Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds

I stumbled upon this book as a casual reader and as such, even though I was familiar by name with most of the authors here, I had never read a most of the older authors (Milton, Dante, Goethe, etc), thinking their books were too "old" and therefore unrelatable. What a huge mistake!"Genius" is the culmination of Bloom's more than 60 years of attentive reading and has a theme that demands of the author an erudition that very few people have had throughout history, let alone now when vapid distraction is so readily available. Only someone that has read and re-read the Western Cannon many times over and over could make some of the brilliant connections that Bloom makes in "Genius". It does definitely help that Bloom was a freakishly-fast reader, during his prime he could go through an impressive 1000 pages in one hour!While not being a fast as Bloom, I still went through this 800 pages book faster than I had ever read anything else before. Harold Blooms makes his case for the genius of each of the individuals in "Genius" in such a compelling and seductive way that one couldn't wait to finish reading it and getting their hands on the masterpieces he recommends.Bloom's arguments are clear and logical. Even if you don't agree with him, you will always know where he stands. One of my biggest beefs with literary critics is how a few of them, lacking the cojones to say something that might be deemed controversial, try to obfuscate their arguments and run laps around the reader to confuse her. You don't need to worry about that with Bloom.Harold's views of genius are tied to different concepts:-The idea of originality, a creative and unexplained spark shared by many authors in the book, and that can't be easily explained/dismissed by social factors.- How the genius of the author affects its work, and most importantly, the reverse, how the work influences the life of the genius.- The struggle to surpass, transcend and continue the work of previous genius (and in some cases genius yet to come). Something that has been thoroughly covered by Bloom on his previous books, what he calls the Anxiety of Influence, and which is Bloom's greatest contribution to literary studies.So, stop wasting your precious time on earth reading sub-literature like Harry Potter, Stephen King and David Foster Wallace. Read "Genius" and the 100 authors mentioned here. Start augmenting your consciousness, getting to know yourself and others better while at the same time getting a taste of the Sublime.

Excellent

I tend to measure books by the amount of my underlining, and there's a lot of that here. Unending. The all time champion reader and likely best writer of our time synthesizes for us the subject of the top 100 literary geniuses. Has anybody read all 100? Bloom has apparently read most written by all of them, and much of it more than once or repeatedly. I find the memory of the man for what he has read to be incredible and then superseded by the highly intelligent analysis and perspective. Bloom makes it fit together like a puzzle:"Paul Valery, the disciple of the poet Stephane Mallarme, was the most intelligent and accomplished person of letters in twentieth-century France. That may understate Valery's centrality in modern poetry, whereas his presence helps place for us such eminent admirers of his work as Rilke,(T.S.) Eliot,(Wallace) Stevens."A lot of info packed into that sentence, which is but a small small sample of what this contains.For those giving this less than five stars, to be sure one does grow weary after a while with Mr. Bloom's fetish for gnosticism, "over hearing" gets a bit repetitive. And,the never ending battle against the "school of resentment". Give Bloom a little rope since these references are buried in a treasure of literary insight and specially selected excerpts from 100 great authors. A coffee table book deserving a place of prominence in our libraries and our consciousness.

I tried reading this book shortly after publication. I didn't understand Bloom's objective, but I kept the book anyway, thinking that some day I would find more depth than my earlier reading. Now, nearly 82 and in a moment of boredom, I pulled it from my shelf. I now believe Bloom's genius is equal to most of the 100 writers he selects.From the ultimate paragraph of Bloom's introduction:"The use of my mosaic is that it ought to help preprepare us for this new century, by summoning up aspects of the personalty and achivements of many of the most creative who have come before us. The ancient Roman made an offering to his genius on this birthday, dedicating that to to the 'the god of human nature,' as the Poet Horace called each person's tutelary spirit. Our custom of the birthday cake is in direct descent from that offering. We light the candles and might do well to remember what it is that we are celebrating."Charles Krohn (not a genius)Author: The Lost Battalion of Tet

