The mental processes of this exceptional man of letters are as complex as a labyrinth. They are challenging, uneven, and extremely self-conscious. And in the end, of course, they are literary.

"I have snoozed through many a crisis (while millions died)," laments our hero. He is an overthinking, overcompensating, and overwhelming protagonist. He is like a regular Danish prince, and indeed, most of his life is seen through a Shakespearean filter that emphasizes complications rather than tragedy or romance.

This is a lauded Pulitzer and Medal of Something (I forgot) winner, with amazing sentences and wholly exuberant prose. However, what I agree with in all of this is very minimal. The dude lives in an entirely different stratosphere from you and me. I do agree with his thoughts on "the prestige of significant failure" and the beauty in a breakdown. But the point of view is both the plus and minus of the novel. It is very selfish and self-involved, like Rabbit Angstrom. It is just superior and entirely focused on gilded but droll experiences. The dead seem to exist only to satisfy our main man, Charlie Citrine. Ugh, it's overly long and tedious.

For all its dramatic efforts, I wasn't left impressed.

2.5/5 stars

I have been extremely frustrated and impatient, eagerly waiting for something better to unfold. However, now that it has finally ended with its anticlimactic conclusion and revelation, I find myself completely lacking the energy and motivation to write a proper review. Perhaps at some other time. I will mention that if the book were approximately a quarter of its current length, I might very well have loved it. But Bellow's self-indulgent philosophizing and ranting, which涵盖了从艺术到商业，从好莱坞到存在主义再到死亡等方方面面， are truly tiresome. The most annoying digressions included Anthroposophy, which is described as "A philosophy based on the premise that the human intellect has the ability to contact spiritual worlds. It was formulated by Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian philosopher, scientist, and artist, who postulated the existence of a spiritual world comprehensible to pure thought but fully accessible only to the faculties of knowledge latent in all humans."

Overall, while there were some interesting aspects to the book, the excessive length and Bellow's self-indulgence detracted significantly from the reading experience.

Every Head is a Tribunal
Charles Citrine is an emblematic figure of many things. He is an American intellectual of Russian Jewish origin (Tzitrin). He is a good man stripped by his ex-wife, a prey of lawyers, and a passionate yet superficial lover of young and beautiful women. The reading of the book has suggested to me the saying: “every head is a tribunal”, and Citrine's head especially. Throughout the book, he reasons about aesthetics, Steinerian philosophy, his relationships with women, family, friends, and acquaintances, and retraces the troubled events of his friend Humboldt, debating every argument from all points of view. His aspiration would be to dedicate himself undisturbed to thought, but events annoyingly distract him. The characters he deals with are represented superbly as if he knows them well. For example, the gangster Cantabile with his soft beards like beaver fur, dressed like a dandy and with a wife who is a literature graduate; his businessman brother who has to undergo an important operation and is attached to life; the beautiful and charming Renata, with her practical sense and perfect jokes; the señora, a fake Spanish Hungarian, Renata's mother, a model of the scheming mother. I think Bellow had fun writing it at least as much as I had fun reading it. He is a great interpreter of human comedy and in this sense, I often thought of the best Woody Allen.

I'm going to rave a little here. Do forgive me in advance. This is my second reading of this masterpiece. It was shortly after the publication of Humboldt's Gift that Bellow won the Nobel Prize. That in itself usually doesn't mean much, as mostly the literature awards are given out for political reasons these days. But I think in the case of Bellow, Stockholm got it right. From the very start, the storytelling is simply brilliant and it never loses its momentum.

Charlie Citrine, a young man filled with a deep love of literature, writes to his hero poet Von Humboldt Fleisher from his home in Appleton, Wisconsin, and is invited to visit the great man in Greenwich Village. Citrine comes to New York just as Humboldt is reaching the peak of his popularity because of his book of ballads. However, Humboldt soon loses it all. He starts drinking and medicating himself in a way that can only be described as suicidal. No wonder he's constantly blocked now.

