Much like the narrative poem Venus and Adonis (which I wrote about previously), Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece is an oft-overlooked part of the Bard's oeuvre. There are lots of reasons for this--the fact that it isn't a drama would probably be a large one--but I suspect our motivations, as modern readers, to avoid this poem comes from the topic. Especially in a time when we're (fortunately) becoming more and more aware of the ways in which sexual assault are discussed, The Rape of Lucrece can be a really challenging text.
That being said, it is a really good piece of poetry on almost every level. In fact, the area where it isn't "good" is in the topic it treats: Rape narratives are distasteful, and to speak highly of this one feels contradictory. I fully admit that it's one of my biases at play here. I don't feel that fratricide is too uncomfortable a topic, despite being firmly anti-murder in my morals, so discussing Hamlet doesn't come with it any additional problems. But when it comes to other topics, I'm less keen to jump into the discomfort that the narrative conjures. Reading Lucrece is hard from a modern point of view because of how rapists and rape victims are treated. Things are not good when it comes to this societal ill, despite all of the progress of the past 400 years since Shakespeare wrote his poem. They aren't even better, in my estimation, just different. There are a lot of antiquated ideas that Lucrece espouses as she wallows in guilt and shame after what Tarquin does to her; these are also ideas that modern day victims of sexual exploitation suffer. There are old-fashioned concepts of what it means to be married, and what duties a wife has to her husband (and, implicitly, vice versa); these concepts aren't dead with the advent of the digital age, instead living on in millions of households currently. Oh, the verbiage has changed, true. But the implications of these beliefs are fundamentally unchanged. One thing that is also unchanged from then to now, however, is that Tarquin's act is considered reprehensible by his victim, her husband, her father, and the congregated lords of Rome who arrive at her home to hear her story. The same emotions of fury and rage, of desire for vengeance and violence, flow through Collatine in the final couple of dozen stanzas of the poem that any modern might feel. He doesn't disbelieve his wife or doubt her story, however, which does put him in a different category than many people when victims of sexual abuse step forward. (Look, for example, at the different responses to Dr. Blasey Ford's account during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process.) Another difference between how we view rape victims is that there's a stronger push toward exculpating the feelings of guilt in the victim herself. Life is complicated, and there are usually multiple angles of responsibility and blame in many different actions. Rape, however, is absolutely the fault of the rapist. The (usually) man who does the deed bears the burden of that crime. Lucrece, unfortunately, doesn't believe that. Oh, she comes close, don't get me wrong. Just before her drastic decision to end her life, she asks these brilliant and pointed questions--questions, I should add, that are exactly the right thing to ask, though she presupposes all the wrong answers--of the gathered lords: 'What is the quality of mine offence, Being constrain'd with dreadful circumstance? May my pure mind with the foul act dispense, My low-declined honour to advance? May any terms acquit me from this chance? The poison'd fountain clears itself again; And why not I from this compelled stain?' (1702-1708) She has no "quality of offence" because she's done nothing wrong. It isn't her fault that Tarquin raced from the camp to Collatium where he, despite some of his own misgivings, yielded to his lusts and violated his friend's wife. It's Tarquin's fault. It's always the rapist's fault. But she doesn't believe that--and there's the real crux of the difficulty in this piece. It's not only that it's dealing with one of the most heinous crimes we have; it's the internalized misogyny that Lucrece deals with that makes this poem so hard to read and think about. After the horrendous act (which is not described in any detail by Shakespeare), Lucrece is left alone to wallow in her guilt and shock and dismay and grief. Among many other things, she says, 'Well, well, dear Collatine, thou shalt not know The stained taste of violated troth; I will not wrong thy true affection so, To flatter thee with an infringed oath;' (1058-1061) She did no infringing: It was Tarquin. This is the sort of thinking that makes no sense to me, adding an unseen (to Shakespeare, at least) complication to the text. And it isn't as though she exclusively thinks of herself as having betrayed her husband, that the sin resides solely in her…it's just that it's mostly exclusively. She does say, "Not that devoured, but that which doth devour/Is worthy blame" (1256-1257), but that line of thinking isn't supported in the rest of the poem. As a reader, seeing the guilt she carries makes it additionally tricky to deal with something other than the crime when you consider how many great lines that Lucrece drops as she processes her woe. (In a lot of ways, Lucrece is the paragon of