Stop the presses! It's time to tell the world what the literary critic Harold Bloom has figured out about the highest use of imaginative literature for our American way of life. After his years of suffering like a secular Modern Job, Bloom has emerged as a Modern Prometheus in his new book THE DAEMON KNOWS: LITERARY GREATNESS AND THE AMERICAN SUBLIME (2015).

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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) May 18, 2015: My thesis is based on Walter J. Ong's work: We in contemporary American and Western culture today are undergoing a deep tectonic shift in our cultural conditioning. In short, our still emerging new cultural conditioning is deeply involved in stirring up our centuries-old cultural conditioning. As a result, the old themes of night, death, the mother, and the sea that American literary figures in the past expressed in various ways are currently undergoing deep evocations and changes.

Beatrice Bruteau describes the deep tectonic shift that we in contemporary American and Western culture have been undergoing for more than a half century as involving the new feminine era in the psyche that counter-balances the centuries-old ascendancy of the masculine era in the psyche in American and Western culture. She also describes the paleo-feminine era in the psyche that preceded the ascendancy of the masculine era in the psyche in Western culture.

But today in the new feminine era in the psyche in American culture, many teenage American boys and young men whose sense of masculine identity is insecure are most likely to be impacted by the still emerging new cultural conditioning. As a result, they may lash out at girls and young women -- and not just verbally lash out at them.

In the past, cultures around the world instituted male puberty rites to help teenage boys develop a secure sense of masculine identity. But our contemporary American culture does not provide teenage boys with this kind of important help.

As a result, it appears that many college-age young men today are male chauvinist pigs. In any event, many American young men today do not have a secure sense of masculine identity.

If Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes the Democratic Party's candidate in the 2016 presidential election, she will be a lightning rod for American men whose sense of masculine identity is insecure -- unless of course the Republican Party's presidential candidate is also a woman.

Thus far, I have called attention to how disturbing the new feminine era in the psyche in American culture is for men whose sense of masculine identity is insecure. That's the bad news.

The good news is that the new feminine era in the psyche in American and Western culture represents a potential great boon for spirituality -- not only for women but also for men. Not only theists but also atheists (also known as secularists) and agnostics can benefit from actuating the potential great boon for spirituality -- and the inward subjective personal experience of God (or the sacred, as Mircea Eliade uses this term in his book THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE: THE NATURE OF RELIGION [1959]). For example, the inward subjective personal experience of God (or the sacred) occurs in experiences of nature mysticism and in profound mystical experiences.

Now, in the Christian tradition of thought, what is referred to as God's immanence is involved in experiences of nature mysticism and in profound mystical experiences -- and to varying degrees in individual person's spiritual lives. The new feminine era in the psyche in contemporary American and Western culture is involved in the inner experience of God (or the sacred).

However, in the Christian tradition of thought, what is referred to as God's transcendence is also affirmed not only by orthodox Christians but also by orthodox Jews and orthodox Muslims and by certain early Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle.

By definition, atheists (also known as secularists) reject the idea of God's transcendence. Certain atheists are quite emphatic in denying the existence of the transcendent God -- in the name of secularism or naturalism or Gnosticism. However, not all atheists reject the idea of the inward subjective personal experience of God (the sacred), but of course they prefer not to attribute such experiences to God. For example, modern-day Gnosticism affirms the possibility of the inward subjective personal experience of the sacred in one's psycho-spiritual development, but without referring to God's immanence -- for fear that acknowledging God's immanence might necessitate acknowledging and recognizing God's transcendence.

Concerning a secularist interpretation of St. Paul's writings, see Troels Engberg-Pedersen's book COSMOLOGY AND THE SELF IN THE APOSTLE PAUL: THE MATERIAL SPIRIT (2010).

HAROLD BLOOM'S NEW BOOK

Harold Bloom (born in 1930) is a secular Jew who still teaches English at Yale University -- his daemon makes him do it, just as it makes him write and publish prolifically. In his new book THE DAEMON KNOWS: LITERARY GREATNESS AND THE AMERICAN SUBLIME (2015), a work of literary appreciation, he centers his discussion on twelve American literary figures. In addition, he offers numerous allusions to other figures in our American and Western cultural history. He also works in enough autobiographical information as he goes that a portrait of him emerges, giving the book a personal quality.

So in a sense, his wide-ranging discussion offers us a portrait of our American and Western cultural conditioning and invites us to reflect on our cultural conditioning and analyze it.

