The Saving Lie: Harold Bloom and Deconstruction

Chapter Five: Intricate Evasions, or the Poetic Will-to-Ignorance

Chapter 5 Intricate Evasions, or the Poetic Will-to-Ignorance Indeed, the most precious thing human beings possess . . . depends in the final analysis, as anybody can easily know, on some such point of strength that must be left in the dark, but nevertheless carries and supports the whole, and this force would give out at precisely the moment when one wanted to dissolve it through comprehension. —Friedrich Schlegel, “On Incomprehensibility” We shall now resume themes we have already discussed in the first two parts, but this time develop them in Bloom’s own idiom: highly idiosyncratic , deliberately “non-angelic” and “ignoble”; deidealizing, sobering, and disenchanting, yet not for a “reducing” or deadening but a “quickening ” or vitalizing purpose (MM, 65) that puts its stakes on the defenses of the singular life. The first chapter will thus be devoted to the defense of the poetic self against the danger of reductionism; the canvas for our reflections will be delivered by the analysis of two of Bloom’s famous ratios, clinamen and kenosis. The second chapter will tackle the crucial notion of antithetical vitalism, basing on another pair of daemonization and askesis. And the third chapter, evolving round the last duo of ratios, tessera and apophrades, will discuss the dialectics of the final outcome of the poetic struggle, this “hard-won, partial victory,” which cannot be classified either as triumph or failure. In Bloom’s own rendering of the poetic agon, ratios form a linear story. Yet, the division of six ratios in couples is justified by the fact that they indeed can be systematized according to three types of defenses that govern the whole agon: evasion (first and third ratio), life enhancement (fourth and fifth ratio), and reconciliation (second and sixth ratio). 231 Thus, although Bloom’s version of the agon may be more dynamic, this one is more systematic; by concentrating on these uniquely Bloomian types of defenses and their respective goals within the process of poetic singularization, it allows for a broader, more speculative approach we are championing in this book. Hubris and Exodus: The Tragic Hero of Our Times To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail. —Samuel Beckett, “Three Dialogs” In the struggle to pave the meandering “subjective way”—simultaneously defiant and defensive, centripetal and centrifugal, retreating and advancing—Bloom is assisted by his two favorite tropes, deriving from both Hellenistic and Hebrew sources. Just like the romantic visionary company he has been writing on with such fervor for years, he seems to live under the spell of mixed influences. The numerous synonyms of his six revisionary ratios, in which he describes the structure of the poetic striving for originality, come both from the Greek and the Jewish tradition alike: clinamen, tessera, kenosis, askesis, daemonization, and apophrades meet their uneasy equivalents in many “Hebrew sixes” deriving from the Torah as well as from the kabbalistic behinot (revisionary tropes).1 But here, we would like to point just to the two tropes, one Greek and one Hebrew, whose unique combination gives a peculiar flavor to Bloom’s speculation on the agonistic nature of modern subjectivity. These two tropes are: on the one hand, hubris, the conceit of singular being which refuses to be reduced to generality—and, on the other, the Jewish yeziat, the notion of Exodus, signifying a constant effort of getting out “into the wilderness” from all possible houses of bondage: systematic closures and universal truths which spell the tyranny of monotonous repetition . Bloom’s notion of agon, in which modern poetic subjectivity fights for its right to be unique and singular, ingeniously juxtaposes these two splendid tropes of daring, which, although culturally distinct, unite in their powerful defiance against the reductive influence of “what already exists.” And it is on their combined power that Bloom grounds his anguished hopes for the emergence of the new: a new poetic tone, a new voice, a new life that could not be easily reduced to the realm of the already. The first appearance of hubris initiates what Hans Blumenberg aptly called “the work on myth,” a process in which subjectivity defends its 232 wrestling harold singular being against a return to the chaos of undifferentiation.2 In Bloom’s writings hubris likes to take on the Gnostic form of the pneumatic spark:3 Lacan, himself deeply influenced by a mixed esoteric tradition, could have defined it as the typical hysterical hubris of...