We all fear loneliness, madness, dying. Shakespeare and Walt Whitman, Leopardi and Hart Crane will not cure those fears. And yet these poets bring us fire and light.
Reading the very best writers—let us say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy—is not going to make us better citizens. Art is perfectly useless, according to the sublime Oscar Wilde, who was right about everything. He also told us that all bad poetry is sincere. Had I the power to do so, I would command that these words be engraved above every gate at every university, so that each student might ponder the splendor of the insight.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Reading great literature may not improve civic duties, but it enriches the human experience.
Harold Bloom reflects on the value of reading classic literature by authors such as Homer and Shakespeare, suggesting that while such readings may not directly contribute to being better citizens, they are invaluable for personal and artistic enrichment. He quotes Oscar Wilde to emphasize that art, which may seem useless in a practical sense, nonetheless holds profound beauty and significance that influences our understanding of life. Bloom advocates for the recognition of this insight, proposing that it should be a guiding principle in education.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a commencement speech to emphasize the importance of the arts in education.
More from Harold Bloom
All quotes →I am naive enough to read incessantly because I cannot, on my own, get to know enough people profoundly enough.
Reading well is one of the greatest pleasures that solitude can afford you.
Socrates, in Plato, formulates ideas of order: the Iliad, like Shakespeare, knows that a violent disorder is a great order.
I have never believed that the critic is the rival of the poet, but I do believe that criticism is a genre of literature or it does not exist.
Everyone wants a prodigy to fail; it makes our mediocrity more bearable.
Similar quotes
You have to learn a few things, which you do along the way, but basically, poetry is a matter of the ear. Iambic pentameters or what constitutes a stanza comes naturally - your ears will know.
Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand - a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods - or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.
Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o'clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.
If you have so earth-creeping a mind that it cannot lift itself up to look to the sky of poetry... thus much curse I must send you, in the behalf of all poets, that while you live, you live in love, and never get favour for lacking skill of a sonnet; and, when you die, your memory die from the earth for want of an epitaph.
From dancing around to Michael Jackson and Madonna as a kid to having my mind blown by the first sounds of punk and indie rock, to getting to play my own songs and have people listen, music is what got me through.
Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.