Possessed by Memory: The Inward Light of Criticism

by Harold Bloom

In arguably his most personal and lasting book, America's most daringly original and controversial critic gives us brief, luminous readings of more than eighty texts by canonical authors-- texts he has had by heart since childhood.

Gone are the polemics. Here, instead, in a memoir of sorts--an inward journey from childhood to ninety--Bloom argues elegiacally with nobody but Bloom, interested only in the influence of the mind upon itself when it absorbs the highest and most enduring imaginative literature. He offers more than eighty meditations on poems and prose that have haunted him since childhood and which he has possessed by from the Psalms and Ecclesiastes to Shakespeare and Dr. Johnson; Spenser and Milton to Wordsworth and Keats; Whitman and Browning to Joyce and Proust; Tolstoy and Yeats to Delmore Schwartz and Amy Clampitt; Blake to Wallace Stevens--and so much more. And though he has written before about some of these authors, these exegeses, written in the winter of his life, are movingly informed by "the freshness of last things."

As Bloom writes "One of my concerns throughout Possessed by Memory is with the beloved dead. Most of my good friends in my generation have departed. Their voices are still in my ears. I find that they are woven into what I read. I listen not only for their voices but also for the voice I heard before the world was made. My other concern is religious, in the widest sense. For me poetry and spirituality fuse as a single entity. All my long life I have sought to isolate poetic knowledge. This also involves a knowledge of God and gods. I see imaginative literature as a kind of theurgy in which the divine is summoned, maintained, and augmented."

Genres: Literary Criticism, Poetry, Essays, Criticism, Nonfiction, Literature, Books About Books

544 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2019

About the author

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.

Reviews

[BlackOxford · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Sounds of Silence

Harold Bloom’s religion was literature. He dedicated his life to writing of every type. But his was no religion of faith, of unswerving belief in the merits of the written word. Bloom recognised books, literature, indeed all of language, as a double-edged sword. One side allowed humans to conquer the world; the other trapped them in a sort of spiritual peonage. His therapy for this Gnostic reality of language was to use language against itself. That is to say, he loved poetry.

Bloom was not a self-recognised poet. Neither was he a novelist or a creator of new literary forms. He was a critic, by which he meant that he wrote his biography as a response to the things he read. And this response was fundamentally religious:

“The original meaning of the state of being blessed was to be favored by God. Since I do not share my mother’s trust in Yahweh’s covenant with my people, I long ago transmuted the blessing into its prime form, which is our love for others. I turned to the reading and studying of literature in search of the blessing, because I came to understand we cannot love enough people. They die and we abide. Literature has become, for me and many others, a crucial way to fill ourselves with the blessing of more life.”

I think that it is because of this religious background that all of Bloom’s criticism may be considered as a form of poetry. His constant and inventive comparison of a word, literary piece, or genre with another effectively relativises all of literature by demonstrating the conflict (‘agon’ is a term he often uses) among interpretations and meanings. Bloom struggles with language not in the sense of searching for the right word or phrase but as a poet fighting to be free of it. Just as Jacob wrestled with God only to receive his eternal blessing as well as a permanent deformity, Bloom recognises the consequences of the biblical blessing and the injury imposed by language. He quotes Wallace Stevens:

“To say more than human things with human voice,
That cannot be; to say human things with more
Than human voice, that, also, cannot be;
To speak humanly from the height or from the depth
Of human things, that is acutest speech.”

Bloom says: “Poetry, as I most richly conceive it, is the ultimate secular mode of what the ancients called theurgy.” Theurgy is the calling down of the gods through incantations and spells - in other words, magic. By making unexpected connections within his incredibly expansive knowledge, this is exactly what Bloom does. The reader can only be astonished, for example, when he connects the biblical Song of Deborah with the Battle Hymn of the Republic in the American Civil War, or expresses his admiration for the biblical villains Ahab and Jezebel, or proposes the concept of “self-otherseeing” as a literary explanation of Revelation as a normal part of human existence (as well as a central key in reading Shakespeare). He improves our understanding of texts ancient and modern by making their connections clear:

“I listen even at my age to a trumpet call that urges me to fresh hope: “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.” I think of Walt Whitman chanting: “Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sunrise would kill me, / If I could not now and always send forth sunrise from myself.” Or I hear Wallace Stevens lamenting: “The exceeding brightness of this early sun / Makes me conceive how dark I have become.”

