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
Socrates, in Plato, formulates ideas of order: the Iliad, like Shakespeare, knows that a violent disorder is a great order.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that chaos can be conceived as a form of order, particularly in art and literature.
Harold Bloom's quote discusses the philosophical perspective that works like the Iliad and the plays of Shakespeare possess a structural order that emerges from the chaos of violence and disorder. This raises intriguing questions about how narratives can reflect deeper truths about human experience, where even in tumult and conflict, there can be a discernible pattern or meaning that resonates with audiences.
Themes
ChaosOrderArtLiteraturePhilosophyViolence
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the nature of tragedy in literature, you might quote Bloom to highlight the paradox of chaos and order.
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
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
Everyone wants a prodigy to fail; it makes our mediocrity more bearable.
Harold BloomRead
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