Herzog

This book has warts – oh, does it have warts…! Like Moses Herzog himself, this book is marred and marked with warts…. But it is a book of genius nonetheless – and not just in parts, but in whole – in scope and in depth….

I rarely write reviews about fiction – I’m not a literary type. One of the very few I’ve written worth reading is that of The Sun Also Rises. Fiction is not amenable to the type of analysis that comes most naturally to me.

Besides, I’ve only been reading fiction, after a long hiatus, for a year or two -- so really…, what’s to say?

But since most of my GR friends who liked this book have not commented on it; while those who have, mostly don’t like it – I feel I need to say something in defense of poor Herzog.

When I started this, I had the sinking feeling I had when I tried to read Henderson, The Rain King – many, many years ago. Something just didn’t click. Bellow’s names sound (indeed, they *are*) artificial – something that bugs me no end in a book…; and it’s hard to construct a universe in the opening pages, in any event – so that one has doubts early on…. And so, I almost gave up.

But that would have been a great mistake. For this is a large book, a book written ‘in grandi dimensioni’.

Andre Gide (I think it was) commented about Dostoevsky that, in his novels, ideas became flesh. He was thinking of The Brothers Karamazov, as I recall. And indeed, of the postwar American novelists, Bellow perhaps comes closest to this – as his characters not only ‘represent’ ideas, but utterly *live* them, engage them, struggle with them, breath them, exude them… – not only intellectually (though that, of course!), but also as LIVED maxims, as lived DILEMMAS… It is a philosophy of life, he wants… a philosophy FOR life that he seeks – one steeped in our historical moment, of course, because the hallmark of modernity is, after all, its historicity…. And by this enormously ambitious standard, Bellow – and already the Bellow of Herzog – succeeds admirably, brilliantly, convincingly… in bringing modern, urban, cosmopolitan – that is, Jewish intellectuals onto the tragicomic stage that was, perhaps, in one sense – that of the hyper-learned, sensate, quivering, irreverent, sexualized, incandescent, doubting, longing intellectual of late modernity – that of Freud made flesh in the bookstalls of the Upper West Side – the peak and apex of Western modernity -- a modernity, indeed, a West..., now in terminal decline.

Well… what can I say…? I wax nostalgic….

But a rich and wonderful book…. warts and all.

Professor Moses Elkanah Herzog as main actor in ‘Herzog’ reminds me a great deal about another chief character, Ricardo Reis of Jose Saramago from ‘The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis’, both high-minded intellectuals, graduated and with an strong inclination towards philosophy, although it looks much more appropriate to M.E. Herzog than to Ricardo Reis who is a doctor by education and profession. Both of them enjoy rummaging, soberly deliberating within their own minds, losing themselves in writing, mostly mentally with Herzog and by written hand with Reis, lots of letters, poems, poetry, lines that sound very rich, apparently in substance, but not necessarily to lead to any practical meaning.
I found my first novel by Saul Bellow very savoury, mostly it made me laugh, although it’s not funny at all, as standing from an objective perspective it treats decently serious life situations.

≪ Well, there is a piece of famous advice, grand advice even if it is German, to forget what you can’t bear. The strong can forget, can shut out history. Very good! Even if it is self-flattery to speak of strength – these aesthetic philosophers, they take a posture, but power sweeps postures away. Still, it’s true you can’t go on transposing one nightmare into another, Nietzsche was certainly right about that. The tender-minded must harden themselves. Is this world nothing but a barren lump of coke? No, no, but what sometimes seems a system of prevention, a denial of what every human being knows.
I love my children, but I am the world to them, and bring them nightmares. I had this child by my enemy. And I love her. The sight of her, the odor of her hair, this minute, makes me tremble with love. Isn’t it mysterious how I love the child of my enemy? But a man doesn’t need happiness for himself. No, he can put up with any amount of torment – with recollections, with his own familiar evils, despair. And this is the unwritten history of man, his unseen, negative accomplishment, his power to do without gratification for himself provided there is something great, something into which his being, and all being, can go. He does not need meaning as long as such intensity has scope. Because then it is self-evident; it is meaning. ≫

≪ No, the good in his heart evidently didn’t count for much, for here, at the age of forty-seven, he was coming home after a night out with a lip made sore by biting and kissing, his problems as unsolved as ever, and what else did he have to show for himself at the bar of judgment? He had had two wives; there were two children; he had once been a scholar, and in the closet his old valise was swelled like a scaly crocodile with his uncompleted manuscript. Two years ago a Berkeley professor name Mermelstein had scooped him, confounding, overwhelming stunning everyone in the field, as Herzog had meant to do. Mermelstein was a clever man, and an excellent scholar. At least he must be free from personal drama and able to give the world an example of order, thus deserving a place in the human community. But he, Herzog, had committed a sin of some kind against his own heart, while in pursuit of a grand synthesis. What a catalogue of errors!! ≫