Now, I imagine that each human person has a daemon -- that is, a driving psychological constellation in his or her psyche that influences his or her destiny -- or perhaps more than one daemon. Whether the daemon constellation begins to form when the person is in his or her mother's womb, or only after birth, I am not certain.

In any event, Bloom's daemon has influenced his destiny so that he has read widely in imaginative literature and written voluminously about imaginative literature. As a result, we Americans should consider him a national treasure. But he has certain identifiable quirks. For this reason, nobody should uncritically swallow what he says. But what he says deserves to be considered and examined carefully.

Bloom claims that he has been "a Longinian critic since early youth" (page 30). Bloom says that Herman Melville's novel MOBY-DICK and Walt Whitman's SONG OF MYSELF together represent "the sublime of American imaginative literature" (page 31).

Bloom invokes Percy Bysshe Shelley's observation that "[t]he function of the sublime is to persuade us to end the slavery of pleasure" (page 30).

Subsequently, Bloom says that suffering is a hard doctrine that is "akin to Shelley's notion that the sublime persuades us to abandon easier pleasures for more difficult engagements. In this severe vision, the slavery of pleasure yields to what lies beyond the pleasure principle" (pages 47-48).

Finally, Bloom says, "Shelley remarked that the function of the sublime was to persuade us to abandon easier for more difficult pleasures" (page 496).

But so what?

Bloom says, "I think of Whitman and Melville, in the relation to the contemporary United States, as our resources akin to Isaiah's prophecy:

"'And a man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest;

"'as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land' (Isaiah 32:2).

"We have a need to heal violence, whether from without or from within. Our strongest writers . . . can meet that imaginative poverty and help protect the individual mind and society from themselves. I now have come to see that as the highest use of literature for our way of life" (page 31).

Wow!

Stop the presses!

Tell the world that Bloom has figured out something really important for Americans to know -- the highest use of imaginative literature for our American way of life.

To be sure, Bloom is a modern-day idolater who claims that Shakespeare is God (page 32: "there is no God but God, and his name is William Shakespeare"). Bloom is also an anti-religion modern-day Gnostic. He explicitly singles out the "bad guys" in American culture today as "theocrats, plutocrats, and aging moralists" (page 135). I'm not sure why he specifies only "aging moralists" rather than saying "conservative moralists," which would include such conservatives as the New York Times' conservative columnists David Brooks and Ross Douthat.

Disclosure: My daemon compels me to write and publish op-ed commentaries against certain American theocrats of various stripes, libertarian plutocrats such as the Koch brothers, and conservative moralists such as Brooks and Douthat. I come from a Roman Catholic background, but for years now I have not been a practicing Catholic. Today I would describe myself as a theistic humanist (Bloom is an atheistic humanist). Another example of a theistic humanist is Eric Voegelin, who also used the term daemon that Bloom uses.

Let me be clear here about my position regarding possible personal psycho-spiritual development: Christians and Jews and Muslims and other theists as well as all varieties of atheists and agnostics may take the log from their eye, figuratively speaking (Mt. 7:3; Lk. 6:42), so that the spirit of truth may set them free (Jn. 16:13).

My claim is that the psychodynamism of the spirit of truth setting one free involves the deep feminine dimension of the human psyche that Bruteau calls attention to.

Concerning certain American Catholic theocrats, see Damon Linker's book THE THEOCONS: SECULAR AMERICA UNDER SIEGE (2006).

In his new book Bloom centers his attention on major American literary figures in the 19th century and later.

In her book THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE (1977), Ann Douglas discusses the feminization of American culture in the 19th century.

So I am inclined to say that what Bruteau refers to as the new feminine era in the psyche in American culture began to emerge in 19th-century American culture.

Now, for the purposes of analyzing our American and Western cultural conditioning, I want to single out the set of four themes that Bloom mentions like a leitmotif running through his book: (1) night, (2) death, (3) the mother, and (4) the sea (pages 4, 48, 121, 125, 455). Bloom also says that this set of four themes express "'an image of longing,'" a characterization he acknowledges borrowing from A. R. Ammons (page 455).

In a flourish about those four themes, Blooms says that Herman Melville's novel MOBY-DICK "is Ishmael's book of the night; Queequeg's deathly coffin, which saves Ishmael from the vortex; Moby Dick, who, for all his phallic menace, constitutes the epic's only maternal presence; and Ahab's imperial (and imperious) sea" (page 121).

As you can see, in the hands of a smooth operator like Bloom, symbolic representations of those four themes can be found even in a novel where mother imagery is in short supply.

