“Hamlet, Kiekegaard, Kafka are ironists in the wake of Jesus. All Western irony is a repetition of Jesus' enigmas/riddles, in amalgam with the ironies of Socrates.”

—  Harold Bloom

Jesus and Yahweh: the names divine (2005), p 10.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Hamlet, Kiekegaard, Kafka are ironists in the wake of Jesus. All Western irony is a repetition of Jesus' enigmas/riddle…" by Harold Bloom?
Harold Bloom photo
Harold Bloom 13
American literary critic and scholar 1930–2019

Related quotes

David Foster Wallace photo
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve photo

“Let us beware of irony when making judgements. Of all the dispositions of the mind, irony is the least intelligent.”

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804–1869) French literary critic

Gardons-nous de l'ironie en jugeant. De toutes les dispositions de l'esprit, l'ironie est la moins intelligente.
Notebook entry, February 24, 1848, cited from Les cahiers de Sainte-Beuve (Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1876) p. 75; Christopher Prendergast The Classic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) p. 244.

David Foster Wallace photo
Ian McDonald photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo

“The similarity between Christ and Socrates consists essentially in their dissimilarity. Just as philosophy begins with doubt, so also a life that may be called human begins with irony.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

1840s, On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates (1841)

Thomas Mann photo

“Irony, forsooth! Guard yourself, Engineer, from the sort of irony that thrives up here”

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 5
Context: Irony, forsooth! Guard yourself, Engineer, from the sort of irony that thrives up here; guard yourself altogether from taking on their mental attitude! Where irony is not a direct and classic device of oratory, not for a moment equivocal to a healthy mind, it makes for depravity, it becomes a drawback to civilization, an unclean traffic with the forces of reaction, vice and materialism.

Christopher Hitchens photo

“An appreciation for irony.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: Hitch-22: A Memoir

Alexandra Kollontai photo

“Such is life's irony.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

Related topics