It seems that some posters here are missing that Moby Dick is very beautiful to read. It is dramatic and startling. The poetry can sometimes take your breath away or, at least, inspire an admiration for Melville's artistry. This is the last sentence of Chapter 14: "With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales." I think Professor Bloom is right that the book is not correctly a novel but rather a Shakespearean prose poem. It's a profound, multi-dimensional adventure story in the form of an epic poem. Professor Bloom gives his insights to make your reading more meaningful. Read it!
I could listen to this for hours. Thanks, Electric Cereal. The comments here for the most part are extremely depressing. Before you start clowning on Bloom or raging against what you think he is saying, consider his great knowledge and appreciation for the work. He has most of it memorized. Someone with that level of intimacy with a book is bound to have some interesting insights, but listen how he doesn't claim to understand it all, and how he has his class discuss the book while he listens. We're all capable of our own insights and learning from the interpretation of others provided our minds are open and a genuine feeling for the work exists. Bloom has an amazing level of genuine feeling for this book and literature as a whole.
Nice try at trolling. Jordan Peterson is in a class all by himself - a steaming pile of dogs#!t that generates its own wind. Bloom, by contrast, has a readily discernible intelligence that makes him uniquely worth listening to.@@Liliquan
Fantastic!!! Intellectually stimulating with so many references to favorite poets my deceased husband and I so much enjoyed reading. Thank you so very much.
''Whitman clung to the Transcendental dream that universal brotherly love would end all strife and create in America the New Eden. This theme echoes through poem after poem in Drum Taps. Melville's poetry, however, reflects a great range of themes from the obvious one of opposition and reconciliation, to a preoccupation with death, to a conviction that law is necessary to preserve order, to a final despair that evil would overcome all. To illustrate these themes Whitman and Melville chose symbols and images of war closely related to their outlooks. Whitman's drum taps and lines of soldiers marching together illustrate the unity in spirit that he hoped would prevail. Melville selected diverse symbols and images which once again reveals his inability to accept any single philosophy.'' A comparison of the Civil War poetry of Herman Melville and Walt Whitman. Huston, Janice M. ... *** Whitman said this (and this can be found by Googling the phrase, "Walt Whitman + Omoo"): ''Omoo, the new work (Harpers, pub.) by Mr. Melville, author of Typee, affords two well printed volumes of the most readable sort of reading. The question whether these stories be authentic or not has, of course, not so much to do with their interest. One can revel in such richly good natured style, if nothing else. We therefore recommend this "narrative of adventures in the south seas," as thorough entertainment -- not so light as to be tossed aside for its flippancy, nor so profound as to be tiresome. All books have their office -- and this a very side one.'' --Walt Whitman, in Brooklyn's "Daily Eagle", May 5, 1847
I love Moby Dick - I've read it many times. I'm happy to hear Harold Bloom's thoughts on it! I came here after watching Orson Welles's Father Mapple scene in the John Huston film.
As an undergraduate studying English literature back in the 80's , Harold Bloom was one of my favorite critics especially the great work he did in British Roantic poetry.
I’m awestruck by the negative comments. Harold Bloom is unbelievable in his depth of understanding of this book. He doesn’t to my mind make shallow waters deep!
I’m a Quaker.Always heard Nixon:”I was raised a Quaker”. When his fellow Q from his Whittier meeting house were marching outside the WH reported he would not meet them. Herbert Hoover WAS a Quaker &managed the WWI relief work , that got a Nobel Peace for it; the later WW2 relief that earned a 2nd Nobel. Richard Foster has a bit of youtube thoughtful quaker.
I lost my physics books and car in the first running on my way back home. I'm on my 2nd running now, the new car is already wrecked and keep it to audiobooks only. I found out school has become futile and switched to TH-cam and Google.
Shipboard life is perfect for getting some reading in. I read all the Dune books, Shogun, Dostoyevsky - standing watches, reading and eating. What a life. It was great.
Thank you for this. Maybe this is well known in scholarly circles, but there is certainly a connection between Ahab, of the Bible, and the Greek hero, Pelops. This connection strengthens the theme of man vs nature, as it was Demeter who ate Pelops missing body part. Read his myth... the first part is likely enough. Pelops, reborn of the ocean, lover of Poseidon...
Thank you Professor Bloom for noting that, The Confidence Man was almost unreadable. I tried. I could not finish it. Too bad. I was a prison Psychologist for several years and was hoping to see a connection between 19th Century sociopaths & 21st Century sociopaths. Huck Finn's father, as described by Twain, is certainly a derivative sociopath who I have re-met several times on several prison tiers in this here 21st Century.
I always thought that Moby Dick was God and that Ahab couldn't live with his hate and vengeance because it was consuming him. If he could only kill God then he wouldn't have to endure his endless suffering and perhaps become God himself. After all he said he would strike the Sun (Jesus) if it mocked him. What Ahab describes of Moby Dick is exactly what he is himself, the opposite of God, hatred and self loathing and self pity.
+budcat7 i always thought dick was an embodiment of certainty and ahab the fanatic... god is kind of a side idea to be certain about not a direct concept in moby dick... its a geat work, but i havent finished it yet...
It appears your personal bias against religion is blinding you. The men meet a prophet before boarding the ship! And the Jonah story is always close at hand.
What a great book, of course you ignore it most of your life precisely because teachers who sound like this, recommend it in your youth, but it is truly great.
Ahh, and as the years pass we come to long to speak with these teachers again if but for a moment, now that life has given us perspective, holding on as we do to one or two or three bits of comment we recall from our youth during those classes in which we dismissed the greater part, only to find that they’d died and were interred many years ago. Bless all of them that tried to reach us then and those who are doing the same now, a mighty and noble work. Thank you, Ms. White, my English teacher at Sam Houston High School, class of 1983.
Joined a course on 'Moby Dick'. The professor sat before us with his copy of the book and reeled off the references to various works in the Canon, and we scribbled like mad. I did not return and did not read the book for a couple of years but when I did, it was without referring to any references. Could barely put it down for it was so gripping. Have since read it twice more and it is up there on my list, holding first place together with 'War and Peace'. Years since, but can still recall the beautiful description of their being able to see the huge whales and their young deep down, because the water is so clear. That and the description of the cabin boy's floating in the water as if in space, because of the vastness of the ocean and sky about him.
"Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large oil painting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched, But by dint of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be altogether unwarranted. But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through. --It's the Black Sea in a midnight gale. --It's the unnatural combat of the four primal elements. --It's a blasted heath. --It's a Hyperborean winter scene. --It's the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture's midst. THAT once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great leviathian himself? In fact, the artist's design seemed this; a final theory of my own, partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads." - Chapter 3 Moby Dick
You can find so many passages in Moby Dick, like this splendid one you have chosen, that are just magnificent prose. I call him the Beethoven of American Literature.
I love Captain Ahab - he gets life - he sees the deep evil and malice and injustice of the hidden reality - the darkness that pretends to be natural, to be white - the evil that must be destroyed if humanity is to find true salvation, true freedom
And yet his obsession with his wounding, his compulsion for vengeance, his boiling anger is what does him in. The evil inside of him becomes greater than any whale. The whale is not evil, he is an indifferent force of nature who acts on instinct alone. Ahab in unable to grieve and accept his fate. So the evil that must be destroyed if humanity is to find salvation is the evil of our own hatred, anger, and vengeance. Hence the sacred teachings: Love your enemy, turn the other cheek, do not seek revenge.
people will write a book about anything if they think there is money to be made. I'm not against anyone writing any book, for any subject, but we have to admit, just like in art,music,fashion,films etc much that is out there is junk, it just makes the good stuff seem even better.
