Harold Bloom General

some of what he says is illogical, but boy does he know how to make it sound beautiful.

there was this guy who gave an opening speech for one of Bloom's lectures that referred to him as "the critic as an artist". I always found that the best way to describe Bloom's critical philosophy

yeah sure, Gnosticism ("in a very broad sense", as he refers to it) may be a part of the primal human condition. But who's to say Marxism, if you "broaden" its definition to be the power struggle of the oppressed and the oppressor, or feminism, if you "broaden" it to be the inherent difference and subsequent oppression of men and women, isn't fundamental to the human condition as well? This just simplifies this back down to a theoretical lens to be argued.

And, ironically, like Bloom said, "putting the lens of Marxism or feminism on Shakespeare says nothing of Shakespeare, but of Marxism and feminism".

Surely I'm not saying his Gnostic lens on Shakespeare is useless, but it doesn't reveal any truth or beauty in the work. People love Bloom because he's a very interesting person, but his post-Western Canon criticism always devolves back to this same problem

Dude is fucking miserable, but he's made a hell of a lot out of it.

Yeah man, his Wiki bio says "Harold had three older sisters and an older brother of whom he is the sole survivor"

Plus his very strange mental condition, which is probably some type of Tourrete's that Dr. Johnson had, must've been a huge burden on his life

Didn't he write The Anxiety of Influence after he had some nightmare/midlife-crisis of a terrifying cherub? Fuck man.

>early parts of the bible were written by a woman

I thought women couldn't write Veeky Forums?

he got that idea from a reviewer of his work, who suggested that Bloom didn't go far enough and say that the Yahwist was Bathesheba.

Now he's all like, "hmm...yes, early parts of the Bible were writing by a woman. Am I provocative yet?"

I've got his famous Western Canon. But I'm not sure if I should start it before reading canonical writers or after. How should I approach this Veeky Forums?

Whites should not be reading Bloom or taking anything he says seriously. They should instead initially be wondering why a jew is institutionally promoted as the guardian of European literature, and then protesting this fact. If you're white, this is your obligation. No jew should be in the position Bloom is in and he should be derided every time his name comes up.

why is everyone in this thread so fucking stupid
this board is fucking trash

Do you expect others to entertain you while you sit back and soak it all in? Take action. Stop being so passive.
>Inb4 "you're the kind of retard I'm complaining about"

muh Shakespeare

i expect others not to be fucking 17 years old retards like (inb4 he is le trolling looool epic internet subculture stuff ahahah NORMIES!!!) and everyone else in this fucking thread
i open the catalog and every thread reads like one giant durrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr from start to finish
but i suppose expecting others to know what they're talking about is too much

The only post that reads like a 17 year old retard wrote it is your own. Just leave, you won't be missed.

It's a valid question, to be honest. Even if Bloom is right about pop culture authors like Rowling and King.

typical quasi-formulaic response i'd expect some utter imbecile like you to write
kill yourself

Before because he teache you to read better.

In 1973 Yale University professor, literary poobah & would-be vates Harold Bloom foisted a monumentally bold & silly book (both bold in its silliness & silly in its boldness!) into the public literary realm. Titled The Anxiety Of Influence: A Theory Of Poetry it posited some rather manifest, & trite, observations garbed in pseudo-Freudian mumbo-jumbo- much like most of Bloom’s simplistic Manichaean thought & writing. Although these observations had some truth, they were true to very limited areas & small degrees. Here, then, the sine qua non of the book/theory, & its 6 pillars/techniques (or in Bloom’s hoodooery revisionary ratios):

The Argument: Past Masters are always & necessarily better than latter-day scrubs (Bloom referring originally to poetry, alone, yet he & others have greatly expanded its application since) because they came first; therefore got to all the great & essential ideas/things first. This circular reasoning/paralogism is best called Classic Chicken Littleism.

