CHAPTER Ill

In Theory: Influence and the Kabbalah

Part I - An Uncanny Theory of Poetry.

The f irst volume of Harold Bloom's theoretical

tetralogy is The Anxiety o f inf luence published in 1973.

The subti t le of the book indicates that i t is a theory of

poetry. On reading this subtit le, we may imagine that we

are going to encounter principles of composing or reading

or cri t icizing poetry. But when we are through the

introduction, we realize that i t is "[. . . I by no means what

i t pretends to be" (de Man 267). Paul de Man laments that

the essay is not very explicit even on the "avowed major

theme, on the question of influence [. . . I " (268).

Bloom offers a theory of poetry "[. . .] by way of a

descript ion of poetic inf luence, or the story of intra-poetic

relat ionships" (Anxiety 5) . Poetic history is

indist inguishable from poetic inf luence because strong

poets who misread one another to clear imaginative space

for themselves make that history. His concern is only with

strong poets who have the wil l power to wrestle with their

precursors. Poetic history is a "tale of parr ic idal battles

between the Titans of the past and their increasingly

desperate poet ic descendants [. . . I " (Fite 55).

Bloom acknowledges Nietzsche and Freud as the

prime inf luences on him in formulating the theory of

inf luence presented in The Anxiety o f lnf luence.

Nietzsche is the prophet of the anti thetical, while Freud's

formulations on the mechanisms of defense provide the

clearest analogues for the revisionary rat ios that govern

intra-poetic relat ions. By reducing poetic history into a

parr ic idal batt le between precurso'rs and ephebes, Bloom

has changed the rules of canonization and the definit ion

of "strength" in poetry.

In the Preface to his book on Yeats, published in

1970, Bloom announced that the book was a

"Prolegomenon to a larger study on the theory of

inf luence" (vi i) . That "larger study" ran into volumes of

which the f i rst appeared in 1973 under the t i t le The

Anxiety o f lnf luence. A Map o f Misreading in 1975 further

elaborated the theme of influence and presented a theory

of reading. Kabbalah and Criticism in the same year

explored the endless possibi l i t ies of Jewish mysticism as

a model for his revisionary poetics. He real ized with great

enthusiasm that what he had unknowingly promoted as

the theory of belatedness and consequent revisionism in

poetry had a one-to-one correspondence with the

revisionary interpretations of the Kabalist ic scholars.

Perhaps the dormant Jewish heritage in his sub-conscious

mind had prompted him to project such a model. With

Poetry and Repression published in 1976, in which an

elaborate application of the theory of inf luence to the

texts by the Romantic, the Victorian and the twentieth

century poets was made, the tetralogy came ful l circle. In

the books that followed, Bloom made an attempt to trace

the or ig ins of revisionism back to the very origin of

Western l i terary culture. The discussion of Bloom's theory

of poetry in this chapter is mainly based on the books

making up the tetralogy published in the four years

between 1973 and 1976. The discussion of the theory of

belatedness and misreading is based on The Anxiety o f

Inf luence and A Map of Misreading and that o f the

Kabbalah on Kabbalah and Criticism.

The revisionary ratios in the development of the

ephebe's poetic career along with the corresponding

rhetor ical tropes and psychoanalytical defense

mechanisms charted out by Bloom in his The Anxiety o f

Inf luence and A Map o f Misreading are common

knowledge now. But a thesis that claims to examine

Bloom's theories of poetry, inf luence and misreading in

detai l cannot take things for granted. Hence a brief

analysis of these theories follows.

The Anxiety o f Inf luence begins with Bloom's

declaration that the aini of his theory of poetry is

corrective in two ways. He hopes to de-idealize the

accepted views of poetic influence and to provide a

poetics that wi l l foster a more adequate pract ical

cr i t icism. Poetic influerice need not make poets less

original. But the strong poet who is conscious of the

inf luence of his mighty precursors experiences the

immense anxiety of belatedness and indebtedness. Hence

his f irst inst inct is to deny any trace of inf luence as Oscar

Wilde and Wallace Stevens had done.

Bloom explains that poetic inf luence is a variety of

melancholy or an anxiety principle. I ts profundit ies cannot

be reduced to source study or to the history of ideas or to

the patterning of images. I t is actually a misprision, the

study of the l i fe cycle c ~ f the poet as poet. In this study,

intra-poetic relationships become an important area of

observation. Bloom admits that Freud's investigations of

defense mechanisms have provided him the necessary

analogies for the revislonary rat ios that govern such

relat ionships. In post-enlightenment poetry, relat ions

between poets are very much l ike what Freud cal led the

"family romance." Though he is employing the Freudian

paral lel, Bloom assures us that he is doing so as "a

del iberate revisionist of some of the Freudian emphases"

(Anxiety 8).

Bloom announces that the central emblem of his

discussion of poetic influence is the Covering Cherub

(Anxiety 35). But Bloorrr's Covering Cherub is dif ferent

from the angel in Genesis or the Prince of Tyre in Ezekiel

or Tharmas in Blake. He is a poor demon of many names

and a total ly thwarting agent that blocks real ization. He is

the emblem of the creative anxiety that af f l ic ts a l l

imaginative people in the post-enl ightenment period. In

other words, he is the spectre of the internal ized poetic

precursor with whom the ephebe has to struggle in order

to clear imaginative space for himself.

