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Kabbalah and Criticism
While Bloom is appreciated for his originality, range and clarity, less notice has been taken of the remarkable unity that is displayed in his writings from the earlier studies on Shelley, Blake and Romanticism, up to A Map of Misreading. That unity is brilliantly highlighted in Kabbalah and Criticism.
Providing a study of the Kabbalah itself, its great commentators, the 'revisionary ratios' they employed and of its significance as a model for contemporary criticism, Kabbalah and Criticism is an indispensable book for all students of literature as well as for all those who are fascinated by this singularly rich body of mystical writings.
Providing a study of the Kabbalah itself, its great commentators, the 'revisionary ratios' they employed and of its significance as a model for contemporary criticism, Kabbalah and Criticism is an indispensable book for all students of literature as well as for all those who are fascinated by this singularly rich body of mystical writings.
76 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
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241 people want to read
About the author
Harold Bloom
1,712 books2,011 followersHarold Bloom was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world." After publishing his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and one novel. He edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.
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October 31, 2020
A Post-Modernist Tradition
Ever since Pico della Mirandola brought Kabbalah to the attention of Christian society in the late 15th century, the mystical Jewish discipline has found its way into a European literature. Jorge Luis Borges and H. P. Lovecraft use Kabbalah extensively in their short stories. Franz Kafka's later works indicate an increasing interest in Kabbalistic interpretation. Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum is structured around the Sefirot, the Kabbalah's terms for the attributes of God. Thomas Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow, and Malcolm Lowry in Under the Volcano use Kabbalah as a central trope. So to some degree, Kabbalah has become naturalised into modern fiction.
Harold Bloom's little book is both a useful introduction to the history and symbology of Kabbalah, as well as an application of Kabbalah in poetic criticism. He respects its religious origin but also its unique character, "Kabbalah differs from Christian and Eastern mysticism in being a mode of intellectual speculation rather than a way of union with God." For Bloom, Kabbalah is a theory of rhetoric and a theory of writing, "writing before writing, speech before speech."
Bloom recognises that Kabbalah's primary subject is language itself, and quotes the authority of Gershom Scholem, the leading Kabbalistic scholar of the 20th century: "The God who manifests himself is the God who expresses himself, which means that the Sefirot [the ten mystical names of God] are primarily language, attributes of God... they are like poems." Religion itself is "spilled poetry," thus establishing a priority for Kabbalah as a critical not just a mystical method.
The Sefirot are peculiar poetic forms. They are self-referential; they comment poetically on themselves: "As early as the thirteenth century, Kabbalists spoke of the Sefirot reflecting themselves within themselves, so that each 'contained' all the others." As such, the Kabbalah, therefore, is not incidentally but essentially a method of poetic criticism.
Bloom is explicit about the literary method involved: "Kabbalah if viewed as rhetoric centres upon two series of tropes: first, irony, metonymy, metaphor, and then - synecdoche, hyperbole, metaiepsis." This corresponds to the sequence which Kabbalah describes as Zimzum, Shevirat, Tikkun - roughly Destruction, Re-assignment, and Reconciliation. Call it productive mis-reading to align it with Bloom's general theory of literary criticism.
This poetic process of mis-reading anticipates what has become known in 20th century philosophy as deconstruction, the phenomenological analysis of a text in order to identify its central presumptions and intentions. It also anticipates the epistemological method of the 19th century philosopher C.S. Peirce, whom Bloom discusses at some length. This epistemology he connects with the "wandering" or experimentation with meaning that is inherent in Kabbalah. "Meaning wanders to protect itself", primarily from premature or prejudicial closure of textual interpretation.
Kabbalah emerged from a philosophical conflict within Judaism between Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism. A similar conflict has also been perennial in Christian history. But in Christianity resolution has largely been imposed by the power of an ecclesiastical hierarchy. The result has been increased conflict and ethical compromise. Judaism's solution is not only more pacific, it is also more productive, encouraging the incorporation of religious tradition within the core of literary civilisation. Quite an accomplishment. It seems almost...well, post-modern.
Ever since Pico della Mirandola brought Kabbalah to the attention of Christian society in the late 15th century, the mystical Jewish discipline has found its way into a European literature. Jorge Luis Borges and H. P. Lovecraft use Kabbalah extensively in their short stories. Franz Kafka's later works indicate an increasing interest in Kabbalistic interpretation. Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum is structured around the Sefirot, the Kabbalah's terms for the attributes of God. Thomas Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow, and Malcolm Lowry in Under the Volcano use Kabbalah as a central trope. So to some degree, Kabbalah has become naturalised into modern fiction.
Harold Bloom's little book is both a useful introduction to the history and symbology of Kabbalah, as well as an application of Kabbalah in poetic criticism. He respects its religious origin but also its unique character, "Kabbalah differs from Christian and Eastern mysticism in being a mode of intellectual speculation rather than a way of union with God." For Bloom, Kabbalah is a theory of rhetoric and a theory of writing, "writing before writing, speech before speech."
