"The Anxiety of Influence" is a central concept in the work of Harold Bloom, first outlined in detail in his 1973 book of the same name and remaining central to his subsequent writings. It is his theory of poetic influence and succession. At its core, Bloom's thesis posits that all poets must confront their precursors in a struggle to create an imaginative space for themselves. This struggle is sometimes described as a "quasi-Oedipal" one. The strong poets, according to Bloom, are those who are able to effectively digest or sublimate their precursors through a process of wrestling with their influence. The theory has significant psychological, religious, and literary dimensions, drawing on various philosophical and psychoanalytic ideas. **Psychological Dimension:** Bloom connects his concept of anxiety to psychological states. He refers to Freud's use of the term "danger" and relates it to a "universal fear of domination" and the feeling of being trapped in the body, especially in stressful situations. Bloomian anxiety is loosely related to what Sartre termed "dread" and Kierkegaard called "angst". While everyday fear is often directed towards specific objects or beings in the world, anxiety (Angst) in existential philosophy is often described as an unfocused, objectless fear, such as the fear provoked by freedom. Kierkegaard linked anxiety to the fear of freedom, while Heidegger saw it as the apprehension of nothingness, and Sartre viewed it as the consciousness of freedom itself and the realization that one must constantly choose and define oneself without inherent foundation. Rollo May describes anxiety as an ontological characteristic of man, rooted in existence, experienced as the threat of imminent nonbeing or the dissolution of the self. Anxiety is also linked to inner conflict, particularly between being and nonbeing or between emerging potentiality and present security. May suggests that neurosis and ontic fears can develop when one fails to confront ontological anxiety. The term "Angst" itself, etymologically linked to words meaning "narrow place" or "straits," emphasizes a characteristic restriction in breathing, which Bloom translates into the idea of a lack of "breathing space" due to influence. The "anxiety of influence," then, can be seen as an internalized struggle where the poet, feeling a lack of space, must limit or "hold in" their creative breath until space is cleared. Bloom also employs Freudian concepts, particularly the "Primal Scene". He interprets this as the "Poetic Father’s coitus with the Muse," which the younger poet witnesses, leading to a guilt of indebtedness. This "horror-of-origins" seems to be a basic human anxiety. Bloom also references the Freudian "primal history scene" involving the murdering and devouring of the "totem papa" by the "primal horde," seeing everything else as flowing from this. He connects the Freudian ego to the poetic self and the id to the precursor. The Primal Scene, in his view, is a solipsism that represses the precursor's influence. While he later stated he "never meant by ‘the anxiety of influence’ a Freudian Oedipal rivalry", and claimed it was often weakly misread as such, his language and imagery frequently draw on these concepts, describing a conflict where the younger poet attempts to "engender himself upon the Muse his mother" and strives against the "Poetic Father". **Religious Dimension:** Bloom's theory has a notable Protestant dimension. He believes the concept is based upon the prohibition of the Second Commandment: "You shall have no other gods before me". He uses Calvinistic terms like "Reprobate" and "Elect" to describe poets. The anxiety of influence can be understood as a form of "election anxiety," where poets feel deep anxiety about their aesthetic salvation and seek to relieve it through intense activity. The precursor poet is seen as a "cultural god" composed of "dead poets" or a "dead but still embarrassingly potent and present ancestral poet" against whom the younger poet rebels. This aligns with Nietzsche's idea that the ancestors of powerful tribes become fearful to the imagination and recede into a "numinous shadow," becoming a god. The modern poet, in Bloom's view, is a "chosen man" who experiences his consciousness of election as a curse, a "creation-fall" from an imagined state of being God or Man, now falling from himself. From a religious perspective, the theory has been seen as rejecting Judaism in favor of divination, the religion of the Gentiles. **Literary and Critical Dimension:** As a literary theory, "The Anxiety of Influence" describes the relationship between a later poet ("ephebe") and an earlier poet ("precursor"). This relationship is one of struggle or "agon". Bloom argues that poets engage in this struggle through "revisionary ratios," which are essentially rhetorical or tropological maneuvers by which the later poet attempts to assert their originality and overcome the influence of the precursor. There are six such ratios, presented in pairs: Clinamen and Tessera, Kenosis and Daemonization, Askesis and Apophrades. Clinamen, meaning "swerve," is particularly significant, representing a misreading or trope by which the later poet deviates from the precursor. Bloom connects this to the Epicurean-Lucretian concept of the _exiguum clinamen_ or little swerve, which guarantees free will. The struggle is not just linguistic but also psychological, involving a tension between the language of the poem and the poet's psyche. Bloom emphasizes that influence remains "subject-centered, a person-to-person relationship" and should not be reduced solely to linguistics. The goal is to achieve a state of "authentic being," which for Bloom involves meditating upon "mortal gods" like Shakespeare and Milton and introducing new ways of saying into literary history. The theory also describes an "agonistic archetype," tracing the poet's life cycle through figures like Blake's Orc and Urizen, or Adam and Satan. The "Scene of Instruction" serves as a metaphor for the poet's confrontation with borrowed images and the struggle to create their own voice. Bloom argues that the true anxiety isn't just the fear of having nothing left to do after precursors, but the "horror-of-origins" itself. The theory focuses on the "achieved anxiety" present within the text of the poem, novel, play, or essay itself, rather than solely on the poet's internalized feelings. Bloom's approach can be seen as a "phenomenology of the canon," psychoanalyzing one's relationship with the established tradition viewed as a kind of "secular Godhead". **Criticisms and Alternative Perspectives:** Bloom's theory has faced criticism. Some argue it neglects the constitutive role of "extraliterary forces" and socio-historical determinants on identity and poetic meaning. Edward Said, for example, emphasized that texts are "worldly" and part of the social and historical world. While Bloom's detractors claim he sees extra-poetic concerns as irrelevant and that his account makes a historicized reading of poetry inconceivable, others argue that his theories do have extrapoetic overtones linked to Judaism and Protestantism. Another perspective, found in the context of feminist criticism, contrasts Bloom's perceived "paranoid" approach to influence with a celebratory attitude among some female writers who welcome influence as a "rich inheritance". In summary, "The Anxiety of Influence" is a multifaceted theory by Harold Bloom that describes the necessary, often difficult, struggle poets undertake against their literary predecessors to find their own creative voice. It weaves together psychological concepts (rooted in Freudian and existential ideas of anxiety and origins), religious imagery (particularly from Protestantism and the Old Testament), and literary analysis (through concepts like revisionary ratios and agonistic archetypes) to portray the complex relationship between poets and the tradition they inherit. It positions the act of poetic creation not merely as passive reception but as an active, anxious contestation against the power and presence of earlier, influential works.