CHAPTER l l
Before Theory: Romantic Roamings
When Harold Bloom entered the arena of l i terary
cri t icism in the late 1950's, readers immediately
recognized that they were confronting "one of the most
challenging and audacious theoretical voices of the past
several decades" (Fite, Preface xi). The term "theoretical"
here is to be understood in the sense of "cri t ical" because
at a t ime when the profession of l i terary cri t icism was
recording tremendous progress by featuring cri t icism
writ ten about cri t icism, Bloom had the intel lectual
audacity to make a strong plea to return to the poem
itself , to the world of l i terature. And for Bloom, the world
of l i terature is the world of romantic poetry. He opened
his account in l i terary crit icism with his book-length study
of Shelley's poetry anc ever afterwards, he has faithful ly
held on to the one subiect of interest to him - the inf inite
possibi l i t ies of the romantic imagination.
The f i rst book to be published by Bloom was
Shelley's Mythmaking in 1959. Along with an introductory
chapter on the mythopoeic mode based on Mart in Buber's
dist inct ion between 'I-'Thou' and ' I - I t ' words, i t contains
detai led analysis of Shelley's mythmaking in his important
poems l ike "1816 Hymns," Prometheus Unbound, "Ode to
the West Wind," "The Sensitive Plant," "The Witch of
Atlas," "Epipsychidion" and "The Triumph of Life."
I t i s said that forthcoming events cast their shadows
beforehand. This is true of Shelley's Mythmaking,
because i t is an indication of what is to be expected from
Bloom. The book undertakes a very minute and detailed
interpretation of Shelley's poems in the New Crit ical
mode. At the same time the dif ference in approach - at
least the desire to be different - is quite evident from the
very f irst l ine of the introduction. Instead of introducing
the subject o f study in the conventional mode Bloom goes
on elaborating Buber's dist inct ion between the two
primary words, / -Thou and /-It. Later in the book, he
states beyond doubt that the purpose of the book is to
demonstrate that Shelley is a passionately rel igious poet,
"who formulates his religion by the actual writ ing of his
poems, the making of his myths, and further to
demonstrate the nature of those myths, by a close
reading of the actual f ~gu res in which they are embodied
in the poems" (67).
In the introductory chapter, Bloom explains three
kinds of mythopoeic poetry, based on Buber's dist inct ion
between ' I-Thou' and ' I - I t . ' In the f irst, the poet uses a
given mythology, but extends i ts range of signif icance
without violat ing i t in spirit. Shelley's "Hymn of Apollo"
and "Hymn of Pan" are good examples. The second kind
of myth poetry i s rather primit ive because i t embodies the
direct perception of a "Thou" in natural objects or
phenomena. The poet enters into a relat ionship with a
natural "Thou" and the relationship i tsel f consti tutes the
myth. In the third kind, which is more complex, the poet
creates his own myth instead of adhering to tradit ional ly
formulated myths. Shelley's major poems, according to
Bloom, manifest this third kind of mythopoeia.
Before beginning the analysis of Shelley's "1816
Hymns," Bloom closely analyses Coleridge's "Hymn
Before Sunrise" and Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey Lines."
This is to indicate how Shelley's poems show a clear
aff inity to these poems "Mont Blanc," "Hymn to
Intel lectual Beauty" ancl "Zucca" are analyzed in detail.
Bloom i l lustrates how Shelley's poems are related to one
another and also to the poems of other romantic poets
l ike Coleridge and Wordsworth.
In the introductiol i to the study of Prometheus
Unbound, Bloom begins with an analysis of the epigraph
to give i t a meaning which no other editor or scholar
seems to have noticed. The inf luence of Blake and Milton
in Prometheus Unbound is carefully traced and
establ ished. Bloom also refers to the other
representations of Prometheus in world l i terature.
