(03-31-2019, 02:58 PM)rowens Wrote:  I'm drunk. And so shouldn't say anything. When I wake up tomorrow, after hours obsessing about the woman I'm in love with, I'm going to be suicidally embarrassed about this.

And I had to start a new paragraph.

Absorb. Secrete. Digest. Circulate. Excrete. Create.

And Ignorance with a capital I.  That's all I know.

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I enjoy discussing Harold Bloom's views on Celine, Carl Jung and Strindberg. Because Bloom is such a force. But when it comes to these figures, he admits, as we all do, his bias.

Bloom is a shamelessly effervescent Shakespeare fan-boy, no doubt.  It seems that in his old age all he reads is Shakespeare and Whitman.  LOL  Having said that, his Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human was a tour-de-force in the realm of literary criticism.  It made me re-read about 15 Shakespeare plays as I read it. 

That Shakespeare "over-wrote" at times can hardly be denied.  Sometimes I think he had so much vibrant creative energy that he was never one to deny his audience the tangentially aimed "asides" he aimed at them for their enjoyment.  I don't know...sometimes you just guess about such things...

I remember once reading that Macbeth was his most sparse and brutally economic of tragedies. 

You write some damn good shyt, by the way...

I've been waiting the last ten minutes, because Who's Online was saying you were Replying.


So hold on a few minutes and let me type my drunken shit.

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I want to say something about Harold Bloom.

But if nobody wants to hear it, I won't waste your time.

(03-31-2019, 03:27 PM)rowens Wrote:  I've been waiting the last ten minutes, because Who's Online was saying you were Replying.


So hold on a few minutes and let me type my drunken shit.

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I want to say something about Harold Bloom.

But if nobody wants to hear it, I won't waste your time.

Bloom is one of the only somewhat famous persons whom I corresponded a bit back and forth with on-line.  I was just curious about some of his "takes" on certain writers and passages, wanted some more clarification, and somewhat surprisingly he responded back and forth.  I have to give him that. 

Anyway...

How long ago was this? I find it surprising, unless this is something he's been doing in his old age, because in his writings, he despises The Time of the Screen.

I'm not saying that what you're saying is untruthful. I just find it odd. Unless this is something recent.

(03-31-2019, 03:46 PM)rowens Wrote:  How long ago was this? I find it surprising, unless this is something he's been doing in his old age, because in his writings, he despises The Time of the Screen.

I'm not saying that what you're saying is untruthful. I just find it odd. Unless this is something recent.

No, I don't lie, though this is the internet and what I say can't be taken as truth.  I don't care.  I just was truly appreciative of some things that he wrote, and I wanted to know a little more about a few things he had explicated upon.  That's all.  It was, I don't know, about ten years ago or so.  I thought it was nice that he took the time. 

I had the same experience with just a couple of other people (I rarely do this, hardly at all).  I was wondering about something Louise Gluck wrote in her book of poems The Wild Iris, and she also responded, and I wondered something about a quantum physicist wrote about his theories of time and he replied.  That's about it.  I was curious about something the economist Paul Krugman wrote, but he never did.  Not much more than that in this regard.

I have no life. So I've been sitting around waiting for your response. Because I wanted to make all kinds of Romantic points that I read out of Harold Bloom.

But, anyway. I'm not saying you're lying. I just find it odd, odd that Harold Bloom talks to people on the internet, after all the vitriol he spews on the internet in his books.

(03-31-2019, 02:16 PM)NobodyNothing Wrote:  Freud coined the term "penis envy".  In the literary and dramatic arts, one might re-phrase the term as "Shakespeare envy", as no other writer casts a longer, more encompassing shadow than he.  I recall the eminent literary scholar Harold Bloom's term "the anxiety of influence" when referring to artists attempting to escape beyond the shadows of those predecessors who influenced them the most in their artistic viewpoint and stylistic endeavors.  It's hard to be original and talentedly so in this way.  It's a beautiful and sometimes culturally earth shaking thing when it happens.  Pushing the ball further.  Artistic thunderbolts.  The momentous achievement of true and lasting cultural relevancy.  

Shakespeare just happens to be the giant amongst all giants in this literary and dramatic way.  Just the way it happened.  Just the way it is.

And I say that Shakespeare was just one of several big names in the European literary tradition, along with Homer, Virgil, Dante, Petrarch, Goethe, and the Russians. 
That's just the way it is.

