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
At our present bad moment, we need above all to recover our sense of literary individuality and of poetic autonomy.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of maintaining one's unique voice and creative freedom, especially during challenging times.
Harold Bloom highlights the need to reconnect with our own literary and poetic identities amidst adversity. In times of hardship, clinging to our individuality as creators becomes crucial to not only express ourselves authentically but also to inspire and uplift others through our art.
Themes
IndividualityPoetryLiteratureCreativityAutonomy
In practice
Example use cases
During a writer's workshop, to encourage participants to embrace their unique styles.
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
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
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A world turned into a stereotype, a society converted into a regiment, a life translated into a routine, make it difficult for either art or artists to survive. Crush individuality in society and you crush art as well. Nourish the conditions of a free life and you nourish the arts, too.
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Music so softens and disarms the mind That not an arrow does resistance find.
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That part of Rostrevor which overlooks Carlingford Lough is my idea of Narnia.
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I believe that a good children's book should appeal to all people who have not completely lost their original joy and wonder in life. The fact is that I don't make books for children at all. I make them for that part of us, of myself and of my friends, which has never changed, which is still a child.
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