every time i encounter one of these maniacs i want to ask them to give an example of a passage in the iliad or the odyssey that they find particularly beautiful. is it the bit where someone has his head perforated by a spear, “shattering his white teeth, shearing his tongue at the root, and exiting through the chin”? is it the millionth time the poet mentions the “rosy-fingered dawn”? there’s something enjoyable in the rolling repetitive cadences of the homeric poems but on the level of the actual language they’re not remotely beautiful, beauty is not their project, there’s nothing comparable to the self-conscious aestheticism of someone like keats or even later greek poetry. it’s oral literature, rough-hewn, half-savage, which is precisely why it’s still so fascinating today. similarly, what’s the most beautiful passage in crime and punishment? dostoevsky’s writing is basically monstrous, heavy and hysterical, shrieking old women who turn white or purple every other paragraph. absolutely none of the deeply musical qualities of joyce. nothing nearly as nice as stephen on the strand. “signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot.” or the line about heavy sands i’ve stolen for my tagline. but of course this person hasn’t actually read any of the texts they mention, it’s all just a rote fetishistic invocation of the jordan peterson bookshelf of beautiful classical wisdom. fucking dostoevsky! “unadulterated beauty.” you are an illiterate. fuck off