Romans 3:4 declares one fundamental rub which people (religous or not) must address at one point in their life, if they would at all care to be honest with themselves.
'Let God be true though every one were a liar'
What the writer is stating here, in a very stiking way, is that God can be true though every person on the planet disagree. The claim is more than that. It is that the disagreement of all people with God amounts to nothing more than a unanimous lie. The favor of the masses does not equate with truth. Rather, the nature of God equates with truth. What people think of the truth or what they want to think, has absolutely nothing to do with it. That is the point of an absolute.
This one statement, pretty clearly, is what people find wrong with God. It's also quite the same point where people begin to very strongly want to do away with Harold Bloom.
The definition of literature, for Mr. Bloom, is not to be found circulating through the popular ideals of this or any other generation. Literature, fine art, the ultimate voice, is of a nature near to divine. Literature is, as Blooms would say, true though every man were a liar.
In his infamous introductory essay for the 1997 ten-year anniversary edition of the 'Best of the Best American Poetry' series, Bloom decries with emotional fury the trend of poetry and literature being determined by social and political agendas. The message is relevant in the following way. The ten-year anniversary edition aimed to pull together the 'Best of the Best' poetry published in the B-o-t-B series over ten years of editions. To be the butterfly net of the butterfly net. To capture the best of the best of the best. Bloom included a sturdy crowd of fine poems that passed his test for the cannon: "I have reread them with pleasure and with profit." Within the Bloom selection, there were absolutely no poems chosen from the 1996 edition. His own words best describe his reasoning: "That 1996 anthology is one of the provocations for this essay, since it seems to me a monumental representation of the enemies of the aesthetic who are in the act of overwhelming us. It is of a badness not to be believed, because it follows the criteria now operative: what matters most are the race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, and political purpose of the would-be poet."
What more is there to say? Bloom condemned the works to be the pathetic mire of contemporary political axe-grinding. How can one man condemn an entire year's worth of the 'Best of the Best'? Bloom has his eye on the prize. In every Bloomian work, he grooms the suggestion that there is an absolute value in the aesthetic of words and ideas. This absolute is delineated not by emotional appeal or common soap-boxing. Poetry is not mean to be the pillar of the righteous or the footstool of the mob. The good or bad intentions of the writer are not the property of poetry. Honesty is not the aim, nor is hope, nor condemnation.
Ironically, the 1996 authors consisted of spokespersons for the disenfranchised and oppressed members of today's society. Their voices called for the masses to change. Like most revolutions, once voices align with commonality and vision, the dream has already passed by. Harold responds to them with an essay that flips the scale - it is they who are the masses. It is Harold who holds the heights.
How can this be? I'm not writing here to answer that question nor to pursue this debate. What interests me is setting the tone for this series of thoughts, that I'm heading under the banner "relativity".
In every life there are moments when humans must stand by and watch while all they hold as absolute and true shifts. Humans do the best they can to understand our world and they make the best of their uncanny ability to get things wrong. There are people, though, in this world like Harold and Paul who believe there is a nearly unknowably truth to the guts of life. Whether these truths be comprehended or not we will be held to high scrutiny by our measurements against the unknowable, the profoundly unseen, the omnipotent aesthetic and spiritual nature of existence.
How do we live with the possibility that our perceptions and reality may be at universal odds with each other?
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