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Title: Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom ISBN: 1-57322-751-X Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: September, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.54 (90 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Shakespearean commentary by a premier professor and critic
Comment: In his new, hugely popular book, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Harold Bloom reacts in play by play fashion to some of the most famous Bardian characters while paying special attention to his obvious personal favorites, Falstaff and Hamlet. Bloom peppers his highly entertaining tome with other critics' Shakespearean commentary, most provocative among them that of W.H. Auden in The Dyer's Hand. Some of his interpretations of Auden's critical work are certain to elicit debate from the Audenesque among us. For example, was Auden's view of Falstaff as a "comic symbol of christian charity" an "extravagant claim?" Is it true that "Auden apparently disliked Hamlet," the character? And, of course, Bloom's insinuation that Auden's so-called "religious conversion" slanted and compromised his literary criticism, is an idea that has reared its presumptuous and incomplete head many times in the past. Auden's preservation of traditional manners, art, language and liturgy is no more equivocal than Bloom's holding on to the language, playmaking and indeed the recollection of past performances of Shakespeare's plays, illustrated most gloriously by Bloom from his own memories of Sir Ralph Richardson as Falstaff and Sir Lawrence Olivier as Prince Hal in an over 50 year old stage production of Henry IV, Part I! Auden's commentary has more to do with Bloom's thesis than the author of Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human seems able or willing to admit. To illustrate, consider this Auden quote from The Dyer's Hand: "Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind." Nonetheless, Bloom's tome is a keeper, a rare and delectible literary treat for those of us who are looking for more than Stoppardesque Elizabethan yuks (not that there's anything wrong with that)!
Rating: 3
Summary: Good criticism with a weird central thesis
Comment: This big Shakespeare book is very welcome and valuable as
a general companion to the plays (the sonnets are not discussed
much). It is certainly a book intended for the general
reader: it contains nary a footnote and there is no
bibliography. There is not even, alas, an index!
However, aside from its use as Shakespeare companion and
tutor, this book advances a rather odd thesis that William
Shakespeare singlehandedly invented human beings as we know
them today. The average reader will very likely pause,
go back to re-read that sentence, and then scratch his head.
"What?"
For the sake of perspective, it is a commonplace of social
history that the European Renaissance gave birth to our
modern conceptions of "the individual." For example,
A. L. Rowse's "The England of Elizabeth" made this point
fifty years ago: "The increasing national
self-consciousness expresses itself; but most significant
of all is the growth of words expressing self-awareness
and personality, fancy and instinct, acuteness of
observation, the psychological consequences of the sense
of individuality that is at the core of the Renaissance
experience."
Well, Bloom is having none of this. Bloom tells us, rightly,
that "the age" or "the times" did nothing at all -- wrote
no plays, created no art, played no music. Of course all
this was done by people, not by "the age." But Bloom then
asserts that the entire Renaissance "sense of individuality"
was the work of William Shakespeare. This would strike many
as a rather odd thought, a side-effect of the Bardolatry
which Bloom cheerfully admits.
Well, this is a complex issue and we can all decide for
ourselves, but here are a few reflections.
First, Bloom never even hints that this "invention of the
human" might in fact be a re-invention of the individual
found in ancient Greece and Rome. In this sense, Bloom
wants to reconceive the Renaissance as the Naissance --
thereby once again showing his enormous blind spot: for
such an avid reader, Bloom seems to have read and
understood precious little from pagan antiquity.
Second, it would seem to stand to reason that -- if Bill
Shakespeare was the unique inventor of the human -- that we
would find this miraculous event only happening in England;
the Renaissance experience in France, Germany, and Italy
would be utterly different, and their humanity would remain
"stuck" in the Middle Ages, since Shakespeare didn't get
translated very quickly. But I see no evidence at all of
this, and Bloom can't be troubled to supply any.
So, my own feeling is that Bloom's grandiose claim should be
whittled back to Shakespeare's visible achievement, in
revolutionizing the representation of human beings in his
plays, of building on the masterpieces of antiquity
(Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides) and surpassing them in
certain key aspects. With this in mind, it is easy to
enjoy the rest of the book.