≪ He tried to make his lust comical, to show how absurd it all was, easily the most wretched form of human struggle, the very essence of slavery. ≫

≪ Evidently I continue to believe in God. Though never admitting it. But what else explains my conduct and my life? So I may as well acknowledge how things are, if only because otherwise I can’t even be described. My behavior implies that there is a barrier against which I have been pressing from the first, pressing all my life, with the conviction that it is necessary to press, and that something must come of it. Perhaps that I can eventually pass through. I must always have had such an idea. Is it faith? Or is it simply childishness, expecting to be loved for doing your bidden task? It is, if you’re looking for the psychological explanation, childish and classically depressive. But Herzog didn’t believe that the harshest or most niggardly explanation, following the law of parsimony, was necessarily the truest. Eager impulses, love, intensity, passionate dizziness that make a man sick. How long can I stand such inner beating? The front wall of this body will go down. My whole life beating against the boundaries, and the force of balked longings coming back as stinging poison. Evil, evil, evil…! Excited, characteristic, ecstatic love turning to evil.≫

≪ The dream of man’s heart, however much we may distrust and resent it, is that life may complete itself in significant pattern. Some incomprehensible way. Before death. Not irrationally but incomprehensibly fulfilled. You get one last chance to know justice. Truth! ≫

I am in absolute agreement with Mr Moses E Herzog; there is absolutely too much nonsense in the world. So, apparently the recipe for enjoying a great(er) freedom is to take life in a very simple, non-theological way. Then there are no surprises as there are no problems. Everything is/will be a mystery, but not a problem, as one will just live for the mystery, and not solving problems.
Herzog is doing a lot of “mental” exploration. He should better do meditation instead. That will take him towards an exploration of the mystery, and not searching to find solutions to whatever problems. But are there any problems? He would like to dissolve slowly, slowly. Where to? Anywhere, but not into nonsense, at least this is what he tells himself.
He is feeling too much and too strongly. He has lots of desires, thus he is always out of incompletion. He would like to feel (and think) as an emperor, but he practically feels like a beggar. That’s why all the agitation that leads him to a horror of living with some many dangerous results – a failure in his private life, not very successful in his public life, what else remains?
Herzog seems to represent through his philosophy the ancient idea of the man as serious, sad, miserable, suffering. This earth is seen as a punishment, he is imprisoned here – and how he can be joyous when life itself is condemned as punishment? Then the only way out of miseries is to get rid of life, and especially of that part of life that damage the mental or emotional side of being.
There is a whole rubbish of the past. His life is an indicative of that too. He has to fight life, to fight everything that makes life beautiful, joyous, everything that makes him desirous of life. He is a victim, just as everybody else in the world is a victim. On the one hand he was told to be anti-life, that being the ancient idea of renunciation, towards the world and its joys. But he cannot help it. On the other hand, he was told to sacrifice himself for others. To think of oneself, was condemned as selfish. He is claimed that he should think of others, to think of others’ well-being, of others’ freedom.
While reading the book, mostly at work (again, against all the company's rules, but fortunately there are some nice phone booths in the office which can allow full privacy, especially for reading), I started to gather some texts I liked but then I gave up, it is nonsense, I should quote almost whole book. Anyway, here is just a small sample.

Conclusion: I really like philosophers. But only while reading them or about them, otherwise there is a strong conflict. I seem to have been born a natural philosopher, too.

*Herzog himself had no small amount of charm. But his sexual powers had been damaged by Madeleine. And without the ability to attract women, how was he to recover? It was in this respect that he felt most like a convalescent. The paltriness of these sexual struggles.
*Unless you are utterly exploded, there is always something to be grateful for.
*His eccentricities had him in their power.
*Man’s life is not a business.
*Beauty is not a human invention.
*His achievements were not only scholarly but sexual. And were those achievements? It was his pride that must be satisfied. His flesh got what was left over.
*She was not young; probably in her thirties. (goodness, what a prejudice!)
*Instead of answering, he wrote mentally…
*Heartsore? Yes, he further wrote. But my vanity will no longer give me much mileage and to tell you the truth I’m not even greatly impressed with my own tortured heart. It begins to seem another waste of time.
*You have to fight for your life. That’s the chief condition on which you hold it. Then why be half-hearted?
*A sexual reflex that had nothing to do with age or subtlety, wisdom, experience, history, etc.. In sickness or health there came the old quack-quack at the fragrance of perfumed, feminine skin.
*For Christ’s sake, don’t cry, you idiot! Live or die, but don’t poison everything.
*It hardly does much good to have a complex mind without actually being a philosopher.

