Editing The Anxiety of Influence (section)

==Six revisionary ratios==
Bloom introduces his six revisionary ratios in the following manner, which he consistently applies in this book as well as his successor volume titled ''A Map of Misreading''.

* '''Clinamen''' – Bloom defines this as "poetic misreading or [[misprision]] proper". The poet makes a swerve away from the precursor in the form of a "corrective movement". This swerve suggests that the precursor "went accurately up to a certain point", but should have swerved in the direction that the new poem moves. Bloom took the word ''[[clinamen]]'' from [[Lucretius]], who refers to swerves of atoms that make change possible.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry|last=Bloom|first=Harold|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1973|location=New York|pages=14}}</ref>  
* '''Tessera''' – Bloom defines this as "completion and antithesis". The author "completes" his precursor's work, retaining its terms but meaning them in a new sense, "as though the precursor had failed to go far enough". The word ''[[tessera]]'' refers to a fragment that, together with other fragments, reconstitutes the whole; Bloom is referring to ancient [[Greco-Roman mysteries|mystery cults]], who would use ''tessera'' as tokens of recognition.<ref name=":0" />
* '''Kenosis''' – Bloom defines this as a "breaking device similar to the [[defence mechanisms]] our psyches employ against [[repetition compulsion]]s", in other words "a movement toward discontinuity with the precursor". The poet humbles himself, "as though he were ceasing to be a poet", but does so in such a way as to empty out the precursor poem too, so that the later poet is not deflated as much as may seem. Bloom took the word ''[[kenosis]]'' from [[Paul the Apostle|St. Paul]], who uses it to refer to [[Jesus]] accepting his own reduction from divine to human status.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry|last=Bloom|first=Harold|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1973|location=New York|pages=14–15}}</ref>
* '''Daemonization''' – Bloom defines this as a "movement towards a personalized Counter-Sublime, in reaction to the precursor’s Sublime". The author suggests that the powers in the precursor poem actually derive from something beyond it; the poet does so "to generalize away the uniqueness of the earlier work". Bloom took the term daemonization from [[Neoplatonism]], where it refers to an adept being aided by an intermediary, who is neither divine nor human.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title=The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry|last=Bloom|first=Harold|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1973|location=New York|pages=15}}</ref>
* '''Askesis''' – Bloom defines this as a "movement of self-purgation which intends the attainment of a state of solitude". The author curtails the impression of his/her own "human and imaginative endowment" in order to separate themselves from others and stress his/her own individuality. The poet does this in such a way as to do the same to the precursor, whose limitations and individuality are also emphasized, separating him/her from the later poet. Bloom took the word ''askesis'' ([[asceticism]]) from the [[Pre-Socratic philosophy|pre-Socratic philosophers]].<ref name=":1" />
* '''Apophrades''' – Bloom defines this as the “return of the dead”. The poet, toward the end of his/her life, opens up his poem – this time deliberately rather than naturally – to the precursor's influence. But this deliberateness creates the [[uncanny]] effect that the precursor's work seems to be derivative of the later poet. Bloom took the word ''apophrades'' from the [[Athens|Athenian]] concept of the days on which the dead return to reinhabit the houses in which they once lived.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry|last=Bloom|first=Harold|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1973|location=New York|pages=15–16}}</ref>