The word "influence" has undergone radical changes

over the centuries. The root meaning of "inflow," an

emanation or force coming in upon mankind from the stars

was retained for many centuries though i t had received

the sense of "having a power over another" as early as

the t ime of Aquinas. Original ly " to be inf luenced" meant

" to receive an ethereal f luid f lowing in upon one from the

stars, a f lu id that affected one's character and destiny

and that a l tered al l sublunary things" (Bloom, Anxiety 26).

The word began to be used in the sense of poet ic

inf luence roughly from the t ime o f Coler idge onwards. But

the anxiety had existed long before the word acquired this

new meaning. I t was the post-enl ightenment passion for

Genius and the subl ime that lent the shape and

magni tude of a menace to th is anxiety.

The strong poet's l i terary career is thus beset by his

struggles wi th a more i l lustr ious precursor. His claim to

immortal i ty and canonization is d i rect ly proport ionate to

the v ictory he gains in the "Agon." The father may be a

single ind iv idual or a composite f igure. Bloom also posits

six stages, or "revisionary rat ios" as he ca l ls them, in this

struggle between fathers and sons. The exot ic vocabulary

Bloom employs in the naming o f these rat ios -

"Clinamen," "Tessera," "Kenosis," "Daemonization,"

"Askesis" and "Apophrades" - lends a part icular charm to

the theory set for th by him.

Bloom admits that he has taken the word "clinamen"

from Lucretius where i t means "a 'swerve' of the atom so

as to make change possible in the universe" (Anxiety 14).

This i s poet ic misprision proper which forms the central

concept of the theory c)f poetic inf luence. I t is th is swerve

away from the blocking power of the precursor that makes

the "agon" possible. The young poet fo l lows the precursor

poem along to a certain point and then deviates, insisting

that a wrong direction was taken at just that point. The

new poet himself determines what his precursor must

have done or meant. Thus a creative interpretation is

always a misinterpretation. Bloom also proposes a wholly

dif ferent practical crit icism. He rejects New Crit icism as

"the fai led enterprise of seeking to 'understand' any

single poem as an entity in i tself" (Anxiety 43). Instead

we must pursue the quest of learning to read a poem as

i ts poet 's del iberate misinterpretation of a precursor

poem. The true history of modern poetry would be the

accurate recording of the revisionary swerves.

The second revisionary rat io is "tessera" which is

completion and antithesis. Bloom has taken the term from

ancient mystery cults where i t meant a token of

recognit ion. The ephebe reads the parent poem in such a

way as to retain i ts terms but to mean them in another

sense so that he antithetically completes his precursor.

The later poet believes that the precursor poem is a

"truncated" one and completes i t according to his own

imagination, which is actually a misprision. Hence

"tessera" is actual ly a completing l ink. I t represents the

later poet's attempt to redeem the precursor's word

because otherwise i t would be worn out. Lacan's

revisionary relat ionship to Freud is an instance of

tessera. Stevens is another case in point because

anti thetical completion is his central relat ion to his

American Romantic precursors. Bloom observes that

Brit ish poets are content to make a swerve away from the

precursors, whereas the American poets labour to

complete their fathers because they [the precursors], in

his rating, were not daring enough. In both cases the

result i s reductiveness a kind of misprision in which the

precursor is regarded as an overidealizer. The ephebes

deceive themselves "into bel ieving they are tougher-

minded than their precursors" (Anxiety 69). Bloom

proposes that the study of misprision can be useful in the

creation of an anti thetical practical cr i t icism as opposed

to the primary cri t icisms now in vogue, which vaci l late

between tautology and reduction. Anti thetical crit icism

must begin by denying tautology and reduction and by

assert ing that the meaning of a poem can only be another

poem - a central poem by a precursor even i f the ephebe

never read that poem. Quite curiously, Bloom asserts that

"an ephebe's best misinterpretations may well be of

poems he has never read" (Anxiety 70).

"Kenosis," the third revisionary rat io, i s a movement

towards discontinuity with the precursor. Bloom takes the

word from St . Paul who uses i t in the context of the

emptying out of Jesus when he accepts reduction from the

divine to the human status. Kenosis is at once an undoing

and isolat ing movement of the imagination. In strong

poets, i t is a revisionary act in which an emptying takes

place in relat ion to the precursor. I t is a l iberating

discontinuity. By undoing the precursor's strength in

oneself, the ephebe isolates the self from the precursor's

stance. Thus he is able to write a kind of poem, which the

repeti t ion of the precursor's godhood would not have

allowed. Every kenosis voids a precursor's powers.

The fourth revisionary ratio is that o f daemonization,

which is the movement towards a personalized counter-

subl ime. The term comes from Neo-Platonic usage. The

ephebe opens himself up to a power in the parent poem

that i s just beyond the range of the precursor. The power

that makes a man a poet i s daemonic. He is not

"possessed" by a daemon, but i s himself a daemon. When

the ephebe is daemonized, the precursor is humanized.

Daemonization is an attempt to de-individuate the

precursor. But i t ends as a return of the repressed. I t

augments repression by absorbing the precursor more

thoroughly into tradit ion.

