Harold Bloom reciting Wallace Stevens' "Tea at the Palace of Hoon"

[AAwildeone]

As an undergraduate, Dr Bloom is necessarily a pariah and unreadable. Afterward, when you actually begin to think for yourself, his words become manna and an open eye in a desert of purposely shut out methods and ridiculous interpretations whose sole credibility is an -ism. Harold Bloom has been first and foremost a teacher; SO LEARN!

[CottonPoisonwood]

He seems like such a relic these days - an elegant, library-nourished Cryptkeeper. God bless him.

[johanhellerstedt]

Him, the 0, and successor, probably cruises trough Bloom's mind over and over. Logic, the empirical and the eternal, supposingly, is the subject matter. It is ironic that Bloom is the most ardent opposal of Deconstruction.

[MackenDaFlows]

there are two poems read, both from stevens. btw that is bloom after all.

[MackenDaFlows]

I don't think that's harold bloom.

[Jezetha]

As if I heard the poem for the first time... Wonderful!

[Jomabeks]

As he is finishing his way

he is the real Lear King face.

[generalcircle]

Harold Bloom is just a fat ass who slumps on a couch and incorrectly thinks he's a genius.

[firestartertwistedfi]

@generalcircle Funny, he speaks very kindly of you!

[DavidYetzer]

Thank you so much for sharing this - it is too good for words... it brings tears to my eyes.

[dantedite]

.... !damn all!

[hanshotfirst1138]

When is this?

[DagobertoFonseca]

I don't see just a man reciting a poem for an audience, I see a chapter of the great struggle of his entire life. I like it when he smirks at 'through what you called the loneliest air', it surely is a glance backward, maybe to a discussion with someone loved.

The whole reading is a faraway movement of his soul, where the emotions and memories flood him. That's why after reciting 'Tea at the Palace of Hoon' comes immediately the first stanza of the other poem: for him, they always go together.

[travisbicklejr]

My goodness, I love Harold Bloom. No one will be able to take up his mantle when he passes. What a sad day that will be.

"Nothing is Final!"

[carlmelanson1]

His book Genius should be the introductory book for anyone who wants to learn the who's who of literature.

[Omphaloskeptical]

Harold Bloom: brilliant critic; unremarkable poetry orator.

[Wintblash]

google Doe's Account.

[xinxinming]

Harold Bloom is the most wonderful man alive.

[Bolinas1971]

seems like, without a beard you're out of business! Thank-a-you, Childe Harolde!

[vanderbilt887]

Does anyone have some more Harold Bloom? This man deserves more attention on youtube!

[molloyxx1]

@vanderbilt887 I don't. But look, if you haven't already, for Hugh Kenner, who I am familar with mainly because of a relatively short book on Samuel Beckett which was as lucid as it was concise. And now it strikes me that I have never loked for him on You Tube, our Alexadrian Library.

[hanshotfirst1138]

@vanderbilt887 Yeah, I can't find many interviews with the man outside of his Charlie Rose appearances. Maybe he's not into that sort of thing.

[eganbarry]

the man loves literature

[jigoku66]

No, just a very tiny part of what literature means.

[MrNobleSavagery]

well, what a genius; you are clearly out of my league. Maybe I should start upping the invective too?

[molloyxx1]

Man is excellently made, and there is always...something to do.

[molloyxx1]

Moreover, I do see a thread joining the pathologically opaque Mr Rumsfeld and the pathologically opaque Mr. Heidegger, both of whom are notorious for the blinding circularity of their logic, a logic which depends on an aggressive impulse to dismantle the prospect of comprehension. That the honorable Mr Bloom, who has railed against imported obfuscation for years long and loud is even remotely conected to any discussion of the dour old Nazis well modulated psychosis is, you know, terrible.

[MrNobleSavagery]

well, what a genius; you are clearly out of my league. Maybe I should start upping the invective too?

[Bolinas1971]

he makes me nervous.... this is surely a pagan poem like that guy ferdinand nietzsche

[mathiasgandy]

Bloom has lost a lot of weight...

[toolesttool]

This is a bit odd. Bloom recites "Tea at the Palaz of Hoon" until 1:07. Then, he recites (incomplete, because he's clearly doing it by heart) the first stanza of "Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery". It would have been better to have checked before.

[WorldlyMusi]

Did he loose weight or something? he looks so skinny here compare to his photos

[billybrachiosaurus]

I love you Harold Bloom forever.  Adon Olam.

[vanderbilt887]

Dasein isn't Heidegger's word. It's a basic German word that's used all the time. Furthermore, strictly speaking Dasein in Heidegger's philosophy does not mean 'human being', as his ontology is no existentialism. Dasein means 'a being' through which 'Being' speaks.

But who gives a shit right? Certainly not I.

[traccan]

Dasein is basically Heidegger's word for 'human being' whose primary characteristic is a being-unto-death. I see very little connection between the Crane poem and Heidegger, although Heideggerians will argue till they're blue in the face that it has connections to everything.

[Madysaveskittens]

What the hell is he doing with his glasses?

[dafeltre]

I suggest you change to contact lenses.

[theburt83]

He couldn't do the same thing with contact lenses.

[IntuitSpirit]

Aesthetic splendor? Check.

Cognitive power? Check.

Wisdom?  Check.

The Good Professor strikes again!

