Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize)

by Saul Bellow

  “Don’t put temptation before me. Just pour me another cup.”

  “What’s the temptation?”

  “Oh, the temptation? The temptation is to complain. I could tell you how bad Denise is with the kids, how she dumps them when she can, has the court tie me in knots and the lawyers rip me off, and so on. Now that’s a Case, Naomi. A Case can be a work of art, the beautiful version of one’s sad life. Humboldt the poet used to perform his Case all over New York. But these Cases are bad art, as a rule. How will all this complaining seem when the soul has flowed out into the universe and looks back on the complete scene of earthly suffering?”

  “You’ve only changed physically,” said Naomi. “This is how you used to talk. What do you mean, ‘the soul flows out into the universe’? . . . When I was an ignorant girl and loved you, you tried out your ideas on me.”

  “I found when I made my living by writing people’s personal memoirs that no successful American had ever made a real mistake, no one had sinned or ever had a single thing to hide, there have been no liars. The method practiced is concealment through candor to guarantee duplicity with honor. The writer would be drilled by the man who hired him until he believed it all himself. Read the autobiography of any great American— Lyndon Johnson for instance—and you’ll see how faithfully his brainwashed writers reproduce his Case. Many Americans—”

  “Never mind many Americans,” said Naomi. How comfortable she looked in slippers, smiling in the kitchen, her fat arms crossed. I kept repeating that it would have been bliss to sleep with her for forty years, that it would have defeated death, and so on. But could I really have borne it? The fact was that I became more and more fastidious as I grew older. So now I was honor-bound to face the touchy question: could I really have embraced this faded Naomi and loved her to the end? She really didn’t look good. She had been beaten about by biological storms (the mineral body is worn out by the developing spirit). But this was a challenge that I could have met. Yes, I could have done it. Yes, it would have worked. Molecule for molecule she was still Naomi. Each cell of those stout arms was still a Naomi cell. The charm of those short teeth still went to my heart. Her drawl was as effective as ever. The Spirits of Personality had done a real job on her. For me the Anima, as C. G. Jung called it, was still there. The counterpart soul, the missing half described by Aristophanes in the Symposium.

  “So you’re going away to Europe with that young broad?” she said.

  I was astonished. “Who told you that?”

  “I ran into George Swiebel.”

  “I wish George wouldn’t tell my plans to everyone.”

  “Oh, come, we’ve all known each other a lifetime.”

  “These things get back to Denise.”

  “You think you have secrets from that woman? She could see through a wall of steel, and you’re no wall of steel. She doesn’t have to figure you, anyway, she only has to figure out what the young lady wants you to do. Why are you going twice a year to Europe with this broad?”

  “She’s got to find her father. Her mother isn’t certain which of two men . . . And last spring I had to be in London on business. So we stopped in Paris, too.”

  “You must be right at home, over there. The French made you a knight. I kept the clipping.”

  “I’m the cheapest type of low-grade chevalier.”

  “And did it tickle your vanity to travel with a great big beautiful doll? How did she make out with your high-class European friends?”

  “Do you know that Woodrow Wilson sang ‘Oh You Beautiful Doll’ on the honeymoon train with Edith Boiling? The Pullman porter saw him dancing and singing in the morning when he came out.”

  “That’s just the sort of fact you’d know.”

  “And he was just about our most dignified President,” I added. “No, Renata wasn’t a big hit with women abroad. I took her to a fancy dinner in London and the hostess thought her terribly vulgar. It wasn’t the beige lace see-through dress. Nor even her wonderful coloring, her measurements, her vital emanations. She was just Sugar Ray Robinson among the paraplegics. She turned on the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He compared her to a woman in the Prado, by one of the Spanish masters. But the ladies were rough on her and she cried afterward and said it was because we weren’t married.”

  “So next day you bought her thousands of dollars’ worth of gorgeous clothes instead, I bet. But be you what you may, I get a big kick out of seeing you. You’re a sweet fellow. This visit is a wonderful treat for a poor plain old broad. But would you humor me about one thing?”

  “Sure, Naomi, if I can.”