In "askesis," which is the movement of sel f -

purgation, the attempt 1s to attain a state of sol i tude. The

term is borrowed from the practice of pre-Socratic

shamans l ike Empedocles. The later poet undergoes a

kind of curtail ing. He separates himself from others

including the precursor by yielding up a part of his own

human and imaginative endowment. The parent poem also

undergoes a similar experience and the precursor's

endowment i s also truncated. Askesis begins at the height

of the counter-sublime. I t is a successful defense against

the anxiety of inf luence In this stage, the strong poet

knows only himself and the precursor who must be

destroyed. Hence this rat io converges on the border of

solipsism. Askesis creates the strongest modern poetry

and leaves us sorry for the curtai lment of what might have

been done without the necessity of misprision.

"Apophrades" is the stage characterized by the

return of the dead. According to the Athenians, the dead

returned to reinhabit the houses in which they l ived on

certain dismal days. The ephebe in the f inal stage of his

development, holds his poem open to the precursor's

work in such a way that we feel that the later poet himself

had writ ten the precursor's characterist ic work. The

strong dead keep returning and i f they return intact, the

later poets are impoverished. The apophrades come to

the strongest poets, but with the very strongest, there is

a grand f inal revisionary movement, which pur i f ies them.

They achieve a style that retains priori ty over their

precursors. Bloom feels that this i s the most cunning of

the revisionary ratios, because the tyranny of t ime is

overturned so that the precursors appear to be imitat ing

their ephebes. The strong poets of later nineteenth

century and of the twentieth century give us vivid

instances of this ratio. According to Bloom, "the covert

subject o f most poetry of the last three centuries has

been the anxiety of influence, each poet's fear that no

proper work remains for him to perform" (Anxiety 148).

The theory that was presented in a germinal form in

The Anxiety o f Inf luence is elaborated further in A Map of

Misreading by adding corresponding psychic and

rhetorical dimensions to the revisionary rat ios. Bloom

introduces the book as a study of creative misreading and

"a prolegomenon to further studies of revisionism and to

the ambivalences of canon formation that r ise from

revisionism" (Map 4).

Revisionism is a re-seeing or looking over again

leading to a re-esteeming or a re-estimating. "[. . .] the

revisionist str ives to see again, so as to esteem and

estimate dif ferently, sc as then to aim correctively"

(Bloom, Map 4). According to Bloom, re-seeing is a

l imitat ion, re-estimating is a substi tut ion, and re-aiming is

a representation. These terms are taken from Lurianic

Kabbalism, which according to Bloom is the ult imate

model for western revisionism from the Renaissance to

the present. Luria formulated a regressive theory of

creation thus revising the earlier emanative theory. This

story, Bloom finds, is the best paradigm available for a

study of poetic influence. Hence he announces his

decision to make a detailed study of Kabbalism in a

separate book. The three main stages of the Lurianic

story are zimzum, shevirath-ha-kelim and t ikkun. In

Zimzum, the Creator w~thdraws into himself thus making a

new creation possible by providing the necessary empty

space. Shevirath ha-kelim, which means breaking-apart-

of-the-vessels, is a v i s ~ o n of creation as catastrophe.

Tikkun is the last stage of resti tut ion or restoration. The

aesthetic equivalents for these three stages are

l imitat ion, substi tut ion and representation respectively. I t

is against the background of this Lurianic aesthetic that

Bloom works out in detai l the relat ions between tropes,

defenses, images and revisionary rat ios.

According to Bloom, there are no texts or poems,

but only relat ionships between texts or poems. Every

poem that we know begins as an encounter between

poems. By inf luence he means the whole range of

relat ionships between one poem and another. He admits

that his use of the term is a highly conscious trope. I t is a

complex six fo ld trope which subsumes the six major

tropes namely irony, synecdoche, metonymy, hyperbole,

metaphor and metalepsis. Through the s ix tropes, which

are also psychic defenses, he offers six interpretations of

inf luence and six ways of reading a poem, which are

intended to combine into a single scheme of complete

interpretation.

The displacement of the Lurianic dialectics of

creation into the aesthetic triad of l imitat ion, substi tut ion

and representation has already been explained. Bloom

proceeds further to a charting of how meaning is

produced in post-Enlightenment strong poetry by the

substi tut ive interplay of f igures and images. First he

makes a dist inct ion between two kinds of tropes and two

kinds of psychic defenses. Irony, metonymy and metaphor

are tropes of l imitat ion and synecdoche, hyperbole and

metalepsis are tropes of representation. Similarly the

defenses also fal l into two anti thetical series. Reaction

formation, the tr iad of undoing, isolat ing and regressing

and sublimation are the defenses of l imitat ion. Turning

against the self and reversal, repression, and introjection

and projection are the defenses of representation. These

part icular tropes and defenses are also associated with

part icular kinds of images. The tropes and defenses are

interchangeable forms of the revisionary rat ios when they

appear in poems. They are manifested only in poetic

imagery. A rhetorical cr i t ic regards a defense as a

concealed trope and a psychoanalytical cr i t ic regards a

trope as a concealed defense. An antithetical cri t ic, who

knows that the subs t i t ~~ t i on of analogues is one with the

poetic process itself, learns to use both in turn.

Bloom realizes that in order to make these

groupings more convincing, he must re-define a trope and

the common features that ally with each grouping of

tropes and defenses and images. Slightly disagreeing

with Quinti l ian, he re-defines the trope as "a will ing error,

a turn from l i teral meaning in which a word or phrase is

used in an improper sense, wandering from i ts r ightful

place" (Map 93). He adds two more tropes - hyperbole

and metalepsis - to the four master tropes defined by

Vico. Irony withdraws meaning through an interplay of

presence and absence. Metonymy reduces meaning

through an emptying out and metaphor curtai ls meaning

through dualisms. Synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis

are tropes of restoration. Synecdoche enlarges from part

to whole and hyperbole heightens, whereas metalepsis

overcomes temporality by substituting earl iness for

lateness.

