Influence anxiety exists between poems and not between persons. Temperament and circumstances determine whter a later poet feels anxiety at whatever level of consciousness. All that matters for interpretation is the revisionary relationship between poems, as manifested in tropes, images, diction, syntax, grammar, metric, poetic stance. (6)
In regard to the precursor, creative freedom can be evasion but not flight. There must be agon, a struggle for supremacy, or at least of holding of imaginative death. (6)
Threatened b the prospect of imaginative death, of being entirely possessed be a precursor, they suffer a distinctively literary form of crisis. A strong poet seeks not simply to vanquish the rival but to assert the integrity of his or her own writing self. (8)
The psyche is the empircal self or ratinal soul, twhile the divine daimon is an accult self or nonratinal soul. From Hellenstici times hrough oethe, the daimon has been the poet's geius. In speak of the poet-in a poet, I mean precisely his daimon, nhis potential immortailty as a poet, and so in efect his dividity. (11)
There are strong misreadings and weak misreading, but correct readings are not possible if a literary work is sublime enough. A correct reading merely wold repeat the text, while asserting that it speaks for itself. It does not. He more powerful a literary artifice, the more it relies upon figurative language. hat is the cornerstone of The Anatomy of Influence, as of all my other ventures into criticism. Imaginative literature is figurative or metaphoric. And in talking or writing about a poem or novel, we ourselves resort to figuration. (13)
Definition of anxiety by Freud: "anxious expectations". (14)
Definition of Influence by Bloom: "a literary love tempered by defense." (14)
Definition of Influence by Bloom: "a literary love tempered by defense." (14)
What is my cation and what is merely heard? This anxiety is a matter of both personal and literary identity. What is the men and the not-me? Where do other voices end and my own begin? The sublime conveys imaginative power and weakness at once. It transprots us beyond ourselves, provoking the uncanny regnition that one is never fuly the author of on's work or one's self. (20)
Definition of literary love by Pater: "love of art for the sake of quickening and enhancing consciousness." (22)