CHAPTER Ill
I n Theory: Influence and the Kabbalah
Part I
-
An Uncanny Theory of Poetry.
The first volume o f Harold Bloom's theoretical
tetralogy i s The Anxiety o f influence published i n 1973.
The subtitle o f the book indicates that it i s a theory of
poetry. On reading this subtitle, we may imagine that we
are going t o encounter principles of composing or reading
or criticizing poetry. But when we are through the
introduction, we realize that it i s "[.
..I
by n o means what
it pretends to b e " (de Man 267). Paul d e Man laments that
the essay i s n o t very explicit even on the "avowed major
theme, on the question of influence [. .
.I"
(268).
Bloom o f f e r s a theory o f poetry "[. . .] by way of a
description of poetic influence, or the story o f intra-poetic
relationships" (Anxiety 5 ) . Poetic history i s
indistinguishable from poetic influence because strong
poets who misread one another to clear imaginative space
for themselves make that history. His concern i s only with
strong poets who have the will power to wrestle with their
precursors. Poetic history i s a "tale o f p a r r i c i d a l battles
between the Titans of the past and their increasingly
desperate p o e t i c descendants [. .
.I"
(Fite 5 5 ) .
Bloom acknowledges Nietzsche and Freud as the
prime influences on him in formulating the theory of
influence presented i n The Anxiety o f l n f l u e n c e .
Nietzsche i s the prophet of the antithetical, while Freud's
formulations o n the mechanisms of defense provide the
clearest analogues for the revisionary r a t i o s that govern
intra-poetic relations. By reducing poetic history into a
p a r r i c i d a l battle between precurso'rs and ephebes, Bloom
has changed the rules of canonization and the definition
of "strength" i n poetry.
I n the Preface to his book on Yeats, published in
1970, Bloom announced that the book was a
"Prolegomenon t o a larger study on the theory o f
influence" (vii). That "larger study" ran i n t o volumes of
which the f i r s t appeared in 1973 under the t i t l e The
A n x i e t y o f lnfluence. A Map o f Misreading i n 1975 further
elaborated the theme of influence and presented a theory
of reading. Kabbalah a n d Criticism i n the same year
explored the endless possibilities of Jewish mysticism as
a model for his revisionary poetics. He realized with great
enthusiasm that what he had unknowingly promoted as
the theory o f belatedness and consequent revisionism i n
poetry had a one-to-one correspondence w i t h t h e
revisionary interpretations of the Kabalistic scholars.
Perhaps the dormant Jewish heritage in h i s sub-conscious
mind had prompted him to project such a model. With
P o e t r y a n d Repression published i n 1 9 7 6 , i n which an
elaborate application o f the theory of influence t o the
texts by the Romantic, the Victorian and the twentieth
century poets was made, the tetralogy came f u l l circle. I n
t h e books that followed, Bloom made an attempt to trace
t h e o r i g i n s o f revisionism back to the very origin of
W e s t e r n literary culture. The discussion of Bloom's theory
of poetry i n this chapter i s mainly based o n the books
making up the tetralogy published i n the four years
between 1973 and 1976. The discussion o f the theory of
belatedness and misreading is based on The A n x i e t y o f
I n f l u e n c e and A Map of Misreading and that o f the
Kabbalah on Kabbalah a n d Criticism.
The revisionary ratios in the development of the
ephebe's poetic career along with the corresponding
r h e t o r i c a l tropes and psychoanalytical defense
mechanisms charted out b y Bloom i n h i s The Anxiety o f
I n f l u e n c e and A Map o f Misreading are common
knowledge now. But a thesis that claims to examine
Bloom's theories of poetry, influence and misreading i n
d e t a i l cannot take things for granted. Hence a brief
analysis o f these theories follows.
The Anxiety o f Influence begins with Bloom's
declaration t h a t the aini of his theory of poetry i s
corrective i n two ways. He hopes to de-idealize the
accepted views of poetic influence and to provide a
poetics t h a t w i l l foster a more adequate p r a c t i c a l
criticism. Poetic influerice need not make p o e t s less
original. But the strong poet who i s conscious of the
influence o f h i s mighty precursors experiences the
immense anxiety of belatedness and indebtedness. Hence
his first instinct i s to deny any trace of influence as Oscar
Wilde and Wallace Stevens had done.
Bloom explains that poetic influence i s a variety of
melancholy or an anxiety principle. I t s profundities cannot
b e reduced to source study or to the history of ideas or to
the patterning o f images. I t i s actually a misprision, the
f
poet as poet. I n this study,
study o f the l i f e cycle c ~ the
intra-poetic relationships become an important area of
observation. Bloom admits that Freud's investigations of
defense mechanisms have provided him the necessary
analogies for the revislonary ratios that govern such
relationships. I n post-enlightenment p o e t r y , relations
between p o e t s are very much l i k e what Freud called the
"family romance." Though h e i s employing the Freudian
parallel, Bloom assures us that he i s d o i n g s o as "a
deliberate revisionist of some of the Freudian emphases"
( A n x i e t y 8).
Bloom announces that the central emblem o f his
discussion o f poetic influence i s the Covering Cherub
( A n x i e t y 35). But Bloorrr's Covering Cherub i s different
from t h e angel i n Genesis or the Prince of Tyre i n Ezekiel
or Tharmas i n Blake. He is a poor demon o f many names
and a totally thwarting agent that blocks realization. He i s
the emblem o f the creative anxiety that a f f l i c t s a l l
imaginative people in the post-enlightenment period. I n
other words, he i s the spectre of the internalized poetic
precursor with whom t h e ephebe has to struggle in order
to clear imaginative space for himself.