Shakespearean women, with voice, presence, compassion, and a piercing insight. It makes it doubly tragic that such a powerful character is so often overlooked.) Consider, for example, these observations: 'The baser is he, coming from a king, To shame his hope with deeds degenerate: The mightier man, the mightier is the thing That makes him honour'd, or begets him hate; For greatest scandal waits on greatest state. The moon being clouded presently is miss'd, But little stars may hide them when they list. (emphasis mine, 1002-1008) This struck particularly hard during our 2020 elections, where one candidate has over two dozen allegations of sexual assault (to say nothing of allegations about paying off a porn star to keep quiet about an extramarital affair) and another whose interactions with at least eight women constitutes sexual harassment--or worse. Seeing this reminded me of the chilling lines from the poorly-named Angelo in Measure for Measure, where he tells the nun, Isabella, "Say what you can, my false o'erweighs your true" (emphasis mine, 2.4.170). The point of a leader is to, well, lead. As Lucrece argues to Tarquin's intentions, "For princes are the glass, the school, the book/Where subjects' eyes do learn, do read, do look" (615-616). Even in a democratic-republic where the power is derived from the people and shaped by the Constitution, how our political leaders behave gives license to those who follow. Only a quarter of actual rapes are reported, and of that number, less than 1% lead to felony convictions. When high profile cases of sexual misconduct result in no punishment (consider the aforementioned Dr. Ford, who had to get a security detail to deal with the death threats, while the accused got a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court), it gives a disturbing credence to that Measure for Measure quote. I think it's fair to say, along with Lucrece, that "kings' misdeeds cannot be hid in clay" (608). I'd like to tell you that The Rape of Lucrece is a tale where things go right, where the victim is believed and her shame expunged while the villain is appropriately punished. Unfortunately, that isn't the case: Lucrece ends her life because of the shame, and the men who remain seek vengeance fail to do more than banish Prince Tarquin. This is no small thing: Removing the king of Rome eventually led to the Roman republic. In those times, however, it wasn't considered morally wrong to kill the man who had committed this type of crime. The fact that Tarquin lost his father's kingdom but kept his life is a chilling foreshadowing of many future miscarriages of justice. But what of the poem itself? I mentioned before that it's a beautiful piece of work. There are some stunning pieces of wordplay and fascinating refrains, to say nothing of the nuggets of wisdom that Shakespeare is so adroit at crafting. I'll give a couple of examples to indicate the whole. Throughout the poem, Shakespeare employs "contraries" (his word) or paradoxes (my word) to describe the feelings and events. They're used so frequently that, despite being on the lookout for them, I know I missed a few. "Thou nobly base, they basely dignified" (660); "He in his speed looks for the morning light; / She prays she never may behold the day" (745-746); "How he in peace is wounded, not in war" (830); "To hold their cursèd-blessèd fortune long" (866); "Thy honey turns to gall, thy joy to grief" (889). These contraries help draw attention to the images he's creating, helping us understand the extremities that the characters are dealing with. Shakespeare will also deploy repetition to great effect. Consider this lambasting of Tarquin as Lucrece levels curse after curse on his head. 'Let him have time to tear his curled hair, Let him have time against himself to rave, Let him have time of Time's help to despair, Let him have time to live a loathed slave, Let him have time a beggar's orts to crave, And time to see one that by alms doth live Disdain to him disdained scraps to give. 'Let him have time to see his friends his foes, And merry fools to mock at him resort; Let him have time to mark how slow time goes In time of sorrow, and how swift and short His time of folly and his time of sport; And ever let his unrecalling crime Have time to wail th' abusing of his time. (emphases mine, 981-994) This echo of the word "time" gives us a sense of regret for the now-past moment that led to her tragedy. She recognizes how much can hinge on such an ephemeral, rapidly shifting thing as time, and how it can be so elastic in our perception. More than that, she's calling out to future generations--the story, which transpired in 509 BCE, was well known to Shakespeare's audiences, though its popularity has faded since--to remember the shame that she's suffered. And, in my case at least, I view this less about her shame and more about the deplorable behavior of Tarquin. (Of course, I don't agree with the Renaissance conception that female chastity was a physical condition as much as a mental condition, so it's not surprising I view things differently.) This kind of repetition is also embedded within certain lines, such as "And for himself himself he must forsake: / […] When he himself himself confounds, betrays […]" (156, 160). There's also "Whose deed hath made herself herself detest: / At