Bloom's ratios of revision work against the spectral

image of a precursor that acts as a blocking agent. They

work in matched pairs as clinamenltessera,

kenosisldaemonization and askesis l apophrades. Each

pair fol lows the Lurianic pattern of l imitationlsubstitutionl

representation. Bloom points out that in many central

poems of the romantic tradit ion, and in the best poems of

the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the three pairs

can be seen at work and the poems divide in terms of

image and argument into three parts, irrespective of their

formal divisions into stanzas. This pattern also sets the

pattern of misprision o - of revisionist poetry. Between the

primary and anti thetical movements of each pair of

revisionary rat ios that a latecomer's poem makes in

relat ion to a precursor's poem, there is invariably a

breaking-of-the-vessels.

Bloom subsequently charts the inter-relat ionship

between the revisionary ratios, tropes, defenses and

images. In a typical lyric poem, we can trace three

movements corresponding to the three pairs of ratios. A

poem's opening clinamen is accompanied by images of

absence and presence conveyed by the trope of irony and

represented as the psychic defense of reaction formation.

Tessera is the an t i the t~ca l completion of the f irst

movement through the image of whole for part and the

corresponding trope is synecdoche. The defensive

analogue is turning against the self or reversal. Kenosis

is accompanied by the image of reduction and the trope of

metonymy. The defense mechanism, which forms the

analogue of this revisionary ratio, is the tr iad of l imit ing

defenses of undoing, isolat ion and regression.

Daemonizt ion, the movement towards a personalized

counter sublime, is accompanied by repression on the

psychic side and hyperbole on the rhetorical side and

f inds i ts images in height and depth. With daemonizatiqn,

the poem has completed i ts second movement. Now it

moves into "the tricky l imitations of askesis - the

perspectivizing confus~ons of metaphor, at once the most

praised and most fail ing of Western tropes" (Map 100).

The poem progresses through dualist ic images of inside

as opposed to outside The psychic defense associated

with this rat io i s sublimation, which Bloom feels is only

incoherently described by Freud. From askesis, the poem

moves on to the closing representation, apophrades,

which is an attempt to change its belatedness into

earl iness. Metalepsis or transumption, the rhetorical

device attr ibuted to t h ~ s ratio is "the revisionist trope

proper and the ultimate poetic resource of belatedness"

(Map 101). according to Bloom. It i s a trope-reversing

trope in which a word is substituted metonymically for a

word in a previous trope so that i t may be appropriately

cal led a metonymy of a metonymy. The corresponding

Freudian defenses are the related yet anti thetical pair of

projection and introjection. The movement is a balance

between introjection (cr identif ication) and projection (or

casting out the forbidden). Imagistically the balance is

between earl iness and belatedness. Metalepsis or

transumption "thus becomes a total, f inal act of taking up

a poet ic stance in relation to anteriority, part icularly to

the anteriori ty of poetlc language, which means primarily

the loved-and-feared poems of the precursors"

(Repression 20).

Bloom points out that Quinti l ian who d id not have a

high opinion of transumption had remarked that i t was

good only for comedy. But from the Renaissance onwards

it has become the major mode of poetic allusion. To

transume means to take across - to take across "to the

poem's farther shore ' (Map 102). Metaleptic reversal

dominates the imagery of the closing lines of many

romantic and post-romantic poems.

Before concludrng the chapter on these

relat ionships, Bloom does not forget to dwell upon the

pract ical implications of his theory of misprision. The rest

of the book is an attempt to demonstrate the use of this

model for practical crit icism. Many poems from the

"Int imations Ode" to the poems of Wallace Stevens are

shown to follow the model of the six rat ios quite closely.

But Bloom anticipates objection and remarks that there

are many variants and displacements and many poems

that rebel against the model. So he concludes with the

observation that "What matters is not the exact order of

the rat ios, but the principle of substi tut ion, in which

representations and l imitat ions perpetual ly answer one

another. The strength of any poet is i n h is sk i l l and

inventiveness at substitution [. , .] " (Map 10).

Bloom's theoretical paradigm becomes complete

with the two books, The Anxiety o f Inf luence and A Map o f

Misreading. The third book of the tetralogy, Kabbalah and

Criticism, is devoted to a detailed analysis of the

Kabbalah, which had received only a passing mention in A

Map o f Misreading. He makes an elaborate study of the

various versions of the Kabbalah and i ts interpretations

and their relevance to his theory of poetry. In the last

book of the tetralogy, Poetry and Repression, Bloom

explains how the Freudian defense mechanism works in

the psychology of the belated poet.

Part I1 - Bloom the Kabbalist.

No strong poet can choose his precursor, any more

than any person can choose his father, says Harold

Bloom (Map 12) . This rneans that the ephebe is found by

the precursor. Perhaps this principle was true of the

relat ionship between Bloom and the Kabbalah. Though a

Jew, Bloom was not particularly conscious about the

Kabbalah or i ts possibi l i t ies as a tool for interpretation.