Bloom recognises that Kabbalah's primary subject is language itself, and quotes the authority of Gershom Scholem, the leading Kabbalistic scholar of the 20th century: "The God who manifests himself is the God who expresses himself, which means that the Sefirot [the ten mystical names of God] are primarily language, attributes of God... they are like poems." Religion itself is "spilled poetry," thus establishing a priority for Kabbalah as a critical not just a mystical method.
The Sefirot are peculiar poetic forms. They are self-referential; they comment poetically on themselves: "As early as the thirteenth century, Kabbalists spoke of the Sefirot reflecting themselves within themselves, so that each 'contained' all the others." As such, the Kabbalah, therefore, is not incidentally but essentially a method of poetic criticism.
Bloom is explicit about the literary method involved: "Kabbalah if viewed as rhetoric centres upon two series of tropes: first, irony, metonymy, metaphor, and then - synecdoche, hyperbole, metaiepsis." This corresponds to the sequence which Kabbalah describes as Zimzum, Shevirat, Tikkun - roughly Destruction, Re-assignment, and Reconciliation. Call it productive mis-reading to align it with Bloom's general theory of literary criticism.
This poetic process of mis-reading anticipates what has become known in 20th century philosophy as deconstruction, the phenomenological analysis of a text in order to identify its central presumptions and intentions. It also anticipates the epistemological method of the 19th century philosopher C.S. Peirce, whom Bloom discusses at some length. This epistemology he connects with the "wandering" or experimentation with meaning that is inherent in Kabbalah. "Meaning wanders to protect itself", primarily from premature or prejudicial closure of textual interpretation.
Kabbalah emerged from a philosophical conflict within Judaism between Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism. A similar conflict has also been perennial in Christian history. But in Christianity resolution has largely been imposed by the power of an ecclesiastical hierarchy. The result has been increased conflict and ethical compromise. Judaism's solution is not only more pacific, it is also more productive, encouraging the incorporation of religious tradition within the core of literary civilisation. Quite an accomplishment. It seems almost...well, post-modern.
January 30, 2009
Kabbalah and Criticism is one of Bloom's stranger books, but along with 'Map of Misreading' and 'The Anxiety of Influence' it is indispensable in explicating the origins and methods of Bloom's critical theory.
Here, Bloom identifies the ancient mystic practice of Kabbalah as a type of literary criticism - specifically criticism of the Torah. Kabbalah looks for inverted meanings, coded texts-within-texts, and above all that germ of brilliance most often associated with the Divine.
To read is to pratice "tikkun" or spiritual breathing, absorbing the author and reflecting one's own "strong light" - the apotheosis of this practice is not sterile critical articles but rather "strong misreadings" such as the New Testament brings to bear on the Torah - creating that third, strange genius The Old Testament.
Here, Bloom identifies the ancient mystic practice of Kabbalah as a type of literary criticism - specifically criticism of the Torah. Kabbalah looks for inverted meanings, coded texts-within-texts, and above all that germ of brilliance most often associated with the Divine.
To read is to pratice "tikkun" or spiritual breathing, absorbing the author and reflecting one's own "strong light" - the apotheosis of this practice is not sterile critical articles but rather "strong misreadings" such as the New Testament brings to bear on the Torah - creating that third, strange genius The Old Testament.
Read
April 5, 2008Now, how did I get here? It was like this. . . Prophecy--then the most popular current application of prophecy: "end times" (i.e., Left Behind)--then fundamentalist reading styles--then how else can you read?--then hermeneutics--then kabbalah--and voila, Harold Bloom! (I imagine all roads lead to Harold Bloom eventually).
What's really fascinating here is not, so far, Bloom's deployment of literary concepts, but the idea of close reading as a way of enlivening a full spiritual tradition. That is, you have these texts, you have read them and studied them, you have written about all you can write on them, so then what? Then you begin to read creatively, perversely, mystically. (Then you become Paul Muldoon!) And I like this idea of the spectrum of reading possibilities, and the religious origin of such a spectrum.
Finished. . . Bloom's motives in writing this don't quite line up with my motives in reading this--he plunges into anxiety of influence, insists more often than really seems necessary on the meaninglessness of any individual poem, dignifies the critic, etc--never mind, I just wanted to plunder his ideas on kabbalah as religious reading. My favorite item that I've plundered: the idea of the tragedy of a closed canon (such as the Torah or the Bible), and what that does to creativity among believers. . .
What's really fascinating here is not, so far, Bloom's deployment of literary concepts, but the idea of close reading as a way of enlivening a full spiritual tradition. That is, you have these texts, you have read them and studied them, you have written about all you can write on them, so then what? Then you begin to read creatively, perversely, mystically. (Then you become Paul Muldoon!) And I like this idea of the spectrum of reading possibilities, and the religious origin of such a spectrum.