last she smilingly with this gives o'er; / 'Fool, fool!' quoth she, 'his wounds will not be sore'" (1566). The line 795 has this one: "But I alone alone must sit and pine […]". These work as emphases, but often as grammatically powerful expressions, too. "Whose deed hath made herself herself detest" uses the second herself reflexively (we would render this "made her detest herself"), and puts the emotional feelings squarely on Lucrece. Agree or disagree with her conclusion, it's crucial that we understand the victim on her terms: For her, she is to blame for failing to protect her marital vows more fully. If we can't understand that as her point of reference, the poem becomes murky. Another aspect of this piece that really stood out to me was how, in the depths of her misery, she turned to the classics to find validation. Note, I didn't say comfort. That's not necessarily what the classics (or Shakespeare) are for. In Lucrece's mind--and, I daresay, in the Elizabethan/Jacobean mind, too--the words of the past aren't supposed to act as a balm for the woes of the present. Instead, it's a mirror in which they see a parallel of their own suffering. There's a kind of commiserating solidarity in reading this way, and Shakespeare--whose marginalia (if it ever existed) is lost to us--gives us a glimpse into what he saw when he read the story of the Battle of Troy. For a protracted segment of the poem, Lucrece studies a beautiful painting depicting the sack of Troy. Starting on line 1366 and going through line 1568, Lucrece finds in the tragedy of Ilium the similar feelings and parallels of her own sadness. She casts Helen as both a rape victim herself and a "strumpet that began this stir" (1471). The misery of Priam's death at Pyrrhus' hand (1467) gets attention, and the traitorous Sinon (who convinced the Trojans to allow the wooden horse into their gates) receives a vicious attack from the bereft Lucrece: She tears out his part in the picture with her nails. I, too, often find solidarity in knowing that those of previous eras feel how I feel. It ties me into the broader fabric of humanity, showing me that for all of my advanced technology and specialized skills, I'm still merely human. Though it isn't about comfort qua comforting aphorisms or brain-dulling platitudes, there is some comfort in hearing that I'm not alone. "But I alone alone must sit and pine" stops being true when Lucrece stands up and looks into the lessons and the emotions of the past. She seeks out the universal within the specific and finds herself there--in my mind, that's why I keep returning to Shakespeare. I see myself more clearly through his words than any other's. And what words he chooses. I could dedicate an entire essay just to his word choice in this poem--and the way that words are a type of power within it--but I'll satisfy my itch with highlighting this particular demonstration of the Bard's prowess: 'It cannot be,' quoth she, 'that so much guile'-- She would have said 'can lurk in such a look;' But Tarquin's shape came in her mind the while, And from her tongue 'can lurk' from 'cannot' took: 'It cannot be' she in that sense forsook, And turn'd it thus, 'It cannot be, I find, But such a face should bear a wicked mind.' (1534-1540) Shakespeare seems incapable of not utilizing his dramatic flair for demonstrating a person's galloping thoughts, even when he's pulling double duty of narrator and character speaker. Look at how Lucrece lurches from thought to voice to halted conclusion. It's incredible to see Shakespeare so effortlessly giving us the thoughts of this poor woman, all embedded in the rigid rhyme system of the poem's structure, and demonstrate the twisting tumult of her mind. How many of us have had a similar experience? One where we are in the middle of speaking our point only to realize that what we were going to say at the outset no longer connects to the conclusion? To so beautifully capture all of that in a sparse seven lines. That's just incredible to me. And that sums up the contraries of my feelings toward the poem: On one hand, there is incredible beauty and poetic power here. There's a huge amount of pity and pathos that Shakespeare condenses into 1,855 lines, with some gorgeous descriptions and golden phrases. As a piece of art, it's sublime. And yet, looking at what's being discussed immediately reins in my enthusiasm. To make art out of violation is crass at best, even as I recognize that its creation happened in a time when they viewed rape differently than we do now. I struggle to recommend this poem, yet at the same time I definitely want more people to read it. As is so often the case with Shakespeare, his writing is nuanced, expressive, and--above all--filled with the complexity of life. Read at your own risk. In my rereading of Shakespeare, I'm actually doing a couple of readings--that is, there are some gaps in my Shakespearean experience. Those gaps are the narrative poems. I can now, however, strike Venus and Adonis from the short list of "Shakespeare that I haven't read", as I finished the almost 1,200 line poem today. Wowza. That's what I think of this poem. Wowza. Since Venus and Adonis isn't particularly well known, let me give a quick synopsis for those who'd like to know: Venus, the goddess of love, wants to sleep with the most beautiful man