The word "influence" has undergone r a d i c a l changes
over the centuries. The root meaning of "inflow," an
emanation o r force coming i n upon mankind from the stars
was retained for many centuries though i t had received
the sense o f "having a power over another" a s early as
the t i m e of Aquinas. Originally " t o b e i n f l u e n c e d " meant
" t o r e c e i v e a n e t h e r e a l fluid f l o w i n g i n u p o n one from the
stars, a f l u i d t h a t affected one's character and destiny
and t h a t a l t e r e d a l l sublunary things" (Bloom, Anxiety 26).
T h e w o r d b e g a n to b e used in the s e n s e of p o e t i c
i n f l u e n c e roughly from t h e time o f C o l e r i d g e onwards. But
t h e a n x i e t y had existed l o n g b e f o r e t h e w o r d a c q u i r e d this
new m e a n i n g . I t was the post-enlightenment p a s s i o n f o r
G e n i u s a n d t h e sublime that lent t h e s h a p e a n d
m a g n i t u d e of a menace to t h i s anxiety.
T h e s t r o n g poet's literary career i s t h u s b e s e t by his
s t r u g g l e s w i t h a m o r e illustrious precursor. His claim to
i m m o r t a l i t y and canonization is d i r e c t l y p r o p o r t i o n a t e to
t h e v i c t o r y h e g a i n s i n the "Agon." T h e f a t h e r may b e a
single i n d i v i d u a l or a composite figure. Bloom also posits
six stages, or "revisionary ratios" as h e c a l l s t h e m , in this
s t r u g g l e b e t w e e n f a t h e r s and sons. T h e e x o t i c vocabulary
Bloom e m p l o y s i n t h e naming o f these r a t i o s
-
"Clinamen," "Tessera," "Kenosis," "Daemonization,"
"Askesis" a n d "Apophrades" - lends a p a r t i c u l a r charm to
the t h e o r y set f o r t h by him.
Bloom admits that he has taken the word "clinamen"
from Lucretius where it means "a 'swerve' of the atom so
as to make change possible i n the universe" (Anxiety 14).
This i s p o e t i c misprision proper which f o r m s t h e central
concept of the theory c)f poetic influence. It i s t h i s swerve
away from the blocking power of the precursor that makes
the "agon" possible. The young p o e t f o l l o w s the precursor
poem along to a certain point and then deviates, insisting
that a wrong direction was taken at just that point. The
new poet himself determines what his precursor must
have done o r meant. Thus a creative interpretation i s
always a misinterpretation. Bloom also proposes a wholly
different practical criticism. He rejects New Criticism as
"the f a i l e d enterprise o f seeking to 'understand' any
single poem as an entity i n itself" ( A n x i e t y 43). Instead
we must pursue the quest of learning to read a poem as
i t s p o e t ' s deliberate misinterpretation o f a precursor
p o e m . T h e t r u e history of modern poetry would b e the
accurate recording of the revisionary swerves.
T h e second revisionary ratio i s "tessera" which is
completion and antithesis. Bloom has t a k e n the term from
ancient mystery cults where i t meant a token o f
recognition. The ephebe reads the parent poem i n such a
way a s t o retain its terms but t o mean them i n another
sense s o that he antithetically completes his precursor.
The l a t e r poet believes that the precursor poem i s a
"truncated" one and completes it according t o h i s own
imagination, which i s actually a misprision. Hence
"tessera" i s actually a completing link. I t represents the
later poet's attempt to redeem the precursor's word
because otherwise it would be worn out. Lacan's
revisionary relationship to Freud i s an instance o f
tessera. Stevens i s another case in p o i n t because
antithetical completion i s h i s central relation t o h i s
American Romantic precursors. Bloom observes that
British p o e t s are content to make a swerve away from the
precursors, whereas the American poets labour to
complete t h e i r fathers because they [the precursors], i n
his rating, were not daring enough. I n b o t h cases the
result i s reductiveness a kind of misprision in which the
precursor i s regarded as an overidealizer. T h e ephebes
deceive themselves "into believing they are tougherminded than their precursors" (Anxiety 69). Bloom
proposes that the study of misprision can be useful i n the
creation o f an antithetical practical criticism as opposed
t o the primary criticisms now i n vogue, which vacillate
between tautology and reduction. Antithetical criticism
must begin by denying tautology and reduction and by
asserting that t h e meaning of a poem can only b e another
poem - a central poem by a precursor even i f the ephebe
never read that poem. Quite curiously, Bloom asserts that
"an ephebe's best misinterpretations may well b e of
poems h e has never read" (Anxiety 70).
"Kenosis," the third revisionary r a t i o , i s a movement
towards discontinuity with the precursor. Bloom takes the
word from S t . Paul who uses it i n the context of the
emptying out of Jesus when he accepts reduction from the
divine to the human status. Kenosis i s at once an undoing
and i s o l a t i n g movement of the imagination. I n strong
poets, i t i s a revisionary act i n which an emptying takes
place i n relation t o the precursor. I t i s a liberating
discontinuity. By undoing the precursor's strength in
oneself, the ephebe isolates the self from the precursor's
stance. Thus he i s able to write a kind o f poem, which the
repetition of the precursor's godhood would not have
allowed. Every kenosis voids a precursor's powers.
The fourth revisionary ratio i s that o f daemonization,
which i s the movement towards a personalized countersublime. The term comes from Neo-Platonic usage. The
ephebe opens himself up to a power i n the parent poem
that i s j u s t beyond the range o f the precursor. The power
that makes a man a poet i s daemonic. H e i s n o t
"possessed" by a daemon, but i s himself a daemon. When
the ephebe i s daemonized, the precursor i s humanized.