  “I was in love with you, but I married a regular kind of Chicago person because I never really knew what you were talking about. However, I was only eighteen. I’ve often asked myself, now that I’m fifty-three, whether you’d make more sense today. Would you talk to me the way you talk to one of your intelligent friends—better yet, the way you talk to yourself? Did you have an important thought yesterday, for instance?”

  “I thought about sloth, about how slothful I’ve been.”

  “Ridiculous. You’ve worked hard. I know you have, Charlie.”

  “There’s no real contradiction. Slothful people work the hardest.”

  “Tell me about this. And remember, Charlie, you’re not going to tone this down. You’re going to say it to me as you would to yourself.”

  “Some think that sloth, one of the capital sins, means ordinary laziness,” I began. “Sticking in the mud. Sleeping at the switch. But sloth has to cover a great deal of despair. Sloth is really a busy condition, hyperactive. This activity drives off the wonderful rest or balance without which there can be no poetry or art or thought—none of the highest human functions. These slothful sinners are not able to acquiesce in their own being, as some philosophers say. They labor because rest terrifies them. The old philosophy distinguished between knowledge achieved by effort (ratio) and knowledge received (intellectus) by the listening soul that can hear the essence of things and comes to understand the marvelous. But this calls for unusual strength of soul. The more so since society claims more and more and more of your inner self and infects you with its restlessness. It trains you in distraction, colonizes consciousness as fast as consciousness advances. The true poise, that of contemplation or imagination, sits right on the border of sleep and dreaming. Now, Naomi, as I was lying stretched out in America, determined to resist its material interests and hoping for redemption by art, I fell into a deep snooze that lasted for years and decades. Evidently I didn’t have what it took. What it took was more strength, more courage, more stature. America is an overwhelming phenomenon, of course. But that’s no excuse, really. Luckily, I’m still alive and perhaps there’s even some time still left.”

  “Is this really a sample of your mental processes?” asked Naomi.

  “Yes,” I said. I didn’t dare mention the Exousiai and the Archai and the Angels to her.

  “Oh Christ, Charlie,” said Naomi, sorry for me. She pitied me, really, and reaching over and breathing kindly into my face she patted my hand. “Of course you’ve probably become even more peculiar with time. I see now it’s lucky for us both that we never got together. We would have had nothing but maladjustment and conflict. You would have had to speak all this high-flown stuff to yourself, and everyday gobbledygook to me. In addition, there may be something about me that provokes you to become incomprehensible. Anyway you already took one trip to Europe with your lady and you didn’t find Daddy. But when you go away, there are two more little girls with a missing father.”

  “I’ve had that very thought.”

  “George says that the little one is your favorite.”

  “Yes, Lish is just like Denise. I do love Mary more. I fight my prejudice, however.”

  “I’d be surprised if you didn’t love those children a lot in your dippy way. Like everybody else I have my own child worries.”

  “Not with Maggie.”

  “No, I didn’t like the job she had
with Stronson, but now that he’s washed up she’ll get another, easy. It’s my son that upsets me. Did you ever get around to reading his articles in the neighborhood paper on kicking the drug habit? I sent them to you for your opinion.”

  “I didn’t read them.”

  “I’ll give you another set of clippings. I want you to tell me if he has talent. Will you do that for me?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of refusing.”

  “You ought to dream of it oftener. People lay too much on you. I know I shouldn’t be doing this. You’re leaving town and must have plenty to do. But I want to know.”

  “Is the young man like his sister?”

  “No, he isn’t. He’s more like his dad. You could do something for him. As a good man who’s led a cranky life, you might reach him. He’s already begun a cranky career.”

  “So what’s missing is the goodness I’m alleged to have.”

  “Well, you are a crackpot, but you do have a real soul. The kid grew up without a father,” said Naomi, tears coming to her eyes. “You don’t have to do much. Just let him get to know you. Take him to Africa with you.”

  “Ah, did George sound off about the beryllium mine?”

  This was all that I needed to add to my other enterprises and commitments, to Denise and Urbanovich, to the quest for Re-nata’s father and the exploratory study of anthroposophy, and to Thaxter and The Ark. A hunt for valuable minerals in Kenya or Ethiopia. Just the thing! I said, “There’s really nothing in this beryllium stuff, Naomi.”