But somewhere in the middle of his career, after the

publication of The Anxiety o f Inf luence, he happened to

read the work of the famous Jewish mystic Gershom

Scholem and suddenly realized that he had been working

on a Kabbalist ic model al l along. " I d id not set out on this

enterprise with a Kabbalistic model consciously in view.

But i t was there nevertheless, as I groped to explain to

myself why I had become obsessed with revisionary

ratios, and then with tropes and defenses of l imitat ion

and substi tut ion" (Kabbalah 87). The paradigms offered

by the Kabbalah were remarkably suited to his analysis of

the anxiety of influence because Kabbalah was i tself a

vision of belatedness and the ult imate model for Western

revisionism. I t was as though he was chosen by the

Kabbalah to be i ts ephebe, without his knowledge. Bloom

realized the potent ia l of this ancient esoteric cul t , which

"remains the largest single source for mater ia l that wil l

help us to study the revisionary impulse and to formulate

techniques for the practice of an anti thetical

cr i t icism"(Map 4-5). So in his A Map o f Misreading, Bloom

announced his next project, a book in which he intended

to study the principles of Kabbalah in detai l . That book

was Kabbalah and Criticism published in 1976.

In Kabbalah and Criticism, Bloom gives us an

account of the scheme of Kabbalah and relates i t to a

theory of reading poetry. He expresses his indebtedness

to Scholem on whose expositions his understanding of the

Kabbalah is based. The start ing points of Kabbalah are

traced back to Gnosticism and Neoplatonism. Gnosticism

was an extremist version of the general rel igion that

dominated the Eastern Mediterranean world during the

f irst and second centuries of the Christ ian era. With i ts

bel ief in an al ien God set against an evi l universe, i t has

always been anti-Jewish. Neo-Platonism is a term used to

designate the period of Platonic phi losophy beginning

with the work of Plotinus and ending with the closing of

the Platonic Academy. The introduction of Jewish

Scriptures into Greek intel lectual circles via the

translat ion known as the Septuagint had exercised great

inf luence on the development of Platonic thought.

The true origin of the Kabbalah can be traced back

to the Zef i r Yezhira composed in the third century AD.

This book introduced the central structural notion of

Kabbalah, the sefirot. After a thousand years of oral

tradit ion, the next book, Sefer ha-Bahir, was writ ten only

in the thirteenth century. The dif ference between the two

is that in the Yezhira, the Sefirot were described as ten

primary numbers whereas in the Book Bahir, they became

divine emanations and principles and powers. But the

masterpiece, the central work of classical Kabbalah,

Sefer ha-Zohar, was writ ten a l i t t le later i n the thirteenth

century by Moses de Leon in Spain. Wi th this, Kabbalah

became a ful l-scale system of speculation.

Kabbalah was, from the start, revisionary in regard

to Genesis as wel l as Neoplatonism. According to

Genesis, God created the world out of nothing. Kabbalah

interpreted this statement revisionist ical ly to mean that

God being "ayin" (nothirig), created the world out of

Himself. The dist inct ion between cause and ef fect was

subverted by this formula. For the Neoplatonists,

emanation was a process out from God, but in Kabbalah i t

takes place within God Himself. The Kabbalists identi f ied

the Sefirot with the actual substance of God. They are ten

complex images for God in His process of creation. There

is an interplay between l i teral and f igurative meaning

going on within each sefirah. The ten sefirot are :- Keter,

Hokmah, Binah, Hesed, Din, Tiferet, Nezah, Hod, Yesod

and Malkhut. They are usually depicted in the form of a

tree growing downwards - "the tree of emanation."

Classical Kabbalah is the interplay of these images.

Moses Cordovero who lived in the sixteenth century

was a systematic thinker who had studied the inter-

relat ionships of the sefirot. But the later Kabbalah, which

came into existence after the expulsion of the Jews from

Spain in 1492, was mainly the contr ibution of Cordovero's

pupi l Isaac Luria. Schoiem interpreted Lurianic Kabbalah

as a Myth of Exile and the crit ic in Bloom was interested

in the interpretation because of i ts emphasis on the

psychology of belatedness. The Kabbalists of Spain and

Palestine were already given a massive and completed

scripture along with al l possible interpretations. I t was as

though genius had no more relevance for them. In order

to counter this sense of belatedness, they developed a

series of techniques for opening the scripture to their

sufferings and theosophical insights. Hence the later

Kabbalah was organized as an apparent commentary on

the Zohar, which was originally a commentary on the

scripture.

In the thirteenth century i tself , the Kabbalists had

made speculations about the mutual inf luence exerted by

the sefirot on one another. Each Sefirah contains certain

mult i form aspects, which are responsible for the l inks

between the sefirot. I t was Cordovero who invented the

new category of behinot to denote these aspects. Each

Sefirah has six behinot or aspects, which are very much

similar to the six revisionary rat ios ident i f ied by Bloom in

the precursor - ephebe relationships between poets and

poems. This similarity accounts for the fascination

Kabbalah had for him.

The six aspects o' the Sefirot as ident i f ied by

Cordovero are as follows:-

1. Concealment before manifestat ion within the

preceding Sefirah.

2 . Actual manifestat ion in the preceding Sefirah.

3. Appearance as Sefirah in i ts own name.

4 . Reinforcing the preceding Sefirah so as to

enable i t to emanate further Sefirot.

