Harold Bloom Quotes

Powerful Harold Bloom for Daily Growth

About Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom (July 15, 1930 – October 16, 2019) was an American literary critic, university professor, and cultural theorist. Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish immigrant parents from Poland and Russia, he grew up surrounded by a rich intellectual environment that would significantly influence his life's work. Bloom received his Bachelor of Arts from Cornell University in 1951 and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1955. He joined the faculty at Yale in 1955, where he remained for over five decades, becoming the Sterling Professor of Humanities and one of the most influential literary scholars of the latter half of the 20th century. Bloom is perhaps best known for his theory of the "anxiety of influence," which explores how poets deal with the legacy of their literary predecessors. This idea was presented in his groundbreaking work, "The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry" (1973), a book that sparked intense debates within academic circles and beyond. Throughout his career, Bloom authored over 20 books on literary criticism, including "Agon: Towards a Theory of Revisionism" (1982) and "The Western Canon" (1994). He also wrote numerous essays on individual authors such as Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, and Shakespeare. Influenced by figures like Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche, Bloom's work transcended the realm of literary criticism to delve into broader cultural and philosophical topics. His writing style was often passionate, controversial, and fiercely intellectual, earning him both admiration and criticism. Despite this, his impact on the field of literary studies is undeniable, with his ideas continuing to shape scholarly discourse long after his passing in 2019.

Interpretations of Popular Quotes

"Poetry is a direct revelation of the unconscious."

Harold Bloom suggests that poetry, unlike prose, offers an unfiltered glimpse into a poet's subconscious mind. By writing poetry, authors tap into their deepest thoughts, emotions, and imaginations, allowing these raw, often unconscious aspects to manifest on the page. The final product is a work of art that not only reflects the poet's unique perspective but also transcends personal experiences to resonate with others, bridging the gap between individual and universal human consciousness.

"To be a reader is to be someone who habitually transcends himself; it is to double one's being, to move in two worlds at once, the everyday and the imaginative, the actual and the possible-fact and fiction."

Harold Bloom's quote emphasizes that being a reader allows an individual to expand their existence beyond the confines of daily life. It suggests that by engaging with literature, one can inhabit two realms simultaneously: the tangible world of everyday experiences, and the imaginative realm of fiction, where "fact" blends with "fiction." This duality enriches personal identity, offering a unique perspective to understand and navigate reality while also exploring possibilities that may not be accessible in ordinary life.

"The goal of literary criticism should be to make usatsume, or 'taste,' poetry more keenly."

Harold Bloom suggests that the purpose of literary criticism is to enhance our appreciation for poetry, much like how tasting refines one's palate for food. In other words, criticism should serve as a means to cultivate and heighten our sensitivity and enjoyment of poetry by providing insightful analysis and interpretation.

"We do not read books; we rewrite them."

Harold Bloom's quote, "We do not read books; we rewrite them," suggests that the act of reading is not merely an intellectual exercise but a transformative process. As readers, we engage with ideas presented in books, assimilate them into our own experiences, perspectives, and understanding, effectively reinterpreting or "rewriting" those ideas according to our unique worldview. In essence, Bloom posits that reading is not a passive activity but an active engagement where the reader contributes to the ongoing conversation of knowledge and interpretation.

"Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom."

This quote by Harold Bloom suggests that freedom, although liberating, can also be overwhelming or distressing, inducing feelings of anxiety. In other words, with great freedom comes great responsibility, and the awareness of these choices and their potential outcomes can sometimes cause feelings of unease. It underscores the delicate balance between the empowerment that freedom offers and the psychological challenges it presents when faced with an array of possibilities.

All that a critic, as critic, can give poets is the deadly encouragement that never ceases to remind them of how heavy their inheritance is.

- Harold Bloom

Give, Inheritance, Them, Critic

Indeed the three prophecies about the death of individual art are, in their different ways, those of Hegel, Marx, and Freud. I don't see any way of getting beyond those prophecies.

- Harold Bloom

Art, Death, Individual, Indeed

What we call a poem is mostly what is not there on the page. The strength of any poem is the poems that it has managed to exclude.

- Harold Bloom

Call, Poems, Mostly, Poem

If they wish to alleviate the sufferings of the exploited classes, let them live up to their pretensions, let them abandon the academy and go out there and work politically and economically and in a humanitarian spirit.

