Bright Book of Life : Novels to Read and Reread (9780525657279)
Page 1
ALSO BY HAROLD BLOOM
Possessed by Memory: The Inward Light of Criticism
Macbeth: A Dagger of the Mind
Iago: The Strategies of Evil
Lear: The Great Image of Authority
Cleopatra: I Am Fire and Air
Falstaff: Give Me Life
The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime
The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible
The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life
Till I End My Song: A Gathering of Last Poems
Fallen Angels
American Religious Poems: An Anthology by Harold Bloom
Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine
Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?
The Best Poems of the English Language: From Chaucer Through Frost
Hamlet: Poem Unlimited
Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds
Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages
How to Read and Why
Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human
Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection
The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages
The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation
Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present
The Poetics of Influence: New and Selected Criticism
The Breaking of the Vessels
Agon: Towards a Theory of Revisionism
The Flight to Lucifer: Gnostic Fantasy
Deconstruction and Criticism
Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate
Figures of Capable Imagination
Poetry and Repression: Revisionism from Blake to Stevens
Kabbalah and Criticism
A Map of Misreading
The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry
The Ringers in the Tower: Studies in Romantic Tradition
Yeats
Romanticism and Consciousness
Selected Writings of Walter Pater
The Literary Criticism of John Ruskin
Blake’s Apocalypse: A Study in Poetic Argument
The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry
Shelley’s Mythmaking
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2020 by The Estate of Harold Bloom
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bloom, Harold, author.
Title: The bright book of life : novels to read and reread / Harold Bloom.
Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2020. | “This is a Borzoi Book published by Alfred A. Knopf”—Title page verso. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2020014640 (print) | LCCN 2020014641 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525657262 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525657279 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Fiction—History and criticism. | Best books. | Books and reading—United States.
Classification: LCC PN3491 .B56 2020 (print) | LCC PN3491 (ebook) | DDC 809.3—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014640
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014641
Ebook ISBN 9780525657279
Cover design by Chip Kidd
ep_prh_5.6.0_c0_r0
For Ursula Le Guin
Contents
Preface · THE LOST TRAVELLER’S DREAM
1 Don Quixote · MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
2 Clarissa · SAMUEL RICHARDSON
3 Tom Jones · HENRY FIELDING
4 Pride and Prejudice · JANE AUSTEN
5 Emma · JANE AUSTEN
6 Persuasion · JANE AUSTEN
7 I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) · ALESSANDRO MANZONI
8 The Red and the Black · STENDHAL
9 The Charterhouse of Parma · STENDHAL
10 The Vautrin Saga: Old Goriot, Lost Illusions, The Splendor and Misery of the Courtesans · HONORÉ DE BALZAC
11 The Captain’s Daughter · ALEXANDER PUSHKIN
12 Wuthering Heights · EMILY BRONTË
13 Vanity Fair · WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14 Moby-Dick · HERMAN MELVILLE
15 Bleak House · CHARLES DICKENS
16 Our Mutual Friend · CHARLES DICKENS
17 Madame Bovary · GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
18 Les Misérables · VICTOR HUGO
19 A Sportsman’s Notebook · IVAN TURGENEV
20 First Love · IVAN TURGENEV
21 The Cossacks · LEO TOLSTOY
22 War and Peace · LEO TOLSTOY
23 Anna Karenina · LEO TOLSTOY
24 Hadji Murat · LEO TOLSTOY
25 The Return of the Native · THOMAS HARDY
26 The Brothers Karamazov · FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
27 The Princess Casamassima · HENRY JAMES
28 The Ambassadors · HENRY JAMES
29 Nostromo · JOSEPH CONRAD
30 The Secret Agent · JOSEPH CONRAD
31 Under Western Eyes · JOSEPH CONRAD
32 The Reef · EDITH WHARTON
33 The Rainbow · D. H. LAWRENCE
34 Women in Love · D. H. LAWRENCE
35 Ulysses · JAMES JOYCE
36 The Magic Mountain · THOMAS MANN
37 To the Lighthouse · VIRGINIA WOOLF
38 In Search of Lost Time · MARCEL PROUST
39 The Master and Margarita · MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
40 Absalom, Absalom! · WILLIAM FAULKNER
41 The Death of the Heart · ELIZABETH BOWEN
42 Invisible Man · RALPH ELLISON
43 The Left Hand of Darkness · URSULA K. LE GUIN
44 The Dispossessed · URSULA K. LE GUIN
45 The Loser · THOMAS BERNHARD
46 Blood Meridian · CORMAC MCCARTHY
47 The Rings of Saturn · W. G. SEBALD
48 Book of Numbers · JOSHUA COHEN
Afterword · THE CHANGELING
PREFACE
The Lost Traveller’s Dream
HE SAID THAT THE STORY WAS NOT HIS. Whose was it, then? I never could ask, because he spoke it like a torrent. After a time I lost the words and heard only their sound and tumult.
