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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Every interpretation of a poem inherently carries a poetic quality of its own.
In this quote, Harold Bloom suggests that no matter the perspective or critique someone offers regarding a poem—whether from a critic, scholar, or teacher—that stance itself has its own artistic and poetic value. He emphasizes that the act of analyzing or interpreting poetry is a creative endeavor, as it shapes the meaning of the poem in unique ways.
Themes
PoetryInterpretationArtistic ExpressionCritiqueCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
In a literature class discussing the role of a critic.
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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