Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles: The Power of a Reader's Mind over a Universe of Death
Written by Harold Bloom
Narrated by Edoardo Ballerini
5/5
()
About this audiobook
This dazzling celebration of the power of poetry to sublimate death—completed days before Harold Bloom died—shows how literature renews life amid what Milton called “a universe of death.”
Bloom reads as a way of taking arms against the sea of life’s troubles, taking readers on a grand tour of the poetic voices that have haunted him through a lifetime of reading. “High literature,”
he writes, “is a saving lie against time, loss of individuality, premature death.”
In passages of breathtaking intimacy, we see him awake late at night, reciting lines from Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Montaigne, Blake, Wordsworth, Hart Crane, Jay Wright, and many others. He
feels himself “edged by nothingness,” uncomprehending, but still sustained by reading. Generous and clear-eyed, this is among Harold Bloom’s most ambitious and most moving books.
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He has written more than sixty books, including Cleopatra: I Am Fire and Air, Falstaff: Give Me Life, The Western Canon, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, and How to Read and Why. He is a MacArthur Prize fellow, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the recipient of many awards, including the Academy’s Gold Medal for Criticism. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
More audiobooks from Harold Bloom
How to Read and Why Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shakespeare: The Seven Major Tragedies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles
Related audiobooks
Heaven in a Wild Flower: The British Romantic Poets Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Reflections on Herman Melville's Moby Dick Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAspects of the Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Anatomy of Melancholy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History - Second Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Harold Bloom's The Western Canon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eminent Victorians Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Moby Dick: America's Epic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Genius and Ink: Virginia Woolf on How to Read Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey: A Biography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Of Human Kindness: What Shakespeare Teaches Us About Empathy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Monsters, Gods, and Heroes: Approaching the Epic in Literature Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wife of Bath: A Biography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twice Told Tales Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Burning Man: The Trials of D.H. Lawrence Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLear: The Great Image of Authority Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Macbeth: A Dagger of the Mind Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Iago: The Strategies of Evil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Falstaff: Give Me Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cleopatra: I Am Fire and Air Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Invisible Listeners: Lyric Intimacy in Herbert, Whitman, and Ashbery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFavourite Essays: An Anthology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Studies in Classic American Literature Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dante and His Divine Comedy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Age of Shakespeare Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Literature Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mad about Shakespeare: From Classroom to Theatre to Emergency Room Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Social Science For You
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Road Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Song of Achilles: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Parable of the Sower Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Name of the Wind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Left Hand of Darkness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kindred Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 10th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Land of Delusion: Out on the edge with the crackpots and conspiracy-mongers remaking our shared reality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lonely Dad Conversations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Perfection Trap: Embracing the Power of Good Enough Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Year of Magical Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Razorblade Tears: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Behold a Pale Horse Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles
4 ratings0 reviews