Finished. . . Bloom's motives in writing this don't quite line up with my motives in reading this--he plunges into anxiety of influence, insists more often than really seems necessary on the meaninglessness of any individual poem, dignifies the critic, etc--never mind, I just wanted to plunder his ideas on kabbalah as religious reading. My favorite item that I've plundered: the idea of the tragedy of a closed canon (such as the Torah or the Bible), and what that does to creativity among believers. . .
September 7, 2025
Vocabulary
Kabbalah: A body of Jewish esoteric teachings concerning God and creation that originated around the year 1200. The word means "tradition," specifically in the sense of "reception," and initially referred to the entire Oral Law.
Gnosticism: A dualistic, transcendent religion of salvation that preceded Christianity. Gnostics believed in a radical split between an alien God and an evil universe, where salvation came from a special form of "knowledge" (gnosis).
Neoplatonism: A philosophy founded by Plotinus that sought to vindicate three transcendent realities: the One, Intelligence, and the Soul. It used the concept of "emanation" to explain how the One's plenitude "brimmed over" and descended into the world of nature.
Sefirot: The central structural notion of Kabbalah, introduced in a rudimentary form in the Sefer Yezirah. In later works like the Sefer ha-Bahir, they became divine emanations, principles, powers, and lights that aid in creation. There are ten Sefirot, often depicted as a "tree of emanation" or a "reversed tree" in the form of a man.
Ein-Sof: The totally unknowable and unrepresentable God in classical Kabbalah, meaning "without end".
Ayin: A "nothingness" that is the first manifestation of Ein-Sof. The Kabbalists revisionistically interpreted the creation story as God, being "ayin," creating the world out of "ayin," and thus creating it out of Himself.
Zimzum: The Lurianic concept of "contraction" or "holding-in-of-the-breath," where God hides or enters into Himself to clear a space for creation.
Shevirah ha-kelim: Luria's concept of the "breaking-of-the-vessels." This catastrophe occurred when the light of God was too strong for the vessels of creation, causing them to shatter and fall, forming the evil forces of the universe.
Tikkun: The process of "restitution" and "restoration" in Lurianic Kabbalah. This is the work of humans, who perform acts of meditation to liberate the fallen sparks of God's light imprisoned in the shattered vessels.
Kelippah: A poetic image from the Zohar, comparing evil to the bark of the Sefirotic tree. The kelippot are also seen as husks or broken vessels of evil, which contain a saving spark of good that can be redeemed by human actions.
Gematria: A technique of practical Kabbalah that involves explaining words based on their numerical values. It is described as "interpretative freedom gone mad," where any text can be made to mean anything.
Zohar: The central masterpiece of classical Kabbalah, written by Moses de Leon between 1280 and 1286. The text is a collection of homilies and stories written in a highly literary Aramaic.
Kabbalah and Criticism
Vocabulary
Revisionism: A reaction to the authority of a precursor text and its established interpretations. It's a key concept in Bloom's theory of poetic influence, where a new work of art "swerves" from its canonical predecessors.
Misprision: A term Bloom uses to describe a "creative misunderstanding" or misreading of a precursor text. It is the core of his theory of poetic influence.
Behinot: The six inner aspects or "figurings" that govern each Sefirah in the Kabbalah of Moses Cordovero. Bloom identifies these as the source for his concept of "revisionary ratios".
Parzufim: The "faces" or "configurations" in Lurianic Kabbalah that act as a complex agency for tikkun (restitution). They organize the shattered world after the vessels break and substitute for the Sefirot.
Clinamen: A "swerve" from a precursor text. A modern poem begins with a clinamen, which is a dialectical renunciation of an earlier poem.
Limitation (Zimzum): The poetic equivalent of the Kabbalistic zimzum, representing a loss or dearth of meaning where representation cannot fill the void. This is a "dualizing phenomenon" where a poem contracts to create a space for itself.
Substitution (Shevirah): The poetic equivalent of shevirah ha-kelim (the breaking of the vessels). It is the process by which one image is replaced by another, a violent dramatization of one verbal figure substituting for another.
Representation (Tikkun): The poetic equivalent of tikkun (restitution), viewed as a "mending process" that brings something absent into presence. It is the act of strengthening the mind by reminding us of what we may need to believe we have known.
The Necessity of Misreading
Vocabulary
Canon-formation: The process by which literary tradition selects which poets and texts shall endure and become classics. This process is inherently self-contradictory, as it involves "troping upon" or misreading the text being canonized.
Belatedness: A core concept in Bloom's theory. Reading is an exercise in belatedness, as the reader comes after the text. This sense of being a "latecomer" is what drives the defensive and revisionary act of interpretation.
