A third-way through Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? and midway through a chapter titled "Cervantes and Shakespeare," Yale professor and literary critic Harold Bloom transitions from the Spaniard to the Englishman with this sentence:
Nothing explains Shakespeare, or can explain him away.
On its surface, this sentence, semantically imaginative as it is, seems hardly surprising coming from Bloom, who a decade earlier in The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, argued for placing Shakespeare in the center of the Canon. Indeed, critics familiar with the other writers and works that enter Bloom's lofty literary congregation would likely agree with his assessment. Yet this sentence surprises for three reasons:
1. Its brevity. The eight-word sentence is not typical of Bloom, who usually peppers his narratives with lengthy compound-complex constructions.
2. Its absoluteness. As hyperbolic as Bloom may appear to those who have heard his flamboyant rhetoric, he is generally careful not to employ absolutes like nothing, but here his exuberance over Shakespeare's brilliance gets the best of him.
3. Its placement. Bloom begins his Shakespearean discussion with a statement that preempts discussion, realizing his readers know he is about to try explaining the Bard, if not explain him away.
