4 ms·

Harold Bloom: Anti-Inkling?

55 points by lermontov 8y ago

miobrien 8y ago
Lindsay's "A Voyage to Arcturus" is available at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1329 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1329.
- vixen99 8y ago
  Lindsay coins terms for two new colors, jale and ulfire but you'll need to be on Arcturus to see them. An amazing and far-reaching fantasy.
- sn41 8y ago
  Currently reading it. Quite an experience. I am discussing it with a friend as I am reading it. Don't quite catch all the gnostic references, possible causes of the weird names etc. but still intriguing.
arkj 8y ago
>Given these swerves, gaps, and evasions, it starts to look as if it was actually the Inklings, and especially Lewis, who got under Bloom’s skin. A freudian twist
- rjkennedy98 8y ago
  Plainly not true. Bloom just particularly despised them for their neo-Christianity, which makes sense as he was a jew, most of whose family was massacred in the holocaust.
  - yters 8y ago
    He also seemed to despise Jews, at least according to the article. Perhaps he just didn't like theists.
  - JasonFruit 8y ago
    I don't think it's as plain as you do. That he despised their religious views doesn't mean they didn't influence him and his work, even against his will and preference — in fact, in a way that accords with (my understanding of) Bloom's own views on how influence operates. I'm also not sure how his family's death in the Holocaust is related to Bloom's view of the Inklings' Christianity; Christianity was at most peripherally involved in that particular instance of persecution, as I understand it.
    - steve19 8y ago
      I think it's unfair to even say "at most peripherally involved". There should have been greater opposition to hitlers rise to power (such as the Catholic Church treaty with hitlers Germany), but that's about it. If Bloom had religious objections it was probably more to religion in general. Maybe, at a stretch, he didn't like that Lewis' wife converted to Christianity before she married him. Lewis' stepsons were (are) Jewish. Lewis kept a Kosher house for at least some period of time for his stepsons. His Jewish stepsons inherited his estate after his brother passed away.
      - JasonFruit 8y ago
        "At most peripherally involved" was mostly to avoid having a conversation about minor religious considerations like exactly these.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - leephillips 8y ago
        “We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity [...] in fact our movement is Christian.” -- Adolf Hitler
        steve19 8y ago
        @dang, please can you consider doing something about this thread. It seems to have dissolved into trolling. Lee claims on his website to be waging a war on religious privilege, whatever that is. I assume that means trolling anyone he believes to be a thiest. Hitlers version of Christianity did not even require the belief in Christ. It was twisted evil propoganda designed to combat the Christian Church which he deemed "negative Christiananity". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Christianity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Christianity
sjackso 8y ago
It's worth providing the context in which CS Lewis praised 'A Voyage to Arcturus:' it's in a list of what he considered the best mythopoeic fiction. The quote below is from Lewis' essay 'On Science Fiction,' available e.g. in his collection 'Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories' > Specimens of this kind [of fiction], at its best, will never be common. I would include parts of the Odyssey, the Hymn to Aphrodite, Much of the Kalevala and The Fairie Queene, some of Malory (but none of Malory's best work) and more of Huon, parts of Novalis's Heinrich von Ofterdingen, The Ancient Mariner and Christabel, Beckford's Vathek, Morris's Jason and the Prologue (little else) of the Earthly Paradise, MacDonald's Phantastes, Lilith, and The Golden Key, Eddison's Worm Ouroboros, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and that shattering, intolerable, and irresistible work, David Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus. Also Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan.
briga 8y ago
>Tolkien, Lewis and Williams actually flatter the reader’s Narcissism, while morally softening the reader’s Promethianism. Lindsay strenuously assaults the reader’s Narcissism, while both hardening the reader’s Promethianism and yet reminding the reader that Narcissism and Promethianism verge upon an identity. Inkling fantasy is soft stuff, because it pretends that it benefits from a benign transmission both of romance tradition and of Christian doctrine. Bloom is a good critic and possibly the most well-read person ever, but he's not a particularly good writer. What does this sentence mean? Does Bloom even know? I'm skeptical

