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PARTISAN REVIEW
Hebrew Kabbalists; to one of the rhetorical tropes such as synecdoche,
h yperbol e, metaphor; and to a recurrent typ e of poetic imagery. These
amalgama ted transformers are not onl y versatil e enough to establish
each of Bloom 's new readings, but also antitheti cal enou gh to convert
any possible counter- evidence into a confirma ti on o f hi s own reading.
T ake, for exampl e, the Freudi an mech ani sms of defense-which
Bloom calls " the clearest analogu es I have found for the revisionary
rati os" - as he applies them to interpret any poem as a di storted version
of a precursor-poem.
If
the bela ted poem pa tentl y echoes the parent–
poem, that counts as evidence for the new reading; althou gh, Bloom
asserts, "onl y weak poems, or the weaker elements in strong poems,
immedia tely echo precursor poems, or the weaker elements in strong
poems, immedi atel y echo precursor poems, or directl y allude to them."
If
the la ter poem doesn 't contain such " verbal reminders," that counts
too, on the basis of the mechani sm of repression-the bela ted poet's
anxi ety o f influence h as been strong enough to repress all reference
to
his predecessor. And if the bela ted poem differs radically from its
p roposed precursor, tha t counts even more decisive ly, on the basis of
the mechani sm of " reacti on-forma ti on " -the poet's anxi ety was so
intense as to di stort the precursor into its seeming opposite. T his
power o f the n ega tive
to
turn itself into a stronger positive manifests
itself frequentl y in Bloom's applied criti cism. For exampl e, the open–
ing verse paragraph of T ennyson 's
Tithonus
has traditi onall y been
read as expressing the aged but immortal protagoni st's longing for
death . Bloom, however, reads it antitheti call y as a revision , or
swerve away from the naturalistic affirmations of Wordsworth and of
Keats. Wh at is absent in these op ening lines is simply all of nature;
what is present is the withered Tithonus. As T enn yson 's reacti on–
formation against hi s precursors' stance, these lines a re a rhetori cal
iron y, den ying wh at they desire, the divin ation of a poetic survival
into strength.
Perhaps so; but it will be noted tha t the reaction-transformer charters
the antitheti c criti c to speak without fear of contraditi on, while
stranding his Questioner in a no-win position.
Bl oom's theory, like tha t of o ther Newreaders, is self-referential,
for he does not exempt hi s own interpreta tions from the asserti on that
all readings are mi sreadings. In his recent books on Yeats and Stevens,
he often writes brilliant critiques tha t compel assent from a " primary"
criti c like myself. T he extent of Bloom 's own cla im for these readings,
however, is that they are strong mi sreadings, in tha t they do vio lence to
the texts they address, by virtue of his surrender to hi s need for
