FP wrote: "... and both then and now I dislike his total apoliticism."
I don't know much about Bloom apart from his early work on the Romantics.
Do you think his apoliticism was an aspect of his attraction to
nosticism? --- that one must disengage with the world in order to delve
inward?
It brings to mind Tolstoy's criticism of the Symbolists, or Kropotkin's
criticism of the Parisian avant-garde -- that the cost of pursuing an
internal artistic quest is to ignore the political and social struggles of
the world you live in. It's a dilemma that keeps resurfacing. The writers
and artists of the 1930s facing the rise of fascism, or Bob Dylan in the
mid-60s suddenly turning personal.
BJ
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