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Friday, February 20, 2004
PORTRAIT
II Mr. Harold Bloom read with relish the inner torments of Keats and Ammons. He liked strong poetry, full of heart. Most of all he liked that deathsman of the soul as Robert Greene called him William Shakespeare. Home from the market one morning he saw a letter on the hall floor. He slit it open and glanced down the page. It perplexed him: Dear Harold: I am sorry you did not like my last letter. I am awfully angry with you. I do wish I could punish you for what you did. I call you naughty boy. I think of you so often you have no idea. N. Full of wonder, Mr. Bloom put on his coat and walked to the offices of the Yale Daily News to see if he could find out something. There he saw the following headline: DIMINISHED DIGITS PROVE TOO TITILLATING FOR FRISKY FEMINIST More perplexed than ever he scanned the first paragraph. Something about his long-ago naughty fingers and the fingers of virtually every male faculty member at his university - they had all been sexual predators for decades and no one until this crusading woman came along had noticed a thing. There was a quotation from the British paper, The Guardian: - America’s intelligentsia was today scandalised by the revelations that one of its leading feminist theorists, Naomi Wolf, is publishing a book alleging two decades of sexual harassment against women at her alma mater, Yale. Mr. Bloom felt disgust, despair, but he thought It’s no use. That’s not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it’s the very opposite of this that is really life. Love. The opposite of hatred. He caught sight of Stephen Dedalus entering with a friend Nighttown. LYNCH Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going? STEPHEN Lecherous lynx, to la belle dame sans merci... Out of concern for Dedalus Bloom followed, only to be confronted by a bevy of accusing women: MRS BELLINGHAM Bloom urged me, stating that he felt it his mission in life to urge me, to defile the marriage bed, to commit adultery at the earliest possible opportunity. THE HONORABLE MRS MELVYN TALBOYS He urged me to chastise him as he richly deserves, to bestride and ride him, to give him a most vicious horsewhipping. MRS BELLINGHAM Me too. MRS YELVERTON BARRY Me too. BLOOM I am in a grave predicament. THE WATCH Bloom. Of Bloom. For Bloom. Bloom. [Each lays a hand on Bloom’s shoulders.] FIRST WATCH Caught in the act. |