Daemonization i s an attempt to de-individuate the
precursor. But it ends as a return o f the repressed. It
augments repression by absorbing the precursor more
thoroughly i n t o tradition.
I n "askesis," which i s the movement o f s e l f purgation, t h e attempt 1s to attain a state of solitude. The
term i s borrowed from the practice o f pre-Socratic
shamans l i k e Empedocles. The later poet undergoes a
kind o f curtailing. He separates himself from others
including the precursor by yielding up a p a r t o f his own
human and imaginative endowment. The p a r e n t poem also
undergoes a similar experience and t h e precursor's
endowment i s also truncated. Askesis begins at the height
of the counter-sublime. I t is a successful defense against
the anxiety o f influence I n this stage, the strong poet
knows only himself and the precursor who must be
destroyed. Hence this ratio converges on the border of
solipsism. Askesis creates the strongest m o d e r n poetry
and leaves u s sorry for the curtailment o f what might have
been done without the necessity of misprision.
"Apophrades" i s the stage characterized by the
r e t u r n o f t h e d e a d . According t o the Athenians, t h e dead
returned to reinhabit the houses i n which they lived on
certain d i s m a l days. The ephebe i n the f i n a l stage of his
development, holds h i s poem open t o the precursor's
work i n such a way that we f e e l that the later poet himself
had written the precursor's characteristic work. The
strong dead keep returning and i f they return intact, the
later p o e t s a r e impoverished. The apophrades come to
the strongest poets, b u t with the very strongest, there is
a grand f i n a l revisionary movement, which p u r i f i e s them.
They achieve a style that retains priority over their
precursors. Bloom feels that this i s the most cunning of
the revisionary ratios, because the tyranny o f time i s
overturned s o that the precursors appear t o b e imitating
their ephebes. T h e strong poets of later nineteenth
century and o f the twentieth century give us vivid
instances o f this ratio. According to Bloom, "the covert
subject o f most poetry of the last three centuries has
been t h e anxiety o f influence, each poet's fear that no
proper work remains for him to perform" ( A n x i e t y 148).
The theory that was presented i n a germinal form i n
The A n x i e t y o f Influence is elaborated further i n A Map o f
M i s r e a d i n g by adding corresponding psychic and
rhetorical dimensions to the revisionary ratios. Bloom
introduces the book as a study o f creative misreading and
" a prolegomenon to further studies of revisionism and to
the ambivalences of canon formation that rise from
revisionism" (Map 4).
Revisionism i s a re-seeing or looking over again
leading t o a re-esteeming or a re-estimating. "[. . .] the
revisionist strives to see again, so as to esteem and
estimate differently, sc as then to aim correctively"
(Bloom, Map 4). According to Bloom, re-seeing i s a
limitation, re-estimating is a substitution, and re-aiming is
a representation. These terms are taken from Lurianic
Kabbalism, which according to Bloom i s the ultimate
model f o r western revisionism from the Renaissance to
the present. Luria formulated a regressive theory of
creation thus revising the earlier emanative theory. This
story, Bloom finds, i s the best paradigm available for a
study of poetic influence. Hence he announces his
decision t o make a detailed study of Kabbalism i n a
separate book. The three main stages of the Lurianic
story are zimzum, shevirath-ha-kelim and tikkun. I n
Zimzum, the Creator w ~ t h d r a w sinto himself thus making a
new creation possible by providing the necessary empty
space. Shevirath ha-kelim, which means breaking-apartof-the-vessels, i s a v i s ~ o nof creation a s catastrophe.
Tikkun i s the last stage of restitution or restoration. The
aesthetic equivalents for these three stages are
limitation, substitution and representation respectively. I t
i s against the background of this Lurianic aesthetic that
Bloom works out in detail the relations between tropes,
defenses, images and revisionary ratios.
According t o Bloom, there are no texts or poems,
but only relationships between texts or poems. Every
poem t h a t we know begins as an encounter between
poems. By influence he means the whole range o f
relationships between one poem and another. H e admits
that his use o f the term is a highly conscious trope. I t is a
complex six f o l d trope which subsumes the six major
tropes namely irony, synecdoche, metonymy, hyperbole,
metaphor and metalepsis. Through the s i x tropes, which
are also psychic defenses, he offers six interpretations of
influence and six ways of reading a poem, which are
intended to combine into a single scheme o f complete
interpretation.
The displacement of the Lurianic dialectics of
creation i n t o the aesthetic triad of limitation, substitution
and representation has already been explained. Bloom
proceeds further to a charting o f how meaning i s
produced i n post-Enlightenment strong poetry by the
substitutive interplay of figures and images. First he
makes a distinction between two kinds of tropes and two
kinds o f psychic defenses. Irony, metonymy and metaphor
are tropes of limitation and synecdoche, hyperbole and
metalepsis are tropes of representation. Similarly the
defenses also fall i n t o two antithetical series. Reaction
formation, the triad of undoing, isolating and regressing
and sublimation are the defenses o f limitation. Turning
against t h e self and reversal, repression, and introjection
and projection are the defenses of representation. These
particular tropes and defenses are also associated with
particular kinds of images. The tropes and defenses are
interchangeable forms of the revisionary r a t i o s when they
appear i n poems. They are manifested only i n poetic
imagery. A rhetorical critic regards a defense as a
concealed trope and a psychoanalytical critic regards a
trope as a concealed defense. An antithetical critic, who
knows that the s u b s t i t ~ ~ t i oof
n analogues is one with the
poetic process itself, learns to use both i n turn.