- Harold Bloom

Work, Go, Classes, Sufferings

In fact, it is Shakespeare who gives us the map of the mind. It is Shakespeare who invents Freudian Psychology. Freud finds ways of translating it into supposedly analytical vocabulary.

- Harold Bloom

Mind, Fact, Translating, Freud

I think Freud is about contamination, but I think that is something he learned from Shakespeare, because Shakespeare is about nothing but contamination, you might say.

- Harold Bloom

Think, I Think, Learned, Freud

If I were to sum up the negative reactions to my work, I think there are two primary causes: one is that if there is discourse about anxiety it is necessarily going to induce anxiety. It will represent a return of the repressed for a great many people.

- Harold Bloom

I Think, About, Sum, Repressed

What matters in literature in the end is surely the idiosyncratic, the individual, the flavor or the color of a particular human suffering.

- Harold Bloom

Color, Individual, Surely, In The End

But in the end, in the end one is alone. We are all of us alone. I mean I'm told these days we have to consider ourselves as being in society... but in the end one knows one is alone, that one lives at the heart of a solitude.

- Harold Bloom

Being, Lives, Ourselves, Solitude

We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are.

- Harold Bloom

Reasons, We Cannot, Enough People

The second, and I think this is the much more overt and I think it is the main cause, I have been increasingly demonstrating or trying to demonstrate that every possible stance a critic, a scholar, a teacher can take towards a poem is itself inevitably and necessarily poetic.

- Harold Bloom

Been, I Think, Increasingly, Scholar

Criticism in the universities, I'll have to admit, has entered a phase where I am totally out of sympathy with 95% of what goes on. It's Stalinism without Stalin.

- Harold Bloom

Goes, Phase, Entered, Stalin

In the finest critics one hears the full cry of the human. They tell one why it matters to read.

- Harold Bloom

Critics, Finest, Read, Hears

I would say that there is no future for literary studies as such in the United States.

- Harold Bloom

United, United States, Would, Studies

The world gets older, without getting either better or worse and so does literature. But I do think that the drab current phenomenon that passes for literary studies in the university will finally provide its own corrective.

- Harold Bloom

Own, University, Literary, Studies

I have never believed that the critic is the rival of the poet, but I do believe that criticism is a genre of literature or it does not exist.

- Harold Bloom

Never, Literature, Exist, Rival

Shakespeare is the true multicultural author. He exists in all languages. He is put on the stage everywhere. Everyone feels that they are represented by him on the stage.

- Harold Bloom

Everyone, Feels, Languages, Multicultural

What I think I have in common with the school of deconstruction is the mode of negative thinking or negative awareness, in the technical, philosophical sense of the negative, but which comes to me through negative theology.

- Harold Bloom

Think, Through, Which, Philosophical

Criticism starts - it has to start - with a real passion for reading. It can come in adolescence, even in your twenties, but you must fall in love with poems.

- Harold Bloom

Love, Start, Twenties, Real Passion

I don't believe in myths of decline or myths of progress, even as regards the literary scene.

- Harold Bloom

Decline, Even, Literary, Regards

Shakespeare will not make us better, and he will not make us worse, but he may teach us how to overhear ourselves when we talk to ourselves... he may teach us how to accept change in ourselves as in others, and perhaps even the final form of change.

- Harold Bloom

Teach, Will, May, Shakespeare

No poem, not even Shakespeare or Milton or Chaucer, is ever strong enough to totally exclude every crucial precursor text or poem.

- Harold Bloom

Strong, Enough, Crucial, Shakespeare

Shakespeare is universal.

- Harold Bloom

Universal, Shakespeare

What is supposed to be the very essence of Judaism - which is the notion that it is by study that you make yourself a holy people - is nowhere present in Hebrew tradition before the end of the first or the beginning of the second century of the Common Era.

- Harold Bloom

Study, Very, Which, Era

The world does not get to be a better or a worse place; it just gets more senescent.

- Harold Bloom

World, Better, Does, Gets

I take it that a successful therapy is an oxymoron.

- Harold Bloom

Successful, Therapy, Take, Oxymoron

Sometimes one succeeds, sometimes one fails.

- Harold Bloom

Sometimes, Fails, Succeeds

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