Kabbalah and Criticism

Harold Bloom

1975

Freud says that primal anxiety was toxic, and that the primal limitation was of inspiration. If the anxiety of influence be imaged as a lack of breathing space, then the voluntary limitation that allows a new poem to begin, amounts to a holding-in of the breath, until some space is cleared for it. Zimzum, as I’ve said already, derives from the verb…

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Creator Bio

Harold Bloom

1930–2019

Harold Bloom was born and raised in the Bronx, New York. An influential literary and cultural critic, author, editor, and professor of humanities at Yale University, Bloom wrote widely on poetry, literature, aesthetics, and religion. He was the recipient of numerous awards, including Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Fellowships.

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