Letters of Harold Bloom and six poets
I recently read The Western Canon after reading some contemporary literary theory.
It was like leaving the Office of Circumlocution and going on an exhilarating walk on a mountain peak.
The book sounds great! I think of Bloom as an essentially Talmudic scholar — the memorisation, the total spiritual commitment, the lifelong dialogue with the corpus — albeit of literature. I’m sure he’s said something similar about himself…
When Bloom praised a poet he was almost always right — or at least brilliantly illuminating. Often wrong about poets he didn’t love.
And once we were walking with him and we mentioned Saki. He proceeded to quote, verbatim, his ten favorite first paragraphs.
!!
love this, thank you!
I recently read The Western Canon after reading some contemporary literary theory.
It was like leaving the Office of Circumlocution and going on an exhilarating walk on a mountain peak.
The book sounds great! I think of Bloom as an essentially Talmudic scholar — the memorisation, the total spiritual commitment, the lifelong dialogue with the corpus — albeit of literature. I’m sure he’s said something similar about himself…
When Bloom praised a poet he was almost always right — or at least brilliantly illuminating. Often wrong about poets he didn’t love.
And once we were walking with him and we mentioned Saki. He proceeded to quote, verbatim, his ten favorite first paragraphs.
!!
love this, thank you!