A pretty long study of the "Ode to the West Wind"
fol lows. Bloom points out that the subject o f the poem is
the nature and function of the prophet. Blake and Shelley
are poets of the class of Ezekiel. According to Bloom, an
earl ier poem which most resembles the Ode is "The Song
of Deborah" that celebrates courage and fai th as prime
virtues of a people. He calls to his help Buber's
interpretation of the earl ier poem to show that Shelley's
Ode is a myth-making poem. Poets before Shelley l ike
Lucretius, Virgi l , Horace and Milton have addressed their
praises to the wind, which is favourable to l i fe. But no
one has invoked, l ike Shelley, the West Wind, which is a
destroyer and not a creator. While interpreting the poem,
Bloom quotes almost al l the important scholars before him
who have tr ied to do so. Finally he brings everything
round to Buber's 'I- tho^^' relationship, thus making his
approach dif ferent from that of al l h is predecessors.
I n the detai led analysis of Prometheus Unbound,
Bloom draws al l kinds of paral lels and analogues from
other writers and considers various possibi l i t ies of mutual
inf luences and aff init ies. He does not forget to make a
tongue-in-the-cheek remark about readers who are
interested in reading cri t ical material on the poems
without reading the poems themselves: "[. . . ] our peculiar
l i terary vice is to have forgotten how to read a long poem,
though we are a l l of us adept at reading and judging
essays and even books devoted to the examination of
long poems we ourselves in fact have not read, or are not
able to read" (1 10).
Bloom describes "The Sensit ive Plant" as "a
prelude to a greater visionary poem by Shelley, 'The
Witch of Atlas"'(148). l i e cannot discuss a poem in
isolat ion, but has to relate i t to other poems by the same
author or to poems by other poets. This method reminds
us of T.S.Eliot 's view of tradit ion in his legendary essay
"Tradit ion and the Individual Talent." Spenser is the
ancestor of Shelley as far as "The Sensit ive Plant" is
concerned. Hence Spenser's poem "Muiopotmos" is
discussed f irst. Blake's "The Book of Thel" is also
discussed as a potential precursor of Shelley's poem.
Bloom registers his protest against T.S.Eliot who
had dismissed "The Witch of Atlas" as a " t r i f le." In his
opinion, "The Witch of Atlas" rates as one of Shelley's
best long poems and the supreme example of myth-
making poetry in English. I t is the culmination of the
Spenserian tradit ion and itself in turn is the ancestor of
many f ine poems of Yeats.
Bloom admits that biographical facts and sources
are necessary for a complete approach to poems l ike
"Epipsychidion." His approach to such poems is
incomplete because he has focused only on the
mythopoeic aspect of the poems. Dante is the chief
inf luence on "Epipsychidion," but he is more useful as a
contrast. I n this poem the confrontation of a ' thou' in one
human being by the ' I ' in another is set for th as the
theme.
Bloom is of the view that the fragment "Triumph of
Life" has been misread by a l l the commentators who have
writ ten on i t . But they made valuable contr ibutions
regarding the sources of the poem and interpretation of
di f f icul t passages. The influences of Dante and Spenser
are important in the reading of the poem. Various
passages are examined by Bloom against the background
of explanations given by scholars before him.
Bloom who is a romantic cri t ic to the core, published
his second book The Visionary Company in 1961. I t is a
study of the six major English Romantic poets. The
introductory chapter 'Prometheus Rising ..." discusses the
social, pol i t ical and economic background of English
Romantic poetry. Bloom observes that one of the major
English contr ibutions to world l i terature was the start l ing
phenomenon of six major poets appearing in just two
generations. The Romantic age saw the end of the old
pastoral England and the beginning of a new industr ial
nation. Power passed from the aristocracy and upper
middle class to a new class including industr ia l
employers. In addit ion to the peasantry and city artisans,
the common people of England now included the huge
class of tormented industr ial workers. This emerging
class was greatly influenced by the American Revolution
and the French Revolution in the last quarter o f the
eighteenth century.
England, which was already shaken by continental
wars and economic anarchy, was beginning to experience
social unrest. The ruling class responded to this by
imposing an effective repression. There was considerable
protest against this but England lacked the means and
leadership to effectively organize this protest . The great
writers of the period reacted to this stagnant situation by
an internal movement, that created a new kind of poetry,
which we now cal l romantic poetry.
The term "Romantic" was used by later Victorian
l i terary historians to describe the l i terary period that was
contemporary with the French Revolution and the
Napoleonic wars. But now the word is used to mean not
only that period, says Bloom, but to refer to "a kind of art
that is t imeless and recurrent as well , usually viewed as
being in some kind of opposition to an art cal led classical
or neo-classical" (xvi). The six major poets of the period
shared the spir i t of the age - the optimist ic bel ief that "a
renovated universe was possible - that l i fe could never
again be what i t had been" (xvi).