5. Empowering the Sefirah i tsel f t o emanate out

other sef i rot concealed in it.

6. Emanating out the following Sefirah to i ts own

place.

After the sixth phase, the cycle begins again. The

concealment in and emanation from each other of the

sefirot results in a chain-like formation. Bloom perceives

that th is cycle, though oaffl ing at f irst, is a remarkable

theory of inf luence. "The six behinot can be interpreted as

psychological mechanisms of defense, rhetorical tropes or

areas of poetic imagery" (Kabbalah 37). Bloom also

mentions Kabbalah's vision of the problem of evi l . I n the

Zohar, evi l is compared to Kelippah, the bark of the tree

of the sefirot. According to the Zohar, even in the

kel ippot, there are saving sparks of good that can be

redeemed by the acts of men alone.

The word Kabbalah means tradit ion, and a l l the

masters of Kabbalah including Cordovero were conscious

of their continuity with previous masters. So Bloom is

charmed by the str iking originality of Isaac Luria and his

ideas. "[. . .] he may have been the only visionary in the

entire history of Kabbalah whose basic ideas were

original, since the entire tradit ion from the Sefer Yezirah

through Cordovero is finally only an amalgam [. . .] of

Neoplatonism and Gnosticism" (Kabbalah 39). After

making this observation, Bloom goes on to examine the

main principles of Lurianic Kabbalah.

Classical Kabbalah viewed creation as a progressive

process. The emanations from God through the sefirot

moved to man in a steady manner. The continuity of the

movement was emphasized. But Luria saw creation as a

start l ingly regressive process with catastrophe as a

central event. I t is presided over by the tr iple rhythm of

contraction, breaking apart and resti tut ion (Zimzum,

Shevirah ha-kel im and tikkun respectively). Zimzum

original ly meant a holding-in of breath. Luria revised the

word to give i t an idea of l imitat ion. God withdrew into

Himself, thus clearing fundamental space for creation.

Part of the concentrated din or rigour remained behind in

the cleared space and mixed with the remnants of God's

self-withdrawn l ight. God sent the yod, the f irst letter of

His name into this mixture. The yod is the active principle

of creation along with the l ight, which is the passive

principle. The kel im or vessels created were made of two

kinds of l ight - the l ight that accompanied the yod and the

l ight le f t behind after zimzum. The col l ision of l ights is a

complex process and Adam Kadmon, the culminating

vessel, i s a perpetual war of l ight against l ight. The three

upper sef i rot contained the light, but the lower sefirot

were unable to bear the force and they broke apart. This

is known as shevirah or the breaking of the vessels. This

is a divine act of substitution in which an original pattern

yielded to a more chaotic one. Much of the l ight in the

shattered vessels fe l l down to form ev i l forces. Though

evi l , these forces yet had certain sparks of l ight

imprisoned within them. Luria bel ieved that the whole

catastrophe resulted from an excess of din or rigour i n

God Himself and he saw the whole of creation as God's

catharsis of Himself. So God had to create for the sake of

His own well-being.

Tikkun, the saving process of restoration and

resti tut ion, which is the work of the human, is more

important than the f irst two stages. This process takes

place through the complex agency cal led the parzufim,

which are the Lurianic equivalents of the behinot of

Cordovero. Like the behinot, they are at once defense

mechanisms and rhetorical tropes. After the breaking of

the vessels, the parzutim organize the shattered world

and take the place of the sefirot. Bloom points out that "[.

. .] in some sense this parzuf can be considered as

Luria's revisionist misprision or creative

misunderstanding of his direct precursor's most original

and important doctr ine" (Kabba lah 42).

Kabbalah, according to Bloom, is "1. . .]more of an

interpretative and mythical tradit ion than a mystical one"

(Kabba lah 47). I t proposes to give suffer ing a meaning by

way of an interpretation of Scripture through the sefirot.

Bloom feels that the sefirot and a l l o f Kabbalah are an

incarnation of the desire for dif ference and for an end to

Exi le. The motive of metaphor in poetry is to be dif ferent,

to be elsewhere. In Bloom's opinion, Kabbalah i s unique

among rel igious systerris of interpretation because i t is

already poetry and needs no translat ion into the realms of

the aesthetic.

The important aspects of Kabbalah l ike the doctrine

of the ten sefirot, Cordovero's concept of the s ix behinot

and Luria's catastrophe theory of creation are examined

by Bloom. But he is particularly interested in the

doctr ines of Isaac Luria who is rather a latecomer in the

history of Kabbalah. In the ancient theory, the sefirot are

described as emanatiorls, attributes, l ights, crowns, and

garments of God. They act as instruments connecting

inf inite God with the finite world and form the underlying

structural principles of that world. Each Sefirah is

compounded of al l the others. Bloom is intr igued by the

complex relations of the sefirot and the patterns of their

combinations. "Beyond its direct portrayal of the miod-in-

creation, Kabbalah offers both a model for the process of

poetic inf luence, and maps for the problematic pathways

of interpretation" (Kabbalah 52). The six revisionary

ratios traced by Bloom map the inner l i fe of the poet as

well as his relation to his precursor. Cordovero's behinot

correspond to these revisionary ratios because they trace

the interplay of aspects within each sefirah and between

the sefirot. The process by which each sefirah emanates

out from the preceding one is very similar to the process

by which the ephebe grows out of the inf luence of the

precursor. In the interplay between the sefirot, Bloom

finds a model for the relation between poems, between

precursors and ephebes-. "In terms of my own theory,

Cordovero provides the model for my six 'revisionary

ratios' with his six behinot, or aspects of each sefirah.