[meddmawamm]

For the record, that isn't just "Tea at the Palaz of Hoon." After the word strange, where he begins talking about Walt Whitman, is the first stanza from Steven's "Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery".

[pillarosociety]

Ointment doesn't usually "sprinkle" though, does it?

[nacho862]

aside from the fact that ointment is probably being used as a metaphor, i doubt they had neosporin when this poem was written. perhaps broaden your definition of what it means to be ointment.

[pillarosociety]

Ointment here either is or isn't a metaphor, there's no "probably" in a matter like that, and if so it needs to make sense on the literal level before it's able to project and cover the territory a metaphor covers.

[nacho862]

yes, there is "probably" in a matter like that. in fact, everything in the world is either a metaphor or not a metaphor. in this instance, i use the world "probably" because i am not sure what he was thinking when he wrote the poem. and for your literal complaint... that's where you come in to perhaps broaden your definition of ointment. i can see you put a lot of thought into your response though, so i'll give you a thumbs up.

[gregnar]

Where does this come from? Is there more?

[isselman2000]

Where does what come from? The video or my quote?

The quote comes from the concluding lines of Alexander Pope's The Dunciad.

[runningwithboner]

Harold Bloom lost a vast amount of weight that it is unbelievable for someone to lose so much in his age.

[3toad]

Tea At The Palaz Of Hoon is one of my favorites and seeing Mr. Bloom read it is treat.

[AndrewMann552]

Harold doesn't look too well. I hope we don't have to say goodbye to him soon :(

[KajiCarson]

He's 78. Everybody dies.

[isselman2000]

"Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;

And Universal Darkness buries All."

[isselman2000]

What will we do without Harold Bloom? He has no successor.

[PathosDistanz]

@isselman2000

Well, first we have to know who Harold Bloom actually is. . .

And it is not this man.

[elibro826]

@PathosDistanz Is it you?

[bertiethetoupee4]

@PathosDistanz This is definitely him. He's a lot thinner than he used to be.

[hanshotfirst1138]

@isselman2000 Yes, and I'm sad to hear that he is currently ill.

[dantean]

@isselman2000 The next person to turn Otto Rank's work (as well as the story of his relationship to Rank's "father figure," Freud) into metaphors for literary creation will be the successor to HB--that, plus cribbing from Meyer Abrams and Northrop Frye and PRESTO!, the next Harold Bloom.

[Fixarvi]

@isselman2000

I agrree with you. He is unique

[TheRealSmacker]

@isselman2000 People will always read for higher purposes than the political. Whether they do it in the universities or not. A billion or thousands, it will not die. Bloom says in "An Elegy for the Canon" from "The Western Canon" of 1993, that "his" school of reading may go "underground" soon and lose the connection to the university English faculties, which are now being influenced and overtaken by the whimsical and petty cohort of moralist ideologies known as cultural studies. It may be better

[polymath7]

Everybody!? That's *quite* a sweeping statement.

I'm not altogether convinced.

You conclude this,I presume, purely by induction -but it's like saying everyone has bowel movements.

Even If if the principal of induction is valid, I ask: how many people have you actually *seen* die or take a shit?

I'm neither a parent, a nursing home attendant, a serial murderer, nor a scat fetishist, so my own answer in both cases is(thank god!) exactly zero.

And yours?.

So wherefore your dubious conclusion?

[KajiCarson]

Show me solid proof of a man who has survived death.

[polymath7]

(chuckle)

I was just pulling your leg.

I was stoned when I wrote that.

[KajiCarson]

*high-five*

[paperbullet1945]

Is it possible to "survive" death? Resurrection is dying and then coming back, but you can't really die and survive death at the same time.

[KajiCarson]

It doesn't seem to me that anyone has pulled it off yet. Unless you're talking about the undead of course, but since they aren't even technically alive, it's doubtful. Ultimately, science, not Imhotep, will find a way!

[MrNobleSavagery]

Death is Dasein's utmost possibility of not being possible. Since Dasein is constituted in its Being by possibility, Death as the most outstanding possibility of being impossible is basically the end.

[paperbullet1945]

Who/What is Dasein?

[molloyxx1]

Why does this remind me of Rumsfeld explaining certain aspects of the disaster in Iraq? And I'm not just responding to the tautology.

[MrNobleSavagery]

carry your pedestrian mind elsewhere

[molloyxx1]

MrIgnobleScaveneger, I sense that your primary aspiration is to rise so high that when you shit you don't miss

anyone. W/ apologies to William Gass.

[polymath7]

Don't mind me, I'm pretty fucked up at the moment . ^^

[wayo002]

One of Bloom's most compelling tropes is his conception of "misreading". Anyone who reads intelligently or perceptively by definition "misreads". I love this sort of opaque language Bloom uses to communicate his love of the Canon. Just as interesting is his notion of how the major characters in great literature "overhear" themselves. I'm still trying to understand that one. Wonderful posting, many thanks.

[autochthonous88]

He left out half a line of "Like Decorations", but it was still a strong misreading.

[molloyx]

A delightful reading. And what an extraordinary face.

[KajiCarson]

A nice reading.

[martinatees]

O beauty

[MenMadeGod]

This recitation is so glorious, and this poem is so horrendously beautiful that watching this truly makes me never want to write a poem again as it will be so poor in comparison

[paperbullet1945]

How ironic...