Il protagonista è un personaggio dalle mille sfaccettature.
Docente universitario in periodo di riposo, "Herzog viveva solo nella casa grande e antica". "Piante d'acero, carrubi e gramigna dei boschi lo assediavano da ogni parte, in giardino. Di notte, se apriva gli occhi le stelle erano vicinissime". E scriveva lettere ...
Esaminando se stesso, "ammise di essere stato un cattivo marito: per due volte. (...) Con i suoi due figli (...) era stato un padre affettuoso ma non un buon padre".

Si tratta certamente di un libro di livello, tuttavia penso un po' sopravvalutato. Apparentabile ad altre opere dell'autore dai personaggi maschili spesso inadeguati, dilettanti del vivere, di un certo spessore intellettuale ma emotivamente fragili, alle prese con donne volitive e intelligenti benché un po' svagate. Qui mi pare si respiri un senso di fondo drammatico rispetto ad esempio "Ne muoiono più di crepacuore", testo non tanto dissimile ma ricco di quel lieve umorismo irresistibile che Bellow sa talvolta infondere.
Sappiamo comunque che con questo grande scrittore americano il livello letterario è sempre molto alto e non si corre il rischio di essere lasciati a mani vuote.

n   “Me elevé desde unos orígenes humildes hasta el… completo desastre” n

Vargas Llosa lo ha vuelto a clavar en su prólogo, tanto es así que siento la fuerte tentación de transcribirlo por completo, pero me conformaré con traer aquí algunos de sus clavos principales: “vestir con las alegres prendas de la comedia, una historia que es, de un lado, trágica y del otro, un severo cuestionamiento de la cultura intelectual como instrumento para enfrentar la vida corriente…”; “Herzog, antes que cornudo o masoquista, incluso antes que judío, es un intelectual… Es un hombre hecho de ideas, como otros lo son de instintos o convenciones… el fracaso de Herzog… es su impericia para funcionar normalmente en el mundo, su ineptitud para adaptarse a la vida tal como es”; “buena parte de sus problemas se los ha buscado él mismo; e, incluso, es probable que no pueda vivir sin ellos. Porque a Herzog le gusta sufrir casi tanto como plañir, qué duda cabe”.

Me imagino que les suena todo esto. No me extraña que Saul Bellow sea considerado el maestro de Philip Roth o que relacionen a Herzog con los personajes de Woody Allen.

Moses Herzog es alguien que intenta ser buena persona, mantenerse fiel a unos principios, un moralista de juicio duro y riguroso al que le dan por todo lados, empezando por su mujer que le abandona por su mejor amigo (me encanta la forma en la que su mujer ve la situación: “… comprenderás la humillación que es para mí reconocer mi derrota en nuestro matrimonio”). “

n  La caridad siempre será sospechosa de morbidez: sadomasoquismo, una especie de perversión... Todas las tendencias más elevadas o morales, se hallan bajo la sospecha de que quienes las tienen son unos sinvergüenzas.” n

Tampoco es que él sea un dechado de virtudes, él mismo se considera un mal esposo, mal padre y mal hijo, es política y socialmente indiferente, misántropo y misógino (“coquetear y romper corazones son actividades femeninas. La ocupación seria de un hombre no es ésa, sino el deber, la vida viril, la política en el sentido aristotélico”) y ahora también un fracaso como intelectual que tiene que ver como sus ideas, que iban a cambiar la historia e influir en el desarrollo de la civilización, han sido desarrolladas, pobremente, en un libro escrito por otro.

n   “Moses quería hacer lo que pudiera para mejorar la condición humana y acababa tomando una píldora para dormir porque así, por lo menos, se conservaba él.” n

Se pasa el tiempo pensando o escribiendo cartas que nunca envía, siendo sus destinatarios la gente más dispar, políticos y familiares, enemigos y amigos, vivos y muertos, intelectuales y famosos de distinta especie. Esa es su forma de hacer frente a la penosa situación en la que se encuentra, como bien le hubiera aconsejado Pessoa que decía aquello de que "La literatura es la manera más agradable de ignorar la vida", o porque pensaba igual que Javier Marías: "Quizás escribo porque escribir es una forma de pensar que no tiene rival”.

Tanta lucubración, tanto “transformar sus penas en altas categorías intelectuales”, tanta lamentación acerca de cómo es o como debería ser acaba cuando asume lo que ya sabía de antemano, que el único responsable de su situación es él mismo y que además nunca cambiaría y que, por tanto, solo le queda asumirlo.

n   “Por qué ser un tipo tan emotivo... Pero lo soy. Sí, lo soy y a los perros viejos no se les puede enseñar. Yo soy así, y así continuaré siendo. ¿Para qué luchar contra ello, si soy así irremediablemente? Es mi inestabilidad la que me sirve de estabilizadora. No la organización, ni el valor, como les pasa a los demás. Comprendo que es penoso ser así, pero así soy y no tiene remedio.” n

Una novela que va de más a menos, el último tercio se me hizo un poco cuesta arriba, pero que me hizo pensar y pasar momentos deliciosos y divertidos.


