That's not to say that I've given up on Marcel, and when I have some more time I hope to try him again in French. But for now at least…he's staying on the shelf. View all 79 comments. View all 18 comments. Mar 11, Ian "Marvin" Graye rated it it was amazing Shelves: It was a very capable French Department. He subsequently undertook a full teaching load for no remuneration, declining an opportunity to move to Sydney, so he could continue to cycle everywhere around Canberra and continue his commitment to the cause of French language and literature.
I still have a few quibbles he translated "petite bande" as a "little gang" of girls, which you might do for punks, but I wonder about middle class girls, even if they were perceived as unruly. However, I quickly stopped paying attention to the translation and focussed on the pleasures of the text. To what extent is sexuality implicit in the title? There is also an English song which might have been known to the translators: On the other hand, given the literal meaning of the French title, the "budding grove" might be a more pointed reference to female puberty, a "rosebud" being slang for female genitalia see also its significance in "Citizen Kane".
The young women are in flower or in bloom , a metaphor for puberty. After the tour de force that was the first volume, it still amazes me that Proust was able to continue writing about love with such insight, sophistication and wit and there are more volumes to come. He keeps finding new things to say, all of which seem to be definitive in their analysis.
Proust possessed amazing powers of observation. In the first volume they were directed partly at his own childhood relationship with his mother, but mainly at the relationship of Charles Swann and Odette de Crecey. The second volume continues the scrutiny of Swann and the now Madame Swann, but the narrator moves to centre stage.
He is an older and greater participant in the action. However, even this statement has to be qualified in the case of Proust. He is still an acute observer. At times, it approaches the lyrical and the musical, as if Proust were composing a symphony or an opera assembled from his responses and interactions. The sensation of touch is not enough. He must cerebrally process the sensation and convert it into art.
An animal can touch and feel, only a human can create Art. Proust worked at the pinnacle of what a human can fashion from their life experience. Odette divided opinion in volume 1, because she was a high class courtesan. However, despite all expectations, it seems that their marriage has been a success, at least to the extent that it has been mutually advantageous, which after all is possibly the least we can expect of any marriage. There are unresolved implications of dual infidelity, but they are back story and not the focus of this volume.
Swann has lifted Odette into High Society, and she is grateful. Odette has given Swann a daughter, who loves him, despite being equally strong-willed, but just as importantly Odette confers on Swann a "purely private satisfaction" that cements their relationship. Her complexion is dark. In volume 1, her beauty was always played down. Now, "she seemed to have grown so many years younger, she had filled out, enjoyed better health, looked calmer, cooler, more relaxed". Her new pattern was "full of majesty and charm". She wore "this immutable model of eternal youth". At the same time, whatever she wore: While Marcel purports to be in love with Gilberte, he is at least partly in love with Odette as well.
Alternatively, he actually wants to be Odette, if only so that he can partner Swann, whom he admires. He uses this time to forget his love for Gilberte. Instead, his attention is drawn to a "petite bande" of "jeunes filles en fleurs". This provides the set up for much contemplation on the subject matter of volume 1, memory and the nature of love, as well as the complications introduced by adolescent sexuality. A Critique of Pure Devotion In volume 1, we learn much about the nature of love from the point of view of Swann, as narrated by Marcel.
Presumably, the narrative was dictated at a later phase of his life. Here, we see him undergoing his own adolescent experiences, even if they were narrated subsequently. We learn what the older Marcel knows, only not in chronological order. Proust adheres to a subjective order of revelation, which in a way reflects the fact that memory itself is not chronological. It prioritises itself according to laws that we might never know or understand. From now on, I'd like to allow Proust's words to speak for themselves as much as possible. You must incite admiration, desire and memory: There is only one person — our former self — who could decide the issue; and that self is no longer with us.
My unremitting effort was directed to bringing about the slow, agonizing suicide of the self that loved Gilberte.
- In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower.
- Tale of Aragorn and Arwen, The - Things - Henneth Annûn.
- Shadows Bloom by T.A. Moore.
- The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible by Harold Bloom?
