This review summarizes Harold Bloom's 2007 book Kabbalah and Criticism. Bloom is interested in the Kabbalah not as a Kabbalist but because it provides a framework for his theory of poetic influence. The Kabbalah depicts a world of revisionary interpretation where later texts aim to establish anteriority over prior texts. Bloom finds parallels between this and his own theory of poets revising prior works through misreading in order to reduce anxiety over influences. The review examines Bloom's use of Kabbalist concepts like the sefirot and his view of the Kabbalah as a theory of exile and belatedness highly relevant for literary criticism.

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BOOK REVIEW (July 2016)
Harold Bloom (2007). Kabbalah and Criticism (London and New York: Continuum
Books), ISBN 1-8468-4074-0
INTRODUCTION
Why is Harold Bloom preoccupied with the Kabbalah? I ask this question at the outset
because Bloom is mainly a literary critic by training and inclination and knows that
it is not common to invoke esoteric sources like the Kabbalah to read the poets of the
English romantic tradition. Furthermore, Bloom himself points out that he is not a
Kabbalist in the usual sense; he even goes so far as to describe himself as a ‘sceptic.’ I
think Bloom’s interest in the Kabbalah is related to asking himself what the analytic
difference is between ‘tradition’ and ‘influence.’ The reason that Bloom poses this
question in the context of the Kabbalah is related to the fact that he found therein a
prefiguration of his own theory of the anxiety of influence. Being an astute reader of
Sigmund Freud also made it easier for Harold Bloom to translate the promptings of
this prefiguration into a specific genealogy within the Judaic tradition of
interpretation for his theory of influence. That is however not the same as becoming
a professional Kabbalist like Gershem Scholem. Likewise, Bloom also identifies in
the Kabbalah the critical tendencies that we might identify as ‘structuralist’ or even
‘deconstructionist.’ The reason that it has taken us a while to realize this is that these
texts of the Kabbalah are not familiar to literary scholars outside, or even within, the
Jewish tradition. This short book is therefore meant to be an introduction to not only
what the Kabbalah is, but how it can be put to use within a theory that brings
together critical terms like ‘anxiety, belatedness, and influence.’ This should
however not be misunderstood as akin to implying that the poets of the English
romantic tradition were personally aware of these esoteric forms of learning. In
addition to his interest in the Kabbalah, Bloom has always been interested in the ‘I-
Thou’ dialectic of Martin Buber as a point of entry into how the romantic poets

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approached Nature. So it should not be difficult for an attentive reader of Bloomian
poetics to appreciate his interest in the Kabbalah. Bloom’s intent in writing this book
is to construct a genealogy for his theory of the anxiety of influence and then identify
for readers the ultimate source for his model of six revisionary ratios in Jewish
thought. It is not meant to make a Kabbalist of either Harold Bloom or his readers.
Knowledge of the basic rudiments of the Kabbalah will however make it easier to
appreciate the scope of Bloomian poetics though it is not an absolute prerequisite to
applying it to read the poems of the Anglo-American tradition of romanticism.
BLOOM & SCHOLEM ON THE KABBALAH
There are three important chapters in this book; the first is an introduction to the
Kabbalah; the second is the attempt to relate the Kabbalah to criticism; and the third
is about the Bloomian theory of misreading that is practised by strong readers. The
first edition of this book was published in 1975 by Seabury Press in New York. This
was also the period when the first of Bloom’s books on the theme of the anxiety of
influence was published.1 So it should not be difficult to understand why these
topics were related to each other in Bloom’s mind. Bloom’s knowledge of the
Kabbalah is mainly derived from the work of the Judaic scholar, Gershom Scholem.
Bloom’s intent is not to intervene within the history of the interpretation of the
Kabbalah, but to apply what he knows of the Kabbalah within the traditions of
Anglo-American literary criticism. In other words, Bloom is mainly making a case
for the fact that this esoteric source could become relevant for mainline literary
criticism; this is analogous to Geoffrey Hartman’s interest in the Midrash.2 It
represents, for Bloom, ‘a vision of belatedness.’ That is all the more interesting
because Scholem does not succumb to his own belatedness within the traditions of
Judaic scholarship. Instead, Scholem seeks through his scholarship to establish a
form of ‘anteriority’ to the Judiac tradition that impresses Bloom. It would not be a
stretch to say that Scholem represents an ego-ideal for Bloom’s relationship to the
history of criticism. The only other scholar who takes up that much mind-space in
Bloom’s critical apparatus is Dr. Samuel Johnson. The Kabbalah also represents for
Bloom a theory of figurative language (i.e. rhetoric). Scholem is important because
his scholarship is equal to the task of doing ‘a truly Kabbalistic account of the
1 Harold Bloom (1973). The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press). Bloom points out in this book that he has been thinking about the
genealogy of influence from as early as 1967. Bloom took these ideas further in Harold
Bloom (1975). A Map of Misreading (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press) and
Harold Bloom (2011). The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life (New Haven and
Oxford: Yale University Press).
2 Geoffrey Hartman (2007). A Scholar’sTale: Intellectual Journey of a Displaced Child of Europe
(New York: Fordham University Press), pp. 148-152.

