Herzog da yarım bıraktığım az sayıdaki kitaplar arasında yerini aldı. 341 sayfalık kitabın (1976 Penguin basımı bendeki) 132. sayfasında pes ettim. Fazla karikatürize olması, Yahudi-merkezli bunalımların yoğunluğu, aşırı doz aydın gösterişi, karakterlerin sevimsizliği, ana kahraman Herzog’un ikna etmeyen tercihleri, biraz da eskimiş olması... vs. boğdu. Seven epey olmuş ama Nobelli (1976) Saul Bellow bana uymadı.

Ένα ιδιαίτερο αλλά αρκετά κουραστικό βιβλίο. Ο Μπέλοου αποφασίζει να γράψει για όλους εκείνους (πολύ λίγους-εξαιρέσεις) που ενώ διαθέτουν υψηλή ευφυία και ασχολούνται με τα μεγάλα ζητήματα της ζωής ,σκοντάφτουν στην απλή καθημερινότητα και στις δεξιότητες που δυστυχώς πρέπει να διαθέτεις ώστε να μπορέσεις να επιβιώσεις. Η υψηλή ευφυία άλλωστε ποτέ δεν ήταν καλός οδηγός για μια όμορφη ζωή, ο μέσος όρος με τα τερτίπια του μπορεί να αισθάνεται καλύτερα στο παιχνίδι της καθημερινότητας. Γοητευτικό θέμα, κουραστικός τρόπος γραφής.

This is a tough one to evaluate. I guess Moses Herzog is a typical (Jewish) intellectual who absolutely can not cope with the ordinariness of life. After two divorces he is confronted with the harsh reality. He tries to fight his midlife crisis and the rising frenzy by writing dozens of letters to friends, but also to celebrities. After many wanderings he finds, through a new wife and the solitary contemplation of nature, more or less peace with himself and life. That's the basic story. Quite interesting and vividly told. As a reader you can really feel the struggle of this man.

But, there's a but: Bellow has cut the story in hundreds of fragments: memories of childhood, flashbacks to the difficult relation Herzog had with women, hilarious incidents in the reality of today, letter clips, musings etc. And that makes the reading of this book very difficult and sometimes even hardly enjoyable.

But Bellow goes deep, deeper than anyone. The story did captivate me because of the existentialist themes (just as in Dangling Man), the ingenious confrontation between reality and fantasy, the descriptions of harsh city life and because of some really brilliant scenes (especially the lawyer characters are hilarious). But the story did also repel me because of the difficult grammatic constructions, the accumulation of very sour figments of Herzog (you are all the time in his head) and the very Woody Allen-like (my anachronism) atmosphere.

Essentially Herzog can be seen as a remake of Joyce's Ulysses, including the final (carnal) liberation by a woman that stands firmly in reality, but Bellow does so in a unique way. Certainly a book to reread.

هيرزوغ اكاديمي مرموق يرتبط بعلاقة غريبة مع مادلين في بدايتها ونهايتها تؤثر عليه بشكل كبير ، نكتشف عبر الرواية تفاصيل العلاقات النسائية داخل حياته رامونا التي تحرره جنسيا و ديزي صاحبة ماضي قديم تركه سونو ذات الثقافة الهجينة مثله ، حياته الذهنية هي حبل السرد الطويل تغلب عليها كتابة الرسائل الى مفكرين و ادباء وفلاسفة عبرها احببت هذه الرواية التي تطرح معلومات كثيرة في مختلف مناحي الحياة كما ان تاملات هيرزوغ الفردية و توصيفه للعالم حوله و ذاته داخل العالم جميل ، كانت مشكلتي فقط المقاطع باللغات المختلفة الغير مترجمة لماذا عليه ان يكتب بدون توضيحات حولها .. بختام الرواية احسست اني كأني اتجاوز عمري في تمثل هيرزوغ هذا كأني سأصير نسخة منه او انني احتاج عمرا اكبر لأصل اليه وافهمه

مما أعجبني :

الحزن بحوجة الى دافع اكبر
But since it had not been much to begin with, there was not much to grieve about


والحياة بإختيار طريقة عيشها
 He might once have had the makings of a clever character, but he had chosen to be dreamy instead

وهكذا كان هيرزوغ
    With love, lazy. With brightness, dull. With power, passive. With his own soul, evasive.