in the world, Adonis. Adonis, a mortal hunter, is pretty much only interested in riding his horse and hunting a boar. When Venus shows up to get some action, Adonis isn't having it. She drapes herself on him, woos him with honeyed words, and basically does everything within her not-insubstantial power (she is the goddess of love, remember) to get him horizontal. Adonis doesn't care about Venus, her advances, or her arguments about why he should explore country matters with her, eventually riding away on his palfrey and abandoning Venus in the forest. When morning comes, Adonis is out hunting the boar, only to be gored mortally by the animal. Venus finds his body, weeps and mourns, then transforms him into an anemone. She then retreats to her domain to mourn the loss of the love that could never be. Admittedly, summarizing this story (which is from Ovid's Metamorphoses) doesn't do it much justice at all. The source material isn't quite as lengthy (from my dim memories of reading Ovid seven years ago) as the poem itself, and though there's precious little plot, Shakespeare manages to squeeze about 1,200 lines in this "remake". And, as is often the case whilst looking at the Bard's writings, how Shakespeare tells his stories matters more than what happens in the stories. First of all, Shakespeare uses a popular rhyming pattern--ababcc--in what is officially called sesta rima. However, much like the English sonnet format that now bears his name, this kind of rhyming is known as "Venus and Adonis stanza" based upon its association with our Sweet Swan of Avon. The rhyming can be plain (he rhymes "rest" and "breast" quite a bit) or daring (starting on line 1141, he rhymes fraud/o'erstrawed and breathing-while/beguile), but it's always in that effortless manner that Milton described as "easy numbers flow". Shakespeare, who wrote this poem during the plague outbreak of 1592-93, uses his poetry to woo some patronage from the Earl of Southampton by exercising his virtuosic talents on the page. While we aren't much for narrative poetry these days (or much of anything that isn't firmly lyrical poetry), it doesn't take too long before the artificiality of iambic pentameter in the rhyming quatrain/ending couplet starts to feel natural and comfortable. I don't really conceive of this as Shakespeare showing off, necessarily; it's more of an extension of his ability off the stage and onto the page. What really stood out to me, however, was the reversal of expectations. Shakespeare does this a couple of times in his plays, too, but it's a really sustained look at the wooing conventions of the time. Helena, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, laments the gender roles' rigidity: "We cannot fight for love, as men may do; / We should be wood and were not made to woo" (2.1.241-2). This small aspect of that whole play is the entirety of the tension of Venus and Adonis. The goddess of love comes into Adonis' life and expects that this mortal man to react "normally" when she comes on to him. Adonis, however, will have none of it, wishing that she would just leave him alone. The roles of the spurned lover and the uninterested object of affection are stereotypically male/female. Venus and Adonis shifts that binary, and I have to admit, it's amazingly effective. Surely part of the reason I felt this way is through my own experience being conditioned that men like physical affection and women occasionally dole it out. This kind of thinking isn't exclusively for intercourse, either. I come from a really conservative background--prudish would be too gentle a term, I think--where simply asking someone on a date was almost entirely the purview of the male. Dances like MORP were fun in part because of that reversal--the girl asked the guy. Here's a poem where the most attractive woman in all of existence is literally throwing herself onto a guy, encouraging him to kiss her, to experience her (and some of the ways that Shakespeare frames these "requests" are almost blush-inducing, despite not being particularly explicit), and what does he do? "Nah. I'm good." I think someone who was better at queer theory could make a case about Adonis' asexuality, but that was definitely something that came to my mind, in part because the question of "Why would you not?" kept rattling around my head. Fortunately, the text answers this, at least to a certain extent: He'd rather be hunting, he's supposed to be with his friends, and he's far too young for a tryst in the forest. What stood out the most to me was his delineation between lust and love--a line that I try to help my students understand every year. What have you urged that I cannot reprove? For a young guy who claims he doesn't know much, this is some pretty sound understanding. He rejects Venus' frequent arguments that he is being selfish by not making a copy of himself for others to enjoy--that beauty unshared is a beauty lost. This is an argument that recycles throughout Shakespeare: His sonnets are replete with this concept, and there's even an interesting exchange between Helen and Paroles in All's Well that Ends Well (1.1.105-151). In it, Paroles argues that virginity is "against the rule of nature" and only through losing virginity can more virgins be made, all of which mirrors and expands on Venusian arguments in this poem.
