April 12, 1975

A Map of Misreadingby Harold Bloom(Oxford University Press; $8.95)

This is an exceptionally subtle andcomplex work which, it seems to me, isdoing several things at once. Whatever 1pick as a quotation to start from seemsto give a wrong impression of the book'stenor. But on the author's own authori-ty, I'll try this:

Let me reduce my argument to thehopelessly simplistic; poems, I am saying,are neither about "subjects" nor about"themselves." They are necessarily aboutother poems; a poem is a response to apoem, as a poet is a response to a poet, or aperson to his parent. Trying to write apoem takes the poet back to the origins ofwhat a poem first was for him, and sotakes the poet back beyond the pleasureprinciple to the decisive initial encounterand response that began him.. . . Only apoet challenges a poet as poet, and soonly a poet makes a poet. To the poet-in-a-poet a poem is always the other man, theprecursor, and so a poem is always aperson, always the father of one's SecondBirth. To live, the poet must misinter-pret, the father, by the crucial act ofmisprision, which is the re-writing of thefather.

Primarily, it seems to me, the stress isupon the relation between the poet'spoetic "precursor" and the poet as an"ephebe" who resents being "belated"with reference to his origins. But just asthe dead precursor lives on in him, so hispoems in turn are "refusals of mortality.Every poem therefore has two makers:the precursor, and the ephebe's rejectedmortality."

Bloom plays down a concern with thekinds of "anxiety" deriving from the factthat, in many cases, the poet's choice ofvocation involves a quite painful andconscious break with his actual parentswho, at the very least, were grieved byhis alternative lineage. However thisturn is considered near the end of thebook in the case of Whitman's "SeaDrift," which amounts to a reconcilia-tion with his deceased father (in a poemthat reflected anxiety over the threat-ened loss of the "inspiration" character-

istic of the poetic posturing in, say, the"Song of Myself"). And the problems todo with poetic breakaway trends ingeneral are not given the constantattention that, it seems to me, anyradical rejection of one's parental judg-ments requires.

Just how such problems of "ancestry"relate to the forbears of critics is not anissue in this book. It seems to me thatsuch things are left dangling by this kindof summarizing sentence: "As literaryhistory lengthens, all poetry necessarilybecomes verse-criticism, just as allcriticism becomes prose-poetry"whereat we dare assume that, on manyoccasions. Bloom would like his criticismto be viewed thus, and rightly so.

Another line enters from the peda-gogic angle:

All literary tradition has been necessarilyelitist, in every period, if only because theScene of Instruction always depends upona primal choosing and a being chosen,which is what "lite" means. . . . Noteacher, however impartial he or sheattempts to be, can avoid choosing amongstudents, or being chosen by them, for thisis the very nature of teaching. Literaryteaching is precisely like literature itself;no strong writer can choose his precursorsuntil first he is chosen by them, and nostrong student can fail to be chosen by histeachers. . . . What is the particularinescapability of literary tradition for theteacher who must go out to find himself asa voice in the wilderness? Is he to teachParadise Lost in preference to the ImamuAmiri Baraka?

Bloom turns up with an ingenious bitof diplomacy here when he proposes tofeature Milton's Satan as "representa-tive of the entire canon when hechallenges us to challenge Heaven withhim." But how about the precursors ofteachers? When, for instance, we thinkof Matthew Arnold's deference to hisown distinguished academic father,what of its relation to Sohrab andRustum, where father and son engage incombat unaware ("unconscious"?) oftheir identity, and the father slays theson? In brief I'd like to read more aboutthe ways in which the poetic genealogy of"influence" relates to the motives ofactual biological genealogy. For the mostpart, it seems to me. Bloom' keeps thetwo lines too distinct.