وهنا مقطع عن شخصيته
He had been hoping for some definite sickness which would send him to a hospital for a while

ومقطع اخر
He was making a bore of himself-doing the weak thing, the corrupt thing.

وآخر
Moses was irresistible to a man like Simkin who loved to pity and to poke fun at the same time. He was a Reality-Instructor

رامونا الذكية تشخص نفسية هيرزوغ
 "You're used to difficult women. To struggle.
    Perhaps you like it when they give you a bad time."

وهيرزوغ وعالمه
    He thought, I prefer to accept as a motive not the thing I fully understand but the thing I partly understand.
    Utter clarity of explanation to me is false.

وشخصيته العجيبة مرة أخرى
    He knows he's a good man. He understands, and when you understand you suffer more. You have higher responsibilities, responsibilities that come with suffering.

...

This is how the all-powerful human intellect employs itself when it has no real occupation

هيرزوغ الشبح
    Herzog picked her up and carried her. These children's outings, perhaps because they were pervaded with so much emotion, were always exhausting. Often, after a day with Marco, Moses had to put a cold compress on his eyes and lie down. It seemed his fate to be the visiting father, an apparition who faded in and out of the children's lives. But this peculiar sensitivity about meeting and parting had to be tamed. Such trembling sorrow-he tried to think what term Freud had for it: partial return of repressed traumatic material, ultimately traceable to the death instinct? comshd not be imparted to children, not that tremulous lifelong swoon of death. This same emotion, as Herzog the student was aware, was held to the womb of cities, heavenly as well as earthly, mankind being unable to part with its beloved or its dead in this world or the next.

وهنا اخر mediocrity
I was overcome with happy pride at being found "regular

والمقاطع اللطيفة
    Herzog noted from a favorite source- Opposition is true friendship. His house, his child, yea, all that a man hath will he give for wisdom.

...

    My whole life beating against its boundaries, and the force of balked longings coming back as stinging poison

...

This somber human case, this dark husk, these indurated lines of submission to the fate of being human, this splendid face showed the responses of his mother's finest nerves to the greatness of life, rich in sorrow, in death

...

    Crumbs of decency - all that we paupers can spare one another. No wonder "personal" life is a humiliation, and to be an individual contemptible. The historical process, putting clothes on our backs, shoes on the feet, meat in the mouth, does infinitely more for us by the indifferent method than anyone does by intention, Herzog wrote in the rented Falcon.


نظرة عن عمق الدين في التأثير على تفصيلات الانسان
    Herzog's mother had had a weakness for Jews with handsome beards. In her family, too, all the elders had beards that were thick and rich, full of religion.

وللعطر حكاية او بالكلمة الشائعة إفتضاح
he could smell the perfume. In the depths of a man's being there was something that responded with a quack to such perfume.

وضغط الحياة كتفسير لقبول مختلف اوضاعها
People are dying - it is no metaphor - for lack of something real to carry home when day is done. See how willingly they are to accept the wildest nonsense.

...

    A man is born to be orphaned, and to leave orphans after him, but a chair like that chair, if he can afford it, is a great comfort.

والعناق
He embraced her small bones with fatherly hunger while her breath on his face stirred his deepest feelings.

والعري
No wonder clothes were so important to Ramona, they were the setting of that luxurious jewel, her nakedness.

والضحك
His laughter as it became silent, internal, was all the deeper.

والخليط العجيب
 I get laid, I take a short holiday, but very soon after I fall upon those same thorns with gratification in pain, or suffering in joy- who knows what the mixture is


واختلاف طريقة الحديث داخل اللغات المختلفة
The Yiddish French we spoke was funny but innocent. She told me no such broken truths and dirty lies as I heard in my own language, and my simple declarative sentences couldn't do her much harm.

