Η αποκαθήλωση του Χάρολντ Μπλουμ

Μετά τον θάνατο του Χάρολντ Μπλουμ κυκλοφόρησαν δύο ογκώδη έργα του που ανακεφαλαιώνουν τις απόψεις του και τις εμμονές του μετά τον Δυτικό Κανόνα. 

Ωστόσο μια νεότερη γενιά κριτικών και συγγραφέων έχει αρχίσει να αμφισβητεί τον Κανόνα του. 

Πολύ ενδιαφέρον το εκτενές άρθρο στο LARB του Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado με σημαντικές αναφορές στην λογοτεχνία της Λατινικής Αμερικής που τόσο παραμερίστηκε από τον Αμερικανό κριτικό. 

Αξίζει να διαβαστεί ολόκληρο το άρθρο που καταλήγει ως εξής:

Reading Taking Arms and The Bright Book of Life, I came to the conclusion that, while he was meaningful to me and to the literary world in which I became a scholar, Bloom did not quite deserve the Reyes Prize. His work is eclipsed by the vast intellectual domains covered by many of its most illustrious winners, from Borges or the great French Hispanist Marcel Bataillon to the essayist and librarian Alberto Manguel and the Spanish classicist Carlos García Gual, who received the award in 2020. Reyes was expansive and generous. Even if he worked within a Eurocentric understanding of Western culture that is not as acceptable in this day and age, he played a very significant role in the development of Latin American literature as it rose to international status. Without Reyes, Latin American literature would not have galvanized in the same way as it did right after his passing in 1959. Reyes was nominated five times to the Nobel Prize and was widely thought to be a likely recipient. He never achieved the place in world literature that would match his own commitment to the world at large.

In his most famous essay, “Notes on the American Intelligence” (“American” meaning Latin American), Reyes told an audience of international thinkers gathered in Buenos Aires that it was time for Latin Americans to become recognized in their universal cultural citizenship. He also said that Latin Americans were the true internationalists since we were knowledgeable both in European culture and our own, while even the most educated thinkers of Europe and the United States lacked basic knowledge of our literature and culture. This is the quip that, as his constant Mexican reader, I can raise against Bloom, after years of reading him with dedication: he was never the cosmopolitan that we took him to be. His final two books are a lovely and unmistakable testament to this. Which is, I guess, the reason why Reyes became my model in the end.

I will never stop reading Bloom, nor constrain myself to the silo of my Mexicanist career. I will never recommend anyone to not read him, or any other major critic for that matter. My anxious completionism will not allow me to stop reading or owning all of his books. Thanks to Take Arms and The Bright Book, I remembered once again that Bloom’s work, after so many pages, is only a province, a beautiful and narrow one, of the worldly culture that a Latin American reader like me can choose to own and inhabit. But it is a province I am always happy to revisit".