Bloom observes that the religious background of the
Romantic poets was in the tradit ion of Protestant dissent,
"the kind of non-conformist vision that descended from
the le f t wing of Englanci's Pur i tan movement" (xvi i) . I t was
a displaced Protestantism astonishingly t ransformed by
di f ferent k inds o f humanism or natural ism. This rel igious
t rend adequately explains the attack on Romant ic poetry
by T.S.El iot and his fol lowers. The New Cri t ics too
deprecated the Romantic poets because they broke away
from Christ iani ty and attempted to formulate personal
re l ig ions in their poetry. Bloom traces the beginning of
th is Protestant grouping back to Spenser and Mil ton from
where i t passes through the major Romant ic and Victorian
poets, reaching up to Hardy and Lawrence in the
twent ieth century. The poets brought in to favour by El iot
and the New Cri t ics - Donne, Herbert, Dryden, Pope,
Hopkins and El iot himself - were Cathol ics or High
Church Angl icans. Bloom maintains that there are two
main t radi t ions of Engl ish Poetry and "what dist inguishes
them are not only aesthetic considerat ions but conscious
di f ferences in rel igion and pol i t ics" (xvi i) . One is the
Protestant, Radical , Mil tonic-Romantic l ine, which
according to Bloom is the central l ine. The other is
Cathol ic, conservative and Classical .
The Restorat ion and Augustan poets t reated man
"as a dist inct ly l imi ted being, set in a context of reason,
nature and society that ordered his horizons and denied
any possibi l i ty of a radical alteration in h is mundane
hopes" (xxi). Hence they were haunted by the fear of
psychic energy and the conviction that death in l i fe
awaited any poet who indulged his imagination. Romantic
poetry on the other hand is distinguished by apocalyptic
longings to be achieved through and in imagination.
According to Bloom, the centre of Romantic poetic theory
is "the astonishingly fecund and bewilderingly varied
concept of imagination" (xxii).
Romantic self-exaltation has been viewed as mere
megalomania by many modern cri t ics l ike I rv ing Babbitt,
T.E.Hulme, T.S.Eliot and the academic New Crit ics. But
for Bloom, i t i s a metaphysic, "a vision, a way of seeing
and of l iving a more human l i fe" (xxi i i - xxiv). The hope of
the Romantic poets was that poetry, "by expressing the
whole man, could either l iberate him from his fal len
condit ion or, more compellingly, make him see that
condit ion as unnecessary, as an unimaginative f ict ion that
an awakened spir i t could slough off" (xxiv). Based on this
vision, Bloom proceeds to perform a reading of the six
great poets who, though so dif ferent in their reactions to
the theme of imaginatjon, had in common, a quali ty of
passion and largeness in speech and in response to l ife.
Al l of them knew that the theory of poetry is the theory of
l i fe.
After the il luminating introduction, Bloom examines
the poetry of the six major Romantic poets in six
chapters. A l l the important poems are subjected to
detai led analysis. A brief chapter 7 is devoted to the
poetry of Beddoes, Clare, Darley and others.
In a brief epilogue Bloom observes that no mode of
cri t icism has dehumanized poetry more than
structuralism. But Romantic poetry, which has survived
several varieties of reduction, wil l survive the
structural ists against whom it offers a f ierce counter
crit ique. English poets were and are romantic, as poets
used to be Christians whether they wanted to be or not.
We today cannot read Romantic poetry as i t was meant to
be read. Too many shadows have fal len between the
Romantics and ourselves. The freedom to know appears
to have been lost. The sorrows of poetic inf luence blight
readers and cri t ics even as they aff l ict poets. Our
readings are swerving into language.