@@ejdiii333 you would have to be entirely ignorant of what was “popular” at the time to make such a statement. This was considered an ill advised literary work at the time. Moby Dick was not well received and took upon itself quite a bit of abuse. While your statement is entirely accurate as a general principle anyone with any familiarity with the subject would know that it is completely inappropriate in relation to this work.
@@SerWhiskeyfeet The greatest literary critics tend to be great authors themselves. Melville and TS Elliot are two of my favorites. If you were asking what literary critic I most trust for their interpretation and critique of a literary works, the answer is obviously myself.
I resent what Bloom says about Jeremiah. I like Jeremiah; he was a good friend of mine. I never understood a single word he said, but I helped him drink his wine. (And he had some mighty fine wine).
@@darcyperkins7041 Yes on both counts. He jumped into everything he did and always made a splash. He brought a lot of joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea.
What readers of classical literature appreciate as heavy prose is largely considered a boring, long-winded, and archaic mode of speech by contemporary society. People have forgotten the narrative power of the English language because its full scope is broader than the modern attention span. Moby Dick is a beautifully written book; albeit that most of the biological information given about whales is based on erroneous 19th century understanding, Melville's use of language is gracefully luxuriant throughout. If one has the palate for it, it's one of the finest novels in the American tradition.
I don’t think the attention span is the issue, as Moby Dick and other “classics” (a word seemingly used perjoratively as much as it is used to extol and elegize) have been maligned as “boring” for a long time. I think most of it has to do with people having varying interests, with language being one of the many. In fact, it is something that is discussed often; not in a critical way, but that is true of most subjects except for government and general societal bigotry, and even these subjects are not approached in an authentically critical way, as the same general points are posited ad nauseaum to either join a group, or reinforce one’s belonging or position, or even rise in the hierarchy. If you want to enjoy literature, you must recognize it as such. Thus, to do either of these things you must criticize it. Language is essential when it comes to art because the latter always has to do with human existence, so language is essential to art regardless of the medium. With that being said, since literature depends on language fundamentally (unlike the “visual”, physical, and oral/aural arts) to communicate its message, one must be even more critical than would otherwise be necessary. To interpret art is to interpret oneself, and most people do not have the stomach for it, I think. Which isn’t to paint those who do as superior overall, nor is it to say that we are perfectly introspective (propaganda exists, and all art is propaganda to some extent, after all): Bloom certainly wasn’t. But even he managed to criticize himself sometimes, even if it wasn’t in every area he was obligated to do so (his misogyny comes to mind: look up the sexual harassment accusations) or to the morally required lengths. TL;DR: there are easier and more accessible ways to self-aggrandize, is my point, I suppose.
I had an English literature class with Harold Bloom when he was a visitor at Cornell in, I want to say, 1966 or ‘67. I did not know, of course, that he would become the Great Man of Letters that he later would be considered. I was a pretty serious student, in the Cornell honors English program. But my memories of him are of a pompous (if erudite) man, sitting in his desk in front of the class, chain smoking, droning on, and occasionally asking unintelligible questions of his students. A great thinker, perhaps. But pretty abysmal as a teacher, I’m afraid.
10:52. “He (Ahab) takes everybody down to destruction, but so what?” He does not. Ahab informed everyone of why they were there, there was no mutiny, no defiance, as much as some may have disapproved, they voluntarily agreed to this venture… he took no one down with him. He took himself down and others willfully followed. He never broke will, did not manipulate, he was upfront and honest about his obsessive purpose. Captain Ahab did nothing wrong
Bloom is actually incorrect about the future of whales from a whaling perspective. Though it is true that whaling still exists in Japan, among other nations, it is actually on a small scale. And their whaling for the purposes of "research," is of the Minke Whale which is an abundant species, never hunted to the brink. The great existential threat to whales is still man, but it is from the fallout of climate change, not whaling.
Most of Japanese whaling is certainly not for research. But I do agree, climate is much more impactful than the declining whaling industry. But what the Japanese are doing is still very fucked up.
Harold Bloom has a genius for being able to talk on a subject and never actually tell us why it is worth study. I mean, after 35 minutes what did we just learn about Moby Dick. Why is it better than say the average Oscar nominated movie? He never justifies "High Art' here or in the Western Canon. It's all him showing off his knowledge of literary history. When he claims "As I Lay Dying" is a cry out of hell like Macbeth or something, why can't you say the same thing about "Reservoir Dogs" or "Death Wish"? What does it tell us about life, what do we learn, what part of it makes us think about the world in a different way?
edmund184 The only thing you can learn from 'Moby Dick' is what 'Moby Dick' can teach you, not what Harold Bloom can teach you. As a teacher, Bloom is object-oriented, not subject-oriented. He doesn't want you focused on what he thinks; he wants you to experience the book yourself and see what you take away from it. "High art" is what it is because it's not accessible to everyone's intellect. Anyone can watch the movies you reference and figure them out pretty squarely, on a single viewing. Anyone can read Stephen King and yawn their way to a simple-minded analysis, which is all King's book are open to. Getting to the heart of 'high art' often requires experience in a broad range of reading and experience, and re-reading a great novel five or six times gives you so many different experiences. Re-read crap-ass fiction and no matter how many times you slice it up, you get the same shit out of it.
I'm going to take a stab at the Faulkner part. Now, I am without a degree in English lit. or anything of that kind. However, William Faulkner is in my top four American writers, and easily an all time favorite. It's not often you experience someone with such mastery on words that the story flows almost as like a dream. In addition, I found the story's he writes about actually interesting. Nothing against his fans, but I could never get into Hawthrone's work just because he failed to interest me. The only two American writers I can think of that came close to his style are Gene Wolfe and Cormac McCarthy.
These things are great because their deepest value cannot be paraphrased. You have to read them. A teacher can only point you in productive directions, no more. He can point you to precedents, to references, to contexts--this is what Bloom does.
Moby Dick is a multi-faceted crystal that creates the experience from different angles. An adventure story, love story, gay lib story (the two men sleep spooning and get married!), a Biblical-style admonishment to be humble, nature poem, and exhortation to protect the planet and its creatures, in this case the white whales which predate humanity. Each chapter tells the story from a different perspective. The disparate parts create the masterpiece.
@@MidwestBuckets Read the book, you sick antisemite--if, indeed, you know how to read without inserting your warped racist garbage into magnificent humanistic masterpieces.
@@MidwestBuckets The only ideology is coming from you. I'm totally authentic. Maybe you should try staying off the neo-Nazi websites and think for yourself. To start, maybe actually read Moby Dick and you'll see that Melville, who was not Jewish, did indeed insert a virtual marriage and love scene between two men. There's no interpretation needed. It's a remarkable book; maybe it'll inspire you to be productive rather than being a destructive force in the world.