Bloom realizes that in order to make these
groupings more convincing, he must re-define a trope and
the common features that ally with each grouping of
tropes and defenses and images. Slightly disagreeing
with Quintilian, he re-defines the trope as " a willing error,
a turn from l i t e r a l meaning in which a word or phrase is
used i n a n improper sense, wandering from i t s rightful
place" (Map 93). He adds two more tropes
and metalepsis
- to
- hyperbole
the four master tropes defined by
Vico. Irony withdraws meaning through an interplay o f
presence and absence. Metonymy reduces meaning
through an emptying out and metaphor curtails meaning
through dualisms. Synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis
are tropes of restoration. Synecdoche enlarges from part
t o whole and hyperbole heightens, whereas metalepsis
overcomes temporality by substituting earliness for
lateness.
Bloom's ratios of revision work against the spectral
image o f a precursor that acts as a blocking agent. They
work i n matched pairs as clinamenltessera,
kenosisldaemonization and a s k e s i s l apophrades. Each
pair follows the Lurianic pattern of limitationlsubstitutionl
representation. Bloom points out that i n many central
poems o f t h e romantic tradition, and i n the b e s t poems of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the three pairs
can be seen at work and the poems divide i n terms of
image and argument into three parts, irrespective of their
formal divisions into stanzas. This pattern also sets the
pattern o f misprision o - of revisionist poetry. Between the
primary and antithetical movements of e a c h pair of
revisionary ratios that a latecomer's poem makes i n
relation to a precursor's poem, there i s invariably a
breaking-of-the-vessels.
Bloom subsequently charts the inter-relationship
between the revisionary ratios, tropes, defenses and
images. I n a typical lyric poem, we can trace three
movements corresponding to the three pairs o f ratios. A
poem's opening clinamen i s accompanied by images of
absence and presence conveyed b y t h e t r o p e o f irony and
represented as the psychic defense o f reaction formation.
l
o f the first
Tessera i s the a n t i t h e t ~ c a completion
movement through the image of whole f o r p a r t and the
corresponding trope i s synecdoche. The defensive
analogue i s turning against the self or reversal. Kenosis
i s accompanied by the image o f reduction and the trope of
metonymy. T h e defense mechanism, which forms the
analogue o f this revisionary ratio, i s the triad o f limiting
defenses o f undoing, isolation and regression.
Daemoniztion, the movement towards a personalized
counter sublime, i s accompanied by repression on the
psychic side and hyperbole on the rhetorical side and
finds i t s images in height and depth. With daemonizatiqn,
the poem h a s completed its second movement. Now it
moves i n t o "the tricky limitations o f askesis
- the
perspectivizing c o n f u s ~ o n sof metaphor, at once the most
praised and most failing o f Western tropes" ( M a p 100).
The poem progresses through dualistic images o f inside
as opposed t o outside The psychic defense associated
with this ratio i s sublimation, which Bloom f e e l s i s only
incoherently described by Freud. From askesis, the poem
moves on to the closing representation, apophrades,
which i s an attempt t o change its belatedness into
earliness. Metalepsis or transumption, the rhetorical
device attributed t o t h ~ sratio i s "the revisionist trope
proper and the ultimate poetic resource o f belatedness"
( M a p 101). according to Bloom. It i s a trope-reversing
trope i n which a word i s substituted metonymically for a
word in a previous trope so that i t may b e appropriately
called a metonymy o f a metonymy. The corresponding
Freudian defenses are the related yet antithetical pair of
projection and introjection. The movement is a balance
between introjection ( c r identification) and projection (or
casting out the forbidden). Imagistically t h e balance is
between earliness and belatedness. Metalepsis or
transumption "thus becomes a total, f i n a l act of taking up
a p o e t i c stance i n relation to anteriority, particularly to
the anteriority o f poetlc language, which means primarily
the loved-and-feared poems of the precursors"
(Repression 20).
Bloom points out that Quintilian who d i d not have a
high opinion of transumption had remarked that i t was
good only for comedy. But from the Renaissance onwards
it has become the major mode o f poetic allusion. To
transume means to take across
- to
take across "to the
poem's farther s h o r e ' (Map 102). Metaleptic reversal
dominates the imagery of the closing lines of many
romantic and post-romantic poems.
Before concludrng the chapter on these
relationships, Bloom does not forget t o dwell upon the
p r a c t i c a l implications of h i s theory o f misprision. The rest
of the book i s an attempt to demonstrate the use of this
model f o r practical criticism. Many poems from the
"Intimations Ode" to the poems o f Wallace Stevens are
shown t o follow t h e model o f t h e six r a t i o s quite closely.
But Bloom anticipates objection and remarks t h a t there
are many variants and displacements and many poems
that r e b e l against the model. So he concludes with the
observation that "What matters i s not the exact order of
the ratios, b u t the principle of substitution, i n which
representations and limitations perpetually answer one
another. The strength o f any poet i s i n h i s s k i l l and
inventiveness at substitution [.
,
.] " (Map 10).
Bloom's theoretical paradigm becomes complete
with t h e two books, The Anxiety o f I n f l u e n c e and A Map o f
Misreading. The third book of the tetralogy, Kabbalah and
Criticism, i s devoted to a detailed analysis o f the
Kabbalah, which had received only a passing mention i n A
Map o f Misreading. He makes an elaborate study o f the
various versions of the Kabbalah and its interpretations
and t h e i r relevance to his theory o f poetry. I n the last
book o f the tetralogy, Poetry a n d Repression, Bloom
explains how the Freudian defense mechanism works in
the psychology of the belated poet.
Part I1
-
Bloom the Kabbalist.
No strong poet can choose h i s precursor, any more
than any person can choose his father, says Harold
Bloom (Map 1 2 ) . This rneans that the ephebe i s found by
the precursor. Perhaps this principle was true o f the
relationship between Bloom and the Kabbalah. Though a
Jew, Bloom was not particularly conscious about the
Kabbalah or its possibilities a s a t o o l for interpretation.