The 6 pillars:

1) Clinamen (or misprision- Bloom)- The scrub must always misread/misinterpret the Master- i.e.- claim he (most often, as opposed to the shes now readily available for future scrubs to misread) was OK to a point, then fucked up so badly that the scrub is obliged to paste a DeKooningian smile over the Mona Lisa!
2) Tessera- The scrub sees the Master is a Genius (& didn’t fuck up) but did not go far enough, so the scrub must therefore complete the thing (Master’s idea/work/oeuvre)- i.e.- the scrub must make art in the way the Master would have, had the Master not been so dumb/given up/been cut down in his prime like so many past Masters (be it by circumstance or their own hand).
3) Kenosis- The scrub glumly realizes he cannot surpass the Master’s works, so the scrub labels his garbage GREAT- but in a different way than the Master’s- i.e.- the scrub declaims apples cannot be compared with Shelley Winters, much less oranges.
4) Daemonization- The scrub must lessen the Master’s genius/works by claiming him/it “merely one of the many great Masters/works in the form’s Pantheon”- i.e.- the scrub counters, “C’mon, with all the Citizen Kanes, 2001: A Space Odysseys, & Apocalypse Nows out there, you cannot say Titanic is not right up there with them!”
5) Askesis- The scrub’s purgative of putting his stamp on something already done by the Master- i.e.- the scrub rewrites Paradise Lost as a heroin snortfest war between supermodels & rap stars in Burbank, then preens over his originality.
6) Apophrades- The scrub’s assumption of the Master, seen anew through the scrub’s work- i.e.- the scrub (son) kills & devours the Master (father), shits him out, then claims to have always loved the shit/Master/father, and killed/devoured him for his own good.

he does not know a damn thing he is talking about
youtube.com/watch?v=tavz-teRK5Y

10/10 post

I kinda fear that it might spoil things, but I'll go with your advice.

>he has one faulty opinion so that means he's a complete idiot

Better just disregard every human there is

most of the 6 pillars are retarded but misprision is an extremely good point and that is hard to argue. It's a form of literary cannibalism that the best will do constantly

Reminder that the internet is fucking you up. Stop browsing Veeky Forums

youtube.com/watch?v=EVWiwd0P0c0

Why the fuck does he talk like he's making a deathbed confession?

You won't remenber the complex things that he said.

If you provide good topics for discussion you'll influence the thread in the direction you want it to go. You won't find good discussion on the internet unless you become the catalyst.

Oh my God it does sound like that

I like his overall defence of the Canon but his Shakespeare hard-on is a bit obnoxious to say the least.

>'s ironic that his School of Resentment's rise to academic power came due to the implementation of his ideas

How so?

Why do you find bardolatry obnoxious?

If any literary critic were pressed to deify an author, it would undoubtedly between Shakespeare and Dante.

Religious scriptures are just elevated stories, why can't we elevate The Complete Works into scripture?

Because at least under the T.S. Eliot types, it was conservatively structured, and it was very clear on what was bad and good.

His High-Romantic bullshit made it so ~anything~ can pass as an aesthetic achievement. Sure our sensibilities may lead us to say Tolstoy is better than Rupi Kaur, but sensibilities are just a social construct unless they're grounded on universal principles.

Because there are so many other interesting works that he seemingly knows loads about that he could commentate on and he often makes the choice to lavish praise on Shakespeare.

>reading his introduction to Grossman's Don Quixote
>he goes on about shakespeare for like 90% of the whole thing

He really does never just shut up about shakespeare

I love his passion for the aesthetic, though I wish he'd drop the Gnostic and Kabbala stuff.

I like him. His 'The Best Poems of the English Language' really got me into poetry.

> Taking Jewish 'intellectuals' seriously
Jewish thought is always skin-deep and always in service of a materialistic ulterior motive.

this

>How to Read and Why

Is this worth reading?

>t. Bloom novice

This. Thank you. I am glad someone else gets it as well as I do.

i like bloom but i find that his writing suggests the pitfalls of a life spent reading.

i cant shake the sense that he doesn't really understand a lot of human experience in a deep way because he lived his whole life in a soft bourgie book-nest. his way of explaining things is often just to make allusions and draw associations to various literary characters. yeah, how about the thing itself? do you have any insight of your own about it?

Canon cannon fire.