@@marccohen1335 Cohen, I do think for myself. That is why I know that there is not one scene, not one, where Ishmael and Queequeg takes turnes sodomizing each other. Melville never worte that in the book. Now people such as yourself like to read into the text what isn''t there mostly because you want to normalize homosexuality among the goyim for the purpose of hurting their demographic numbers. Ofc, there are also shabbos goy tools who promote this nonsense for their own perverted motives. Cohen, you also know men and can be friends with men and not be homo for each other. You know this. But you don't want the goy to think that. That was one of many tools your people used to nromalize this debauched lifstyle in the West. You and your people are the true destructive force in the world-- not people like me. Your kind have culturally ruined the West in a matter of decades; you ruin what you couldn't build. Tiny hats have been a destructive force for centuries. People in the West used to know this. But because of Holocaustianity which took hold after WW2 your people got a pass that will never, never happend again once the pendulum swings in the other direction, which it will because it always does.
@@MidwestBuckets William, you seem like an otherwise bright guy. But take your head out of your ideological arse. Your answer is filled with half-truths, outright lies, and strawman arguments--that don't have anything to do with the subject at hand. Did you know that a Jew named Casimir Funk discovered vitamins, and named them? Did you know that Jews have won 30% of the Nobel Prizes in the sciences (despite being a tiny fraction of 1% of the world's population)? Have you heard of Freud, Einstein (made lasers possible as well as realizing that space and light bend, etc), or Jonas Salk, who invented the polio vaccine? Do you wear blue jeans (the product of two Jews, Levi and Strauss)? Have you ever been to Home Depot, Starbuck's, Dunkin Donuts, Toys R Us, used Google, Facebook, Whatsapp, Waze? All Jewish creations. Watched a Hollywood movie? Have you ever read the Psalms in the most popular book ever written (the Jewish Bible)? Have you ever used a shopping cart (Goldman) or a sugar packet (Eisenstadt)? Have you ever read a comic book (developed by Jews who were not allowed into the mainstream publishing industry)? Batman, Superman, Spiderman are all inventions of Jews. With incredible optimism and true faith Jews have been able to spring back from hatred and devastation at the hands of antisemites for thousands of years. Maybe if you spent your time creating rather than being envious of Jews you might be a productive force too.
Zane Grey, Mark Twain, Melville, are my top 3, Bloom is not on my radar, but niether are 95% of all writers. Reason for me is They all wrote fictional stories, but with the ability to teach you about the culture and thinking of the people in there times. They did not interject how things should have been, or should be, or how they thought they were to be viewd or thought of. But thats why there are so many authors, as there are so many different types of readers.
+James Roach I swear to God: you are EVERYWHERE! Not that it's a problem, but this must be the fourth comment section of a video on Melville where I come across your name.
What bothers me about Bloom is he seems more interested in praising great works than in analyzing them, more concerned with prestige than substance. It's the mark of a snob. I recommend Hubert Dreyfus's lecture series on Moby Dick (also on youtube) for something more worth your time.
Dreyfus’ series is great but so is Bloom. Bloom is essentially a mystical interpreter of literature- he viewed himself as a secular talmudist, who left religion and instead made literature his scriptures. It is off-putting to the modern analytical sensibility in academia because it does not use a historical-critical lens of deconstruction. It revels in the beauty of prose and is not afraid to proclaim its worship. It is highly subjective and bold, easy to disagree with. Just as the House of Hillel clashed with the House of Shammai, there are Bloom and Northrop Frye. People forget that while great works of literature can be deadly serious, this is also supposed to be FUN! Reading is a luxurious pleasure, it feeds the soul, and bathes the mind.
@@opposingshore9322 Jesus Christ. Of course you don’t know what deconstruction is. As if you’d ever care. Deconstruction is treating a text as a text. How does a text construct meaning through its own internal logic. It’s precisely about treating a text as an a-historical phenomena. The only thing you got right is that it’s critical. Critical of the grand claims texts tend to make but fail to support.
Agreed. Thank you. Dreyfus’s 8.5 hour lectures are fantastic, deep even entertaining. I wonder why teachers like Bloom are allowed to speak in an educational context?
I am interested in Harold Bloom’s take on page 7 of Moby Dick, which reads: “Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United states. “Whaling voyage by one Ishmael. “BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN.” In light of recent events-Bloom’s analysis would be of value.😊
Elijah was a mad man who got revenge on 24 little boys who harassed him for being bald: "Hey, chrome head." Elijah killed them with Big Bear and Little Bear, Ursah Major and Ursah Minor, and the little boys became the twenty four stars around the Big and Little Dipper.
There is no doubt as to Bloom being a Yale man. His unjustified penchant for reversal thinking-Ahab in Scripture being not isolated bad when he was in fact abominable, and many other examples, is unimpressive.
I'm not just atheist. I'm so much more. I reject the claim that there is an all knowing and all loving and all powerful god. I reject the claim that there is life after death and your consciousness carries on. Then I go forward and do things. I try to be productive. I try to be a good citizen. I try to work to accomplishments that mean something. All of it without a god or the outdated teachings of the jewish or christian faiths. Lower case for both of them.
@@seanwebb605to quote Melville “for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye.”
@@TrevorTisdaleMusic I have been thinking about this some more. The other night I went out and saw The Whale. These themes were a constant in the film. I'm going to have to really sit down and give Moby Dick a serious read. I'm still more than just an atheist. I reject the claims of gods and life after death. Then I get up and try to have a productive day in many areas of work, life etc. An atheist but not just an atheist.
@@seanwebb605 i respect your beliefs, I was really just trying to be funny! :) but yes go back to Moby Dick! Its just fantastic when you really pour yourself into it.
That is a valid comment! He left Judaism and considered himself a secular talmudist. Not sure it’s imposing his Judaism but rather that it’s such a part of who he is that he can’t help himself. Even though he abandoned his faith, his faith did not seem to abandon him!
^Tribulation ! TIME HAS RUN OUT !! BERISHEET 2023-2030 !! John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.^
Janet Chambless I've read it twice(the 2nd time just this past month)...and yes, Chapter 42 both times. I was kinda just joking around, but I do think sometimes one can OVER-analyze. Sometimes others find deep meaning that the author(or musician, or film-maker, etc.) didn't even intend.
Jeremy Mullins I totally agree with you, there's always a danger in over-analysis and I heard from some authors that they were quite surprised by some papers on their own books!
Jeremy Mullins I agree, in that he is trying to put his personal insight into his jewish heritage into the narrative, I think he has over complicated, a somewhat complicated story. We know it is allegorical, but it was not written for people not to be able to understand his comparisons without having in depth theological training and understanding.
Seriously? How likely is it that someone writing an enormous book would choose an important detail of a central image "for no reason"? Think about it. Put yourself in Melville's shoes. Of course there are many, many reasons. Would the book be the same if the whale was black? Or pink? Or green? Of course not.
I loved it and was riveted by every comment. It made me think, ponder, and meditate on this great, strange book. It filled me with awe and a sense of adventure.
It's hard to not get distracted with all that lip and gum noise between sentences . Smack, klack slurp. Really annoying. Like talking with a mouth full of raw sardines. Grrrrrr
@@TrevorTisdaleMusic I see what you are trying to make a point of but knowing it isnt going to make that annoyance any better. Just saying. Plus he was a bit of an inactive , shit food eating, sack of jelly anyway. Sooner or later your heart starts to get up if you wont get off your a##. And that is the real truth Ruth. Bag of s##t. There are many like that . People that would sooner barf their guts out on a Bernstein diet and treatment rather than watch what they eat and get off their a##. Breaking a sweat is unheard of. Of course what Im saying has nothing to do with his stature in the Literary world. However I find it weird that the West is always trying to make an Icon out of the Jews who arent even very Jewish but are all assimilated away from the beauty and culture of Jewish Literature. This guy is going to tell me about English Lit ? There are others I am afraid I will choose for that task. Not someone who lived in an identity crisis, hiding from the world and life in the pages of books. Great writers are great livers. Not lichen or stone moss.