Rating: 5
Summary: This book covers a lot of territory
Comment: This gigantic book summarizing a lifetime of teaching Shakespeare would not seem so familiar to me if the shocks of recognition were not always so close to the truths that I value most highly. My knowledge of Shakespeare is not much, but the information this book contains about plays that loomed large in Walter Kaufmann's books FROM SHAKESPEARE TO EXISTENTIALISM and TRAGEDY AND PHILOSOPHY largely supports a bracing view of the worst things that Shakespeare could find to say about people. A few years ago, at a performance of the play "Cymbeline," I seemed to be much more disturbed than other members of the audience, seeing it in an intimate setting that put people on folding chairs close enough to feel that we were all taking part in what was going on. Harold Bloom adds to that feeling of intimacy by declaring:
"Iago, like Hamlet and Macbeth, is beyond us, but we are Iachimo. Our bravado, malice, fearfulness, confusion are all in Iachimo, who is not much worse than we are, and whom Shakespeare intends to spare." (p. 637).
I have a DVD collection (3 discs), LIVE DEAD, THE GRATEFUL DEAD IN CONCERT, which has an interview with the band, probably the special Dead Facts fan quiz on the GRATEFUL DEAD: TICKET TO NEW YEAR'S recorded at the Oakland Coliseum on December 31, 1987, in which some fan wants to know what they think the words of the song, "Iko Iko" mean: "Jockamo fee na - ne'." It sounds like Iachimo to me, and the attitude that the band adopts to come up with a reasonable explanation which will not produce any more questions is worthy of a truly comic society. The song has been around since 1964, and one verse is like a Shakespeare play:
"Look at my king all dressed in red.
Iko. Iko, unday.
I betcha five dollars he'll kill you dead.
Jockamo fee na - ne'."
Incidentally, there is a version of "Iko-Iko" on the Warren Zevon CD "Wanted Dead or Alive," which also has his song "She Quit Me" which was used in the movie "Midnight Cowboy," which is pretty good if you want to see Dustin Hoffman playing a character called Ratso.
Bloom dates "Cymbeline" to 1609-10, with Shakespeare returning to Stratford in 1610 for semi-retirement (p. xiv), which allowed him to turn on his work with what Bloom regards as "unmistakable overtones of his personal distaste for the London of 1609-10." (p. 615). The larger question is "the question of Shakespeare himself. What was he trying to do for himself as a maker of plays by the heap of self-parodies that constitute `Cymbeline'?" (p. 621). Obviously, "Shakespeare is his own worst enemy in `Cymbeline': he is weary of making plays." (p. 621). Bloom still finds some good poetry:
"Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust." (p. 629).
The six lines of [V.iv. 146-51] are so good that they show up on page 634 and 635 as "Compulsive self-parody" which leads to "It is another of those uncanny recognitions in which Shakespeare is already beyond Nietzsche." (p. 636).
It is easy for me to look up plays that other people might think are awful. Bloom thinks that "Troilus and Cressida" was never staged at the Globe because it "might seem too lively a satire upon the fallen Earl of Essex, who may be the model for the play's outrageous Achilles," (p. 327). Thersites denies having any honour: "no, no: I am a rascal, a scurvy railing knave: a very filthy rogue." (p. 329). Margarelon told him, "The devil take thee, coward." (p. 329). Bloom is sympathetic. "If we can trust anyone in the play, then it must be Thersites, deranged as doubtless he is." (p. 332).
"Timon of Athens" is considered unfinished. "Shakespeare appears to have to have abandoned `Timon of Athens,' for reasons still unclear. He never staged it, and parts of it are less finished than others." (p. 588). There are a few examples of "venereal invective" (p. 596) that were ultimately dismissed as unworthy of himself. "This hymn to syphilis is unmatched and unmatchable." (p. 597). There are topics which are far more worthy of poetry in this book, and the book makes every effort to present explanations which make the poetry worth understanding. Not every reader in our society will make the effort to find what they want in Shakespeare. This book will make sense to people who would want to know all this, whether it will do them any good or not.
This is April. "Shakespeare was christened on April 26, 1564, at Stratford-on-Avon, and died there on April 23, 1616." (p. xiii). He only lived to the age of 52, more or less. Many of his plays were so popular that Bloom can keep talking about characters throughout the book as if readers who have not encountered them already will know who they are someday. They should, too.
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Title: Hamlet: Poem Unlimited by Harold Bloom ISBN: 157322233X Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: 10 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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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: How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom ISBN: 0684859076 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 25 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds by Harold Bloom ISBN: 0446691291 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages by Harold Bloom ISBN: 0684868733 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 25 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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