EXISTENTIAL CONSCIOUSNESS, REDEMPTION, AND BUDDHIST

ALLUSIONS IN THE WORK OF SAUL BELLOW

by

Jerry Durbeej

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of

The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Florida Atlantic University

Boca Raton, FL

May 2010

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Dr. Andrew Furman for introducing me to Saul Bellow and

Jewish American Literature and for his patience and scholarly guidance. I am also indebted to Dr. Steven Blakemore and Dr. Carol Gould who have read my work, and I am grateful for their critical perspectives and invaluable support. I will always be respectful to Drs. Furman, Blakemore, and Gould for I am fully aware that the essence of my study also bears the imprint of your keen minds.

iii ABSTRACT

Author: Jerry K. Durbeej

Title: Existential Consciousness, Redemption, and Buddhist Allusions in the Work of Saul Bellow

Institution: Florida Atlantic University

Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Andrew Furman

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

Year: 2010

Within the past two centuries, massive industrialization, technological and scientific advances, wars, diseases, failures in social systems, and religious, ethnic, and political conflicts have produced an existential angst that has saturated the collective consciousness of modern man. The atrocities of World Wars I and II induced European and American authors and artists to confront this state of disillusionment, anxiety, loneliness, fear, and dread; consequently, much of our modern literature reflects this nihilistic darkness. In this state of grave doubts and uncertainties, the modern man finds himself alienated and disconnected from the very essences that ground him.

Scholars of literature, philosophy, and the various arts and social sciences, having examined this contemporary dilemma, find just cause to question our western belief that science, technology, and materialism put the world in order. The further indictment is that these rational and materialistic forces have usurped the place of God and dismantled the ancient mythologies that once grounded our existence. iv This study examines the selected work of Saul Bellow and argues that his recurring themes of suffering, compassion, humanity, and renewal of the human spirit are antithetical to this collective existential angst. My argument introduces the doctrine of Existentialism and then explores the basic existentialist theory of Jean-Paul Sartre.

From this platform, I later establish that Bellow takes a stand against this collective nihilism in favor of community and the celebration of life that are defined by a moral framework.

Bellow‘s most representative novel in this vein of existential dislocation is

Dangling Man. From this novel I argue that there is an inherent flaw in the notion that man‘s essential existence can only be defined through his agency as an individual, and that man, not God, is ultimately responsible for his actions and destiny. This pursuit of existence based on personal freedom and intellectual synthesis is prone to failure;

Bellow‘s point of view is that the existentialist, having disconnected himself from God and community, plunges into an abyss fraught with angst and turmoil. Bellow‘s theme of humanity instructs that our redemption lies not in our personal quest, but in our absorption and participation in a community framed by moral precepts and the respect for God. Finally, and from another angle and through Bellow‘s Herzog, I establish a connection to Buddhism. From these Buddhist allusions, I further affirm that the quest for authentic existence and redemption demands a confrontation with our angst and an acknowledgement of our suffering.

v DEDICATION

This manuscript is dedicated to my family, particularly to my patient and encouraging wife, Chandra, who has put up with these many years of my schooling, and to my children, Ravi and Arianna, who are the center of our lives. I also dedicate this work to my late parents who believed in the pursuit of an education.

EXISTENTIAL CONSCIOUSNESS, REDEMPTION, AND BUDDHIST

ALLUSIONS IN THE WORK OF SAUL BELLOW

Chapter 1: Saul Bellow: Trajectory and Influences ...... 1

Saul Bellow: His Background and the Influence of the Jewish Tradition ...... 5

Bellow and the Relevance of the Primordial ...... 12

Materialism and Spiritual Disconnect ...... 15

Existential Angst: Agency ...... 17

Influence of the Romantic Ideology ...... 21

Ambiguity in Bellow ...... 24

Bellow: Out of Favor ...... 25

A Recap of the Essential Bellow ...... 28

Chapter 2: Existentialism: Counterpoint to Bellow ...... 31

Existential Consciousness as a Prerequisite in Bellow ...... 31

Existentialism: A Brief Background ...... 34

Jean-Paul Sartre: His Basic Existential Premise ...... 39

Existential Theme in Nausea ...... 45

Chapter 3: Buddhism: Another Counterpoint to Bellow ...... 52

Buddhism and Judaism ...... 52

A Prelude to Buddhism ...... 58

Buddhism: The Basic Doctrine ...... 60

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The First Holy Truth: All Is Suffering ...... 65

The Second Holy Truth: The Origin of Suffering ...... 66

The Third Holy Truth: Nirvana ...... 67

The Fourth Holy Truth: The Path ...... 70

Closure ...... 73

Chapter 4: The Aesthetic and Moral Conduct in Art and Literature ...... 75

The Aesthetic and Moral Conduct: An Overview ...... 75

Arts and Moral Conduct: A Background and Historic Point of View ...... 78

The Axis of Poetry and Morality ...... 84

The Justification of Art: A Brief Segue ...... 86

The Artist as Outsider ...... 89

The Power of Literature as Art ...... 91

The Role of the Author ...... 100

The Unethical Stain: Some Justification ...... 101

Moral Conduct: The Play of Emotion ...... 103

Closure ...... 104

Chapter 5: Existential Play and Redemption in Bellow‘s Dangling Man ...... 107

Dangling Man: The Prototype Novel ...... 107

SECTION A: Existential Play in Dangling Man ...... 111

Bellow and the Lure of the Existential ...... 111

Bellow‘s Existential Anti-Hero ...... 115

The Issue of Identity: The Existentialism Dilemma ...... 121

Joseph‘s Existential Preoccupation with Evil and Death ...... 124

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The Holocaust: Memory and Death ...... 133

SECTION B: Redemption in Dangling Man: Bellow‘s Repudiation of

Existentialism ...... 137

Redemption: The Power of Poetry, Emotion, and Love ...... 137

The Ordinary: Bellow’s Bridge to Redemption ...... 141

Transformation: Bellow’s Religious Psychology ...... 143

Induction and Death: Final Surrender ...... 148

Chapter 6: Buddhist Allusions to Bellow‘s Herzog ...... 152

Overview of Herzog ...... 152

The Buddhist Argument ...... 162

A Preface to Herzog‘s Buddhist Journey ...... 164

Herzog‘s Buddhist Detour: The Road to Suffering ...... 166

Herzog the Good and Peaceful Buddhist ...... 173

Ludeyville: Herzog‘s Buddhist Ashram ...... 176

Sentient Beings: Herzog the Compassionate ...... 181

Buddhist Silence and Emptiness ...... 185

Closing the Buddhist Argument ...... 192

Chapter 7: Conclusion ...... 197

The Essential Bellow ...... 197

The Existentialist Bellow ...... 200

Buddhism as a Platform ...... 202

The Aesthetic and Moral Blueprint ...... 203

Dangling Man: A Study in Existentialism and Redemption ...... 204

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Bellow and Buddhist Allusions in Herzog ...... 207

Closing the Dissertation...... 208

Works Cited ...... 212

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Chapter 1: Saul Bellow: Trajectory and Influences

What good does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? – Mark 8:36

A major focus of this dissertation will examine the philosophy of Existentialism as it serves as a counterpoint to the work of Saul Bellow. I will argue that from the point of view of Bellow, Existentialism is antithetical in providing a moral, ethical, and spiritual compass, and has instead saturated our contemporary consciousness with a nihilistic darkness. Dangling Man and Herzog will representatively serve to dispute this existential doctrine. In examining Bellow‘s recurring themes of suffering, compassion, humanity, and redemption, I will also propose that Bellow, as much as he is a student of his Judaic instruction, is also implicitly advocating the fundamental Buddhist doctrines which instruct on the individual‘s quest for the spiritual and moral stability necessary for the collective harmony of community. A portrait of Bellow will serve to introduce this study and to explain the indelible imprint of his Jewish instruction and the influence of Romantic writers. A close sifting of this autobiographical and biographical information will reveal the natural inclination of Bellow‘s literary trajectory into areas such as his reverence for humanity and the human spirit, the turmoil of suffering, his interest in the primordial, and the quest for personal redemption. A discussion of the basic doctrine of Existentialism, the existential precepts of Jean-Paul Sartre, and a broad overview of Buddhism will follow the introduction, after which I will examine the aesthetic and moral conduct in art and literature. I will then establish how the themes in 1

Bellow‘s Dangling Man and Herzog challenge, appropriate, or repudiate these existential and Buddhist doctrines. To prepare the groundwork and relevance for my later argument, it is necessary to include both existential and Buddhist references in my introduction as they connect to Bellow and relevant themes in his work.

It is important to clarify up front that I will be referencing Martin Heidegger in several parts of this dissertation for his philosophical views. However, I must point out that since I am exploring the work of a very Jewish writer whose work is also defined by the Holocaust, I wish to clarify that in no way is Bellow to be perceived as an ally of

Martin Heidegger. Such an alliance is unthinkable from the point of view that Saul

Bellow, as a Jew and humanist, would have found Heidegger‘s role as a Nazi extremely unforgivable, to say the least. Tom Rockmore, in his text, On Heidegger’s Nazism and

Philosophy, establishes the fact that in 1933 when Heidegger was elected to the post of rector at the University of Freiburg, he joined the Nazi party. The charge against

Heidegger is not so much that he joined the Nazi party, but the fact that he tried to conceal his membership, and when he could no longer deny his Nazi role, he never said he was sorry; he did not offer any excuse for his involvement as a Nazi, and he never asked for forgiveness. The more compelling reason to distance Bellow from Heidegger is that, ―Heidegger clearly and unambiguously, on the basis of his philosophical thought, indentified with Nazism‖ (Rockmore 300). I believe that Bellow, as a humanist, would agree with Rockmore‘s closing thought in his study: ―To fail to take his Nazism into account in the interpretation of his philosophical and

―postphilosophical‖ thought, to endeavor to be more friendly to Heidegger than the truth, is finally to distance oneself from the concern with truth‖ (301). Again, my

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intention to examine ideas from Heidegger is based strictly on his philosophy as a thinker.

The sum of the our modern consciousness, the nature of our being, our place in the universe, and our relevance as a specie have always intrigued philosophers, social scientists, theologians, and scholars of literature from the moment we discovered our cognitive abilities. From language to stone tablets, to papyrus, to paper, and now to the digital screen, we have continued the ancient quest to understand human existence and the processes required for such a balance between self and what may be construed as an outside force such as God. In addition to Judeo-Christian laws, philosophers and poets such as Plato, Aristotle, Homer, and Horace have been duly credited for laying the ethical blueprints and prescriptive standards for human conduct in Western civilization; the essence of our moral laws and the concept of the soul can be traced back to the philosophies of these original thinkers. It is no wonder, then, that as philosophy developed from the epic tales and prose stories of literature, the general theme of how we should live the good life also transitioned into the budding philosophical doctrines.

Thus, long before philosophy, literature, in the form of the Oral Tradition, had already discerned the infinity of the imagination and its potential for imitating reality through the prism of fiction. In fast forwarding to our present century, most authors of fiction honor this ancient standard that literature, among its other values, should still function as a vehicle for ethical behavior. It is therefore not surprising that this theme of moral and ethical relevance is grounded in many of the novels of Saul Bellow, as Michiko

Kakutani of The New York Times points out: ―He [Bellow] believed that literature should hew to one of its original purposes – the raising of moral questions – and his

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own works remained indebted to those he had studied as a boy: the Old Testament,

Shakespeare's plays and the great 19th-century Russian novels‖ (Kakutani,

―Heartbreak‖).

Bellow is not alone when he inquires into the nature and disquiet of our humanity as our modern condition reveals that more and more we are being alienated from the very nature of our being; it is this fracture that haunts our consciousness as we are tossed in a world void of sacred directions. Martin Heidegger, the German existentialist philosopher, argues that much of this disconnect is due to the forces that frame the modern person: ―There is a world of difference between man‘s present life as technological being under the aegis of Gestell, frame, framing – in which everything, including man himself, becomes material for a process of self-assertive production …‖

(Heidegger xv). We can understand this idea of framing to mean that man is no longer an autonomous being; he is now classified as a factor of production and thus he is defined or framed by this industrial machinery fueled by capitalist materialism.

There are compelling reasons to believe that as modern people, we are more disconnected in a world plagued with anxiety and turmoil, as we witness the unraveling of the very fabric that laces the connection with our fellow human beings. Our contemporary history is littered with wars, conflicts, terrorism, nuclear threats, environmental collapse, natural disasters, new and resurging diseases. But most of all, we seem removed from the very primal force that has haunted our deep consciousness long before the creation of language. There is a general feeling that we have been separated from something infinite and philosophers such as Heidegger would agree we rage and struggle against the framing of the machinery and rational thought that

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constantly demand our allegiance. This matter of the heart is close to Saul Bellow as

Martin Corner notes: ―… there are those who see his [Bellow‘s] fiction as the record of an inward journey, from outer to inner truth, from the confusions of discourse to the truth of the heart. For such critics, Bellow is one kind of romantic: the romantic of inner, immanent truth, of direct illumination, of the ascetic inward journey to self- knowledge‖ (370). It is arguable that Bellow‘s journey bears relevance to our collective consciousness infected with a pervasive angst as we battle these real anxieties; it is this constant fear that drives us to confront our existence metaphysically and literature has often portrayed this alienated human condition as nihilistically fashionable.

Saul Bellow: His Background and the Influence of the Jewish Tradition

Saul Bellow was born on June 11, 1915 and died on April 5, 2005. James Atlas, in his biography of Bellow, retraces Bellow‘s birth: ―In the summer of 1915, two years after their arrival in [Montreal,] Canada, Abraham and Liza had a fourth child of their own: Solomon Bellow, known as Shlomie or Shloimke and later as Saul‖ (8). Saul

Bellow‘s Russian parents were originally named Abraham and Lescha Belo, but in

Canada Lescha officially became Liza and Belo was erroneously transliterated as

Bellow by a Halifax customs officer. Atlas suggests that as an importer of Turkish figs and Egyptian onions to Russia, Abraham was not a successful businessman and his in- laws believed their daughter had made a poor choice of a husband. Lescha‘s father was a rabbi and even with twelve children in the family, the Gordins were well off as compared to the shtetl Belos. In 1912, Abraham, as a Jew in Russia, was illegally residing outside of his restricted area and was caught, charged and was about to be

5

deported to Siberia when his wife‘s brother smuggled him and his family out of Russia to Canada.

Saul Bellow was nine years old when his family moved from Montreal to

Chicago where he lived most of his years, and it is from the backdrop of this city that many of his novels are developed. As much as Bellow has maintained that he is not a

Jewish writer as he has indicated in his interview with Kulshrestha, (―Conversations …‖

58), I will explain how his immersion and early upbringing as an Orthodox Jew in urban

Montreal and Chicago, not far removed from the Jewish ghettoes of Eastern Europe, centrally influenced his work. The only gentile protagonists in Bellow‘s Jewish oeuvre are Eugene Henderson in Henderson the Rain King and Clara Velde in A Theft.

Bellow‘s novels alternate between the urbanized setting of Chicago and New York City; the families, friends, acquaintances, and adversaries all tend to be Jewish middle-class of some intellectual worth (some more or less than others), and the element of irony, sometimes gentle or savage, is constant in his tone. Critics believe that few authors can match Bellow‘s mixture of tragedy with comedy, and it is this vision that illuminates and separates his themes from the nihilism dominant in much of the literature of

Modernism which deviated from the established classical form. Modernism, dominant between the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries was characterized by

―alienation, fragmentation, break with tradition, isolation and magnification of subjectivity, threat of the void, weight of vast numbers and monolithic impersonal institutions, [and] hatred of civilization itself‖ (Fuchs 75). However, allusions to modern as a time frame will be restricted to Bellow‘s literary production between1944 –

1970. Thus, it is from this background that Bellow confronts the Romantic inclination

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for liberation and pursuit of self in favor of community. Bellow acknowledges the darkness, but does not sink in it since as a believing Jew, as Antonio Monda points out,

Bellow understands that salvation is possible through the honoring of scripture, not necessarily from the pulpit but from the quietness of moral and ethical action.

Bellow‘s Yiddish background has remained a constant and formative influence in his work as Alfred Kazin, in his essay ―My Friend Saul Bellow,‖ observes: ―he had been brought up as an orthodox Jew; and he had a proper respect for God as the ultimate power assumed but the creation‖ (4). It is this unflinching respect for God and faith in the ancient texts that has anchored Bellow‘s ethical and moral standards:

He was brought up in a deeply Jewish spirit and with the Yiddish language, the life-thread of a cultural and religious tradition in Eastern Europe … This is Bellow‘s tradition, and of the many interesting and talented novelists of Jewish background in this country, there is probably no other who feels so lovingly connected with the religious and cultural tradition of his Eastern European grandfathers. (Kazin 7)

This reverent connection to his Judaic heritage has nurtured and sustained Bellow‘s writing; from this seemingly ordinariness Bellow has illuminated the dramatic undercurrents in a culture that honors tradition and ancestral values without forgetting its comedic imperfections. From this quotidian, Bellow extracts and magnifies the personal and domestic struggles and suffering of Jews who are acutely aware of their place in history. However, as much as Bellow is steeped into the circumstances of his culture, his work speaks to both Gentile and Jew. From the ordinary Joseph in Dangling

Man to the intellectual Herzog in Herzog, we easily recognize the everyday confrontations of Bellow‘s heroes which are: ―made up of love and sex and marriage, of common apprehensions … of the struggles between parents and children, between victims and persecutors, between love and hatred, between life and death‖ (Kazin 8). 7

Bellow is the author of nineteen works of fiction, and it is important to note at this point that Bellow, both as an American and Jew, speaks of a different time and place in our history. The fact that this study will examine Bellow‘s novels published between 1944 and 1970 requires that we be prepared, as readers, to shift our perspectives to settings and values in a different time period. I will explain later to what extent these values in Bellow‘s work do still speak to us or not. Bellow‘s literary awards include the National Book Award for Fiction, the Pulitzer Prize, the International

Literary Prize, the French Croix de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, the highest literary distinction awarded by that nation to non-citizens, and the Nobel Prize (1976) for literature. In his book Bellow, James Atlas commences his first chapter with a quote from Bellow‘s ―The Jefferson Lectures:‖ ―The living man is preoccupied with such questions as who he is, what he lives for, what he is so keenly and interminably yearning for, what his human essence is‖ (3). To a great extent, this observation summarizes the recurring subject pervasive in much of Bellow‘s fiction that investigates the idea of isolation, spiritual fracture, and the potentiality of human renewal. Michiko

Kakutani, in her New York Times article ―A Talk with Saul Bellow: On His Work and

Himself,‖ echoes this sentiment from Atlas when she suggests that many of Bellow‘s heroes are men stranded in the middle of some spiritual crisis, are overwhelmed with too many options in the world, and are not equipped to deal with their awareness of death. Bellow‘s people do not sink into easy despair nor do they fall victim to easy optimism, but they do wonder if their problems are part and parcel of ―the big scale insanities of the 20th century‖ manifested in, among other irregularities, sexual misconduct to random violence. Bellow‘s fiction is philosophically instructive as we

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will see that as an artist bent on honoring ancient and trusted codes, his art not only makes sense of the painful realities sapping the energies of the modern man, but digs deeper into understanding and reconnecting that ancient spirit that grounds man with the mystery of his being.