P.S. Desde aquí hago un llamamiento a algún/una valiente que se atreva a plasmar en un cuento la feliz idea que deja esbozada Bellow en su novela, un cuento de Herzog para su hija: el club de los más-más, aquellos que son “lo más, lo mejor, en cada actividad o de cada tipo físico”. Por ejemplo, el calvo de más pelo y el peludo más calvo, la más gorda de las mujeres delgadas y la más delgada de las gordas, el enano más alto y el gigante más bajo, el más estúpido de los sabios y el más sabio de los ignorantes, acróbatas lisiados, bellezas feas... Los sábados por la noche dan unas cenas con baile y celebran un concurso: si eres capaz de distinguir al más peludo de los calvos del más calvo de los peludos, ganas un premio.

Rereading Herzog

I read Saul Bellow's National Book Award winning novel "Herzog" in the mid-1970s. I was in my mid-20s, had my first legal job, and wanted to keep my mind active beyond the practice of law. I remember the book appealed to me in its mix of lengthy philosophical reflection by its protagonist, Moses Herzog, together with Herzog's difficulty with sexuality.

After a long time of wanting to reread "Herzog", I took the opportunity to do so presented by staying at home through the pandemic. The novel requires time to read as well as more experience than I had nearly 50 years ago.

With its cerebral character and focus on one individual, the 47 year old Moses Herzog, the audience for this novel would appear to be limited. One can understand the appeal of the book to a certain stereotype of non-practicing educated American Jewish men, but it is valuable to see how Herzog's story and his what today are called "issues" have broader interest. In an early scene in the book, Herzog visits an elderly doctor for a physical, in large part to seek some reassurance about his mental state. (He also has consulted a psychiatrist). In a succinct reflection, discussing with the doctor his wife's betrayal, Herzog meditates on his divided self: "A strange heart. I myself can't account for it." The division pervades Herzog's story.

The book tells the story of a twice divorced academic and intellectual who has been cuckolded in a most humiliating way by his second wife and by his apparent best friend. Herzog from his youth has been a ladies man, dependent on sex and on the approval of women in his many relationships.
He is devastated by the loss of his lovely, sexy, educated, but cold and domineering second wife. A highly introspective man, Herzog explores in the course of the short period of time in which this story takes place the nature of his many relationships with women. With all his intellect, Herzog knows that the physicality of a woman, her shape, her breasts, is important to him. He says of his lover, Ramona, who comes to play a large and positive role in the story.

"She was short but had a full, substantial figure, a good round seat, firm breasts (all these things mattered to Herzog; he might think himself a moralist but the shape of a woman's breasts mattered greatly). Ramona was unsure of her chin but had confidence in her lovely throat, and so she held her head fairly high. She walked with quick efficiency, rapping her heels in energetic Castilian style. Herzog was intoxicated by this clatter. She entered a room provocatively, swaggering slightly, one hand touching her thigh, as though she carried a knife in her garter belt.'

Together with Herzog's sexual experiences and urges and his interest in the sexuality and bodies of women -- which are described more sympathetically and with greater candor than they might be today--, the book concentrates on the protagonist's intellectual life. The author of a well-received book on Christianity and Romanticism, Herzog's academic productivity has come to a halt. Herzog uses his formidable intellect and reading to write letters to people, both famous and from his own life, which he never mails. The letters raise without resolving many issues including the nature of the self, the nature of American life, the tendency of intellectuals to denigrate the United States, and the need to find peace and meaning in life. The fame of this book is due in large part to Herzog's inveterate writing and accompanying brooding.

The writing and scenes of the book also combine intellect and thought with street-wise colloquial writing in a way that mirrors Herzog himself. The book works because of its dense, closely-observed texture. It has settings in New York City, Chicago, and a small rural area in the Berkshires, which reminded me of the homes of Hawthorne and Melville. The acute observations and the detailed writing about places, streets, and people throughout this book are as important to the story as are the letter writing and reflection. Herzog and Bellow have an eye for their surroundings and an exuberance in their depiction.

Herzog is at one and the same time a neurotically comical character, a man dependent on sexuality and on women, and a person who somehow tries to rise above it all in the search for wisdom. The book explores the tension in these characteristics and creates an inimitable individual. Moses Herzog tries to work to a degree of peace which allows him to live and to accept life and to come to terms with his intellect and with his physicality.