But somewhere in the middle of his career, after the
publication o f The Anxiety o f Influence, he happened to
read t h e work of the famous Jewish mystic Gershom
Scholem and suddenly realized that he had been working
on a Kabbalistic model all along. " I d i d not set out on this
enterprise with a Kabbalistic model consciously i n view.
But it was there nevertheless, as I groped to explain to
myself why I had become obsessed with revisionary
ratios, and then with tropes and defenses o f limitation
and substitution" (Kabbalah 87). The paradigms offered
by the Kabbalah were remarkably suited t o his analysis of
the anxiety o f influence because Kabbalah was itself a
vision o f belatedness and the ultimate model for Western
revisionism. I t was as though he was chosen by the
Kabbalah t o b e its ephebe, without h i s knowledge. Bloom
realized the p o t e n t i a l of this ancient esoteric c u l t , which
"remains the largest single source for m a t e r i a l that will
help u s t o study the revisionary impulse and t o formulate
techniques f o r the practice of an antithetical
criticism"(Map 4-5). So i n his A Map o f Misreading, Bloom
announced h i s next project, a book i n which he intended
t o study the principles of Kabbalah in detail. That book
was K a b b a l a h a n d Criticism published i n 1976.
I n Kabbalah a n d Criticism, Bloom gives us an
account o f t h e scheme of Kabbalah and r e l a t e s i t to a
theory o f reading poetry. He expresses his indebtedness
t o Scholem on whose expositions h i s understanding of the
Kabbalah i s based. The starting p o i n t s o f Kabbalah are
traced back t o Gnosticism and Neoplatonism. Gnosticism
was an extremist version of the general religion that
dominated the Eastern Mediterranean world during the
first and second centuries o f the Christian era. With its
b e l i e f i n an alien God set against an e v i l universe, it has
always been anti-Jewish. Neo-Platonism i s a term used to
designate t h e period of Platonic philosophy beginning
with the work o f Plotinus and ending with t h e closing of
the Platonic Academy. The introduction o f Jewish
Scriptures into Greek intellectual circles via the
translation known as the Septuagint had exercised great
influence on the development of Platonic thought.
T h e true origin of the Kabbalah can be traced back
to the Z e f i r Yezhira composed i n the t h i r d century AD.
This book introduced the central structural notion of
Kabbalah, the sefirot. After a thousand years o f o r a l
tradition, the next book, Sefer ha-Bahir, was written only
i n the thirteenth century. The difference b e t w e e n the two
i s that i n the Yezhira, the Sefirot were described as ten
primary numbers whereas in the B o o k Bahir, they became
divine emanations and principles and powers. B u t the
masterpiece, the central work of classical Kabbalah,
Sefer ha-Zohar, was written a l i t t l e later i n the thirteenth
century b y Moses de Leon i n Spain. W i t h t h i s , Kabbalah
became a full-scale system of speculation.
Kabbalah was, from the start, revisionary i n regard
to Genesis a s w e l l a s Neoplatonism. According t o
Genesis, God created the world out of nothing. Kabbalah
interpreted t h i s statement revisionistically to mean that
God b e i n g "ayin" (nothirig), created t h e world out of
Himself. T h e distinction between cause a n d e f f e c t was
subverted b y this formula. For the Neoplatonists,
emanation was a process out from God, but i n Kabbalah it
takes place within God Himself. The Kabbalists identified
the Sefirot with the actual substance o f God. They are ten
complex images for God i n His process o f creation. There
i s an interplay between literal and figurative meaning
going on within each sefirah. The ten sefirot are :- Keter,
Hokmah, Binah, Hesed, Din, Tiferet, Nezah, Hod, Yesod
and Malkhut. They are usually depicted i n the form of a
tree growing downwards
- "the
tree o f emanation."
Classical Kabbalah i s the interplay of these images.
Moses Cordovero who lived i n the sixteenth century
was a systematic thinker who had studied the interrelationships o f the sefirot. But the later Kabbalah, which
came i n t o existence after the expulsion of the Jews from
Spain i n 1492, was mainly the contribution o f Cordovero's
p u p i l Isaac Luria. Schoiem interpreted Lurianic Kabbalah
as a Myth o f Exile and the critic i n Bloom was interested
i n the interpretation because o f its emphasis on the
psychology o f belatedness. The Kabbalists of Spain and
Palestine were already given a massive and completed
scripture along with all possible interpretations. It was as
though genius had no more relevance for them. I n order
to counter this sense of belatedness, they developed a
series o f techniques for opening the scripture to their
sufferings and theosophical insights. Hence the later
Kabbalah was organized as an apparent commentary on
the Zohar, which was originally a commentary on the
scripture.
I n the thirteenth century itself, the Kabbalists had
made speculations about the mutual influence exerted by
the sefirot on one another. Each Sefirah contains certain
multiform aspects, which are responsible f o r the links
between the sefirot. It was Cordovero who invented the
new category of behinot to denote these aspects. Each
Sefirah h a s six behinot or aspects, which a r e very much
similar to the six revisionary ratios i d e n t i f i e d by Bloom i n
the precursor
- ephebe
relationships between poets and
poems. This similarity accounts for the fascination
Kabbalah had for him.
The six aspects o' the Sefirot as i d e n t i f i e d by
Cordovero are as follows:-
1.
Concealment before manifestation within the
preceding Sefirah.
2.
Actual manifestation i n the preceding Sefirah.
3.
Appearance as Sefirah in i t s own name.
4.
Reinforcing the preceding Sefirah s o as to
enable it to emanate further Sefirot.
