Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles: The Power of the Reader’s Mind over a Universe of Death

672 Pages·2020·9.744 MB·English

by  Harold Bloom

t a k e a r m s a g a i n s t
a s e a o f t r o u b l e s
This page intentionally left blank
T A K E A R M S
A G A I N S T
S E A
A OF
T R O U B L E S

——–
The POWER of the
READER’S MIND over a
UNIVERSE of DEATH

——–
H A R O L D
B L O O M
——–
New Haven & London
Published with support from the Fund established in memory of
Oliver Baty Cunningham, a distinguished gradua te of the Class of
1917, Yale College, Captain, 15th United States Field Artillery, born
in Chicago September 17, 1894, and killed while on active duty near
Thiaucourt, France, September 17, 1918, the twenty-f ourth
anniversary of his birth.
Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory
of Philip Hamilton McMillan of the Class of 1894, Yale College.
Copyright © 2020 by Harold Bloom.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in w hole or in part, including
illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by
Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except
by reviewers for the public press), without written permission
from the publishers.
Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for
educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please
e- mail sales . press@yale . edu (U.S. office) or sales@yaleup. co . uk
(U.K. office).
Set in Janson type by Westchester Publishing Serv ices.
Printed in the United States of Ameri ca.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020933182
ISBN 978-0-300-24728-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
A cata logue rec ord for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992
(Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
prelude Reading to Stay Alive—P oetic Thinking 1
introduction The Rhe toric of Poetic Thinking 14
1. William Shakespeare and John Milton: In Every Deep,
a Lower Deep 38
2. Milton: The Shakespearean Epic 83
3. Milton and William Blake: The H uman Form Divine 110
4. William Words worth and John Keats: Something
Evermore About to Be 159
5. Words worth: The Myth of Memory 170
6. Percy Bysshe Shelley and George Gordon,
Lord Byron: Serpent and Eag le 180
7. Keats: They Seek No Wond er but the H uman Face 297
8. Robert Browning: What in the Midst Lay but the
Tower Itself? 333
9. Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Lest One Good Custom
Should Corrupt the World 356
vi Contents
10. Walt Whitman: I Stop Somewhere Waiting for You 379
11. Robert Frost: Drink and Be Whole Again
beyond Confusion 409
12. Wallace Stevens: The Hum of Thoughts Evaded
in the Mind 422
13. William Butler Yeats and D. H. Lawrence: Start
with the Shadow 460
14. Hart Crane: The Unknown God 500
15. Sigismund Schlomo Freud: Speculation and Wisdom 559
16. Dante/Center and Shakespeare/Circumference 577
Credits 629
Index 631
t a k e a r m s a g a i n s t
a s e a o f t r o u b l e s
This page intentionally left blank
Prelude
Reading to Stay Alive— Poetic Thinking
Deep Reading and Dr. Samuel Johnson. Angus Fletcher. Poetic Think-
ing and Poetic Awareness. William Blake’s “Idiot Questioner.” Mil-
ton’s Satan and Hamlet. Poetic Thinking: Nietz sche and Vico.
In what sense does deep reading augment life? Can it render
death only another hoyden? Most literary repre sen ta tions of death
do not portray her as being particularly boisterous. Why “her”? Is
it the long cavalcade associating death and the m other?
I have learned from Epicurus and Lucretius what Epicurus stated
so pungently in his letter to Menoceus (late fourth c entury BCE):
So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since
so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death
comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern e ither
the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the
latter are no more.
That does not abate my sorrow for the beloved dead, or requite
my loneliness for my many departed friends, yet it holds off any fears
about my own vanish ing. I do not want to fall yet once more and
break another hip or leg, or even a rib, but a Keatsian ceasing on the
midnight with no pain would not trou ble me. When I say to myself
and to o thers that reading helps in staying alive, I am aware that I
1