It was because of Habit that I had become more and more indifferent to Gilberte. Such women are a product of our temperament, an inverted image or projection, a negative of our sensitivity. Though Albertine now seemed empty, Andree was full of something with which I was overfamiliar. Ephemeral, But not profound. Avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne [After and in the Words of Proust] Madame Swann sauntered along the Avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne, Mellow, gentle, smiling and stately, At the peak of wealth and beauty, Delectable in the blooming Summer season of her lifetime, From which glorious point she watched Worlds turn beneath her measured tread, Until Prince de Sagan spied her.
His greeting evoked chivalry, Polite and allegorical, A noble homage to Woman, Since recalled by Proust after noon Any fine day in May, a glimpse Of Madame Swann chatting with him In the glow of wisteria. Satisfied, at peace, in love, his Spirit freed from hysteria. View all 89 comments. Using the same technique of relentless interior monologue, all are coming of age novels featuring sex, taste of one kind or another, and social class set against a background of contemporary manners and Jewish assimilation.
All three books assay the problems of male adolescence - hormones, separation from family, impending career - and their possible solutions. But whereas Roth views these problems as arising from perceived cultural deprivation, Proust shows how inadequacies emerge equally among the privileged in much the same way. And while Roth treats the evolution from child to adult in terms of neurosis to be overcome, Proust describes milestones in psychological and social realisation that are necessary steps to becoming a person.
Paul's observations about vice. What he learns without knowing what he is learning is protocol, how to act formally in social situations: What to say and not to say, how to stand, who to quote, the techniques of assessing relative social standing, and distinguishing the outre from the avant garde.
They too learn skills, those that are equally necessary to survive in a dominant culture which is not their own and in a political environment which may be just as brutal as that of Paris but far less gentile. For the Newark boys, their lower class immigrant Jewish roots impede assimilation into middle class American society; for Marcel, his learned reserve and internalised emotional calculation inhibit his naturalness and makes him shy in the company of the relatively free-wheeling middle classes. What Roth seems to lack almost totally, however, and which Proust emphasises, even in his stylised accounts of sex and class, is the development of taste, the aesthetic sense which substitutes in Proust's work for religious belief.
It is what makes the work a coherent whole. And it is the lack of an equivalent centre of gravity in Roth that makes his work somewhat unsatisfying in comparison. In Jungian terms and there can be little doubt that Proust is a natural if not a well-read Jungian , Marcel is an Objective Introvert, that is he is particularly sensitive to his environment and he tends to adapt himself to that environment rather than to try to change it. He comes to know this towards the end of the volume: But because Marcel has a developed aesthetic sense, he also has a solution to his, rather common, problem of objective introversion.
He has another aspect to his personality which on its own also causes him additional and frequent trouble: He believes that they are either like himself in terms of desires and likely responses, or that they conform to his primitively articulated ideal. This causes recurring disappointment - a famed actress is far less talented than he expects, church sculptures are less impressive than he had believed, a prospective friend turns out less approachable than he anticipates.
Marcel comes to know he does this and he begins to appreciate the consequences. This is a very clever psychological strategy that neither Freud nor Jung ever considered, a sort of pragmatic aesthetics which allows the parts of his psyche to function productively together. Moreover, in the manner of St. Always just beyond our linguistic grasp, it is that which draws language forth. Even more remarkably, it is also ethical. He is able to come to several conclusions therefore, which are rather more insightful than anything in Roth.
Regarding which of a gang of girls to woo, for example, he puts all his newly acquired skills together to picture the future somewhat longer than the subsequent few hours: For the moment it was their flowering time. The recognition and maturing of this aesthetic sense is the necessary next step from Marcel's insights in volume 1 about purposefulness, the capacity to choose appropriate purpose.
The aesthetic criteria he is developing apply not only to appreciating beauty but to understanding what is important, that is, what is valuable. Value is not an economic category in Proust but an aesthetic one; therefore inseparable from taste. And it in taste that Marcel is more than a bit advanced over his New Jersey fellow-adolescents. View all 33 comments. The careful attention paid by Proust to light, to colour, to objects that add colour such as flowers, and to painting and the visual arts in general, led me to conceive of his art as painterly writing.
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower by Marcel Proust
All those elements continue in this second volume. I could easily select another rich sample of quotes that would illustrate this visual nature. Indeed, sight is explicitly designated in this book as the principal sense. It is through seeing that we make sense of our world. When he observes those who have awakened his imagination, he pays attention to the way they dress and cloak their presence.