I have already briefly mentioned the Judaic influence of The Old Testament on

Bellow‘s upbringing but to truly grasp Bellow‘s rejection of the existential state of mind and the Romantic inclination for liberation of self, it is essential that we study cultural frame that defines much of Bellow‘s writing as he defends humanity: ―Saul Bellow‘s defense of man has been made in the cultural confluence of two main streams: the

Jewish experience and the American experience‖ (Clayton 30). Of the two experiences,

I suggest that the former has been crucially more determinative for Bellow as this heritage, as it frames the Jewish culture, unequivocally instructs on the belief of man and his allegiance to the natural right to life. We can understand how this value and respect for the sanctity of life has evolved over the centuries to shield against unmitigated persecution, genocide, and despair of Jews. And as Clayton poses this question, ―How has the Jew said Yes [to affirmation] to the grimmest facts?‖ (31) I suggest there is also a spiritual connection from a Buddhist point of view when Clayton answers his own question:

Essentially, he has been conscious of the presence of an ideal world lying not [italics mine] outside but within the everyday world. The ideal world is not a heavenly Jerusalem but the earthly Jerusalem returned. The Jew returns not as an embodied soul but as a living Jew. Heaven is this world, redeemed. So while there is great tension between the world as it is and the world as it will be, both poles are immediately present. (31)

The concept of a world here and now is also a principal Buddhist doctrine, especially pronounced in the Zen School which advocates heaven not via any process of the 9

afterlife but in the redemptive and earthly journey of Nirvana and like the heavenly

Jerusalem on earth, the disciple of Buddha can find that state of being within the everyday world. It is indeed another paradox that this Judaic sense of spiritual arrival is not a vertical journey to the heights of heaven but is attained in the horizontal immersion of the ordinary and the common. Thus we begin to understand how and why

Bellow‘s recurring themes are closely tied not to the powerful, but to the struggling everyday man: ―The Jew totters between the everyday world and the miraculous one at hand‖ (Clayton 31). Bellow, as a Jew, understands, like the Buddha, that suffering, joy, and redemption are not worlds apart but are immediately present in the tension of daily life that necessitates a balance between ―both poles.‖ This is the balance the Buddhist disciple will discover as he first must accept that suffering is inevitable, but like the

Jew, he understands redemption is possible through affirmation of life.

In Bellow‘s first novel Dangling Man, Joseph asks himself, ―How should a good man live; what ought he to do?‖ (39).This is the major question that has driven Bellow in search of moral parameters to frame his overall quest for a humanity grounded in the very essence of humility. This quest, as Clayton points out, is part and parcel of the

Yiddish/Judaic divinity steeped in wondrous awe of the ordinary where the Jew pines for the arrival of the final Sabbath when the Redeemer will come and until that day, every Sabbath is sacred in anticipation of the joy and holiness that will pervade the world upon the arrival of this Redeemer. And so like the follower of the Buddha who has to live in a sacred abode, so too the Jew is guided to respect and honor the sacredness of a path deemed a prerequisite for the final atonement that also can be

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called Nirvana. It is quite spiritually instructive that these prerequisites are not at all lofty as Clayton tells us:

And he [the Jew] has the power, at least according to the Hasidic tradition, of making the everyday actions of his life sacred by the manner in which he performs them: the zaddik teaches Torah by the way he ties his shoes, washes dishes, dances. Hasidism teaches that common life itself can be sanctified, what is can be made what ought to be. Through the piety of the Jews the redeemer will come. In Jewish fiction this duality accounts for the combination of a realistic portrayal of everyday life with a fervent idealism. (31-32)

Bellow, as the student of Judaism is aware that the sanctity of life is in direct consequence of observing and respecting the everyday ordinariness and it is in this celebration in enduring that the pious Jew understands, as Clayton informs, that even a beggar can be the redeeming Prophet. Thus Bellow‘s characters are not inclined toward the lofty heavens but gravitate toward a sense of holiness and celebration of the common life. It is interesting too that Zen Buddhism suggests that redeeming qualities can also be experienced in the mundane act of washing dishes and like the zaddik that stresses the sanctity of these simple chores, quite similarly Zen teaches us about mindfulness that can be built into these everyday tasks.

The more we read Bellow, the deeper we will recognize the Jewish influence that drives his work. He has admitted that he was learning the trade writing Dangling

Man and The Victim, but once he had passed his qualifying exams, he discovered the allure of his heritage, ―I had found a new way to write a book. It was my very own. I had no control over it‖ (Roudane 81). L.H. Goldman, in her essay ―Saul Bellow and the

Philosophy of Judaism,‖ gives a brief history of Judaism and it is interesting to learn that Hillel, the earliest Jewish humanist philosopher had boiled down the entire Torah to this simple aphorism: ―What is hateful to you do not unto your neighbor; this is the

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entire Torah‖ (Goldman 52). Goldman points out that Bellow‘s source of inspiration is not necessarily from the Jewish philosophers: ―Bellow goes back to the original source, the Bible … Appearing after Hitler‘s obliteration of humanism, Bellow‘s works strive to reestablish the foundation of a society by reaffirming the world‘s need for morality, for the return to the humanism of Judaism‖ (53). It is quite understandable that after the

Holocaust, Bellow would more so instruct on the brotherhood of Jews as Goldman observes: ―The quest for most Bellovian heroes is basically the same. It is not a search for identity, as some critics suggest. It is rather a quest for a significant existence that would embrace their own identity, such as it is‖ (58).

Bellow and the Relevance of the Primordial

In an interview with Michiko Kakutani, Bellow admits that a central challenge for him as an author is to ―to account for the mysterious circumstance of being‖ (―A

Talk …‖ A1). Such an accounting surely demands a long leap way back into a time before language into the realm of the primordial. It is philosophically insightful that the idea of a guiding spirit bent on humanity, compassion, and community grounds the underlying current in Bellow‘s work. Bellow does admit that this quest back into a time uninfected with the industrial and technological production of man does drive his art as

Ellen Pifer takes us directly to Bellow who offers a relative perspective on his collective literary production:

In almost everything I write there appears a primordial person [who] is not made by his education, nor by cultural or historical circumstances … He precedes culture and history … This means that there is something invariable, ultimately unteachable, native to the soul. A variety of powers arrive whose aim is to alter, to educate, to condition us. If a man gives himself over to total alteration I consider him to have lost his soul. (qtd. in Pifer 112-113)

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There is enough reason to believe that as a modern society, we are continuously barraged with forces of alteration such as education, culture and history which attempt to create meaning and value. However, for Bellow this is a paradox in that when we fully surrender our primordial self in exchange for the institutions of life, we extinguish that divine spark that connects us with the flame of the infinite. This primordial self,

Bellow cautions, should be handled with care since this ―being-ness‖ is a gift of creation and can easily be lost through inattention, carelessness, or distraction and spiritual sloth. This warning is echoed in the Buddhist bible The Dhammapada (The

Moral Path): ―Watchfulness is the path of immortality: unwatchfulness is the path of death. Those who are watchful never die: those who do not watch [italics mine] are already as dead‖ (The Dhammapada 2:21).

Bellow‘s inquiry into the primordial in relation to a spiritual quest has also been examined by Carl Gustav Jung. In his book The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, Jung suggests that the journey to full self-hood necessitates a parallel journey into the other self which he calls the shadow, and it is this sojourn that ignites the original spark of the creative process. It is within this area of the unconscious that visionary works of art are born and knowledge of self can be attained. As Jung describes it, visionary art brings up from the depths, primordial experiences which ―… rend from top to bottom the curtain upon which is painted the picture of the ordered world, and allow a glimpse into the unfathomable abyss of the unborn and of things yet to be‖ (90). The source of such revelations, according to Jung, comes from the sphere of some unconscious mythology whose primordial images are the common heritage of mankind, which Jung refers to as the ―collective unconscious;‖ it is this common heritage that interests Bellow. The

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primordial images are not of the norm, for they seem to originate from a strange dimension and often work within the realms of dreams, night-time fears, and the dark recesses of the human mind. The necessity of facing the dark night of the soul, according to Jung, is essential to human development and the transformation process.

Thus we can understand Bellow‘s preoccupation with the primordial as prescription for the rebirth of the modern person who believes that scientific and material production can appease the call of the spirit. I suggest that Bellow would agree with Jung that facing the dark night of the soul is a prerequisite for affirmation.

On another level, Bellow‘s desire to return to the primordial conforms to the

Buddhist concept of negation that suggests that in order to know the reality of an idea or object, we must first begin from the concept of no-thing. According to Dr. Daisetz T.

Suzuki, the learned Japanese Buddhist scholar, ―Zen teaches us that in order to understand a mountain to be a mountain in the Zen way, the experience is to be negated first – a mountain is not a mountain – and it is only when this negation is understood that the affirmation ‗a mountain is a mountain‘ becomes Reality‖ (qtd. in Mascaro 18). I find it relevant from a Buddhist point of view when Stanley Trachtenberg, in his essay,

―Saul Bellow and the Veil of Maya,‖ references Arthur Schopenhauer, (also a student of

Buddhism) as he discusses this idea of negation:

Beyond the distinction of subject and object which conceptualizes the will-to- live, lies that nothing [italics mine] which is not the absence of that which exists but the presence of an altered condition removed from that representation we think of in time and space. For Bellow, the negation of individuality constitutes an affirmation of being. The individual abandons the claim of uniqueness in order to establish just such universal connections, and so in concert with others he restores the ambition of meaningful destiny he has had to surrender on his own. (221)

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In the same process that Bellow perceives that the affirmation of being is in direct relation to the negation of individuality justifying the end result of a larger cohesion of community, Buddhism, for centuries, instructs on this concept of negation. However, it is a central paradox in both Buddhism and in Bellow‘s work, that in quest of a larger moral community, the individual must first selfishly pursue his own journey of self- affirmation as Bellow has so representatively positioned his most defining character:

Moses Herzog.

Materialism and Spiritual Disconnect

Over the past century, scholars grappled with the question of our painful journey as we became disconnected with the very grounding of our being. It can be argued that this sense of alienation can be attributed to our willingness, beginning from the late nineteenth-century to the time of Bellow‘s literary production, to blindly trust and follow the mass institutions such as science, technology, political and economic systems and mass marketing propaganda that promised a material paradise. Bellow would agree that it was this unchecked gravitation toward the never-ending materialism that eclipsed our spiritual base, and thus our unequivocal belief in science and technology fractured and disoriented us from the center of our primal mythologies. In Herzog, Bellow alludes to this disorientation and it is insightful that in his essay ―The Author Speaks,‖ he positions this self-made seer (the author) as a recorder of this state of being: ―But sometimes he can feel in the very streets that the energies of the population have been withdrawn to mass activity, industry, and money … And sometimes the suspicion arises that maybe the Studebaker, maybe the Bendix have absorbed man‘s highest powers‖

(Bellow, Herzog: Text 377). Bellow‘s concern with the symbolic influence of the

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Studebaker and the Bendix that restricted man‘s transcendence also troubled Martin

Heidegger. For Heidegger, whose writings challenged the rational, logical, and empirical modes of thinking in the twentieth-century Western world, human existence was a constant call for transformation for the modern man of that time whose perception of security hinged on his belief of self-assertion vis-à-vis his unlimited power of technological production. For Heidegger, it was this belief that diminished the presence of holy ground:

Man, on the other hand, as the being who wills himself, not only enjoys no special protection from the whole of beings, but rather is unshielded. As the one who proposes and produces, he stands before the obstructed Open. He himself and his things are thereby exposed to the growing danger of turning into mere material and into a function of objectification. The design of self-assertion itself extends the realm of the danger that man will lose his self-hood to unconditional production. … By building the world up technologically as an object, man deliberately blocks his path [to transcendence] … What threatens man in his very nature is the view that technological production puts the world in order. (Heidegger 115-117)

This pursuit of technological materialism perpetuates the glorification and objectification with the goods of production (the Studebaker, for example) to such an extent that man lacks that energy for any higher quest and believes that the pursuit and conquest of the natural laws are grounds enough for his overall stability. Both Bellow and Heidegger argue that there is a mystery in the primordial and man needs to reconnect back to this fountain in order to really understand the nature of his being and place in the world, not only of production, but of the poetic.

It is no wonder then, that the mysteries and mythologies that once grounded us are laid bare and demystified. As a modern society in the middle of the twentieth- century, we are no longer in awe of the deeper mysteries since irrefutable scientific

―truths‖ have seemingly explained away our primal questions, or so we have been 16

indoctrinated into believing. Joseph Campbell suggests a correlation between our existential turmoil and our penchant for disregarding mythology; I believe Bellow would see this spiritual disconnect tied in to Campbell‘s point of view: ―It is possible that the failure and ritual to function effectively in our civilization may account for the high incidence among us of the high malaise that has led us to the characterization of our times as ‗The Age of Anxiety‘‖ (92). It is interesting too that Bellow would caution the reader who seeks meaning over feeling: ―Perhaps the deepest readers are those who are least sure of themselves. And even more disturbing suspicion is that they prefer meaning to feeling‖ (Bellow, Herzog: Text 367). We must recognize early that Bellow warns of the pitfall of the rational mind exerting precedence over feeling and emotion.

In his Nobel Lecture, Bellow quotes Proust who warns against ―reasoning‖ in art in relation to the priority of the artist: "from the moment that works of art are judged by reasoning, nothing is stable or certain, one can prove anything one likes" (qtd. in

Bellow, It All Adds Up 91). This discussion between the rational and the poetic will be pursued later as Bellow representatively posits his Herzog falling prey to this rational process which precludes him from meaningful participation in the community of the ordinary.

Existential Angst: Agency

In my attempt to link Bellow with the role and influence of the existential state of mind and his quarrel and rejection of this philosophy, it is important that we understand the darkness that saturated much of the literature of Modernism before and during the time of Bellow‘s writing. Gloria Cronin, in her essay ―The Seduction of

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Tommy Wilhelm: A Post-Modernist Appraisal of Seize the Day,‖ explains this existential zeitgeist:

The earlier Modernist tradition, characterized by late romantic despair, bitterness, and a tone of elegy, was imbued with the historicist premise that the twentieth century represents a terminal point in history. But the primary characteristics of the modern novel, of course, was its depiction of modern man as a defeated, fragmented creature incapable, for the most part, or rising about the circumstances of his urban environment. (337)

As much as Bellow respects and admits his love for the Modernist writers, he challenges this sinking lamentation of existential stasis and he is one of the first

American writers to have bridged the gap from Modernism to the tradition of contemporary American literature. With his instinct for parody, irony, paradox, ambiguity, and humor, Bellow, introduces his own requirements for humanity not dissimilar to the Buddhist doctrines that stress suffering, compassion, and immersion in the ordinary as prerequisites for healing the human psyche. This is the consciousness of the western literary tradition that has long been saturated with the recurring themes of death and despair. It is from this paradox of contemporary alienation that Bellow instructs on, ―optimistic realism, which it still carries with it a powerful memory of the recent crisis in Western civilization, nevertheless generates as well as mythologies of death and despair, mythologies of psychic and spiritual survival‖ (Cronin, ―The

Seduction‖ 337).

The existential dilemma of our modern time can be credited to the monumental atrocities such as World Wars I and II, the Holocaust, and the current spate of genocides and so we can understand Bellow‘s concern for the fragility of the human condition both as an artist and a Jew. In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize, he laments on this condition as though he is speaking from the pulpit: ―Let me take a little time to look 18

more closely at this travail. In private life, disorder or near-panic. In families - for husbands, wives, parents, children - confusion; in civic behavior, in personal loyalties, in sexual practices further confusion. And with this private disorder goes public bewilderment‖ (Bellow, It All Adds Up 93). This is the state of affairs that concerns

Bellow the artist as he cautions us about the distressing predictions that confront us, our history of disorder, and our vision of disintegration; this source of upheaval Bellow attributes to, ―The unending cycle of crises that began with the First World War has formed a kind of person, one who has lived through terrible, strange things, … an ability to live with many kinds of madness‖ (Bellow, The Nobel). It is against this background of disorder that he admits our existential turmoil: ―… we stand open to all anxieties. The decline and fall of everything is our daily dread, we are agitated in private life and tormented by public questions‖ (Bellow, The Nobel).

It is instructive that Bellow does not encourage dwelling in the Wasteland as an option but suggests an alternative; it is not difficult to notice the influence of The Old

Testament which Bellow studied from since as a boy: ―It may be more difficult to reach the whirling mind of a modern reader but it is possible to cut through the noise and reach the quiet zone. In the quiet zone we may find that he is devoutly waiting for us.

When complications increase, the desire for essentials increases too‖ (Bellow, The

Nobel). It is paradoxical too that Bellow suggests it is in the location of the quiet zone that we will find this spiritual connection verses the clamor of community. The quest for this quiet zone is also one of the central ideas of Buddhism: ―If you can be in silent quietness like a broken gong that is silent, you have reached the peace of Nirvana‖ (The

Dhammapada 54: 10:134). It is important to note too that in most of his work, Bellow

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is utilizing the concept of opposition in that he is plunging his characters in the same existential abyss that has prevailed in Modern literature so that the prerequisite of personal suffering must be endured to arrive at redemption. This prescription can also be contextually understood in the Buddha‘s First Holy Truth that all life is suffering and it is through our descent in this world of anguish that we may seek enlightenment or what Bellow sees as our humanity. Cronin aptly postulates this recurring ironic utility of alienation not far removed from the Buddha‘s first Noble Truth which is also part of the

Judeo-Christian ambiguity of the:

… fundamental paradox which preaches salvation through deprivation, triumph by way of defeat, transcendence via descent. Tommy Wilhelm‘s loss of wife, children, home, job, social status, self-respect, father and fortune constitute, in Bellow‘s scheme of things, the saving circumstances against which the hero must realize his humanity. Bellow then, shapes out of the materials of the urban complaint novel a new fiction of hope, where ―victimage,‖ mass society, absurdism and the diminishment of a satisfying private domain are eternal and universal conditions of life producing either dehumanization or transcendence, depending upon the power of the individual to resist absurdist despair and modern nihilism. (Cronin, ―The Seduction,‖ 339-340).

This fundamental paradox of Bellow‘s need to sink his characters in an existential abyss to fulfill the prerequisite process for spiritual transcendence is also the same concept of

Zen Buddhism which prescribes the idea of opposition necessary to conceive the inherent reality of any object or even concept. Hence, Bellow honors the Buddhist idea of suffering as he deliberately drowns his protagonists in existential states of agony in pursuit of an essential humanity. Bellow practices this Buddhist principle as per his question to himself in this interview: ―I seem to have asked in my books, How can one resist the controls of this vast society without turning into a nihilist, avoiding the absurdity of empty rebellion?‖ (Harper, ―Saul Bellow,‖ 18). But Bellow cannot avoid

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the absurdity of empty rebellion as Herzog, for example, representatively indulges in empty rebellion when he writes his letters of protest that he fails to send.

Influence of the Romantic Ideology

In addition to Bellow‘s utility of the oppositional existential forces, it is also relevant to understand the influence of the Romantic ideology in Bellow‘s writing as he has admitted a deep attachment and respect for writers such as Lawrence, Hardy, and

Yeats who embody the Romantic tradition. Bellow applauds the contributions of the

Romantics as his spokesman Herzog makes it clear: ―Romanticism guarded the

―inspired condition,‖ preserved the poetic, philosophical, and religious teachings, the teachings and records of transcendence and the most generous ideas of mankind, during the greatest and most rapid of transformations, the most accelerated phase of the modern scientific and technical transformation‖ (Bellow, Herzog: Text165). However, for Bellow, the idealism of this form of Romanticism withers in front of the onslaught of materialism throttled by the scientific and technological progress of the twentieth century. Bellow, being a Romantic himself, and as much as he advocates community over the solitary, cannot escape the imprint of the inspired condition of the Romantics as Chavkin notes: ―one realizes that the whole corpus of Bellow‘s work after The Victim

(1947) wrestles with a problem that tormented the romantics: the survival of the individual and his humanistic values in a materialistic mass society hostile to ―glorified‖ ideals‖ (376-377).