5.
Empowering the Sefirah i t s e l f t o emanate out
other s e f i r o t concealed i n it.
6.
Emanating out the following Sefirah to i t s own
place.
A f t e r the sixth phase, the cycle begins again. The
concealment i n and emanation from each other of the
sefirot results in a chain-like formation. Bloom perceives
that t h i s cycle, though oaffling at first, i s a remarkable
theory of influence. "The six behinot can be interpreted as
psychological mechanisms o f defense, rhetorical tropes or
areas o f poetic imagery" (Kabbalah 37). Bloom also
mentions Kabbalah's vision of the problem of evil. I n the
Zohar, e v i l i s compared to Kelippah, the bark o f the tree
of the sefirot. According t o the Zohar, even i n the
k e l i p p o t , t h e r e are saving sparks o f g o o d t h a t can b e
redeemed by the acts of men alone.
The word Kabbalah means tradition, and a l l the
masters o f Kabbalah including Cordovero were conscious
of their continuity with previous masters. So Bloom is
charmed by the striking originality of Isaac Luria and his
ideas. "[. . .] he may have been the only visionary i n the
entire history o f Kabbalah whose basic ideas were
original, since the entire tradition from the Sefer Yezirah
through Cordovero i s finally only an amalgam [ . . .] of
Neoplatonism and Gnosticism" (Kabbalah 39). After
making t h i s observation, Bloom goes on to examine the
main principles of Lurianic Kabbalah.
C l a s s i c a l Kabbalah viewed creation as a progressive
process. The emanations from God through the sefirot
moved t o man in a steady manner. The continuity of the
movement was emphasized. But Luria saw creation as a
startlingly regressive process with catastrophe as a
c e n t r a l event. I t is presided over by the triple rhythm of
contraction, breaking apart and restitution (Zimzum,
Shevirah ha-kelim and tikkun respectively). Zimzum
originally meant a holding-in of breath. Luria revised the
word t o give it an idea of limitation. God withdrew into
Himself, thus clearing fundamental space for creation.
Part of the concentrated din or rigour remained behind in
the cleared space and mixed with the r e m n a n t s of God's
self-withdrawn light. God sent the yod, the first letter of
His name i n t o t h i s mixture. The yod i s the active principle
of creation along with the light, which i s the passive
principle. The kelim or vessels created were made of two
kinds o f light
- the
light that accompanied the yod and the
light l e f t behind after zimzum. The collision o f lights is a
complex process and Adam Kadmon, the culminating
vessel, i s a perpetual war o f light against light. T h e three
upper s e f i r o t contained the light, but the lower sefirot
were unable to bear the force and they broke apart. This
i s known a s shevirah or the breaking o f the vessels. This
i s a divine act of substitution i n which an original pattern
yielded t o a more chaotic one. Much of the light i n the
shattered vessels f e l l down to form e v i l forces. Though
evil, these forces yet had certain sparks o f light
imprisoned within them. Luria believed t h a t the whole
catastrophe resulted from a n excess of d i n or rigour i n
God Himself and he saw the whole of creation a s God's
catharsis o f Himself. So God had to create for the sake of
His own well-being.
Tikkun, the saving process of restoration and
restitution, which i s the work of the human, i s more
important t h a n t h e first two stages. T h i s process takes
place through the complex agency called the parzufim,
which are t h e Lurianic equivalents of the behinot of
Cordovero. Like t h e behinot, they are at once defense
mechanisms and rhetorical tropes. A f t e r the breaking of
the vessels, the parzutim organize the shattered world
and take the place o f the sefirot. Bloom p o i n t s out that "[.
. .] i n some sense this parzuf can be considered as
Luria's revisionist misprision or creative
misunderstanding of his direct precursor's most original
and important doctrine" ( K a b b a l a h 42).
Kabbalah, according to Bloom, i s
"1. .
.]more of an
interpretative and mythical tradition than a mystical one"
( K a b b a l a h 47). I t proposes to give s u f f e r i n g a meaning by
way o f a n interpretation o f Scripture through t h e sefirot.
Bloom f e e l s that the sefirot and a l l o f Kabbalah are an
incarnation o f the desire for difference and for an end to
Exile. T h e motive of metaphor i n poetry i s t o be different,
to be elsewhere. I n Bloom's opinion, Kabbalah i s unique
among religious systerris of interpretation because i t i s
already poetry and needs no translation into the realms of
the aesthetic.
The important aspects o f Kabbalah l i k e the doctrine
of the t e n sefirot, Cordovero's concept of t h e s i x behinot
and Luria's catastrophe theory o f creation are examined
by Bloom. But he i s particularly interested i n the
doctrines o f Isaac Luria who i s rather a latecomer i n the
history o f Kabbalah. In the ancient theory, the sefirot are
described as emanatiorls, attributes, lights, crowns, and
garments o f God. They act as instruments connecting
infinite God with the finite world and form the underlying
structural principles of that world. Each Sefirah is
compounded of all the others. Bloom i s intrigued by the
complex relations o f the sefirot and the patterns of their
combinations. "Beyond its direct portrayal of the miod-increation, Kabbalah offers both a model for the process of
poetic influence, and maps for t h e problematic pathways
of interpretation" (Kabbalah 52). The six revisionary
ratios traced by Bloom map the inner l i f e of the poet as
well as his relation to his precursor. Cordovero's behinot
correspond t o these revisionary ratios because they trace
the interplay of aspects within each sefirah and between
the sefirot. The process by which each sefirah emanates
out from the preceding one is very similar to the process
by which t h e ephebe grows out of t h e influence of the
precursor. In the interplay between the sefirot, Bloom
finds a model for the relation between poems, between
precursors and ephebes-. "In terms o f my own theory,
Cordovero provides the model for my six 'revisionary
ratios' with his six behinot, or aspects o f each sefirah.