But Luria provides the model for my dialect ic of

revisionism [. . .] " (Kabba lah 6 2 ) .

Bloom proceeds to explore the model further by

analyzing each behinah and explaining i ts identi f ication

with the corresponding revisionary rat io of his theory of

poetry. The analogy between the behinot and the

rhetorical tropes and defense mechanisms is also made

clear. For l i terary purposes, Bloom considers each sefirah

as a single poem or text. On this analogy, the behinot can

be taken to denote the tropes, which are essent ia l for

poetry. The sefirah may also be taken to represent a

single mind or consciousness, where the behinot function

as psychic defenses.

The f i rst behinah of any sefirah is i ts concealment in

the preceding sefirah. In l iterary terms this means that

"[. . .] the in i t ia l trope or image in any new poem is

closely related to the hidden presence of the new poem in

i ts precursor poem" (Kabba lah 66). The deepest instances

of inf luences are never manifested on the poetic surface.

Only weak poems will immediately echo precursor poems

or directly al lude to them. A poem is "a [. . .] deep

misprision of a previous poem when we recognize the

later poem as being absent rather than present on the

surface of the earl ier poem, and yet st i l l being in the

earl ier poem, implicit or hidden in i t , not yet manifest,

and yet there" (Kabbalah 67). Bloom cites the example of

major Victorian and modern poets, Browning, Swinburne,

Hardy and Yeats, who, according to him, are the

descendants of Shelley. Though al l these poets have

styles almost totally antithetical to Shelley's style, he is

their crucial precursor. The opening images of Browning's

poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" may be

most meaningfully interpreted when we see them as being

closely related to the poem's hidden presence in

Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind." Bloom also observes

that so many strong poems of the nineteenth and

twentieth centuries open with dialectical images of

presence and absence because of the hiddenness of their

immediate origin. But as usual, he fails to give specif ic

examples to prove his point.

Cordovero's second behinah is the actual

manifestation of a particular sefirah in i ts precursor or i ts

revelation within the preceding sefirah. The poem hidden

in the earl ier poem comes out from its concealment,

though i t is st i l l in the earlier poem. Bloom explains this

as a movement from dialectical images of presence and

absence to synecdochal images of part and whole. Parts

of a poem seem prophetic of a poem to come. Using this

concept, Bloom explains the contemporaneity of older

poetry. He cites the poetry of Donne as a very good

example of this.

The third behinah involves the material ization of

each sef i rah in i ts own right. I t is the precarious element

in the poem, which attempts to attain an i l lusory self-

sufficiency. Bloom observes that this is the most unstable

element i n a poem and the most unstable aspect in a

sefirah. In psychic terms, this is an undoing and an

isolat ion. In poems this regression is evidenced by

images of a prior fullness emptying i tsel f out.

The fourth behinan of a sefirah is the aspect which

gives the precursor the power to emanate the later sefirah

outwards. A reversal of cause and ef fect is involved here.

The corresponding trope of this behinah is the hyperbole

in which higher and lower are seen as reversible

categories. In psychic terms, this aspect is one of

repression. The later sefirah represses either i ts own

force so as to augment the force of the precursor or the

force of the precursor in order to reinforce i tself . Either

way, a "channel" is formed between them, which acts as a

path of reciprocal influence between the two.

The f i f th behinah is the beginning of the process of

the emanation of the succeeding sefirah, which is in turn

concealed in the newly emanated sefirah. The

corresponding trope is the metaphor with i ts inward-

outward movement and the relevant psychic process is

sublimation.

The sixth and lasr behinah is responsible for the

successful emanation of the sefirah next in sequence to

i ts proper place. The whole process begins again then.

The ephebe has now established himself and has in his

turn given rise to other ephebes. The corresponding

defense mechanism is projection. There is also an aspect

of earl iness succeeding one of lateness.

Cordovero's theosophical cycle becomes a wheel of

images, tropes or defenses. The six behinot reinforce and

supplement the six revisionary ratios Bloom formulated in

The Anxiety o f Influence. Like the ratios, they are both

psychic and linguistic - mechanisms of defense and

tropes.

The six behinot of Cordovero provided Bloom with a

model for the six revisionary ratios and their

corresponding tropes - irony, metonymy, metaphor,

synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis. But he found an

even better paradigm for his dialectic o f revisionism in

the Lurianic story of creation. Bloom points out that no

one in the history of scholarship has speculated on the

l i terary motives of the Kabbalists. According to him,

Luria's revisionism resulted from the psychology of

belatedness that the Kabbalists experienced. They had

confronted not only a closed Book, but also a vast system

of closed commentary. Hence they were compelled to take

the path of expansive inventiveness. Their specif ical ly

l i terary anxiet ies "[. . .] centred upon a genuinely

overwhelming anxiety-of-influence" ( K a b b a l a h 72).

The anxiety of influence intensif ied with the passage

of t ime and i t peaked by the time of Luria whose genius

for invention of new theosophical principles was beyond

comparison. "Even as Cordovero might be cal led the f irst

Structural ist, I am tempted to cal l Luria the archetype of

al l Revisionists, for his dialectics-of-creation seem to me

the model for a l l other kinds of belated activi ty that came

after him [ . . . I " ( K a b b a l a h 7 3 ) . After making this remark,

Bloom proceeds to translate the Lurianic myth of creation

into the terms of a revisionist poetics and to analyze

Luria's misprision of Cordovero's behinot.