The choice of clothes is part of the way a person manifests the self. And although the Narrator confesses that he is infatuated with Gilberte Swann, in reality his fascination is with the mother, with Odette, who has changed her life and made herself into Mme Swann. Similarly the decorative buttons are a quote of those more functional which in the past would have been an invitation to their being unbuttoned. Odette works relentlessly at transforming and creating her own image and is completely aware of the transcendence of her self-fashioning, for herself and for the world Because with all this calculated impersonation, Odette is acting indeed as a creator.
Rightfully, she feels satisfied with her art when she conceives her toilette In that composition she can become, finally, a Grande Dame. Surrounded by white flowers, by white furniture, by white accoutrements, echoes of the Pre-Raphaelites, and of the original Primitives, will resonate. She can evoke images in which angels announce a miracle and designate the virginity in a woman, with all its inebriating effect. All of this thanks to the harmonies of a fully orchestrated -- Symphonie en blanc majeur For it is through a Salon that a lady can best picture herself, fully.
Salons are the dramatic setting in which something is created out of sheer theatricality. The guests form a frame around the Hostess who behaves as if she were the main guest, the main actress, the main sitter. So much so, that it becomes difficult for some people to be able to picture a lady, Odette, outside of her own Salon. For the art of creating a Salon is the art of nothingness Industrial reproduction vulgarises that which art had filtered as beauty il faut.. But the Narrator is no reactionary.
And more interestingly, it can also widen and enrich the capabilities of our eyes. Futhermore, it is thanks to these reproduced images that the Narrator has constructed his mental and ideal picture of the church at Balbec before he can visit it. If sometimes his confrontation of reality leads him to disappointment, in this case representation is not at odds with its origin and has on the contrary aggrandized the significance of the original.
UNVEILING the CLOTHES But if we saw that any one person will fashion her or his clothes with the idea of embodying the self in a particular desired way, here comes the artist, the painter, ready to disentangle that conception and model both the art of fashion designers and the projections of a sitter into yet another level of transformation. So the Narrator presents the duel between a sitter and her portraitist, in which they fight for different representation of her image.
And it is in his portrait of Odette that the Elstir enthralls the Narrator by extracting from her that very quality which has fascinated our protagonist from early on but which Mme Swann had covered up. In her portrayal as Miss Sacripant, Elstir has rendered all her theatricality, fictitiousness and double-entendre. Not only is she dressed up in costume and figuring as someone else, but even her sex appeal is ambiguous and elusive. For it is in the painter Elstir that, so far, our Narrator finds the most pure inspiration. When he finally encountered Bergotte, the object of his fascination from an early age, our Narrator felt disappointed.
There is no disappointment in his meeting the metamorphosed Monsieur Biche. And this Biche-turned-into-Elstir presents him with new and unknown wonders. But one wonders at what point in time this Narrator has opened up his eyes. As we read these memories we do not know when the painterly way of conceiving things entered his mind. The novel is full of terms related to surfaces and paintings and frames. Here is an extract loaded with them. Observing Reality and Extracting Truth. The Narrator comes to the realization that talent is neither inherited nor is it contagious. Observing and talking with Elstir, he becomes mesmerized with the painter and tries to unlock the mystery of his artistic ability.
Time and memory are necessary to extract the truth out of the surrounding reality and these cannot be summoned by the pure and cold intellect. Reality needs to be reflected, but the kind of mirror that is capable of reflecting beauty and truth is just not any mirror, it has to be the mirror of genius and it is in this mirroring activity that beauty is generated.
This is a huge revelation for him, because he no longer needs to block obstacles and vulgar intrusions when he wants to admire his Balbec church. Elstir is capable of distilling beauty even out of Dead Nature, or Still Lives. But registering sensations is not enough. The artist will arrange a new grouping of the constituent elements of the sensory experience and this new arrangement will reveal its deeper nature. Using his capabilities as Creator he will conjure up order out of chaos and will produce a new reality.
And in this he is comparable to the supreme creator because if He named things, Elstir renames them. Art Becomes its own Force. Depicted things enter a new realm of existence. They continue to be that which they may no longer are, but cease to be what they were by acquiring this new nature.
