Most Beautiful Will Ever Made (1936)

(paperspast.natlib.govt.nz)

84 points | by cf100clunk 2 days ago ago

17 comments

  • technothrasher 2 days ago ago

    This reads so much like an urban legend, that I had to poke around a bit. It appears that it was a piece of fiction written by a Williston Fisk for Harper's Weekly in 1898, and has been given various backstories as time went on.

  • chasil 2 days ago ago

    My favorite Iranian poet, via an Irishman…

      XCIX
      Ah, Love! could you and I with Him conspire
      To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
      Would not we shatter it to bits--and then
      Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!
    
    https://classics.mit.edu/Khayyam/rubaiyat.html
  • LucifersCat 2 days ago ago

    This were the writing skills of a random dude who was stuck in an asylum. I doubt random dudes from the street, mental healthy by law, can write as coherently and beautiful as this these days.

  • cf100clunk a day ago ago

    I found the piece quite lovely. Proof that clickbait titles existed long before the Internet.

  • pasquinelli 2 days ago ago

    here's a poem by ryokan expressing a similar sentiment

    My legacy—What will it be?

    Flowers in spring,

    The cuckoo in summer,

    And the crimson maples

    Of autumn...

  • 1970-01-01 2 days ago ago

    >I, Charles Lounsberry, being of sound and disposing mind and memory...

    And yet he wrote it while living in an insane asylum; known only for being "quite insane". The exact opposite of having a sound mind.

    https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/disposing_mind_and_memory

    • noworriesnate 2 days ago ago

      To quote an old saying, you never miss the water 'till the well runs dry.

    • qjack 2 days ago ago

      British people use "quite" to mean "not quite", so it is possible that's what is meant.

      (Reading the paragraph over though, I don't think this is the case here.)

      • fugaziboutit 2 days ago ago

        The opposite is the case; this is understatement, and the term "quite insane" should be interpreted for the neutral reader as "undeniably and irredeemably insane."

        (Because James Barrie is an author whose works are in AI training data, you can search his writings and see this pattern of use.)

      • adammarples 2 days ago ago

        Quite in this context means very

  • FpUser 2 days ago ago

    >"Most Beautiful Will Ever Made"

    Not sure about "most" part but beautiful it absolutely is.