I have to wonder what Shakespeare was hoping would be the takeaway/effect on people as they read this poem. Did he want them to look at gender roles and say, "Wait, why is it this way?" Did he hope they would reconsider the yearnings of the flesh and be more thoughtful in their desires? Was he interested in "natural" copulations (Adonis' horse runs off to mate with a young mare part way through the poem) and wanted to juxtapose them with "unnatural" ones? Androgyny was a coveted aspect for a person during his time: Was he expressing his own culturally-accepted type of homosexual attraction? Elizabethans didn't think a man could be raped, so was this poem supposed to be a story proving that hypothesis (since, despite all of her physical attractions and even rolling on the ground with him, Adonis never gives in)? I don't know. All of these are possible, or none of them. Paradoxes abound in the poem, done (I think) to make the reader recognize the impossibilities of certain situations. The story of Venus and Adonis is supposed to be, to an extent, a paradox, too. And if that's the case, then it's not really something we're supposed to be able to reconcile. However you take it, the poem is fascinating and worth reading. I always encourage people to read more Shakespeare, but the length of his plays can be a bit of a barrier. Maybe a narrative poem or two could fill you up? Pass a pleasant hour or two in the forest with a goddess and her unwilling object of devotion? If nothing else, it'll make you think. With the end of the school year whimpering its way toward graduation, I decided to host some low-expectation online offerings for this week between the end of our school's finals and the official ending of the school year. To that end, I set up a couple of Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, a music-sharing get-together, a Random Stuff I Know™ © ® chat session, a Socratic discussion about David Foster Wallace's "This is Water" speech, and a book club on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I had diminishing returns as the week went on, with only three or four students attending the Random Stuff I Know™ © ® and Socratic discussions. Still, it was a lot of fun to see some of these students again, and to have an hour or so of chatting about something that wasn't curriculum-based.
Today was the day I hosted the book club, and it was a low-water mark in terms of attendance (only one student came) but a high-water mark in terms of discussion. This is unusual: There's a critical mass of students that are usually needed for a high-quality discussion, and who is in that quantity also matters. Typically, if a student wants to have a one-on-one discussion, it's because she has some specific problem or question that she wants help working through. As far as a book club goes, however, a one-on-one session doesn't necessarily inspire me with confidence with the potential of the conversation. However, when the only student showed up, I was relieved to see that it was Becca--one of my favorite students from one of my favorite families. She had finished reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland earlier this morning and was willing to spend an hour talking with her teacher--now former teacher, I suppose--about this piece of children's literature. I'm really glad she did. I won't go into all that Becca and I talked about--though we managed to range from some light religious comments to deep questions about identity and incorporated some Harry Potter and Shakespeare quotes while we were at it--but instead want to focus on the question that is the inspiration for this essay: What is a classic? This is one of our foundational questions that we pose to our students when they come to my school. We're a liberal arts school built on the concept of learning from "the classics", which we use in both its traditional (that is, the great works of Homer and Virgil) and broader (our students read The Scarlet Letter, for example) sense. It makes sense, therefore, that we try to define our terms when we say that we want to study the classics. When I ask my sophomores what they think a classic is on the second day of school, they often give some good, albeit incomplete, answers. "Something that's withstood the test of time" is frequently put up there, though it's an easy enough idea to challenge. (Is The Princess Bride a classic of film? Can any film be considered a classic, as the form is barely over a hundred years old?) We talk about it being