Customer Reviews

Fallen Angels

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have been a great admirer of Harold Bloom for many years now, and as such I've read nearly everything the man has written. Imagine my surprise when I picked this up and found that not only was nothing added to Mr. Bloom's theology of angels, but entire passages had been lifted verbatim from an earlier work of his, Omens of Millennium. If you want to learn more about esoteric angelologies, pick up almost any of his other non-literary works. But, if you want a pretty little meditation on the nature of angels and humanity and God...actually, in that case, just go ahead and get Omens of Millennium.

hamlet's a fallen angel, byron's a fallen angel, and, of course, satan's a fallen angel, that is milton's satan. there are other satans, some of them as well are angels, but not like milton's satan. and adam is a fallen angel, adam removed by creation from the judaic god of the old testament even before the creation of eve. (a good point. if adam, made by jehovah, was perfect, why would adam say he was lonely?) i don't know if bloom believes eve's tempter was a fallen angel. i suppose bloom would have to write another book about the satan(s).

bloom's fallen angels are literary: hamlet and milton's satan. bryon's characters are fallen angels only as much as they represent byron the man as fallen angel.

essentially, or quintessentially, we're all fallen angels, according to bloom, we are all dying animals and within us is trapped that which wants to transcend death and our animal existence. it was hamlet who helped us understand this. hamlet is more than we will ever be. we're all pale reflections of hamlet.

the fallen angel seem to be a metaphor for harold bloom's other ideas. if you're familiar with bloom's writings, you'll recognize his ideas from his other books. if you're not familiar, the brevity and incompleteness here will leave you with questions. and if your questions are pressing, you can find, if not answers, more questions to your question, in detail in one or more of blooms other books. and if you're feeling anxious, bloom has even written a book entitled `The Anxiety of Influence'.

i didn't particularly like the illustrations, the watercolors by mark podwal. watercolors have a tendency to be messy. henry miller liked working in the element; he found the activity childlike. bloom does comment about the fall away from god as a failure to mature as opposed to falling away from god as leaving childhood for adulthood. podwal's reproductions may reflect bloom's words, or not. bloom writes about the falling away from reading into the world of images, so the artwork and the text seem to be at polar ends. and bloom also criticizes cinematic imagery: john travolta films and tony kushner's Angels in America.

so much ambiguity for so brief a text. seventy-one pages, that's including illustrations.

This is a slight volume in every way: it's small in size, it's small in content, and it's small in thought. The illustrations may be the best part of the book, but I'd hardly call them "knock out." Mr. Bloom has nothing new to say in this book, and even to call it a book is a stretch, it's more a bound essay. The P.R. department calls "Fallen Angels," an examination - that's another stretch. My opinion - don't bother.

Rarely does one find such a marvelous compilation of man's fascination with angels, demons and daemons. In this small but mighty book, Harold Bloom has assembled a delightful collection of religious viewpoints, coupled with literary and philosophical text that tantalizes the mind. Worthy of the scholar or theologian, I highly recommend Fallen Angels to anyone who has ever stared at the sky, at a fine painting by one of the Masters, or marveled at the colors of a rainbow and wondered about Heaven, Hell or his/her own place here on this small blue planet.