With the advent of email and media, it is easier today, for better or worse, to share one's private thoughts with individuals and with a broad audience than it was for Herzog in 1964. I was glad to have the opportunity to get to know Moses Herzog better by revisiting his story and by thinking with greater understanding than I may have had years ago about both the demons and the ideals which drove him.

Robin Friedman

To all the people that watched my brave struggle with this book; I dedicate this review to you.
I have really mixed feelings about this one. Was it an absolute struggle to read? Did I fall asleep after a page or two many times? Was I wishing I was reading something else, something were things actually happened, like, I don't know say The Dark Desires Of the Druids III: Desert and Destiny? The answer to all these questions is yes.

Now, was I reading it with a pencil in my hand underlining sentences so I can put them as facebook updates later on? Did I think the opening line: "If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog" was the best opening line I've read in a while? Did I think it was exceptionally well written? Did I admire Bellow for going on for over 300 pages about absolutely nothing and still have people go gaga over it? Yes, yes, yes...

Did I think that Bellow used the book as an excuse to show off his elloquence and eruditism? (Like some other authors, cough, Cortazar, cough). Yes. So you see, I am getting schizoprenia.
I am glad I have finished reading it. I think it's solely responsible for the fact I was sleeping for 10 hours a day for 3 weeks. God, I need to read something stupid now.

Herzog okumanın çok da kolay olmadığı metinlerden. Zaman içindeki sıçramaları, karakter sayısı ve Herzog’un dağınık zihninde gezinmek ilk başlarda kitaba adapte olmayı zorluyor.
Kitap, toplumun beklentileri ile kendi özlemleri arasında parçalanmış ortayaşlı bir entelektüelin hikayesi. Bir noktada da “kayıp yahudi neslinin” bireysel aktarımı durumunda. Bu açıdan da pozitivist bir bakış açısına sahip, zira Herzog ile Bellow’un hayatının kesiştiği çokça nokta bulunuyor. Lakin bunun tamamen otobiyografik bir kitap olarak tanımlaması da pek yerinde değil. Daha çok kendisinin karikatürize edilmiş bir versiyonunu sunuyor Bellow. Yazar bunu yaparken de hiçbir şekilde okurun kitapla/kendisiyle bağ kurması, özdeşleşmesi ya da sorularına cevap bulması gibi bir kaygı duymuyor. Tam tersine kendisinin güvensizliklerini ve sorularını hiçbir çözüm olmadan okura geçiriyor. Varoluşa, zaman kavramına, sona dair asla cevabı olmayan soruları okuyana bırakıp vedalaşıyor. En başta söylediğim gibi, okuması çok rahat olmasa da kitabı bitirdiğinizde buna değdiğini görüyorsunuz. Amerikan edebiyatı seviyorsanız, es geçmeyin

“Hayatın dikenlerinin üzerine düşüyorum, kanıyorum. Sonra? Hayatın dikenlerinin üzerine düşüyorum, kanıyorum. Peki ya sonra? Birileriyle yatıyorum, kısa bir tatile çıkıyorum ama çok kısa bir süre sonra, acıdan haz alarak ya da mutluluktan acı çekerek - bu karışımın ne olduğunu kim bilebilir! - yine aynı dikenlerin üstüne düşüyorum. İçimde iyi olarak nitelendirebileceğim, kalıcı olan ne var? Doğumla ölüm arasında, bu sapkınlıktan elde edebileceğim şeyin haricinde hiçbir şey yok mu? Sadece karmaşık duyguların merhametli dengesi mi? Özgürlük yok mu? Sadece dürtüler mi? Peki ya yüreğimdeki onca iyilik, hiçbir anlamı yok mu? Bir şakadan mı ibaret? İnsanın, kendisinin değerli olduğu yanılgısına kapılmasına yol açan sahte bir umuttan? Böylece insanın mücadeleye devam etmesini sağlıyor, öyle mi? Ama ben bu iyiliğin sahte olmadığını biliyorum. Biliyorum. Yemin ederim.”


“...psikolojinin söylediği gibi zihinsel olarak öldürmek doğalsa (günde bir düşünce cinayeti, uzak tutar psikiyatristi) o zaman var olma arzusu iyi bir yaşamı destekleyecek kadar sağlam değil demektir.”

The Noble Lion

Moses Herzog is an academic, an individual who is used to seeing himself as a prince, a noble, a patrician, a patriarch. He's not a plebeian. He's not upwardly mobile. He believes he's already at the peak. He's somebody who stands out from the crowd. He has dignity.

He displays "the pride of the peacock, the lust of the goat, and the wrath of the lion." Of these three characteristics, the most significant is that he is leonine (the ultimate compliment Saul Bellow would ever pay anyone, as he did William Gaddis), a king of the jungle.

