I am prohibited from working by the Spanish Ministry of Immigration, and so spend the whole day watching videos of Harold Bloom, filling myself up on all the cured ham I can manage, and slowly coming to resemble the esteemed American critic. What strikes one most immediately about Bloom is that he is an excellent consumer — not only of books of poetry, but of millefeuilles and profiteroles, too. It is a wonder to see him imperfectly describe the sensual effect that the poetry of, say, Whitman has upon him. He leaves enough ambiguity to make one think that there is an intense pleasure locked away in the verse, just out of our intellectual reach, though perfectly available to him. It puts one in mind of when, as a young boy, my grandfather would lock me in the garden and force me to watch him eat all the biscuits through the bay window.
Discussion about this post
No posts