I have to agree with the other comment this is a horrible commentary and a waste of my time to listen to. Teachers like this cause intelligent people to leave school. With all due respect my father is a professor and my mother was a teacher and I didn’t read Moby Dick in high school I’m 61. I just kept my promise to myself to read the book, I read the Cliff Notes version for a book report in high school. Dr. Hubert Dreyfus says more in 10 minutes than this guy said in a half an hour he made a few good points and partially I would fault whoever edited this is disjointed on top of at all. He may have been a good teacher but life is short and I don’t have time to listen to this more than the 1520 minutes I gave it. It’s really sad.
As often the wont of celebrated names in particular fields,-- deliberately adopting strange and contrasting opinions to what is inherited,-- all for what? to seem of independent and profound judgment? Except Amos,-- the rest are damnable prophets! Keeping with this narcissistic humour of Bloom regarding the OT prophets, Tolstoy made Shakespeare seem one amidst the many handicaps of quill in the genre of drama.
I love that about him. It gets me thinking about where I agree and disagree, it reminds of the beauty of subjectivity and the raw emotion that rises out of great literary works. He has read more than most people would in several lifetimes and he has thought about it deeply. He reaches conclusions we can strongly disagree with just like Pauline Karl with film or other major critics. That’s the fun of it!
I’ve been following him for years and basically disregard him now. He makes a few good points here, like calling Moby Dick an epic prose poem rather than a novel
BLOOM Does not know how to talk, he cant make things easier, may be he does not understand what he reads, he makes everything romanticised, dramatised, you cannot find connection between two writers ..
Thank god he never tried to make things easier. The mark of a truly great educator- leads one out of the darkness not by pulling their arm but by standing in the cave with a little lantern.
That's where you're wrong. No telling how many times he's read it. Bloom is capable of memorizing entire books and long form poems. He has Paradise Lost memorized.
@@onionhuff Dude learn to read. They didn’t say he hadn’t read it. They were saying that Bloom’s comments were so superficial and useless that he might as well have not read it.
Bloom is very old here, but he has always been a pompous, overrated and deadly critic. He has been the driving force behind ridiculing Oxfordians--those who correctly identify Shakespeare as Edward de Vere. You will learn nothing from this lecture except some allusions to other texts.
This brings back happy memories of college and grad school research. Harold Bloom was my guiding star. And I adore Melville. Thank you.
Great critic. Great book.
@@marknewton6984 great book.
It seems that some posters here are missing that Moby Dick is very beautiful to read. It is dramatic and startling. The poetry can sometimes take your breath away or, at least, inspire an admiration for Melville's artistry. This is the last sentence of Chapter 14:
"With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales."
I think Professor Bloom is right that the book is not correctly a novel but rather a Shakespearean prose poem. It's a profound, multi-dimensional adventure story in the form of an epic poem. Professor Bloom gives his insights to make your reading more meaningful. Read it!
It is also, at times, a really funny book as well as a blood chilling one.
Yes. Bravo.
It’s still a novel. Even if certain sections sound more poetical.
@@Liliquan Wrong.
I doubt Melville was worried about whether it was a novel or a poem at the time he was writing it. Those questions are the inferences of readers.
I could listen to this for hours. Thanks, Electric Cereal. The comments here for the most part are extremely depressing. Before you start clowning on Bloom or raging against what you think he is saying, consider his great knowledge and appreciation for the work. He has most of it memorized. Someone with that level of intimacy with a book is bound to have some interesting insights, but listen how he doesn't claim to understand it all, and how he has his class discuss the book while he listens. We're all capable of our own insights and learning from the interpretation of others provided our minds are open and a genuine feeling for the work exists. Bloom has an amazing level of genuine feeling for this book and literature as a whole.
The man is a critical genius, I too could listen to him indefinitely.
Too much sense in this comment for the youtubes.
as soon as i started reading the western canon i could tell the guy's an intellectual powerhouse.
Bloom is a superficial thinker. Like Joseph Campbell or Jordan Peterson. Famous solely because he’s easy to understand by those who don’t think.
Nice try at trolling. Jordan Peterson is in a class all by himself - a steaming pile of dogs#!t that generates its own wind. Bloom, by contrast, has a readily discernible intelligence that makes him uniquely worth listening to.@@Liliquan
Fantastic!!! Intellectually stimulating with so many references to favorite poets my deceased husband and I so much enjoyed reading. Thank you so very much.
Harold Bloom--Thou art Moby Dick!!! I mean that in the best way possible. This man is Dr. Johnson of our time.
''Whitman clung to the Transcendental dream that universal brotherly love would end all strife and create in America the New Eden. This theme echoes through poem after poem in Drum Taps. Melville's poetry, however, reflects a great range of themes from the obvious one of opposition and reconciliation, to a preoccupation with death, to a conviction that law is necessary to preserve order, to a final despair that evil would overcome all. To illustrate these themes Whitman and Melville chose symbols and images of war closely related to their outlooks. Whitman's drum taps and lines of soldiers marching together illustrate the unity in spirit that he hoped would prevail. Melville selected diverse symbols and images which once again reveals his inability to accept any single philosophy.'' A comparison of the Civil War poetry of Herman Melville and Walt Whitman.
Huston, Janice M. ... *** Whitman said this (and this can be found by Googling the phrase, "Walt Whitman + Omoo"):
''Omoo, the new work (Harpers, pub.) by Mr. Melville, author of Typee, affords two well printed volumes of the most readable sort of reading. The question whether these stories be authentic or not has, of course, not so much to do with their interest. One can revel in such richly good natured style, if nothing else. We therefore recommend this "narrative of adventures in the south seas," as thorough entertainment -- not so light as to be tossed aside for its flippancy, nor so profound as to be tiresome. All books have their office -- and this a very side one.'' --Walt Whitman, in Brooklyn's "Daily Eagle", May 5, 1847
Brilliant!
I love Moby Dick - I've read it many times. I'm happy to hear Harold Bloom's thoughts on it! I came here after watching Orson Welles's Father Mapple scene in the John Huston film.
I like the sermon read by Hootkins. Mapple poorly cut for the movie. Does Bloom really understand Biblical Elijah and Elisha?
As an undergraduate studying English literature back in the 80's , Harold Bloom was one of my favorite critics especially the great work he did in British Roantic poetry.
I’m awestruck by the negative comments. Harold Bloom is unbelievable in his depth of understanding of this book. He doesn’t to my mind make shallow waters deep!
Yes, he could never make shallow waters deep because he never moves beyond the shallow.
Philistines. Bloom is a national treasure.
@@MCJSA 😂 big worddd ooooooohhhh
I feel sad when Comments get ugly.
"Richard Nixon was a Quaker. Heaven help them all . . . and us.
Forgive me, I'm not supposed to do that kind of thing."
Hilarious.
I’m a Quaker.Always heard Nixon:”I was raised a Quaker”. When his fellow Q from his Whittier meeting house were marching outside the WH reported he would not meet them. Herbert Hoover WAS a Quaker &managed the WWI relief work , that got a Nobel Peace for it; the later WW2 relief that earned a 2nd Nobel. Richard Foster has a bit of youtube thoughtful quaker.