In the meantime, Charlie Citrine, his protege, writes a hit Broadway play which is then made into a hit Hollywood movie. Citrine is now swimming in money. And Citrine's success can only be seen by Humboldt, in his madness, as a betrayal. Humboldt comes to loathe Citrine, accusing him of using his [Humboldt's] life as the basis for the main character of his play Von Trenck. When Citrine wins the Chevalier de Légion d'honneur from the French government, Humboldt goes ballistic. "Shoveleer!", he writes, "Your name is lesion."

Charlie Citrine is one of the most captivating characters to emerge from late 20th century American literature. What I truly admire about this book is its unwavering narrative thrust. Line by line, it satisfies the reader on an almost physical level. The humor is so hilarious that it makes you laugh out loud. The erudition is simply mind-boggling. How is it possible for Bellow to incorporate so much knowledge about literature into the book and not end up with some dreadfully boring piece of drivel? It's简直不可思议. Citrine is always talking about his reading (Rudolf Steiner, Santayana, Gide, Aristotle, and so on), which is skillfully incorporated to reflect upon his own trials and tribulations and those of the other characters.

This is quite a rogues' gallery as well, consisting of both the high and the low: mobsters, crooked judges, writers, literary cheats, harridan exes, lawyers, Rubenesque golddiggers, old Russian bath house guys, blue collar guys, virtually all ethnicities and predilections as only a great American city like Chicago can produce. I've read all of Bellow's novels and this, I think, is his best one. I even prefer it to The Adventures of Augie March, which says a lot. This is also a great novel for those who want to learn how to write a great novel. With this text in hand and one's own considerable talent at the ready, why, you can't go wrong. It's all right here in black and white. Read it, please, and let me know what you think.

Your Success is Always the Success of Money

It took me a while to put all the pieces together after reading this certainly interesting but by no means simple novel.

So many characters swirl through six hundred pages in the seemingly disjointed stream of thoughts of Charlie Citrine, a successful man of letters and playwright. So many interesting episodes, so many funny anecdotes, so many brilliant finds, so many memories, so many profound reflections. But at first impression, it gave me the idea of a book without a main thread, without a precise purpose. I had to change my mind.

There are two protagonists, Humboldt and Citrine, interconnected by a deep but also conflicted friendship.

Humboldt, initially a successful poet, is a genius but, as such, unable to relate to the world he despises. The interest of the world, he says, lies not in poetry but in the power of money, politics, and technology. The poet is not "useful," he just writes. He doesn't have to play a part, be likable, make money, he just has to be able to look at the world from a sufficient distance to notice and record the worthy and beautiful things.

While "normal" people are content, live more peacefully, ask few questions, watch TV, they, the writers, poets, artists, are slaves to an idea, an obsession. The obsession with changing the world, putting it in crisis with their ideas and their vision. A beautiful task that, however, requires the renunciation of a conventional life.

Vanity, money, success are not the goal, not the important thing. The purpose of life is to avoid habits, grayness, ugliness, greed, meanness.

Citrine, who has a deep admiration for his friend Humboldt, leads an absolutely chaotic life, full of failures, regrets, lovers he can't love, daughters he can't see, money he can't manage. He seems like a seaweed, at the mercy of the waves. In reality, Citrine is looking for answers about the meaning of the world.

And he looks for them by constantly reflecting, looking for them in anthroposophy, in questions about the why of life and death, looking for the reasons for Humboldt's failure.
Too focused on being a genius, he can't live a life like everyone else and so it's no surprise that his young lover, leaving him high and dry, tells him:

"I'm a beautiful still young woman and, therefore, I prefer to take things as billions of people have always taken them throughout history. You work, you earn your bread, you lose a leg, you fall in love, you have a child, you live to eighty years old then you get out of the boxes, or else you end up hanged or drowned. But you don't waste years and years trying to free yourself in some idiotic way from the human condition. For me, this is boring.”

The hilarious dialogues, his devastating sarcasm, the venomous duels with his ex-wife are not enough to cover the sadness of the intellectual's defeat in the face of the world of interest and money.

Is it better to be Charlie Citrine or a "normal" person? Each of us will have our own personal answer... Is it better to watch the baseball game and eat French fries or think and reflect and reject the success of banal things?

