Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles: The Power of the Reader’s Mind over a Universe of Death

by Harold Bloom

This dazzling celebration of the power of poetry to sublimate death—completed weeks before Harold Bloom died—shows how literature renews life amid what Milton called “a universe of death.” Bloom reads as a way of taking arms against the sea of life’s troubles, taking readers on a grand tour of the poetic voices that have haunted him through a lifetime of reading. “High literature,” he writes, “is a saving lie against time, loss of individuality, premature death.” In passages of breathtaking intimacy, we see him awake late at night, reciting lines from Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Montaigne, Blake, Wordsworth, Hart Crane, Jay Wright, and many others. He feels himself “edged by nothingness,” uncomprehending, but still sustained by reading. Generous and clear‑eyed, this is among Harold Bloom’s most ambitious and most moving books.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Essays, Literature, Books About Books

672 pages, Hardcover

Published October 13, 2020

About the author

Harold 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.

Reviews

[Dan Graser · Rating 3 out of 5]

This being preeminent literary critic Harold Bloom's final work- much of which was dictated while in hospitals and care units - there is a shadow over this massive tome that lends it a certain gravitas and poignancy. The main issue with this final volume, however, is not that he has lost any of his perspicacity or voluminous erudition for poetic connection, but rather, there isn't a firm connecting telos to link much of this and as a results, when there is a connection drawn between chapters, it happens so distantly and so remotely it seems more like a coincidence than a purpose uniting a work.

Thus if you are interested in reading this final work, I would not genuinely recommend you read straight through as his lecture-format style, which has worked well with other collections of his, seems to veer towards the tenuous and random at points. What would be much better would be to read the Introduction, and then choose your primary area of interest, starting there, and working to your least familiar area, one at a time or one per sitting, before proceeding to my personal favorite chapter, the final one, "Dante/Center and Shakespeare/Circumference." Along the way you can treat yourselves to characteristically personal encounters with the works of Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Browning, Tennyson, Whitman, Frost, Stevens, Yeats, Lawrence, and Crane.

As mentioned earlier, this being his final work, there is a greater amount of personal experience, not just opinion, brought to bear and this makes for some of his most intimate writing. He brings in experiences of considering these works in the light of his diminishing mortality and also from the change in his students' attitudes to certain works and poets over decades of teaching. However, this intimacy frequently descended into tangential concatenations of disparate lectures if read straight through, at least for a poetic dilettante like myself. The much more rewarding procedure was the on I mentioned in the first paragraph. He remained an important and perceptive critic right to the end, his work here with Dante and Shakespeare's influence as a result of their sacred and secular tendencies on their successors is beautifully written, however, this would have been much better presented as an anthology of poetic writings than as an attempt at a massive, cogent, single work on a poetic subject.

[Steven Belanger · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderfully meandering long work, a rare unstructured treatise from the easiest-to-read and digest literary critic I’ve ever read, this one is a must-read because it’s Bloom’s last. It reads that way, as he must’ve known he was dying, and it often seems loose, gloomy, and stitched-together, in turns.

The chapters and sections are long, and seem more like an intelligent rambling conversation than is usual for him. This is exceptional, and acceptable, when he’s going on about Shakespeare or Dante, who I’m interested in. But the way-too-long chapter on Hart Crane was almost unbearable, except that it exorcised that particular regret for me, that I’ve never “gotten” Hart Crane, nor cared much to. After trying on the incredibly long excerpts provided here, I’m good to be done with him, and I’m okay with not getting it, or caring to get it, forevermore. He was a poet’s poet, okay. I’ll leave him to them. And I’m over the pitiless or pitiful drunken besotted persona of such poets, anyway.

The excerpts provided for all the subjects of discussion are overlong here, which unnecessarily adds to the 600+ pages. I have to admit to skimming long passages from Crane and others, and you can feel free to do the same. (I seriously tried before I skimmed, I swear.) Consider it like skipping some of Einstein’s math in his famous essays. Oddly, some chapters seem much shorter. I would’ve liked to have seen more about Frost, for example. But Dante and Crane are really the stars of this one.