On another level and since much of this dissertation will examine the work of a writer who acknowledges the deep influence of his Judaic instruction and has written on the theme of survival in view of the Holocaust, it is imperative that we look at another

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interpretation of Romanticism as it played a crucial part in influencing Hitler and the

Nazis. Peter Viereck, in his Metapolitics, explains the difficulty in clearly defining the concept of Romanticism as there are too many authoritative definitions. There is the popular brand of the poetic Romanticism linked to the beauty and appreciation of nature, but Viereck points out that there is a distinct difference in the interpretation of

Romanticism as it has been perceived and applied in England, France, and America versus its relevance in Germany. A typical difference can be noted in the individualism of the bohemian in contrast to the ―totalitarian collectivism of a Fiche, Hegel, and

Hitler‖ (Viereck 18). It was this ―totalitarian collectivism‖ envisioned by Hitler that propelled his quest for the Aryan race, and consequently, his desire to eradicate the

Jews who did not fit in with his plan for a pure Aryan Germany. From the Nazi point of view, there is a clear distinction between the Romanticism utilized to develop a culture and the Romanticism driven by emotions:

The distinction must be drawn between romanticism and emotional sentimentalism. The latter dubs romantic any sort of stereotyped wallowing in the picturesque or emotional, from adventurous Wild West to holding hands under a full moon. German romanticism, in contrast, is an earnest and extremely intelligent attempt at an all-embracing code of life (―Weltanschauung‖). (Viereck 21)

Hitler‘s application of this form of Romanticism was clearly an attempt to codify a culture based not on universal standards of humanity, but rather comprised a concerted effort to fabricate a contrived "historic development" culminating in a supposedly superior German race. Thus, it is clear why Hitler saw the humanist Jew as a problem in his drive for a collective society. L.H. Goldman explains how Germany‘s Romanticism gave Hitler carte-blanche to cleanse the Fatherland from what Hitler believed to be the contamination of the Jews: 22

In the mid-twentieth century, the ethical values of Judaism were severely attacked by Hitler and his Nazi philosophy. Nazi philosophical thought did not appear spontaneously. It was nurtured during the gestation period of previous German philosophers. Hitler recognized that his war against the Jews was a war against twentieth-century humanism with the sole purpose of extirpating it at its roots: razing the humanism of Judaism and replacing it with a Nordic god of Darwinian–Nietzschean–Wagnerian–Chamberlainian species. (52)

Through Hitler‘s practice of the larger and historic German interpretation of

Romanticism, we understand why Nazi Germany desired to wipe out any representation of a humanist philosophy. The Nazi‘s idea of Romanticism suggests that the elements of nature are a larger force eclipsing even God. Goldman explains that Hitler fervently believed that this concept of humanism was a doctrine of the eighteenth-century that owed its development to those specific conditions of that time, and that Nazi Germany did not have to honor such humanism.

So, how could a civilized and Christian nation such as Germany justify the murdering of millions of Jews and not fear the reprimand of God? Hitler and the Nazis had replaced the humanity of God with their version of Romanticism, and in so doing,

Hitler‘s Germans had returned to their Pagan roots:

To worship nature‘s allness as God, as so many German romantics did and do, is the heathen religion known as pantheism. Their modern pantheism is a more philosophic version of the nature-worship of the pre-Christian TeutonWotan- religion. The pantheists‘ god is the direct opposite of the Christian and Jewish God from and above the natural life He created. (Viereck 25-26)

We see that the consciousness of the Nazi Germans, freed from the accountability of

God and seeped in ―Darwinian-Nietzschean-Wagnerian-Chamberlainian‖ Romanticism, would have no qualms exterminating the Jews; it is the morally unsettling question of our time that millions of Germans willingly accepted this indoctrination. It is no wonder that Saul Bellow constantly evokes the relevance of God as his works ―strive to

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reestablish the foundations of society by reaffirming the world‘s need for morality, for the return to the humanism in Judaism‖ (Goldman 53).

Ambiguity in Bellow

In addressing the survival of the individual and Bellow‘s persistent advocacy of humanistic values long battered by existentialist ideology, it is relevant that we recognize some inherent ambiguities in Bellow‘s work dealing with a culture permeated in complexities, uncertainties, and mostly paradoxes. I have already alluded to the role of the paradox that sustains the central themes in Bellow‘s fiction, but John Clayton, in his scholarly study, Saul Bellow: In Defense of Man, quickly points out three major contradictions in Bellow‘s fiction:

First -- Bellow takes a stand against the cultural nihilism of the twentieth century: against Dada, against the Wasteland, against the denigration of human life in modern society…. Second -- Bellow rejects the tradition of alienation in modern literature, and his fiction emphasizes the value of brotherhood and community; yet his main characters are all masochists and alienates. Third – Bellow is particularly hostile to the devaluation of the ―separate self‖ in modern literature, and he values individuality nearly as highly as did Emerson. Yet in novel after novel he is forced to discard individuality … because individuality is undesirable, a burden which keeps the human being from love. (3-4)

This study will keep returning to these contradictions especially so from both the

Buddhist and existentialist points of view where Bellow, consciously or unconsciously adapts the Buddhist and existentialist principles that encourage alienation, solitude, and meditation in order to first confront personal anguish. I suggest that Bellow understands that communal salvation and hope demand that members first cleanse themselves in order to be accepted and then contribute to the good of the collective welfare. Thus alienation and self-imposed flagellation in Bellow‘s quest for humanity follow the direct parallel of the Buddhist and existentialist journey of suffering in quest for an

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objective basis of truth after which one matriculates into community. In Bellow‘s vision, according to Clayton, this long psychological examination of self and the unburdening of guilt are prerequisites for acceptance in tribe and the challenge to be worthy. I suggest that Bellow‘s monasteries are the cities of Chicago and New York where the urban clamor of steel, concrete, and subterranean movement define his characters and force them into self-retreat. Like the Buddha who frowns on intellectual parlance but cannot escape the power of intellectual discourse, quite similarly Bellow understands that being worthy in community is to be ordinary, but as a novelist he cannot avoid the intellectual foreplay necessary to arrive at this quotidian as Herzog so aptly demonstrates.

Bellow: Out of Favor

Bellow, unlike Faulkner, Fitzgerald, or Hemingway, is hardly ―read‖ anymore today in American academia especially so because even in his day Bellow was considered too old for the young and many of his themes are philosophical and spiritual in nature. It was disconcerting to discover that of the four prominent writers just mentioned, just a handful of Ph.D. candidates have written dissertations on Bellow during the past five years; more students write their Master‘s thesis on Bellow‘s novels.

It is interesting that for this same period the ―hard-boiled‖ literature of Hemingway produced an abundant amount of dissertations followed by Fitzgerald and then Faulkner both whom paled against Hemingway. Bellow‘s protagonists are not generally of the culturally elite and we can understand why Bellow was unable to attract a young

American audience as Kakutani observes about his novels: ―With their old-fashioned characters, their passion for big ideas and problems of the spirit, Mr. Bellow's own

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books clearly belong to a different tradition … Indeed, his choice of vocation, he says, was animated by the traditional challenge ‗to account for the mysterious circumstance of being‘‖ (―A Talk,‖ A1).

Bellow, to some extent has also fallen out of favor having been accused of covert racism in some of his novels. In his book on racism in America, Brent Staples dedicates a chapter titled ―Mr. Bellow‘s Planet‖ where he points out instances in

Bellow‘s work that can be construed as racist. Staples supports his charge of racism as he cites derogatory references in Humboldt’s Gift pertaining to African-Americans:

The novel [Humboldt’s Gift] ceases to be a farce when a black man steps out of the shadows and with no motive, slits a white woman‘s throat. Black people in the book were sinister characters. Rinaldo refers to them as ―crazy buffaloes‖ and ―pork chops.‖ Crazy buffaloes populate the slums that surround Hyde Park. A pork chop chases Charlie down the middle of his street, presumably at night. These passages made me angry. It was the same anger I felt when white people cowered past me in the street. (Staples 219)

Staples‘ resentment as an African-American seems understandable since Humboldt’s

Gift was published in 1973, long after the Civil Rights movement; Bellow would have been aware of how racially insensitive his references would affect African-Americans.

The imagery of a ―black man stepping out of the shadows and with no motive‖ does indeed imply Bellow‘s disregard for an ethnicity that he representatively portrays in such a demeaning manner.

Staples further focuses on the black pickpocket in Mr. Sammler’s Planet who seems to represent a savagery in African-Americans: ―Barbarousness in Mr. Sammler’s

Planet is a pickpocket who preys on the old and feeble as they ride the public bus in

New York City‖ (Staples 219). What angers Staples, however, is when the pickpocket corners Sammler, another old man, the thief says nothing but takes out his penis and

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forces Sammler to look at it. Critics have alluded to this phallic display symbolizing brute force; it can be argued that Bellow is suggesting that by virtue of his physical prowess, the black man represents a sub-culture where beneath the veneer of civility he believes he can intimidate the weak by sheer force. Staples interprets this scene as a racist insult:

Bellow wanted the dick remembered. He returned to it again and again as a symbol of spiritual decay, of the ―sexual nigger-hood‖ that ―millions of civilized people‖ had deluded themselves into wanting. I expected more of a man who could see to the soul. I expected a portrait of myself, not as the beast I‘d been made out to be, but as who I was at heart. (220)

Bellow was severely criticized for this single action of the pickpocket that could be interpreted to represent brute force and civil deterioration alluded to the African-

American race. Here again in 1970 Bellow has been accused of racially insulting a large group of people by insensitively portraying a young, strong, and big black man intimidating an old white man, not only with the capacity for brute force, but with a penis symbolizing masculine power.

In 1994 Bellow was again charged with being a racist and elitist based on an insensitive remark that he had made in an interview in1988. Bellow is reported to have said, ―Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans? I‘d be glad to read them‖ (qtd. in Lacy). In an Op-Ed article in the New York Times on March 10, 1994, he was allowed to rebut these charges against him:

I had come under attack in the press and elsewhere for a remark I was alleged to have made about the Zulus and the Papuans. I had been quoted as saying that the Papuans had no Proust and that the Zulus had not yet produced a Tolstoy, and this was taken as an insult to Papuans and Zulus, and as a proof that I was at best insensitive and at worst an elitist, a chauvinist, a reactionary and a racist – in a word, a monster.

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Bellow does not categorically deny that he had made such remarks about the Papuans and Zulus; however, in our climate of political correctness, even in 1988, Bellow could have been perceived as being racist. The City of Chicago had enough reason to believe that Bellow had a record of racist insensitivity when in October 2007 it flatly refused to name a public place after Bellow. Richard Stern, Bellow‘s longtime friend and colleague, had petitioned the City of Chicago to honor their literary son but he was informed by the alderman of Chicago that ―she had heard remarks from Bellow she considered racist and because of those comments would not agree to name something after the author‖ (Lacy). However, I do believe that Bellow has lost favor in America over the past two or three decades not because of these charges but because to a great extent, our young contemporary readers find Bellow too philosophical and may have difficulty relating to protagonists who are not heroes in the traditional sense.

A Recap of the Essential Bellow

This introduction has touched on Bellow‘s background, the influence of his culture, themes in his work, and other factors that have defined Bellow‘s literary trajectory. From the time Bellow discovered his own voice, he has been battling the established tradition of the Modernist consciousness which implies that the modern man is somehow doomed to an existential wasteland but like other Jewish writers he ―rejects the devaluation of man, knowing in his heart … that man is a profound and holy mystery. The ―legacy of wonder‖ from the Jewish religious tradition is a counterweight to despair over the insignificance of man‖ (Clayton 33). It is therefore material that in discussing any aspect of Bellow‘s work, we cannot escape the essence of Jewish values that insist on moral codes not only to sustain this ancient culture but to promote

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standards that are universal. John Clayton identifies Saul Bellow as one of those Jewish authors who refuse to believe that the man of his time is doomed to an existential wasteland:

These writers – let us call them the writers of sweetness – do not assume evil to be the last word of man. … They do not condescend to the ordinary, or scorn the domestic affections, or suppose heroism to be incompatible with humbleness. … We are repeatedly struck by the tone of love, that final register of moral poise, with which such masters as Sholem Aleichem and Peretz faced the grimmest facts of life. (qtd. in Clayton 33-34)

These themes of humility, ―tone of love, that final register of moral poise,‖ and parody have been the established armament of the Jewish culture in its collective response to the relentless onslaught of implacable forces. And yet as a product of a historic persecution, the Jew, like Bellow truly is, does not promote hate as an antidote but teaches instead the ―tone of love‖ as this Buddhist aphorism centuries ago affirmed:

―For hate is not conquered by hate: hate is conquered by love. This is a law eternal‖

(The Dhammapada 1: 5: 35). We can therefore understand the recurring lecture of goodness pervasive in Bellow‘s novels as another antidote to the existential abyss popularized by the Romantic as Bellow writes: ―‗I think the Jewish feeling resists romanticism and insists on an older set of facts‘‖ (qtd. in Clayton 35) to which Clayton continues, ―It is this older sect of facts which has served as a basis for Bellow‘s affirmation of the value of man‖ (35).

Bellow cannot ignore the formative influence of his Judaic culture or the art and poetry of many of the Romantic writers he admired. He has, however, admitted that his moment of truth as writer emerged when he made a deliberate choice to disregard the artistic formalities and restraints he had employed in his first two books to follow his calling as a writer: ―A writer should be able to express himself easily, naturally, 29

copiously in a form which frees his mind, his energies. Why should he hobble himself with formalities? With a borrowed sensibility?‖ (Harper, ―The Art,‖ 63). Having emancipated himself from this borrowed sensibility of the Anglo-Saxons, Bellow plunged into the collective experiences of his culture and emerged with the moral codes,

―this older set of facts‖ that had defined and sustained his ancestors. However, as I bring this introduction to Bellow to a close, it is important that as much as Bellow thrives on the stories of his culture, especially going back to his Yiddish inheritance, his themes are steeped in a moral conviction universal to all cultures:

Bellow‘s view is that of a Jew, yet he is speaking of all men. Remembering that he spoke Yiddish before he spoke English or French, we assume that he assimilated the Jewish heritage with his mother‘s milk. He assimilated ―the virtue of powerlessness, the company of the dispossessed, the sanctity of the insulted and injured,‖ as Irving Howe has put it – the great themes of Yiddish literature. And because of this, Bellow speaks for all voices or powerlessness, humiliation, and weakness everywhere. (Walden145)

And so Bellow, in moving away from the Modern tradition with its Romantic inclination, strangely moves away from the poet‘s muse of the imagination that soars way beyond the mountain top for he knows in his heart that like any follower of the

Buddha, his characters must first solitarily endure the trials and tribulations of life that will redeem their powerlessness, humiliation, and weakness from which they will emerge into a collective humanity that finally heals them.

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Chapter 2: Existentialism: Counterpoint to Bellow

Existential Consciousness as a Prerequisite in Bellow

This chapter will present Existentialism as a counter-point to Bellow in view that Chapter 5 will explore Dangling Man in an existential context pervasive in the literature of Bellow‘s time. I will expound on the background of Existentialism and explore the existential theme of Sartre‘s ground-breaking Nausea to foreground my examination on Bellow‘s Dangling Man which compares to Sartre‘s novel. This chapter, therefore, serves as an existential reference to build on my argument that even though Bellow is not an existentialist, Joseph, his protagonist, is plunged into the abyss of an existential angst. Like Roquentin, his counterpart in Nausea, Joseph is determined to define his own existence but suffers the consequences of isolation, dread, and anxiety, but most of all he suffers the painful loneliness stemming from his disconnection from community.

Saul Bellow‘s novels are not action-packed and his protagonists do not carry big-bore rifles to hunt lions or rhinoceros on the African plains and jungles, nor are they fighting a civil war in the hills of Spain and honoring masculine codes of bravery. On the contrary, Bellow‘s men are urbanites who constantly wage war with themselves in the introspective realms of their souls. This mode of solitary, existential introspection runs deep in Bellow‘s people. In the beginning page of his first novel, Dangling Man,

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Bellow lays the methodological foundation of self-examination as a blueprint for his later novels. Bellow, in this first page, immediately challenges the masculine codes that categorize introspection as a weakness; these codes bent on individual honor are antithetical to his recurring themes that stress community and humanity. Here is Bellow in 1944:

There was a time when people were in the habit of addressing themselves frequently and felt no shame at making a record of their inward transactions. But to keep a journal nowadays is considered a kind of self-indulgence, a weakness, and in poor taste. For this is an era of hardboiled-dom. Today the code of the athlete, of the tough boy … that curious mixture of striving, asceticism, and rigor … is stronger than ever. Do you have feelings? There are correct and incorrect ways of indicating them. Do you have an inner life? It is nobody‘s business but your own. Do you have emotions? Strangle them. To a degree, everyone obeys this code. … To hell with that! I intend to talk about mine … (9)

Bellow is aware of the themes of honor, virtue, courage, and duty that have defined the

American literary hero especially through the stories of Hemingway. However, Bellow challenges these prerequisites for the typical ―code hero‖ by ignoring the mold of the silent, strong, and tough typecast; instead, his characters are babblers who break down.

Thus, Bellow‘s insistence to ―talk‖ about feelings instead of strangling them begins this therapeutic methodology consistent with his characters‘ determination to accept and face their weaknesses. As victims, Bellow‘s protagonists have no other choice; they are not groomed in the codes of armoring themselves like the hard-boiled. The Bellow man, instead of facing a charging lion, faces his internal turmoil armed to the teeth with dialogue, but his words, like bullets, never explode but implode into a mass of introspection that scatter in all directions.

I reference this selection from Bellow‘s Dangling Man to introduce my discussion on Existentialism via Sartre for two main reasons. First, Bellow is not an

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existentialist; there is reason to believe that the influence of his Judaic instruction and his references to a humanity guided by such instruction suggest that Bellow believes in

God. Also, a recurring theme in Bellow‘s work, especially in Dangling Man and

Herzog, is that that man cannot achieve spiritual salvation via the intellect and reason; such redemption lies in the community of man and not in the existential pursuit of self.

Nevertheless, Bellow‘s characters are framed in an existentialist consciousness as a prerequisite journey toward affirmation. Bellow has admitted his depressive tendencies; his men are more like anti-heroes who lack the strength, grace and noble courage but gravitate in the solace of isolation to battle their self-doubts: ―Bellow‘s characters are lonely, despairing, cut off not only from society but from friends and wives. Moreover, they are pathological social masochists, filled with guilt and self-hatred, needing to suffer and to fail‖ (Clayton 53). Joseph is a dangling man who fits Clayton‘s existential mold; he lives isolated in a cheap apartment unable, or perhaps unwilling, to join in the ranks of the normal Chicago community. Thus, from Joseph to Herzog, we run into the same man who Bellow mercilessly plunges into this abyss of existential despair, and because this stream of alienation runs so deep in Bellow‘s work, it is only practical that we examine the philosophy of Existentialism as a means to an end.

It is also relevant that we study the basic existential premise of Sartre since much of modern literature glories in the fashionable existentialist isolation of man. Thus

Bellow, in his first two novels could not escape this paradigm already typecast by the established writers such as Joyce, Lawrence, and Eliot. Consequently, in his attempt to join the ranks of these writers who had already saturated and indoctrinated both the public and the universities with their existential themes, Bellow‘s Dangling Man and

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The Victim reflect ―existentialist premises and modernist literary techniques in their representations of alienated heroes, hostile environments, and apparently absurd worlds‖ (―Overview of Dangling Man,‖ 2). However, Bellow has admitted that in these two first books he was practicing the Modernist approach of form, content, and style but abandoned these requirements to discover his Jewish voice (Harper, ―The Art of

Fiction,‖ 63). The fact that so much of literature has postulated the idea of a nihilistic society compels us to examine the historicity of this prevailing consciousness and the roots that birthed this collective despair. Hence in order to understand the Romantic preoccupation with the desire for solitude, introspection, and despair, we need to review the basic philosophical doctrines that explicate alienation of the modern man. It is important to note that Sartre‘s novel Nausea, published in 1938, is regarded as the quintessential existential novel; this chapter will examine Sartre‘s basic existential philosophy and will utilize Nausea as a platform to further extrapolate on the doctrine of Existentialism. It is necessary, however, to first discuss the background and history of this philosophy.

