Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human

Outside university English departments, devotion to the Bard is a lonely avocation. We read these great works and tend to carry our own thoughts and reactions to them inside us. We commit passages to memory because we want to own these words, to be a part of the Great Chain of the English Language, a transgenerational community joined in a common appreciation of the finest, most universal written English yet wrought. But what we really crave is conversation, with a sharing, perceptive interlocutor, with whom we might swap enthusiasms, probe ambiguities, repeat the words, declaim, expound, enact, react. In the end, we remain for the most part solitary enthusiasts. Hence the great and enduring value of the formidable critics and commentators: Johnson, Hazlitt, Pollard, Bradley, Van Doren, Goddard, Mack, Rowse, and, now, Harold Bloom.Of all these, none has provided greater pleasure, or more illuminating argumentation, or profound, quirky observations than Bloom, whom I've come to think of as my wise old Uncle Harold. I go directly from the play to Bloom's Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, for literary companionship. Taking his leads from Johnson, for whom Shakespeare is the great writer of human nature, and Hegel, who saw Shakespeare's characters as "free artists of themselves," Bloom's central teaching is that Shakespeare not only shows us, but literally invents our template for, what it means to be human. He mines this theme throughout, pausing long at the central characters--Falstaff, Rosalind, and Hamlet--who epitomize the lesson. In touching on each of the works, sometimes only briefly but never simply dutifully, Bloom invariably opens up new vistas, adds context, begs controversy, settles old scores and manufactures new ones, leads the reader back to the works for fresh consideration in new dimensions--and all in an avuncular, colloquial voice that I for one find wholly delightful and attractive. The professional lit-crit crowd doesn't share this view--which "populizers" has it ever easily credited?--but for me, having Bloom on my desk is roughly akin to having the erstwhile "brightest grad fellow ever" of the most formidable English Department at my beck and call, always willing and ready to sit up late in the Common Room for endless conversations over coffee and cigarettes, until exhaustion sets in, the sun rises, or the tobacco runs out. For all these things and for much else, Bloom's hefty volume joins Schoenbaum's sumptuous, long out of print Documentary Life, Dobson and Wells' Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, and Spevak's similarly OOP Concordance (as well as--pick 'em--your favorite edition of Complete Works: I like the Riverside but am open to other suggestions) on my short desert island shelf, which would occupy me for a lifetime on some God-forsaken atoll. Indeed, I love this indispensable, inexhaustible book and puzzle over those who cannot.

In The Western Canon, Harold Bloom stated that Shakespeare, along with Milton, was the center of Western thought. In Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, he contends that Shakespeare, alone, "went beyond all precedents (even Chaucer) and invented the human as we continue to know it." Bloom assigns Shakespeare the singular honor of being responsible for our personalities, not just in the Western world, but in all cultures. Falstaff and Hamlet, the central characters of Bloom's discourse are, he says, "the greatest of charismatics" and are "the inauguration of personality as we have come to recognize it."Naturally, critics of Bloom have taken great exception to sweeping statements such as the above and their general reaction is one of resentment. Individual critical response depends on what particular school of criticism the respondent adheres to, but most often critics and readers alike have simply attacked Bloom, himself. However, even those who denigrate both Bloom and this book have found the time to read and review it to a greater extent, rather than to a lesser.The book, itself, is made up of three major critical discussions by Bloom combined with brief discussions of each of Shakespeare's thirty-seven plays. Bloom begins by expressing his awe at Shakespeare's ability to create literary characters who epitomize the quintessential nature of humanity itself. In Bloom's opinion, Shakespeare shapes all of humanity, not just the elite literati.Bloom does acknowledge the fact that great writers existed before Shakespeare and says that, "The idea of Western character" defined as "the self as a moral agent" came from many sources at many different times. Individually, however, Bloom says, Shakespeare's predecessors created nothing more than "cartoons" and "ideograms" rather than fully-developed personalities. "Every other great writer will fall away," he says, but "Shakespeare will abide, even if he were to be expelled by the academics..." And Bloom makes his point so convincingly that even those who cannot abide Shakespeare (or Bloom) will be swayed.Bloom next turns to short, individual synopses of each play, with each review intended to support Bloom's argument that Shakespeare was truly the inventor of the human. These reviews do bristle with long quotations from the plays themselves but they are always extremely interesting to read.Bloom, however, is nothing if he is not contentious. In concluding his review of The Taming of the Shrew, he says, "Shakespeare, who clearly preferred his women characters to his men, enlarges the human, from the start, by subtly suggesting that women have the truer sense of reality."After the individual play reviews, Bloom treats us to a concluding essay entitled, "Coda: The Shakespearean Difference," and says that "Shakespeare, through Hamlet, has made us skeptics in our relationships with anyone, because we have learned to doubt articulateness in the realm of affection." Bloom, himself, identifies