So this isn’t as monumental as his Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, but what is? Like his best stuff, this usually comes across as an intelligent conversation—albeit professorially one-sided—with an obviously intelligent guy with a passion for what he’s thinking and saying. He’s all over the place here (there’s a jarring reference to Bruce Springsteen) and often rambling, but that’s to be expected from a 90-year old man who knows he’s dying and who laments about all of his dead friends. Probably some editors and assistants had to pull a lot of this together, with varying levels of success. Still, a must-read for serious readers and thinkers, as all of Bloom’s books are.

[Illiterate · Rating 2 out of 5]

An elegiac tour of poetry. Although Bloom is rambling and solipsistic, his interpretations can be insightful and his memories can be moving.

[David Given Schwarm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Monster. Seriously--we will never see his like again.

Such an amazing mind. Such a great book. So much more to learn--this book is basically a challenge to your reading skills & it turns out that very few of us are even going to come close.

It is like a Southern California surfer watching big wave guys--Bloom's reading is just another thing.

And a reflection at the end of life--the asides, the commentary, the reflection, the non stop Eliot bashing--it is all here and it is all glorious.

Strongly recommended for anyone who has read Shakespeare and thinks that Dante makes as much sense as magnetism.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

“What you read and how deeply you read matters almost as much as how you love, work, exercise, vote, practice charity, strive for social justice, cultivate kindness and courtesy, and worship if you are capable of worship. The mind is an activity and will decay into dark inertia if not sustained by the sustenance of reading.” p. 11

[Jono Grondel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Read it.

[Stetson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I admire and envy Harold Bloom. He's one of the best read, most erudite yet still sane literary critics I've encountered. There is good reason that the one literary critic educated Americans are most likely to know is Bloom.

The real value he provides isn't related to taste-making or lit theory. He value is in classical and rigorous instruction on foundational texts in Western culture. Of course, one has to do some amount of reading of these texts to make his work worthwhile. But otherwise, his commentaries and lectures are always edifying, providing insight even when one disagrees with his analyses or preferences. In his writing, he really is at his best when tracing literary influence, delivering harangue against the "school of resentment," or analyzing Shakespeare's enduring character portraits. Unfortunately, none of these elements figure prominently in this final book.

Despite being pitched as a reckoning with death through literature and verse. This work is more of a legacy play. Bloom smooths his image a bit, minimizing his criticisms of "the school of resentment" even making overtures toward certain feminist readings. He also returns strongly to Romantic poets, including Shelley, who was the subject of his thesis. It is hard to overstate how heavily this book is weighted toward Romantics. Commentary on Blake, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Browning occupy most of the work. Maybe the most interesting parts, to those inclined toward gossip, follow his personal reflections. He boosts his literary friends and critiques his literary enemies. For example, Bloom fondly eulogizes fellow lit critic friend Paul De Man but complains of Cleanth Brooks because of his attachment to T. S. Eliot.

The great weakness of the work (and most of Bloom's work) is that it is discursive. Given his eminence and intelligence, I doubt he had an editor willing to rein him in. Hence, I recommend casual consumers of Bloom to check out his lectures. His series on Shakespeare called "The Modern Scholar" is a must.

[Kent Winward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting insights after a lifetime of literary scholarship.