It seemed like a dream narrative, spasmodic and flickering, yet a miracle of coloring, as though erotic beckoning were its only substance. I knew him well enough to find no relevance to his personality as it rocketed along. His was a dry soul, a limp leaf waiting for combustion.
He dreamed of a Western gate with vine leaves crimson on the wall. They whispered to him, and some seemed flying words that meant to strike him.
I gave up listening and walked away. Directions have always been preternaturally hard for me. Rarely can I tell east from west. When I was younger, hiking was a burden, as I always got lost.
Hopelessly I wandered on. And then I tripped and fell downward into w
hat seemed a darkening hall. Landing on my feet was painful but not disabling. A lover of Cervantes, like everyone else, retrospectively I realized I was imitating Don Quixote’s descent into the Cave of Montesinos (Part 2, Chapters XXII–XXIII). Cervantes was parodying the epic journeys to Hades by Odysseus and Aeneas, though the Sorrowful Countenance is let down by a rope that is tied around him and then is hauled back up after rather less than an hour. He returns in what seems deep sleep and with his usual passionate conviction says that he has been below for several days. The Knight describes a crystal palace created by Merlin the wicked enchanter:
“With no less pleasure do I recount it,” responded Don Quixote. “And so I say that the venerable Montesinos led me into the crystalline palace, where, in a downstairs chamber that was exceptionally cool and made all of alabaster, there was a marble sepulcher crafted with great skill, and on it I saw a knight stretched out to his full length, and made not of bronze, or marble, or jasper, as is usual on other sepulchers, but of pure flesh and pure bone. His right hand, which seemed somewhat hairy and sinewy to me, a sign that its owner was very strong, lay over his heart, and before I could ask anything of Montesinos, who saw me looking with wonder at the figure on the sepulcher, he said:
“ ‘This is my friend Durandarte, the flower and model of enamored and valiant knights of his time; here he lies, enchanted, as I and many others are enchanted, by Merlin, the French enchanter who was, people say, the son of the devil; and what I believe is that he was not the son of the devil but knew, as they say, a point or two more than the devil. How and why he enchanted us no one knows, but that will be revealed with the passage of time, and is not too far off now, I imagine. What astonishes me is that I know, as well as I know that it is day, that Durandarte ended the days of his life in my arms, and that when he was dead I removed his heart with my own hands; and the truth is that it must have weighed two pounds, because according to naturalists, the man who has a larger heart has greater courage than the man whose heart is small. If this is the case, and if this knight really died, why does he now moan and sigh from time to time, as if he were alive?’ ”
(trans. Edith Grossman)
This being Cervantes, the delight of absurdity is mixed with the Hispanic sublime. Durandarte is both dead and noisily alive. Belerma, his true love, keeps marching by, holding his heart in her hands. A young peasant girl, a friend of the immortal Dulcinea of Toboso, approaches Don Quixote with a new cotton underskirt as security for a loan of a half-dozen reales that Dulcinea desperately requires. The noble Knight declines the security and empties his pockets to find no more than four reales, which he swiftly gives.
I cannot say that I found Durandarte, let alone Dulcinea, but my dream returned to one of Ursula K. Le Guin’s realms. Surrounded by shadowy forms, I strained to hear the voice of a woman chanting:
“The money burned to ashes, the gold thrown away. Footsteps on the air.”
In the dream I could not recollect the source. I see now that I quoted the end of The Telling (2000). Sutty, Le Guin’s surrogate, sums up the complex experience of a journey to the planet Aka in search of its lost spirituality.
In her The Word for World Is Forest (1972), Le Guin cites a report that a Malaysian community, the Senoi, constructed their culture as a dream world founded on the formula: “Where did you fall to, and what did you discover?” Le Guin’s supple prose intimates a charming skepticism, yet the formula is helpful.
In last night’s bad dream, my late and beloved friend John Hollander and I had arranged to meet for lunch somewhere in lower Manhattan. Again I got lost, and fell down an open grate. Where did I fall to, and what did I discover?
I have had a great deal of trouble getting up to my study recently. My friend and trainer of the last thirteen years is away in Florida, and it might be a little dangerous to attempt it without her. In the dream I fell into my own study, onto a pile of novels strewn about. One was by my friend Cormac McCarthy, but when I picked it up I did not recognize it. I assumed that it was his work in progress. He phoned me this morning, when I was still iced over from a dreadfully early excursion to pick up my new hearing aids. In our conversation he talked about his almost completed new novel. Only later did I realize that my dream had been proleptic.