  “I didn’t actually think there was. But how wonderful it would be for Louie to go with you on safari. It isn’t that I buy King Solomon’s Mines or anything like that. And before you go, let me suggest something, Charlie. Don’t wear yourself out proving something with these giant broads. Remember, your great love was for me, just five feet tall.”

  twenty-five

  We were accompanied to O’Hare by the gloomy Señora. In the cab she coached Renata in whispers and stayed with us as we checked in, went through skyjacking inspection. At last we took off. Renata told me in the plane not to worry about leaving Chicago. “At last you’re doing something for yourself,” she said. “It’s funny about you. You’re self-absorbed but you don’t know the ABC of selfishness. Think of it this way, without a me, there’s neither thee nor we.” Renata was a perfect whiz at rhymed sayings. Her couplet for Chicago was, “Without O’Hare, it’s sheer despair.” And when I asked her once what she thought of another fascinating woman she said, “Would Paganini pay to hear Paganini play?” I often wished that the London hostess who thought her so gross, such a slob, could have heard her when she got going. When we reached the take-off position and suddenly began to race, tearing from the runway with an adhesive-plaster sound, she said, “So long, Chicago. Charlie, you wanted to do this town some good. Why that bunch of low bastards, they don’t deserve a man like you here. They know fuck-all about quality. A lot of ignorant crooks are in the papers. The good guys are ignored. I only hope when you write your essay on boredom that you’ll let this city have it right in the teeth.”

  We tilted backward as the 727 climbed and heard the grinding of the retracted landing gear. The dark wool of clouds and mist came between us and the bungalows, industries, the traffic, and the parks. Lake Michigan gave one glint and became invisible. I said to her, “Renata, it’s sweet of you to stand up for me. The truth is that my attitude toward the USA—and Chicago is just the USA—hasn’t been one hundred percent either. I’ve always hunted for some kind of cultural protection. When I married Denise I thought I had an ally.”

  “Because of her college degrees, I suppose.”

  “She turned out to be the head of the Fifth Column. But now I can see why this was. Here was this beautiful slender girl.”

  “Beautiful?” said Renata. “She’s witchy-looking.”

  “This beautiful slender aspiring martial bookish young woman. She told me that her mother once saw her in the bath and gave a cry, ‘You are a golden girl.’ And then her mother burst into tears.”

  “I understand the disappointment of such women,” Renata said. “That’s the upper-middle-class Chicago scene, with the driving mothers. What are those daughters supposed to rise to? They can’t all marry Jack Kennedy or Napoleon or Kissinger or write masterpieces or play the harpsichord at Carnegie Hall dressed in gold lamé with a purple backdrop.”

  “So Denise would start up in the night and sob and say that she was nothing.”

  “Were you supposed to make her something?”

  “Well, there was an ingredient missing.”

  “You never found it,” said Renata.

  “No, and she went back to the faith of her fathers.”

  “Who were the fathers?”

  “A bunch of ward-heelers and tough guys. But I’m bound to say that I didn’t have to be such a sensitive plant. After all, Chicago is my own turf. I should have been able to take it.”

  “She cried in the night about her wasted life and that was what did it. You’ve got to have your sleep. You could never forgive a woman who kept you awake with her conflicts.”

  “I’m thinking about sensitive plants in Business America because we’re headed for New York to find out about Humboldt’s will.”

  “A complete waste of time.”

  “And I ask myself, Must Philistinism hurt so much?”

  “I talk to you, and you lecture me. All our Milan arrangements had to be changed. And for what! He had nothing to leave you. He died in a flophouse, out of his mind.”

  “He was sane again before he died. I know that from Kathleen. Don’t be a bad sport.”

  “I’m the best sport you’ll ever know. You’ve got me confused with that up-tight bitch who drags you to court.”

  “To get back to the subject, Americans had an empty continent to subdue. You couldn’t expect them to concentrate on philosophy and art as well. Old Doc Lutz, because I read poetry to his daughter, called me a damn foreigner. To pare corns in a Loop office was an American calling.”

  “Please fold my coat and lay it on the rack. I wish the stewardesses would stop gossiping and take our drink orders.”

  “Certainly, my darling. But let me finish what I was saying about Humboldt. I know you think I’m talking too much, but I am excited, and I feel remorseful about the children besides.”