Watch the interview in this post from 23:30 He says that one of the 4 or 5 things that contribute to great literature is the 'unlived life' of the author

Good post. This goes as an argument against the whole tradition of Longinian criticism. The only reliable instrument of literary analysis we have is analysis of literary form. By taking the 'aesthetic sensibility-route', Bloom actually paved the way for some of the excesses of postmodernism he despises.

Whence boil'd this pasta?

Typical Jew with a low performance IQ.

I love him because he loves reading.

>would be vates
that's funny, user. are (you) even aware of what youre doing? one wonders, after Bloom, where your own sophmoric prose will lead (you)....
those 'truths' with only [(you) claim] marginal application are indeed everywhere in literature-- Montaigne's Essays come to mind, and they are all over Eckermann's book of his conversations with Goethe, to give two instances. True, Bloom pastes together a thoroughly modern archaism with respect to them, but he's more interested in how these columns or nodes relate to one another given this or that author's progress through (or lie against) time vis a vis 'literature in general,' which generally wears the face of some (loved\hated) hero of the poet or writer's own perhaps unconscious selection-- Stevens obsession with Keats, for instance. Ever hear Keats in Stevens? He's fucking all over the place. Ever hear Sterling Morrison's (VU) little guitar riffs in your favorite indy band's oeuvre? Theyre all over the place. ...But what are the pillars ultimately?
Ultimately they are (unconscious) excuses. The excuses one makes to oneself for not being Homer, Shakespeare, or even Auden (Oxford comma employed consciously). Or even Bloom.
The fact that this thread even exists is sufficient argument that he's a modern giant. His way of looking at literature and his obvious love of it are twin beacons of hope in these dark times of crass stupidification. He's demanding, fun, and somewhat silly (indeed) and did lose some of his 'luster' when he decided to become a pop critic in the late 80's early 90's, but his latest contribution The Daemon Knows is a somewhat watered down return to his earlier fun stuff, and is a joy to read. And what does it accomplish or attempt to do? It attempts to leave (or return) literature to its proper habitation, i.e. up in the air.
Bravo Bloom!

That's what makes it fun to read, though.

He spears School of Resentment fools with ease.

Is he really taken that seriously by the establishment anymore?

A sloppy thinker. His ideas are basically a motley of pretentious Freudianism, pseudo-Gnosticism, and a touch of Emersonian mysticism. His belief in Romanticism is embarrassing.

The true greatest critic of the 20th century was Yvor Winters.

why does this guy look simultaneously 17 and 50

>Why do you love him

Because he has that air of aristocratic contempt and effortless superiority that I find comfort in as an undergraduate, incapable of forming my own opinion and thought.

>Why do you feel in between

See above.

>Why do you hate him

See above.

He's a figurehead of the establishment, so I would assume so. But Bloom's taken seriously on Veeky Forums because a lot of the jews who swarm this place promote him (along with their mediocre writers like Salinger and Kafka) and a lot of naive white kids fall in line with those jews' opinions because they don't understand the dynamics at play / how jews think / why they're promoting a fellow jew as the guardian of this area of white culture.

>greatest critic

>King of the Sewers

...

I'm upset I read this horrible post.

>Canonical Western literature cannot be truly appreciated, or protected by anyone that isnt white.

Well, yeah. And why are you under the assumption that jews intend to protect other people's culture when they are the ones disproportionately involved in destroying other people's culture? Sounds like you need to familiarize yourself with the jewish question.

it's a jew's world, kid, you're just living in it

and barely

The jew's world you speak of is crashing down because jews have never run anything and have made it apparent quite fast into their reign that they aren't fit to run anything.

the jews made you say that

the jews made you say that

the jews made you say that

the jews made me say this

i feel in between because i actually read hamlet poem unlimited and it was mostly "wow i really like this play!!!!!" bullshit

>this
You had one job user

It's moronic /pol/tard bullshit, user. Carry on.

I wish he was my grandpa

All I know of this man is that what he wrote on Gravity's Rainbow is the worst thing I've ever read ever.

Was it autism?

Post excerpts?

Are any of Bloom's books worth reading? I like to dabble in lit crit from time to time.

Now I'm curious