Yeats, published in 1970, i s a book-length study of
the twentieth century Romantic poet who comes at this
end of the l ine of visionary poets. Bloom describes this
book as "a prolegomenon to a larger study of poetic
inf luence, in addition to being a cri t ical reading of Yeats
[. . . I " (vi i) . Yeats's ancestors in the l ine of vision are
Blake and Shelley and his achievements are judged
against theirs. According to Bloom, Yeats, Hardy and
Wallace Stevens are tne twentieth century English poets
who merit comparison with the major poets of the
nineteenth century. His dislike for poets l ike T.S.Eliot and
Auden is quite evident when he predicts that they may
prove to be the Cowley and Cleveland of this age.
The introductory chapter of Yeats gives a clear
indication of the theory of poetic inf luence in the making.
Though his theory differs considerably from that of
Borges, Bloom admits that he has accepted Borges's idea
of the poet 's creation of a precursor as his start ing point.
He brief ly explains his idea of poetic inf luence and
introduces some of the terms used in his later books on
theory.
Bloom is so much preoccupied with his own theory
of poet ic inf luence that he cannot treat any poet in
isolat ion. In the book on Yeats also he begins by
comparing various approaches to Yeats's poetry and the
inf luence of precursors l ike Pater, Blake and Shelley. In
the preface he admits that a ful l discussion of Yeats's
work does not commence unti l part way through chapter
6. In the remaining 19 chapters, a thorough study of
Yeats's poems and the various inf luences on them is
carried out in a str ict chronological order.
Yet another study of Romantic poetry, The Ringers
in the Tower, came out in 1971. I t is a col lect ion of
essays, which had already appeared in other places. In
the Preface Bloom states that the major subject o f the
essays is poet ic influence conceived as an anxiety
principle or a variety of melancholy, part icularly in regard
to the relat ions between poets in the Romantic tradit ion.
He also suggests that i f the poets are to survive the
anxiet ies of inf luence, they must learn to master and unify
themes l ike the Promethean quest and i ts fai lure, the
estrangement of landscape from the imaginative quester
and so on. Out of the total o f twenty-one essays, only
three are devoted to prose works and that too because
these prose works - Frankenstein, Ruskin's cri t icism and
Marius the Epicurean - are closely connected to prevalent
themes in poetry.
According to Bloom, The Odyssey is the
fundamental quest romance and the f irst romantic poem.
Romance is a journey toward home or toward a supreme
tr ia l after which home is possible. We are given a quester
and his quest, antagonists and temptations, a presiding
goal. Even when the goal is delusive, the journey is more
valuable than the destination so that there is no sense of
loss. Romanticism fused romance and prophecy.
In Bloom's opinion, Romantic poetry has been saved
from the worst dif f icult ies "by i ts sense of i ts own
tradit ion, by the l iberating burden of poetic inf luence"
(10). Though Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton together
formed a colossal covering cherub and prevented the
romantics from certain achievements, they at the same
time compelled them to invent continuously. Invention is
the posit ive mode of divination, which is the essence of
poetic power.
I n the chapter on "The Visionary Cinema of
Romantic Poetry," Bloom discusses the abundance of
visual detai l in Romantic poetry, especial ly in the poems
of Blake, Shelley and Wordsworth. A l l o f them tend to
make the visible a l i t t le hard to see. After reading the
beaut i fu l passage from Shelley's "Epipsychidion" in which
Shelley describes Emilna Viviani, we fee l dissatisf ied with
"the ways we ordinarily describe a woman's beauty - and
even more, with the grossness of the motion picture
camera or i ts manipulator [ . . .I" (51) .
A whole chapter is devoted to the discussion of the
dialectic o f the "Marriage of Heaven and Hell." According
to Bloom, i t is fu l l o f irony and i t is very di f f icul t to mark
the l imits of this irony. In another chapter Bloom
discusses in detai l Blake's Jerusalem, which according to
him has taken Ezekiel's Book as the model for i ts
structure. Blake's central image of the Merkabah or the
Divine Chariot and the lmages of the Four Zoas are taken
from Ezekiel. Bloom remarks that Ezekiel is to Jerusalem
as Homer is to Aeneid. In the brief sixth chapter, Bloom
examines the romantic treatment of Napoleon and comes
to the conclusion that i t was Shelley who wrote the proper
Romantic dirge for the great hero.