A difficult but splendid novel, intense and very profound, despite a bit of verbosity and some annoying repetition.

This novel makes us think deeply about the meaning of success, the value of different lifestyles, and the relationship between the intellectual and the society. It challenges our preconceived notions and forces us to question what we truly consider important in life. The complex characters and their intertwined stories add depth and richness to the narrative, making it a truly engaging read.

We can see the contrast between Humboldt and Citrine, two different types of intellectuals with different fates. Humboldt, the genius poet, struggles to find his place in a world that values money and power more than art and ideas. Citrine, on the other hand, tries to balance his intellectual pursuits with the practicalities of life but often finds himself in a state of chaos and confusion.

The novel also explores the theme of obsession. Both Humboldt and Citrine are obsessed with their own ideas and visions, which sometimes lead them to make choices that are not in their best interests. This obsession can be seen as both a strength and a weakness, as it drives them to pursue their goals with passion but also makes them vulnerable to failure and disappointment.

In conclusion, this novel is a thought-provoking and engaging work that offers valuable insights into the human condition. It challenges us to think about our own lives and the choices we make, and to consider what truly matters in the pursuit of happiness and fulfillment.

Auch das muß ein Schriftsteller erstmal schaffen: Man hält ein Werk in Händen, satte 650 Seiten stark, und merkt nach ca. 40 Seiten, daß einem der Ich-Erzähler zutiefst unsympathisch ist – und liest dennoch weiter. Vielleicht ist es nur den ganz Großen der schreibenden Zunft vergönnt, genau diesen Trick hinzubekommen, diesen Kniff anzuwenden, den Leser mit Intelligenz, Witz und genug Hinweisen auf interessante Wendungen so anzufüttern, daß er auch dann weiterliest und sich in solch ein Werk hineinarbeitet. Unter den großen amerikanischen Erzählern des 20. Jahrhunderts ist Saul Bellow sicher einer der größten – und ihm ist es gegeben, genau dies zu erreichen.

HUMBOLDTS VERMÄCHTNIS gehört zu jenen Werken, die den Leser angehen, ihn herausfordern, ihn locken und zugleich gelegentlich abstoßen. Charlie Citrine, der egomane Erzähler, ist ein Schriftsteller, der am Ende seiner 50er Jahre von einer Phase in seinem Leben berichtet. In dieser Phase ist er zugleich ausgesprochen weltlichen Dingen ausgeliefert, wie seiner Ex-Frau, die versucht, sein Vermögen zu bekommen, verschiedenen amourösen Verwicklungen und Schwierigkeiten mit eher zwielichtigen Gestalten. Gleichzeitig wendet er sich innerlich immer mehr spirituellen Fragen zu.

Bellows Schreiben lebt von der Assoziation, von Gedankensprüngen und Wechseln zwischen dem Philosophischen, Religiösen und Profanen. Wir folgen Citrine durch das Chicago der frühen 70er Jahre, wo er mit dem Gangster Cantabile konfrontiert wird, dem er Geld schuldet. Hier kann man Bellows hohe Kunst bewundern, wie er seine Erzählung mit Witz und vielen klugen Gedanken füllt. Der Roman wird auch zu einer „Great American Novel“, die das amerikanische Jahrhundert reflektiert und kritisch hinterfragt.

Gerade in der Auseinandersetzung mit seinem toten Freund Humboldt wird das Spannungsfeld zwischen künstlerischer Integrität und kommerziellem Erfolg deutlich. Als der junge Citrine einen Hit schreibt und damit erfolgreich wird, wirft Humboldt ihm den Ausverkauf seiner Fähigkeiten vor. Citrine bestätigt dies auch durch seine Überlegungen und den Text.

Anhand vieler sarkastischer und ironischer Passagen kann man erkennen, daß dies ein großer Roman über das Land der unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten ist. Bellow nimmt den Leser mit auf eine Reise durch die Höhen und Niederungen der amerikanischen Kultur und Gesellschaft. Man muß sich in diesen Roman einlassen und bereit sein, die innerkulturellen Verwerfungen in den USA zu verstehen. Belohnt wird man mit einem der herrlichsten, lustigsten und klügsten Romane, die die amerikanische Literatur hervorgebracht hat.