required in school, even though that isn't a required part of the definition…if that makes any sense. There are a lot of other things that they come up with, of course, but the picture should be coming into focus: The understanding of what makes a classic is hard to pin down. Part of that comes from being able to apply it to other media, which I think is a crucial component. The Greeks may have invented poetry, but we've other ways of communicating beyond that now. The concept of film, I think, is really helpful, as it's old enough to be a given in our culture, yet new enough to force additional understanding onto the definition of classic. (Can video games fit into this definition? Yes. Do they? Very, very rarely.) As Becca and I talked about why Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a classic, we pulled on the concept that is partly satirized in the last chapter of the book. In Chapter XII, Alice is brought as a witness in the trial of the Knave who supposedly stole the tarts. The White Rabbit throws in a poem (supposedly a confessional written by the accused) that ought to help clear things up. Unfortunately, the poem is so vague that it could be applied to a great many of situations. "'I don't believe there's an atom of meaning in it,'" says Alice (114), and she's basically right. It's imprecise and is not particularly worth interpreting. The King agrees that it would be better if the poem were meaningless, because then he wouldn't have to interpret it. But he can't help himself, and he starts to "botch the words up fit to [his] own thoughts" (Hamlet 4.5) in an interpretive pretzel that strains to get the poem to mean what the King thinks it ought to mean. Becca and I noticed that this impulse to interpret a book of nonsense is a similar sort of action that the King is doing himself. And that's when we cottoned onto the idea that additional meanings of interpretation are what mark a piece of work as a classic. The text itself is comparatively narrow--there are only two epic poems by Homer, and Virgil has but one masterpiece (and Shakespeare, building off what came before, created a dozen masterpieces because Shakespeare is incredible)--but it invites, encourages, and (most importantly) allows additional interpretations. The boundaries of the story do not confine the meaning of the story. A classic, therefore, insists that the ways into it and out of it continue to expand. Time allows us to see what pieces have endured this sort of hermeneutical expansion--which is why we often think of classics as "old"--but that's more of an outgrowth of its richness. Part of how it does that, I think, is via a return to the beginning. Sometimes that's through direct invocations--Frankenstein's frame story brings us back to where we started, for example--and sometimes it's a matter of thematic closure and the protagonist's completion of the goal. However it comes about, there's a revolution that returns to its starting point: Alice wakes up next to where she'd fallen asleep; Peter Pan refuses to grow; Dante leaves the "straightforward path" of true worship until his theophany amongst the stars. This provides closure, but also encouragement: "You saw one thing this time through. Go again, and see what else you discover." Talking it over with Becca, it was this second component that made such a difference. Today marks the last day of her time at my school: She graduates next Friday, and there aren't any more lessons for her to attend. Even my extracurricular get-togethers are ended. Much like a classic, she has now returned to where she began, asking (and, I think, perhaps, answering) the question that began her entire educational path at my school: What is a classic? In that sense, her classical education was an interpretive journey through the classics, forming her own classic in her growth as a human and a seeker of truth. Being a part of that journey is why I love being a teacher. Over the many hundreds of essays I've vomited out and then published to my website without even running over it again for editing purposes, I have written about Harold Bloom, in one mode or another, quite a bit. On the whole, I've long liked his work (with qualifications intact), but haven't put a lot of effort into reviewing his works lately. Now, however, with the cantankerous old scholar passing away this week, I thought it might be fitting to throw my own two cents into the well of well-wishers and detractors who are commemorating and excoriating the legacy he's left behind.