In particular 1 am puzzled about hiscomments on Browning's grotesque 'fantasy, "Childe Roland to the DarkTower Came." Let me quote a fewbrilliantly impressionistic descriptions

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(there are many more of the same sort):"his perverse and negative stance . . . aturning against the self . . . a quest forfailure is a synecdoche for suicide . . . its'realism' a pure self-imposition . . . aninward impulse [suicidal self-punishment] . . . yielding to instinctualdemands that his ego-ideal finds objec-tionable . . . we feel, as readers, thatdeath must be at hand . . . to accept hisplace in the company of the ruined . . .sacrificed, not to the energies of art, butto the near-solipsist's tragic victory overhimself . . . Childe Roland dies, if hedies" (a reference particularly worthconsidering in the light of the traditionalassociation between death and sexualorgasm).

Add now such considerations as these:Bloom has already quoted Freud'snotion that writing, "which consists inallowing a fluid to flow out upon a pieceof white paper," has "acquired the sym-bolic meaning of coitus," hence "is asthough forbidden sexual behavior werethereby being indulged in." But weshould recall that usually in our tradi-tion the conscience-stricken poetic"ephebe" (an adolescent just beforemanhood) such as Browning was,chooses his calling as a writer prior tothe conveniences of coitus, though anindependent form of indulgence wasavailable. Add also the thought that,going Freud one better (or one worse)there is the proverbial expression, "As Itake pen in hand." And recall Bloom'sown assurance that "The poet-in-a-poetcannot marry, whatever the person-in-a-poet chooses to have done." In the lightof all that, go back and read the previousparagraphand surely Bloom was pro-viding all we needed for the suggestionthat this wayward poem by a maturemonologue-artist is a fantasy of onan-ism (for Bloom also stresses the fact thatpoets are forever going back to theirorigins, and most such vocations origi-nate during the lonesome passionateseverities of adolescence).

Of course 1 could quote many similarlines from the poem itself, includingabove all the stanza in which the poeteven signs his name, as the "Childe"nears the squat "brown" turret wherehe "came," as announced in what Bloomcalls "Roland's final act of blowing hisslughorn." But I would not agree tointerpret the Childe's ruined "Band" as"precursors" in Bloom's sense. They,along with the "ominous tract" (that willstand for what Bloom brilliantly calls theChilde's "ordeal, his trial by landscape")and the many incidental gnarled figures,are all tautologies, embodying the

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rhetorical principle of amplification,various repetitions of the same sinistertheme that is, in sum, a highly drama-tized exaggeration (or '[hyperbole," touse a term that Bloom does exceptional-ly well by) for this temporary fanciful"return" to the exacting conditionsunder which his "poetic ancestry" tookform. Here is another notable respect inwhich the motivations of the poeticbreakaway are not dealt with through-out; yet one can't deny that they arethere.

Two other major fields should still beconsidered. Having glancingly notedthat Vico and I stress the four "majortropes" (metaphor, metonymy, synec-doche and irony). Bloom adds hyperboleand metalepsis (or transumption). Andhe does wonders by them all. I startedthis review on that theme. But Iabandoned that start because it involvesissues too specifically literary for ageneral approach to the book. As Iunderstand Bloom's added emphasis,atop the stylistic exaggeration (hyper-bole) of the "Childe's" temporary imagi-nary return to guilt-laden origins (ess-entially experienced as a relationship tohis actual parents as vs. his new poeticunnaturalization), I'd take it that meta-lepsis, or transumption, would involveconsiderations of this sort.

The Phaedrus takes us from seed in thesense of sheer sperm to the heights ofthe Socratic erotic, as transcendentlyembodied in the idea of doctrinal insemi-nation. And similarly, via hyperbole andmetalepsis, we'd advance from anephebe's sheer physical release to apoetically ejaculatory analogue, implicitin the imagery of Childe Roland's horn-blow.

There is at least one more majorstrand that should be mentioned in areview (the "news") of this exceptionallyand admirably subtle and complex work.Whereas, in my Rhetoric of Religion, forthe start of things I had been content toborrow secular "logological" analogiesfrom the opening chapters of Genesis,Bloom prefers a "logocentric" version byIsaac Luria, "a sixteenth-century masterof theosophical speculation," who "for-mulated a repressive theory . . . in arevision of the earlier Kabbalistic ema-nation theory." In any case we coincideto the extent that his "Lurianic story"contains "a vision of creation-as-catastrophe," and mine builds aroundthe orthodox biblical account thatintegrally connects the "Creation" withthe "Fall." Maybe we could settle for thisquotation from Coleridge's Table Talk;"A Fall of some sort or otherthe

creation, as it were, of the non-absoluteis the fundamental postulateof the moral history of man."