Anteriority: The state of coming before something else. A key concept for Bloom, who argues that belatedness is a war against anteriority. The poet must defend against the anteriority of the precursor, and the reader against the anteriority of the text.
Apotropaic: A term used to describe something that wards off or defends against evil. For Bloom, poetry itself is an apotropaic litany that defends against death, and literary history is apotropaic, defending against its own perceived enemies.
Metaleptic reversal: A rhetorical move that reverses the relationship between an earlier and later event. Nietzsche's "afterglow of art" is an example, where a later event (the memory of art) is given priority over the original event (the existence of art).
Revisionary ratio: A term for the psychic defenses and rhetorical tropes by which a later poet misreads or revises a precursor's work.
Daemonic: A term used to describe a powerful, numinous, or mystical force. Bloom argues that "tradition" is a daemonic term, unlike "influence," which is not.
Misprision: The core concept of misreading or creative misunderstanding that drives poetic and critical history.
Bloom's Insights on Criticism and Kabbalah
Harold Bloom sees Kabbalah not merely as a mystical tradition, but as a rich, pre-Freudian, and pre-Nietzschean model for a theory of belatedness and interpretation. He argues that studying Kabbalah, particularly the Lurianic tradition, offers contemporary critics a powerful paradigm for understanding how poetry is written and read.
Key Insights
Kabbalah as a Theory of Rhetoric: Bloom contends that Kabbalah is an "extraordinary body of rhetoric or figurative language" and, in fact, a theory of rhetoric. The Sefirot, for instance, are not allegorical personifications but complex figurations for God, or "tropes or turns of language that substitute for God". This perspective allows a critic to approach Kabbalah as a literary system, where the relationship between God and language is central. The Sefirot are seen as "divine poems" or "texts in themselves" that model how figurative language functions in a creative process.
The Psychology of Belatedness: For Bloom, Kabbalah's deepest meaning lies in its implicit "psychology of belatedness". The Kabbalists, as later interpreters of a "massive and completed Scripture" and an even more extensive body of commentary, had to find a way to introduce new religious impulses. Their solution was a "rhetorical series of techniques for opening Scripture" to their own experiences and insights, a process that Bloom sees as the classic paradigm for all Western revisionism. He sees poets as similarly "belated," struggling with the overwhelming authority of their precursors.
A Model for Poetic Influence and Misprision: Bloom identifies a direct parallel between the Kabbalistic dialectic of creation and the process of poetic influence.
Limitation (Zimzum): The first stage of Luria's creation myth—God's self-contraction to make space for creation—is a perfect model for the "creative contraction" of a new poet. To begin, the poet must renounce and "void an unbearable presence, the idea of the precursor". This is a "trope-of-limitation," where the new poem creates a space for itself by seeming to empty out its source.
Substitution (Shevirah ha-kelim): The "breaking of the vessels" is a model for "rhetorical substitution," where one verbal figure is violently replaced by another. This catastrophe, in which God's Name is "too strong for his Words," mirrors the way a new poem breaks with its precursor's style, substituting a new, more chaotic pattern for the original.
Representation (Tikkun): The process of "restoration and restitution" in Kabbalah, where fallen sparks of God's light are gathered and liberated, is a model for the poetic act of "representation". This is not a passive act of imitation, but an active "mending process" that brings something absent into presence, strengthening the mind by reminding us of what we need to believe we have known.
Reading as Defensive Warfare: Kabbalah, with its Gnostic-influenced dualism, provides a model for understanding interpretation itself as a form of "defensive warfare". Just as Kabbalists defended against the "threat of confusing the creature with his Creator," a strong reader defends against the influence of the text by actively misreading it. According to Bloom, a strong reading must be a misreading, because it must insist on its own authority and displace the earlier text's meaning. This insight transforms the critic's role from a passive interpreter to an active, creative revisionist, whose work is itself an event in literary history.
The Primacy of the Trope: Bloom argues that the history of poetry and interpretation is governed by the "primacy of the trope" and its "defensive nature". This is a key insight of Cordovero's behinot, which Bloom interprets as "poetic images that can be regarded as the master tropes, or as the crucial mechanisms of defense". Tropes are not mere figures of speech; they are the very tools of a poet's or critic's defense against anteriority and the means by which meaning is made to "wander" from text to text.
Kabbalah: A body of Jewish esoteric teachings concerning God and creation that originated around the year 1200. The word means "tradition," specifically in the sense of "reception," and initially referred to the entire Oral Law.
Gnosticism: A dualistic, transcendent religion of salvation that preceded Christianity. Gnostics believed in a radical split between an alien God and an evil universe, where salvation came from a special form of "knowledge" (gnosis).
Neoplatonism: A philosophy founded by Plotinus that sought to vindicate three transcendent realities: the One, Intelligence, and the Soul. It used the concept of "emanation" to explain how the One's plenitude "brimmed over" and descended into the world of nature.