Und das Vermächtnis? Das Humboldt´sche? Es ist die dreiste und schon fast boshafte Pointe, daß das, was Humboldt hinterlassen hat, schließlich genau die Entwicklung unterstützt, die er wahrscheinlich nie gewollt hätte. Aber auch Citrine, als jüdischer Erzähler, der zum Alter Ego des Autors wird, schreckt davor nicht zurück. Bellow spielt mit antisemitischen Klischees und unterläuft sie, er nutzt eine Sprache, die heute nicht mehr angängig wäre, und stellt Amerika ein befremdendes Zeugnis aus. Trotzdem ist dies ein literarischer Hochgenuß, der intelligent unterhält und uns eine Menge darüber erklärt, wie es kam, wie es jetzt ist.

In April 2018, just back from Athens, Saul Bellow's novel appealed to me more. Could it be true that values undergo a mutation, as E. Lovinescu believed? I doubt it. The mutation is in the reader...

As usual (see also Ravelstein), Bellow's narrator, Charlie Citrine (in fact, an alter ego of the author), reconstructs the life of a fascinating and abject character, the poet Von Humboldt Fleischer. But as the story unfolds, the hagiography turns into a hideous pamphlet: "As a poet or thinker, he didn't leave such an impressive work." To be fair, Von Humboldt doesn't remain in debt either.

In the testamentary letter, which hypothetically contains his gift (a dubious film scenario), Von Humboldt portrays his unfaithful and ungrateful disciple in the most sarcastic terms possible:

"I said about you that you are a traitor, a Judas, an ax handle, a sycophant, a careerist, a flatterer. First, I nourished a black fury against you, and then a troubled, red and burning rage. Both were, however, copious."

My big problem with this book was for a while its fractured chronology. The narrator jumps from one event to another, goes up in the future, and comes down in the past. The structure of the novel is revealed only on the second reading. Naturally, Charlie Citrine's memories don't flow linearly, and the epic thread is often broken. However, I retained some of the narrator's obsessions: the relationship with the poet Von Humboldt, the childhood spent in Chicago, the meditations on Rudolf Steiner (a very precarious sage), the conflict with the suave mafioso Rinaldo Cantabile, the tormented love for the capricious Renata, the contempt for Denise, etc.

The nicest woman in Humboldt's Gift remains Kathleen (the wife of the frenetic poet Von Humboldt Fleischer). The most inventive in evil is undoubtedly Renata.

Saul Bellow's humor should not be overlooked either.

P. S. Since April 2018, from the first reading, this formidable sentence has remained in my mind: "The sad eyes looked intelligently in the wrong direction." And another one: "He looked at a sky of an Emersonian pomposity."

A novel like "Humboldt's Gift" is difficult to summarize because it doesn't have a real plot. It requires time to be assimilated, understood, and experienced.

It is a long stream of consciousness, a flow of consciousness of thoughts, sensations, emotions, and poetry. It is a long and dense internal monologue, in which the dialogues are short or almost nonexistent.

It is a compendium of human relationships, beauty, poetry, literature, the real, pure, and salvific one. It is the art that becomes a masterpiece and turns sublime. It is a wonder that, after finishing reading, will make you feel the "lack of something, infinitely, my heart is full, a lacerating craving."

This kind of novel challenges the traditional narrative structure and invites the reader to immerse in the complex and profound inner world of the characters. It forces us to slow down, to savor each word, each thought, and to reflect on the meaning and value of life. "Humboldt's Gift" is not just a book, but a journey of the soul, a exploration of the human condition.

"I have always had, very distinctly, the gift of acquiescence."

You are a famous writer. Moreover, a Pulitzer Prize winner. You are rich, no...extremely wealthy, and the opposite sex, so to speak, you like very, very much.

The allure of money acts like a flypaper, and many, but really many, are the characters who abuse your fundamental carelessness and generosity.