“All institutionalizing of prophecy is betrayal,” Bloom says, revealing his view of religion as a permanent search, an unending interpretation of the world’s best interpretations (he hated the God of Milton not because it was violent but because it was doctrinal, and doctrine always serves the interests of power). And no matter how erudite, how nuanced his critical work is, it is never suggested as definitive, never pompous, but rather is intended to provoke yet more interpretation: “My intention for this book is to teach myself and others how to listen for the voice we heard before the world was made and marred.” It is out of silence that language emerged, and where it returns to be understood. And whence with Hamlet he now speaks.

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is reverie and not argument. My title is the book in a single phrase. What is it to be “possessed by memory”? How does possession differ in these: to possess dead or lost friends and lovers, or to possess poetry and heightened prose by memory?

Nearing ninety, legendary critic Harold Bloom has assembled in Possessed by Memory a sort of memoir out of his favourite poems (alongside passages from the Old Testament and Shakespeare), which, with his own thoughts interspersed, give proof to the wonderful epigraph by Oscar Wilde: “That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul”. Written over six years, we watch as Bloom's body inevitably declines, and more urgently, we watch as he “monthly” says goodbye to his friends and colleagues of many decades; he has, indeed, entered “the elegy season”. I must confess that much of Bloom's thoughts on writing are beyond my understanding, but I learned much from the still active professor; this is a dense yet rewarding read. (Note: I read an ARC and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

I am aware that some readers may turn away from Possessed by Memory because what they regard as heretical or at least esoteric distracts from the reading of poetry. I address not them but those who yearn for what I would term a Shakespearean reading of the best poetry made available to us, here in our Evening Land, of the tradition sparked by Homer and Isaiah. That tradition is dying. As a literary and religious critic, I wish to rally a saving remnant.

I am enthralled by the image of the insomniac Bloom reciting long stretches of by-heart epics and poems to himself in the middle of the night: I remember having to memorise a handful of shortish poems while in school, and they are lost to me now. In a society that seems to be ever turning away from our cultural foundations, I can relate to Bloom's urge to “rally a saving fragment”. However, because my education was not steeped in poetry and psalms, I couldn't always make the intertextual or exegetical connections that Bloom seems to take for granted with his readers. I can only take it as given as Bloom relates one poem to another; links one poet to the next (as he so often does):

A lifelong brooder on the problems of poetic influence, I have learned that one ultimate canonical test for poetic magnitude is provided by the sublime progeny a poet engenders. By that test, Wordsworth, William Blake, Shelley, and John Keats can be awarded the palm over Byron. Each of them lived on in the cavalcade of Anglo-American poetry, from Tennyson and Browning through Whitman and Emily Dickinson on to Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, William Butler Yeats, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, and Hart Crane. I can think only of early Auden as a poet who attempted to carry on Byron's legacy, with indifferent success.

And I am even more lost when Bloom speaks in the jargon of poetry:

The transcendental impulse that powers Shelley's Pindaric flights is not alien to Keats, yet he turns away from it as Shakespeare did, choosing Ovidian flux and change over Platonic yearnings for a premature Eternity.

And if I may be permitted a minor complaint on format: Possessed by Memory often reads like a collection of essays instead of one linked work. Not only could I not really see an overall theme (other than an aged Bloom sharing whatever poems/high prose he felt like writing about), but many definitive statements were repeated throughout the essays, each time as though for the first time: that Johnson had inherited from Pope a distrust of the Sublime; or that Blake, like Milton, was a sect of one; or that Tennyson knew the quantity of every English word except for scissors; or that Whitman writes as though he is ahead of us and waiting for the reader to catch up. But who am I to criticise the critic?

For the most part, this is a collection of other peoples' (mostly Western white males) writing; Bloom's own thoughts take up not much space at all. However, I will put here some of what I found most intriguing:

Since childhood, I have meditated upon this agon of Israel with the Angel of Death. I interpret it not only as an allegory of Jewish history – indeed, of universal history – but also as the story of my own life, and the lives of everyone I have known, loved, taught, and mourned. In the half-light of my incessant nocturnal wakefulness, I begin to conceive of it as the struggle of every solitary deep reader to find in the highest literature what will suffice.

