maybe i'm arguing semantics, but i don't think it's fair to say that the JVM "made Clojure possible" -- that's like saying "C made Python possible because CPython is written in C".

iirc the JVM was chosen as a backend because that's what Clojure's creator had to work/interop with. and i think that's generally the case with "guest" languages -- there's an environment you want to write code for (JVM/ browser), but you don't want to use its "official" language (Java/JS), so you create a new language and adapt it to run there.

and sure, reusing the Java stdlib and other existing code can help bootstrap a language, no doubt about that, but it's a stretch to say it makes it "possible"