[MountainAshleah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book probably best read in hard copy or on screen if you must, but on audio, despite an excellent narrator, it's a bit rough going unless you are able to focus through the large cast of quoted passages and stanzas, and there are many. I admit I had a difficult time focusing as I listen while hiking and working outdoors. (That's my current post-NYC chosen rustic life in a town of 500, and I am quite sure Bloom would not approve, although perhaps old man Frost would.) Now that I've gotten that admission out of the way...for me, this book was just way too much turning back the clock to 40 years ago and the unnecessary jabs and counter-jabs that give critics a bad name. It's especially irksome to me, anyway, as Bloom, literally on his deathbed, is still battling his peers--long dead and over books long out of print. Goodness, who cares. We start and end with that old saw Shakespeare versus Dante with Milton thrown in...good grief, enough. I perked up with the Whitman chapter, but we didn't move much further along than Wallace Stevens. Although Bloom mentions a few modern poets, he doesn't comment on modern trends in poetry...and if not as you lay dying...when? Apparently, never. While I don't know the publication history of this text--and probably I should--taken on its own merit, it doesn't quite live up to its "click bait" title. I did enjoy Bloom's personal commentary, which is threaded throughout, and I would have liked more of that and less of the stuff I had to endure 40 years ago. Of course, there is the larger discussion of poetry on the whole (for the masses, for the elite), and that's for others to debate. Listening to this book did make me return to some of my older collections and revisit some old favorites as I stripped off my work gear and pulled burrs off my wool socks. Most importantly, kudos to this man who was a scholar truly until the end.

[Jay Heinrichs · Rating 2 out of 5]

An erudite dog's breakfast of a book, with wild claims to literature's ability to make the reader...not immortal, exactly but something more than alive. Its premise comes in the prelude, in a rare lucid passage: "...if life is to be more than breathing, it needs enhancement by knowledge or by the kind of love that is a form of knowledge."

There is plenty of knowledge in here--piles and heaped piles of knowledge--and, clearly, love of the subject. As for the breathing, the 628 pages of wild interpretation, dropped claims, and unnecessary questions (is the history of rhetoric persuasion, or a "panoply of tropes?") amount to a gasping for air. Bloom died soon after writing this, and the book was published posthumously.

I've been an admirer of Bloom's since college, and his theory of the anxiety of influence has intrigued and maddened me for almost as long. Bloom is a giant among critic/philosophers, and he should be admired for writing to the end.

Which did not make me glad I read his final work.

[Anthony Crupi · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sort of vascular insufficiency attends Bloom's musings on the canon, which is understandable given that he dictated much of this rheumy parting shot from his hospital bed. Hallucinogenically intractable to the very end—Bloom goes full-on Lizard King (RIDE THE SNAKE … THE ANCIENT SNAKE) whenever he invokes the specter of his Freud-addled Anxiety of Influence*—this capstone is most rewarding in the early going, when the focus is on the Romantic poets. But whenever he wanders to either side of the tuberculosis-&-drowning era, Bloom flails around like a manatee in a K-hole. His willful misreading of Dante is sad and frankly inane, and what little time he spends with the handful of 20th century poets that made the cut amounts to nothing more than the wheezing noises one might hear emanating from the sort of petting zoo that allows the inmates to smoke Marlboros.

*the frequency of said allusions being, roughly, always

[Horatio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was going to put three stars (the Shelley and Freud chapters were long and, quite frankly, boring) but then Bloom wrote this in the last chapter:

"Shakespeare may seem simpler [than Dante] but he is not. No one else in Western literature, not even Dante, is so great a master at the art of leaving things out, or ellipses. You learn to read Shakespeare for his silences, his unanswered questions, the refusal of his protagonists to listen to what anyone else is saying. While death in Shakespeare is absolute and frequently without memorial, he abounds in ghosts."

So. Four stars it is. But if you're expecting this book to have a central theme, don't get your hopes up. The title is misleading.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the title, this farewell by Harold Bloom is neither "arming" nor morbid. The key is the center word: Power, especially of Mind. Knowing he was fast approaching his finality, he calmly and with an affection (mostly) for literature's gifts to him over 90 years. My admiration for his life and work, after reading this, is exceeded only by his humility.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ruminative essays on Dante. Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Shelley, Whitman, Frost, Crane (Hart), and Stevens, with nods to some other poets. Yes, he was full of himself, but he brings such erudition and fine thinking to his lectures that even when I disagreed or didn't understand his point I felt as if I were being elevated--like when reading Whitman or, sometimes, Keats.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was a disappointment. It reads no different than his last four or five books and makes no comprehensible case for mind over matter through the power of poetry. His last books, including this one, were just recyclables of his previous ones with new covers and titles.

