We all fear loneliness, madness, dying. Shakespeare and Walt Whitman, Leopardi and Hart Crane will not cure those fears. And yet these poets bring us fire and light.
Harold BloomRead
Reading the very best writers—let us say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy—is not going to make us better citizens. Art is perfectly useless, according to the sublime Oscar Wilde, who was right about everything. He also told us that all bad poetry is sincere. Had I the power to do so, I would command that these words be engraved above every gate at every university, so that each student might ponder the splendor of the insight.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Reading great literature may not improve civic duties, but it enriches the human experience.
Harold Bloom reflects on the value of reading classic literature by authors such as Homer and Shakespeare, suggesting that while such readings may not directly contribute to being better citizens, they are invaluable for personal and artistic enrichment. He quotes Oscar Wilde to emphasize that art, which may seem useless in a practical sense, nonetheless holds profound beauty and significance that influences our understanding of life. Bloom advocates for the recognition of this insight, proposing that it should be a guiding principle in education.
Themes
LiteratureArtEducationCitizenshipOscar Wilde
In practice
Example use cases
During a commencement speech to emphasize the importance of the arts in education.
More from Harold Bloom
All quotes →I am naive enough to read incessantly because I cannot, on my own, get to know enough people profoundly enough.
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Reading well is one of the greatest pleasures that solitude can afford you.
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Socrates, in Plato, formulates ideas of order: the Iliad, like Shakespeare, knows that a violent disorder is a great order.
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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 BloomRead
Everyone wants a prodigy to fail; it makes our mediocrity more bearable.
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Prose is not to be read aloud but to oneself alone at night, and it is not quick as poetry but rather a gathering web of insinuations ... Prose should be a long intimacy between strangers with no direct appeal to what both may have known. It should slowly appeal to feelings unexpressed, it should in the end draw tears out of the stone.
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I am a painter with letters. I want to restore everything, mix everything up and say everything.
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I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.
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It is not opium which makes me work but its absence, and in order for me to feel its absence it must from time to time be present.
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I increasingly fear that nothing good can come of almost any adaptation, and obviously that's sweeping. There are a couple of adaptations that are perhaps as good or better than the original work. But the vast majority of them are pointless.
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