Accurate description, quick arrival

Wieder ein Bloom-Buch, das mir sehr gut gefallen hat. In "Genius" teilt der alte Weise aus Yale seine Lieblinge anhand der Kabbala ein. Das schön gestaltete Buch ist von vorne bis hinten durchdacht und hat mich neben den Dichtern über die Grundprinzipien der spirituellen Kabbala-Lehre aufgeklärt. Anhand von 10 sogenannten "Lustres", Stadien der Spiritualität, werden die Dichter durchdekliniert und nach ihren poetischen Errungenschaften abgeklopft. Am Anfang erfolgt einige Zeilen, die erklären, warum jene Dichter zusammengruppiert wurden.Blooms Konzept vereint Literaturkritik auf höchstem Niveau mit kreativer Religionsauslegung. Seine Ideen sind erfrischend unideologisch, wenn auch, wie man an meiner unbeholfenen Erklärung schon sieht, nicht ganz einfach zu verstehen. Wie auch in seinen anderen Werken erfährt man in "Genius" darüber hinaus einiges über "Einflussängste", Blooms ureigene Literatur-Theorie, in der er, ganz aus der Sicht des jeweiligen Schriftstellers gedacht, erklärt, wie sich werdende Autoren an ihren Vorgängern abarbeiten sich an ihnen reiben und diese mehr oder weniger bewusst falsch interpretieren.Inhaltlich variieren die 100 Artikel in ihrer Länge und Durchdringung. Manches kann man anlesen und überspringen. Jeder nach seinem Gusto. Zu Blooms Lieblingen wie Shakespeare, Dante, Tolstoi, Dickinson oder Cervantes habe ich zum Beispiel schon einiges in anderen Werken gelesen, vor allem im "Kanon", weswegen ich diese Artikel großzügig umschifft habe. Erhellendes gibt es dafür zu Priandello oder Rimbaud, zu Rilke und Valery, auch der Thomas Mann-Artikel ist gut gelungen. Gerne lausche ich seinen klugen, durchdachten, auch theoretischen Überlegungen, statt irgendwelchen ideologischen Moden oder sonstigem Mummenschanz zu folgen. Bloom bleibt gottseidank streitbar, unstreitbar bleibt sein alles übertreffender Wissensschatz und die Leidenschaft, mit der er seine Literaten vor wohlfeilen Angriffen verteidigt. Alles in allem ist "Genius" ein gutes Werk zur Ergänzung, etwas zum Schmökern, Weiterlesen und Weiterdenken. Ein Buch, das vor allem durch seine taufrische Konzeption neue Sinn-Synergien ermöglicht.

Sehr viel Text, jedoch werden Genies hier nach einem mystischen System eingeordnet.Finde ich nicht besonders wissenschaftlich.

Les autres ouvrages que j'ai eu l'occasion de lire de cet auteur étaient bien meilleurs ("Shakespeare: the invention of human", "Le livre de J" en particulier et, dans une moindre mesure, "The western canon").Celui-ci est assez banal : ni bon ni mauvais.Les commentaires ne sont pas puissants : un peu plats.Le choix des "génies" est discutable. Il y a d'abord un tropisme pour les auteurs anglo-saxons qui est discutable (40% au total : ça, c'est une sacrée surprise d'apprendre que l'Angleterre a donné tant de génies à la littérature)Par ailleurs, c'est assez conventionnel. HB mentionne Rossetti, Hemingway et Wilde mais pas Stevenson ou Charles Morgan. Si l'on cite Freud, pourquoi pas Groddeck ? Si l'on cite Murasaki Shikibu, pourquoi pas Sei Shonagon ? Pourquoi si peu d'Allemands : nulle trace de Hölderlin, Novalis, ETA Hoffmann ou Hans Carossa ; mais il y a Thomas Mann (!). Il ne connaît visiblement pas Juan Rulfo.Et pourquoi Platon plutôt que Héraclite, Plotin, Duns Scot, Spinoza, Leibniz, Husserl, Wittgenstein ou même Kant (sans préjuger de mes préférences) ?Ce qui est troublant, c'est qu'on ne sait pas pourquoi à la fin de ce livre : quels sont ses critères ?

El libro llegó en buen estado. Lo compré de de segunda mano, y por tanto, tiene un ligero maltrato, pero en general el producto está casi como nuevo. Vendedor recomendable.