Existentialism: A Brief Background

The emergence of Existentialism as a philosophy may be credited to Soren

Kierkegaard (1813-1855) who advocated that the highest moral standard an individual can attain is through his own unique visionary process. This individual pursuit in search of the ultimate moral truth is in direct opposition to the standards established by such philosophers as Plato who insisted that the highest ethical good is to be found in set forms or principles that can serve as universal standards for good human conduct. In his argument against this traditional perspective that moral choice is attained through

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objective and rational synthesis, Kierkegaard insisted that moral truth can only be experienced via personal existence as he wrote in his journal: ―I must find a truth that is true for me … the idea for which I can live or die‖ (qtd. in Dreyfus). This defining existential theme of personal choice stipulates that human beings are not programmed with a fixed nature and as such existence comes before rational essence which leaves individuals free to choose their own moral trajectory. It is essentially this self-driven disconnection from the rest of society that Bellow argues against. The existentialist is therefore quite cognizant that in order to define his existence, he must divorce himself both from the safety of society and from those social codes that he now perceives hostile to his cause.

We can understand, then, that such a choice to depart from established foundations to live in the periphery has defined the existentialist to a life of isolation, angst, dread, and especially alienation. The existentialist repudiates that human existence is collectively or individually rational and a person, by choice embarks on his solitary journey believing only in the consequences of his own actions; he thus severs the umbilical lifeline from the very ethos of his fellow man. But why would any sane person in the nineteenth or twentieth century reject the established order inherited from centuries of a Christian past that define our basic convictions in relation to state and society, the rights of man, and the institutions of society? The existentialist answers that he has lost faith in the social institutions that fail in honoring the spiritual and moral foundations of humanity. In The Existential Revolt: The Main Themes and Phases of

Existentialism, Kurt F. Reinhardt refers to this unstable situation more so in our

Western world to suggest that, ―all the manifold social and political upheavals in every

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part of the globe are merely the external manifestations, the symptoms and outbursts of a creeping and moral disease‖ (1-2).

Existentialists also argue that industrialization, technology, and scientific advances enslave the modern man by virtue of his addiction to materialism; in exchange for this sense of accumulation, comfort, and luxury, he becomes Faustian having sold his soul. And as the modern man builds a new altar for this new-found god that blesses him with his material cravings and knowledge, he slowly moves away from the ancient moral codes that are now perceived as obsolete and even as an encumbrance; more and more he believes, as Heidegger suggests, that science and technology will put the world in order. It is apropos that Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900), the quintessential existential philosopher, bemoans modern man‘s supreme trust in knowledge: ―Oh thou proud European of the nineteenth century, art thou not mad? Thy knowledge does not complete nature, it only kills thine own nature. … Thou climbest toward heaven on the sunbeams of thy knowledge – but also down toward chaos‖ (qtd. in Reinhardt 3). A generation later Oswald Spengler (1880 – 1936), in his two volumes of The End of the

West echoes Nietzsche‘s concern for the erosion of long established moral standards and spiritual values endemic in Western civilization. This collective unease manifested in an existential tension, first took root in Europe; both Nietzsche and Spengler recognize the underlying symptom of this human dread:

To both thinkers, however, it appeared as the tragedy of human existence in its most critical stage that the modern scientific age, which had promised progress, peace, security, and liberation from all illusions and superstitions, was producing on all sides a growing existential insecurity, accompanied and aggravated by multiplying revolutionary upheavals. (qtd. in Reinhardt 8)

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The existentialist acknowledges the social enrichment of science but he realizes that the

Gatling gun, atomic power, and the unquenchable thirst for imperialistic conquest have not put the world in order. Instead, he recoils at the destruction and atrocities heaped upon human by human and realizes that the wars, diseases, genocides, and religious, ethnic, and political conflicts represent the manifestation of a society that in its pursuit of blind and brutal power to subjugate, disregards the basic moral codes of humanity.

This irreparable schism between humanity and the brutal imposition of institutional power has been central in the existentialist‘s quest and since the institutions have failed him, he believes he must find his own truth, a truth that he will live and die for, as

Kierkegaard suggested earlier.

Kierkegaard, on laying the groundwork for Existentialism, attacked Hegel‘s doctrine of a systematic and absolute idealism where he (Hegel) claimed ―to have worked out a total rational understanding of humanity in history‖ (Dreyfus) but:

Kierkegaard, on the contrary, stressed the ambiguity and absurdity of the human situation. The individual response to this situation must live a totally committed life, and this commitment can only be understood by the individual who has made it. The individual therefore must always be prepared to defy the norms of society for the sake of the higher authority of a personally valid way of life. (Dreyfus)

In opposition to Hegel, Kierkegaard insisted that as much as man is separated from

God, man‘s only salvation in bridging this gulf between himself and God lay in the inward journey of the individual. For Kierkegaard, this inward journey (not dissimilar to the Buddhist journey to Nirvana,) demands challenging the mores of society and even the Christian institution of his time that Kierkegaard believed was compromising the

Christian faith. (Here again there is the analogy of the Buddha who challenged

Hinduism and was exiled out of India because of his heretical beliefs). In his 37

provocation against the Christian establishment, Kierkegaard insisted that true

Christianity can only be experienced from the existential experience of truly relating to the subjective nature of the doctrines: ―But an honest rebellion against Christianity can only be made when one honestly admits what Christianity is and how one is related

[italics mine] to it‖ (qtd. in Reinhardt 5). And so other existentialists such as Nietzsche,

Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus have followed in the footsteps of Kierkegaard passionately advocating the individual choice in deciding the questions and issues of truth and morality. It is this inner conviction of subjective belief that argues against rational and systematic thought that stresses detachment and objectivity; these are the thinkers that cling ferociously to their belief that the important questions of life are not answered through reason or science but through the submersion in personal existence.

However, as much as it can be argued that rationalism is the nemesis of

Existentialism, existentialists do accept the role of reason but they tenaciously insist that there are limits to reason and that there is a clear distinction between reason and rationality. Just as Kierkegaard disagrees with Hegel‘s synthesis, ―Existentialism is opposed to the entire rationalist tradition deriving from the Renaissance and culminating a hundred years in the ―cosmic rationalism‖ of Hegel … [whose] purpose was to unite the Final Reality with Ideal Reason in a system that sublimated all negative or oppositional tendencies‖ (Carruth vii-viii). However, Hegel orchestrates his ideas in such a harmonious symphony that for generations until now his theories sway and dominate both the practical and academic spheres. But this blanket rational system uniting reality with reason troubles men who believe that the rational does not really

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explain man‘s true existence; here again we see how Kierkegaard is historic in defining

Existentialism:

But for a few men, notably Kierkegaard, this apotheosis of the mind did not account for human experience. Pain and ecstasy, doubt and intuition, private anguish and despair – these could not be explained in terms of the rational categories. Long before Freud, Kierkegaard was aware of the hidden forces within the self, forces that, simply by existing, destroyed all rational, positivistic, and optimistic delusions. (Carruth viii)

For the existentialist, meaningful existence defies being submerged in this grand synthesis of a collective consciousness, for he argues that the reality of existence can only be determined by the individual who is the only one capable of understanding, interpreting, and evaluating his experiences which often include some form of suffering.

Consequently, the existentialist fervently believes that the self cannot be submerged and that ―any system of thought that overrides this suffering is tyrannical … Only in the self can the drama of truth occur‖ (Carruth viii). And so from this theme that hidden forces within the self are capable of defeating rational and optimistic delusions, we turn to

Jean Paul Sartre whose philosophy on Existentialism challenged, among other things, the concept of God.

Jean-Paul Sartre: His Basic Existential Premise

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was born in Paris and from 1924 to 1929 he studied at the prestigious École Normale Supérieure. In 1931 he became professor at Le

Havre, and in 1932 he lived in Berlin where he studied the philosophies of Edmund

Husserl and Martin Heidegger. After his studies in Germany, Sartre returned to Paris where he later taught at the Lycée Pasteur from 1937 to 1939. During World War II,

Sartre enlisted in the army in 1939 and served in the meteorological corps where he was captured by the Wehrmacht in 1940 but escaped in 1941. During the German 39

occupation of France in 1938, he wrote his first major novel Nausea which served as the platform for his later monumental work Being and Nothingness (1943) which established Sartre as a foremost authority on Existentialism. After the war, Sartre left teaching to pursue a writing career which has included short stories, novels, plays, essays in literature and philosophy, journalistic pieces, manifestoes, and pamphlets.

Critics and scholars from all over the world have respectfully recognized Sartre, not only for his defining exploration in Existentialism, but for his overall brilliance as a seer of literature and drama and for his perspectives on human psychology, both normal and abnormal. Sartre has been revered as the most brilliant Frenchman of his time: ―For wit, learning, argumentative skill and polemical zeal, none can match him. Certainly Being and Nothingness was a brilliant contribution to philosophy; and Nausea was not only a powerful novel, but a crucial event in the evolution of sensibility‖ (Carruth x). It is worthy to note that in 1964 Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature which he refused to accept based on his belief that ―Authentic writing is not subject to an authority with the power to grant or withhold prizes‖ (Priest 10).

Sartre‘s central existential premise hinges on his argument that existence is strictly contingent on chance or uncertainty and experiences of existing are simply encountered and in no way should this state of existence, of being-ness be attributed to any higher force such as God. Sartre insists that there is no pre-destined reason that explains our existence; the man who disconnects himself from a higher state that presumably defines existence, now not only determines his own destiny, but he is, in all truth, able to define himself based on his natural perceptions to arrive at his place in the universe. From Sartre‘s point of view God does not exist:

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In his [Sartre‘s] philosophical view atheism is taken for granted; the "loss of God" is not mourned. Man is condemned to freedom, a freedom from all authority, which he may seek to evade, distort, and deny but which he will have to face if he is to become a moral being. The meaning of man's life is not established before his existence. Once the terrible freedom is acknowledged, man has to make this meaning himself … (Frenz)

The realization of this ―terrible freedom‖ is the pivotal point of departure from the safety net of the social establishment. According to Sartre, this freedom is fraught with dire consequences for man must now face the world alone as his abrogation from God pits him against the humanity of commandments. The deliberate choice to sever this ancient bond emphasizes the isolation of the existentialist who now believes that human existence cannot be explained through some preconceived concept; he now accepts full responsibility for his freedom to choose and to bear the consequences of his actions. It is important to note that Sartre is not advocating moral anarchy but stresses that the pursuit of an existential state of being demands moral responsibility albeit defined by the individual. Sartre argues that his existentialist human community is defined by values created and not inherited: ―Life has no meaning a priori. Before you come alive, life is nothing; it‘s up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning you choose. In that way, you see, there is a possibility of creating a human community‖ (Sartre, Existentialism …49).

According to Reinhardt, Sartre‘s philosophical position draws from both

Husserl‘s idea of man‘s consciousness being free and totally intentional and

Heidegger‘s concept of Being and Time. Both Husserl and Heidegger argue from a phenomenological point of view that only human consciousness is capable of interpreting reality via objects and events as they are perceived and that no other independent source outside of human consciousness can determine reality. However, as 41

much as Sartre was a student of Husserl, Stephen Priest, in his book on Sartre points out that Sartre was already disagreeing with a central point of consciousness in Husserl‘s paper ―The Transcendence of the Ego‖ published in 1937. Husserl propagated that a transcendental ego exists in one‘s consciousness within the deeper inner self that conditions and defines experience but ―Sartre argues that the postulation of the transcendental ego is phenomenologically illegitimate. Phenomenology describes only what appears to consciousness‖ (Priest 11). It is this premise central to consciousness from which Sartre‘s philosophical analysis of existence can be defined:

Sartre logically confines himself to a phenomenological investigation of the only empirically known being that can consciously experience what it means ―to exist,‖ namely man. It is human consciousness which makes this experience possible. Sartre states … that consciousness always posits an object: it is of necessity consciousness of something: of something which is different from and beyond consciousness. This ―transphenomenal being‖ Sartre calls the ―in-itself‖ (l’en-soi), and he opposes it to the ―for itself‖ (le pour-soi) of human consciousness. Nothing can be said of the en-soi except that it is. Sartre‘s work is therefore not primarily concerned with this ―being-in-itself‖ but rather with the phenomenological analysis of the structure, the projects, and the limitations of human consciousness. (Reinhardt 159).

From an ontological point of view, it can be argued that the nature of existence can be perceived not from ―something that is different from and beyond consciousness‖ but that which is directly born out of man‘s consciousness. Reinhardt further points out that

Antoine Roquentin, Sartre‘s main character in Nausea, is forced to confront the phenomena of Being and existence by contemplating the existence of everyday affairs.

Sartre is convinced that the meaning of Being and its relationship with existence can be found in the affairs of daily life and not through the prism of an external consciousness steeped in theological idealism since ―Everything that is, is nothing but an artifact of the human mind‖ (Reinhardt 158).

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Sartre thus argues that since our reality is contingent on the constructive powers of the mind, then our entire consciousness of existence is strictly fabricated by our individual perspectives. Sartre disputes the accepted role of determinism and proposes that once we have freed ourselves from any doctrine that propagates that our actions are the inevitable consequences of antecedents, it is only then that we can truly reach the ultimate threshold of existence. For Sartre then, ―The goal of all human striving is thus an ideal ―self,‖ combining the fullness of being with the fullness of consciousness‖

(Reinhardt 160-161). But this pursuit of an ideal self or free will where man throws off the yoke of preconceived laws is also fraught with the anxiety of the new and frightening responsibility of his own fate. Now that he is existentially and absolutely free, he can no longer plead to the mythology that had sustained his beliefs and values from time immemorial, and so he braces himself for a long, painful and anxious journey.

Sartre is quite aware of the anxiety of isolation man suffers once he accepts the solitary role of his being in the universe; he is now like the man without legs whose crutches have been snatched from him. Reinhardt aptly posits this imagery of the beginning of existential torment and angst:

Man is his freedom, says Sartre, and therefore this freedom is absolute. It extends to anything and everything; it leaves no room for any kind of determinism. No one can relieve me of this burden; neither I myself, who am this freedom, nor any of my fellowmen, nor a god, because there is no God. All the modes of my being equally make manifest my freedom; all of them are projects in the pursuit of my ideal ―self.‖ Absurd, irrational projects, to be sure, but I am precisely this kind of absurdity. Human freedom, therefore, is not a blessing, but a curse and a horrible yoke. (161)

If human freedom is not a blessing but a curse why would man leave the safety and comfort of God? Sartre believes that in the pursuit of the essential truth of reality, man 43

has no choice but to descend in this abyss of nothingness (as opposed to the something- ness of God) where he must dictate and assert for himself the true nature of a consciousness that will truly sustain his existence. This void, this nothingness, becomes a terrifying proposition for the existential man who has burnt the only bridge connecting him to the mainland of humanity; in his solitary island all he has now is his faculty of consciousness. Like the human animal he is, he is fearful and wishes to rid himself of this burden of freedom, but the deep essence of his being has already determined for him that the comfort of any materialistic determination or religious fate is false; there is no turning back. However, Reinhardt makes it clear that for Sartre, the existentialist is not condemned to perpetual despair but it is through this downward spiral of uncertainty that the man in search of his true self will now emerge and create relevant values and motivations to ground his existence.

In creating these new values and motivations, Sartre‘s solution relates to my earlier discussion where I mention Heidegger‘s charge that we are in spiritual disarray when we believe that technology and materialism will put the world in order. Bellow understands this disconnect as well based on his earlier point of view on the symbolism of the Studebaker and the Bendix as usurpers of man‘s energies as he immerses himself totally in the mass activity of technology and industry. The consequence of such absorption creates a spiritual void and despair; the quest for materialism now replaces the pursuit of the holy. According to Reinhardt, in this same vein Sartre explains the correlation between the materialistic pull and potential existential redemption:

Beyond despair, he [Sartre] tells his readers, entirely new perspectives are opening up, perspectives which even impart an ethical substance to human action. To reach this point of a new departure, man must first of all renounce what Sartre calls l’esperit de serieux. This ―spirit of seriousness‖ prevails, says Sartre … if 44

one measures one‘s own reality and value in terms of one‘s belonging-to-the- world … Materialism simply denotes the abdication of man in favor of the world. Within this frame of reference there is no possibility of escaping the world‘s crude force: assimilated to the world, man becomes hard like a rock, dense and opaque like all those things that constitute the ―world.‖ (164).

Even in view of impending isolation the existential man will choose to create his own reality of existence based on his internal dialogue driven by his consciousness as opposed to his counterpart who measures his existence externally based on his belonging-to-the-world through materialistic accumulation. There is reason to believe that much of our modern travail is in direct correlation to our belief that being assimilated in a material world justifies our existence. For the existentialist as well as any mystic, this external material ambition finally leads to estrangement because such objectification is illusory, especially so since there is no final acquisition that will define man‘s true existence. Consequently, man acquires slave status in his never-ending pursuit of this material god of plastic, chrome and steel. Also, from a spiritual point of view, such a quest for materialism creates the vanity of vanities that is antithetical to the inner growth of man. It is worth noting that as I close this section on Sartre‘s basic existential doctrine, it is provocative how Sartre has shifted the power of the omniscient force at that axial line when existential man has determined only his consciousness will free him: ―Man has thus assumed his ―absolute freedom‖ and endows it with the quality of the master value. By doing so he will in rare moments become sufficient unto himself: he will be like a god …‖ (Reinhardt 165).

Existential Theme in Nausea

Sartre‘s Nausea, like Dostoyevsky‘s Underground Man, is the benchmark existential novel of its time. From a structural and thematic point of view, it can be

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considered as a model from which Bellow constructed his Dangling Man. However, I am not sure whether Bellow read Nausea. Nonetheless, he was certainly acquainted with Dostoyevsky‘s work. In any case, I am exploring the existential theme in this novel as it serves as an analogue to Chapter 5: ―Existential Play and Redemption in Bellow‘s

Dangling Man.‖ Nausea is not structured as a normal novel but is written in a dairy or journal form by Antoine Roquentin who, having travelled around the world has now settled in Bouville, a French provincial town. Roquentin is writing a biography of the

Marquis de Rollebon, an eighteenth-century diplomat and a man of questionable values.

Roquentin has begun keeping a journal first dated sometime in January 1932 to keep track of himself as he has been observing some alarming changes in his perception of everyday phenomena. The intent of his journal is to classify these strange changes and on the first page we begin to see Sartre planting the seed of doubt in Roquentin‘s mind as he (Roquentin) starts to question the existence of external phenomena: ―I must tell how I see this table, this street, the people, my packet of tobacco, since those are the things that have changed. I must determine the exact extent and nature of this change.‖

Roquentin is strangely disturbed as he becomes aware of these items existing outside of him. Later on he picks up a stone and again he feels an anxiety he cannot explain though he does admit, ―Perhaps it was a passing moment of madness after all‖ (Sartre

2). Sartre continues to catalogue other instances where Roquentin observes outside objects such as the fork he is using to eat; the cold object of a door knob; and the hand of the Self-Taught Man: ―Then there was this hand like a fat white worm in my own hand. I dropped it almost immediately and the arm fell back flabbily‖ (Sartre 4).

Roquentin cannot understand why these observations disquiet him, but he does

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acknowledge, ―So a change has taken place these last few weeks. But where? It is an abstract change without object. Am I the one who has changed? If not, then it is this room, this city and this nature; I must choose‖ (Sartre 4). It is obvious that Roquentin is approaching a troubling state of doubt and indecision, but what is the cause for his anxiety?