And you see yourself, by Jove if you see yourself. And you also see all the people in your entourage who misuse either your fame or your money...And what do you do to protect yourself? Nothing. You think about death. Death obsesses you really. You don't even dare to attend funerals. You can't stand the sight of a coffin. And then you think about boredom. But isn't it really that boredom is the only seat of the self-conscious "I"?

And you dwell on people. The people of whom you distinctly notice every detail have great power over you. But what will come first, the attraction or the observation? And then you dwell again on death. Ah, well...death surely suits certain people. And how can one not stop to reason about love. Love is a divinity that cannot leave us in peace. It cannot, because we owe our lives to acts of love committed before our birth; because love is a debt contracted by our soul. Well, of course. There is also the soul to think about. And anthroposophy. And poetry. Ah, what would we be without poetry. And so poets are loved, but only because they don't know how to live in the world. They exist only to shed light on the enormity of this atrocious tangle that is the world.

But in all this rambling meandering, there is someone who brings you back to earth. Yes indeed. Fortunately there is Renata, dear Citrine, sixty-year-old man.

And Renata makes it very clear to you:

"I am a beautiful woman still young and, therefore, I prefer to take things as billions of people have always taken them throughout history. One works, one earns one's bread, one loses a leg, one falls in love, one has a child, one lives to eighty years old and then one gets up from the boxes, or else one ends up hanged or drowned. But one doesn't waste years and years trying to free oneself in some idiotic way from the human condition. For me, this is boredom."

A novel of an indefinable genre. A long flow of thoughts that follow one another in inconclusive freedom. A man who reveals the depth of his inner universe, with great self-irony. A man whose desire for tenderness is so high that he needs to go to the barber just to be touched by someone. A series of vividly characterized characters: the gangster Cantabile with his mink mustache, the beautiful Renata, whose first joint of the fingers reveals the signs of sensual excess and her mother, the ruthless and arriviste Señora.

A man Citrine who finally grasps the meaning, thanks to the gift that could only reach him through a friendship that survives death.

"There is almost nothing personal in success. Your success is always the success of money."

Citrine. A generous, ironic and unforgettable daydreamer.

In an almost entirely Bellowian summer, the unhealthy temptation to express preferences is strong. When Bellow was asked by Norman Manea who he preferred between Herzog and Humboldt, he first defined it as “a too difficult question”, and then twenty years later, confessed: “I feel a greater sympathy for Humboldt than for Herzog. I don't know why.” Then in reality he also said why (he felt closer to the artist than to the intellectual and this in Bellow's thought is an important reason).

I loved Sammler more than all. Because he is the most intense, the most charged with pathos and also the most balanced. Even from a literary point of view. Pain makes him noble and his comicity is not spontaneous, but exercised, never exhibited, often compulsory. And he has the tones of disenchantment and sad stupor. His way of looking at the world that Bellow has built around him has suggested and infected me more than all the other characters.

Turning to Humboldt, it is the funniest novel I have read or reread on the theme of death. Funny without giving up an iota to intelligence and the rationality of reflection on what is the Mother of all themes, the most difficult one to read and write. “What is this death? We risk it: no one knows. But ignorance of death destroys us.”

Humboldt never stops questioning himself about the end and the perception he can try to have of the afterlife: always intolerably limited, claustrophobic, impotent. And yet a gift from some Afterlife reaches him. What is certain is that in Bellow's vision there is no refuge in a Redeemer God (nor even mercifully consoling), but it is not found either in the negation of his existence. Moreover, he has always equally distributed his skepticism between science and religion.

He has talked about it many times, in essays and interviews. Someone, something, some form of intelligence that has set up this mysterious Game that we don't understand, probably exists. Because as he said quoting Einstein, it is more difficult to explain things with Chance than this way. And Humboldt, like Bellow in his life, tries to enter the Game, to pass to the other side, in all ways. After that he must (we must) accept that we remain at Ground Zero, in the sense that we know nothing either of the Game, or of who is playing it and why. And Humboldt comes to think that with these thoughts on death the only result obtained is to ruin one's life.

And then?