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Kabbalah.’ Bloom even compares Scholem to John Milton who had not only
absorbed but had also decisively transcended his precursors in the history of poetry.
This is high praise indeed from Bloom since the entire theory of influence is related
to the anxiety induced by the figure of John Milton in the post-Miltonic tradition of
English poetry.
KABBALAH, NEO-PLATONISM, & GNOSTICISM
Bloom situates the Kabbalah for his readers by first comparing it to Gnosticism and
Neo-Platonism and explains it origins briefly in the Provence of the 12th century. It
can also be traced to the earlier period in which the Book of Enoch was written.
While the main source of information about the Kabbalah is Gershom Scholem;
Bloom’s main source for Gnosticsm is Han Jonas. Neo-Platonism originated in the
work of Plotinus in the 3rd century A.D. It is mainly preoccupied with the trope of
‘emanation’ in the attempt to bridge the gap between Good and Evil. The term
‘Gnosticism’ is derived from the word ‘gnosis’ meaning ‘knowledge.’ The gnostic
heresy actually preceded Christianity. It was also not considered to be compatible
within Judaism because it does not recognize that the God of the Jews ‘allows
himself to be known by His people as an immediate Presence, when He chooses, and
in which his Creation is good except as it has been marred or altered by man’s
disobedience or wickedness.’ The rabbis also disliked the propensity to excessive
speculation in the Gnostic world-view. The rabbinical belief was that ‘whosoever
speculated on these four things, it were better for him if he had not come into the
world – what is above? what is beneath? what was before time? And what will be
here after?’ Bloom also mentions and describes the books that were published in the
tradition of the Kabbalah including the Book of Creation, the Book Bright, and Splendor.
While describing these books is beyond the scope of this review, the main point that
Bloom is making in his summary of the Kabbalah is that its tradition of
interpretation is ‘revisionary.’ So, for instance, the main myth of creation is that God
made the world from nothing (ayin). Since the word ‘ayin’ means God as well, it
could be interpreted to mean that God made the world from ‘himself’ rather than
from nothingness (i.e. the cosmic void which pre-existed creation). This reversibility
of cause and effect in Kabbalistic interpretation is what is really at stake in invoking
the myth of creation. It was known much before Friedrich Nietzsche was to re-
discover the same linguistic phenomenon as inherent in philosophical forms of
interpretation as well. So, unlike the Neo-Platonists, ‘emanation’ for the Kabbalists
takes place ‘within’ God rather than ‘out from‘ God. That is why there is a lot of
interest in identifying the attributes of God in the Kabbalah. These attributes are
literary tropes that substitute for the divine presence; that is why Bloom compares
these attributes of the divine to poems. The main takeaway however for Bloomian
poetics is that these attributes are ‘relational events’ – they should not be conflated

