Shakespeare is considered the most orignal writer we have every known. Harold Bloom is a Professor at yale who has written a lot of books. I have read a lot of his books and find him to be interesting and at times a little frustrating.
His thoughts about Shakespeare cover a lot of ways of looking at this author. He says his greatest originality is in the representation of character. He says that no other writer has ever had anything like Shakespeare's resources of language. He adds:
The desire to write greatly is
the desire to be "Elsewhere"
This scene from Hamlet was so interesting. For some reason Shakespeare works and word are good both as a play and to read. I mostly prefer the plays. Cedar City Utah has a Shakespeare Festival every summer and that is as good as it gets I think.
Be thou a spirit of health or a goblin damn’d
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy interests wicked or charitable
(Act I, Scene IV, Lines 40-43).
Language for a book or a play and
literature, according to Bloom, is not merely "language"; it is also the "will to figuration"
Both Stephen King and Harold Bloom wrote about writing as building on past experiences (from memory) but adding from imagination. Becoming different from oneself. Something tied to ones own originality but resulting in something different.
Something Elsewhere
( Bloom finds that Shakespeare's originality in the whole of the history of philosophy is comparable to none else)
Whether that conclusion is "wicked or charitable" depends on what else you belive in, I would suggest.
No comments:
Post a Comment