Who Can Do Anything After Beethoven? The Anxiety of Influence
“Secretly in my heart of hearts I still hope to make something of myself, but who can do anything after Beethoven?” These were allegedly words spoken by a young Franz Schubert, who, like many composers in the 19th century, felt himself to be in Beethoven's long shadow. Johannes Brahms waited until the age of 43 before he could bring himself to publish his first symphony; he told his friends, “You have no idea of how it feels to hear behind you the tramp of a giant like Beethoven.”
As I wrote in my last blog, I read Rob Kapilow's What Makes It Great? because this book was mentioned in Celebrate Theory / History 9. In the chapter on Franz Schubert, after including the quotation about Beethoven, Kapilow mentioned a book which sounded interesting to me (and which I immediately borrowed from the library): Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence (published in 1973).
The Anxiety of Influence is a theory of poetry; specifically, it is a theory regarding the Romantic poets of the 19th century. The central idea of the book is that poets have an ambiguous relationship with precursor poets: they are influenced by the great poets of the past, but they are in danger of creating weak poetry if they are unable to create something original. Harold Bloom suggests that there are six ways (“revisionary ratios”) in which “strong” poets can approach the influence of the precursors. The theory is rather complicated, but here are the basics:
Clinamen or Poetic Misprision: The poet makes a swerve away from the precursor in the form of a corrective movement. “Poetic Influence...always proceeds by a misreading of the prior poet, an act of creative correction that is actually and necessarily a misinterpretation. The history of fruitful poetic influence, which is to say the main tradition of Western poetry since the Renaissance, is a history of anxiety and self-saving caricature, of distortion, of perverse, wilful revisionism without which modern poetry as such could not exist.”
Tessera or Completion and Antithesis: The poet completes the precursor's work, as though the precursor failed to go far enough. “In the tessera, the later poet provides what his imagination tells him would complete the otherwise 'truncated' precursor poem and poet, a 'completion' that is as much misprision as a revisionary swerve is.”
Kenosis or Repetition and Discontinuity: The poet breaks with the past using “repetition with a reversal of unconscious meaning”. “The poet's stance appears to be that of his precursor but the meaning of the stance is emptied of its priority.”
Daemonization or The Counter-Sublime: Bloom suggests that the power that makes someone a poet is daemonic; he also writes that “the strong poet is never 'possessed' by a daemon; he is a daemon.” “Turning against the precursor's Sublime, the newly strong poet undergoes daemonization, a Counter-Sublime whose function suggests the precursor's relative weakness.”
Askesis or Purgation and Solipsism: a “match-to-the-death with the dead”! The poet separates himself/herself from the influence of others and stresses his/her own individuality.
Apophrades or The Return of the Dead: The poet opens up his poem deliberately to the precursor's influence, which creates the uncanny effect that the precursor's work seems to be derivative of the later poet. “One can believe at moments that they [the later poets] are being imitated by their ancestors.” “The mighty dead return, but they return in our colors, speaking in our voices.”
After reading The Influence of Anxiety, I was curious to know what a poet might think of the theory, and if this book is actually taught in university English courses. Who better to ask than my friend Adam Sol, an award-winning poet and a lecturer at the University of Toronto, Victoria College? Here are Adam's comments regarding Bloom's book: “I am familiar with it. In some ways it's very insightful about how generations of artists push against the ideas and tendencies of their predecessors. In other ways, the whole Freudian way he sets it up makes it feel very bro-ish to me – women critics after Bloom pointed out that it's hard to 'kill your father' if there are no precedents for what you're trying to do (speak in a woman's voice, for example!). It's something I think about, but I also try to hold it at some distance, to be honest. I sometimes tell friends, 'Oh that poet was the father for my patricide,' thinking of Bloom. But there are also lots of poets who influenced me in different ways, ways that don't include the same 'anxiety.'''
All this talk about poetry is very interesting, but what does it have to do with Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms? As I was reading The Anxiety of Influence, I was thinking about the nature of influence in all art forms, but especially in music. When we study music history, we throw the word 'influence' around with seemingly reckless abandon. It seems that every great composer was influenced in some way by the composers of the past as well as their own contemporaries. Occasionally you get a composer who seems to be something of an outlier, but that, too, can come about as a reaction against influence.
When we talk about influence, I think it might be worthwhile to reflect on the later composer's response to the influence in more precise ways. Let's consider Harold Bloom's “revisionary ratios”. Does the later composer's work have similarities to the earlier composer's work but then swerve in a different direction? Does it complete the earlier work? Repeat it with a complete reversal of meaning? Reduce it to more human dimensions and replace it with a new kind of divinity? Replace it completely, as if the old music is dead? When we listen to the older music now, do we hear echoes of the new?
As Rob Kapilow writes in What Makes It Great?, “the entire Romantic period can be seen as a series of creative misreadings of Beethoven. Different composers reacted to different aspects of his music in different ways, but almost no one remained outside his influence. In the presence of powerful predecessors, artists tend to either copy those they admire or go in the opposite direction; they rebel in order to define themselves in opposition” (page 139). Similar things could be said of J.S. Bach, Mozart, Wagner, Debussy...any of the great (and therefore influential) composers.
In spite of their trepidation at writing in a form so dominated by Beethoven, both Schubert and Brahms succeeded in writing beautiful symphonies. Here are a few samples; judge for yourself:
F. Schubert: Symphony No. 8 in B Minor, D759 (“Unfinished”)
Beethoven (from Music: A Pictorial Archive of Woodcuts & Engravings; 841 copyright-free illustrations for artists & designers, selected by Jim Harper (Dover Publications, 1980))
J. Brahms: Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, op. 21, movement IV*
J. Brahms: Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, op. 98, movement IV*
*These movements contain required orchestral excerpts for RCM Level 8 and Level 9 flute.
I would like to thank Adam Sol for his contribution to this blog post. Adam has a great blog about poetry, https://howapoemmoves.wordpress.com ; check it out! He is the author of five collections of poetry (the latest one, Broken Dawn Blessings, will be released in September 2021). Crowd of Sounds won Ontario's Trillium Book Award for Poetry in 2004. He's also written an excellent book based on his blog: How a Poem Moves: A Field Guide for Readers of Poetry (2019), which consists of short essays on individual poems. (I definitely prefer Adam’s approach to Harold Bloom’s.)
I'd also like to acknowledge someone who is perhaps my greatest influence in writing this blog: Katherine Barber, who died on April 24th. Katherine was a woman of many talents: among other things, she was a lexicographer (she was the editor of The Canadian Oxford Dictionary), a published author (Only in Canada, You Say and Six Words You Never Knew Had Something to Do With Pigs), and the founder of Tours en l'Air (a company that provided tours for balletomanes to see performances by the leading ballet companies in Europe and North America). Katherine and I sang together for many years in a choir; she was my friend. Katherine wrote a delightful blog, Wordlady (https://katherinebarber.blogspot.com/ ), which entertained her many fans with “the fascinating, fun, and challenging things about the English language.” When I began my blog in February, Katherine immediately responded by sending me her congratulations and a few helpful suggestions. I think of her as I write my blog posts, both with regard to her own style of blog and also thinking about the use of language. I'm not aware of feeling anxious when I consider her influence! But I will miss her. Requiescat in pace. May her memory be for a blessing.