In the chapter which Bloom cal ls an "Introduction to
Shelley," he admits that after many years of reading
Shelley's poems, he finds nothing in them that needs
apology. "Shelley is a unique poet, one of the most
or ig inal in the language, and he is in many ways the poet
proper, as much so as any in the language" (87). Those
who try to bel i t t le the great poet are "churchwardenly
crit ics." Before concluding the essay, Bloom identi f ies six
major variet ies of anti-Shelleyans, namely: 1. The school
of common sense, 2 . The Christian orthodox school, 3.
The school o f wit, 4. The Moralists, 5. The school of
classic form and 6. The precisionists or concretists.
The book also contains a brief discussion of Mary
Shelley's novel Frankenstein. Bloom feels that the
importance of the novel i s that i t contains one of the most
vivid versions we have of the romantic mythology of the
self. According to him the major inf luences that haunt the
novel are the novels of Will iam Godwin and "The Ancient
Mariner" o f Coleridge.
The essay on "Keats and the Embarrassments of
Poetic Tradit ion" begins with the quotation from W.J.Bate
on the paralyzing embarrassment that a r ich tradit ion can
impose on an aspiring young poet. Indirectly hint ing at
the impending theory oi the anxiety of inf luence, he
remarks: "Somewhere in the heart of each new poet there
is hidden the dark wish that the l ibraries be burned in
some new Alexandrian conflagration, that the imagination
might be l iberated from the greatness and oppressive
power of i ts own dead champions" (131). Keats had the
gi f t of absolute originality, which according to Bloom, was
given by a clarity in his knowledge of the uniqueness and
f inal i ty of human l i fe and death.
In "Tennyson and the Romantic Tradit ion," Bloom
declares that Tennyson was the legit imate heir of Keats.
He is the most extreme instance of imagination going one
way and the wi l l going quite another. His poetry is many-
sided. A considerable portion of the essay is ut i l ized for
discussing Tennyson's poetry in relat ion to the romantic
poets.
I t seems that Bloom is especially fascinated by
Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" of
which he has written or1 different occasions. Chapter 11
of Ringers in the Tower is a detailed discussion of this
poem. He claims that the truest precursor of Childe
Roland is Shelley. Bloom points out that the dominant
mood of Childe Roland is the anxiety of influence, "in that
variety of poetic melancholy that issues from the terrible
strength of post-Enlightenment l iterary tradit ion" (166).
The excellence of the poem is the clinamen or the swerve
i t makes away from i ts precursors, f rom Shelley in
part icular.
There is a somewhat lengthy analysis of Ruskin's
l i terary cri t icism in this work. Bloom points out that
Wordsworth's "Immortality Ode" had exerted a haunting
inf luence on Ruskin. We get a good biography of the
great cr i t ic and after that an evaluative analysis of his
l i terary cri t icism. Ruskin's achievement can be classif ied
into three major areas: art, social cr i t icism and literary
cri t icism. The inf luences behind his work are Wordsworth
and Shelley. His ideas and att i tudes are examined from
various angles.
Bloom says that Walter Pater's place in the
Romantic t radi t ion was a consciously chosen one. Pater
is also one of the central f igures in the continuity
between Romanticism, Modernism and the emergent
sensibi l i ty replacing modernism at the t ime. Bloom
observes that l ike Eliot, Pater too was a cri t ic, a creator
and a moral ist at the same time. The essay provides a
detai led interpretation of Marius the Epicurean.
In the chapter on Lawrence, El iot, Blackmur and the
Tortoise, Bloom finds fault with Blackmur for placing
Lawrence much below Pound and El iot and for defending
Eliot as a dogmatic cri t ic and poet. I n h is opinion,
Lawrence is the romantic heir o f Coleridge and Blake.
The chapter "Poetic Misprision: Three Cases" gives
us Bloom's definit ion 0.f poetic inf luence and revisionism.