نيتشه اخو المسيح لا عدوه
Herzog sat straighter in his chair, and pronounced his words with slight portentousness, perhaps. "I don't agree with Nietzsche that Jesus made the whole world sick, infected it with his slave morality. But Nietzsche himself had a Christian view of history, seeing the present moment always as some crisis, some fall from classical greatness, some corruption or evil to be saved from. I call that Christian. And Madeleine has it, all right.

وفكرة الخلاص كخلاصة لصعوبة حياة هيرزوغ
If ever Herzog knew the loathsomeness of a particular existence, knew that the whole was required to redeem every separate spirit, it was then, in his terrible passion, which he tried, impossibly, to share, telling his story.

ولماذا كتابة الرسائل
I must be trying to keep tight the tensions without which human beings can no longer be called human. If they don't suffer, they've gotten away from me. And I've filled the world with letters to prevent their escape. I want them in human form, and so I conjure up a whole environment and catch them in the middle

سبينوزا والوجود كرغبة
Now: the first requirement of stability in a human being was that the said human being should really desire to exist. This is what Spinoza says. It is necessary for happiness

وافكار سبينوزا كسبب ألم
He wrote to Spinoza, Thoughts not casually connected were said by you to cause pain. I find that is indeed the case. Random association, when the intellect is passive, is a form of bondage.

هل هكذا نفهم إلحاد سارتر
    if existence is nausea then faith is an uncertain relief.

وهيدغر والموت
 "Face death. That's Heidegger. What comes out of this?"

الاخر والحقيقة
On this theory truth is punishment, and you must take it like a man. It says truth will harrow your soul because your inclination as a poor human thing is to lie and to live by lies. So if you have anything else waiting in your soul to be revealed you'll never learn about it from these people.

لا فكاك من الآخر
When the preachers of dread tell you that others only distract you from metaphysical freedom then you must turn away from them. The real and essential question is one of our employment by other human beings and their employment by us

Li até meio, com muita calma mas sem convicção, daí em diante li na diagonal. Não estou no modo certo para esta leitura, talvez noutra altura, ou noutra vida!

Bellow tem todas as qualidades de um Nobel: erudito, denso, entrosado, rico e bastante resistente. O tema deste livro até é interessante, e a abordagem à introspeção questionadora também, mas enreda-se demais, perde-se em descrições não fornecendo propriamente motivação narrativa.