Luria had perceived creation as a tr iple process of

zimzum, shevirah-ha-kelim and tikkun. Zimzum is perhaps

the most innovative of Luria's ideas, according to Susan

Handelman. I t i s the wrthdrawal or contraction of God into

Himself thus creating empty space to make creation

possible. Bloom equates zimzum with the trope of irony

because i t means the opposite of what it appears to say.

Concealment is actually revelation. The image of His

absence is the greatest image for His presence. In poetic

terms zimzum is interpreted as a loss of meaning for

poetry and psychically as the arousal of various defenses.

The second step in the Lurianic theory of creation is

shevirah-ha-kelim or the breaking of the vessels. Unable

to bear the force of divine light, the lower sefirot broke

apart and sparks of light were scattered in the universe.

In poetic terms this is translated as substi tut ion, the

replacing of one image by another or the yielding of an

original pattern to another.

The third movement in the Lurianic dialectic is

tikkun, the universe of restitution or of representation.

The basic image of tikkun is the l i f t ing up and gathering

in o f the fal len sparks. Redemption comes through the

restoration of the scattered sparks to their original source

through the fulf i l lment of the commandments of the Torah.

I t involves three transit ions - from irony to synecdoche,

from metonymy to hyperbole and from metaphor to

metalepsis. Luria needed a model for t ikkun and he could

easily have adapted Cordovero's behinot to the requisite

images of resti tut ion. Hut he was too strong a poet, Bloom

notes, to tolerate such indebtedness. So through a

creative misreading of Cordovero, Luria invented the

Parzufim in place of the behinot. These concepts easily

become models for Post-Enlightenment poems.

The aesthetic translation for t ikkun is

representation, which is viewed as a kind of mending

process. I t represents the f inal unif ication and fulf i l lment

for the Kabbalists. But poetic tikkun in Bloom's view is

only a gesture towards an impossible fulf i l lment. The

Kabbalah i tsel f is a grand cosmic myth of redemption.

Bloom is interested in Kabbalah only as a theory of exile

or anxiety. He declares that zimzum was God's anxiety.

This anxiety-ridden God becomes the model for the

modern poet who must also go through the dialectics of

contraction, catastrophe and mending.

Bloom points out that Gnosis and Kabbalah were the

f irst "modernisms" in the current sense of the word. He

had already traced the origins of Kabbalah to Gnosticism.

Neo-Platonism was a conventional theory of inf luence

whereas Gnosticism was a theory of misprision and so a

model for the contemporary theory of inf luence as

creative misunderstanding. A modern poem begins with a

cl inamen, which depends on the renunciat ion of an earlier

poem. Since the precursor is internal ized, creation begins

with the contraction of the self to a primordial point.

Defensive reactions are produced in the self, result ing in

creation-as-catastrophe. This creation through contraction

of the precursor is the dialectical model for belated

poetry. The poet makes himself free by changing his

relat ion to his parent poem. Susan Handelman points out

that th is is Bloom's project as well because he is the

inheritor of a burdensome yet unavoidable Rabbinic

heritage (22).

Susan Handelman cannot help seeing an intentional

and obvious design in Bloom's ef forts to br ing theology

back into secular systems of thought, but she remembers

Hartman's remark that pure secularism is simply another

rel igion. She notes that l i terary cri t icism has become a

k ind of subst i tute theology. The theological roots of the

modern science of interpretat ion are indeed very deep

because i t has i ts foundations in Bibl ical hermeneutics

and Greek phi losophy. The Jews have contr ibuted the

concept of the divine text. The encounters between the

Jews and the Christ ians had a great role in determining

the history of interpretat ion with Christ ianity claiming that

i t had the f ina l and val idating interpretat ion of the "Old"

Testament and the Jewish tradit ion upholding i ts bel ief in

the mult ip l ic i ty o f meaning. After the conquest o f Europe

Christ ianity al l ied i tself with Greek phi losophy thus

providing the matr ix for Western culture. That is why

many of the important scholars and l i terary cr i t ics of the

west have been overt ly indebted to their theological

biases. But Handelman points out that recently there has

been a chal lenge to the Greco-Christ ian t radi t ion of

interpretat ion. They have overturned classical concepts of

meaning, interpretat ion and exegesis. According to her,

"Harold Bloom's tortuous 'anxiet ies of inf luence' and

dialect ical poet ic wars come from an openly avowed

Hebraic biasn (xiv). In the last century, there has been a

col lapse of the prestige of Christ ianity, which coincided

with the entry of Jews into the intel lectual l i fe of Europe.

The inf luence of Jewish thinkers has become increasingly

dominant after World War II. Whatever be the truth behind

these observations, i t is undeniable that Bloom has

managed to make the Kabbalah part of the ideology of

contemporary cri t ical theory.

The theory of poetry formulated in these four books

made Bloom one of the most controversial cr i t ics of the

twentieth century. The implications of th is theory for an

anti thetical pract ical crit icism and for canon formation are

interesting and complicated. An analysis of Bloom's

revision of the English l iterary canon wi l l be made in the

fol lowing chapters.