> > "All truth is a deep tautology." - Harold Bloom
>
> Such a terrible statement. I hope you don’t agree with
> it (even with the escape clause via addition of “deep”).
Oh it's awful on every level, if you look at it closely. Every word is wrong, really. Including "is" and "a", to paraphrase who, Diana Trilling?
"All" truth? The Peace of Westphalia treaties were signed in 1648. This is indisputably true. Is it a tautology?
And then "truth". As if true statements were little wedges carved out of some master-pie of "truth". Really, when one hears the word "truth", with a capital T hovering somewhere in the neighborhood, one ought to go for one's revolver.
ravi notes the oddity of "deep" tautology. What is the difference between a shallow and a deep tautology? How do you tell the one from the other?
Doug cited this untethered hot-air balloon of an obiter-dictum in response to an observation of mine about the necessary circularity of definitions (which is not quite the same thing as a tautology, NB).
I don't know whether Big Harold made his observation about that topic or some other. But this sort of grand sweeping verbal gesture, which incidentally knocks a few family portraits off the mantelpiece, is all too characteristic of the lit-crit biz.
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Michael J. Smith mjs at smithbowen.net
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