Sefirot: The central structural notion of Kabbalah, introduced in a rudimentary form in the Sefer Yezirah. In later works like the Sefer ha-Bahir, they became divine emanations, principles, powers, and lights that aid in creation. There are ten Sefirot, often depicted as a "tree of emanation" or a "reversed tree" in the form of a man.
Ein-Sof: The totally unknowable and unrepresentable God in classical Kabbalah, meaning "without end".
Ayin: A "nothingness" that is the first manifestation of Ein-Sof. The Kabbalists revisionistically interpreted the creation story as God, being "ayin," creating the world out of "ayin," and thus creating it out of Himself.
Zimzum: The Lurianic concept of "contraction" or "holding-in-of-the-breath," where God hides or enters into Himself to clear a space for creation.
Shevirah ha-kelim: Luria's concept of the "breaking-of-the-vessels." This catastrophe occurred when the light of God was too strong for the vessels of creation, causing them to shatter and fall, forming the evil forces of the universe.
Tikkun: The process of "restitution" and "restoration" in Lurianic Kabbalah. This is the work of humans, who perform acts of meditation to liberate the fallen sparks of God's light imprisoned in the shattered vessels.
Kelippah: A poetic image from the Zohar, comparing evil to the bark of the Sefirotic tree. The kelippot are also seen as husks or broken vessels of evil, which contain a saving spark of good that can be redeemed by human actions.
Gematria: A technique of practical Kabbalah that involves explaining words based on their numerical values. It is described as "interpretative freedom gone mad," where any text can be made to mean anything.
Zohar: The central masterpiece of classical Kabbalah, written by Moses de Leon between 1280 and 1286. The text is a collection of homilies and stories written in a highly literary Aramaic.
Kabbalah and Criticism
Vocabulary
Revisionism: A reaction to the authority of a precursor text and its established interpretations. It's a key concept in Bloom's theory of poetic influence, where a new work of art "swerves" from its canonical predecessors.
Misprision: A term Bloom uses to describe a "creative misunderstanding" or misreading of a precursor text. It is the core of his theory of poetic influence.
Behinot: The six inner aspects or "figurings" that govern each Sefirah in the Kabbalah of Moses Cordovero. Bloom identifies these as the source for his concept of "revisionary ratios".
Parzufim: The "faces" or "configurations" in Lurianic Kabbalah that act as a complex agency for tikkun (restitution). They organize the shattered world after the vessels break and substitute for the Sefirot.
Clinamen: A "swerve" from a precursor text. A modern poem begins with a clinamen, which is a dialectical renunciation of an earlier poem.
Limitation (Zimzum): The poetic equivalent of the Kabbalistic zimzum, representing a loss or dearth of meaning where representation cannot fill the void. This is a "dualizing phenomenon" where a poem contracts to create a space for itself.
Substitution (Shevirah): The poetic equivalent of shevirah ha-kelim (the breaking of the vessels). It is the process by which one image is replaced by another, a violent dramatization of one verbal figure substituting for another.
Representation (Tikkun): The poetic equivalent of tikkun (restitution), viewed as a "mending process" that brings something absent into presence. It is the act of strengthening the mind by reminding us of what we may need to believe we have known.
The Necessity of Misreading
Vocabulary
Canon-formation: The process by which literary tradition selects which poets and texts shall endure and become classics. This process is inherently self-contradictory, as it involves "troping upon" or misreading the text being canonized.
Belatedness: A core concept in Bloom's theory. Reading is an exercise in belatedness, as the reader comes after the text. This sense of being a "latecomer" is what drives the defensive and revisionary act of interpretation.
Anteriority: The state of coming before something else. A key concept for Bloom, who argues that belatedness is a war against anteriority. The poet must defend against the anteriority of the precursor, and the reader against the anteriority of the text.
Apotropaic: A term used to describe something that wards off or defends against evil. For Bloom, poetry itself is an apotropaic litany that defends against death, and literary history is apotropaic, defending against its own perceived enemies.
Metaleptic reversal: A rhetorical move that reverses the relationship between an earlier and later event. Nietzsche's "afterglow of art" is an example, where a later event (the memory of art) is given priority over the original event (the existence of art).
Revisionary ratio: A term for the psychic defenses and rhetorical tropes by which a later poet misreads or revises a precursor's work.
Daemonic: A term used to describe a powerful, numinous, or mystical force. Bloom argues that "tradition" is a daemonic term, unlike "influence," which is not.
Misprision: The core concept of misreading or creative misunderstanding that drives poetic and critical history.
Bloom's Insights on Criticism and Kabbalah
Harold Bloom sees Kabbalah not merely as a mystical tradition, but as a rich, pre-Freudian, and pre-Nietzschean model for a theory of belatedness and interpretation. He argues that studying Kabbalah, particularly the Lurianic tradition, offers contemporary critics a powerful paradigm for understanding how poetry is written and read.