Stating that Auden is one of the modern sufferers from
the malady of poetic influence, he goes on to explain:
Poetic inf luence, in this sense, has l i t t le to do
with the transmission of ideas and images from
an earl ier poet to a later one. Rather, i t
concerns the poet's sense of h is precursors,
and of his own achievement i n relat ion to
theirs. Have they le f t him room enough, or has
their priori ty cost him his art? More crucially,
where did they go wrong, so as to make it
possible for him to go r ight? In this revisionary
sense, in which the poet creates his own
precursors by necessarily misinterpreting
them, poetic Influence forms and malforms new
poets, and aids their art at the cost of
increasing f inal ly, their already acute sense of
isolat ion. (209)
'The Central Man: Emerson, Whitman and Wallace
Stevens" is an essay which tr ies to drive home Bloom's
belief that, as Emersorr had claimed, the poet is the true
man at the centre of men. Whitman later found the true
centre appearing in himself. Wallace Stevens who is heir
to both Emerson and Whitman, is "the ironical ly yet
passionately balanced fulf i l lment of the American
Romantic tradit ion in poetry" (218). There is a powerful
and direct inf luence of Emerson upon Whitman and a
subtler, less direct effect of Whitman on Stevens. But
poetic inf luence is as yet "a process about which a l l too
l i t t le is presently known anyway" (219).
In "A Commentary on Notes toward a Supreme
Fict ion" Bloom asserts that Stevens had the radiant
fortune to have his most ambitious poem as his best. He
takes the poem section by section and analyses the whole
poem qui te minutely. Chapter 18 is a comprehensive
interpretation of the poems of A.R.Ammons.
Chapter 19, "The Dialectic o f Romantic Poetry in
America" i s an examination of four "f irst volumes" of
American poetry. Bloonl remarks at the outset o f the
essay that i t is meant "as prolegomenon to a projected
larger study of American Romantic poetry, to be
conducted on the princrples of a revisionary theory of
poetic inf luence, and i ts consequences for practical
crit icism" (291). The poets discussed are Emerson,
E.A.Robinson, Hart Crane and Alvin Feinman who cover
the per iod from 1846 to 1964. Chapter 20 examines the
view that Romanticism is opposed to the rat ional. Bloom
feels that the great Romantic poets have nothing against
reason.
The book concludes with an epi logue in which Bloom
raises the question whether i t i s a new romanticism or
another decadence. At the end of the book, B.loorn fai ls to
give a def in i te answer to this question.
The new age of romantic myth in l i terary cri t icism
had already been inaugurated by Northrop Frye. The
theory of the visionary imagination of romanticism
presented by Bloom in his early books belongs ful ly to
th is new trend. Bloom has frequently acknowledged this
indebtedness to Frye.
One important deviat ion from conventional romantic
cri t icism that can be noted in Bloom is h is observation
that the Romantics were not poets of nature. He is also
dif ferent from modernist cr i t ics in his assessment of the
Romantics. According to the modernist cr i t ics, Yeats
began as a romantic, but triumphed over romanticism in
his later career. Bloom countered this assumption by
pointing out that Yeats failed as a poet when he
abandoned the visionary power of imagination.
Bloom places Shelley in a posit ion of preeminence
while devaluing in varying degrees the establ ished
Romantics of tradit ional crit icism l ike Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Byron and Keats. He has practical ly nothing to
say of Byron. Even Coleridge, who was held in some
esteem by the New Critics, was almost ignored by him.
David Fite points out that there is "ample evidence
throughout his writ ings to suggest that Shelley, not Blake
or Stevens or Emerson remains the poet closest to his
own heart 's desires" (Fite 27).
From the very beginning, Bloom's reading of
romantic and modern poetry challenges the main
assumptions of the modernist approach to l i terary texts.
His early books are an extended polemic against the
tradit ion immediately preceding him that had sl ighted al l
the romantics except Coleridge and that had quite
contemptuously dismissed Shelley. His l i terary career has
been an incessant struggle with New Humanism, New
Crit icism and the "neo-Christian matrix of modern Anglo-
Cathol ic letters" represented by Eliot, Auden and Lewis
(Bloom, Ringers 207). Romantic imagination, according to
Bloom, is an inf inite and inexpressible desire in the
process of trying to utter itself. His attempt is to subsume
Modernism by his special version of visionary
Romanticism and thereby to deliver a resounding blow
against cri t ical tradit ion. He based his reading method on
a powerful but narrow definit ion of Romanticism as a
primari ly visionary mode. As Fite points out, he "ful ly
engages the imaginative l i fe of the works he admires, and
thus replaces New Crit ical 'objectivi ty ' with his own
dist inct ly passionate advocacy of, and prophecy about,
the Romantic cause" (Fite 31).