@@charlesthoreaubillybudd8483 isn’t Nixon and the Nobel Peace in the same paragraph a sick joke?
I ended up homeless with my literature diploma as a pillow, so I joined the Navy only to discover my ship to be my Harvard or Yale college
I lost my physics books and car in the first running on my way back home.
I'm on my 2nd running now, the new car is already wrecked and keep it to audiobooks only.
I found out school has become futile and switched to TH-cam and Google.
Call me Ishmael...😮
Shipboard life is perfect for getting some reading in. I read all the Dune books, Shogun, Dostoyevsky - standing watches, reading and eating. What a life. It was great.
Thank you for this. Maybe this is well known in scholarly circles, but there is certainly a connection between Ahab, of the Bible, and the Greek hero, Pelops. This connection strengthens the theme of man vs nature, as it was Demeter who ate Pelops missing body part. Read his myth... the first part is likely enough. Pelops, reborn of the ocean, lover of Poseidon...
I had a colonoscopy and the doctor told me I had Pelops
Bloom was a gigachad, all the negativity here is distilled and refined cope and seethe
You calling him a gigachad is the most cope one could conceive of.
Yeah, he's certainly cringe and bluepilled.
Bloom was a blowhard.
Ironically he would've probably visibly winced at your comment and inability to communicate in anything other than memes you parrot from the internet.
Yall ever talk with actual words or just in meme code or whatever
Thank you Professor Bloom for noting that, The Confidence Man was almost unreadable. I tried. I could not finish it.
Too bad. I was a prison Psychologist for several years and was hoping to see a connection between 19th Century sociopaths & 21st Century sociopaths.
Huck Finn's father, as described by Twain, is certainly a derivative sociopath who I have re-met several times on several prison tiers in this here 21st Century.
" ... Leviathans passing in the night ... " indeed!
I always thought that Moby Dick was God and that Ahab couldn't live with his hate and vengeance because it was consuming him. If he could only kill God then he wouldn't have to endure his endless suffering and perhaps become God himself. After all he said he would strike the Sun (Jesus) if it mocked him. What Ahab describes of Moby Dick is exactly what he is himself, the opposite of God, hatred and self loathing and self pity.
+budcat7 i always thought dick was an embodiment of certainty and ahab the fanatic... god is kind of a side idea to be certain about not a direct concept in moby dick... its a geat work, but i havent finished it yet...
It appears your personal bias against religion is blinding you. The men meet a prophet before boarding the ship! And the Jonah story is always close at hand.
'I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor..'
Never cared for that image.
The horror...
I have seen that movie and read the book. Different, especially Kurtz.
@marknewton6984 hey yes I read heart of darkness its fantastic... this guy reminds me of Brando in Apocalypse Now 🤣🙏
Kurtz in the book was a business man, not military.
Star Trek's Wrath of Khan parodies Ahab. Khan goes "round and round perditions fire." He wants to slay that big white whale, the Enterprise.
What a great book, of course you ignore it most of your life precisely because teachers who sound like this, recommend it in your youth, but it is truly great.
Ahh, and as the years pass we come to long to speak with these teachers again if but for a moment, now that life has given us perspective, holding on as we do to one or two or three bits of comment we recall from our youth during those classes in which we dismissed the greater part, only to find that they’d died and were interred many years ago. Bless all of them that tried to reach us then and those who are doing the same now, a mighty and noble work. Thank you, Ms. White, my English teacher at Sam Houston High School, class of 1983.
Joined a course on 'Moby Dick'. The professor sat before us with his copy of the book and reeled off the references to various works in the Canon, and we scribbled like mad. I did not return and did not read the book for a couple of years but when I did, it was without referring to any references. Could barely put it down for it was so gripping. Have since read it twice more and it is up there on my list, holding first place together with 'War and Peace'. Years since, but can still recall the beautiful description of their being able to see the huge whales and their young deep down, because the water is so clear. That and the description of the cabin boy's floating in the water as if in space, because of the vastness of the ocean and sky about him.
Indeed, Herman studied mythic/mystic Hebraic traditions, hence Zohar/etc. knowing
at Albany Prep
Let's bring the word 'chap' back into American usage--both Melville and Twain have dialogue using the term. Certainly more chipper than 'guy.'
Bring 'sport' back too
@@gavinbrando8255 replace 'sports'? Yes.
Well said chap!
@@lionelmerbles9375 thanks chappies!
@@gavinbrando8255 Yes. I think we will bring that one back, old sport. Good idea.
"Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large oil painting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched, But by dint of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be altogether unwarranted.
But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through. --It's the Black Sea in a midnight gale. --It's the unnatural combat of the four primal elements. --It's a blasted heath. --It's a Hyperborean winter scene. --It's the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture's midst. THAT once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great leviathian himself?
In fact, the artist's design seemed this; a final theory of my own, partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads." - Chapter 3 Moby Dick
is this also the a painting about the fate of the pequod?
You can find so many passages in Moby Dick, like this splendid one you have chosen, that are just magnificent prose. I call him the Beethoven of American Literature.
I love Captain Ahab - he gets life - he sees the deep evil and malice and injustice of the hidden reality - the darkness that pretends to be natural, to be white - the evil that must be destroyed if humanity is to find true salvation, true freedom
The darkness that pretends to be natural, to be white….
Fine lime you’re walking there. Let’s hope there’s no racial implications to what you said.
And yet his obsession with his wounding, his compulsion for vengeance, his boiling anger is what does him in. The evil inside of him becomes greater than any whale. The whale is not evil, he is an indifferent force of nature who acts on instinct alone. Ahab in unable to grieve and accept his fate. So the evil that must be destroyed if humanity is to find salvation is the evil of our own hatred, anger, and vengeance.
Hence the sacred teachings: Love your enemy, turn the other cheek, do not seek revenge.
There's an entire chapter of the book dedicated to the potential symbolism of "the whiteness of the whale."
people will write a book about anything if they think there is money to be made. I'm not against anyone writing any book, for any subject, but we have to admit, just like in art,music,fashion,films etc much that is out there is junk, it just makes the good stuff seem even better.
Moby Dick obviously wasn't written as a cash cow. It's the opposite of what was bound to be popular
Yes there is, and it naturally fits in with the other humor
@@ejdiii333 you would have to be entirely ignorant of what was “popular” at the time to make such a statement. This was considered an ill advised literary work at the time. Moby Dick was not well received and took upon itself quite a bit of abuse. While your statement is entirely accurate as a general principle anyone with any familiarity with the subject would know that it is completely inappropriate in relation to this work.
There's a whole chapter about what the whalers typically do with a sperm whale's foreskin, too!
This is wonderful stuff. I’m sorry you deleted student responses. They always provoke interesting insights from Bloom. Then he bangs out a book!
Harold Bloom is the GOAT
The goat? At what, exactly, is he the greatest that we would bestow that title?
@@Gckirbydtx the goat at literary criticism bruh
@@SerWhiskeyfeet I was just curious. I completely disagree but thank you for clearing that up.
@@Gckirbydtx For sure. Who's your favorite literary critic?
@@SerWhiskeyfeet The greatest literary critics tend to be great authors themselves. Melville and TS Elliot are two of my favorites. If you were asking what literary critic I most trust for their interpretation and critique of a literary works, the answer is obviously myself.
Lots of little Ahabs out here. Harold SHOULD task you.