I appreciate all my fellow reviewer's criticisms about the book: yes it's true that Bloom was opinionated, non-politically correct, and a bit of a wacko at times. Still, he's one of the few 20th century critics who has the self confidence not to fall into lit. crit. jargon to express himself -- he manages to avoid the snobbiness that often accompanies Shakespeare studies. The word I would use to describe this work overall is uneven. Some chapters are so insightful that you may ask yourself how you could have ever read the play without reading the essay and still appreciated it. Others are small ruminations on intersting points which are much less earthshattering. Sure, there are much more "scholarly" essays out there on Shakespeare, but these are all READABLE essays, all well-written. I happen to enjoy Bloom's lack of tight structure. It's like sitting down with Bloom at a coffee house or bar and hearing him ramble on about his thoughts and lifetime reflections on Shakespeare.But remember, Bloom was not just your average guy chewing his cud -- he's probably the most well-read and brilliant reader of our generation. Due to a sleep disorder that he had, he often would stay up all night and would typically consume several volumes of literature in one evening. So, when forced to listen to his musings, there are many kernels of brilliance that make their way to the surface. Many professors have begrudged him his popular success, but by avoiding jargon, Bloom does us all a service by popularizing Shakespeare for everyday readers and making us want to go back and read and reread Shakespeare. At the very least, these chapters will make you run to a bookstore to read more Shakespeare -- how can you criticize anyone who instills a passion for literature? I have read all of Bloom's major works and enjoyed them for many of the same reasons I list above. Buy this one and read a chapter or two at a time along with the plays. It's a book to be savored over a long period of time.

Some readers need to lighten up! Pick from this bountiful and pleasurable book like you would pluck grapes from a bunch, and use it as a springboard to formulating your own responses to Shakespeare, whether in agreement or disagreement with Bloom the Bardolator.For all you readers who sniff about cant and fret that Professor Bloom ignores agendas dear to you -- I must say that Bloom's thorough zest for his subject completely annihilates your persnicketiness. (The book is neither jargon-laden nor disingenuous; I'm afraid I just don't see where it's cant.) Bloom does just what professors of high standing are best in position to do -- they are ultimately the ones who can relate deep subject matter in their fields to the widest general audiences while fearlessly advancing challenging and counter-trendy ideas.Obviously it is impossible to agree with everything said in such a book as this. The book needs to be treated like a trove of juicy lecture notes or a compendium of choice commentaries by a lively dinner guest. This is the venerable professor in full Sam Johnson mode -- unrepentantly provocative, with plenty of barbed responses for narrow or doctrinaire alternatives. Like Dr. Johnson, Bloom here is always unabashedly himself, fully aware that he may make certain others all hot and bothered, and always tossing off evidence of the depth of his readings at every turn.Dive into this one by all means -- get ready to argue with him -- at the very least engage yourself with this explosion of ideas about the Bard's works and for God's sake enjoy yourself!

I've read the book of course, and I've read reviews of the book in various mags and such. I'm astounded by the amount of comments that sound like this: "You don't have to agree with him; what's important is that you go back to the texts", or, "Bloom too often derides political correctness" . . . What's wrong with deriding political correctness? It clearly needs to be derided, and thank God Harold Bloom is here to do it. And, as far as not agreeing with Bloom and simply going back to the plays, I daresay that one needs to read "Invention of the Human" first before reading Shakespeare. In the dreadful cultural climate of 1998, an average reader doubtlessly brings an assortment of wrong-headed baggage to such sublime works of art. Read Bloom's new book: it will not only teach you how to read Shakespeare, but will teach you how to read, period. BTW, for all you defenders of the REAL Western Canon, out there, prepare to rejoice. To paraphrase the Bard: "Now gods, stand up for literary elitists!" --- Genius Rules ---