A comment on Bloom

Since the beginning of this class I have been a bit skeptical of this Harold Bloom character.  He seems to write an awful lot of introductions proclaiming his brilliance though I am not familiar with any of his own books beyond these intro.  I will admit that my guess is my own ignorance is to blame for this lack of information.  None the less I just get a bit uneasy when he begins spouting off about the incorrect criticisms of So and So and the brilliance of Such and Such.  That being said, even the slipperiest of characters can completely redeem themselves with a few well placed and artfully written sentences.  After all I am a bit shallow.  Low and behold, just when I thought Bloom was irreconcilable, he surprises me with a sentence so incredibly and simply profound in relation to DQ that I wish I could reach through the folds of time and space and pat him on the back while saying "thats gooooood!"  In the very last paragraph of his introduction Bloom states in relation to both Hamlet and Don Quixote:

"Here are two characters, beyond all others, who seem always to know what they are doing, though they baffle us when ever we try to share their knowledge."  (xxxv)

Now I until this passage, Don Quixote has plagued me a bit - good thing I waited till November 12 to read it.  I enjoy the novel.  The story is both charming and cynical, jovial and cruel.  I see instances of absolute relevance to the course and to the study of English.  I even see and enjoy DQ simply for the sake for the piece of art itself.  My only hang up occurs with all this talk about DQ as the greatest novel in existence and the talk of Cervantes and Shakespeare as the only true and ultimate masters since Homer.  Someone with a higher educational degree and a few more laps around the sun can assure me of the truth in these statements all they want and I will not argue.  However, I find such bold statements such as the one above easier to digest through my self realization.  Some synapse lost in my brain must stumble into the older more sagacious synapse with the conceptualized idea of such a profound thought in order for me to pole vault the gap from being told to being discovered.  

Which brings me back to Bloom's quote at hand, DQ's greatness derives from this state of knowledge explained by Bloom.  Cervantes writes one of the single greatest pieces of literature in the history of the world simply because DQ always knows.  I fail to understand all the possibilities of DQ's far reaching knowledge however I believe part of idea derives from the notion of DQ the critic.  Don Quixote the novel is the foremost novel in literary criticism due mostly in fact to Don Quixote the character is the worlds foremost critic.  DQ read a bunch of literature in his life time...interesting...so did Frye, and Fish, and Blake, and Coleridge, and any number of other literary critics of the past.  All these men wrote brilliantly on criticism and philosophy and art however, Don Quixote surpasses all of the above simply because he lived the criticism.  Don Quixote read countless novels of Knights errant and rather than writing a hundred volume index of the practical application of myth in novels of knights errant or the recurrent imagery through the texts, DQ saddles Rocinante and sallies fourth to live through his criticisms. DQ takes the next step and experiences Fryes modes first hand from the Mythic comedy to the ironic tragedy.  Frye of course takes much of his theory from Blake so in a sense DQ outdoes the father of the visionary as well.  DQ comes face to face with the Archetypal trickster and pharmakos.  He meditates alone in the Sierra Madre's on the anagogic.  He becomes enchanted in the Romantic and faces brutal, cruel, and painful reality in the descriptive.  All the while, DQ "knows."  We as readers can only wish to know the feeling of living the criticisms we create.  For as pure as true as a person can live, no one can exist in a place so beautiful it exceeds nature itself.  No person can reenact the artful criticisms we dictates because we fail to "know."  Some may say the journey counts more than the knowledge, that we reap the benefits observing from our end.  I disagree.  The journey for DQ lies in the "knowing" and its a journey far greater than our imaginations can fathom.  Our only hope exists in experiencing DQ from the outside.  Like a trickle down effect, The Great Critic's profound experience and his "knowledge" seep through a criss-crossed grate to us and create our own slightly watered down slightly segmented experiences.  Thankfully due to the unimaginably wonderful experiences of the Sorrowful Face, our own are pretty darn good as well.

Well Mr. Bloom, I guess I should say thank you.  For even through all your arrogant rhetoric, whether the above makes sense to anyone else, you certainly proved useful in my own criticism.  I think I came just about as close to living it as possible.