HAROLD BLOOMFOR PUBLIC RELEASE The Anxiety of Influence A THEORY OF POETRY SECOND EDITION Harold Bloom New York Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1997Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogoté Bombay Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto . and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1973, 1997 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bloom, Harold The anxiety of influence : a theory of poetry / by Harold Bloom. and ed. Pp. cm. ISBN-13 978-0-19-51 1221-4 1. Poeuy. I. Title. PNi0g1.B53 1996 809.1—dc20 96-19988 There were 18 printings of the first edition of this book. Since this page cannot legibly accommodate the acknowledgments, the following Page constitutes an extension of the copyright page. 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 Printed in the United States of America The lines from the poem “The City Limits” are taken from the vol- ume Briefings: Poems Small and Easy by A. R. Ammons, Copyright © 1971 by A. R. Ammons, published by W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., New York, 1971. The lines from the poem “Le livre est sur la table” are taken from the volume Some Trees by John Ashbery, Copyright © 1956 by Yale University Press, and published by Yale University Press, New Haven, 1956. The lines from the poem “Fragment” are taken from the volume Fragment: Poem by John Ashbery, Copyright © 1966 by John Ashbery, and published by Black Sparrow Press, Los Angeles, 1969. The lines from the poem “Soonest Mended,” by John Ashbery, are taken from the volume The Double Dream of Spring, Copyright © 1970 by John Ashbery, and published by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York, 1970. The passage from the essay “Freud and the Future” is taken from the volume Essays of Three Decades by Thomas Mann, translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter, Copyright © 1947 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and pub- lished by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1968. The lines from the poetry of Wallace Stevens are taken from the volume The Palm at the End of the Mind, edited by Holly Stevens, Copy- right © 1971 by Holly Stevens, and published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1971. The passages from the letters of Wallace Stevens are taken from the volume Letters of Wallace Stevens, edited by Holly Stevens, Copyright © 1966 by Holly Stevens, and published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1966. The lines from the poetry of Theodore Roethke are taken from the volume The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, Copyright © 1966 by Beatrice Roethke, and published by Doubleday and Company, Inc., Garden City, N.Y., 1966.