Key Insights
Kabbalah as a Theory of Rhetoric: Bloom contends that Kabbalah is an "extraordinary body of rhetoric or figurative language" and, in fact, a theory of rhetoric. The Sefirot, for instance, are not allegorical personifications but complex figurations for God, or "tropes or turns of language that substitute for God". This perspective allows a critic to approach Kabbalah as a literary system, where the relationship between God and language is central. The Sefirot are seen as "divine poems" or "texts in themselves" that model how figurative language functions in a creative process.
The Psychology of Belatedness: For Bloom, Kabbalah's deepest meaning lies in its implicit "psychology of belatedness". The Kabbalists, as later interpreters of a "massive and completed Scripture" and an even more extensive body of commentary, had to find a way to introduce new religious impulses. Their solution was a "rhetorical series of techniques for opening Scripture" to their own experiences and insights, a process that Bloom sees as the classic paradigm for all Western revisionism. He sees poets as similarly "belated," struggling with the overwhelming authority of their precursors.
A Model for Poetic Influence and Misprision: Bloom identifies a direct parallel between the Kabbalistic dialectic of creation and the process of poetic influence.
Limitation (Zimzum): The first stage of Luria's creation myth—God's self-contraction to make space for creation—is a perfect model for the "creative contraction" of a new poet. To begin, the poet must renounce and "void an unbearable presence, the idea of the precursor". This is a "trope-of-limitation," where the new poem creates a space for itself by seeming to empty out its source.
Substitution (Shevirah ha-kelim): The "breaking of the vessels" is a model for "rhetorical substitution," where one verbal figure is violently replaced by another. This catastrophe, in which God's Name is "too strong for his Words," mirrors the way a new poem breaks with its precursor's style, substituting a new, more chaotic pattern for the original.
Representation (Tikkun): The process of "restoration and restitution" in Kabbalah, where fallen sparks of God's light are gathered and liberated, is a model for the poetic act of "representation". This is not a passive act of imitation, but an active "mending process" that brings something absent into presence, strengthening the mind by reminding us of what we need to believe we have known.
Reading as Defensive Warfare: Kabbalah, with its Gnostic-influenced dualism, provides a model for understanding interpretation itself as a form of "defensive warfare". Just as Kabbalists defended against the "threat of confusing the creature with his Creator," a strong reader defends against the influence of the text by actively misreading it. According to Bloom, a strong reading must be a misreading, because it must insist on its own authority and displace the earlier text's meaning. This insight transforms the critic's role from a passive interpreter to an active, creative revisionist, whose work is itself an event in literary history.
The Primacy of the Trope: Bloom argues that the history of poetry and interpretation is governed by the "primacy of the trope" and its "defensive nature". This is a key insight of Cordovero's behinot, which Bloom interprets as "poetic images that can be regarded as the master tropes, or as the crucial mechanisms of defense". Tropes are not mere figures of speech; they are the very tools of a poet's or critic's defense against anteriority and the means by which meaning is made to "wander" from text to text.
January 2, 2023
A short and interesting read. I didn't go into this a big fan of Harold Bloom, nor did I end up buying his concept of "influence" as a universal critical lens, but there are some fun ideas here.
I do think there's something to the idea that all art is implicitly a statement about what art ought to be, and these statements are made in light of whatever art the artist has consumed. I don't think that makes all "strong" art as overdetermined as Bloom thinks it is. Do we really expect that we can locate the ordering irony-synecdoche-metonymy-hyperbole-metaphor-transumption in every influential poem, and have that order be meaningfully related to the poet's artistic anxiety? It's just too specific to be plausible.
The focus on "influence" and canon-formation anyways (and I'm sure this is not an original observation) seems more relevant to the analysis of Bloom's anxieties than anyone else's.
At the same time, though, I'm attracted to Bloom's vision of poetic meaning as located in difference and embedded in process. I read R.F. Kuang's Babel at the same time and this made an interesting companion since it addresses similar ideas. I do think that meanings are more like Whiteheadian occasions than Aristotelian essences. The meaning of a word to you is relative to your lifetime experience of hearing it, plus how it is embedded in the poem, plus your freedom of interpretation.
The connection to Kabbalah makes this a fun jumping off point for thinking about reading.
I do think there's something to the idea that all art is implicitly a statement about what art ought to be, and these statements are made in light of whatever art the artist has consumed. I don't think that makes all "strong" art as overdetermined as Bloom thinks it is. Do we really expect that we can locate the ordering irony-synecdoche-metonymy-hyperbole-metaphor-transumption in every influential poem, and have that order be meaningfully related to the poet's artistic anxiety? It's just too specific to be plausible.
The focus on "influence" and canon-formation anyways (and I'm sure this is not an original observation) seems more relevant to the analysis of Bloom's anxieties than anyone else's.
