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Title: Hamlet: Poem Unlimited by Harold Bloom ISBN: 1-57322-233-X Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: 10 March, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.7 (10 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: an appendix to Shakespeare: the Invention of the Human
Comment: This is a tiny book, but it will please mutual fans of Bloom and Shakespeare. I was thrilled to get it and read it in one afternoon. But in the end, I was a little disappointed. I wanted more! The book lacks a coherent development, explores no single argument, but Bloom is worth reading even when he rambles. I teach Hamlet to college freshmen and probably won't recommend this book to most of them, but I would definitely recommend it to my better students or to my colleagues. However, Bloom's much larger book, Shakespeare: the Invention of the Human, is better.
Rating: 2
Summary: A "Poem Unlimited" gets short shrift
Comment: When an author overflows his pages with hymns to his own religion, expect a limited audience ...the choir? ...a few others if the music soars to great heights? Bloom *does* acknowledge that "Shakespeare is my model and my mortal god..."(p. 2), so "Hamlet: Poem Unlimited" could be seen as his personal testament and hymnal.
But as a robe-bearing member of the Bardology choir, I am dissappointed that the symphony of Shakespearean stimulations and provocations Bloom provided in "Invention of the Human" and in "Genius" is weakly orchestrated here. Hamlet is the St. Paul of your church, Professor. Does he not deserve a Missa Solemnis after feeding your soul for so many decades of life? (The volume is a mere 154 pages - and perhaps *half* are quotations of the play.) Because Hamlet so dominates most of Bloom's recent titles, when the self-proclaimed bardolosaurus finally dedicated a book to him fans could hope for a "book unlimited" on this Poem Unlimited. I was so saddened to find it more a "book uncontrolled."
Picking up a copy in a book shop I found that I was able to read this title in a half-hour. During those few minutes, Bloom made few new connections for me. His reflections about the play scarcely presented a book of Revelation to cap off his career writing the New Testament of Shakespeare. And although this is probably a necessary title for those who want to read everything that has ever been thought about Hamlet, it will not be an easy read if you are not steeped in the play and the wealth of thought it has inspired over the centuries. (Do not make this an introductory gift to a novice you would like to beckon to the Church of Shakespeare.) No notes, no index, no guidance as to where to go to explore any idea or commentator here cited that intrigues you.
Bloom owns that this little essay-dressed-out-as-book is just a postlude to his "Invention of the Human" (necessary because he got distracted by the Ur-Hamlet issue in writing the earlier book and did not write the Hamlet chapter he meant to include there). Yet, given its own volume, and given Hamlet's central place in Bloom's theology/bardology I expected some wealth of new insights - or comprehensive overview. Alas, alas.
A final caveat. Heed the author's up-front warning: "Much of 'Hamlet: Poem Unlimited' devotes itself to meditative surmises upon Shakespeare's involvement in the mysteries of his final Hamlet."(p.2) Truly: more surmises than analyses or even explorations. Allow me to prophesy: most readers will be annoyed to pay for a book that is half quotations and filled out with *surmises*. Compulsive Shakespeare collector that I am, I will probably own a copy some day to examine more closely - out of my curiosity over how Shakespeare affects the professor's mind. But from my quick stand-up read in the store I've decided to wait till it's available for a couple bucks in a remainder bin.
Rating: 5
Summary: Marvelous criticism for even the north by northwest
Comment: Hamlet: Poem Unlimited provides more than just a deeper look at Hamlet, but it also places him aside other great characters in the canon. So if you are looking for good criticism of other characters, this is great volume to have on hand. I love the idea that Hamlet is his own Falstaff, successfully outwitting the dim-witted characters around him. Bloom points out marvelously that the only character who can match wits with the prince is the silver-tongued grave digger in the Yorick scene. All others are unceasingly uncomprehending.
What this volume lacks in length it packs in strength for no one would read it without wishing that Bloom would do more, such as debating with other critics like A.C. Bradley and Pasternak. Of course, Pasternak opines that Hamlet is Elsinore's palace pretty boy, spoiled beyond belief by a doting, aged father and his callow, simplistic mother. When it comes time for Hamlet to serve his family and his country, he is ill-prepared for such a fate, which sets him on his delayed course, soliloquizing selfishly and constantly about suicide instead of facing up to his duty. Really, it seems almost by accident that he ever exacts revenge in the Act V bloodbath. What Bloom shows successfully is that Hamlet is more than just a character who can be pigeon-holed so easily: he is both tragic hero and tragedian who seems to be creating and directing the play as his goes along! What other character in Shakespeare could orchestrate other characters while acting himself and then viewing his actions as if detached from himself, as though he is also his own audience? A marvelous chapter is the "Apotheosis" section in which Bloom explains how what seems a failure to accomplish one's fate becomes a greater, transcendent moment. Is there another tragic character in Shakespeare who is eulogized so magnificently and whose memory makes him super-human and super-natural? What does all that say about Shakespeare's own views and voice in the play and the psychological interplay between the Bard, his world, his stage, and the after-life?
Though some of the humor fails to amuse, I know that those like me--who insatiably desire to think divergently about the prince and his play--would be more than gratified by this wonderful little book. It creates more questions than answers, so this would be be a fitting volume for Shakespeare classes to read and discuss. Don't pass this one up.
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Title: Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom ISBN: 157322751X Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds by Harold Bloom ISBN: 0446527173 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: November, 2002 List Price(USD): $35.95 |
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Title: The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages by Harold Bloom ISBN: 1573225142 Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: September, 1995 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Shakespeare Is Hard, but So Is Life: A Radical Guide to Shakespearian Tragedy by Fintan O'Toole ISBN: 186207528X Publisher: Granta Books Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry by Harold Bloom ISBN: 0195112210 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: March, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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