With such a transformational ability, Art eventually is no longer just an outcome in a process. It will consolidate its own existence and become a new force. With this impulse it will act in a boomerang fashion and having emerged out of reality it will project itself back and change its nature. These two artists, Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Fillipeppi a. Botticelli and Tiziano Vecellio are an example of how two individuals, before Elstir, were able to elicit beauty out of their sitters and surroundings, thanks to their sensibility and ability to transform and represent bequeathing to us their art and enriching our perceptions.
We see with his eyes how he discovers it through the visual arts and its aesthetics and participate in this Education Artistique. And if the novel finishes with the opening of the curtains in the Narrators room, we shall now close them tightly until it is time to open them up again and let light stream in beautifully and poetically and enable us to continue to see.
And all of this we see through text. View all 60 comments. To me, though, the unifying theme is a continuation of Proust's analysis of how romantic relationships work, which he started in Un Amour de Swann. There, he examined one particular kind of relationship. Swann spends a fair amount of time with Odette, who is very nice to him and keeps saying how she wishes she could see him more often. Without realizing it, he comes to rely on her always t There's a lot of stuff in Volume 2 of A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu , and people see different things in it.
Without realizing it, he comes to rely on her always to be there for him. One night, she isn't, and he suddenly discovers he's hooked. The balance of power changes completely: If you've never had this kind of thing happen to you, count yourself lucky. In the second volume, Proust looks at two more kinds of patterns, where the relationship isn't as clearly defined as it is with Swann and Odette.
He shows how hard it can sometimes be to understand that a relationship has started or ended. With the narrator and Gilberte, he's involved with her in an early-teen way, and then, somehow, things go wrong. He's mad at her, and thinks he won't see her for a bit. Then it continues a bit longer, and he still hasn't seen her. After a while, it's clear that the relationship is over, but it's not obvious whether he ever made a real decision to end it.
He examines all his shifting thoughts and emotions in the minutest detail, and you still don't know. At least, I didn't. With Albertine, in the last third of the book, we get the case that I find most interesting. He's at Balbec apparently it's based on the real-life resort town of Cabourg; I first learned that from a Brigade Mondaine novel.
He sees this rather rowdy gang of teenage girls who go around together, laughing and indulging in various kinds of horseplay. He's a sickly kid, and their boisterous animal spirits appeal to him. There's one in particular that he keeps on bumping into by accident. Her name is Albertine, and after a while he decides he's fallen in love with her. Being Proust, he has to carefully go though all the times they've met, and look at how his feelings evolved in response to those chance meetings. When he reconstructs everything, an interesting fact emerges: It's possible that he met different girls on the different occasions, and the feelings just crystallized out as deciding that he was in love with Albertine.
He doesn't know, and they don't know! If the book had been written 15 years later, I would have wondered if this was an allusion to the new quantum theory: But I'm pretty sure that that was still in the future, so Proust made it all up himself. Conceivably, the causality went the other way: The thought I find so interesting here is that, as Proust shows, you can fall in love quickly, but then there is a philosophical problem: At one point in my life, I was kind of interested in the semantics of denotation and reference, but linguistic philosophers like Kripke, Quine or Montague never seem to look at examples as complex as the ones that Proust makes up.
I would love to know if someone has done an analysis of his books from this kind of angle. From the practical point of view, though, I think there is a useful lesson to be learned. If you fall in love quickly, the person you're in love with may not really exist. View all 19 comments. View all 24 comments. We meet regularly for afternoon tea, going round turn and turn about, although Barbara has now been excused from hosting in deference to her great seniority and some health issues that come along with the seniority.
We have nothing in common except that we are all English native speakers, living here in Germany, and all of us married at one time or another to German husbands. A group of ladies that I meet regularly, and who I would definitely consider as friends, even though we do not necessarily share many common interests. No, but why would you do such a thing at all?
Now I have to admit that I was a bit flummoxed. And that struggle reached a real crisis point later that very week, as I was developing a cold and already beginning to feel woozy that evening. I dragged myself to work the next day, but then gave up and cancelled all classes and snuggled up with the cat on the sofa.
Three days at home with very little human contact or physical exercise makes me go slightly stir-crazy. So when I had the strength to pick up a book again, to find myself trapped inside the head of a self-absorbed neurasthaenic endlessly obsessing over unrequited love for a cold-hearted companion nearly drove me to distraction.
