Harold Bloom’s Immortality
The last email I got from Harold came in on October 8 at 4:08 P.M., eight days ago. It said:
Dear Lucas,
I am trying to cut the size of the book. This is the new table of contents.
Love,
HaroldTable of Contents
Prelude: The Longing for Immortality
Chapter 1: Platonic and Neo-Platonic Immortality
Chapter 2: Esoteric Visions of Immortality: Orphism, Hermeticism, Kabbalah
Chapter 3: The Resurrection of the Body
Chapter 4: Indic and Iranian Redemption
Chapter 5: Redemption in Israel
Chapter 6: Christian Redemption
When I saw him over the summer, in late August, he started to. It was to be an exploration of the afterlife in the Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman, and Islamic traditions, the way people have imagined and hoped for something more or different once this life ends. It moved me that an eighty-nine-year-old writer and former teacher would spend whatever time was left wrestling with the very thing that would take him.
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