His American pantheon excludes Twain ? Hemingway said Huckleberry Finn was the beginning of a specifically American literature, and he was right.
I resent what Bloom says about Jeremiah. I like Jeremiah; he was a good friend of mine. I never understood a single word he said, but I helped him drink his wine. (And he had some mighty fine wine).
You…you!! I see what you did there🤪😳
Were your conversations with him ribbeting? Did he eventually croak?
@@darcyperkins7041 Yes on both counts. He jumped into everything he did and always made a splash. He brought a lot of joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea.
Joy to the World!😮
What readers of classical literature appreciate as heavy prose is largely considered a boring, long-winded, and archaic mode of speech by contemporary society. People have forgotten the narrative power of the English language because its full scope is broader than the modern attention span. Moby Dick is a beautifully written book; albeit that most of the biological information given about whales is based on erroneous 19th century understanding, Melville's use of language is gracefully luxuriant throughout. If one has the palate for it, it's one of the finest novels in the American tradition.
My favorite novel of a prose poem!!
I don’t think the attention span is the issue, as Moby Dick and other “classics” (a word seemingly used perjoratively as much as it is used to extol and elegize) have been maligned as “boring” for a long time.
I think most of it has to do with people having varying interests, with language being one of the many. In fact, it is something that is discussed often; not in a critical way, but that is true of most subjects except for government and general societal bigotry, and even these subjects are not approached in an authentically critical way, as the same general points are posited ad nauseaum to either join a group, or reinforce one’s belonging or position, or even rise in the hierarchy.
If you want to enjoy literature, you must recognize it as such. Thus, to do either of these things you must criticize it. Language is essential when it comes to art because the latter always has to do with human existence, so language is essential to art regardless of the medium. With that being said, since literature depends on language fundamentally (unlike the “visual”, physical, and oral/aural arts) to communicate its message, one must be even more critical than would otherwise be necessary. To interpret art is to interpret oneself, and most people do not have the stomach for it, I think.
Which isn’t to paint those who do as superior overall, nor is it to say that we are perfectly introspective (propaganda exists, and all art is propaganda to some extent, after all): Bloom certainly wasn’t. But even he managed to criticize himself sometimes, even if it wasn’t in every area he was obligated to do so (his misogyny comes to mind: look up the sexual harassment accusations) or to the morally required lengths.
TL;DR: there are easier and more accessible ways to self-aggrandize, is my point, I suppose.
Great conversation
God bless Harold Bloom
God bless Captain Ahab. The ultimate gnostic hero… Promethean
Vonnegut needs to be included in his list of American greats imo
I am however sympathetic alongside you with your concern for the whales and the apparent discontinuity with Quakerism.
I had an English literature class with Harold Bloom when he was a visitor at Cornell in, I want to say, 1966 or ‘67. I did not know, of course, that he would become the Great Man of Letters that he later would be considered. I was a pretty serious student, in the Cornell honors English program. But my memories of him are of a pompous (if erudite) man, sitting in his desk in front of the class, chain smoking, droning on, and occasionally asking unintelligible questions of his students.
A great thinker, perhaps. But pretty abysmal as a teacher, I’m afraid.
truly passionate minds scare the herds... see below
10:52. “He (Ahab) takes everybody down to destruction, but so what?”
He does not. Ahab informed everyone of why they were there, there was no mutiny, no defiance, as much as some may have disapproved, they voluntarily agreed to this venture… he took no one down with him. He took himself down and others willfully followed. He never broke will, did not manipulate, he was upfront and honest about his obsessive purpose.
Captain Ahab did nothing wrong
Bloom is actually incorrect about the future of whales from a whaling perspective. Though it is true that whaling still exists in Japan, among other nations, it is actually on a small scale. And their whaling for the purposes of "research," is of the Minke Whale which is an abundant species, never hunted to the brink. The great existential threat to whales is still man, but it is from the fallout of climate change, not whaling.
Most of Japanese whaling is certainly not for research. But I do agree, climate is much more impactful than the declining whaling industry. But what the Japanese are doing is still very fucked up.
Am I the only one that thinks what bloom is saying is absolutely incomprehensible 😭😭like can anyone actually summarize what he said???
"Brevity is the soul of wit." -Bill Shakesman
ILLFilms
Pretty sure that was Shatner.
"Tedious old fools" - Hamlet
All I know about Moby Dick is that Papa Boner is his dad. And, he probably missed him during the time of the writing process.
Harold Bloom has a genius for being able to talk on a subject and never actually tell us why it is worth study. I mean, after 35 minutes what did we just learn about Moby Dick. Why is it better than say the average Oscar nominated movie? He never justifies "High Art' here or in the Western Canon. It's all him showing off his knowledge of literary history. When he claims "As I Lay Dying" is a cry out of hell like Macbeth or something, why can't you say the same thing about "Reservoir Dogs" or "Death Wish"? What does it tell us about life, what do we learn, what part of it makes us think about the world in a different way?
edmund184 The only thing you can learn from 'Moby Dick' is what 'Moby Dick' can teach you, not what Harold Bloom can teach you. As a teacher, Bloom is object-oriented, not subject-oriented. He doesn't want you focused on what he thinks; he wants you to experience the book yourself and see what you take away from it. "High art" is what it is because it's not accessible to everyone's intellect. Anyone can watch the movies you reference and figure them out pretty squarely, on a single viewing. Anyone can read Stephen King and yawn their way to a simple-minded analysis, which is all King's book are open to. Getting to the heart of 'high art' often requires experience in a broad range of reading and experience, and re-reading a great novel five or six times gives you so many different experiences. Re-read crap-ass fiction and no matter how many times you slice it up, you get the same shit out of it.
edmund184 righton
I'm going to take a stab at the Faulkner part.
Now, I am without a degree in English lit. or anything of that kind. However, William Faulkner is in my top four American writers, and easily an all time favorite. It's not often you experience someone with such mastery on words that the story flows almost as like a dream. In addition, I found the story's he writes about actually interesting. Nothing against his fans, but I could never get into Hawthrone's work just because he failed to interest me. The only two American writers I can think of that came close to his style are Gene Wolfe and Cormac McCarthy.
These things are great because their deepest value cannot be paraphrased. You have to read them. A teacher can only point you in productive directions, no more. He can point you to precedents, to references, to contexts--this is what Bloom does.
Drew Hargrove: Barry Hannah. From the same Mississippi town as Faulkner. www.vanityfair.com/culture/2010/03/writers-remember-barry-hannah
What can you say? Why use ten words when you can use a hundred. It's still brilliant though.
Moby Dick is a multi-faceted crystal that creates the experience from different angles. An adventure story, love story, gay lib story (the two men sleep spooning and get married!), a Biblical-style admonishment to be humble, nature poem, and exhortation to protect the planet and its creatures, in this case the white whales which predate humanity. Each chapter tells the story from a different perspective. The disparate parts create the masterpiece.
@@MidwestBuckets Read the book, you sick antisemite--if, indeed, you know how to read without inserting your warped racist garbage into magnificent humanistic masterpieces.
@@marccohen1335 You read the book without inserting your subversive ideology-- promoting genetic dead-end lifestyles to the Goyim. We are onto you.
@@MidwestBuckets The only ideology is coming from you. I'm totally authentic. Maybe you should try staying off the neo-Nazi websites and think for yourself. To start, maybe actually read Moby Dick and you'll see that Melville, who was not Jewish, did indeed insert a virtual marriage and love scene between two men. There's no interpretation needed. It's a remarkable book; maybe it'll inspire you to be productive rather than being a destructive force in the world.
