Harold Bloom on the Highest Use of Literature

&ldquo;I think of Whitman and Melville, in their relation to the contemporary United States, as our resource akin to Isaiah’s prophecy: And a man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. —ISAIAH 32:2 &ldquo;We have a need to heal violence, whether from without or from within. Our…