"Sometimes one succeeds, sometimes one fails"
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Harold Bloom, a critic who made grand claims about literature and its powers, could also be starkly unromantic about human effort. The bald assertion "Sometimes one succeeds, sometimes one fails" strips ambition of glamour and restores the truth of contingency. It is the tone of a lifelong reader of Shakespeare and Dante who understood how greatness is forged in risk, error, and persistence, not in guarantees.
Bloom built his theory of the anxiety of influence on the idea that strong writers wrestle with their precursors, misreading them creatively to make space for an original voice. That agon is inherently uncertain. Most attempts to out-sing the dead will falter; occasionally, a voice cuts through. Success, for Bloom, is not a market triumph or a political vindication but an aesthetic strength that can withstand time. Failure is not a moral indictment; it is the ordinary fate of ambitious acts that do not quite achieve strangeness or power. By acknowledging both outcomes as common, he demystifies the artistic life and the critic’s role alike.
As a teacher, he urged reading for the self, for enlargement of mind and spirit. Such reading also alternates between clarity and bafflement. A book that defeats us today may yield tomorrow; the reader, like the poet, will sometimes fail and sometimes succeed. This rhythm is not a flaw but a condition of genuine engagement with difficult works.
There is a humility here that undercuts Bloom’s reputation for grandiosity. He defended the canon, battled what he called the School of Resentment, and insisted on evaluative judgment, yet he knew judgment is fallible and achievement uncertain. The line becomes a quiet ethic: proceed without illusions, accept the odds, keep faith with the work. Endurance in literature is built from innumerable trials, most of them failures, and the few successes that endure do so precisely because they faced the same risk and prevailed.
Bloom built his theory of the anxiety of influence on the idea that strong writers wrestle with their precursors, misreading them creatively to make space for an original voice. That agon is inherently uncertain. Most attempts to out-sing the dead will falter; occasionally, a voice cuts through. Success, for Bloom, is not a market triumph or a political vindication but an aesthetic strength that can withstand time. Failure is not a moral indictment; it is the ordinary fate of ambitious acts that do not quite achieve strangeness or power. By acknowledging both outcomes as common, he demystifies the artistic life and the critic’s role alike.
As a teacher, he urged reading for the self, for enlargement of mind and spirit. Such reading also alternates between clarity and bafflement. A book that defeats us today may yield tomorrow; the reader, like the poet, will sometimes fail and sometimes succeed. This rhythm is not a flaw but a condition of genuine engagement with difficult works.
There is a humility here that undercuts Bloom’s reputation for grandiosity. He defended the canon, battled what he called the School of Resentment, and insisted on evaluative judgment, yet he knew judgment is fallible and achievement uncertain. The line becomes a quiet ethic: proceed without illusions, accept the odds, keep faith with the work. Endurance in literature is built from innumerable trials, most of them failures, and the few successes that endure do so precisely because they faced the same risk and prevailed.
Quote Details
| Topic | Failure |
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