(03-31-2019, 04:04 PM)rowens Wrote:  I have no life. So I've been sitting around waiting for your response. Because I wanted to make all kinds of Romantic points that I read out of Harold Bloom.

But, anyway. I'm not saying you're lying. I just find it odd, odd that Harold Bloom talks to people on the internet, after all the vitriol he spews on the internet in his books.

It's no big deal.  I wrote to him at Yale at his website there.  Maybe he responded because I flattered him a bit.  I don't know.  At the time I was just really curious about some of his literary theories, and maybe he sensed my genuine curiosity.  I honestly don't know.  I will say this.  At one point he did wax on about his mortality.  LOL

(03-31-2019, 01:28 PM)billy Wrote:  what the scientists did for science, bill did for english language, a language that covers a large part of the globe. it's a fair comparison.

Only for the English, not French or Russian. The Germans loved Shakespeare, but it's not clear how Shakespeare influenced them.
Voltaire disdained Shakespeare, as did (did I mention it?) Tolstoy.
To compare Shakespeare's influence to that of Newton is factually incorrect. Although both are cultural icons of a similar stature to the English, their value is vastly different in other cultures. A better comparison would be Newton and Karl Marx, who both transcend cultures.

Quote:here's a cut and past, the article is much longer but i can't be arsed doing it all or source it other than to google "what did Shakespeare do for us" ;
note the phrases "world's pre-eminent dramatist" and "other languages" the man added around 1,700 new words to the language we speak. i'd say that's pretty fuckin awesome

No evidence - just a claim. Many of them were just words in use at the time, in an English language that was still evolving. Nevertheless, it's not clear how just making up new words is an achievement. It's not as if he invented a language and grammar, just borrowed (or made up) a lot of slang: https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/0...story.html

Quote:Shakespeare's influence extends from theatre and literature to present-day movies, Western philosophy, and the English language itself. 

Shakespeare's influence on English literature and culture is considerable.
He was one of several big names on the European stage. Schopenhauer admired Shakespeare, as he did also Goethe and Calderon.
Nevertheless, I am not sure (and I suspect, neither are you!) on how Shakespeare "influenced" Kant or Schopenhauer or Spinoza or philosophy in general. Incidentally, Wittgenstein hated Shakespeare.

Quote:William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the history of the English language,[1] and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.[2][3][4] He transformed European theatre by expanding expectations about what could be accomplished through innovation in characterization, plot, language and genre.[5][6][7] Shakespeare's writings have also impacted a large number of notable novelists and poets over the years, including Herman Melville[8] Charles Dickens,[9] and Maya Angelou,[10] and continue to influence new authors even today. Shakespeare is the most quoted writer in the history of the English-speaking world[11][12] after the various writers of the Bible; many of his quotations and neologisms have passed into everyday usage in English and other languages.

That is what happens when you found a language a tradition, and are taught in schools. Your standing in purely literary terms has nothing to do with it.

In this and every instance, your defence of Shakespeare is from appeals to authority. Tolstoy's problem with King Lear was stated in clear, logical terms. If a modern day TV writer opened a story like bill did, he wouldn't get very far.

The greatest cultural contribution of Britain is Sherlock Holmes.

Death. Yes. I believe you now. Because he resists any supernatural beliefs.

His favorite writers are those who face death head on.

(03-31-2019, 04:14 PM)rowens Wrote:  Death. Yes. I believe you now. Because he resists any supernatural beliefs.

His favorite writers are those who face death head on.

I was really into literary criticism for awhile there.  That's where this came from.  My majors were American Studies and Comparative Lit.  What I got from Bloom was that he enjoys arguing with God, or the argument with God, though I tended to think he resided somewhere between agnostic and atheistic, but a lot closer to atheistic.  I think that argument with "God" was something of great literary interest to him, however.  At least that's what I got from him.

Anyway...

I enjoy reading Bloom on Yeats and Merrill. William Butler Yeats and James Merrill. Men who actually had supernatural beliefs.

Bloom's whole thing is death. Death.

Poets who accept death, and write to make life worth living.

(03-31-2019, 04:29 PM)rowens Wrote:  I enjoy reading Bloom on Yeats and Merrill. William Butler Yeats and James Merrill. Men who actually had supernatural beliefs.

Bloom's whole thing is death. Death.

Poets who accept death, and write to make life worth living.

Yes, of course, death.  He's Jewish.

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PS>  It took me a very long time to reconcile my mind and heart with absolute nihility.

There's one sentence out of Heidegger. Who Bloom as a Jew despises. But it sums up Bloom's work. And he admitted it. Twice.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

I might be crazy, for all I know.