* * *
—
Today, in mid-afternoon I suddenly remembered two quatrains of William Blake and realized that I had seen them engraved over a gateway in a dream several nights ago:
VERSES FROM “THE GATES OF PARADISE”
[Epilogue]. To the Accuser who is The God of this World
Truly, my Satan, thou art but a dunce,
And dost not know the garment from the man;
Every harlot was a virgin once,
Nor canst thou ever change Kate into Nan.
Tho’ thou art worship’d by the names divine
Of Jesus and Jehovah, thou art still
The Son of Morn in weary Night’s decline,
The lost traveller’s dream under the hill.
In my nightmare, the gate was flanked by fearsome Cherubim waving flaming swords and frowning fiercely. Only now do I recall John Milton’s expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden:
They looking back all th’ Eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat,
Wav’d over by that flaming Brand, the Gate
With dreadful Faces throng’d and fierie Armes:
Som natural tears they drop’d, but wip’d them soon;
The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitarie way.
I try to puzzle it out. Is my lost traveller’s dream only another attempt to restore the Satanic-Promethean figure of Lucifer, son of the morning? My heart is with Blake and not with Milton, though the shadow of Milton all but eclipsed Blake’s vision of “the human form divine.” What is the dream of reading your own way into secular revelation, the enterprise of my long life, if at last you must founder on the reef of intersubjectivity? Are we purely social beings, or have we experiences so inward that great poets, novelists, dramatists, storytellers can at once achieve adequate outward forms for them while retaining a sense of solipsistic glory, or is that only another delusion?
I was myself the compass of that sea:
I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.
(Wallace Stevens, “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon”)
That ecstasy is not social. I live, day to day, reciting these lines among many others.
I have always understood that my imagination requires a Covering Cherub or blocking agent in order to raise itself for mental fight and not collapse into solipsism. This has never been a question of my will but of my character or fate. A strong critic, like a strong poet, has no choice. To defend the aesthetic is to defend poetry, but this is a defense that initially may seem an attack upon poetry.
* * *
—
Today is Sunday, February 4, 2018, and it is thawing outside. I am still not ready to leave the house or to climb up to my study. I reread Pride and Prejudice this morning and necessarily enjoyed it. I then decided rather sadly to replace Persuasion by it, because I have never published anything on the most popular of Jane Austen’s novels.
When I finished the book, I read my late acquaintance Tony Tanner’s 1972 introduction to Pride and Prejudice, reprinted at the back of the Penguin Classics edition of 2003. It retains freshness, and the insights are still helpful. Tanner defends Jane Austen from the strictures Charlotte Brontë expressed in a letter to G. H. Lewes, George Eliot’s partner. Brontë opined that she would not l
ike to live with Jane Austen’s people in their confined lives.
Though Jane Austen was a contemporary of the English High Romantics, she was a throwback to the age of Dr. Samuel Johnson and Samuel Richardson, her authentic precursor. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his journal for the summer of 1861, expressed an ultimate dismissal of Jane Austen:
Never was life so pinched & narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer in both the stories I have read, “Persuasion”, and “Pride & Prejudice”, is marriageableness; all that interests in any character introduced is still this one, Has he or she money to marry with, & conditions conforming? ’Tis “the nympholepsy of a fond despair”, say rather, of an English boarding-house. Suicide is more respectable.
Emerson, no great lover of Lord Byron, nevertheless quotes from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto iv, Stanza 115:
EGERIA! sweet creation of some heart
Which found no mortal resting-place so fair
As thine ideal breast; whate’er thou art
Or wert,—a young Aurora of the air,
The nympholepsy of some fond despair;
Or, it might be, a beauty of the earth,
Who found a more than common votary there
Too much adoring; whatsoe’er thy birth,
Thou wert a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth.
Emerson can be forgiven. He did not like novels anyway, and even dismissed those by his Concord walking companion Nathaniel Hawthorne. The summer of 1861 was hardly a good time for a Northern abolitionist, and the romance of Elizabeth and Darcy, though timeless, did not appeal to the Sage of Concord.
Jane Austen will have multitudes of readers until the end of time and beyond. Stendhal famously defined love as a blend of lust and vanity. For Jane Austen, love is affection, a mutual esteem that remains within the compass of a narrow social class. Her precursors—Shakespeare, Dr. Johnson, Samuel Richardson—taught her how to represent change in her more complex characters. Darcy and Elizabeth change by listening to one another and sometimes overhearing what they say in their most affectionate moments.