At the same time, though, I'm attracted to Bloom's vision of poetic meaning as located in difference and embedded in process. I read R.F. Kuang's Babel at the same time and this made an interesting companion since it addresses similar ideas. I do think that meanings are more like Whiteheadian occasions than Aristotelian essences. The meaning of a word to you is relative to your lifetime experience of hearing it, plus how it is embedded in the poem, plus your freedom of interpretation.
The connection to Kabbalah makes this a fun jumping off point for thinking about reading.
April 25, 2014
Harold Bloom in top form! Perhaps his strangest book from before he went senile, this fun little text outlines the connections between Jewish mysticism and his own theories on literary history. Serves as a fascinating introduction to Bloom's ideas and it's filled with countless possibilities for future studies of literature, just as, as he argues, within each poem is the seed of the next. Highly recommend to anyone with an interest in literary theory. Plus I love his prose style. It reads like someone who learned English reading Blake (which he did, true story).
November 28, 2022
“Reality for Luria is always a triple rhythm of contraction, breaking apart, and mending, a rhythm continuously present in time even as it first punctuated eternity.” - pg. 39
“Two kinds of light had made these vessels, the new or incoming light that had accompanied the yod or Word of God, and the light left behind in the tehiru (the fundamental space the contraction of God clears for creation) after the zimzum (the contraction of God). The collision of lights is an enormously complex process, for which this present essay lacks space, but the crucial element in the complexity is that Adam Kadmon, man as he should be, is a kind of perpetual war of light-against-light. This war emanates out from his head in patterns of writing, which become fresh vessels-of-creation…
[A breaking or scattering of the vessels] was caused by the force of the light hitting all-at-once, in what can be interpreted as too strong a force of writing…
Paradoxically God’s Name was too strong for his Words.” - pg.40
“The zelem is a modification of the later Neoplatonic idea of the Astral Body, a kind of quasi-material entity that holds together mind and physical body, and that survives the death of the body proper. In Lurianic Kabbalah, the Astral Body also serves the function of determining an individual human personality, so that the difference between one of us and another is not necessarily any part of the soul, but in the enigmatic doing of soul and body, that is, in the relationship between our consciousness and our body…
It was only a step from the idea of zelem to the Lurianic version of the transmigration of souls, called gilgul. Luria seems to have taught that there were families of souls, united by the root of a common spark. Each person can take up in themself the spark of another soul, of one of the dead, provided that they and the dead share the same root.” - pg. - 44
“… the highest grade of reality is only reached by signs … “ —C. S. PEIRCE
“Kabbalah is a theory of writing, but this is a theory that denies the absolute distinction between writing and inspired speech, even as it denies human distinctions between presence and absence. Kabbalah speaks of a writing before writing (Derrida’s “trace”), but also of a speech before speech, a Primal Instruction preceding all traces of speech.” - pg. 52
“Some Kabbalists spoke of a missing twenty-third letter of the Hebrew alphabet, hidden in the white spaces between the letters. From those openings the larger Torah was still to emerge, yet it was there already…which may recall to us that aphorism (119) of Nietzsche’s Dawn of Day, where we are told that ‘all our so-called consciousness is a more or less fantastic commentary upon an unknown text, one that is perhaps unknowable but still felt.’” - pg. 53-54
(Refer above to pg. 40) “God withdraws from a point only to concentrate Himself upon it. The image of His absence becomes one of the greatest images ever found for His presence, a presence which is intensified by the original metaphor of mezamzem, His holding in of His breath. If we move out of theosophy into poetry, what is the equivalent of this creative contraction? What does it mean to transform the Lurianic zimzum into a trope-of-limitation? What does ‘limitation’ mean in the context of poetry?
To begin with, it means a loss-in-meaning, even an achieved dearth-of-meaning, a sense that representation cannot be achieved fully, or that representation cannot fill the void out of which the desire-for-poetry rises.” - pg. 74
“Meaning wanders, like human tribulation, or like, error, from text to text, and within a text, from figure to figure. What governs this wandering, this errancy, is defense, the beautiful necessity of defense. For not just interpretation is defense, but meaning itself is defense, and so meaning wanders to protect itself. In its etymology, ‘defense’ refers to ‘things forbidden’ and to ‘prohibition,’ and we can speculate that poetic defense rises in close alliance with the notions of trespass and transgression.” - pg. 82
“Meaning, whether in modern poetry or in Kabbalah, wanders wherever anteriority threatens to take over the whole map of misreading, or the verbal universe, if that phrase be preferred. Meaning swerves, enlarges oppositely, vacates, drives down so as to rise up again, goes outside in the wan hope of getting itself more on the inside, and at last attempts to reverse anteriority by forsaking the evasions of mental space for those of mental time… Kabbalah and modern poetry share the paradox that Kojève explored in his commentary upon Hegel’s Phenomenology:
‘… for Hegel it is precisely in this annihilation of Being that consists the Negativity which is Man, that Action of Fighting and Work by which Man preserves himself in spatial Being while destroying it — that is, while transforming it by the creation of hitherto unknown new things into a genuine Past— a nonexistent and consequently non spatial Past … ‘“ - pg. 89
“A text is a relational event, and not a substance to be analyzed. But of course, so are we relational events or dialectical entities, rather than free-standing units.” - pg. 106
“At midnight he went down to the lake, to hear the name spoken over the water, but found no one there to meet him.