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with discrete ‘things or acts.’ It should not be difficult to understand why Bloom
goes on to define the meaning of a poem as another poem; the relational dynamics of
how poems affect each other then becomes more important for Bloom’s ontology of
literature than looking upon poems as discrete entities. The theory of revisionary
ratios then is just a way of comparing how any two poems or more relate to each
other in time. Furthermore, in terms of the compositional dynamics of poetry, the
Kabbalah is also preoccupied with the relationship between the precursor text and
that of the ephebe who is haunted by a sense of belatedness.
ON THE ‘PSYCHOLOGY OF BELATEDNESS’
The main challenge for the ephebe then is to find a way of establishing his
‘anteriority’ to the tradition of creation or interpretation to which he belongs. So
there is nothing less than a ‘psychology of belatedness’ in the Kabbalah. That is why
Blooms argues that it is worth the effort involved in reading these esoteric texts. The
Kabbalah however became less esoteric after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in
1492. Safed in Palestine became the main centre for the interpretation of the
Kabbalah; this also brought theorists like Isaac Luria and Moses Cordovero into
prominence within Jewish thought. These theorists are, according to Harold Bloom,
the main precursors for French structuralism in the 20th century. Another important
reason for invoking the Kabbalah is that it was interested in the existence of Evil. So
unlike both normative Judaism and Neo-Platonism, it was much more interested in
explaining the existence of Evil. Likewise, Gnosticism also shared this passion for
trying to explain how Evil came into the world. These are the reasons then that
explain their survival as esoteric doctrines. These theorists explained the act of poetic
creation on the model of how God went about creating the world. The poet like God
must love in order to remain healthy. The creation of the world then was a necessary
‘catastrophe.’ Bloom’s invocation of the Kabbalah is an attempt to extricate it from
‘alchemy, astrology, and the occult’ and ‘recuperate’ from it the theory of ‘creation,
belatedness, and interpretation’ that animate it for scholars of literary and religious
criticism.3 Furthermore, the Kabbalah has its own ‘psychic cartography’ that serves
as a prefiguration of the Freudian model of the psyche.
KABBALAH AND EXILE
The main difference however between the Kabbalah and Eastern mysticism is this:
the Kabbalah is akin to a form of ‘intellectual speculation’ rather than an attempt to
unify mystically with God. Furthermore, the Kabbalah focuses on finding a meaning
for suffering by invoking ‘the ascetic ideal.’ It is this idea of the ascetic ideal that the
creative artist embodies through his attempts ‘to be elsewhere.’ For Bloom, this desire
3 For an introduction to Bloom’s work on ‘religious criticism,’ see Harold Bloom (1992, 2006).
The American Religion (New York: Chu Hartley Publishers), pp. 3-30.

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to be elsewhere is more or less the definition of metaphor. It is this desire that
motivates all poetry; hence, Bloom’s definition of religion is ’spilled poetry.’ The
Kabbalah does not work with reductive models of ‘either-or.’ It simply subsumes all
binaries within its theory of writing (that prefigures that of Jacques Derrida and
deconstruction). Its definition of God is not reducible to either ‘absolute presence’ or
‘absolute absence’ since it includes both. Though there are ten attributes of God, only
six of these are ‘active in the world.’ These six ‘sefirot’ or ‘behinot’ correspond to
Bloom’s six revisionary ratios in his theory of poetry. While these ratios are related
to the work of Moses Cordovero; the Bloomian theory of revisionism is borrowed
from Isaac Luria. These theorists also differentiate between the ‘first chance’
involved in God’s creation; and the ‘second chance’ that constitutes the poet’s
representations of God’s creation in his own work. Bloom also differentiates between
human anxieties and the literary anxieties of the Jewish diaspora; the former relate to
being expelled from Spain; the latter to the anxiety of influence. As Bloom points
out, ‘Kabbalah is a doctrine of Exile, a theory of influence made to explain Exile.’
When the anxiety of exile is displaced from space to time, it generates the category of
belatedness. The implication of this for Bloomian poetics is not that a belated poet like
William Wordsworth is directly mulling on these forms of esoterica from the
Kabbalah. But rather that it provides the belated poet with an analogue for
exercising his desire for anteriority. Furthermore, the dialectic of revisionism
comprising tropes like ‘limitation, substitution, and representation’ makes more
sense in the context of belatedness. It helps the belated poet to come to terms with
how much space he really has to manoeuvre as a latecomer to the tradition given
that ‘the belated poet cannot substitute wholly at will, since his tropes defend
against prior tropes.’ The whole purpose of the poetic ‘swerve’ then is to keep the
poet and his poem alive since ‘literal meaning…is a kind of death, even as death
itself seems the most literal kind of meaning.’ This position that Bloom not only
describes; but, which is constituted through these revisionary ratios, is known as the
‘poetic stance.’
CONCLUSION
And, finally, Bloom explains the necessity of misreading strong poets; it is only
possible to read weak poets accurately because they threaten nobody; that is
however not possible with the strong poets. Furthermore, the reader finds himself in
a locus of belatedness when he reads a strong poet just as the strong poet finds
himself in the locus of belatedness compared to his precursor. Misreading then is a
structural pre-requisite to writing a new poem in the attempt to find a locus of
anteriority to the tradition in which the poet writes. The strong reader cannot help
but ask whether he chooses what he must read or whether these choices are being
made for him in the locus of the symbolic Other. That is why the shaping of the literary