Now, as Bloom's flourish about Melville's MOBY-DICK suggests, the imagery involved in those four themes are inter-connected, which presumably is why they can be characterized as expressing together an image of longing. For example, womb and tomb imagery can be inter-connected not only with one another but also with the mother and with death and with night. In addition, I think that the theme of death can refer to each person's final loss of life -- and to symbolic psychological death.

Concerning death as the final loss of life, see the new book THE WORM AT THE CORE: ON THE ROLE OF DEATH IN LIFE by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski (2015).

Now, once we allow that metaphors of death may refer not only to one's final loss of life, but also to one symbolic dying to one's old life, then we are in a position to interpret night, the mother, and the sea symbolically as possible psychological experiences involving the deep feminine dimension of the human psyche -- the very dimension of the human psyche that Bruteau says is resurfacing in our contemporary experience of the new feminine era in the psyche in our contemporary American and Western culture today.

In the deeply informed book THE RESTORED NEW TESTAMENT (2009), Willis Barnstone notes that in ancient Gnosticism, Eve in the story in Genesis was seen as the Prometheus-like hero in the story.

So once we allow that the character Eve in the story in Genesis symbolically represents a certain aspect of the feminine dimension of the human psyche, then we are in a position to see her as the Prometheus-like hero of the story in Genesis and the deep model in the American and Western psyche for Promethean heroes such as the Promethean heroes that Bloom discusses throughout his new book.

Years ago, Bloom famously, or infamously depending on your point of view, claimed that the author of J, the Yahwist source, was a woman. The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis is part of the source known as J. So if Bloom is right about the author of J being a woman, we have in the story of Adam and Eve, a woman portrayed as the Prometheus-like hero of the story written by a woman.

CONCLUSION

Bloom perceptively refers to "the Voice of the Daemon" (his capitalizations, page 153).

No doubt the ancient Hebrew prophets heard the Voice of the Daemon in their psyches calling out to them, which they interpreted to be the voice of God in their psyches.

In the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, the Voice of the Daemon in Eve's psyche is symbolically represented as the talking serpent, who inspires Eve to become the Prometheus-like hero of the story.

In Maurice Friedman's revised edition of his book PROBLEMATIC REBEL: MELVILLE, DOSTOIEVSKY, KAFKA, CAMUS (1970), Friedman provides an informed discussion of the modern Promethean hero. In addition to discussing the Modern Prometheus, Friedman discusses the Modern Job. He even intimates that the Modern Prometheus and the Modern Job may be two sides of the same coin, so to speak.

In Friedman's terminology, Bloom in his new book emerges as a Modern Prometheus (that's Eve in his Jewish psyche coming through) and something of a Modern Job in his later years of suffering, but not a theistic Modern Job. Bloom is far too disillusioned with the monotheistic deity of his Jewish ancestors to put his trust in God, as the biblical character Job is portrayed as doing.

In Friedman's terminology, it was also Ong's fate in life to be both a Modern Prometheus and a Modern Job in his later years of suffering.

FURTHER READING

Concerning ancient people hearing voices for daemons, see Julian Jaynes' book THE ORIGINS OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND (1977).

For further reading about voice, see Walter J. Ong's 1958 essay "Voice as Summons for Belief: Literature, faith, and the Divided Self" that is reprinted in AN ONG READER: CHALLENGES FOR FURTHER INQUIRY, edited by me and Paul A. Soukup (2002, pages 259-275) and Thomas D. Zlatic's essay "Faith in Pretext: An Ongian Context for [Melville's novel] THE CONFIDENCE-MAN" in the anthology OF ONG AND MEDIA ECOLOGY: ESSAYS IN COMMUNICATION, COMPOSITION, AND LITERARY STUDIES, edited by me and Paul A. Soukup (2012, pages 241-280).

(Article changed on May 19, 2015 at 13:17)

Authors Website: http://www.d.umn.edu/~tfarrell

Authors Bio:

Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book WALTER ONG'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL STUDIES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WORD AND I-THOU COMMUNICATION (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000; 2nd ed. 2009, forthcoming). The first edition won the 2001 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology conferred by the Media Ecology Association. For further information about his education and his publications, see his UMD homepage: Click here to visit Dr. Farrell's homepage.

On September 10 and 22, 2009, he discussed Walter Ong's work on the blog radio talk show "Ethics Talk" that is hosted by Hope May in philosophy at Central Michigan University. Each hour-long show has been archived and is available for people who missed the live broadcast to listen to. Here are the website addresses for the two archived shows:

Click here to listen the Technologizing of the Word Interview

Click here to listen the Ramus, Method & The Decay of Dialogue Interview