What put me onto this dichotomous thinking was a tweet (not worth dredging up right now) about how all of the laudatory essays about Bloom were written by males. And, to be certain, my quick search for a news report (as opposed to an op-ed) for Dr. Bloom's death proved to be rather tricky, as everyone had a take to give--and almost all of them were, indeed, by men. (This one from the Mary Sue has some nuance, as well as treading over familiar critical ground.) And, being as I am a guy-fellow, another think-piece about Dr. Bloom really would be one snowflake among a blizzard. But I'm going to do it anyway. And here's why: Harold Bloom was one of the best professors I never had. It's difficult to reconcile the impact of a person's work when so much of (in this case) his work is tied up in something that I also love. He gave me the vocabulary of a Bardolator, with a concept of how to read Shakespeare that provided a pathway into the Bard that I may not have otherwise found. He was the anathema that we all spoke of during the Wooden O Symposium 2018 where I presented. I've heard him quoted (and, more often, misunderstood) in casual conversations about Shakespeare. His polemical, belligerent, curmudgeonly character (or, perhaps, caricature) gave me a sense of validation in loving unabashedly what I love. This is a mighty gift: Aside from salvation, I can think of no thing that will better a human's soul than being able to hear Shakespeare's multitudinous voices. These are difficult voices to hear, in part because of the four hundred years of static that makes some of his nuances garbled or missing. But Bloom's ear was attuned to Shakespeare's levels in a solid, committed way, and his ability to express that was masterful. And though he may have missed the mark occasionally (how occasionally depends on how much you've read of him and how much you agree with his fundamental positions), his unabashed love for richness in literature is inspirational, powerful, and worthwhile. Yet he's accused of having sexually harassed one of his students*. This is not something that ought to be swept under the rug or dismissed as a "those times were different"--no, it's still wrong, regardless of timing. The tension of what to do about this--the tangled knot of separating the art from the artist is a Gordian one that I've yet to undo--makes accolades conditional at best and ill-distributed at worst. How much poor behavior is excusable? Ideally, none at all, but in a real world that isn't divided into Death Eaters and everyone else, there has to be some level of forgiveness? "Treat every man after his dessert," asks Hamlet, "and who shall 'scape whipping?" Does the art that's created likewise generate exculpation? It's easier for me to pass off poor behavior as a quirk of personality in someone like John Milton or William Shakespeare--men whose art is, undoubtedly, more impressive than Bloom's--in part because they're far removed from me and my time. Any direct victims of them are no longer hurting; so is that long enough? Oh, sure, I definitely acknowledge the misogyny or racism that their particular works endorse or operate with--I don't pretend their violations aren't there. It isn't a really satisfying answer, but it's the best I can come up with for my centuries-dead idols. Modern artists, however, are in a different situation. Those they harm in their ascent are still living, too, and dealing with the consequences of their crimes. (And a few months away from the comedy circuit doesn't count as penitence or "being cancelled", Louis C.K., no matter how much you may think otherwise!) How long does pain preclude progression? This is not an easy question, and it spirals into larger and more important dialogues than the death of an august literary critic. And that, I think, is part of what makes hard writing any sort of eulogy for the man so difficult. He contributed mightily to the English language, and was as staunch a defender for aesthetic beauty and humanistic value as you could find--provided the aesthetic beauty was one that he likewise recognized. Part of his charm was his belief in his own correctness--it also, paradoxically, was one of his great detriments. His unflappable assurance allowed him to make assertions that people still grapple with--that Shakespeare "invented the human" is perhaps his most visible one--and his sense of unassailable interpretation gave us a great deal to think about. That is a valuable thing. It is no easy thing to do, what Harold Bloom did. Regardless of whether or not you agreed with him, he made you think and stretch. It isn't like the nonsense of other poor polemicals such as Ben Shapiro where two seconds' thought lets you know the guy's an idiot and should be dismissed**. Bloom may not have hit the level of his idol Shakespeare in being a writer who can be embraced or rejected but never ignored, but he still managed to make a large impact. To paraphrase and invert Othello, Harold Bloom wrote wisely, but perhaps not too well. Still, as far as writerly goals go, he will be someone continually debated for at least a generation--far longer than the half a year a good man may be remembered, according to Hamlet. Harold Bloom probably would smile at that. --- * As a matter of principle, I believe Naomi Wolf--and, let's be honest: A crusty old white guy who believes in the unfailing superiority of the white West as a cultural zenith not thinking women are objects for his use? Yeah, not very likely. ** Easiest example: Benny boy argued (with a straight face no less) that people on the coast shouldn't worry about climate change and rising sea levels because they can "just sell their houses" and move elsewhere. Sell them, I suppose, to Aquaman, right Ben? The above screenshot shows a tweet that went viral over the weekend. At least, on Book Twitter. The tweeter (why is that a word?) is Ryan Boyd, a professor, editor, and writer. He received hundreds of responses to his request, many in the thread itself, while others quoted his tweet and gave their opinions. If you've a minute or ten, feel free to filter through and see what others think about books.