Hayden Carruth explains that for centuries the debate over the philosophical distinction between existence and essence has raged unabated, but for Sartre, the distinction becomes clear when Roquentin experiences a strange sensation of disgust having picked up the round stone and realizes then and there that the features of the stone which are its flatness, dryness on one side, and muddy on the other all constitute the essence of the stone. It is at this point that Roquentin discovers the concept of bare existence: ―For him, quite unexpectedly, the essence of the stone disappears; he ―sees through‖ it; and as the days proceed he gradually discovers that all essences are volatile, until, in the confrontation with the chestnut tree, he finds himself in the presence of reality itself reduced to pure existence: disgusting and fearsome‖ (Carruth xi). Sartre therefore insists that existence precedes essence as he argues that man is a ―being who exists before he can be defined by any concept … At first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be. Thus there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it‖ (qtd. in Reinhardt 175). But why should pure existence be disgusting and fearsome? It is because pure existence is stripped of all rational construction not dissimilar to the primordial that interests

Bellow. It is also from this sphere of emptiness that the Buddhist begins his journey toward a meaningful existence. It is no wonder then that this awareness of a gaping void

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can be so frightening for the existential man has now left the comfort of reason and meaning; for many, this is the clutch of insanity.

Roquentin progresses more and more into this gaping void into the maw of existence, but he is offered the conventional means of dealing with his predicament. He finds life in the town, with all its commercial attractions and the piety of the people, discomforting; he no longer finds pleasure in his travelling adventures and when he seeks refuge in the past, he discovers that the dust of history cannot help him; his last hope of human love with his former mistress fails. During a luncheon the Self-Taught-

Man tries to sell Roquentin on humanism and it is interesting to note Sartre‘s vehement opposition to this option. When the Self-Taught-Man asks Roquentin, ―Perhaps you are a misanthrope?‖ (Sartre 118) Roquentin muses to himself:

I know what this fallacious effort at conciliation hides. He asks little from me: simply to accept a label. But it is a trap: if I consent, the Self-Taught-Man wins, I am immediately turned round, reconstituted, overtaken, for humanism takes possession and melts all human attitude into one …I don‘t want to be integrated, I don‘t want my good red blood to go and fatten this lymphatic beast: I will not be fool enough to call myself ―anti-humanist.‖ I am not a humanist, that‘s all there is to it. (Sartre 118).

The more Roquentin accepts he cannot fight this existential consciousness, the more he cannot bear the thought of being integrated within the humanistic fold since his new code of existence rebels against any external doctrine that threatens him with fixed parameters of conduct; as an existentialist, he must find his own values. This deliberate departure from community, the refusal to accept the compassion of humanity, and the self-imposed exile of the existentialist are significant principles in the philosophy of

Sartre. In his Existentialism and Human Emotions, Sartre unequivocally rejects humanism and positions man as the creator of his ultimate truth: ―Many people are

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going to be surprised at what is being said about humanism … In any case, what can be said from the very beginning is that by existentialism we mean a doctrine which makes human life possible and, in addition, declares that every truth and every action implies a human setting and a human subjectivity‖ (10). On the other hand, these ideas are anathema to Bellow whose recurring themes stress the essence of humanity, the significance of togetherness, and the caution against reason as being the ultimate answer to man‘s problems.

It is an interesting parallel that like the Buddha who found Enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, Sartre‘s Roquentin is finally confronted with the terrifying reality of existence while sitting on a park bench under a chestnut tree. The analogy is limited to perceptual awareness; the Buddha is finally aware he has arrived at Nirvana and

Roquentin is plunged into the frightening abyss of metaphysical anguish and tearing self-doubt. It is a strange paradox that should a man of our world today declare he has unveiled existence as Roquentin does in the following extract, he would certainly be placed under psychiatric observation for this loss of reality would surely suggest insanity. Here is Roquentin‘s state of mind as the true reality of existence tears through his consciousness:

And then all of a sudden there it was, clear as day: existence had suddenly unveiled itself. It had lost the harmless look of an abstract category: it was the very paste of things, this root [of the chestnut tree] was kneaded into existence. Or rather the root, the park gates, the bench, the sparse grass, all that had vanished: the diversity of things, their individuality, were only an appearance, a veneer. This veneer had melted, leaving soft monstrous masses, all in disorder – naked, in a frightful, obscene nakedness. (Sartre 127)

It is illuminating that more than two thousand years ago the Vedic scriptures of India had declared that everything in the world was an illusion and so it is not totally

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incomprehensible that Sartre would have understood this idea of the veneer. When tangible references of phenomena have been obliterated, man is on the brink of losing his mind in a closed and disordered world of ―frightful, obscene nakedness.‖ And yet there is the paradox of man being free as Roquentin painfully admits here:

I am free: there is absolutely no more reason for living, all the ones I have tried have given way and I can‘t imagine any more of them … How much, in the strongest of my terrors, my disgusts, I had counted on Anny to save me I realized only now. My past is dead. The Marquis of Rollebon is dead, Anny came back only to take all hope away. I am alone in this white, garden-rimmed street. Alone and free. But this freedom is rather like death. (Sartre 156-157)

Here is the existential agony of the man who has renounced the world in quest of personal freedom at an unbearable cost. It is ironical that this is the suffering that elicits our deepest empathy as readers and members of an audience. As he abdicates the outside world, Roquentin is reduced to nothing and yet the revered mystics in all cultures would agree that suffering is the overture for the reestablishment of true self.

Carruth suggests that Roquentin may be experiencing what Carl Jaspers calls ―the preparing power of chaos‖ (qtd. in Carruth xii).

Sartre‘s philosophy, like Nietzsche‘s, plunges the existential man in a terrifying void in a world without God, but Sartre is fully cognizant of this fear and as Reinhardt points out, Sartre offers this comfort:

Nothing is really lost as long as man is courageous to rid himself of all nostalgia of things which are gone and cannot be brought back. Everything can still be arranged satisfactorily if only man realizes the strength of his freedom; this strength will then enable him to start a new existence and a new world, both centered in himself rather than in God. (174)

The existentialist is fully aware that before he can realize the strength of his freedom that both human existence and freedom are born and nourished by despair and in

Sartre‘s own words: ―Before you come alive, life is nothing; it‘s up to you to give it a 50

meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning you choose‖ (qtd. in Reinhardt

174). It is important to remind ourselves that the philosophy of Existentialism flourished both in Europe and America having found a fertile ground after the barbaric atrocities of World Wars I and II. Men had lost trust and faith in social institutions and even in God and so it was fashionable to denounce these institutions in favor of an alternative form of existence. Sartre did not preach his gospel out of a vacuum but sensed that out of despair man could forge an existence that has been waiting for him; the only stumbling block was God.

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Chapter 3: Buddhism: Another Counterpoint to Bellow

Buddhism and Judaism

As I begin this discussion on Buddhism, and since I will examine Buddhist allusions in the work of a writer defined by his Judaism, it is appropriate that I explore any existing relationship between Buddhism and Judaism. I remember, as a young boy, the stories my father told me about the Jews and how their historic journey was one suffering after another, but yet, as a group of people, they were able to influence the world of science and medicine. Harold Heifetz quotes Albert Memmi who reinforces my father‘s perspective on this defining aspect of Judaism:

My delight in Jewish history has never been more than a gloomy delight, the reminder of an endless succession of disasters, flights, pogroms, emigrations, humiliations, injustices … I have only to open a book of Jewish history …What is called Jewish history is but one long contemplation of Jewish misfortune, despite the extraordinary originality of Hebraic thought, (and) its astounding impact on the world. (qtd. in Heifetz 9-10)

It can be argued that from a Buddhist point of view that this long contemplation of

Jewish misfortune fulfills the Buddha‘s first Holy Truth that all is suffering, but for twenty centuries, Jews have managed to survive. In a similar vein, Buddhism was persecuted and expelled from India by the ruling Brahmins who saw the teachings of the Buddha as a direct threat to their authority. Three thousand years later, Buddhists in

Tibet are facing the same persecution and genocide as the Chinese military occupies

Tibet which is considered the center of Buddhism. Since 1959 the Dalai Lama has lived in exile as the Chinese government has systematically destroyed all Tibetan resistance.

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From most accounts, an estimated 1.2 million Tibetans have been killed by the Chinese

People‘s Liberation Army. Rodger Kamenetz, in his book The Jew in the Lotus, confirms that under the brute force of the PLA, more than 6,000 Buddhist monasteries have been desecrated, pillaged, and destroyed. The public teaching of Buddhism is banned and having lost their temples, their land, and their teachers, they now face losing their identity as well, since ethnic Chinese now outnumber the native Tibetans in Lhasa.

Jews, of course, understand this deliberate and systematic persecution, and Kamenetz likens the Chinese occupation of Tibet and the suppression of the Buddhist culture to the events two thousand years ago when ―the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and expelled the Jewish people from their spiritual, homeland, beginning nineteen centuries of exile and dispersion. Rabbi Lawrence Kushner made a different parallel when he told the

Dalai Lama in 1989, ‗The Chinese came to your people as the Germans came to ours‘‖

(2). For his unrelenting peaceful approach to the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the Dalai

Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, and for the first time he turned to

Jews for help: ―Tell me your secret, the secret of Jewish spiritual survival in exile‖ (qtd. in Kamenetz 2).

Jews, on the whole, tend to resist conversion, but for the past fifty years, many

Jews have embraced Buddhism without sacrificing their Jewish faith. These half-way converts refer to themselves as Jewish Buddhists or JUBUs. According to Kamenetz,

American Jews have been instrumental in opening up Buddhist meditation centers; they have become respected teachers and promoted the Buddhist philosophy. Much of this

Buddhist influence can be traced to the beat generation of the 1950s, especially to Allen

Ginsberg who proclaimed himself as a Buddhist Jew; his biography, Dharma Lion,

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attests to his Buddhist inclination. It is interesting that Jews have not only gravitated to

Buddhism, but they seem naturally inclined to be teachers of this philosophy:

In a much more quiet, but perhaps deeper way, other Jews have been very important teachers. In the early 1970s, four Jewish practitioners of Vipassana meditation – Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, Jacqueline Swartz, and Sharon Salzberg – returned from their studies in India and Thailand to found the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, which is today one of the most successful teaching institutions in America …Today in American universities there is an impressive roster of Buddhist scholars with Jewish backgrounds. Among them are Anne Klein of Rice University, Stanley Weinstein at Yale, Alex Wayman and Matthew Kapstein at Columbia, Charles Prebish and Steve Heine of Penn State, and many more. (Kamenetz 8-9)

I was curious as to why Jewish Buddhists gravitated toward the role of teachers, and it occurred to me that perhaps this inclination can be credited to the intense program of

Judaic instruction starting from childhood where the holy texts are studied and questions are encouraged. Thus, from an early age Jewish children learn not only the importance of religious instruction, but as participants they are involved early in the pedagogical process as well. In this same manner, Buddhists insist that their children be instructed early on in studying their holy books. Rodger Kamenetz recalls that when the

Romans destroyed Jerusalem and over a million Jews died, Judaism did not die because,

―The religion was saved by the first-century sages known today as rabbis, the teachers‖

(94). Kamenetz paraphrases Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai who was granted one wish from the Roman emperor to set up an academy at Yavneh: ―If we don‘t have our

Temple, but we have our learning, our texts – our bible with us, we have power by learning to create the equivalent of the Temple. It‘s a portable homeland‖ (94-95).

Perhaps it is this commiseration for Buddhists losing their center of learning that propels Jews to help in spreading and finding roots for their adopted philosophy.

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Throughout Kamenetz‘s encounters with Jewish Buddhists, he discovers repeatedly that as much as Jews are drawn to Buddhism, they still remain loyal Jews.

His inquiry as to why Jews gravitate toward Buddhism reveals that Buddhism shares several similarities with Judaism, and many Jews see an opportunity to teach another doctrine that complements their existing religion. Kamenetz quotes several high-ranking

Jewish Buddhists on this subject of Buddhist affiliation:

The Jewishness of my background adds something to my Buddhism, a life- affirming approach. This is one of the main contributions we have given to Buddhism, being more creative with it to help make it more accessible to Western people, more affirming, more secular … Because of the love of clarity and scholarship, one feels at home in this tradition. This has allowed Jewish people to make a contribution here … the concept that there is suffering was most alive to me and opened me up to the Buddhist concepts … to understand better hidden and dormant parts of my religion. For example, the philosophy of Maimonides is extremely similar to Buddhist philosophy … Buddhism includes all living beings. (139-140)

Here, again, is that underlying desire to instruct on another doctrine that shares the common denominator that knowledge, scholarship, and wisdom can be achieved through rigorous study. What makes Buddhism appealing to the Jew is that he or she senses more of a universal humanity based on the Buddhist ideal of humility, not to the extremes, but within the concept of the Buddhist Middle Path as Maimonides advocates: ―If one is arrogant, he should accustom himself to endure much contumely, sit below everyone, and wear old and ragged garments that bring the wearer into contempt, and so forth, till arrogance is eradicated from his heart and he has regained the middle path, which is the right way‖ (qtd. in Kamenetz 140).

On a deeper and recurring level, there is the underlying idea of suffering in both

Judaism and Buddhism. Jews, as victims, have suffered for centuries, but no single event can match the pinnacle of suffering as the genocide of the Holocaust. It is only 55

during the past fifty years or more that Buddhists have come to know the word genocide and real suffering as they face the military might of the Chinese army intent on eradicating their culture. Like the Jews of the past who suffered meekly and believed in living peacefully, Buddhists are against anger and confrontation, and as a non-violent group, they are easy prey to the imperialistic power of the Chinese military machine.

However, the Buddhist doctrine that advocates the first Holy Truth that all is suffering resonates with the Jewish consciousness that strives to comprehend the Holocaust.

Judith Linzer explains why Jews are drawn to Buddhism based on the Buddhist principle of suffering:

One of the most dramatic insights of the conference was highlighted in the relationship between Judaism, Buddhism, and the Holocaust. The cloud of intense and unspeakable suffering and devastation so formative to the Jewish experience in the Fifties and the Sixties left this community without the tools or ability to acknowledge or deal with the enormity or meaning of the Holocaust. Many young Jews were drawn to Buddhism, which offered direct access to the investigation of suffering and impermanence not available in their Judaism. For many, this experience became a turning point in their spiritual development and a way to relate to the nightmare of the Holocaust. (280)

There is a paradox here that the keen Jewish mind (developed from the early years of instruction) wishes to ―investigate‖ suffering; such an inquiry necessitates an intellectual and rational process of analysis and argument which Buddhism does not encourage. Instead, the Buddhist accepts the word of the Buddha as a representation of the truth and then strives to pursue a rigorous discipline according to the precepts that will finally lead to the cessation of suffering. Thus, the keen distinction is that Buddhist salvation from suffering can only be achieved through actions and not by the power of intellectual reason. In another paradoxical way, Bellow is more Buddhist when he

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advocates that man‘s salvation lies not in his capacity for reason and intellectual analysis, but in his ―ordinary‖ actions that tie him to his community.

In Chapter 6, ―Buddhist Allusions in Bellow‘s Herzog,‖ I will explore, among other aspects, this concept of suffering both as a part of Jewish history and from the point of view of the Buddhist truth that all life is suffering. This idea of compassion so inherent in Buddhism is also part of the core Jewish regard for his fellow man; it is by no accident that much of the world is indebted to the artistic, scientific, and educational accomplishments of the Hebraic mind that promotes peace over aggression. Harold

Heifetz points out this underlying compassion of the Hasidic Jew in comparison to the

Buddhist:

Hasidism was an ecstatic flight from the pain of living among strangers. It was compounded by each Jew‘s sensitivity and belief that everyman‘s pain is also mine, that he or she over there, on the other side of the mountain, cries, but they cry with my Jewish tears. I am the brother, sister, and keeper. This is Jewish involvement. All destinies are tied together. This was also part of the great unselfishness in Buddha‘s fundamental vow that unless others attain Buddhahood, Buddha himself could not attain it; if anyone suffered in the world, then Buddha himself could not become free and enlightened. (10)

Heifetz‘s point of view of the Jew being the brother, sister, and keeper of the sufferer on the other side of the mountain is, indeed, a foundational religious doctrine. It is this constant insistence on compassion that drives the Buddhist toward a peaceful coexistence with his fellow man. It is the ultimate paradox that Christianity owes its existence to the ordinary son of a carpenter who was a Jew who preached the compassionate need to be the keeper of a brother or sister, and yet Jews have been persecuted for fifteen centuries. Are Jews then the Chosen People because they are destined to suffer? The Buddha would perhaps nod in approval, knowing that Jews are

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also destined to shine a bright light on the world; their achievements attest to this illumination.

A Prelude to Buddhism

Sometimes I feel that I am under the command of an invisible hand guiding me to weave this dissertation with the threads of human suffering; I cannot escape this surreptitious force which insists that the level of man‘s salvation is directly tied to his level of suffering. Of course this invisible hand is not original since this condition of human suffering has sustained its number one status on the chart of all art and literature for centuries. Perhaps Victor Hugo was right when he said that from the beginning of time there have been essentially only three stories that we have been retelling and it is very likely that the theme of suffering is a lynchpin that holds these stories together. But why does this invisible hand, like a creeper tree, insist that suffering should suffuse and haunt these pages? Is it perhaps because this writer knows about suffering and senses too that we may have already begun the era of Kalyug, that cycle of human darkness prophesied by Hindu scriptures? There are other reasons too.

First and foremost, and as I have mentioned before, Saul Bellow is a Jew and all of his protagonists are Jewish, with the exception of the gentile Eugene Henderson in

Henderson the Rain King and Clara Velde in A Theft. We must bear in mind too that

Bellow began his writing career just about the end of World War II and he was cognizant of Hitler‘s gas chambers and death camps. In addition, Bellow was born in

North America in 1915 of parents who had escaped from Russia and the pogroms against Jews. Finally, Bellow would have grown up learning about the historic persecution of Jews; even up to the middle of the twentieth-century in America Jews

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were still considered second-class citizens. And so having grown up understanding the present and historic suffering of his fellow Jews, Bellow could certainly relate to the essence of the Buddha‘s first Holy Truth that all life is suffering. On a more personal level, and at a very young age, Bellow was surrounded by death. Sometime in 1918, there was a flu epidemic, and James Atlas recalls Bellow sitting by the window with his brother Sam, as they looked at the horse-drawn funeral corteges. Death was everywhere: ―Every house had a wreath on the door, even their own. The landlord‘s young son died of tuberculosis; Bellow got a glimpse of the boy, white-faced in his coffin, surrounded by flowers‖ (Atlas 15). In 1923, when Bellow was eight years old, he almost died when he developed tuberculosis, and had to be hospitalized for six months.

Bellow recalls being comforted by a Christian lady who read aloud to him in the hospital from the New Testament; many decades later he still remembered how touched he was by Jesus‘ call to ―suffer little children to come unto me.‖

The experience of suffering is inherent in Bellow‘s world. His protagonists, who are all men, are not happily married nor are they found in settings indicative of community; on the contrary, these men are solitary figures who live in their own minds and whose collective existence is unbearable with the suffering of daily life. Thus, in a similar manner, Bellow‘s men, like Buddhist aspirants are struggling with their existence of suffering in the same fashion too that the existentialists are. Finally, our world of today is littered with a moral fatigue borne out of incessant conflict between brothers, friends, groups, and nations; even in the hand of God the scimitar gleams. So, from this unavoidable backdrop of suffering and since I intend to examine redemption in Bellow through the influence of Buddhist doctrines, it is only appropriate that I

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examine the basic principles of the Buddhist philosophy that begins with the premise

―All is suffering.‖

Buddhism: The Basic Doctrine

In the doctrines of both Existentialism and Buddhism, there are ideological similarities but there are distinct differences in which each philosophy achieves its aims; an important distinction I later examine. In the premises of both Existentialism and

Buddhism, there is an absence of God: Sartre not only vehemently denies but argues against the existence of any omniscient Being who determines antecedents for man‘s behavior whereas Buddhism is tolerant of other faiths and has no interest in proving the existence or non-existence of God. Both philosophies stress that the ultimate truth can only be achieved through man‘s deciphering and interpreting the realities of his existence but whereas Sartre insists that his existentialist is not a humanist, Buddhism is compassionate in its humanist approach. Also, the idea of suffering is dominant in both philosophies; the existentialist‘s brutal severing of God plunges him in dire isolation and torment whereas Buddhism admits up front that man‘s nature is born to suffer.