Herzog is ensconced in the world of culture, ideas, ideologies, philosophy and metaphysics. He has published a well-received monograph entitled "Romanticism and Christianity". However, his career seems to have stalled, at least partly as a result of tensions in his personal relationships:

"I am a specialist in spiritual self-awareness; or emotionalism; or ideas; or nonsense."

The Broken-Down Monarch

By the time we meet Herzog, he has been married twice (Daisy and Madeleine), divorced once and now separated a second time, as the result of his cuckolding by a former close friend, the poet and broadcaster, Valentine Gersbach. He has become a "broken-down monarch".

There's no reason to suspect that Herzog has been faithful during either marriage. It's unlikely that this lion would have been content with just one lioness. However, Herzog totally freaks out when he learns of Madeleine's infidelity.

Apparently, the affair had been going on for some time previously. What is most hurtful is that it seems that everybody knew about it but Herzog.

Herzog paints a flattering portrait of Madeleine:

"She is a beauty, and a very rare type, too, because she is so brilliant."

She has a Ph.D. in Russian religious history and has mothered Herzog's daughter. He really did love her passionately, at least in the beginning.

Listen to the Lioness

Over the course of the novel, we learn the very simple nature of Madeleine's dissatisfaction: Herzog just didn't listen to her enough. He wanted to be the star who shone brightest in every sky above their heads. She, understandably, wanted to shine as well.

Ultimately, for all the intellectualism and sexuality that they shared, their relationship was just too internally competitive to survive, at least on the rules that they set collectively or individually.

Madeleine ejects Herzog from the family home in Chicago, some time around October. Most of the action takes place the following May and June, around the time that the academic year has finished and Herzog is trying to deal with his estrangement, both emotionally and intellectually.

There is no prospect of Herzog returning to Madeleine, as there was that Odysseus would return to Helen or Leopold Bloom would return to Molly.

Herzog has been rejected, but at the same time set free.

Blows against the Empire

This is an enormous blow to Herzog's vanity. It unhinges him so much that Madeleine and Valentine spread rumours that he is insane or has at the very least had a nervous breakdown.

Herzog even entertains the thought himself. In one of the most famous first sentences, he says:

"If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me."

Thus, Bellow immediately puts us on notice that the sanity of his protagonist is an issue. (It's interesting that, at this point, the impact of his insanity on family and friends is of no apparent concern to him.)

Herzog visits the doctor who can find nothing wrong with him physically:

"The strength of Herzog's constitution worked obstinately against his hypochondria...He had been hoping for some definite sickness which would send him to a hospital for a while. He would not have to look after himself."

Herzog is just over-excited. He has disintegrated metaphysically. He needs a rest. A stay in hospital would mean that he could cease being responsible for himself. "His egotism [is] in abeyance, all converted into passivity."

Ridiculous Scribbling

Herzog spends much of the novel venting his spleen in the form of letters to all and sundry. He could almost have been the first blogger or troll.

Initially, these letters and the need to write them reflect the work of a madman. In retrospect, they are attempts to reconstruct his life and worldview. He has experienced a meltdown. Now he needs to reboot and reconfigure. He isn't mad, just egotistical and eccentric:

"He knew his scribbling, his letter-writing, was ridiculous. It was involuntary. His eccentricities had him in their power."

The novel is written primarily in the third person. This gives the reader the opportunity to see a perspective beyond that of Herzog. However, often the narrative dealing with Herzog's perspective slips into the first person. Bellow is always in control. However, he subsequently revealed that he wrote the novel in a white hot rage, after he experienced similar events in his own life. Herzog is not necessarily Bellow, but there is a lot of Bellow in him. For what little it's worth, even the vowels in their surnames are the same.

A Natural Masterpiece

What saves the novel from being a pure rant, is the introduction of Ramona. She is a business woman, as well as a mature aged student who has a degree in Art History from Columbia. She has also been a student in some of Herzog's classes.

It's inevitable that a relationship between the two will develop during the course of the novel. They seem to be made for each other. There's a sense in which Ramona is an intellectual equal. However, she is also portrayed, like Madeleine, as extremely sexually attractive. Sometimes you can be both:

"Ramona truly was a desirable wife. She was understanding. Educated. Well situated in New York. Money. And sexually, a natural masterpiece. What breasts!"

The interposition of this relationship into the narrative prevents it being too maudlin. However, to the extent that it reflects an actual relationship with a person who would become Bellow's third wife (even if the model is someone quite different altogether), it gives effect to an authorial desire for revenge on his second wife.

As attractively as he portrays Madeleine in many parts, Bellow uses the fictional romance with Ramona to get over her and start a new life of even greater personal compatibility and sexual pleasure.

There's an element of authorial immaturity in this entire construct. Any acquaintances of the Bellow family or circle of friends would have had no doubts about who and what was being portrayed in the novel.