From childhood through old age, I have been made uncomfortable by a God who demands sacrifices that are also thanksgivings. Post-Holocaust, this will not work for many among us, and I frequently retreat from the Psalms to the poetry of Paul Celan, which has a difficult rightness, and does not seek to praise what can no longer be praised.

My religion is the appreciation of high literature. Shakespeare is the summit. Revelation for me is Shakespearean or nothing.

The deepest lesson I have learned from Johnson is that any authority of criticism as a literary genre must depend on the human wisdom of the critic, and not upon the wrongness or rightness of either theory or praxis.

Now almost all of my friends among the poets and critics of my generation have departed. Mourning for so many men and women does not diffuse an individual grief yet makes it seem less urgent.

I have no doubt that Possessed by Memory will be of most interest to those who better speak Bloom's language, but I found many points of connection here myself; most especially when Bloom was writing intimately of his decline and his losses. In its way, it's a perfectly fitting memoir; the capstone of a deep reader's life.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

My introduction to Harold Bloom was his Anxiety of Influence, which I read over 30 years ago. I still have my original hardcover, though it is not a reference book; more like something to hang onto because you found it intriguing like a colorful shell on the beach.

Although I enjoyed Possessed By Memory for the most part, I must say that much of what he has written in it has been written before by him. It's repetitive, unfortunately, if you have been a reader of Bloom. If you put the pages of this book under the cover of his recent critical memoirs like Anatomy of Influence and The Daemon Knows, you would have the same book written three times.

This is really my only criticism. I understand he is writing about about what has moved him over a long life of close reading, study, teaching, and thought. If I were to recommend a great book as an introduction to Bloom, try his How To Read And Why. It's about the joys of reading through the works of his favorites. And it works well.

[Weronika · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember walking into a bookstore last April and seeing this heavy book displayed on the countertop. 'Dear God, the guy is still alive?', I said to the bookstore's owner. 'It must be a posthumous volume'. I did not buy the book then, it overwhelmed me. But just a couple of days later, I dutifully trotted back to the same place and splurged on this sizeable tome by a writer who was still alive at that time, but would soon be gone.
He might have seemed so out of touch - old, white, male. And all this Freud: really, in the 21st century? But somehow since I discovered him he felt like a kindred soul -- obsessed by beauty, possessed by his love for literature, which became his real world, his real home. I envied him his passion, his dedication to the pursuit of the sublime. What a wonderful life he must have lived in his mind. R.I.P. one of the greatest literary scholars of all time.

[Vishvapani · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a moving book to read some six months after Bloom's death, not because what he writes is new but because its elegiac cast. I would have enjoyed a more straightforward memoir of Bloom's inner intellectual and 'spiritual' development, but his reflections on religion, inwardness and all the associated values are always mediated: they are always reflections on texts, and it is no different here, where's final book, at the age of 88 is a reflection on the poems he has by heart and lives best. Even the reflections in his final chapter on the relationship between memory and the imminent prospect of death takes the form of a commentary on Proust with a coda from Dr Johnson.

I can't help feeling that this is a limitation, but Bloom was perhaps too self-doubting and too abstracted in the very large world of literature to regard his own life experiences as source of transcendence, as Proust did, or as the basis of moral insight as did Dr Johnson.

Of course it is also his strength. In this work we hear Bloom musing to himself, at times ruminating on texts he possesses by memory, and communicating with the poets as with old friends as he struggles with the indignities of old age in the middle of the night. He is always at his best, I think, as here when he focusses on particular texts rather than drifting not generalisations; and of course he muses is a personal dialect that readers must learn to recognise. But in my mind (not having read his other recent works) the angle of perception of poets from the author of Job and Ecclesiastes down to Shakespeare and Milton, the High Romantics, Whitman, Stevens and American contemporaries like Ammons and Ashberry, about whom he has been writing for six decades, is subtly changed by the shadow of death.