But Luria provides the model for my d i a l e c t i c of
revisionism [. . .] " ( K a b b a l a h 6 2 ) .
Bloom proceeds to explore the model further by
analyzing each behinah and explaining i t s identification
with the corresponding revisionary ratio o f his theory of
poetry. T h e analogy between the behinot and t h e
rhetorical tropes and defense mechanisms i s also made
clear. F o r literary purposes, Bloom considers each sefirah
as a single poem or text. On this analogy, the behinot can
be taken t o denote the tropes, which are e s s e n t i a l for
poetry. The sefirah may also be taken t o represent a
single m i n d or consciousness, where the behinot function
as psychic defenses.
T h e f i r s t behinah of any sefirah i s i t s concealment i n
the preceding sefirah. In literary terms this means that
"[. . .] the i n i t i a l trope or image i n any new poem i s
closely related to the hidden presence of the new poem i n
its precursor poem" ( K a b b a l a h 66). The deepest instances
of influences are never manifested on the poetic surface.
Only weak poems will immediately echo precursor poems
or directly allude to them. A poem i s "a [. . .] deep
misprision of a previous poem when we recognize the
later poem as being absent rather than present on the
surface of the earlier poem, and yet still being i n the
earlier poem, implicit or hidden i n it, not yet manifest,
and yet there" (Kabbalah 67). Bloom cites the example of
major Victorian and modern poets, Browning, Swinburne,
Hardy and Yeats, who, according t o him, are t h e
descendants of Shelley. Though all these poets have
styles almost totally antithetical to Shelley's style, he is
their crucial precursor. The opening images of Browning's
poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" may be
most meaningfully interpreted when we see them as being
closely related t o the poem's hidden presence in
Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind." Bloom also observes
that s o many strong poems of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries open with dialectical images of
presence a n d absence because of the hiddenness o f their
immediate origin. But as usual, h e fails to give specific
examples t o prove his point.
Cordovero's second behinah is the actual
manifestation o f a particular sefirah in i t s precursor or its
revelation within the preceding sefirah. The poem hidden
in t h e earlier poem comes out from its concealment,
though i t is s t i l l in the earlier poem. Bloom explains this
as a movement from dialectical images of presence and
absence to synecdochal images o f part and whole. Parts
of a poem seem prophetic of a poem to come. Using this
concept, Bloom explains the contemporaneity o f older
poetry. He cites the poetry of Donne as a very good
example o f this.
T h e t h i r d behinah involves t h e materialization of
each s e f i r a h i n its own right. I t i s the precarious element
in the poem, which attempts to attain an illusory selfsufficiency. Bloom observes that this i s the most unstable
element i n a poem and the most unstable aspect i n a
sefirah. I n psychic terms, this i s an undoing and an
isolation. I n poems this regression i s evidenced by
images o f a prior fullness emptying i t s e l f out.
The f o u r t h behinan of a sefirah i s t h e aspect which
gives the precursor the power to emanate the later sefirah
outwards. A reversal of cause and e f f e c t i s involved here.
The corresponding trope of this behinah i s t h e hyperbole
in which higher and lower are seen a s reversible
categories. I n psychic terms, this aspect i s one of
repression. The later sefirah represses either its own
force so as t o augment the force o f the precursor or the
force o f t h e precursor i n order t o reinforce itself. Either
way, a "channel" is formed between them, which acts as a
path of reciprocal influence between the two.
The f i f t h behinah is the beginning o f the process of
the emanation o f the succeeding sefirah, which is in turn
concealed in the newly emanated sefirah. The
corresponding trope is t h e metaphor with i t s inwardoutward movement and the relevant psychic process is
sublimation.
The sixth and lasr behinah is responsible for the
successful emanation of the sefirah next in sequence to
its proper place. The whole process begins again then.
The ephebe has now established himself a n d has in his
turn given rise to other ephebes. The corresponding
defense mechanism i s projection. There is also a n aspect
o f earliness succeeding one o f lateness.
Cordovero's theosophical cycle becomes a wheel of
images, tropes or defenses. The six behinot reinforce and
supplement t h e six revisionary ratios Bloom formulated in
The A n x i e t y o f Influence. Like the ratios, they are both
psychic and linguistic
-
mechanisms o f defense and
tropes.
The six behinot of Cordovero provided Bloom with a
model for the six revisionary ratios and their
corresponding tropes
-
irony, metonymy, metaphor,
synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis. But he found an
even better paradigm for his dialectic o f revisionism in
the Lurianic story of creation. Bloom p o i n t s out that no
one i n the history o f scholarship has speculated on the
literary motives o f the Kabbalists. According to him,
Luria's revisionism resulted from the psychology of
belatedness that the Kabbalists experienced. They had
confronted n o t only a closed Book, b u t also a vast system
o f closed commentary. Hence they were compelled t o take
the p a t h o f expansive inventiveness. T h e i r specifically
literary anxieties "[. . .] centred upon a genuinely
overwhelming anxiety-of-influence" ( K a b b a l a h 72).
T h e anxiety o f influence intensified with the passage
of time and it peaked by the time of Luria whose genius
for invention of new theosophical principles was beyond
comparison. "Even as Cordovero might b e called the first
Structuralist, I am tempted to c a l l Luria the archetype of
all Revisionists, for his dialectics-of-creation seem to me
the m o d e l f o r a l l other kinds of belated activity t h a t came
after him [ . .