Bloom announces that he intends todo more with Luria's visionary ways. Iam sure that the job of following himwill be well worth the effort of anyreader who, along with both poetry andpoetics, also loves criticism in general forits own sake.

Kenneth BurkeKenneth Burke, distinguished Americancritic, is author of Philosophy of LiteraryForm, A Grammar of Motives, TheRhetoric of Religion (University of Cali-fornia Press), a novel, short stories andpoetry.

Watchmen in the Nightby Theodore C. Sorensen(MIT Press; $8.95)

"Wa'tergate is like a Rorschach," AaronWildavsky observed at a Washingtonseminar last year. "If you want to knowwhat anyone thinks is wrong with thecountry, ask him what Watergate has toteach us."

Theodore Sorensen bears out thatthesis: it was not that Richard Nixonwas too strong a President that led to theWatergate abuses, argues John Kenne-dy's White House special counsel; on thecontrary it was that he was too weak, i.e.,"he was not in the mold of Jefferson,Jackson, Lincoln, the two Roosevelts,and others."

That he was not. Nor was he in themold of Millard Fillmore and CalvinCoolidge. But Sorensen has a point tomake, and he does it in the way BenSonnenberg once described the art ofsuccessful public relations: "First, throwyour dart. Next, draw a circle around it.That was the target."

Sorensen is not without strategicpurpose in this treatise, the outgrowthof lectures given last fall at MIT. Hecame to political maturity in the schoolthat holds that there has never beenanything wrong with the country that agood strong President couldn't set right.The accession of a not-so-good'President- but one nevertheless cap-

The New Republicable of using the sinews of his powerfuloffice for ends inimical to the democraticprocesshas clearly confronted theauthor and other members of the schoolfor strong presidencies with a doctrinaldilemma.

Sorensen acknowledges that problem,at a personal level, in his preface:

/ helped write John Kennedy's speecheson a strong Presidency and helped himforge the legal tools of a strongerPresidency in the mistaken belief thatwhat was good for the Presidency wouldinevitably be good for the country.

The style is reminiscent: New Fron-tier, playing off the simplism of EngineCharlie Wilson. Or, again: "Nixon keptsaying that the charges against himraised fundamental questions about ourwhole concept of the Presidency; and inmy heart I know he's right." This isvintage Sorensen, of the turning phrase,familiar to all who recall his contributionto those dazzling exercises in presiden-tial persuasion of the early 1960s.

Central to this exercise is Sorensen'slaundry list of suggested institutionalreforms to make the presidency more"accountable" without diminishing itspower. He believes Congress must showmore "guts" in carrying out its constitu-tional role; that the press must remainvigilant (his defense of leaks-in-government is the liveliest section of thebook); and that the judiciary must assertitself more vigorously as a check againstexecutive authority.

Yet, too often, the author's stylisticwhorls and semantic inversions posedproblems for this reviewernot unlikethose I sometimes encountered onreexamining the presidential speecheshe helped craft, after their initial dazzlehad faded.

"No doubt," Sorensen confesses atone point, "my view of the NixonPresidency is distorted by bias." He doesadmit he was "mistaken" in his simplisticfaith regarding the absolute virtue ofpresidential power. Given that freshinsight, a pre-Nixon White House aideof his ability and experience mightprovide instruction far more valuablethan anything a Dean or Magrudercould impart at this advanced stage ofthe public's post-Watergate education.

The Nixon presidency has been anat-omized as has no presidency gonebefore. But if we know the Nixon WhiteHouse better than any other, what of itspredecessors? If a lawyer (as distin-guished from a journalist like GeorgeReedy) of Sorensen's unique back-