The blurb tells us, with evident relief that in this book 'gone are the polemics'. The polemics in fact make only a small part of Bloom's output, and were always concerned to save literature as a resource for the inner lives of readers that is capable of expanding those lives into the greatest imaginable scope and capacity. Here he approaches the poets, once again, as openings to ways of being that can support us in the face of death. This is implicitly polemical because it reveals poetry's importance in a very direct way ; it suggests why we might turn again to the poets when our time is reaching its terminus, and it should prompt us to wonder if we would wish to read new historicism or post structuralists, and what they really have to teach us about poetry in this aspect.

This is essential reading for lovers of Bloom. It is fine reading for lovers of poetry. It may find a particular place for people who are one or both of these and are themselves approaching death. Which other 88 year old has written so finely? Who else has been so fully equipped to encounter death through in the strong light of the literary canonical?

[Lugubriouspooch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Possibly my favorite Bloom book, this one seems to encompass the works he found most inspiring. There is a lot of esoterica here, especially Hermeticism (hermeneutics), gnosticism, etc. I feel like this is a book at the top of his mountain and one you should read after many of his other great works for the best payoff. RIP. No one like Bloom.

[Pessoa · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me more than a year to finish this book. I'm still in awe of Bloom's great memory even at the dusk of his life. RIP

[Deb · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think that Harold Bloom’s Possessed by Memory: The Inward Light of Criticism is a good book, but I also think that it is a bit more than I was ready for at this time.

I will, therefore, count it toward my Challenge, but will also put it aside to read again once I am more familiar with the works Bloom covers in it.

[Kevin Yee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. A personal work filled with final observations of a lifetime of reading. I learned a lot from Bloom's influences and works that hold a special place for him, I found the recollection of his memories that tie works to specific moments very moving.

[Eric Willeforde · Rating 4 out of 5]

A memoir in the form of commentary on great classic poems and contemporary poems by people Bloom knew. I wish he did this for novelists too but this is quite good.

[Tamara Agha-Jaffar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Possessed by Memory: The Inward Light of Criticism by the prolific literary critic Harold Bloom is a literary memoir threaded with a meditation on aging.

The 89-year-old Professor Bloom begins by interrogating selections from Hebrew scripture and then moves to a discussion of some of his favorite excerpts from Western literature. Included is a section on Shakespeare and an exploration of what he refers to as the concept of “self-otherseeing” in some of Shakespeare’s characters. He probes the words of Milton, the visionary company of the Romantic poets, Walt Whitman and twentieth-century American poetry, and concludes with Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. His contributions to the field of literary criticism will be felt for years to come.

Professor Bloom peppers his discussion with delightful anecdotes and illuminating conversations he shared with famous figures in literature and literary criticism, most of whom have long-since died. He mourns their deaths, paying tribute to them by keeping their memory alive through engaging with their writing. An elegiac tone permeates his discussions as he looks back on the past, reminiscing about old friends and feeling their loss.

Making frequent reference to his aging body, his lack of mobility, and his insomnia, Professor Bloom acknowledges he does not have much longer to live. He meditates on life, aging, death, and the legacy one leaves behind. Suffering from chronic insomnia, he derives comfort by reciting extensively from a vast repertoire of poems, many of which he memorized as a child. And as he recites, he articulates why certain verses or whole poems move him. Literature is his consolation and his solace.

One doesn’t have to agree with all—or even, some—of Professor Bloom’s observations about literature or the Western canon. But one cannot deny the breadth, depth, and scope of his expansive knowledge and expertise. He cites verses from poems as if they are second nature; he draws unexpected connections and comparisons with poems that are centuries apart; he breathes life into a poem as he interrogates its meaning. And he uses literature as a platform to explore existential questions about life and death. One doesn’t have to be familiar with the literature he discusses to appreciate the insights he shares.

This isn’t an easy read. It is a deeply personal journey about how literature has informed and shaped the life of a giant among literary critics—a man endowed with a capacious appetite for reading, for thinking deeply about what he reads, and for nurturing an unabashed passion for literature.

Professor Harold Bloom died on October 14, 2019. May he rest in peace.

Recommended.

[Ramanqu · Rating 4 out of 5]

An old man, living from day to day hearing the news of his friends' deaths, one after the other, and reminiscing over his life passion, books that formed him and then sustained him.
It's so miserable to live long, but more miserable to have no passion.

