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BOOK REVIEW (July 2016)
ON THE ANXIETY OF INFLUENCE
Harold Bloom (1997). The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press), ISBN 978-0-19-511221-4
INTRODUCTION
What exactly is the scope of the Bloomian theory of influence? Is it merely a tool for poets
and literary critics to think with? Or, is Bloomian poetics only about poetry in the
‘first instance’ - unless by poetry we mean any creative endeavour which involves the
relationship between, as T. S. Eliot might put it, ‘tradition’ and the ‘individual
talent’? In other words, is it about (in Bloom’s own idiom), the creative relationship
between the precursor text and the ephebe in any area of expertise where the latter
experiences a sense of belatedness? 1 The early response to Bloomian poetics focused
mainly on the poetic dimensions; that is, on the relationship between strong poets in
the post-Miltonic tradition of Anglo-American poetry though it was realized later on
that there is no specific reason to restrict the theory of influence to the history of
poetry.2 Bloomian poetics only makes ‘explicit’ in the history of poetry what remains
1 Harold Bloom’s pre-occupation with belatedness is shared by Theodor Adorno and
Edward W. Said. See, for instance, Edward W. Said (2006, 2007). ‘Timeliness and Lateness,’
On Late Style: Music and Literature Against the Grain (London: Bloomsbury), pp. 3-24.
2 For an application of Bloomian poetics to literary criticism, see Harold Bloom (2004). The
Art of Reading Poetry (New York: Perennial) and Harold Bloom (1975, 2003). A Map of
Misreading (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press). Bloom provides
interpretations of a number of poets including John Milton, Robert Browning, Ralph
Emerson, and Wallace Stevens in this book. Bloom’s interpretation or mapping of the six
revisionary ratios on John Milton’s Lycidas in the opening pages of the book (pp. xiii-xxiii) is
especially instructive for those encountering Bloomian poetics for the first time. See the
culmination of this theme in Harold Bloom (2011). The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a

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‘implicit’ in less creative areas. The term ‘creative’ is used here to mean the extent to
which literary figuration is at stake in constructing a text.3 Bloom himself has
suggested that the relationship between the analysts Sigmund Freud and Jacques
Lacan in the history of psychoanalysis can be thought through in terms of his
revisionary ratios that mediate the figural relationship between poems; the anxiety
that goes into the making of a poem; and, more specifically, in the relationship
between a theory of anxiety and a theory of influence that constitutes Bloomian
poetics. Lacan’s attempts to ‘return to Freud’ in terms of the theory and practice of
psychoanalysis in France under the aegis of the ‘French Freud;’ then, is related to the
larger question of whether the precursor text went far enough. Unlike most ephebes
who argue that the precursor text did not go far enough, Lacan seems to be arguing
that Freud went much further than it might be possible for those who came in his
wake to go in their attempts to represent the unconscious. The fantasy of decisively
getting ahead of Freud is based on not understanding the textual dimensions of his
theoretical achievements. Furthermore, the question of what Lacan meant by the
‘poetics of the Freudian corpus’ will make more sense if we refer it to Bloomian
poetics since the Lacanian assumption is that it is not possible to avoid being flooded
by the Freudian text.4 Lacan’s comments on the ‘poetics of Hegel’ and La Bruyère
Way of Life (New Haven and London: Yale University Press). My review of Bloom’s book is
available online as Shiva Kumar Srinivasan (2014). titled ‘Bloomian Poetics,’ at:
http://www.jltonline.de/index.php/reviews/issue/current
3 For an introduction to poetics in literary theory, see Aristotle’s Poetics, translated by
Malcolm Heath (London: Penguin Books, 1996). Readers interested in Bloom’s
preoccupation with the sublime and the counter-sublime should first consult Longinus ‘On
the Sublime,’ translated by T.S. Dorsch in Classical Literary Criticism (London: Penguin
Books, 1965), pp. 97-158. For an incorporation of the poetics of Longinus into British
romantic theory, see M.H. Abrams (1953, 1971). The Mirror and the Lamp (Oxford: Oxford
University Press), pp. 72-77 and 132-137. Thinking through the differences between
Aristotle’s work on poetics and rhetoric is a useful preparation for those who want to
engage seriously with Bloomian poetics. See Aristotle’s The Art of Rhetoric, translated by
Hugh Lawson-Tancred (London: Penguin Books, 1991, 2004).
4 For Bloom’s polemical positions on psychoanalytic literary criticism, see Harold Bloom
(1994). ‘Freud: A Shakespearean Reading,’ The Western Canon: The Books and Schools of the
Ages (New York: Riverhead Books), pp. 345-366. For a background to these themes in
psychoanalytic literary criticism, see Sigmund Freud (1990). Art and Literature, translated by
James Strachey and edited by Albert Dickson, Vol. 14 (London: Penguin Books). See also