Yet, despite this apparent desire for revenge, the novel is one of the great literary works of the twentieth century. It's definitely one of my top ten, if not top five.

Herzog Comes to Bury Caesar

While the breakdown of the relationship with Madeleine triggers the narrative, it is more inflamed by the dynamic of the relationship between Herzog and Ramona.

Of course, in the manner of two highly flirtatious people who know what they want, the relationship is consummated quite early in the peace. However, Herzog is not sure he is ready for Ramona yet. He has too much on his mind. First, it seems, he has to get these things off his mind, hence the letters.

Next, Herzog has to decide that this new relationship is what he really wants. Equally importantly, though, if the answer is yes, then, in the game of love, he has to play hard to get. For a little while, at least.

Herzog is used to strong, if not dominant, women. Before starting another relationship, he has to ready himself for the challenge. He needs some grooming before he is ready to become Ramona's groom.

As much as we know that Herzog could not possibly resist Ramona's sexual attraction, the process by which he gets to the liaison that will occur at the end of the novel is quite circuitous. Not to mention metaphysical.

Herzog's initial instinct is to retreat into himself after the separation from Madeleine. In the same manner, he feels the temptation to escape Ramona's lure by running away to the relative isolation of his rural home in Massachusetts, from where he writes most of his letters.

Of course, Herzog knows that he will eventually return to Ramona, as does she. The attraction is too great to turn his back on her permanently. He describes his temporary flight as like that of a runaway slave. He is still enslaved to the prospect of their love.

Turbulence of Spirit

The narrative is fragmented and non-chronological, so we know about Ramona from early on.

However, the structure of the narrative reflects the manner in which Herzog has been let loose on the world following his separation. If nothing else, he is suffering from "irregularity and turbulence of spirit".

The role of Herzog's letters is to come to grips with this turbulence. Ironically, for all the turmoil he finds himself in, "though he still behaved oddly, he felt confident, cheerful, clairvoyant, and strong. He had fallen under a spell." Despite his excess of nervous energy, "he looked weirdly tranquil."

Even though his letters focus on the past and his interior world, his attention has already moved to the future and his relationship with the external world.

My Story is History

It's this change of focus that constitutes what is truly great and transcendent about the novel.

Until now, the leonine version of Herzog has seen himself as part of the progress of History. He personalises all of the philosophy he has consumed and written about:

"One way or another the no doubt mad idea entered my mind that my own actions had historic importance, and this (fantasy?) made it appear that people who harmed me were interfering with an important experiment."

The Metaphysical Self

Herzog's marriage breakdown represents a crisis in the progress of not just Herzog himself, but History as well. He endeavours to address it with the only tools known to him, his metaphysics.

However, since the 18th century, metaphysics has become increasingly self-oriented, almost by definition.

Littered throughout the novel are words deriving from the roots "self" and "ego": self-consciousness, self-awareness, self-hatred, self-development, self-realisation, self-sufficiency, self-correction, self-obsession, egotism, ego-reinforcement.

Herzog's plight is symbolic of what has happened to humanity in the last two centuries.

He is "aging, vain, terribly narcissistic, suffering without proper dignity." He has lost his nobility. He has re-joined the plebeian. To use Heidegger's term, he has fallen into the Quotidian.

Let Me Look at You

Bellow is keenly observant in respect of the world around his protagonist. We know what the environment and people look like. Herzog is a keen gardener. Trees and birds are often described with pastoral delight: "All the while, one corner of his mind remained open to the external world." However, ultimately, Herzog realises that he has grown too far away from the external world.

It takes family and friends to tell him:

"Don't get highfalutin. I'm talking facts, not shit...Who told you you were such a prince? Dreamy boy...You're a highbrow and [you] married a highbrow broad. Somewhere in every intellectual is a dumb prick. You guys can't answer your own questions."

Herzog recalls his own father's attitude towards his arrogance and pretension:

"He could no longer bear the sight of me, that look of mine, the look of conceit or proud trouble. The elite look."

Not by Self Alone

Of course, the impetus for Herzog to sort himself out derives from his sexual appetite for Ramona. How can a man in his state be fit for a "mature, successful, laughing, sexual woman?"

For all his intellectual and academic seriousness, he is still at heart a human being with human needs:

"Herzog had committed a sin of some kind against his own heart, while in pursuit of a grand synthesis...I wasted myself in stupid schemes, liberating my spirit."

He realises that he could have become conscious of this truth a lot earlier, if he had just paid more attention to those around him. If we could only bother to look into the eyes of others, we would see how we look to them:

"Man liveth not by Self alone, but in his brother's face."

Herzog realises for the first time that life is not just about the individual, the self, in isolation from others and the external world:

"I really believe that brotherhood is what makes a man human."