.I"
( K a b b a l a h 7 3 ) . After making this remark,
Bloom proceeds to translate the Lurianic myth o f creation
into the terms of a revisionist poetics and to analyze
Luria's misprision of Cordovero's behinot.
Luria had perceived creation as a triple process of
zimzum, shevirah-ha-kelim and tikkun. Zimzum is perhaps
the most innovative o f Luria's ideas, according to Susan
Handelman. I t i s the wrthdrawal or contraction of God into
Himself thus creating empty space to make creation
possible. Bloom equates zimzum with the trope of irony
because i t means the opposite of what it appears to say.
Concealment is actually revelation. The image of His
absence i s the greatest image for His presence. In poetic
terms zimzum is interpreted as a loss o f meaning for
poetry and psychically as the arousal of various defenses.
The second step i n the Lurianic theory o f creation is
shevirah-ha-kelim or the breaking o f the vessels. Unable
to bear t h e force of divine light, the lower sefirot broke
apart and sparks of light were scattered in the universe.
In poetic terms this is translated as substitution, the
replacing of one image by another or the yielding of an
original pattern t o another.
The third movement in the Lurianic dialectic is
tikkun, the universe o f restitution or o f representation.
The basic image of tikkun is the lifting up and gathering
i n o f the f a l l e n sparks. Redemption comes through the
restoration of the scattered sparks to their original source
through the fulfillment of the commandments of the Torah.
I t involves three transitions
-
from irony to synecdoche,
from metonymy t o hyperbole and from metaphor to
metalepsis. Luria needed a model for tikkun and he could
easily have adapted Cordovero's behinot to the requisite
images o f restitution. Hut he was too strong a poet, Bloom
notes, t o tolerate such indebtedness. So through a
creative misreading o f Cordovero, Luria invented the
Parzufim i n place o f the behinot. These concepts easily
become models for Post-Enlightenment poems.
The aesthetic translation for tikkun i s
representation, which i s viewed as a kind of mending
process. I t represents the f i n a l unification and fulfillment
for the Kabbalists. But poetic tikkun i n Bloom's view i s
only a gesture towards an impossible fulfillment. The
Kabbalah i t s e l f i s a grand cosmic myth of redemption.
Bloom i s interested i n Kabbalah only as a theory of exile
or anxiety. H e declares that zimzum was God's anxiety.
This anxiety-ridden God becomes the m o d e l for the
modern poet who must also go through the dialectics o f
contraction, catastrophe and mending.
Bloom points out that Gnosis and Kabbalah were the
first "modernisms" i n the current sense of the word. He
had already traced the origins of Kabbalah to Gnosticism.
Neo-Platonism was a conventional theory o f influence
whereas Gnosticism was a theory of misprision and so a
model f o r the contemporary theory o f influence as
creative misunderstanding. A modern poem begins with a
clinamen, which depends o n the renunciation of an earlier
poem. Since the precursor i s internalized, creation begins
with t h e contraction of the self t o a primordial point.
Defensive reactions are produced i n the self, resulting i n
creation-as-catastrophe. This creation through contraction
of the precursor i s the dialectical model f o r belated
poetry. The poet makes himself free b y changing his
relation t o h i s parent poem. Susan Handelman points out
that t h i s i s Bloom's project as well because he i s the
inheritor of a burdensome yet unavoidable Rabbinic
heritage (22).
Susan Handelman cannot help seeing a n intentional
and obvious design in Bloom's e f f o r t s t o b r i n g theology
back i n t o secular systems of thought, b u t she remembers
Hartman's remark that pure secularism i s simply another
religion. She notes that literary criticism has become a
k i n d of s u b s t i t u t e theology. The t h e o l o g i c a l r o o t s of the
m o d e r n science of interpretation are i n d e e d very deep
because i t h a s i t s foundations in B i b l i c a l hermeneutics
and G r e e k philosophy. The Jews have c o n t r i b u t e d t h e
concept of t h e divine text. The encounters between the
Jews a n d t h e Christians had a great r o l e i n determining
the h i s t o r y o f interpretation with Christianity claiming that
i t h a d t h e f i n a l a n d validating i n t e r p r e t a t i o n o f t h e "Old"
T e s t a m e n t a n d the Jewish tradition u p h o l d i n g i t s b e l i e f in
t h e m u l t i p l i c i t y o f meaning. After t h e conquest o f Europe
Christianity a l l i e d itself with Greek philosophy thus
providing t h e m a t r i x for Western culture. T h a t i s why
many of t h e important scholars a n d literary c r i t i c s o f the
west have b e e n overtly indebted to t h e i r t h e o l o g i c a l
biases. B u t Handelman points out that recently there has
b e e n a challenge to t h e Greco-Christian t r a d i t i o n o f
i n t e r p r e t a t i o n . They have overturned c l a s s i c a l concepts of
m e a n i n g , interpretation and exegesis. According to her,
"Harold Bloom's tortuous 'anxieties o f i n f l u e n c e ' and
d i a l e c t i c a l p o e t i c wars come from an openly avowed
Hebraic biasn (xiv). I n the last century, t h e r e has been a
c o l l a p s e o f t h e prestige o f Christianity, which coincided
with t h e entry of Jews into the intellectual life of Europe.
The influence of Jewish thinkers has become increasingly
dominant after W o r l d War II. Whatever be the truth behind
these observations, it i s undeniable that Bloom has
managed to make the Kabbalah part of t h e ideology of
contemporary critical theory.
T h e theory of poetry formulated i n these four books
made Bloom one of the most controversial critics of the
twentieth century. The implications o f t h i s theory for an
antithetical p r a c t i c a l criticism and f o r canon formation are
interesting and complicated. An analysis o f Bloom's
revision of the English literary canon w i l l be made i n the
following chapters.