  “Just what Denise wants you to be,” said Renata. “When you go away and won’t leave a forwarding address she tells you, ‘Okay, if the kids get killed you can read about it in the paper.’ But don’t get into a tragic bind about this, Charlie. Those kids will have their Christmas fun, and I’m sure Roger will have a marvelous time with his Milwaukee grandparents. How children love that square family stuff.”

  “I hope he is all right,” I said. “I’m very fond of Roger. He’s an engaging kid.”

  “He loves you too, Charlie.”

  “To get back to Humboldt then.”

  Renata’s face took on an I’m-going-to-let-you-have-it-straight look and she said, “Charlie, this will is just a gag from the grave. You said yourself, once, that it could be a posthumous prank. The guy died nuts.”

  “Renata, I’ve read the textbooks. I know what clinical psychologists say about manic dépressives. But they didn’t know Humboldt. After all, Humboldt was a poet. Humboldt was noble. What does clinical psychology know about art and truth?”

  For some reason this provoked Renata. She became huffy. “You wouldn’t think he was so wonderful if he was alive. It’s only because he’s dead. Koffritz sold mausoleums, so he had business reasons for his death hang-up. But what is it with you?”

  I had it in mind to reply, “What about yourself? The men in your life have been, were, or are Mausoleum Koffritz, Flonzaley the Undertaker, and Melancholy Citrine.” But I bit my tongue.

  “What you do,” she said, “is invent relationships with the dead you never had when they were living. You create connections they wouldn’t allow, or you weren’t capable of. I heard you say o
nce that death was good for some people. You probably meant that you got something out of it.”

  This made me thoughtful and I said, “That’s occurred to me, too. But the dead are alive in us if we choose to keep them alive, and whatever you say I loved Humboldt Fleisher. Those ballads moved me deeply.”

  “You were just a boy,” she said. “It was that glorious time of life. He only wrote ten or fifteen poems.”

  “It’s true he didn’t write many. But they were most beautiful. Even one is a lot, for certain things. You should know that. His failure is something to think about. Some say that failure is the only real success in America and that nobody who ‘makes it’ is ever taken into the hearts of his countrymen. This lays the emphasis on the countrymen. Maybe that’s where Humboldt made his big mistake.”

  “Thinking about his fellow citizens?” said Renata. “When will they bring our drinks?”

  “Be patient and I’ll entertain you till they come. There are a few things I have to get off my chest about Humboldt. Why should Humboldt have bothered himself so much? A poet is what he is in himself. Gertrude Stein used to distinguish between a person who is an ‘entity’ and one who has an ‘identity.’ A significant man is an entity. Identity is what they give you socially. Your little dog recognizes you and therefore you have an identity. An entity, by contrast, an impersonal power, can be a frightening thing. It’s as T. S. Eliot said of William Blake. A man like Tennyson was merged into his environment or encrusted with parasitic opinion, but Blake was naked and saw man naked, and from the center of his own crystal. There was nothing of the ‘superior person’ about him, and this made him terrifying. That is an entity. An identity is easier on itself. An identity pours a drink, lights a cigarette, seeks its human pleasures, and shuns rigorous conditions. The temptation to lie down is very great. Humboldt was a weakening entity. Poets have to dream, and dreaming in America is no cinch. God ‘giveth songs in the night,’ the Book of Job says. I’ve devoted lots of thought to all these questions and I’ve concentrated hard on Humboldt’s famous insomnia. But I think that Humboldt’s insomnia testified mostly to the strength of the world, the human world and all its wonderful works. The world was interesting, really interesting. The world had money, science, war, politics, anxiety, sickness, perplexity. It had all the voltage. Once you had picked up the high-voltage wire and were someone, a known name, you couldn’t release yourself from the electrical current. You were transfixed. Okay, Renata, I’m summarizing: the world has power, and interest follows power. Where are the poets’ power and interest? They originate in dream states. These come because the poet is what he is in himself, because a voice sounds in his soul which has a power equal to the power of societies, states, and regimes. You don’t make yourself interesting through madness, eccentricity, or anything of the sort but because you have the power to cancel the world’s distraction, activity, noise, and become fit to hear the essence of things. I can’t tell you how terrible he looked last time I saw him.”