His new version of humanism is founded on some kind of fraternity. A relationship with the other. A relationship with others.

Combatting the Void

Characteristically, it's not enough that this analysis be restricted to Herzog alone. Herzog, if not Bellow as well, diagnoses the problem as one shared by the whole of Western Civilisation. Thus, Herzog's solution to his metaphysical problem ends up being equally metaphysical and equally applicable to others.

Herzog rails against various nihilist philosophies of disintegration and annihilation that he describes as "the mire of post-Renaissance, post-humanistic, post-Cartesian dissolution, next door to the Void" (we might recognise the cultural manifestation as Post-Modernism):

"What is the philosophy of this generation? Not God is dead, that point was passed long ago. Perhaps it should be stated Death is God. This generation thinks - and this is its thought of thoughts - that nothing faithful, vulnerable, fragile can be durable or have any true power. Death waits for these things as a cement floor waits for a dropping light bulb...History is the history of cruelty, not love, as soft men think. We have experimented with every human capacity to see which is strong and admirable and have shown that none is. There is only impracticality. [This is] the victory of death, not of rationality, not of rational faith...

"The question of death offers us the interesting alternatives of disintegrating ourselves by our own wills in proof of our 'freedom', or the acknowledging that we owe a human life to this waking spell of existence, regardless of the void. (After all, we have no positive knowledge of that void.)"

Herzog believes that life is too important to be abandoned to nihilism:

"We mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of the intellectual. The canned sauerkraut of Spengler's 'Prussian Socialism', the commonplace of the Wasteland outlook, the cheap mental stimulants of Alienation, the cant and rant of pipsqueaks about Inauthenticity and Forlornness. I can't accept this foolish dreariness. We are talking about the whole life of mankind. The subject is too great, too deep for such weakness, cowardice...a merely aesthetic critique of modern history! After the wars and mass killings!"

"...Nietzsche: you speak of the power of the Dionysian spirit to endure the sight of the Terrible, the Questionable, to allow itself the luxury of Destruction, to witness Decomposition, Hideousness, Evil...You want to make us able to live with the void."

Ultimately, Herzog argues that only humanism can combat the void, if there is such a thing. Man's backbone must hold us above and beyond entropy, at least temporarily. Whatever the concerns about rationality, technology, evil, abuse of power, they can only be addressed at an individual or collective level. There is no point in surrendering to the void.

Metaphysical Pleasure

These metaphysical conclusions have cleaned Herzog's slate, and left him ready for Ramona. What awaits him is:

"not simple pleasure but metaphysical, transcendent pleasure - pleasure which answered the riddle of human existence. That was Ramona - no mere sensualist, but a theoretician, almost a priestess...

"Ramona had passed through the hell of profligacy and attained the seriousness of pleasure. For when will we civilised beings become really serious? Said Kierkegaard. Only when we have known hell through and through. Without this, hedonism and frivolity will diffuse hell through all our days. Ramona, however, does not believe in any sin but the sin against the body, for her the true and only temple of the spirit."

Now that Herzog, too, has been to hell and back, it's time that the two Orphic travellers met up again.

Kiss Me Again

All his life, Herzog has been dogged by words:

"What can thoughtful people and humanists do but struggle towards suitable words?...I've been writing letters helter-skelter in all directions. More words. I go after reality with language. Perhaps I'd like to change it all into language..."

By the end of the novel, Herzog has run out of words:

"At this time he had no messages for anyone. Nothing. Not a single word."

No words are necessary, because he has discovered reality, and reality is enough. He is about to reunite with Ramona in his home in the Berkshires. A nice meal is in the oven. He has chilled a few bottles of white wine in the mountain spring. He looks at his watch. She will be coming soon. So, too, will he.


SOUNDTRACK:

Bettie Serveert - "Roadmovies"

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VjQ7xeC...

Bettie Serveert - "Certainlie"

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hDDHJugkG1U

Bettie Serveert - "I'll Keep It With Mine"

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u83Qy1FBahI



In Her Brother's Face (A Bright New Star Called Emmanuelle)
[For Rupert's Little Sister]
[After a Story by Saul Bellow/Moses Herzog]

All over Rupert's freckled face,
Nature traced out constellations,
With every star in its place,
Except for one that occupied
What was, 'til now, an empty space.

Nobody knew what it was called,
Not even the astronomers.
The man they asked was very bald.
His name was Hiram Shpitalnik
And by this star he was enthralled.

Though his beard reached to his feet
And he lived inside a hat box,
Hiram had to accept defeat.
Only his grandfather would know.
His wisdom was much more complete.

He lived inside a walnut shell
And all his friends were bumble bees,
But just by looking, he could tell.
It was a new discovery
That Rupert named Emmanuelle.