(03-31-2019, 04:39 PM)rowens Wrote:  There's one sentence out of Heidegger. Who Bloom as a Jew despises. But it sums up Bloom's work. And he admitted it. Twice.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

I might be crazy, for all I know.

No, I don't.  I never read Heidegger, though I'm aware of him.  Didn't he carry on with Hannah Arendt?  I read a bunch of her stuff.  "On Totalitarianism", "The Human Condition", and "Eichmann In Jerusalem" were all enthralling reads when I read them.

I don't know German. But the line I'm talking about has to do with picking a worldview and sticking with it.

And that is a Romantic point of view. It's also a Nazi point of view.

. . . I love Bloom because of Hart Crane And William Blake.

My library started throwing away books a few years ago. And I stole everything, the first thing I did, was steal everything by Crane and Blake.
And this is after they destroyed my beloved fairy book.


I wrote a poem about it called Genet's Library. You know who Genet was? Yep, that poem is a confession.


It's a confession. And I've never published it. Despite the fact that I'm on here every day confessing everything I do.

(03-31-2019, 04:54 PM)rowens Wrote:  I don't know German. But the line I'm talking about has to do with picking a worldview and sticking with it.

And that is a Romantic point of view. It's also a Nazi point of view.

. . . I love Bloom because of Hart Crane And William Blake.

My library started throwing away books a few years ago. And I stole everything, the first thing I did, was steal everything by Crane and Blake.
And this is after they destroyed my beloved fairy book.


I wrote a poem about it called Genet's Library. You know who Genet was? Yep, that poem is a confession.


It's a confession. And I've never published it. Despite the fact that I'm on here every day confessing everything I do.

Ha!  Confession.  It was reading Bloom's literary criticism that turned me onto Hart Crane.  I didn't know him from Adam before that.  I remember a poem called The Bridge, I think, and another great poem about a tower.  No doubt, he had a lyrical gift.  Didn't he jump off a ship and get chewed up by its its props?

You're talking about The Broken Tower. Crane's death poem. Read it again right now. Just do it.

(03-31-2019, 05:07 PM)rowens Wrote:  You're talking about The Broken Tower. Crane's death poem. Read it again right now. Just do it.

That's it!  I remember.  The Broken Tower.  God Damn, it's in a box with many other books now.  I moved.

PS> The internet has its uses...

The Broken Tower

The bell-rope that gathers God at dawn
Dispatches me as though I dropped down the knell
Of a spent day - to wander the cathedral lawn
From pit to crucifix, feet chill on steps from hell.

Have you not heard, have you not seen that corps
Of shadows in the tower, whose shoulders sway
Antiphonal carillons launched before
The stars are caught and hived in the sun's ray?

The bells, I say, the bells break down their tower;
And swing I know not where. Their tongues engrave
Membrane through marrow, my long-scattered score
Of broken intervals… And I, their sexton slave!

Oval encyclicals in canyons heaping
The impasse high with choir. Banked voices slain!
Pagodas, campaniles with reveilles out leaping-
O terraced echoes prostrate on the plain!…

And so it was I entered the broken world
To trace the visionary company of love, its voice
An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)
But not for long to hold each desperate choice.

My word I poured. But was it cognate, scored
Of that tribunal monarch of the air
Whose thigh embronzes earth, strikes crystal Word
In wounds pledged once to hope - cleft to despair?

The steep encroachments of my blood left me
No answer (could blood hold such a lofty tower
As flings the question true?) -or is it she
Whose sweet mortality stirs latent power?-

And through whose pulse I hear, counting the strokes
My veins recall and add, revived and sure
The angelus of wars my chest evokes:
What I hold healed, original now, and pure…

And builds, within, a tower that is not stone
(Not stone can jacket heaven) - but slip
Of pebbles, - visible wings of silence sown
In azure circles, widening as they dip

The matrix of the heart, lift down the eye
That shrines the quiet lake and swells a tower…
The commodious, tall decorum of that sky
Unseals her earth, and lifts love in its shower.

But I have to re-digest...

And so it was I entered the broken world
To trace the visionary company of love, its voice
An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)
But not for long to hold each desperate choice.

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And so it was I entered the broken world
To trace the visionary company of love, its voice
An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)
But not for long to hold each desperate choice.


Bloom's first book. And Crane got it from Pater.

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And that line of thought is pure Emily Dickinson. That's right out of Dickinson.