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canon is so important. It is the canon which determines which poets will live on and
which will die. The poets whom Bloom takes up for canonization include Robert
Penn Warren, Elizabeth Bishop, A. R. Ammons and John Ashberry in the United
States and Geoffrey Hill in Britain. There are two formulae that pertain to how the
reader relates to the literary canon. The first formula suggests that the reader will
eventually become what he reads while the second formula implies that, in any case,
the reader can only read that which he already is. It is the interplay of these two
formulae that attends to keeping the notion and reality of a literary canon alive.4
Bloom points out that unlike the literary canon, the religious canon of biblical texts is
‘closed.’ What does this mean? It means that the books comprising the Bible are
already considered to be final; it is highly unlikely that a completely new biblical text
will be found. That is however not the case in literary, business, or legal studies
where the canon remains open. Whether a canon will stay open or be closed is, as
Bloom points out, a question of scriptural ‘authority.’ What literary critics aspire for is
precisely this form of scriptural authority. Bloom’s authority as a literary critic relates to
the fact that he was able to wield this authority on behalf of the above-named poets;
but not, I suspect, without first ‘examining’ them personally and ‘scrutinizing’ their
work carefully. But, for poets who pass muster – and there are many who don’t - the
stakes can be nothing less than immortality. Canonization was to poets akin to
‘deification’ for the rulers of a realm; they were divine honors that should not be
4 It is not possible to over-emphasize the importance of this theme in Bloomian poetics. The
problem of canon-formation has percolated into business and legal studies as well. See, for
instance Anthony J. Mayo and Nitin Nohria (2005). ‘Introduction,’ In Their Time: The Greatest
Business Leaders of the Twentieth Century (Boston: Harvard Business School Press), pp. xv-xxx
for an account of what is really at stake in putting together a canon of business leaders who
are characterized by ‘contextual intelligence.’ See also Jack M. Balkin and Sanford Levinson
(1998). ‘The Canons of Constitutional Law,’ Harvard Law Review, Vol. 111,pp. 963-1022 for an
analysis of how to put together a canon from case law in the form of a case book in order to
teach constitutional law. The main question that they address is whether the canon of
constitutional law is reducible to the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court or whether it has
to be ‘supplemented’ by texts from political theory and American legal history? As should
be obvious from these examples from literature, business, and the law, the existence of a
canon of literary texts, business models, and case law helps to not only structure the ‘who-is-
who’ and ‘what-is-what’ of these areas of study, it also provides the next generation of
students and scholars with the professional ‘role models’ necessary to emulate in their own
careers. The authors cited here also provide an analysis of the methodological considerations
required in identifying ‘who’ or ‘what’ should be included in the canons-in-use in programs
in the liberal arts, humanities, business, and law; and, the reasons to justify their inclusion.
Since the challenges of canon formation are not well-known in business programs and law
schools, reviewing Bloom’s book provides an invaluable opportunity to explain these
canonical stakes to stakeholders of various persuasions and areas of expertise; and make a
case retroactively for examining those eventually included in the canon on a ‘case-by-case’
basis. Only then will it become possible to find the political consensus necessary to find
acceptance for such canons across a range of stakeholders in the symbolic.

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actively sought, but difficult to turn down if offered as a mark of achievement and
distinction by the poets and elders of the state. When we think through the
modalities of canonization in areas like business and law, we will find that Bloom’s
meditations on the anxiety of influence are an absolutely indispensable guide to
finding our way. That is why despite Bloom’s insistence that ‘a theory of poetry
must belong to poetry, must be poetry before it can be of use to interpreting poems,’ I
insist that Bloomian poetics is a theory that is going to make an impact in areas both
inside and outside poetry in the years to come. That is because its scope is not
reducible to the ontology of literature; which, in any case, as Bloom points out, is
riven with ‘religious, organic, rhetorical, and metaphysical’ illusions given the
fundamental assumption made by literary critics that a poem is a discrete object. But,
if Bloom is right, and poems turn out to be ‘relational’ objects after all, then, what is
at stake is not the ontology of discrete entities in the history of literature, but the
history of strong readings.
As Bloom explains, ‘strength here means the strength of imposition.’ In other words,
‘a poet is strong because poets after him must work to evade him.’ Likewise, to
conclude, for Bloom, ‘a critic is strong if his readings similarly provoke other
readings.’ The literary canon then is a collection of texts that have consistently
provoked strong readings within a given tradition of interpretation.
SHIVA KUMAR SRINIVASAN