@@marccohen1335 Cohen, I do think for myself. That is why I know that there is not one scene, not one, where Ishmael and Queequeg takes turnes sodomizing each other. Melville never worte that in the book. Now people such as yourself like to read into the text what isn''t there mostly because you want to normalize homosexuality among the goyim for the purpose of hurting their demographic numbers. Ofc, there are also shabbos goy tools who promote this nonsense for their own perverted motives. Cohen, you also know men and can be friends with men and not be homo for each other. You know this. But you don't want the goy to think that. That was one of many tools your people used to nromalize this debauched lifstyle in the West. You and your people are the true destructive force in the world-- not people like me. Your kind have culturally ruined the West in a matter of decades; you ruin what you couldn't build. Tiny hats have been a destructive force for centuries. People in the West used to know this. But because of Holocaustianity which took hold after WW2 your people got a pass that will never, never happend again once the pendulum swings in the other direction, which it will because it always does.
@@MidwestBuckets William, you seem like an otherwise bright guy. But take your head out of your ideological arse. Your answer is filled with half-truths, outright lies, and strawman arguments--that don't have anything to do with the subject at hand. Did you know that a Jew named Casimir Funk discovered vitamins, and named them? Did you know that Jews have won 30% of the Nobel Prizes in the sciences (despite being a tiny fraction of 1% of the world's population)? Have you heard of Freud, Einstein (made lasers possible as well as realizing that space and light bend, etc), or Jonas Salk, who invented the polio vaccine? Do you wear blue jeans (the product of two Jews, Levi and Strauss)? Have you ever been to Home Depot, Starbuck's, Dunkin Donuts, Toys R Us, used Google, Facebook, Whatsapp, Waze? All Jewish creations. Watched a Hollywood movie? Have you ever read the Psalms in the most popular book ever written (the Jewish Bible)? Have you ever used a shopping cart (Goldman) or a sugar packet (Eisenstadt)? Have you ever read a comic book (developed by Jews who were not allowed into the mainstream publishing industry)? Batman, Superman, Spiderman are all inventions of Jews. With incredible optimism and true faith Jews have been able to spring back from hatred and devastation at the hands of antisemites for thousands of years. Maybe if you spent your time creating rather than being envious of Jews you might be a productive force too.
Of all the American writers Bloom ranks highest, the celestially ornate Stevens is my personal favorite.
Zane Grey, Mark Twain, Melville, are my top 3, Bloom is not on my radar, but niether are 95% of all writers. Reason for me is They all wrote fictional stories, but with the ability to teach you about the culture and thinking of the people in there times. They did not interject how things should have been, or should be, or how they thought they were to be viewd or thought of. But thats why there are so many authors, as there are so many different types of readers.
+James Roach I swear to God: you are EVERYWHERE! Not that it's a problem, but this must be the fourth comment section of a video on Melville where I come across your name.
Wallace was wonderful.
Chapeau!
CAN SPINOZA SAVE YOUR SOUL?
No, but Kerouack can ( maybe).
@17:28 Was "Moby Dick" Melville's metaphorical Ferrari in that regard? LOL, making up for a SHORTcoming, perhaps?
#DickJokes
What bothers me about Bloom is he seems more interested in praising great works than in analyzing them, more concerned with prestige than substance. It's the mark of a snob. I recommend Hubert Dreyfus's lecture series on Moby Dick (also on youtube) for something more worth your time.
I agree. Bloom is notoriously superficial.
Dreyfus’ series is great but so is Bloom. Bloom is essentially a mystical interpreter of literature- he viewed himself as a secular talmudist, who left religion and instead made literature his scriptures. It is off-putting to the modern analytical sensibility in academia because it does not use a historical-critical lens of deconstruction. It revels in the beauty of prose and is not afraid to proclaim its worship. It is highly subjective and bold, easy to disagree with. Just as the House of Hillel clashed with the House of Shammai, there are Bloom and Northrop Frye. People forget that while great works of literature can be deadly serious, this is also supposed to be FUN! Reading is a luxurious pleasure, it feeds the soul, and bathes the mind.
@@opposingshore9322 Jesus Christ.
Of course you don’t know what deconstruction is.
As if you’d ever care.
Deconstruction is treating a text as a text.
How does a text construct meaning through its own internal logic.
It’s precisely about treating a text as an a-historical phenomena.
The only thing you got right is that it’s critical.
Critical of the grand claims texts tend to make but fail to support.
I listened to Dreyfus lectures about MD after I read the book. Absolutely LOVED him!! 😊❤
Agreed. Thank you. Dreyfus’s 8.5 hour lectures are fantastic, deep even entertaining. I wonder why teachers like Bloom are allowed to speak in an educational context?
Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt? D.H. Lawrence got Moby Dick right-- whether Melville knew it or not.
Nice upload but that’s quite an off putting photo tint lol
I am interested in Harold Bloom’s take on page 7 of Moby Dick, which reads: “Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United states. “Whaling voyage by one Ishmael. “BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN.” In light of recent events-Bloom’s analysis would be of value.😊
Dude, he’s dead.
Elijah was a mad man who got revenge on 24 little boys who harassed him for being bald: "Hey, chrome head." Elijah killed them with Big Bear and Little Bear, Ursah Major and Ursah Minor, and the little boys became the twenty four stars around the Big and Little Dipper.
Elisha, you idiot.
The left hated Bloom. He called them Resentful
The word "white" begins with a W unless one is talking about Moby Dick, in which case the invisible H is to be emphasized.
Nature has a tendency to spiral.
So does the Economy!
@@marknewton6984amiright
Wow
Smacking of lips tends to turn me off regardless of how knowledgeable the words issuing forth.
I think Harold Bloom was unwell and the medication caused this
"MAN IS CONDEMNED TO FREEDOM FROM COSMIC MEANING." SEE SATRE AND BAD RELIGION
There is no doubt as to Bloom being a Yale man. His unjustified penchant for reversal thinking-Ahab in Scripture being not isolated bad when he was in fact abominable, and many other examples, is unimpressive.
*smacks lips*
Sounds like he’s struggling to eat his scrambled eggs.
My god, it would be less laborious to just read the book.
A fragment of a longer talk, not well thought out, and admitted as aimless ramblings by the speaker at the end.
Such great aimless ramblings, such a joy to ponder and absorb.
Just littered with adds to start. Now then the proffesor will digress. Yawn
Remove the word "Moby" and the title of this podcast takes on a whole other meaning . . .
The people in these comments who can’t follow and/or call Bloom’s lecturing pompous, pedantic, romantic, etc. YOU’RE STILL JUST ATHEISTS LOL GTFO
like ahab
I'm not just atheist. I'm so much more. I reject the claim that there is an all knowing and all loving and all powerful god. I reject the claim that there is life after death and your consciousness carries on. Then I go forward and do things. I try to be productive. I try to be a good citizen. I try to work to accomplishments that mean something. All of it without a god or the outdated teachings of the jewish or christian faiths. Lower case for both of them.
@@seanwebb605to quote Melville “for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye.”
@@TrevorTisdaleMusic I have been thinking about this some more. The other night I went out and saw The Whale. These themes were a constant in the film. I'm going to have to really sit down and give Moby Dick a serious read.