A lot of the stuff that came around was similar--and much wasn't particularly spicy--but there were a couple of people who snarked on Dickens (I'm there for that) and Shakespeare (not in my house). Some were lighthearted, like the one that claimed that Homer was actually the Earl of Oxford. Others were insistent on important parts of book culture (how we define what's "literary" or the usefulness of ebooks and audiobooks) while yet others had bones to pick with highly popular books and authors (Harry Potter and Stephen King getting a fair dose of the attention). Anyway, the ones that really stood out to me and sent me scurrying to my keyboard were those that took on classics as a whole genre, even when voiced slightly differently. This is important to me, because not only do I think classics (as opposed to the classics, which would mainly be ancient Roman and Greek works) are immensely useful, but it's kind of how my job works. We're based on the classics and classics, so whenever people sound off on them, I sit up. One of the things that I constantly bump up against is the possibility of ruining what I love. That is, many people have had horrible experiences being forced to read a book that the teacher (or school or district or…) has claimed is a Good Book. And I get that--heck, I was an English major in college: Of course I had to read books that the professor liked and I didn't. Kind of like eating all of my vegetables on my plate, I'd say. And that's what's so tricky about this whole thing. There's value in vegetables--a lot of value, actually--but they're not inherently tasty. There's an acquired taste to them, but once you're in, there's a lot there. Classics are the same way: Intellectually healthful and hard to choke down at first. That's why it's so important for us to be exposed to classics throughout our early life--we're not likely to get into them later on, at least not without some strong motivator (like it being one's job, for example). I think it comes from the idea that reading is only to be fun and enjoyable, with any other motivation for doing it being artificial or from the point. Books are food, and some meals are exotic, unique, savory, sweet, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, or something that you'd like to have weekly. (And, maybe, then, some books are poison, having gone rancid since they were first made and, therefore, need to be avoided.) To push the book metaphor further, a good teacher is like a good chef's instructor: We try to teach how to understand what's going on inside of the meal that makes it taste the way it does. This comes from my own experience being a student in the culinary arts. My friend is a chef and baker, so I've been going over to her house off and on for the past couple of years to learn how to make a variety of foods. One of the things that my friend helps me to understand is why we cook the way we do. We want to hold the knife in a particular position so that we have maximum control. We sear the meat in just such a way so as to seal in the flavor. We let the meat rest, rather than cook up to temperature, to prevent drying out the cut. That's what's supposed to happen in an English class. Reading is a pleasurable experience, but sometimes there's more going on than what a first-time reader can take in. A teacher is supposed to break it down so that it's intelligible, yes, but also equip the students with the skills needed to transfer to the next book, then the next, then the next. Where we come into a problem--at least, from the perspective of a teacher--is when there's something we have to teach that we aren't passionate about. I'm lucky in that I love basically everything I teach, so it isn't hard for me to be excited about digging in and finding a lot to share. There are others, however, whose opinions are "spicy" when it comes to certain classics--sniffing at Shakespeare, for example, or antagonistic toward Austen--yet are expected to teach those books. They're mandated by the school, so there's already some resistance (that whole American independence thing coming through), which I definitely get. One thing, however, is that I don't know of a book that's taught--at least at my school--that doesn't have multiple reasons for its inclusion. If I had to teach something like Little Britches, a book I didn't particularly enjoy, I wouldn't approach it like a chore. I would still seek to find the value in the piece. Often, that leads to a better understanding of it--I know that was the case for me of reading versus teaching The Great Gatsby--for me and the students. If, however, I absolutely despised the book--like if I were forced to teach Tale of Two Cities, I can see how the experience would be frustrating for my students and lead to the kinds of opinions that launched this essay in the first place. This isn't necessarily a defense of classics--if so, it would be a pretty tepid one--and more of a recognition that there's a real consequence for me teaching a book well. There's a lot of value in older works, but it requires more assistance to get there than some of the more modern stuff, which is why I think we should still read--and teach--classic literature. Okay, full disclosure: I didn't get to sleep until 5:30 am or so last night. I'm pretty sure I'm only firing on, like, two cylinders, max. Insomnia sucks. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! |
AuthorWould you like to support my writings? Feel free to buy me a coffee (which I don't drink, but I do drink hot chocolate) at my Ko-Fi page. Thanks! Archives
July 2022
Categories
All
|