Din punctul meu de vedere, Herzog este unul dintre cele mai bune romane ale secolului al XX-lea. Cu siguranță, nu este singurul roman al lui Saul Bellow care a devenit un reper, un punct de referință în istoria literaturii americane și nu numai. De altfel, cartea a fost recompensată cu National Book Award în 1965 (era pentru a doua oară când Bellow primea acest premiu foarte prestigios, dar nu și ultima dată; în 1971, scriitorul avea să câștige cel de-al treilea National Book Award, fiind, până astăzi, singurul autor care a reușit performanța de a obține de trei ori acest premiu). De aici nu rezultă faptul că este o carte pe gustul oricui, ba chiar, dimpotrivă, statistic vorbind, probabil că sunt mai mulți cititori enervați de Herzog decât cei încântați cu adevărat. Oricum ar fi, este un roman care nu poate fi ignorat.
Din nou, așa cum ne-a obișnuit Bellow, narațiunea este oarecum secundară, acțiunea (principală) având loc pe parcursul a doar câteva zile, modul în care este narat romanul fiind însă unul deloc liniar, așa cum mintea lui Moses Herzog nu poate fi caracterizată prin liniaritate; ne putem întreba, de altfel, dacă mintea noastră poate fi cu adevărat liniară sau dacă nu cumva este plină de cotloane, având mereu tendința de a nu urma o linie dreaptă.
Cu certitudine, mintea lui Moses are multe asemenea coridoare secrete, cele mai multe dintre acestea fiind pline de ranchiună la adresa fostei sale soții, Madeleine și a amantului acesteia, Valentine Gersbach, ce a devenit noul ei partener de viață. Fără îndoială, cel puțin în prima parte, descrierea modului în care viața lui Moses Herzog se face țăndări este magistral. La fel de magistral este descris și efortul său supraomenesc de a se se vindeca de ură, de a lăsa în urmă trauma suferită. Dar s-o luăm pe rând.
Moses Elkanah Herzog este un profesor, un istoric al ideilor, mai bine spus. Este specializat în Romantism, dar are cunoștințe de-a dreptul enciclopedice din multe domenii ale cunoașterii. Însă, viața sa a intrat într-un declin profund în momentul în care cea de-a doua soție, frumoasa și cruda Madeleine, s-a hotărât să se despartă de el, nu înainte de a-l înșela cu cel mai bun prieten al lui, Valentine Gersbach (acesta este de altfel unul dintre episoadele autobiografice, deloc puține, pe care le conține cartea).
Ce face Herzog pentru a putea să reziste acestei traume extraordinare? Se apucă și scrie tot felul de scrisori sau doar fragmente de scrisori pe care nu le expediază nimănui. Cui îi scrie? De-a valma, prietenilor, președintelui SUA, rudelor sale, lui Martin Heidegger, foștilor colegi, noii sale iubite, Ramona Donsell, fostă studentă a lui Herzog, dar și unor gânditori care nu mai trăiesc de multă vreme, precum filosoful Baruch Spinoza. Nici el însuși nu este scutit de avalanșa aceasta de epistole (oare a avut vreun cititor curiozitatea să le numere?); da, ați auzit bine, Moses Elkanah Herzog îi scrie lui Moses Elkanah Herzog, pe un ton destul de tandru, dar nu lipsit de ironie și îngrijorare: "Dragă Moses E. Herzog, de când te interesează atât de mult problemele sociale, lumea exterioară? Până de curând ai dus o viaţă de inocentă lenevie. Și deodată te-a cuprins o pornire faustiană de nemulţumire şi schimbare universală. Cerţi. Jigneşti".
Într-un cuvânt, Herzog îi scrie oricui îi trece în acel moment prin minte. Mai mereu, el polemizează cu persoana căreia îi scrie, dar, spre lauda sa, așa cum am remarcat mai sus, are și un spirit autoironic foarte dezvoltat. În realitate, prin intermediul acestor scrisori ce nu vor fi niciodată citite de altcineva decât de cel care le-a scris, Herzog face cumva ca realitatea să poată fi suportabilă; este un fel de anihilare simbolică a dușmanilor săi, între care îi putem include pe mătușa Zelda, Monseniorul Hilton, cel care a convins-o pe Madeleine să se convertească, devenind atât de habotnică încât soțul ei aproape nu o recunoaște, "bruta spilcuită" Egbert Shapiro, supărat cu siguranță pe Herzog, după ce acesta a scris o recenzie probabil nu foarte elogioasă despre studiul de proporții monumentale al lui Shapiro și cărat "prin toată Europa" de bietul Moses, disperat la gândul că nu va reuși să scrie blestemata aia de recenzie (cu atât mai mult cu cât el a înțeles foarte bine că lui Shapiro îi curgeau balele după soția sa), doctorul Edvig - în paranteză fie spus, episodul în care psihiatrul lui Herzog, doctorul Edvig din Chicago, este convertit de Mady, trecând cu arme și bagaje de partea acesteia este descris de-a dreptul senzațional - etc. Lista de dușmani este lungă, mult mai scurtă cea a prietenilor, dintre care o figură frumoasă face bietul zoolog Lucas Asphalter.
Concluzia: un roman genial și/sau enervant, depinde de fiecare cititor în parte să-l primească așa cum dorește. Lectură plăcută!

This is the first book of this author that I read and I really liked it.

Despite many other reviewers, the author does have a great skill in the narrative, even if he doesn't follow the conventional rules of writing fiction.

The theme of the plot is quite actual considering the present moment (Trump's administration).

