Pietro Aretino
-Giuseppe Ungaretti
Yes, can’t believe no one else mentioned it until now! Dante alone would rank them amongst the greats, let alone all the other great writers you’ve mentioned
Ovid too!
And Horace!
That depends upon how you define Literary. If you define it as pulp paperbacks or Ebooks, then I'd say it's the United States.
If you are talking about literature that makes you think and changes your life. I'd say Russia as well.
After that, maybe Germany : : Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Nietzsche, Friedrich Schiller Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Rainer Maria Rilke
Then England with: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Newton, Locke.
Germany can sometimes feel underrated in literary concerns, which is extremely strange given the names you mention and the country's historical output in philosophy, the sciences, and others.
Also for the German pantheon: Thomas Mann, something of a giant in my mind.
I’d say the definition of literary is entirely subjective so define it how you wish.
Germany is a great shout, hadn’t actually considered that myself actually, but a lot of the writers you mentioned there are among my favourites.
Also, great to see England get mentioned (not that I’m biased at all 🏴🏴🏴)
“It’s my own so I’m partial to it.” A professor I had said that about American Lit, and I’ve repeatedly found that true in my life. There’s something about the localism in Faulkner and Wendell Berry, the pure philosophy of Thoreau, the epic of Cormac McCarthy and Melville, the craft of Hemingway, and the poetic spirit of Eliot and Twain that I obsess over. They have their flaws for sure. I don’t know if they stack up to the Russians, but they’re mine and I love them for that.
Ah I love the way you’ve put that, “they’re mine and I love them for that.” It is remarkable how good American literature has been in such a short time period. McCarthy passing last month was tough to bear
Just a personal opinion: I think “Moby-Dick” can go toe-to-toe with the greatest works of world literature. It’s a hill I’d die on lol.
I have never read it. Definitely been on the list since every McCarthy obituary compared the two writers. My girlfriend tried it earlier this year and hated it so I’m excited to enjoy it and tell her she’s wrong!
Have fun! There are a few chapters devoted solely to the history and art of whaling that seem dense and pointless but just keep pushing on. It’s so worth it. Melville had an almost Shakespearean sense of epic and drama.
Whether it’s England, China, or Russia, these countries have an underlying commonality. Something is going on subconsciously. They’re all relatively cold climates. Books in hot and humid countries were harder to come before humans invented air conditioners. Look up the history of Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein. She was stuck in a cabin because there was bad weather. When there’s bad weather outside, humans tend to write more.
That’s a very interesting thesis.
Though I would perhaps suggest some counter examples such as Borges, Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Rabindranath Tagore!
China has a lot of different climates. From the hot, arid western deserts, to the tropics in the south. Only in the north does it have cold winters, and the winters in Beijing are nothing like the winters in Moscow or Minneapolis. I would also argue that Egypt and Greece have some great literature, and they are famously not cold places.
How do you define greatness?
As you point out, Russia has the likes of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Chekov.
But France has Voltaire, Rousseau, and Rostand
Germany has Goethe, Schiller, von Wolkenstein, and von Tell.
England/Britain has Chaucer and Shakespeare, but also Marlowe, Bacon, and Donne.
The United States has Thoreau, Emerson, Edwards, Hemingway, London, and L'Amour.
Can we truly say one country's literary tradition is greater than another?
A good story is a good story no matter which country nurtured it into being.
Everything is subjective, no conclusions could ever be reached, no consensus established -yet, I enjoy the argument!
It is a good framing for celebrating the wealth of literature countries and cultures have gifted us!
I think I have. Don't remember where I heard this be do remember this
I've had this debate with my wife before, and we always settle on Russia. There are certainly other places which punch well above their weight, like Ireland or those who fully master a niche like Belgium and the B.D.
For me though Russia fields a team of greats where most other countries offer a single genius level maestro.
I have to agree, I just can’t see past Russia in this debate
Awh you beat me to it! Clearly Russian writers with Dostoyevsky taking the prize. The depth of thoughts explored and the outlining of human nature is like no other writer. Pasternak wrote my favorite love story with the Russian revolution as the backdrop. Who can forget Solzehenitsyn and his powerful tales of the gulag, man's inhumanity to man.
Have you heard the story of Pasternak reading Shakespeare’s sonnet at the Soviet event?
I don’t know enough about literature to have a very credible opinion but it’s gotta be England or Russia (although Russia’s style is so dense and niche - albeit brilliant - while Great Britain seems to have impacted the world of literature the most widely in general)
I think if you love literature then you’re opinion is very credible! Two excellent answers, one for my head (Russia) and one for my heart (Britain)!
With the pedantic caveat that this sort of sports fan literary discussion is always a little ridiculous, I’m going with Russia, and adding Babel to your list of luminaries.
The overwhelming bulk of my reading is American writers, but given my native bias, it’s hard to argue against the Russian list. I could name dozens of Americans I love that I think are great, but-- how many of them are better than Babel? Better than Dostoevsky? Chekhov? Gogol?
There are also quite a few writers among my favorites who are the only writers from their country I read, or one of a small number. Javier Marias, Georges Simenon, de Maupassant, Jaroslav Hasek, etc.
To add to your list at the bottom, I very much enjoyed Mircea Cărtărescu of Romania and Ismael Kadare of Albania. Shame greats like these are left out of debates because their nations are so often overlooked
when you started this publication, told you about the book that "made" me, a short novel called "the secret of dr honigberger" by mircea eliade. as an author, cartarescu is ok but to me eliade is ten times above. it is a pity that he is not know enough. eliade was a philosepher, fiction writer but mostly an historian of religions. and oh, he was a professor at the university of chicago. there are other romanian writers: eugene ionescu (theatre and essays), nichita stanescu (poetry) and so on.
to me the greeks and the chinese are the greatest influencers in literature
Is it available in English, that Eliade book? Very much want to read it based on your description of it
dont know but i'll try to find it
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Two-Strange-Tales-Mircea-Eliade/dp/1570626634/ref=sr_1_9?crid=EGE25ZCHYSHV&keywords=two+strange+tales&qid=1689007047&sprefix=%2Caps%2C145&sr=8-9
i will try to find an ebook version
Amazing, thank you! May have to indulge my tendency to order physical copies of books to my Mum’s house while I’m out of the country 😅
I’ll look for their work, thanks!
100%. Excellent point very well made.
Best of bunch follows:
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&hl=en-us&sxsrf=AB5stBjCLANbrVqb8jz_dCdfFDpje1RXMA:1689047302151&q=Which+country+has+produced+the+greatest+literary+output&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwis-s_D34WAAxWbj4kEHfgkAHgQ0pQJegQICRAB&biw=1128&bih=732&dpr=2
Reframing initial challenge question:
https://www.quora.com/Which-language-have-the-most-literature
+++
You make a great point on Chinese literature. We in the West are so divorced from their entire literary canon, it’s easy to overlook. My intention is to read the big four some day: Water Margin; Romance of the Three Kingdoms; Journey to the West; and Dream of the Red Chamber.
Also, please tell me more about you think England is the best 🇬🇧😂
You know that it’s often said that Middle Earth was vaguely mapped onto Europe, so that would make America...Valinor
You’re an elf, Ellis.
It's also worth noting how Chinese poetry has influenced the literature of other countries such as Japan; and not only the literature, but other arts as well. 19th-century Japanese Ukiyo-e prints continually reference famous Chinese poems.