Pages and pages of interiors, pages and pages of nothing but his thoughts about Gilberte or Mme Swann. But then at last! Fresh air and sunshine and the clear blue skies and seas of the Normandy coast! I could breathe freely again. I felt my mind opening like a flower in the sun. When he describes the inside of the church at Combray, when he bathes in the colours of the famous hawthorn flowers, when he ceaselessly agonizes over Gilberte, questioning himself and his motives, questioning her and her motives, pondering over strategies to win her, when he describes his room at the hotel in Balbec, everything, everything is seen with a preternatural attention to detail, to associations, to images called up in his mind.
And I have this theory that reading Proust is akin to meditation. Those infamous sentences that require multiple readings, sometimes, just in order to work out what the subject is in the following subordinate clauses, they demand a certain kind of concentration. And as you read, you develop a certain rhythm of thought, a deliberate slowing of pace, no skipping or skimming but a mindfulness, a quietening, a letting go of the world around you to find yourself one with the mind of an asthmatic man who lived more than a hundred years ago.
And there are those mysterious moments where you feel your mind easing and stretching, new circuitry opening up, new dimensions glimpsed, a feeling of wholeness and integrity that results from a disintegration of self and your own petty concerns, that moment when you move beyond the text and discover new intellectual horizons, expansive, transformative, euphoric.
View all 32 comments. Dec 31, Nathan "N. An Open Letter to Marcel Proust: Sir, thank you for having written what must be known only as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century; a work of genius.
Henneth Annun Reseach Center
Unfortunately, this letter cannot be a letter of exaltation, but a rather a letter of apology. You deserve all the adulation which you have received these past years since the first volume of your novel was published. But for me, I can only apologize. Our minds would seem to work upon different currents. My literary experience has me ensconced in what was written after you wrote, in those works of fiction written by authors who must have learned an enormous amount of what you taught that fiction could be, what it could do.
It is a matter of finding myself more at home in a postmodern aesthetic than a modern aesthetic. If I dare oversimplify the contention over modernism, I have to place myself more in the camp with James Joyce than with yourself. But that is merely a matter of my preference for one genius over another, just as one may prefer Plato over Aristotle or Kant over Hegel or Heidegger over Wittgenstein. Whichever side one finds oneself, one can only believe that one is witnessing the heights to which thought can aspire. I am entirely incapable of disparaging your novel or your prose or your aesthetic, but only find myself traveling down other roads of thought and experience.
In the back of my mind I think it may be only a matter of language. I have a small suspicion that your thought, your writing, is at home only in the French language, and despite the efforts of three generations of the Englishing of your novel, the English language itself may not be a comfortable abode for your experience. Lacking masculine and feminine nouns and pronouns, perhaps your dependent clauses can only land as a clunk in English, so poorly adapted for this kind of subordination of one thought to another. I have heard complaints posited against your narrator Marcel, that he is self-absorbed.
I find such a judgement about Marcel to be entirely out of order. Marcel does not believe that he exists sufficient unto himself, but experiences himself at all times enmeshed with the experiences and recognitions of other people, people upon whom he depends for his very being. Marcel finds his being at all times in and with others. But perhaps rather it is precisely this gap which is what fascinates so much in reading your novel; that it requires an imaginative and engaged reading by which one would find oneself as a reader dislocated into a strange world, and gaining from that distance a new insight into how we can shape ourselves as moral beings within our own world.
And indeed, the further I read into your novel the more convinced I am that the very same difference in aesthetic preferences between us is at the very same time what links those postmodern novels I love so much with your very modernist novel, one of the three pinnacles of modernist noveling. Perhaps the aesthetic difference between the modernist and the postmodernist novel is nothing about this or that characteristic, but is reflective merely of the different shape we find ourselves in living under different conditions and different pressures, different traumas.
Were you writing and reading today, would you find yourself attracted to a fiction like that of Joseph McElroy's? I do feel you would.
And if I could recommend one book to you from my postmodernist library, it would indeed be his Women and Men ; therein I suspect you would find a kindred thinker, a questioning about how to bring ourselves to a respect of the gap between us as individuals, as ones and simultaneously as twos. I do not know at this time whether I will maintain my intended schedule to read your entire novel in I may luxuriate a bit and extend my reading into next year.
