Sobre el Dr. Johnson

Este domingo The New York Times publica una reseña de Harold Bloom a propósito de una nueva biografía sobre el Dr. Johnson, escrita por David Nokes. Comparto los dos primeros párrafos:

It has been three centuries since Dr. Johnson was born, on Sept. 7, 1709. He died on Dec. 13, 1784, still struggling for the mixed blessing of more life. His Falstaff­ian vitalism is always my first thought when I reread, teach again or continue brooding upon the canonical critic of Western literature.

Johnson loved literary biography and practiced it superbly in his wonderful “Lives of the Poets” (1779-81). It is appropriate that he continues to be the subject of valuable literary biographies, of which the masterwork will always be his friend James Boswell’s “Life of Samuel Johnson” (1791). Boswell’s “Life” is so strong a book that common readers may wonder why more biographies of Johnson proliferate, to which the answer is the spiritual complexity and intellectual splendor of the most eminent of all literary critics. “Reflection” was one of Johnson’s favorite terms, and we need as many accurate reflections of and upon him that we can get.

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Hace un par de meses, The Times Literary Supplement publicó un texto del profesor H.J. Jackson, titulado Samuel Johnson at 300.

Por su parte, The New York Review of Books publicó un buen ensayo de Andrew O’Hagan,  The powers of Dr. Johnson.