Bloom talks so lovingly of the works closest to his heart. A worthy book to read.

[Madia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una formidabile raccolta antologica di un critico letterario di massimo livello. Harold Bloom, nella sua opera ultima, prova a donarci un'autobiografia spirituale attraverso l'analisi di brevi passaggi poetici. E quando si tratta di Shakespeare, sembra non avere dubbi: di tutta la letteratura "alta", egli ne è il vertice. Addirittura, la rivelazione stessa per Bloom è shakespeariana. Come non essere d'accordo?

[Haifa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eurocentric literariness at its best.

[Kent Winward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bloom in his late 80s musing on poetry. He is at his best with Shakespeare.

[Fraser Kinnear · Rating 3 out of 5]

A long, lovely, lyrical, requiem. Written in the final years of Bloom’s rich life. Formally, most of this book is literary criticism (much of it warmed over from his other books). Frequently, he interjects with his contemporaneous concerns; elderly ones, like fear of falling, fading senses, and loss of friends.

The original meaning of the state of being blessed was to be favored by god. Since I do not share my mother’s trust in Yahweh’s covenant with my people, I long ago transmuted the blessing into its prime form, which is our love for others. I turned to the reading and studying of literature in search of the blessing, because I came to understand we cannot love enough people. They die and we abide. Literature has become, for me and many others, a crucial way to fill ourselves with the blessing of more life.

As I mentioned, much of this criticism is recognizable from Bloom’s other books (e.g., his Shakespeare character series, The Western Cannon, The Anxiety of Influence). But still fun to read regardless.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always appreciated Harold Blooms wealth of insight and knowledge. He has inspired in me a hunger to explore new writers and made me feel less alone in my love of classics. This novel is no different except ot is his last and there is a personal touch here absent from his other works. Bloom has always indicated the solace he has found in friends, authors, students and literature but in this work he gives personal experience. After having fallen and wheelchair bound he seems to be letting us feel his personal struggles while showcasing those great works that can give us all whatever it is literature gives us. Not solace but that shared beautiful transcendent reality or striving for reality.

Also he writes about many new authors here. Read a review on goodreads on this book that said blooms books are all the same. In general i see his point but feel this reviewer could not have read this book. Many fresh insights and a poignant tone invades this book that is unique to this book. Must read for fans of Bloom.

Very sad to have this man's voice gone from the world.

[Matt Morris]

At 89, the renowned literary critic contemplates mortality through protracted discussions of biblical tales, replete with lengthy quotations of scripture from the King James version, no less, in hopes of a "capital B Blessing of a more abundant life"--er, afterlife, I guess. Then there's Shakespeare, Milton, & so on in that manner.

For more reviews, visit The Greater Encyclopedia of Universal Knowledge https://miscmss.blogspot.com/2022/08/...

[Clay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grateful for everything that Bloom has written over the years -- The Western Canon, Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles, and certainly this one. He's responsible for introducing me to Proust and re-awakening my interest in Shakespeare, and although I think he's off target on a lot of his analysis of Tolstoy (He's obsessed with Hadji Murat), his breadth of knowledge of the Canon is awe inspiring. I wish I could have met this guy in person.

[George Louis Corgi · Rating 5 out of 5]

The beauty of this book lies in its uniqueness among Bloom’s work. An avid Harold Bloom fan will find many recurring themes, though this time around, they feature a twist: we’re not reading an anthology, commentary or literary criticism here but a kind of memoir from a man who loved books and, more importantly, loved those around him.

Full review here: https://josephrauch.com/therauchrevie...

[Tessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a lovely book to end my 2024 reading challenge. 100 books completed and how marvelous to cap it off with an absolute master of literature like Harold Bloom. I listened to the audiobook but wish I had a hardback to savor. The narration by Stephen Mendel was a soothing eulogy and it felt like a 16 hour love letter to reading the classics.

[Frederick Gault · Rating 2 out of 5]

Normally I love his insight ‘s but not this time! This is more a reflection on me than the author.

[Jay Rothermel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Subjective, but interesting.

Bloom recapitulates old positions. Not much digging into "criticism" as a way of life beyond applauding good books and figuring out how they do it.

[Colleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Few things more boring than reading about other people’s interpretations of books you haven’t and may never read