Buddhism originated in India some 2,500 years ago just as the Vedic Age was drawing to a close. This was a time of great economic prosperity thanks to the Aryans who had invaded the Indus Valley and who, instead of destroying the culture of the conquered people, adopted and contributed to the overall social welfare. However, there is reason to believe that at some point the prosperity in this region encouraged some degree of hedonism which created underlying social and spiritual problems. In addressing these social ills, wandering sects (there were five of them), each led by an ascetic, took to the road advocating the practices of their philosophies bent on

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redemption. One such sect was led by Siddhartha Gautama who later became known as the Buddha (Snelling 15). The Buddha, like Jesus or Socrates, never wrote anything and it was some four hundred years after the Buddha‘s death that his teachings were written down. The term ―Buddha‖ is not really a name per se but more of a title describing an

―Awakened One‖ or an ―Enlightened One;‖ thus there can be many Buddhas as there have been before Gautama. The emphasis on Buddhism is not centered in its founder but stress a variety of spiritual commandments and practical disciplines necessary to arrive at a more integrated and calm personality. The overall emphasis is to understand and practice compassion not only with respect to our fellow humans but with all sentient beings. Buddhism advocates a long and arduous spiritual journey, and the joy of Nirvana is the ultimate reward for the few who achieve this status of supreme contemplation. (Nirvana is the highest state of consciousness where the soul has been freed from attachments and desires; it is often inaccurately referred to as heaven.) An essential premise of Buddhism is the idea of transmigration:

The doctrine of transmigration is central to the Buddhist quest, and the idea of nirvana would be unintelligible without it. The Buddhist process of insight meditation is a direct continuation of the meditations on the great sayings of the Upanishads, wherein the practitioner internalizes a concise doctrinal formula as a direct and personal realization of the truth. (Prebish 7)

The Buddhist concept of transmigration is limited to the phenomenal and should not be mistaken as moving into another plane of existence after death. The Buddha has been noted for his silence on the question of what happens after death but has consistently reminded his followers that transmigration is a continuous earthly metamorphosis geared for the uplift of the humanity within us. This dynamic process of transmigration can be achieved by the aspirant who adheres to the Buddhist precepts in pursuit of his

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―personal realization of the truth.‖ This process of transmigration can be seen from a biological point of view as well: ―Every moment in our life is a new life and an old death: we die in a past that is gone and we live in the future to come, and thus our life on this earth is a perpetual transmigration‖ (Mascaro 28).

Buddhism is a spiritual philosophy oriented in human realities; there is no godhead but the closest to this concept is the principle of Dharma which encompasses the ―eternal truths and cosmic law-orderliness discovered by the Buddha(s), Buddhist teachings, the Buddhist path of practice, and the goal of Buddhism‖ (Harvey 2). Like the transcendental poetry of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt

Whitman, in this same manner Buddhism seeks to transcend:

Buddhism starts rather from an experience of the human condition, an intuition concerning its essential character, and an aspiration to transcend it. Likewise, its culmination in the experience of Nirvana or the realization of Buddhahood, though suggestive of an absolute or transcendent state akin to the divine in other religions, is qualified always, if it can be described at all, by its original premises in regard to the nature of existence. (Theodore deBarry xviii-xix)

Since Buddhism does not champion heaven or hell, its transcendence is limited to and by human experiences and realities. However, its power to transcend lies in its teachings to promote human virtues such as equanimity, wisdom, courage, service to others, and most important of all, compassion. I will later explain how these same principles anchor Bellow‘s call for community. For all its transcendent powers,

Buddhism remains a moral philosophy where man‘s consciousness determines the center of the universe. As much as Buddhism insists that man alone is the creator of his fate and destiny, it does not suggest that God does not exist and for this reason

Buddhism has been able to coexist with other faiths in all parts of the world. Inherent in

Buddhism is its peaceful outlook as it lives by the ―understanding that there are many 62

paths by which the great mystery of ultimate reality may be approached. Allied to this is a fundamental tolerance: a willingness to listen, to learn, to change, and to coexist with others with whom one may not necessarily agree‖ (Snelling 11).

Buddhism is not a fundamentalist religion based on dogmas or articles of faith, nor does it demand allegiance at the cost of arresting rational and critical analysis, experience and common sense. In its pursuit of the concept of truth, Buddhism, like the teaching of Jesus, refrains from such metaphysical inquiries as to who created the world, is there a heaven or hell, or what is the meaning of life. Buddhism focuses on the premise that suffering is embedded in all of life but that there is a way out of this suffering. In a very Socratic fashion, dialogue is encouraged between aspirant and teacher and it is through this process that the teacher can share and point the way to truth. The role of teacher is taken seriously and in Buddhism this status is earned after a long journey of purification of self where desires and attachments are cut off at their roots. Credentials of a learned teacher are not established by the certification of a diploma but by a history of good actions to himself, to the rest of his community, and to what extent he can share his vital knowledge to make the world a more peaceful place.

A central commandment of Buddhism is the seeking of peace through love, first with oneself and then with others: ―For hate is not conquered by hate; hate is conquered by love. This is a law eternal‖ (The Dhammapada 1:5:35).

Critical analysis of experiences and perspectives, strict adherence to discipline of body and mind, and compassion for all sentient beings are deeply rooted values in

Buddhism. However, Buddhism insists on a strict process in attaining these values; the road to Nirvana is fraught with countless challenges and unlike other spiritual journeys,

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Buddhism is unique in that it even forbids attachment to its own practices and ideas, instead suggesting the aspirant, having reached a goal, should un-attach himself from the vessel that brought him to that goal. This concept instructing on the ill of attachment is a recurring theme of all of Buddhism albeit in a perplexing context here:

The Buddha emphasized that his teachings had a practical purpose, and should not be blindly clung to. He likened the Dhamma [Path] to a path made by a man seeking to cross from the dangerous hither shore of a river, representing the conditioned world, to the peaceful further shore representing Nibbana [Nirvana] (M.1.34-5). He then rhetorically asked whether such a man, on reaching the other shore, should lift up the raft and carry it around with him there. He therefore said, ‗Dhamma is for crossing over, not for retaining‘. That is, a follower should not grasp at Buddhist ideas and practices, but use them for their intended purpose, and then let go of them when they had finally accomplished their goal. (Harvey 31)

I believe many Buddhists would find this concept of non-attachment to even ideas and practices difficult to sustain but the deeper teaching is that the Buddhist does not need to cling to the principles but to replace such tenets with a fresh awareness acquired from observing the principles. It can be argued too that in the long journey to Nirvana, the traveler must continuously empty himself as he makes his final approach to this ethereal place where all attachments and desires have disappeared. This is a place now beyond the realm of dualities of good and evil; the devotee is at one with his existence and is in harmony with the rest of nature. It is important to note that the Buddhist traveler is not restricted to the calm forest of the Himalayas; he travels just as well in the concrete jungle of New York City where the rest of nature does not include quiet brooks but screams with a clamorous cacophony.

Central to all schools of Buddhist philosophy is a structural framework from which all doctrines, practices, and methodologies emanate. This framework supports the

Buddha‘s Four Holy Truths which parallel a medical diagnosis: a) diagnose the disease, 64

b) identify its cause, c) make a determination that the disease is curable, and d) prescribe a course of treatment.

The First Holy Truth: All Is Suffering

According to the Buddha, all life is born out of dukkha which is suffering: ―(i)

Birth is dukkha, ageing is dukkha, sickness is dukkha, death is dukkha; (ii) sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are dukkha; and (iii) association with what one dislikes is dukkha, separation from what one likes is dukkha, not to get what one wants is dukkha‖ (qtd. in Harvey 47-48). We have no control over the first features of suffering since biologically we are all born, endure sickness, and fear death; these are all traumatic and painful. However, on another level, this suffering is compounded through the Buddhist belief that man endures repeated cycles of rebirth, sickness and death within his own existence. The second set of suffering is in direct consequence of the pain, both mental and physical that we suffer from the hardships in life. Finally the

Buddha explains that we suffer since we are unable to control the things, people and situations that affect us negatively nor are we able to hold on to the people we do like; thus our relationships are so unpredictable that we are constantly in some mode of disappointment and frustration. This perspective may seem pessimistic but the teachings insist that we must first face the unpleasantness of life in order to transcend this unhappiness. Buddhism does not deny the existence of happiness but cautions that happiness can be limited and transitory and can even serve as a prelude to unhappiness:

―When a happy feeling passes, it often leads to dukkha due to change, and even while it is occurring, it is dukkha in the sense of being a limited, conditioned, imperfect state,

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one which is not truly satisfactory‖ (Harvey 48). However, lasting happiness and joy can be experienced when one has attained Nirvana.

The Second Holy Truth: The Origin of Suffering

Having presented humanity‘s natural predisposition to suffering, the teachings of the Buddha explain the origin of suffering: ―It is this craving (tanha), giving rise to rebirth, accompanied by delight and attachment, finding delight now here, now there

…‖ (qtd. in Harvey 53). Tanha in Pali means thirst and refers to our constant needs and desires which create suffering. In the first case, our satisfaction derived from these needs and desires are never permanent and like addicts, we are constantly looking for the ultimate but elusive perfect state of bliss; consequently we are faced with disappointment. These needs and desires overwhelm our sense of moderation and often impel us to commit unsuitable actions to sustain these cravings. Finally, the pressures to satisfy these desires often lead to unethical behavior which results in severe disagreements between individuals and groups. The teachings list these three types of cravings: ―craving for sensual pleasures, craving for existence, and craving for non- existence. The second type refers to the drive for self-protection, for ego enhancement, and for eternal life after death. The third is to get rid of unpleasant situations, things and people‖ (Harvey 53). This third craving, in its strong form can perpetuate harming and killing others and even taking one‘s own life. In order to overcome the origin of this suffering, the Buddha suggests not only to limit these desires, but to utilize wisdom and calmness to uproot these cravings from our mind.

In addition to cravings, incorrect views and conceit create suffering. Incorrect views refer to those speculative theories or opinions that take the form of dogmas which

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can narrow a person‘s point of view and create major disagreements between individuals, groups, or even nations. Harvey explains:

Such views are seen as hidden forms of self-assertion, which lead to conflict with those of other opinions, be this in the form of verbal wrangling or ideological wars and bloody revolutions. In this context, it is worth noting that the atrocities carried out by Hitler, Stalin, and the Khmer Rouge were initiated by people who were convinced of a theory which demanded and ‗justified‘ their actions. The Buddha focused much critical attention on view concerning ‗self‘, which he saw as leading to attachment and thus suffering. (53-54)

As we look at our current social and political landscape, whether on the national or international stage, we can see how our inability to arrive at humane and egalitarian consensus can be affected by incorrect views as evidenced by the partisan politics of our times. It can be argued that the American-Iraq conflict with its cost of human lives and materiel has been the product of those with incorrect views. Conceit, on the other hand affects our personal growth since we insist on our deep-rooted belief of self-assertion driven by our clinging to ego. The removal of craving and desires, for the Buddha then, is the antidote to suffering.

The Third Holy Truth: Nirvana

Having established in his First Truth that all life is suffering and then explaining the origin of suffering in The Second Holy Truth, the Buddha postulates his third Truth:

―This, monks, is the Holy Truth of the cessation (nirodha) of dukkha: the utter cessation, without attachment, of that very craving, its renunciation, surrender, release, lack of pleasure in it‖ (qtd. in Harvey 60-61). This is the end of the pilgrimage where suffering ceases; this is the joy of blissful Nirvana where the Buddhist is no longer slave to his cravings and attachments. Nirvana is the Sanskrit word whereas the Pali counterpart of Nibbana literally means ―extinction‖ or ―quenching‖ which are words

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used for extinguishing a fire. (Harvey 61). The concept of burning and quenching is perhaps the most important idea in understanding the arrival at Nirvana:

This teaches that everything internal and external to a person is ‗burning‘ with the ‗fires‘ of attachment, hatred and delusion, and of birth, ageing and death. Here the ‗fires‘ refer both to the causes of dukkha and to dukkha itself. Attachment and hatred are closely related to craving for things and craving to be rid of things, and delusion is synonymous with spiritual ignorance … When one has destroyed these [the fires] dies, he cannot be reborn and so is totally beyond the remaining ‗fires‘ of birth, ageing and death, having attained final Nibbana. (Harvey 61)

It is an arresting concept that the status of Nirvana as a point of ultimate arrival releases the Buddhist from the process of earthly rebirth as he is no longer part of the wheel of becoming; he has arrived. This is the most transcendent aspect of Buddhism but this transcendence does not suggest an afterlife and as in Kant‘s theory of knowledge, this state is beyond the limits of experience and hence is beyond our comprehension. (The reference to Kant comes from the dictionary that explains the meaning of transcendence under philosophy.) Harvey too points out the difficulty of words to truly explain the transcendent feature of Nirvana: ―In the face of Nibbana, words falter, for language is a product of human needs in this world, and has few resources with which to deal with that which transcends all worlds‖ (62).

Nirvana can be likened to the soul of Buddhism and judging from the various reports documenting this state of mind, it can be argued that this state of being bears a close resemblance to the mystical and spiritual experience of anyone who may have encountered the nearness of God. Several Christian mystics such as Saint John of the

Cross, Saint Augustine, and Meister Eckhart have alluded to this Godly radiance. Juan

Mascaro, in his introduction to The Dhammapada references this perspective which could be describing the state of Nirvana; the metaphor of fire as radiance is nicely 68

juxtaposed against Nirvana as a force quenching a fire: ―Saint John of the Cross, 1542-

91, says that when soul is in union she sees the spendour of God as many lamps of fire, his qualities: love, omnipotence, wisdom, mercy, justice, and many others. All these lamps of fire merge in the Lamp of the Being of God‖ (Mascaro19). This is perhaps the closest language will allow for a description of this immanent connection.

However, as much as the Buddha refrains from crediting a higher force for the joy of Nirvana, we can also perceive in the Buddha‘s transcendental journey the elemental ethos dominant in all religions that promote peace and love, beauty and truth.

From a theological point of view, it can be ascertained that at this axis of Nirvana the soul of man has finally merged in a harmony with the essence of God; this is a state beyond language as God is beyond language:

In union with Being the Upanishads found a condition that is ‗neither outer nor inner consciousness, neither semi-consciousness nor unconsciousness‘, a condition that is ‗peace and love‘. Buddha found in Nirvana a condition ‗wherein there is neither consciousness, nor space nor void. It is not a coming, not a standing still, not a falling, nor a rising‘. (Mascaro19)

In our hectic contemporary life we are constantly being reminded by the gurus of psychology, psychiatry, and theology instructors that we need to slow down and to live

―in the moment.‖ Pharmaceutical companies besiege us with their goods that promise us ultimate relaxation, not to mention the thriving underground narcotic industry that promotes the Kingdom of Awareness. Is it possible that centuries ago the Buddha would have understood the human need for an experience of nothingness that paradoxically would also ground us with Being that is essentially within us? The Buddha, having read the Vedic scriptures, must have understood that connection to the Godhead is achieved not through an external bridge but via a long consecrated process of internal

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contemplation this reveals that the Vedic/Hindu God is not conceived as an outside force but created within the mind of man. Thus the Buddha can be considered the ultimate existentialist except that he practices and teaches the supreme irony; the journey to Nirvana is the same journey to God but within the internal corridors of man‘s mind.

The Fourth Holy Truth: The Path

In his sermon on The Fourth Holy Truth, the Buddha outlines eight steps which he calls The Eightfold Path; the Buddha teaches that honoring these ―right‖ or ―perfect‖ steps gradually lead the way out of suffering and into the abode of Nirvana. Any aspiring Buddhist must follow these steps not fanatically or in the extremes, but should strive for a balance which the Buddha called the Middle Way. The Path can be understood as a manifesto in acquiring wisdom, practicing ethical conduct and achieving a sound mental development which are all prerequisites in understanding truth. There is a strong emphasis on the practical applications of these steps for it is only through consecrated action can one achieve a higher level of consciousness required for entry into the realm of Nirvana. The eight stages of the Path extracted from ―The Noble

Eightfold Path‖ are summarized as follows:

1. Right View or Understanding: In this first stage we find the four universal

values in Buddhism that are found in all religions. First we must develop and

maintain loving-kindness to all through friendliness, benevolence, love, and

good will. This is followed by compassion where we need to feel pity and

sorrow for the suffering of others, not only for the human species but for all

sentient beings. We are then allowed to experience the joy in the good of all

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followed by our understanding and practice of forgiveness as we accept the

faults of others. We must first achieve these virtues which will prepare us for the

other stages.

2. Right Determination: This second stage can be defined as our commitment to

improve our lives by following accepted ethical standards. We must be

determined to recognize the ill of desire, practice good will towards others,

refrain from thoughts of anger and aversion, and strive for a life of non-violence,

and non-aggression which will free our minds from cruelty.

3. Right Speech: The need for right speech establishes a mental framework for

ethical standards which lead to moral integrity. Buddhist ethics insists on right

speech knowing that words have the power to create enemies or friends, destroy

or build lives, and even start and end wars. The Buddha teaches that we should

abstain from speaking falsely which includes lying and deceitful intention; avoid

malicious speech that slanders; strive for peaceful instead of harsh words that

may offend others; and it is better to remain quiet instead of indulging in idle

talk that lacks any meaningful purpose.

4. Right Action: This is another series of ethical preferences required to produce a

wholesome frame of mind. Right action means: strive from harming sentient

beings and taking any life including your own; do not take what is not given and

avoid stealing, fraud, robbery, dishonesty and deceitfulness; and to abstain from

sexual misconduct. Kindliness, compassion, honesty, respecting the property of

others, and appropriate sexual conduct define right action.

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5. Right Livelihood: In the pursuit of right livelihood, the Buddha teaches that we

should not earn our livelihood producing goods or items that are useless, evil, or

harmful. There are four activities that defile right livelihood: producing and

dealing in weaponry; dealing in prostitution, the slave trade, and raising animals

for slaughter; working in meat production; and being a part of the production of

alcohol and harmful drugs.

6. Right Effort: The practice of right effort stipulates achieving the right balance in

tension and relaxation in accomplishing the tasks in our lives. Right effort is the

dedicated mental and physical energy we need to achieve in order to sustain a

wholesome state of mind from which any product of our effort will be a

manifestation of this pure energy. This right effort is not only limited to our

physical production but promotes kindness, honesty, self-discipline and good

will to others.

7. Right Mindfulness: This is our learned ability to sift through various

impressions that constantly invade our consciousness and to arrive at a distinct

and clear perception as to the true essence of what the mind is trying to

conceptualize. We can only achieve a state of right mindfulness when we

constantly strive to control the random inclination of our thoughts. The Buddha

teaches we can achieve this state of mind once we assiduously practice

contemplation of our body, our feelings, our mind and the world of phenomena.

8. Right Concentration: In this last stage the Buddha teaches the concept of

meditation where the mental faculties are trained to focus on one object with the

intention of fully understanding that object only. The challenge here is to limit

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the wandering mind to focus but once this is achieved, then this practice can be

applied our daily problems that require analysis and synthesis. With right

concentration and through meditation we are able to bridge the finite with the

infinite. This is the end of the journey where the burden of ego has been lifted

and man is in the realm of true freedom for he has been emancipated from his

suffering; he is at Nirvana.