[Gijs Limonard · Rating 3 out of 5]

All the familiar Bloom tropes (the Agon-angle of literary influence, the bardolatry, the sweeping statements) have their final appearance in this sizeable volume. Maybe this was just one Bloom book too many from this masterful literary critic.

[Lloyd Fassett]

2/14/21 Found it through the Fall 2020 Phi Beta Kappa Key Reporter. It was listed as books published by Phi Beta Kappa members. Harold Bloom was one from Cornell.

It sounds like a great anthology and includes Yeats, which I've been wanting to check out.

[General Kutuzov · Rating 3 out of 5]

The digressions are occasionally enlightening, but more often irritating. Ethnonarcissism is a major problem as well. Bloom's final agon is with Christianity--- a philosophy he pays to which he pays the ultimate compliment-his relentless attention.

[Barry Medwid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just before he died Harold Bloom completed this ode to poetry. It’s a sprawling somewhat scattered lament for the poetry he loved, taught and which we are losing. From Homer to Hart Crane ( who he drank long and deeply from since childhood) Bloom amazes with an incredible breadth of knowledge.
The book also reads as a lament for wisdom (where do we hear that word in today’s world of TicToc and Trump?). The wisdom of friends he has lost and poets no longer read. Bloom would describe me as a common reader. On a good day I understand half of what I was reading. Other days less. This is deep stuff. Yet I continue to read Bloom for his insights and what he makes possible for me to understand. Skimming over much poetry (sorry Harold) in the middle of the book the first and last chapters were my favourite. They are the most general. The chapters with writers I am most familiar with (Nietzsche, Emerson, Shakespeare) were a close second. Tremendous insights and an ability to make the reader understand complex poems and their writers. I miss Harold Bloom. He did for his readers what poetry did for him. He made their lives richer

[Sharon]

Sometimes I need to read a book that is too smart for me. This definitely fits the bill.

[Alan Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Typical Bloom, always interesting, always cocky about his often bad memory.

[Spencer · Rating 3 out of 5]

smart but overly loquacious and obscure. hard to follow honestly. quit at 30% and wish i had quit sooner.

[African Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

"If you are still sane, this is certainly unacceptable."

Kierkegaard once remarked that the only appropriate response to the world's capricious cruelty is defiant laughter. Perhaps by this he meant the laughter which is now a staple of the Joker? That is, laughter exhibiting resigned madness?

I am reminded of Jung's sublime quip: "[s]how me a sane man and I will cure him for you."

I confess I view the late Professor Bloom as sane, but his words contradict my unfounded belief. What of the book? It, too, must be crazy; but like Shakespeare I must note that "[t]hough this be madness… there is method in't."

"The Talmud warns against so reading Tanakh that we find ourselves reflected in it."

By this I believe Bloom meant Jewish tradition warned against imposing one's views onto the sacred texts. As I read Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles, I tried to avoid doing the same. Yet, this proved troublesome, as he here observed that

Originality doubtless must expect misunderstanding.

There can, therefore, be little doubt that I misunderstood some of the points the great Professor made here.

The Bard

Bloom worshipped Shakespeare more than many worship their creators. Whether that idolatry, or "bardolatry" as he termed it, is acceptable is something beyond the scope of this review. For Bloom, Shakespeare invented the Human. Obviously, this does not mean that he literally made made us ex nihilo. Instead, it refers to the fact that "...many of the emotions we feel were first Shakespeare's thoughts."

"[W]e are inside Shakespeare even as Jonah was within the large fish that swallowed him. We cannot achieve a perspective on Shakespeare that he has not taught us. He is always ahead, and we labor in his wake."

Any additions made here would detract from the profundity of this quote. Let us, therefore conclude:

"I am delighted when William Tyndale gives us: "And the LORde was with Ioseph and he was a luckie felowe...""

I too am blessed. But my blessing is not a throne. It is Professor Harold Bloom.