TR The Adventures of Augie March
TR Humboldt's Gift
TR Seize the day
TR Dangling Man

Meraviglioso

Moses Elkanah

E' il romanzo di Moses. Dei suoi fallimenti, doppio come marito, e poi come padre e professore. E delle sue paure ataviche: del nulla, della morte. Si sfianca e strugge nelle sue elucubrazioni filosofiche. Scrive decine di lettere che mai recapiterà, tra i destinatari anche Nehru, M.L.King, Eisenhower, Nietzsche. Cerca di trovare un senso e mettere ordine nel caos. Prova a mantere una dimensione politica che possa incidere sul suo tempo. Riallaccia relazioni, anche per via sessuale (Sono, Ramona). Con un po' di ironia, va avanti e sembra farcela.

n  Ma naturalmente lui, Herzog, che, com’era da aspettarsi, non si era rassegnato a quelle tendenze, aveva, con la cieca ostinazione tipica del suo carattere, spavaldamente ma senza tutto il coraggio o l’intelligenza necessari, provato a essere uno Herzog meraviglioso, uno Herzog deciso a tentare, forse goffamente, di vivere doti meravigliose appena vagamente comprese. Era chiaro che aveva esagerato, che si era spinto oltre i suoi limiti e le sue capacità, ma quella era la crudele difficoltà di un uomo che aveva forti impulsi, persino fede, ma a cui mancavano idee chiare. E anche se aveva fallito? Significava davvero che non esistevano fedeltà, generosità, nessuna sacra virtù? Doveva forse essere uno Herzog comune, senza ambizioni? No.n

Attorno a Moses girano tanti personaggi, molto ben caratterizzati. La sua famiglia di origini ebraiche, immigrata in Canada e poi negli USA, padre turbolento, madre e matrigna pacate e resilienti, alcuni fratelli di successo. Le sue ex mogli, in particolare la seconda che lo ha tradito con il suo migliore amico. E altri.

n  Dunque, dietro tutto questo è l’America borghese. Questo è un rozzo mondo di splendore e di escrementi. Una civiltà superba e pigra che adora la propria cafonaggine. Tu e io siamo cresciuti nell’antica miseria. Io non so quanto tu sia diventato americano, dai vecchi tempi del Canada – vivi qui da molto tempo. Ma io non adorerò mai gli dèi grassi. Io no. Non sono mica marxista, sai. Io conservo il mio cuore per William Blake e Rilke.n

Bellow scrive bene, da Nobel. Mi è piaciuta molto la parte in cui descrive la casa in campagna in rovina, dove un tempo era stato felice e dalla cui sistemazione Moses può trovare una nuova ripartenza.

n  La premessa necessaria è che un uomo in certo qual modo è qualcosa di più delle proprie “caratteristiche”, di tutte le emozioni, affanni, gusti e opere che si compiace di chiamare “la mia vita”. Noi abbiamo ragione di sperare che una vita sia qualcosa di più di questa nube di particelle, di questa fattualità. Esamina bene ciò che è comprensibile e concluderai che soltanto l’incomprensibile ti fornisce qualche luce.n

There are a lot of interesting themes here. The main character is Moses and there are a lot of occasions to think of the Pentateuch and especially Genesis throughout the book. Moses had a wife who converts to Christianity and a nurse who reads to him from the Old Testament; there is a lot of transitioning from old to new in here. His family moved from the old to the new world and while everyone around him is moving forward Moses is stuck looking back to his dead parents and at the dead ideas of philosophers and Freud. There is also a lot of dirty talk, not that kind of dirty talk! Literally dirt and grime. Moses is acutely aware that plants spring from the soil and that we eventually crumble to dust. If nothing else Bellow is a master at staying on track and using language to reinforce all the seams of the story.

I wish I could figure out what it is with Bellow and violet eyes. Who have you ever seen with violet eyes? Supposedly Elizabeth Taylor did but that’s all I can think of. Madeleine has them here and Charlie Citrine’s ex had them in Humboldt’s Gift. The obvious first thought is royalty but that doesn’t seem right here. Jesus was dressed in purple to mock his claim to be the king of men. Is that it? I don’t know but I finished both books wondering about that more than anything else.

I enjoyed reading this and would like to think I’ll bump my rating up to five stars after another reading but as much as I enjoy most of Bellow’s works this one didn’t keep my interest as much as the others did.