Closure

In the beginning of this chapter I mentioned an invisible hand that kept redirecting my focus to this human condition of suffering and I am beginning to understand the persuasion of this hand. As I grasp the existentialist‘s desire to stand alone in the world at the cost of safety and comfort and as I recognize Bellow‘s insistence on plunging his protagonists in severe states of anguished introspection, it occurs to me that the natural state of man is more inclined to suffering as the Buddha accepted this truth over 2500 years ago. It is instructive that both the Buddha and

Bellow refuse to sink in this quagmire of despair; the former has produced a philosophy that millions follow and the latter speaks to his fellow man through the moral precepts of The Old Testament which has guided millions for the better part of 2000 years. And in between the Buddha and Bellow (at least chronologically) is the fearless non- humanist Jean-Paul Sartre who is bold enough to state categorically there is no God.

The Buddha, as a teacher proposes a light to man‘s darkness in this world and as

Mascaro concludes in his introduction to The Dhammapada, we can feel assured that man is destined to a higher life:

He [the Buddha] wants us to arise from a life of dreams into a higher life where man loves and does not hate, where a man helps and does not hurt. His appeal is 73

universal, because he appeals to reason and to the universal in all of us: ‗It is you who must make the effort. The Great of the past only show the way‘. He achieves a supreme harmony of vision and wisdom by placing spiritual truth on the crucial test of experience; and only experience can satisfy the mind of modern man. He wants us to watch and be awake and he wants us to seek and to find. (Mascaro 33)

It is a voice of compassion that rings loudest in the sermon of the Buddha; this is the same compassion found in all the major religions and can only be understood through the prism of suffering. This is an old message of peace not necessarily handed down from the mountain top but constructed out of the spiritual experience of man. In his own secular manner void of congregation and rituals, we can also see Bellow on the periphery of the establishment throttling his protagonists to confront their existence littered with anxieties and ambiguities. Whether it is through the eyes of the Buddha, the existentialist, or Bellow, we cannot escape the nature of suffering but one thing is for sure: there is the potential for transformation.

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Chapter 4: The Aesthetic and Moral Conduct in Art and Literature

The Aesthetic and Moral Conduct: An Overview

In the beginning of Chapter 3, I had mentioned that I seemed to be in the clutches of an unseen hand dictating that the play of suffering must anchor this dissertation. I can now understand, having examined the basic doctrines of

Existentialism and Buddhism, how the gestalt of this dissertation cannot escape the correlation between suffering and redemption. This is the yin and yang of the human condition that drives Bellow‘s work; the existential blackness is the yin of the dark, passive, cold, and downward journey whereas the yang is in line with the Buddhist ascent into the bright, active, and expanding life force that leads to Nirvana. Bellow, of course, does not credit Nirvana as the transformative force that lifts his characters; he honors God and community. My next chapter will expand on this dynamic process as it defines themes in Bellows work but before I get there I am proposing that between the yin and yang of our journeys, humanity also needs the moral blueprint of the arts and literature to navigate that parallel journey that orbit within the cycle of suffering and redemption. My discussion of the arts will generally and loosely reference painting, sculpture, and music and these forms will be used interchangeably to express a broad sense of the aesthetic and moral. Poetry and literature (more so literature) will serve as the stronger focus point to establish the aesthetic and moral perspectives that define our lives.

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The commitment of my exploration of Bellow vis-à-vis Existentialism and Buddhism must also hinge on a moral platform to include the role of the aesthetic and ethical conduct as they are prescriptive in the arts and literature. But why head in this direction? The short answer is that our contemporary world is plagued with moral ambiguities and more and more as we lose our compass in life and as dogmas befuddle and distort our consciousness we need to continuously seek the redemptive powers of art and literature. Here again is Bellow as he sees the contemporary predicament of his time: ―… we stand open to all anxieties. The decline and fall of everything is our daily dread, we are agitated in private life and tormented by public questions‖ (Bellow, It All

Adds Up 92). The moral and ethical blueprints that have sustained the standards for human conduct in Western Civilization can be traced to the poetry and philosophy of men such as Homer, Horace, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The pursuit of the good life in search of truth and wisdom by means of an intellectual inquiry and moral self- discipline was mostly the domain of philosophy but it was literature and the arts that really defined our aesthetic sensibilities and moral responsibilities.

From the epic tales of poetry and drama emerged literature with its flowering of irony, metaphors, and allusions; the art of this new prose also followed the ancient tradition honoring the moral values of mankind. Bellow, too, has paid homage to this tradition as I have pointed out in the second page of this dissertation: ―He [Bellow] believed that literature should hew to one of its original purposes – the raising of moral questions – and his own works remained indebted to those he had studied as a boy: the

Old Testament, Shakespeare's plays and the great 19th-century Russian novels‖

(Kakutani, ―Heartbreak,‖ E1). Keith Opdahl also notes the recurring theme of man‘s

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religious and moral needs: ―One of the most striking characteristics of Bellow‘s work is his view of the personal and the metaphysical as a continuum, in which personality finds justification in a universal principle or moral order which it reflects‖ (7). In his non-fiction collection It All Adds Up, Bellow titles his opening chapter ―Mozart: An

Overture‖ in which he strives to explain, among other things, why the world should be indebted to the wondrous and mystical music of Mozart. In the closing sentences of the chapter, we can see how deeply Bellow feels about the role of art as a conduit for our deep mysteries: ―In him [Mozart] we see a person who has only himself to rely on. But what a self it is, and what an art it has generated. How deeply (beyond words) he speaks to us about the mysteries of our common human nature. And how unrestrained and easy his greatness is‖ (14). In a later chapter titled ―An Interview with Myself‖ in this same text, Bellow alludes to the function of art as a tonic for the soul: ―The power of a work of art is such that it induces a temporary suspension of activities. It leads to contemplative states, to wonderful and, to my mind, sacred states of the soul‖ (84). It seems clear that from his early studying of The Old Testament and later understanding the play of art, Bellow would gravitate toward those writers that were imbued with a moral imperative. It falls in place, then, that in his first novel and in the words of his character John Pearl, Bellow is ruminating on the value of art: ―The real world is the world of art and of thought. There is only one worth-while sort of work, that of the imagination‖ (Bellow, Dangling Man 91).

For writers like Bellow, this function of literature to raise and adjudicate moral questions has become increasingly significant in the last century as we have witnessed the fragmentation of our moral foundation; the record of man‘s evil conduct

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representative in incessant wars, greed, and genocides speaks for itself. Thus it behooves this independent chapter to examine the function of art on a general level, not only as a vehicle to produce works of aesthetic principles based on the beautiful, but to argue that moral conduct of the good must be a prerequisite for all forms of art. This moral conduct is differentiated from institutional and religious dogma and instead is grounded in the precepts of the cardinal virtues such as truth, beauty, wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. These are the fundamental values that have remained central in the chronicle of the arts and literature. This chapter, as it mostly examines literature, will also reinforce the notion that historically art and its aesthetic values have always served as a prism from which we have conceptualized morality.

Arts and Moral Conduct: A Background and Historic Point of View

From the inception of communal living, all civilizations and their cultures needed to determine and establish parameters and standards for moral behavior, ethical principles and artistic values. Through various processes, each culture, irrespective of geography, formulated social, political, and economic systems to control and manage the wild impulses of its population previously prone to savagery. However, it was only after centuries that these systems, through trial and error, were firmly planted as standard institutions in the civilized lands of the world. It was the implementation of moral, ethical, and artistic codes that lubricated the machinery of civilization. The framers of these systems were first concerned that for society to function on some level of equality and respect for the rights of all people, it was important that from a governing and moral point of view that the architects of society should construct a body of obligations, rules and duties to serve as prescriptive standards for ethical human

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conduct. In addition to these codes, the institution of art, in its various forms of poetry, literature, painting, sculpture, architecture, and cinema, and so on, supplemented society with standards of aesthetic principles of the beautiful and appealing. It can be argued that art, in producing an aesthetic value in the form of beauty, can be considered a barometer for moral conduct should we follow Keats‘ formula that ―Beauty is truth, truth beauty.‖ Perhaps, indeed this is all we need to know.

The discussion of whether a work of art should have a moral value and the question whether a work of art can be admired on a moral ground and at the same time be aesthetically satisfying, has been debated for centuries. Perhaps, then, it would be relevant to first examine some basic premises postulated by two philosophers whose views are more than a thousand years apart. Clive Cazeaux, in his essay ―Aesthetics &

Morality in the History of Philosophy: Plato and Nietzsche,‖ suggests that in order to understand the moral question in relation to aesthetic concerns, the idea of goodness must be examined. It is from this platform that Cazeaux explains the groundwork for moral standards as expounded by both Plato and Nietzsche to suggest that, ―the concepts of morality are worked out within theoretical frameworks which are also responsible for determining concepts of art and the aesthetic.‖ Cazeaux points out that according to Plato, the concept of goodness is in direct relation to one living in the essence of one‘s being. This essence is one of many Forms postulated by Plato to symbolize a state existing on a metaphysical plane possible through transcendence; these Forms can be likened to templates which shape and define reality. Consequently, a person can be moral and virtuous once he lives by the standards exemplified by these

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Platonic Forms. Cazeaux suggests that this attainment via Forms is a prerequisite for

Plato‘s theory of art:

What is important to note is that Plato‘s metaphysics of the Forms is also responsible for determining his theory of art. True knowledge, for Plato, consists of direct unmediated knowledge of the Forms; this is the condition we are ultimately working towards by endeavoring to live morally in accordance with our essence. ... Thus, with Plato‘s concept of the Form, we have a metaphysics in which the structure behind a theory of morality is also at work in determining a theory of art.

Plato‘s perspective is that for art to transcend, its practitioners must first be aware and be connected to these higher, universal Forms. It would be through this symbiosis, not dissimilar to the Zen relationship, that artist, art, and Form would fuse to produce a consciousness of the good and the beautiful that would define appropriate moral conduct. However, not all artists will agree with Plato‘s point of view that the theory of morality determines the theory of art on the ground that art is not answerable to doctrine as Nietzsche believes as well.

Nietzsche propounds a different perspective between art and morality in that he rejects the traditional platform of goodness and morality grounded on customs and dogmas elevated to represent absolutes. Nietzsche argues that a collective ―ordered experience‖ is not possible as defined and suggested by religious doctrines and laws since such indoctrination seeks a moral understanding and choice via the dichotomy of opposites such as good and evil. It is therefore necessary, as Cazeaux points out, that this moral instruction be replaced: ―Nietzsche introduces a theory of becoming in which we seek to be and act in between concepts, in other words, we look to the possibilities which lie in conceptual transition.‖ Since institutional dogma is limited to opposites, such direction would fail as a moral compass and hence the artist must first suffer the

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abyss of the yin where he is forced to confront the true reality of his existence.

Nietzsche suggests that it is only through this sacrificial self-burning that the artist can produce works of art capable of rendering the world morally habitable; this concept of becoming fits into his existential philosophy where the artist denies the existence of

God in his quest for personal existence.

In positioning his argument of transition over opposites, Nietzsche references the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysius to represent the inherent polar opposites of our psyche; Apollo symbolizes form, shape and resolve whereas Dionysius exemplifies frenzy, dissipation, celebration and erasure of self. The world is therefore never entirely in balance nor is it always harmonious but our lives are more livable once we are able to acknowledge, appreciate and transition between these opposites. We will see later how

Bellow employs this state of flux as his protagonists deal with the constant chaos that relentlessly pursue them. However, this process at arriving at some moral direction is only attainable via art from which we can determine the world. Cazeaux explains

Nietzsche‘s argument where it is only through this play between shape and chaos that a compromise is possible:

The relevance of this account to our concern is that, for Nietzsche, it is art wherein the transitions between these terms and others is most visibly at play, since both artist and designer have to mediate between inner, chaotic impulse and outer, organized form. Art, for Nietzsche, far from being a morally deceptive layer of imagery, is instead constitutive of the human being‘s capacity to be and act in the world.

Nietzsche argues then that a function of art is instrumental in understanding and deciphering the world around us, and in determining certain moral values. However, the value of this art is in direct correlation to the artist‘s plunge into the abyss and to what extent he emerges whole and is able to transcend the dynamics between order and 81

chaos. This act of becoming is the central theme in Nietzsche‘s grounding of an alternative moral instruction as he declares, ―A painter without hands who wished to express in song the picture before his mind would, by means of this substitution of spheres, still reveal more about the essence of things than does the empirical world‖

(qtd. in Cazeaux). It is this ―essence of things‖ brought to the surface by art that declines dogmatic boundaries, but yet has the capacity to define the core of our moral values and conduct.

We can ascertain long before language that man, as he might have looked at the stars and the vastness of his world he could have innately sensed the metaphors of poetry and must have wondered at the beauty and harmony of the universe. Mascaro talks about this development of awareness in relation to man‘s early artistic inclination from a Buddhist point of view:

The progress of man on this earth is a slow awakening, and every poetical or artistic vision and every discovery is an awakening; but behind man‘s visions of something infinite in the finite and of something eternal in things that pass away that make possible his creations of art and poetry and all the discoveries of science, there is the great awakening into the law of Dharma … (Mascaro10)

We are still in the process of awakening, and it is insightful as to the extent that this blossoming is tied in to this gravitational pull of Dharma, which is the foundation for all moral laws that stress the spiritual and ethical codes of righteousness that draw from the universal concept of Truth. It is reassuring to believe that irrespective that man may be labeled a Hobbesian creature, there is evidence to suggest he possesses the potential to transcend his lower form into the realm of an experiential divinity. Morris Dickstein, in the preface to his book, A Mirror in the Roadway: Literature and the Real World, aptly

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references Wordsworth and Walter Benjamin as he explains the role of poetry and the emerging influence of literature:

Wordsworth saw poetry as an instrument for the education of the feelings, a means of nurturing our decency and humanity, rescuing our fellow feeling from the numbing effects of modern life. Walter Benjamin echoed Wordsworth (and in a sense anticipated the Internet) when he described the impact of daily journalism, with its overload of information, in dulling the sensibilities of its readers. But where Wordsworth appealed to poetry for resistance, Benjamin looked to storytelling, with its links to an oral tradition. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the novel had effectively begun to replace poetry as a means of repairing tattered human bonds. (xiii)

More and more we will notice that as the anxieties and turmoil of modern life numbs us, the more humanity turns to the arts for relief. I can relate to Benjamin‘s point about storytelling; having grown up in village without electricity, indoor plumbing, and unpaved roads, and of course television, we looked forward to those evenings when the master storytellers would take the stump, literally, and transfer us to distant lands with their stories full of laughter, pain, fear, and moral twists. However, around this same time and on the other side of the globe as literacy increased in a world driven by science and technology, classical learning gradually waned to be replaced by the novel which became popular thus allowing readers to identify with characters, stories, and settings that poetry was unable to accomplish. Novels provided credible backdrops to the realities of a world torn both by anxiety and hope. Not dissimilar to television of today, the novel in the hands of such masters like Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and

Hemingway provide a hallucinatory escape from the harsh realities of daily life. On the other hand, as Dickstein points out, there are the reality instructors such as Kafka and

Beckett who craft their stories to probe ―the limits of human endurance and disorientation, surreal situations made all the more credible by their dark comedy and

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precise circumstantial detail‖ (xv). As Martha Nussbaum later explains in this chapter, it is the poetic language of literature that profoundly affects us; this is the art form that can transform our world from the opaque to the intelligible. As a universal agency, literature has the power to inscribe, dye, and stitch the moral fabric of the tapestry that we call life.

The Axis of Poetry and Morality

From the time of man‘s consciousness as he looked upward to the stars, he must have searched for words to describe his feeling of awe as he pondered the sublime of the universe. In his own way, whether his words rhymed or not, his cognizance of something divine and beautiful must have ignited the first spark that would later determine his moral orbit. I believe it is this same awareness that within man‘s limited consciousness, there is a perception of a larger harmony that dictates that human conduct should be dedicated to the interest and well-being of his fellow man. It is possible that this very same acknowledgement of the sublime inspired the likes of

Homer, Aeschylus, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Whitman to have colored our world with beauty, imagination, and intelligence. This coloring has molded our ethos to elevate humanity from our base instincts to a more civilized community of man. These are the virtues of poetry that have reinforced our sense of moral conduct; in the realm of the beautiful we are inspired to be good. Tzvetan Todorov, in his essay ―Poetry and

Morality,‖ examines the relationship between poetry and morality as he comments on a paper by Alexander Nehamas who is a professor of Philosophy at Princeton. Todorov, in his first paragraph reminds us that this debate between poetry and morality extends over 2,500 years ago; not only has this argument been the domain of philosophers, but

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historians, artists, and critics as well have engaged in this never-ending disputation.

This dialectic inquiry, according to Todorov, has been divided into three groups: the first suggests that poetry should yield to morality; secondly, that morality should bow to poetry, and finally, that the two fields should be separate and independent. Todorov argues in favor of the second domain as he cautions us that we can be trapped in dogma when we subscribe to the first classical argument which suggests:

Poetry should place itself in the service of moral principles, that esthetic values should be subject to ethical ones. As we all know, this position is expressed in Greek Antiquity by Plato, who, once he deemed that poets did not satisfy the demands of morality, repudiated them by banishing them from the city. It is also the dominant position of Christian esthetics, which places art in the service of religious doctrine. But history has reversed things; what seemed self-evident two thousand years ago we find shocking today.

Todorov, having being born in Communist Bulgaria, understands the ideology of dogma; as a philosopher he would understand the suffocation imposed by political and religious canon where aesthetic values are contingent on absolute doctrines. Thus his loyalty to the second group is quite unambiguous: ―For us, the greatness of a work of art is in direct proportion to a kind of inner truth that it brings; to yield to any other demands can only harm it‖ (Todorov). His opinion on the function of the novel as an art form is in the same vein, ―… the novel makes a plurality of subjectivities come alive, and thereby renounces any claim to being an illustration of dogmatic truth‖ (Todorov).

Todorov concludes in his essay that the intrinsic moral value of poetry as art is two dimensional: first poetry enhances our concepts of beauty and truth and a collective consciousness seeped in these values can only serve to complement our moral journey.

Also, poetry, like all symbolic and representative arts, seeks to create and mold a more intelligible world, not only by providing the necessary tools for analysis, interpretation,

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and synthesis for meaning, but poetry thrusts the human spirit in a trajectory toward a lofty plane of moral significance. It is only from this elevation of consciousness can the poet find and share true meaning:

It is not because the poet professes a moral doctrine, or a doctrine more moral than another, that he contributes to improving the world, it's because he reveals his truth to us. In this sense, Shakespeare and Dante are equals. The poet has no business submitting to any external morality, nor transmitting any lesson. By producing beautiful, meaningful work, he accomplishes his moral duty. (Todorov)

Now, how does the poet reveal his truth to us? Is there a collection of universal truths buried long before the institution of formal language that can only be accessed through some poetic diving rod? I believe that Bellow would answer yes to the second question, as he has admitted a strong fascination in the relevance and significance of the primordial (see Chapter 1) as it affects the human condition. I am not sure that there is one answer to my first question but I will agree with Todorov that the poet reveals his truth to us by exploring the regions beyond language to produce beautiful and meaningful work in the same vein following Keats‘ declaration that truth is beauty and beauty is truth. Bellow, in his short piece ―The Writer as Moralist‖ implies a similar context between art and morality: ―The writer in any case finds that he bears the burdens of priest or teacher. Sometimes he looks like the most grotesque of priests, the most eccentric of teachers, but I believe the moral function cannot be divorced from art.‖

The Justification of Art: A Brief Segue

In her essay ―The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts,‖ the philosopher

Iris Murdoch argues that in the branch of moral philosophy the most prominent activity in the human psyche is the natural inclination to be selfish. The psyche, in pursuit of 86

self, prefers not to face the dark and threatening realities of our everyday life and even how much we strive to believe in a higher power, the human animal, at all costs constantly seeks consolation through a fertile imagination where self is inflated.