But I am convinced that, despite our differences, I will not add to those statistics found here on goodreads whereby your first volume has received over 12, ratings while this second volume already has a mere one fifth of that number. I will not allow myself to be counted among those who have abandoned your work. I thank you for your time in reading this, and I do look forward to returning to your novel in the not too distant future. View all 26 comments. One young nubile girl starts to blend into another young nubile girl who looks at this point a lot like her friend.
One picked flower starts to smell like another from an earlier page; a page that seemed to exist a whole lifetime ago. One young man with mommy issues starts to look almost exactly like another young man with grand-mommy issues. Jul 29, Jared rated it it was ok. I started this book with high hopes. While I don't believe the Bible to be historically or ontologically true, I do appreciate its literary qualities and the impact that it's had on Western civilization. Harold Bloom approaches the Bible from this perspective But--like a wine connoisseur or an art critic--he has the tendency to get very flowery and obscure in his language: You end up feeling simultaneously impressed by Bloom's literary breadth and annoyed at how he makes you feel like a slow pupil.
Don't get me wrong. I don't think that Bloom's condescending. I think he genuinely enjoys what he's talking about and genuinely wants to include you in that conversation. At least I didn't. Still, Bloom offers a beautiful, close reading of the King James Bible that will expand your knowledge and appreciation its history; and will illustrate how it differs from earlier English versions in poesy and content.
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Jun 25, Michael Kneeland rated it it was amazing Shelves: Despise the anxieties of some Christians who bristle at the notion of Bloom, a self-described Gnostic Jew, conducting an "appreciation" of the King James Bible, this book succeeds at being an unbiased admiration of a central Western literary text. Bloom's readings, which sometimes comprise comparative readings of three or four different versions of the religious texts at once , never fail to provide enlightenment and insight into the aesthetic and rhetorical prowess of these Protestant scriptures Despise the anxieties of some Christians who bristle at the notion of Bloom, a self-described Gnostic Jew, conducting an "appreciation" of the King James Bible, this book succeeds at being an unbiased admiration of a central Western literary text.
Bloom's readings, which sometimes comprise comparative readings of three or four different versions of the religious texts at once , never fail to provide enlightenment and insight into the aesthetic and rhetorical prowess of these Protestant scriptures. Though he clearly has a stronger appreciation of the "Old Testament," Bloom nevertheless appreciates the Greek New Testament with something like awe, particularly regarding the Gospel of Mark, where he sees Jesus uncannily more human than in the other three Gospels.
Incidentally, I'm as fascinated by that Gospel's depiction of Jesus as Bloom is. Compare the characterization of Jesus in Mark to those in the other Gospels, and encounter this fascination for yourself. This is solid literary analysis of a text that has had an immense impact on the literature of the West, primarily from the 19th century onwards, and for that reason, this too is a book to appreciate. I, for one, will return to this book and savor Bloom's masterful readings. Oct 29, Donavan rated it liked it. This book works best when it analyzes specific segments of the Bible as literature.
In retrospect, I wish he just focused on King James translation. Professor Bloom wrote this in which was the anniversary of that specific translation. As a critic, he infuses his religion Jewish culturally, but with a fascination with agnosticism into his criticism. Yet, he struggles with doing that as an author and literary critic. There are insight points and there are moments where I toss his book aside altogether. Sep 29, Christina Dudley rated it liked it Shelves: I only made it through the introduction, which I happened to find fascinating and full of promise for the rest of the book.
Then the slim volume sat on my bedside table Last night I picked it up and plunged into Chapter One, only to hit the following structure: I snore, just typing it. I think I was exp Confession: I think I was expecting 1 short passage exemplifying some trait, where KJV translators made particular literary choices, followed by 2 how those wonderful choices have reverberated through English literature with specific examples. In any case, I give it three stars for learnedness what else would you expect from Bloom? But if you already thought the Bible was boring, stay away from this book! I don't know why I read anything by Harold Bloom - he's just a hard read for me.
But I always learn something, as I did in reading this book. Now, about six months after finishing this book, I have changed my rating to 4-stars. As a book, it's one thing - but considering the long-term effect it has had on me, well I picked up this book at a time in my life when I was looking for something to salvage in my relationship with the Bible, and I found it here. Who k I don't know why I read anything by Harold Bloom - he's just a hard read for me.