So he became two, one to speak the name and one to receive it.
He forgot which one was which.
Both spoke the name, and neither received it.
Then both stood to hear it, but it was not spoken…” - Epilogue
June 2, 2025
“The great lesson that Kabbalah can teach contemporary interpretation is that meaning in belated texts is always wandering meaning…meaning wanders, like human tribulation, or like error, from text to text, and within a text, from figure to figure.”
“We say that an author is original when we cannot trace the hidden transformations that others underwent in his mind…” -Bloom quoting Valéry
Such a fun dip into some post grad lit crit. His theory of misreading will be clunking around in my mind
“We say that an author is original when we cannot trace the hidden transformations that others underwent in his mind…” -Bloom quoting Valéry
Such a fun dip into some post grad lit crit. His theory of misreading will be clunking around in my mind
July 7, 2022
Here mr Bloom begins by summarizing very sparsely the basic ideas of Kabbalah, a not-very-satisfying exposition that seems to be about on par with an half-hour of wikipedia reading in terms of depth. From there, he takes the basic concept of the Sefirot, the various 'tiers' of metaphysics/immanence as per the Kabbalah, and identifies them with different poetical concepts from his pre-existing (and incredibly weak) theory of poetry. The basic idea seems to be that the malleable poetic concepts that literary criticism identifies function in a similar inter-related way to the Sefirot of the Kabbalah. This is pretty much the extent of his argument, and the rest of the book sees him repeating his turgid takes on Shelley and Milton as well as his misunderstandings of Nietzsche and Emerson. I recommend looking elsewhere for information on Kabbalah or its implications for literary criticism
May 27, 2013
The first, longer section was almost unreadable, and this is coming from someone very familiar with the kabbalah. As always, Bloom uses unnecessarily obscure jargon and flowery prose. I can't see how someone not reaching for the logos can become such a powerful and respected critic.
October 10, 2017
Well worth a read it shows how Kabbalah "through the power of criticism" i.e. critiquing the Holy Books of Judaism was able to create a new religion from sources which were complete and needed no innovation i.e. the Torah, Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) and the Talmud.
April 25, 2018
I can't pretend to comprehend any part of KABBALAH AND CRITICISM by Harold Bloom. The section on the Kabbalah might as well been written in Hebrew, and applying that mystic system to an understanding of poetry seems like a good idea as any, but I wish my brain was better at parsing out the connections. What can I say? My brain’s a lazy organ, and my eyes were little help too, surfing over words and wiping out all meaning. There was one kernel I took out of the shit of my misreading, which is the concept of misreading that Bloom says is what separates the great from the good poem. That I can do! He sees poetry existing only in relation to other poetry and filling the void between the two with paradox and, I’m guessing, some rhyming here and there. I guess I need to misread this again before I can glean its ken.
April 28, 2020
Always fun to read Bloom. Three weird essays. His overview of Kabbalah is poisoned by his use of his own terminology (belatedness, influence, defensive, etc.), which should have been reserved for the second and third essays. Oh well. He's nothing if not self-aware: "The Talmud warns against reading Scripture by so inclined a light the the text reveals chiefly the shape of your own countenance. Kabbalah, like the poetry of the last two centuries, reads Scripture only in s inclined or figurative a defensive mode." This, of course, is precisely how Bloom reads Kabbalah. We come to read about Kabbalah and criticism, but both are overshadowed and overwhelmed by the shape of Bloom's round face.
July 24, 2023
A concise exploration by Bloom of the basic tenets of Kabbalah (mostly taken and acknowledged from Scholem) and how he finds a useful mapping of these ideas onto the history and writing of poetry. I think I might have been able to appreciate this work more if I had already read Bloom's Anxiety of Influence but I was able to get most of the gist of what he was saying and laying out. Lost me a bit with some lit/poetry criticism language and terms in the middle section. But at the very least this book made me want to go back and re-read some of my books on Kabbalah as well as read more books by Bloom.
December 10, 2019
Fun work. Short book. Gets right into Gnostic and Kabbalistic myth.
If you like books like this you'll love my project:
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If you like books like this you'll love my project:
http://youtube.com/c/seekersofunity?s...
July 8, 2024
Not sure if I understood more than 10% of this. Hopefully it will help as I read Bloom's other books about criticism of poetry and poems.
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