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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Bloom suggests that criticism is an essential and legitimate form of literature, not just an adversarial role to poetry.
In this quote, Harold Bloom emphasizes the importance of literary criticism as a genre in its own right. He suggests that critics play a unique role in the literary world, differing from the poet, and that their work contributes to the understanding and appreciation of poetry rather than opposing it. Bloom’s view challenges the perception that criticism is merely a negative critique of artistic work; instead, he values it as a constructive and creative form of expression.
Themes
CriticismLiteraturePoetryArtGenre
In practice
Example use cases
In a writing workshop, to emphasize the role of feedback, one could say, 'As Harold Bloom noted, criticism is a genre of literature.'
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.
Harold BloomRead
Reading well is one of the greatest pleasures that solitude can afford you.
Harold BloomRead
Socrates, in Plato, formulates ideas of order: the Iliad, like Shakespeare, knows that a violent disorder is a great order.
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.
Harold BloomRead
Everyone wants a prodigy to fail; it makes our mediocrity more bearable.
Harold BloomRead
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How quiet the writing, how noisy the printing.
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One of the great functions of art is to help us imagine what it is like to be not ourselves, what it is like to be someone or something else, what it is like to live in another skin, what it is like to live in another body, and in that sense to surpass ourselves, to go out beyond ourselves.
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I feed on good soup, not beautiful language.
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A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.
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The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstance whether created by others or by one's own human failings. They are the only consistent art in the United States which constantly remind us of our limitations while encouraging us to see how far we can actually go. When understood in their more profound implication, they are a corrective, an attempt to draw a line upon man's own limitless assertion.
Ralph EllisonRead