(no subject)

[proximoception]

Harold Bloom interviewed by a Buddhist in 1997

http://vishvapaniswriting.blogspot.com/2007/02/cultures-peak-interview-with-harold.html

I love Harold Bloom. Shame on me for ever doubting him.

Comments

doubting him

[howlikeyouthis.livejournal.com]

When and why did you ever doubt HB? Sounds like something said in jest but I'm still curious!

If you could interview him now on any topic, what would it be? I may get the chance to next month.

Re: doubting him

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I have discomfort with his religious language now and then; sometime recently he'd implied gnosis was a once in a lifetime thing, or maybe something he'd never even had, which made me wonder if his idea of transcendence was compatible with secularity. Secular transcendence has to, like, happen, and presumably does all the time--it's moments that are more than other moments. Deferring it, refusing to admit it's happened to you, that it's conditional or requires further search under some authority, is the first step toward religion, surely; for Bloom, belated strong poets--and the rest of us on our good days--exactly never defer. I worry about what this implies about our bad days sometimes. Well, whatever my doubts were, they centered in this area; and on his claim that Judaism is a religion of trust rather than faith, which strikes me as a hair too thin to split. Not important to my trust in Bloom, I've decided.

I guess his trust/faith distinction amounted to something like, trust means you think that the grain of the world will ultimately do right by you if you follow it; faith, that the facts are what people tell you rather than what the world does. Buying miracles and Jesus' resurrection or whatever. Considering how many believing Jews accept that the Flood actually happened, and how many Christians these days, of whatever denomination, are basically hazy Unitarians, I don't see this as a difference of essence. But, since neither Bloom nor I have faith or trust it's a non-issue. Might want to ask him about it, actually, if I've made any sense and you chase down where he says all this, in The Names Divine I think it was. And if it's something you care about.

What would I ask Bloom. I can't think of anything essential. I'd like to thank him, basically, among other things for speaking his mind so fully. And I just might leave it at that.

Though I'd sure like to locate a certain striking remark of his, more or less about effective stories simultaneously showing us our contingency within sex roles and ability to wear them loosely. He puts it much better. I think it was in one of his Chelsea introductions but I've forgotten which.

Re: doubting him

[howlikeyouthis.livejournal.com]

I don't quite buy the faith/trust distinction myself. Been reading a great book called The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son by Jon Levenson, which traces the titular theme from Isaac to Jesus but makes stops along the way for people like Joseph and even Jacob and Esau among others, and its predominance, he more or less shows, has everything to do with the collapsibility of the Bloomian distinction. But then again 'trust' is what Yahweh wants from his people; they're bad at it, and he makes promises and offers visions of plenty that depend more on trusting him to be their leader than on having faith in him, which may also imply a state of mind that's a little less out of one's control, maybe more indefinite an less immediate. The first is more intimate, maybe? You can do it and still wrestle with them? Just thinking aloud. It is a fragile distinction, you're totally right about that. But the way contemporary religious practice whitewashes the richness and contentiousness of historical debates within Judaism and Christianity makes it harder to uphold the difference when, like Bloom, one has both of these things, then and now, or even the informed and the ignorant, in mind. Going just on HB/NT I can sort of see it, though.

Several months ago an online journal (Romantic Praxis?) published an interview with Bloom re: The Names Divine in which he revealed some interesting thoughts about religion and the Bible; one interesting statement near the end (this is just approximate) was about how what keeps him reading the Bible so much is its aesthetic value. That gave me more faith, er, made me trust, that his interest in religion is closer to mine. Not to either my grad or undergrad students but that's another story.

I think I'll thank him for you and pretend it was my idea! That's beautifully put. I wonder what you mean by our bad days, it sounds like a very deep point. On our bad days we defer transcendence willingly or not?

Re: doubting him

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Well, to Bloom deferring transcendence is exactly a failure of the will...so on days when the will fails that's what you're doing. Days when you need the world to tell you how to be: Proust right before tasting the madeleine.

Bloom's convinced Judaism, like Buddhism, is built around a secular-spiritual kernel, so the miraculous and rule-based stuff is finally inessential. Possibly, but the inessential was in both cases characteristic for the longest time, and still not hard to locate. Anyway, Bloom himself claims Christianity may have misaccreted around Jesus' actual message in the same fashion.

The reason for my disquiet is that one hears ageing Jews (David Mamet is a painful recent example) talk an "our religion is special because we don't have to believe it to get the benefits, just say we believe it and do all the stuff" talk. I couldn't see what could fit through the crack Bloom was opening but that. And I don't see the specialness--that's just dreary Pascal country. That's what English people who know better also age into--it's one of the few paths open to the well-informed to justify becoming their parents (that grimmer apophrades).

Ultimately Bloom's polemic is against existing Judaisms as much as against Christianities, I know; I think his comparatively late conversion from recognizable Judaism is responsible for his even keeping this distinction alive. The tone is, "you guys don't get it but us guys--oh wait, I forgot, I left them and those guys don't get it neither." Anyone paying attention to Israeli political debates knows Biblical literalism is alive and bloodthirsty. The proportions look better in Judaism than Christianity, is all I'll grant.