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will however be of interest to those who are looking for Lacan’s own anxiety as a
belated reader of Sophocles’ Antigone. It is this belatedness that Lacan denies (in order
to clear space for himself in the history of Sophocles criticism) when he says: ‘La
Bruyère said that we have arrived too late in a world that is too old in which
everything has already been said. It is not something I’ve noticed. As far as the
action of tragedy is concerned, there’s still a lot to be said. It’s far from being
resolved.’5 Lacan accords priority to Freud as a precursor but not to La Bruyère.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BLOOMIAN POETICS
The usefulness of Bloomian poetics is not reducible to what Harold Bloom himself
does with it in his practical criticism of the Romantic poets of the Anglo-American
tradition. That is why Bloomian poetics is useful in business and law schools as
well.6 So, for instance, the relationship between Ben Bernanke and his precursor
Benjamin Strong of the New York Federal Reserve is worthy of study from the point
of view of Bloomian poetics.7 I have good reason to believe that we will not be able
to understand Bernanke’s approach to ‘unconventional monetary policy’ unless we
study his relationship to influential precursors like Benjamin Strong and the English
theorist of central banking, Walter Bagehot. Bernanke, like the typical Bloomian
ephebe, is battling a sense of belatedness within conventional monetary policy; this
is bound to be the case if he is a ‘consequentialist’ by temperament as a policymaker.
He is basically arguing that his precursors in central banking or the Federal Reserve
Jacques Lacan (1953). The Language of the Self: The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis,
translated by Anthony Wilden (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1968), pp. 81-83, for his comments on ‘the poetics of the Freudian corpus.’
5 See, for instance, Jacques Lacan ‘The Splendor of Antigone,’ The Ethics of Psychoanalysis
1959-1960: The Seminar of Jaques Lacan, translated by Dennis Porter, and edited by Jacques-
Alain Miller (London: Tavistock/Routledge), pp. 249-250. The plays of Sophocles are
available in translation by Paul Roche in Sophocles: The Complete Plays (New York: The Signet
Classics, 2001).
6 See Kenji Yoshino (1994). ‘What’s Past is Prologue: Precedent in Law and Literature,’ Yale
Law Journal, Vol. 104, pp. 471-510. See also Shiva Kumar Srinivasan (2016). ‘Bloomian Poetics
In Law Schools,’ available at: www.slideshare.net/.../bloomian-poetics-in-law-schools
7 See, for instance R. W. Hafer (2005). ‘Strong, Benjamin (1872-1928),’ The Federal Reserve
System: An Encyclopaedia (Westport, CT and London), pp. 361-362.

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System did not go far enough in thinking through the implications of monetary
policy; the financial crisis of 2007-08 gave Bernanke an unexpected opportunity to do
precisely that. A number of additional examples can be adduced for this type of
study; so, for instance, I think Chief Justice John Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court
is working-through the anxiety of influence induced by an important precursor in
Justice Robert Jackson; Judge Richard Posner of the Court of Appeals, Seventh
Circuit, Chicago is working-through the anxiety of influence relating to Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and so on.8 The most recent example that I can think of
is the jurist Noah Feldman’s preoccupation with the ‘scorpions’ of the Supreme
Court in the FDR era; and his transferential relationship with Justice Felix
Frankfurter in particular. While exploring all these relationships of belatedness and
the anxiety of influence therein is beyond the scope of this book review, I hope these
transferential invocations from the law will make an effective case for Bloomian
poetics in domains other than those in which it was originally conceived.9 If it has
taken us so long to realize the significance of Bloomian poetics, it is because this is
not an easy book to read. And, furthermore, Harold Bloom likes to castigate his
readers for not being as committed to poetry and literary criticism to the extent that
he is; this scares away readers who are not professional students of literature. The
poetic structure of this text also makes it incomprehensible for those who lack the
academic background to read the history of poetry or the theory of poetry. Bloom is
not just offering us a theory of poetry here, but is probably sublimating his desire to
8 For an introduction to the career of Justice Robert Jackson of the U.S. Supreme Court, see
G. Edward White (1988). ‘Personal versus Impersonal Judging: The Dilemmas of Robert
Jackson,’ The American Judicial Tradition: Profiles of Leading American Judges (New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 230-250.
9 It is worth considering whether the vicissitudes of the anxiety of influence in the law is
related to the ideal of the lawyer-statesman and whether the disappearance of this ideal will
affect the state of the ephebe’s anxiety vis-à-vis his precursors. On this resonant theme, see
Anthony T. Kronman (1993). The Lost Lawyer:Failing Ideals of the Legal Profession (Cambridge
and London: Belknap, Harvard University Press). For an account of the forms of
pedagogical influence that Yale Law School was itself subject to in constructing its
curriculum, see Robert W. Gordon (2004). ‘Professors and Policymakers: Yale Law School
Faculty in the New Deal and After,’ History of the Yale Law School: The Tercentennial Lectures,
edited by Anthony T. Kronman (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), pp. 75-
137.