I have embraced again the old KJV, not for the reasons that motivate some of my conservative Christian friends, but for the reasons that Bloom suggests at least, this is where my mind went - that inspiration gives us a tiny little glimmer of understand of God, The Other, The Holy, or whatever name one wishes to use. This book rescued me. Jul 12, Antoinette rated it really liked it.
The introduction was extremely helpful to me. It is necessary to have access to a dictionary and an encyclopedia close by both of which I used online frequently. If you read Greek and Latin; are a scholar of the Talmud and other Hebrew writings; intimately familiar with a number of ancient and modern poets; have already read much of the Old Testament in the the KJB version; and are a Shakespeare scholar, these tools are not necessary. I am none of the above but that did not decrease my enjoyment The introduction was extremely helpful to me.
I am none of the above but that did not decrease my enjoyment of the book. I took from it what I could, did a lot of research and feel Glad that I spent some time doing so. My ignorance was no excuse for not enjoying Bloom's writing which is sprinkled with both humor and personal opinions written for the average Job or Ruth. Dec 31, Jason Myers rated it liked it. This is a great source for research on the topic, but I would not recommend it for general study. Bloom is certainly critical and not very appreciative. The New Testament section is much too brief.
I felt that it was more of a literary appreciation of the Tyndale Bible than the KJV which used much of Tyndale's work. KJV-only types will be challenged if they are attracted to the book due to the title. Apr 25, James Coon rated it liked it. This appreciation of the King James Bible does not hang together as well as I had hoped it would. Even so, it is well worth reading, especially to gain insight into how the KJB has influenced our thinking, despite being a rather poor translation of much of the original material. An important read for those who view the KLB as literature. Mar 01, John rated it it was amazing.
Mind-boggling amounts of insight into the architecture, authorship and trivia of the Christian Bible. This guy is able to compare several Bibles in English to the original. Erudition beyond erudition and about erudition, but its all very readable with a great deal of insight. This is really one that we should call a great book. Jul 09, Benjamin rated it did not like it Shelves: Sad that after 60 years of writing about literature, that a book "I have been writing all my life" is so tepid, contains so little original thought, and is wrought throughout with statements such as "Shakespeare is my scripture, but I cannot believe in the Bible.
Dec 30, Charlie rated it did not like it. I enjoy Harold bloom, even if I cannot relate to what he is saying nor agree with it. With few scattered exceptions I found this book to be a complete bore, without passion and without effort. May 11, Paul Gatz rated it it was ok Shelves: And why do you call me by that name? But if you are not she, then you walk in her likeness. Though maybe my doom will be not unlike hers. But who are you? Yet I marvel at Elrond and your brothers; for though I have dwelt in this house from childhood, I have heard no word of you. How comes it that we have never met before?
Surely your father has not kept you locked in his hoard? I have but lately returned to visit my father again. It is many years since I walked in Imladris. But Arwen looked in his eyes and said: For the children of Elrond have the life of the Eldar. For this lady is the noblest and fairest that now walks the earth. And it is not fit that mortal should wed with the Elf-kin.
The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible
Therefore I am afraid; for without the good will of Master Elrond the Heirs of Isildur will soon come to an end. But I do not think that you will have the good will of Elrond in this matter. One day, therefore, before the fall of the year he called Aragorn to his chamber, and he said: A great doom awaits you, either to rise above the height of all your fathers since the days of Elendil , or to fall into darkness with all that is left of your kin.
Many years of trial lie before you. You shall neither have wife, nor bind any woman to you in troth, until your time comes and you are found worthy of it. But I do not speak of my daughter alone. You shall be betrothed to no man's child as yet. She is too far above you. And so, I think, it may well seem to her. But even if it were not so, and her heart turned towards you, I should still be grieved because of the doom that is laid on us.
Such is my fate. Master Elrond, the years of your abiding run short at last, and the choice must soon be laid on your children, to part either with you or with Middle-earth. But there will be no choice before Arwen, my beloved, unless you, Aragorn, Arathorn's son, come between us and bring one of us, you or me, to a bitter parting beyond the end of the world. You do not know yet what you desire of me. We will speak no more of this until many have passed. The days darken, and much evil is to come.
For nearly thirty years he laboured in the cause against Sauron ; and he became a friend of Gandalf the Wise , from whom he gained much wisdom. With him he made many perilous journeys, but as the years wore on he went more often alone.