Novels without chapters bug me.
Herzog had some sort of dissection; sometimes the prose would be cut, only to be continued a couple spaces below. It still seemed vague and disorganized to me, having been for so long used to chapters and clear division.

I read a measly 18% of this book, and this is what I have to show for it:
This book was extremely hard for me to review. I’m still not completely sure I have a finished opinion on it. It had been on my to-read list forever. And it’s long been on the corner of my eye, beckoning, begging me to open it, and discover the amazing Nobel Prize winner.

I thought I would love it. Sixty pages in, I still could not see the point the author was trying to sell with his story. It was not grabbing me. The introduction by Philip Roth had mentioned Tolstoy and compared their prose. I could not see the resemblance, as Anna Karenina is one of my all-time favorites.

I felt the writing was all over the place and it was not able to focus on one sole idea for even the length of a couple of phrases. Perhaps that was meant to illustrate Herzog’s “madness”, but it was sort of annoying.

Interspersed with that muddle were quotes of extreme genius, wit and introspection, so you might perhaps understand my difficulty in wrapping my mind on a fixed opinion.

Throughout what I actually read, I could sense a dulled, dark humor underneath the drama of the plot. Most of the time I didn’t know if I should consider some passages funny or insulting; like this one:

“Will never understand what women want. What do they want? They eat green salad and drink human blood.”

Nearing the 70th page, I grew extremely tired of the character’s crazy, chopped letter writing. Plus, my book was smelling all mildewy (thanks, new Penguin Classics copy, that managed to be the only book in my shelves – among 200 others – to get mildew/mold, having been less than 2 years old), so I just decided to abandon it for now, and maybe pick it up again in a couple of years. Maybe.

I just honestly could not bring myself to care for Herzog, or his incessant ranting.

These quotes are pretty killer though:
“You have to fight for your life. That’s the chief condition on which you hold it.”

”People are dying – it is no metaphor – for lack of something real to carry home when day is done.”

Why should we read Saul Bellow today, and why Herzog?

Bellow, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, is the only three time winner of the National Book Award for fiction. The Times of London identified him as the greatest writer in English of the past century.

Bellow believed that fiction should address the major social issues and in his words ‘account for the mysterious circumstance of being.’ In his critical essays, Bellow called for ‘a more positive vision of humans as glorious sufferers wounded by their own aspirations and ideals in a world that has lost its belief in both.’

He was a shrewd observer and could write with an exuberance that was almost Whitmanesque. The Nation wrote ‘It's like drinking from a fire hose. This is your brain on Bellow.’ And, he was comical in a very dry manner. Accepting all the above, he believed the real true test of good writing was enjoyment for the reader.

Herzog has been called the top ‘novel of ideas.’ A middle-age college professor, who is a failed academic, loses his second wife to his best friend. He obsesses to understand what not only has happened him but to humanity at large - locally, nationally, globally, historically, culturally, politically. He asks the most difficult questions that most of us would run from: What is the purpose of living? Is love worth a man's soul? Can one man ever make a difference in the world?

Herzog addressed these issues with a series of letters he writes but never mails to family, to friends, to church clergy, to Spinoza, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Adlai Stevenson, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, and even to God. The letters are cranky, playful, but always clever. It has been said after ‘Herzog’ no writer need pretend in his fiction that his education stopped in the eighth grade.

Maybe the stunning intensity comes from the fact that Bellow started the novel after losing his second wife to a good friend. Herzog’s girlfriend Ramona is modeled after Bellow’s girlfriend at the time and she was quoted saying the novel is ‘a book so private as to constitute a parallel to Rousseau's Confessions.’

Some accuse Bellow of being a misogynist. I found his treatment of women really not negative. Sure, Herzog hates his ex for making a fool out of him, but Bellow recognizes the rather amazing power a woman has to bring even a brilliant and arrogant man to despair due to his need for just a small amount of her attention, her care.

Like most of Bellow’s books, don’t expect Herzog to have much of plot or even a conclusion. The story is in the thinking.