>>25116390
Yeah salammbo is pretty much proto sword and sorcery

I just read Sentimental Education, reading Madame Bovary now. Flaubert is too good, I might have to jump straight into this if im not sick of him for a minute after MB. Thanks to Francis Steegmuller I didnt have to read a womens translation

GRRM invented jack shit

Grimdark has to be one of the worst genre names ever.

>>25117007
It comes from Disney kids, so what do you expect?

>>25117007
Yeah dark fantasy is better and more defined

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>>25116390
This is one of the best historical novels every written, and possibly my favorite novel set in the ancient world written from a non-ancient author. I would also argue that it's probably the only novel by a modern author set in the ancient world that actually makes sense for you to read.
Flaubert, besides being an absolute nerd, gets one thing right that almost no modern writer gets about the past - and that classical scholars only grasp (meaning: "feel", and not conceptualize) after years and years of engaging with classical material, that is: these people were not at all like us. They were radically different, and the distance in time should make us perceive them as radically weird, to the point of being almost alien when compared to us. Flaubert succeeds in portraying a set of beliefs so entirely alien from his (and our) "civilization", that it really makes you doubt whether our society isn't also operating on some entirely superstitious beliefs. It really feels like encountering a mentality, a people, a set of thoughts and values that is completely "other", and as the result it creates a general impression of dissociation towards your own world.
But Flaubert also - and here is his true, umparalleled genius - somehow manage to convey that the secret architecture of the human psyche, despite naming its elements in entirely different ways (as "gods" instead of "passions", for instance) is the same. We read a story of superstition, religious fervour, mysticism - and it looks and sounds so much like the story of a romantic infatuation, although the vocabulary in which it is told never raises the suspicion that this is a romantic tale. Only through the structure, you get this feeling.
As a result of this, he conveys the feeling that the vocabulary for our inner lives, and for describing something as "common" as love, is entirely insufficient - our failure in expressing ourselves is not in modern age alone; it is a total and complete defeat as a species. The hope is that we'll read Homer, and Flaubert, and the great classics for a few more thousand years and maybe BEGIN to grasp what the fuck is going on inside of us - what is this vastness of fantasy and colors and feelings in which we are immersed, and for which we only have small, insufficient, ridiculous names.
>“Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.”

I fucking revere this book. People should bow, cum and cry in front of Flaubert for being able to do something like this besides Sentimental Education and Madame Bovary, which already are absolute unparalleled masterpieces. You should read his work in their entirety, and read the absolute masterpieces that are his letters.

>>25116390
Mccarthy's legion of horribles passage was probably inspired by Salammbo

>>25117034
Dark fantasy is not the same thing.

>>25117230
Then how come literally every "grimdark" trope can be found either in dark fantasy or sword and sorcery or horror like HP Lovecraft.

>>25117096
What's interesting about his letters? Do they offer any insight into Salammbo? I'd be interested to hear what the author thought about his own book because it's a story that seems to refrain from any moral judgement even as the most obscene stuff happens.

>>25117096
Great post anon. I'd like to add his adolescent works November and Memoirs of a Madman, they could easily stand alongside the usual Misunderstood Young Man suspects but unfortunately aren't well-known.

>>25117096
okay okay calm down I will read the book, I loved Madame Bovary anyway

Fuck, I guess I gotta finish it now.

>>25116390
>set in Carthage immediately before and during the Mercenary Revolt (241–237 BCE). Flaubert's principal source was Book I of the Histories, written by the Greek historian Polybius.
I just finished reading Book I of Polybius, maybe I need to look into this novel soon

His descriptions of Elephants in battle, when hurt or dying or how the carthigians view them and how the mercenaries treat them, Every sentence is like knifes to the heart. Marvelous book.

>>25117290
Descriptions of mud and dysentery are specifically grimdark. So is the main character taking part in gang rapes on the page. Grimdark is a relative of the naturalism genre in the field of fantasy and not just dark but grimdark.