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write a theory of poetry in the form of a poem. Another reason could be that Bloom
seeks to derive his theory of influence from esoteric sources like the Jewish tradition
of interpretation in the Kabbalah; which itself, according to Bloom, is but a
prefiguration of his theory of belatedness.10
APPLYING BLOOMIAN POETICS
My intent in reviewing Bloom is to make it possible for those not accustomed to
reading poetry, the history of poetry, or theories of poetry to appreciate the enormity
of what Bloomian poetics can make possible for those who are open to
interdisciplinary approaches in humanities, law, and business studies. The reason
that Bloom doesn’t do that himself is that he is relentless in his focus on poetry. This
focus, he believes, is necessary to resist the temptation of not reading poetry in a
utilitarian world.11 Or, to put it simply, Bloom understands literary critics who like
theories of poetry but who do not like reading poetry. Furthermore, Bloom believes
that literary criticism must draw its intellectual resources to the extent possible from
the poem itself. Bloom’s six revisionary ratios were themselves derived from a life
dedicated to reading and writing about poems; they are not meant to be imposed on
a poem from outside by the reader. That is why Bloom names his sources for these
six revisionary ratios. In that sense, Bloomian poetics is literally about poetry and the
poetics of influence - as opposed to a semiotics of influence which is preoccupied
with constructing a lexicon of technical terms that can be applied readily outside the
arena in which it was first constructed. Furthermore, the six revisionary ratios are
themselves implicated within the internal history of poetry and literary criticism.
Bloom accords each of these six ratios a separate chapter; and illustrates their
10 Harold Bloom (1975). Kabbalah and Criticism (New York: Seabury Press). A useful analogue
to Bloom’s invocation of the Kabbalah is Hartman’s preoccupation with the Judaic tradition
of interpretation in the Midrash. See Geoffrey Hartman (2007). A Scholar’s Tale: Intellectual
Journey of a Displaced Child of Europe (New York: Fordham University Press). Hartman’s
comments on scholars of comparative literature and poetics like René Wellek, Ernst Curtius,
Erich Auerbach, and Leo Spitzer (in addition to his friendship with Harold Bloom) are
especially useful in formulating the history of the anxiety of influence at Yale. See also the
Appendix titled ‘Erich Auerbach at Yale’ in A Scholar’s Tale, pp. 165-180.
11 For more on such themes, and the decline of reading as a cultural practice, see Harold
Bloom (2000). How to Read and Why (London: Fourth Estate), passim.

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genealogy with any number of illustrations from the history of poetry. What these
six ratios have in common is the synedochal relationship between the part and the
whole. In other words, if the belated ephebe were to have undertaken the original
poem which constitutes the locus of his anxiety of influence; how far would he have
gone? Would he have gone further than his precursor did? If yes, why? If not, why
not? What would the sources of his poetic inhibition have been? What did the
precursor text do to successfully overcome its ‘inhibitions, symptoms, and anxiety’
in the act of poetic creation? 12
A TRANSFORMATIONAL GRAMMAR OF POETICS
In other words, Bloomian poetics proceeds on the ontological assumption that every
poem is a form of ‘achieved anxiety.’ Literary criticism therefore should try to situate
how poems relate to each other rather than get ‘into’ the poem as an end in itself.
The ‘inter-generational dynamics’ of anxiety, belatedness, and influence are the main
categories at stake in the interpretation of poems. That does not mean that a poem is
reducible to a precursor text or that Bloomian poetics is only a search for variations
of common images or forms of figuration across the ages; Bloom dismisses such
attempts as simplistic forms of source studies. Instead, Bloomian poetics is to be
understood as a search for epistemic or creative space when the ephebe is belated in
time. What are the rhetorical strategies available for the belated poet? How can he make
his precursor text look like a mere form of ‘anticipation’ or ‘pre-figuration’ of his
own themes? Literary criticism then is an attempt to explain how the six revisionary
ratios can explicate the relationship between the ‘precursor text’ and the ‘belated
text’ in terms of a transformational grammar of poetics. The six revisionary ratios are the
following: ‘clinamen, tessera, kenosis, daemonization, askesis, and apophrades.’ Not
only does this model of poetics provide literary critics with a classificatory schema, it
12 The Freudian theory of anxiety on which Harold Bloom draws here is available in
Sigmund Freud (1925, 1926). ‘Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety,’ On Psychopathology,
translated by James Strachey and edited by Angela Richards (London: Pelican Books, 1987),
pp. 227-333. See also Jacques Lacan (2004, 2014). Anxiety: The Seminarof Jacques Lacan, Book X,
translated by Adrian Price and edited by Jacques-Alain Miller (Cambridge: Polity Books).
The Freudian and Lacanian theories of anxiety are not the same. See, for instance, Dylan
Evans (1996). ‘Anxiety,’ An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (London and
New York: Routledge), pp. 10-12.

