EN
The article interprets Harold Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence from the perspective of Adam Mickiewicz’s The Great Improvisation, an instance of Polish Romantic literature. Su-perficially, this part of Mickiewicz’s Romantic drama seems to be an ideal object for reading from Bloom’s perspective. Yet, as I claim, that is because it is the Romantic writer, who makes a literary conceptualization of the anxiety of influence. The Great Improvisation is a picture of a poetic agon. My conclusion is as follows: Bloom’s theory of poetry being itself a way of reading any literary work, results from Romantic imagination and Romantic concept of originality. Thus Harold Bloom just reformulates Romantic ideas about creation and crea-tive achievements.