يقدم هذا الكتاب إضاءة في النقد العملي للشعر، وكيفية قراءة القصيدة، استنادا إلى نظرية الشعر المطروحة في كتابي السابق ( قلق التأثر ) . القراءة، كما يشير عنواني، هي فعل متأخر، وتشمل كل شيء، سوى أنها، أي القراءة، مستحيلة أصلا، وهي نوع من القراءة الضالة، وبخاصة عندما تكون قوية. فالمعنى الأدبي ينزع دائما لأن يصبح أضعف حضورا، كلما كانت اللغة الأدبية التي تعبر عنه أقوى وجودا. قد لا يكون النقد دائما فعل حكم لكنه دائما فعل حسم، وما يحاول حسمه هو المعنى.
Harold Bloom was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world." After publishing his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and one novel. He edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995. Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.
This is my poem about Harold Bloom’s A Map of Misreading.
I wrote a poem About a bird, in a bush. And Harold Bloom said, “See, you are obsessed with Shelley.” And I said, no, this is about a bird Or maybe my parents Or maybe a girl I like Or maybe just a bird. And Harold Bloom said, “No, Shelley” He said, “I have this map” And yelled a bunch of Greek And he seemed pretty confident, and now I don’t even know.
Harold Bloom called me after he read this poem, to murmur that it had a weak clinamen and that it was locked in an obvious death struggle with Marianne Moore.
Harold Bloom’s second book regarding his theory that poets misread their precursor poets, which becomes the source then of their creative output. Or, put another way, there are no separate texts; only relationships between texts.
I prefer his more generalized books about reading, but he does make an interesting case for his theory. He does wander off, though, into parts either incomprehensible or a dead end.
In A Map of Misreading, Professor Bloom discourses on his dense, complex theory of poetic influence, first elaborated in The Anxiety of Influence, and applies his "poetic ratios of Misreading" to such poems as Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came (Robert Browning), As I Ebbed (Whitman), The Auroras of Autumn (Wallace Stevens), and poems by other "strong poets." The text can be daunting, so I recommend reading it at least twice.
Always interesting to read a book by the man who has read more than God. Difficult to understand in spots, especially his sui generis tabling of rhetorical tropes. But that also helped turn me on to Kenneth Burke. Very much enjoyed his walk-through of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.
Long ago, when Robert Kelly was my teacher, he gave me a little synopsis of "misprision," but of course he did it in the Kelly mode--a rather frank departure from what Bloom actually does in this book. There's a short synopsis in the introduction of (mis)reading as fascinatingly analogous to Lurianic Kabbalism, but otherwise, this is a one-note reprise of Bloom's anxiety of influence theory. The arrogance! The reductiveness! The overblown prose! Best to pass on this book.