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also makes it possible for them to read with the realization that these categories are
internal to the history of poetry and is not being imposed on the text from outside.
THE SIX REVISIONARY RATIOS
The term ‘clinamen’ is borrowed from Lucretius; it relates to the structure of the
swerve in the atomic physics of the ancients; it is invoked metaphorically in theology
as well. So, for instance, when Satan fell from Heaven in Milton’s epic poem, he
managed to swerve; that is why he comes across as heroic; if he didn’t know how to
swerve, he would be just another loser. The term ‘clinamen’ is qualified with the
phrase ‘poetic misprision.’ This refers to the misreading of the precursor’s text that
starts the process of poetic composition. In the absence of this moment of
misreading, the ephebe will not be able to write a new poem because he would have
allowed himself to be flooded with the anxiety of influence by his precursor.
‘Tessera’ is the trope of ‘completion and antithesis.’ This trope enables the ephebe to
question whether his precursor went far enough; he does this by retaining the terms
invoked by his precursor while imbuing them with another meaning. ‘Kenosis’ is the
trope with which the ephebe not only empties out himself but his precursor’s
afflatus as well. ‘Daemonization’ is the trope of the counter-sublime in response to
the precursor’s invocation of the sublime. ‘Askesis’ is the trope of purgation; this
involves both the precursor and the ephebe. Unlike kenosis, the focus here is on
‘curtailing’ rather than on the ‘emptying of afflatus.’ This is a difficult trope to
understand in practice; it takes a talented reader of poetry to be able to differentiate
between askesis and kenosis. And, finally, ‘aprophrades’ represents ‘the return of
the dead.’ It marks the poet’s return from the solipsistic withdrawal that was
necessary to get the poem written; the ephebe is once again willing to reckon with
the possibility of being flooded albeit with a difference. Whereas earlier (i.e. in the
first phase of clinamen) his poem was open, he is now ‘holding’ his poem open; that
is, he is able to exercise a greater sense of control on the structure of the poem. In
retrospect, it appears that the precursor’s poem was itself written by the ephebe
rather than the case that the ephebe was flooded by his precursor.

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CONCLUSION
This quick summary of the main forms of figuration that constitutes the anxiety of
influence should make it obvious that the career of Bloomian poetics has but barely
begun; there is no reason to believe that it cannot be applied outside the theory or
history of poetry.
The main takeaway from Bloomian poetics is that the meaning of a poem is always
another poem; the reason that critics resist this simple but devastating insight is that
they fall prey to the ontological illusion or the spatial metaphor that the meaning of a
poem is always ‘inside’ the poem. That is not unlike the ‘early Freudians’ who
thought that the patient’s unconscious is always inside his head. Analysts had a lot
of difficulty in coming to terms with where exactly the unconscious is situated within a
structuralist model that deconstructs the opposition between the inside and the
outside of the analytic subject and seeks to generate insights in-between analytic sessions
using techniques like ‘scanding and punctuation.’ 13 The meaning of a poem then for
Bloomian poetics is to be found ‘in-between’ the precursor’s poem and the ephebe’s
poem. Literary criticism is itself the art then of identifying the secret paths that
connect poems to each other.
SHIVA KUMAR SRINIVASAN
13 See Jacques-Alain Miller (1988). ‘Extimité,’ Prose Studies: Lacanian Discourse, Dec, pp. 121-
130 and Bruce Fink (1995). The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton:
Princeton University Press), passim. See also Bruce Fink (2007).‘Punctuating’ and ‘Scanding’
in Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique: A Lacanian Approach for Practitioners (New York
and London: W.W. Norton & Company), pp. 36-73.