I'm still more than just an atheist. I reject the claims of gods and life after death. Then I get up and try to have a productive day in many areas of work, life etc. An atheist but not just an atheist.
@@seanwebb605 i respect your beliefs, I was really just trying to be funny! :) but yes go back to Moby Dick! Its just fantastic when you really pour yourself into it.
The dude really likes to impose his Judaism on everything.
That is a valid comment! He left Judaism and considered himself a secular talmudist. Not sure it’s imposing his Judaism but rather that it’s such a part of who he is that he can’t help himself. Even though he abandoned his faith, his faith did not seem to abandon him!
I’m a half ass Christian but respect Judaism tremendously
Isn t he a gnostic ?@@opposingshore9322
Whoa, spoiler alert! I am in the midst of this book, chapter 30 something, and right off the bat the lecturer has spoiled the ending for me :(
dude, it came out in 1851 and you avoided spoilers until now? LoL!
^Tribulation ! TIME HAS RUN OUT !! BERISHEET 2023-2030 !! John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.^
time seems to be continuing . . .
I wish I could listen. Misophonia is real.
maybe Melville just wanted the whale to be white....for no reason.
Clearly you never read the book
Janet Chambless I've read it twice(the 2nd time just this past month)...and yes, Chapter 42 both times.
I was kinda just joking around, but I do think sometimes one can OVER-analyze. Sometimes others find deep meaning that the author(or musician, or film-maker, etc.) didn't even intend.
Jeremy Mullins I totally agree with you, there's always a danger in over-analysis and I heard from some authors that they were quite surprised by some papers on their own books!
Jeremy Mullins
I agree, in that he is trying to put his personal insight into his jewish heritage into the narrative, I think he has over complicated, a somewhat complicated story. We know it is allegorical, but it was not written for people not to be able to understand his comparisons without having in depth theological training and understanding.
Seriously? How likely is it that someone writing an enormous book would choose an important detail of a central image "for no reason"? Think about it. Put yourself in Melville's shoes. Of course there are many, many reasons. Would the book be the same if the whale was black? Or pink? Or green? Of course not.
Thankfully Mr. Bloom seems to be a bit more familiar with Moby Dick than he is with religious writings and context. Haha
Agree
oh, that was indeed boring & pretentious, not that he is stupid or that your literarure isn't really great: it's just his pomposity...
I loved it and was riveted by every comment. It made me think, ponder, and meditate on this great, strange book. It filled me with awe and a sense of adventure.
@@opposingshore9322 u such a naive! 😁😁
@@AlessandroZir I’m a lot of things my friend but unfortunately naive ain’t one them! Good try though ❌ haha
It's kind of impressive that every word out of bloom's mouth sounds pretentious. Doesnt matter what he's saying.
It's hard to not get distracted with all that lip and gum noise between sentences . Smack, klack slurp. Really annoying. Like talking with a mouth full of raw sardines. Grrrrrr
Agree 100%. All that lip smacking should have been edited out. Stopped listening after 5 minutes.
@fish story Forgive me. What does that even mean? Squatting on a bad dragon? Lol
He was on heart medication that gave him a horrible case of dry mouth, try looking into the person you are criticizing.
Ageism
@@TrevorTisdaleMusic I see what you are trying to make a point of but knowing it isnt going to make that annoyance any better. Just saying. Plus he was a bit of an inactive , shit food eating, sack of jelly anyway. Sooner or later your heart starts to get up if you wont get off your a##. And that is the real truth Ruth. Bag of s##t. There are many like that . People that would sooner barf their guts out on a Bernstein diet and treatment rather than watch what they eat and get off their a##. Breaking a sweat is unheard of. Of course what Im saying has nothing to do with his stature in the Literary world. However I find it weird that the West is always trying to make an Icon out of the Jews who arent even very Jewish but are all assimilated away from the beauty and culture of Jewish Literature. This guy is going to tell me about English Lit
? There are others I am afraid I will choose for that task. Not someone who lived in an identity crisis, hiding from the world and life in the pages of books. Great writers are great livers. Not lichen or stone moss.
I have to agree with the other comment this is a horrible commentary and a waste of my time to listen to. Teachers like this cause intelligent people to leave school. With all due respect my father is a professor and my mother was a teacher and I didn’t read Moby Dick in high school I’m 61. I just kept my promise to myself to read the book, I read the Cliff Notes version for a book report in high school. Dr. Hubert Dreyfus says more in 10 minutes than this guy said in a half an hour he made a few good points and partially I would fault whoever edited this is disjointed on top of at all. He may have been a good teacher but life is short and I don’t have time to listen to this more than the 1520 minutes I gave it. It’s really sad.
This guy legit made me sick with his disgusting lip smacking and other mouth vulgarities!!! Grossss!!!
He was ill. I hope you don’t feel that way with a disabled person who stutters.
As often the wont of celebrated names in particular fields,-- deliberately adopting strange and contrasting opinions to what is inherited,-- all for what? to seem of independent and profound judgment? Except Amos,-- the rest are damnable prophets! Keeping with this narcissistic humour of Bloom regarding the OT prophets, Tolstoy made Shakespeare seem one amidst the many handicaps of quill in the genre of drama.
It's a perfect novel with 300 pages of crap in the middle
So is life my friend. But its not crap when you begin to behold even the blade of grass in godlike amazement.
The hypermodern mind parading its ignorance, congrats!
You shouldn't smear your shit in between the pages. Use tp like normal people
I question this man's credibility and opinions. Some of his arguments seem way off base.
Anonymous righton
I love that about him. It gets me thinking about where I agree and disagree, it reminds of the beauty of subjectivity and the raw emotion that rises out of great literary works. He has read more than most people would in several lifetimes and he has thought about it deeply. He reaches conclusions we can strongly disagree with just like Pauline Karl with film or other major critics. That’s the fun of it!
I’ve been following him for years and basically disregard him now. He makes a few good points here, like calling Moby Dick an epic prose poem rather than a novel
BLOOM Does not know how to talk, he cant make things easier, may be he does not understand what he reads, he makes everything romanticised, dramatised, you cannot find connection between two writers ..
Have you read his writing?
And yet he taught for 30 years at harvard Yale and NYU and read through multiple libraries, just stop.
Thank god he never tried to make things easier. The mark of a truly great educator- leads one out of the darkness not by pulling their arm but by standing in the cave with a little lantern.
Bloom should retire.
You should retire!
Well, he's dead, so...
It's not obvious to me that he even read the book.
That's where you're wrong. No telling how many times he's read it. Bloom is capable of memorizing entire books and long form poems. He has Paradise Lost memorized.
What is obvious to you dipshit?
It is obvious you didn't
@@onionhuff Dude learn to read. They didn’t say he hadn’t read it. They were saying that Bloom’s comments were so superficial and useless that he might as well have not read it.
@@lotharlamurtra7924 You concluding that from one sentence shows your stupidity.
Bloom has nothing to say except to extol the value of literature and his favoured exponents. His commentary is empty.
Bloom is very old here, but he has always been a pompous, overrated and deadly critic. He has been the driving force behind ridiculing Oxfordians--those who correctly identify Shakespeare as Edward de Vere. You will learn nothing from this lecture except some allusions to other texts.
Shakespeare was actually a writer and actor from Stratford. Numerous people, including Ben Jonson, actually knew him.
Silly
Silliest comment award
SEE ROBERT M PIRSIG AND THE METAPHISICS OF QUALITY. WIKI