55 points by lermontov 8y ago

Lindsay's "A Voyage to Arcturus" is available at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1329 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1329.

vixen99 8y ago
Lindsay coins terms for two new colors, jale and ulfire but you'll need to be on Arcturus to see them. An amazing and far-reaching fantasy.
sn41 8y ago
Currently reading it. Quite an experience. I am discussing it with a friend as I am reading it. Don't quite catch all the gnostic references, possible causes of the weird names etc. but still intriguing.

arkj 8y ago

>Given these swerves, gaps, and evasions, it starts to look as if it was actually the Inklings, and especially Lewis, who got under Bloom’s skin. A freudian twist

rjkennedy98 8y ago
Plainly not true. Bloom just particularly despised them for their neo-Christianity, which makes sense as he was a jew, most of whose family was massacred in the holocaust.
- yters 8y ago
  He also seemed to despise Jews, at least according to the article. Perhaps he just didn't like theists.
- JasonFruit 8y ago
  I don't think it's as plain as you do. That he despised their religious views doesn't mean they didn't influence him and his work, even against his will and preference — in fact, in a way that accords with (my understanding of) Bloom's own views on how influence operates. I'm also not sure how his family's death in the Holocaust is related to Bloom's view of the Inklings' Christianity; Christianity was at most peripherally involved in that particular instance of persecution, as I understand it.
  - steve19 8y ago
    I think it's unfair to even say "at most peripherally involved". There should have been greater opposition to hitlers rise to power (such as the Catholic Church treaty with hitlers Germany), but that's about it. If Bloom had religious objections it was probably more to religion in general. Maybe, at a stretch, he didn't like that Lewis' wife converted to Christianity before she married him. Lewis' stepsons were (are) Jewish. Lewis kept a Kosher house for at least some period of time for his stepsons. His Jewish stepsons inherited his estate after his brother passed away.
    - JasonFruit 8y ago
      "At most peripherally involved" was mostly to avoid having a conversation about minor religious considerations like exactly these.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - leephillips 8y ago
      “We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity [...] in fact our movement is Christian.” -- Adolf Hitler
      - steve19 8y ago
        @dang, please can you consider doing something about this thread. It seems to have dissolved into trolling. Lee claims on his website to be waging a war on religious privilege, whatever that is. I assume that means trolling anyone he believes to be a thiest. Hitlers version of Christianity did not even require the belief in Christ. It was twisted evil propoganda designed to combat the Christian Church which he deemed "negative Christiananity". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Christianity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Christianity

sjackso 8y ago

It's worth providing the context in which CS Lewis praised 'A Voyage to Arcturus:' it's in a list of what he considered the best mythopoeic fiction. The quote below is from Lewis' essay 'On Science Fiction,' available e.g. in his collection 'Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories' > Specimens of this kind [of fiction], at its best, will never be common. I would include parts of the Odyssey, the Hymn to Aphrodite, Much of the Kalevala and The Fairie Queene, some of Malory (but none of Malory's best work) and more of Huon, parts of Novalis's Heinrich von Ofterdingen, The Ancient Mariner and Christabel, Beckford's Vathek, Morris's Jason and the Prologue (little else) of the Earthly Paradise, MacDonald's Phantastes, Lilith, and The Golden Key, Eddison's Worm Ouroboros, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and that shattering, intolerable, and irresistible work, David Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus. Also Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan.

briga 8y ago

>Tolkien, Lewis and Williams actually flatter the reader’s Narcissism, while morally softening the reader’s Promethianism. Lindsay strenuously assaults the reader’s Narcissism, while both hardening the reader’s Promethianism and yet reminding the reader that Narcissism and Promethianism verge upon an identity. Inkling fantasy is soft stuff, because it pretends that it benefits from a benign transmission both of romance tradition and of Christian doctrine. Bloom is a good critic and possibly the most well-read person ever, but he's not a particularly good writer. What does this sentence mean? Does Bloom even know? I'm skeptical