And then for Bellow the only working escape route is art, is to observe and tell things, not to lose courage in the face of facts, to avoid too many theories. The answer is to break the wall of individual solitudes and share the account of the acrobatic mental (and financial: the shameless way in which Bellow talks about money is enchanting) equilibriums of Charlie Citrine and Humboldt, the oscillation between thought and action, between conformism and transgression, between lived life and told life.

What we can do is describe how we all embark blindly, in the darkness of meaning, as long as we have a space in which it is possible to move and from which it is possible to enter and exit. Then, it will no longer be possible and who knows if something of us will still be capable of wandering in the universe and continuing to participate in some form in the Great Game.

“I don't want to go underground. I'll be cremated. I need space, action, I. I'll dissolve in the atmosphere. You'll have news of me with the weather bulletins.”

"Wrestling match between Vita Contemplativa and Vita Activa"

Let's be honest! Humboldt's Gift is truly exhausting. It is a masterpiece, a brilliant exploration of a man who battles the world and his inner demons by withdrawing from active participation. However, it often leaves the reader frustrated with the narrator, Charles Citrine, and his non-response to the problems he creates by simply contemplating life instead of actively living it. Similar to the idea explored in Dangling Man, it delves deeper, presenting a person who is not forced into passivity by external circumstances but chooses it because he rejects the mechanisms of modern life.

The dramatic conflict is inherent in the character and setting. A man who loves poetry and an aesthetic life spends his time in Chicago, a contradiction he himself recognizes. But he doesn't break free from this pattern; instead, he accepts it as the raw material he has to work with. The narrator reflects on the corruption in Chicago, seeing it as an art form invented in America, where all means are justified and even celebrated in the pursuit of fame and fortune.

Bellow presents a vivid study of grown-up men playing gangsters and hurt poets, putting on a loud and visible show. But the narrator refuses to play this game. He gets bored and even contemplates writing a study on the impact of boredom on world history. This boredom makes him an easy target for more energetic people, like his ex-wife and girlfriend, who use him for their own purposes. His relationship with his brother is also based on the contrast between the active and contemplative interpretation of the world.

Even his poet friend Humboldt doesn't fully respond to his need for a passive, intellectual friendship. Money flows out of Citrine's hands, and he struggles to negotiate for himself without the support of his overactive part-time friends. The most colorful character in this regard is Rinaldo Cantabile, a typical gangster who constantly disturbs Citrine's contemplations. Citrine's reaction to everyday annoyances is often accompanied by comparisons to his favorite authors, but he realizes that metaphorical language is of no use in expressing and soothing his hurt feelings.

The contemplative life Citrine desires is not compatible with the reality he faces. In the end, he needs the help of his friend Humboldt, even from beyond the grave, to get out of the trouble his detachment has caused. Humboldt, who can merge the active and contemplative life into a complete experience, takes the necessary steps to turn artistic ideas into real successes. This gives Citrine the opportunity to clear up his business before retiring to the hermitage of his choice.

The novel raises several questions: Is it the frustration of a creative man in a business and over-active environment? The search for truth beneath the surface of celebrated crime and crookedness? Or the fundamental right to leave the circus if one finds it boring and repetitious? I changed my mind several times during the slow reading, and I'm not sure I have a definite answer yet. I will be retreating to my cave to think further.

I am truly sorry to admit that I was unable to read this book. In a nutshell, it was extremely boring. I managed to force myself through 64 pages. Although 64 pages might not seem like a large number, during the process of reading, it felt as if it took an eternity.

I believe this is one of those books that is deeply entrenched in its specific time period and fails to have any appeal outside of it. It seemed to me that Bellow was attempting to incorporate every contemporary hot topic and every recognizable name of that era into the text.

I am certain that there will be those who will tell me that I am incorrect and that the book gets better as it progresses. However, I simply could not convince myself to invest any more time in a book that failed to hold my interest. This is the year of my unplanned reading, and I have given myself the freedom to simply say "no".

I understand that different people have different tastes in literature, and perhaps others will find this book captivating and engaging. But for me, it was not the case. I have decided to move on and explore other books that might offer a more fulfilling reading experience.