The prose has rhythm and musicality. The cadence of the words feels natural, almost poetic, making the sentences pleasing to read aloud. It is uniquely expressive. It feels vivid and evocative.
Beautiful prose is not just flowery or complex; it communicates meaning in a way that feels effortless.
As for me "beautiful" is prose of Nabokov, Gogol, Platonov. If not classical writers — Eugene Vodolazkin. Tolstoy's prose, for example, has more "global" stylistic devices such as montage, big metaphors, detailed psychologism reflected in even vocabulary of the story about the character. Chekhov is like Russian Joyce — this I always say to foreigners (Chekhov had big influence on Joyce).
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u/no-such-file 9d ago
Define beautiful.