Murdoch, in the following passage establishes her hypotheses to suggest an end can justify the means:

We are anxiety-ridden animals. Our minds are continually active, fabricating an anxious, usually self-preoccupied, often falsifying veil which partially conceals the world. Our states of consciousness differ in quality, our fantasies and reveries are not trivial and unimportant, they are profoundly connected with our energies and with our abilities to choose and act. And if quality and consciousness matters, then anything that alters consciousness in the direction of unselfishness, objectivity and realism is to be connected with virtue. (198)

Murdoch contends that there is no external point in human life that guarantees us relief from our anxieties; this existential state often gives us license to create a parallel consciousness that allows us to move from our pre-occupation with self to that communal level of unselfishness. Murdoch believes that the production of art is in direct consequence of this other consciousness that employs the imagination to blanket our anxieties and to replace this state with a framework of moral decency and accountability. In this same vein we can appreciate the how the art of Impressionism was in direct consequence to the atrocities of World War I.

Murdoch reinforces her theme by citing Plato‘s concept of beauty which propounds that we all possess the capacity to instinctually recognize and love beauty on a spiritual level. From this awareness we can therefore transform the beauty in nature to the beauty in art. However, Murdoch cautions us that we must differentiate between good art and fantasy art (self-consolation), for moral conduct is predicated by good art which instructs against the pursuit of selfish obsession: ―It invigorates our best faculties

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and, to use Platonic language, inspires love in the highest part of the soul. … Art then is not a diversion or a side-issue; it is the most educational of all human activities and a place in which the nature of morality can be seen‖ (Murdoch 199-200). Murdoch further points out that it is art that punctures the cloak of our darkness, and it is through this opening we are able to perceive and interpret our realities beyond appearances. These realities, however, are not trifling and mundane but are the high virtues that determine the essence of our morality. Arriving at this plane is possible when ―we examine what are essentially the same concepts … such as justice, accuracy, truthfulness, realism, humility, courage, as the ability to sustain clear vision, love as attachment, or even passion without sentiment or self‖ (Murdoch 200).

Besides the concepts such as truth, love, and beauty that drive the passion for art, so too does man‘s injustice against his fellow man create the need for art to howl in pain and to record these iniquities for posterity. The function of such a record is not necessarily only to indict the perpetrators of these atrocities such as genocides, but to document that such unbelievable acts of evil that seem beyond our humanity have indeed occurred. Such art serves as a moral museum to remind the world not so much that man is capable of evil but to what extent we can prevent this evil from recurring. It is no wonder then that Bellow‘s literary production constantly references the horror of the Holocaust: ―Bellow and his friends were the children of the Holocaust rather than the ghetto. They did not write about the recent events in Europe – they hadn‘t directly experienced them – but those horrors cast their shadow on every page of their work, including the many pages of desperate comedy‖ (Dickstein 171). We must not forget that ―desperate comedy‖ is itself an art form as Murdoch alludes to earlier as the

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―falsifying veil which partially conceals the world.‖ Thus we can understand the prominence of Jewish self-parody and humor not necessarily as an avenue to entertain the ―others‖ but as the only available tool to deal with the horror of being a Jew in a time and place when six million Jews were systematically annihilated as the ―civilized‖ world looked on.

The Artist as Outsider

The determination of moral conduct and the construction of ethical standards have historically been fraught with bitter opposition in the never-ending battle between the tribe, monarchy, state and church pitted against the lone voice of the artist. The archetypal figure in most artistic endeavors is the solitary crusader, the outsider, who by the nature of his deep awareness constantly plunges into the darkness of our abysmal world. More often than not, his resurgent moral consciousness is rarely in sync with the prevailing doctrinal, dogmatic, and prescriptive moral codes his society has neatly picket-fenced for collective behavior. Many of us, albeit not artists and operating within the confines of a scripted morality, often find this message from this rebel intent on shattering sacred taboos, frighteningly alluring; we are drawn, like a moth to the flame, to the brilliance of alternative perceptions. These perceptions and revelations, as we have already been warned, are dangerous to the collective well-being of our club; signposts at every corner constantly caution and remind us of the moral danger and potential loss of membership privileges we can expect when we follow this pied-piper to the other side of town. The battle between the institution and art, to a great extent, has been the battle of moral conduct; the artist indicts the institution on charges of prefabrication of life, and the artist is counter sued for tearing the moral fabric through

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his insistence that immersion in the taboos of life is a prerequisite for the fullness of life.

My discussion of the artist as outsider, rebel, and interpreter of moral conduct serves to introduce Joyce Carol Oates‘s essay ―Art and ethics?--The (F)utility of Art.‖

In this essay she examines the idea of rebellion as a central theme in classic American literature and suggests that even though the artist often dwells on the fringe of society, his ethics and aesthetics are very much significantly connected to society. Oates explains that the artist does not live in a vacuum, for the essence of this work is a series of questions aimed at society: ―The issue for the artist, of course, is: whose ethics? whose morality? whose standards of propriety? whose community? whose censors? whose judges?-prosecutors?-jailers?-executioners? whose State?‖ (Oates 75). However, the works of art are the questions that challenge the prevailing ethics of society and the artist is aware that in taking a stand he is up against a formidable and often impenetrable wall that can easily break and suppress his artistic instinct. Consequently, the artist is relegated to the fringes of society, but it is interesting to note that when art is shunned and is considered dangerous for the mainstream, adherents of the counter-culture have always followed the call of art as evidenced by the various thriving underground artistic movements all over the world.

As a parallel to Oates‘s theme of rebellion against the prefabrication in art, I find it interesting that as Americans, much of our moral instruction is tied in to our mythology of the loner hero, earlier represented as the cowboy who single-handedly fights the good fight. It is this lonely figure, always a visitor and outside of community, that colors our imagination with a sense of the high moral ground; he is pitted against

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the metaphors of concrete, steel and dogma. It is provocative that from the very beginning of the oral tradition to this very moment, this lone hero has captivated our western tradition to such an extent that when he when he is down, we root for him.

What is our fixation with this outsider that threatens the very stability of our beliefs, values, and institutions? Is he a disciple of Thoreau who went to the woods, lived deeply and sucked the marrow of life? And is it not strange that he is the product of art?

This is the point that Oates wants us to understand: it is difficult to explain the meaning of art; art is about the mystery of life and can reward the participant with a deeper sense of moral meaning: ―In the artist's own experience, of course, art is fundamentally indefinable, unsayable; there is something sacred about its demands upon the soul, something inherently mysterious in the forms it takes, no less than in its contents‖

(Oates 77). It would seem then that we are faced with the dilemma that while meaning lies in mystery, the mystery in itself is a blank slate upon which the artist will inscribe moral directions. But artistic inscription demands the loneliness and courage of the artist as he alone must dive deeply into the mystery, often risking insanity and further alienation as he challenges taboo and dogma in his effort to decode the ―indefinable‖ and the ―unsayable.‖ In a strange way we assure ourselves, that as the cowboy rides off into the sunset, all alone, he is never really lonely for he has our spirits with him; he is our symbolic hero, albeit an abstraction of the artist‘s conjuration but yet a real entity grounding the needle of our moral compass.

The Power of Literature as Art

I am always disappointed in the responses from my composition classes when I inquire as to how many students like, dislike, hate, or have any passion at all about

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writing; invariably, the majority tend to lean toward the dislike category with a few meekly admitting they like to write and even surprise the class by admitting they also love to read. And so I make it my mission to instruct my students that whenever, for example they see a movie and they laugh, cry, empathize, sympathize, or even experience some sense of dignity, outrage or renewal, or if by chance they recognize some glimmer of beauty, truth, or justice, then they ought to thank the writer as artist. I further explain that to the greatest of extent, our moral perception of the virtues such as truth, justice, and beauty, are all standards blueprinted by philosophy and the arts, and that our very humanity would be meaningless without the radiance and interpretive powers of the artist. Often, the blank stares of a collective ―huh?‖ caution me to return to the safer grounds of thesis statement and topic sentences.

Many decades ago, as a young boy growing up in rural British Guiana (now

Guyana), I would ride my Raleigh bicycle to the canals (the earlier Dutch colonizer had built these waterways) adjacent to the Atlantic ocean, and there, all alone under a courda tree, I would lay on a jute bag on the ground and in the silence of the mangrove,

I would listen to the roar of the Atlantic Ocean. It was there that I allowed my imagination to soar and without my realizing it, I was drinking in the beauty of nature; I was painting my own pictures with the brush of my fancy. Electricity, indoor plumbing, and television were alien concepts to our village, so to nurture our imagination, we read.

For those of us that read, we discovered the metaphors of language that offered us transcendence. From our barren equatorial landscape, we roamed the hills and valleys of

Wordsworth‘s bucolic England, shivered in the cold snow on Kilimanjaro, and suffered the trials and tribulations of countless heroes, antiheroes, and protagonists who fell and

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soared in our fertile imagination. Our colonial master, in his quest for total indoctrination, had introduced us to his literature, and so from this early age, through the power of art in the written word, we began to define a moral compass. The pedagogical lesson was a simple one: through the narrative of literature, we were being instructed on the great virtues embedded in the written word; our heroes did the right thing!

Since I am not an artist and my academic concentration is in literature, it is through the written word that I find the most impact of the writer as an artist. I would suggest that of all the arts, the lessons of literature dominate our moral consciousness, whether it is read or transferred to the screen or stage. This point of view is also shared, to some extent, by the philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum who, in her essay ―Form and

Content, Philosophy and Literature,‖ does argue that even though philosophy is the foundation for our moral trajectory, literature shares an equal voice in this pulpit as she declares in the first paragraph of her essay: ―Literary form is not separable from philosophical content, but is, itself, a part of content – an integral part, then, of the search for and the statement of truth‖ (201). Nussbaum cites Henry James in the preface of his The Golden Bowl, where, in his reference to the usage of language, he explains the nurture and growth of an author‘s text to the metaphor of the soil to suggest, in

Nussbaum‘s paraphrase that, ―Just as the plant emerges from the seeded soil, taking its form from the combined character of seed and soil, so the novel and its terms flower from and express the conceptions of the author, his or her sense of what matters‖ (202).

However, what matters and nurtures the text should be the flowering of what is honorable and that what is deemed reverent is the conception arising out of form. James

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refers to another metaphor referencing the text to a winged creature soaring into clearer air and from that summit perceptions crystallize and forms take shape.

Nussbaum takes us back to the relevance of the Greek tragedy which incorporated tragic events beyond the control of the characters; such actions of chance were weaved into the chronicle for the audience to experience, on a vicarious level, the pity and fear of the mighty who had fallen from grace. In eliciting the human emotion of empathy, tragedy as art bridges the gap between audience and the fallen; grief and misfortune are shared. It is from the stage, as Nussbaum points out that we recognize the earliest correlation between art and moral conduct in terms of love and grief through the performance of tragic art:

The tragic genre depends on such beliefs for its own structure and literary shape: for its habit is to tell stories of reversals happening to good but not invulnerable people, and to tell these stories as if they matter for all human beings. And the form sets up in its audience responses, particularly those of pity for the characters and fear for oneself, that presuppose a similar set of beliefs. It feeds the tendency of the spectator to identify with a hero who weeps uncontrollably over the body of a loved one, or goes mad with rage, or is terrified by the force of an insoluble dilemma. (202-203)

The art form of cinema and theatre of today still cling to the same basic idea that the performance is worthwhile only to the extent that it moves the audience. There is no doubt that our contemporary audience is much more jaded than it was a century ago but now and again comes an extraordinary film or a stage performance of such tragic dimension that we are shaken to the core of our moral fiber; this is the power of art. But how does art, in this sense, provide a moral lesson? I suggest that art becomes a moral conduit when themes such as justice, compassion, forgiveness, jealously, wrath, greed, and lust are addressed in such a truthful way that they reinforce and realign those basic codes that unequivocally define right from wrong and good from evil. 94

It is relevant, as Nussbaum reminds us, that as much as the ―ancient quarrel‖ pitted the arts against philosophy, both sides agreed that a central essence of their work was to provide moral illumination on how one should live. It was obvious that as much as Plato insisted that this dissemination of moral instruction should be relegated to philosophy, he was unable to prevent poetry‘s fidelity to ethical and moral mandate. We should not forget, as Thomas Hobbes expounded in 1651 in his Leviathan, that the natural condition of mankind is one in which life in the state of nature is ―solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short‖ with each man having the license to take what he wants. We may not agree entirely with Hobbes‘s view on the nature of man, but the historic record of man‘s transgression against his fellow man does confirm the precarious standing of the weak man. We do know, however, that this state of nature needed to be tempered and controlled and as much as this task fell naturally to the various forms of government, much of the social, political, and moral codes had to be extracted from philosophical treatises. But the realm of joy, appreciation for beauty and truth, the search for the moral high ground, the transcendence to higher levels of awareness, and so on, all naturally gravitated toward the domain of the arts. This secession, however, is a natural drift for the language of philosophy, as Nussbaum acknowledges, is not quite suited to metaphorical fluidity and thus it fails in explaining ―… the world‘s surprising variety, its complexity and mysteriousness, its flawed and imperfect beauty – that cannot be fully and adequately stated in the language of conventional philosophical prose, a style remarkably flat and lacking in wonder‖ (Nussbaum 201). The arts and especially literature then, fulfill our need to connect to our deepest mystery where we

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investigate our sense of being, meaning, and existence vis-à-vis the parameters of moral conduct.

We can agree that the influence of literature eclipses the other arts since most of us are introduced, through the school system, to seminal works early in life as and that most of the artistic performances on the screen and stage are adapted from written works. Sartre, in his text “What is Literature?” and Other Essays goes one step further when he argues in his chapter ―What Is Writing‖ that even though the arts, including literature, do influence each another in any given period and are conditioned by the same social factors, it is literature that offers us the most penetrable insight into the human condition. Sartre insists that art in music, painting, and sculpture is limited only to themselves: ―Notes, colors, and forms are not signs. They refer to nothing exterior to themselves‖ (25). The prose of literature, however, is the ultimate signifier for meaning:

―The writer can guide you and, if he describes a hovel, make it seem the symbol of social injustice and provoke your indignation. The painter is mute. He presents you with a hovel, that‘s all. You are free to see in it what you like‖ (Sartre 27). Like Bellow,

Sartre is intrigued by the mysterious soul and the deeper meanings only literature can excavate; he believes ―One does not paint meanings; one does not put them to music ...

On the other hand, the writer deals with meanings. Still, a distinction must be made.

The empire of signs is prose‖ (28). Taking a similar stand as Plato who disassociated poetry from philosophy, Sartre also relegates poetry to a lesser status to the prose of literature: ―poetry is on the side of painting, sculpture, and music‖ (28), whereas ―The art of prose is employed in discourse; its substance is by nature significative – that is, the words are first of all not objects but designations for objects‖ (35). Sartre further

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asserts that prose is ―an attitude of the mind;‖ its main frame is language which serves as our ―shell and antennae‖ that ―protects us against others and informs us about them; it is a prolongation of our senses, a third eye which is going to look into our neighbor‘s heart. We are within language as within our body‖ (35).

Sartre‘s point of view on literature is also influenced by his existentialist philosophy, specifically from the perspective that God does not exist. Thus Sartre challenges the theme in literature which suggests that salvation and moral instruction are defined by an absolute power. Sartre argues that there is an essential flaw when literature presumes that our actions in life will be judged based on our religious connotation of an eternity that exists beyond man‘s comprehension; he indicts this frame of mind that promises finality in the absolute:

There is such a hunger for the absolute in every heart that eternity, which is a non-temporal absolute, is frequently confused with immortality, which is only a perpetual reprieve and a long succession of vicissitudes. I understand this desire for the absolute; I desire it too. But what need is there to go looking for it so far off; there it is, about us, under our feet, in each of our gestures. We produce the absolute ... Whether the world is mind or matter, whether God exists or whether He does not exist, whether the judgment of the centuries to come is favourable to you or hostile, nothing will ever prevent your having passionately loved that painting, that cause, that woman, nor that love‘s having been lived from day to day; lived, willed, undertaken; nor your being completely committed to it. (240)

From an existential point of view, Sartre insists that we are all product of our own constructed historical relativity which has defined our consciousness. His existential argument against God bears a close parallel to the Buddhist doctrine that man alone defines his trajectory in life and thus, existentially, man creates his framework of what constitutes the absolute. From the point of view of literature, Sartre argues that we live in an age which can be defined as the ―intersubjectivity, the living absolute, the dialectical underside of history‖ (241). 97

On another level, how does literature, besides its role as a conduit for moral conduct, function as a vehicle capable of transcendence? In the last two pages of her essay, Nussbaum tackles this question. According to Proust, as Nussbaum explains, the literary text can be seen as an ―optical instrument‖ through which the reader can ―read‖ his own heart, but the question is posed as to the necessity for such an instrument. To this question Nussbaum cites Aristotle who explains that our experiences are too limited and provincial and thus one function of literature is to expand our minds in reflection of what might have been beyond our confined awareness. Thus by reading Chinua

Achebe‘s Things Fall Apart, we are instructed on the rich past of an African culture that withers against the onslaught of European imperialism. Or we may read Richard

Wright‘s Native Son and would be shocked to learn, in Wright‘s time, about the social injustice and racial inequality so deeply entrenched in a country founded on the rights of man. It is through literature that events are amplified without censorship. In

Nussbaum‘s view, this objective search for truth is the combustion that drives literature and thus, ―The importance of this for both morals and politics cannot be underestimated‖ (Nussbaum 206); the literature on the Holocaust, for example is a testimony to this principle.

Nussbaum draws heavily from both James and Proust as she explains that much of life is raw and what makes this rawness livable and even enjoyable, is the process of the interpretation, not only of the mythologies that ground our consciousness, but much of the everyday realities that are beyond our comprehension. It is literature that opens the veil through the power of imagination where words create another landscape: ―The point is that in the activity of literary imagining we are led to imagine and describe with

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greater precision, focusing our attention on each word, feeling each event more keenly – whereas much of actual life goes by without that heightened awareness, and is thus, in a certain sense, not fully or thoroughly lived‖ (Nussbaum 207). In addition, this functional amplification of literature, as it is conjoined with form, is not limited to one community but serves as a broad stage to anchor relevant and prescriptive meaning by

―… bringing the reader into contact with events or locations or persons or problems he or she has not otherwise met, but also, so to speak, vertically giving the reader experience that is deeper, sharper, and more precise than much of what takes place in life‖ (Nussbaum 207). From another point of view the reading of literature provides a community of readers who are able to relate and empathize along similar moral lines:

… it is only in relation to the literary text, and never in life, that we can have a relation characterized by genuine altruism and by genuine acknowledgement of the other. There is something about the act of reading that is exemplary for conduct. … And as Lionel Trilling emphasized, it [literature] brings them together in a particular way, a way that is constitutive of a particular sort of community: one in which each person‘s imagining and thinking and feeling as respected as morally valuable. (Nussbaum 207)

Nussbaum‘s idea of the correlation between text and conduct is pertinent especially so in view of the fact that the foundations of most civilized cultures owe much of their moral trajectory to various literary interpretations embodied in their respective Hindu,

Buddhist, Judaic, Christian, and Islamic texts. Of course these are not the only texts that bring people together; for centuries the world has continued to read Shakespeare to such an extent that on a universal level we can commonly share the wonder of such a short phrase: ― To be or not to be …‖

In this vein, I must emphasize that as much as literature has historically extracted its moral themes from the central texts of various religions, there are other

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philosophers and authors of literature who maintain, on an opposing level, that literature and moral knowledge can also be grounded from an epistemological perspective. It can be argued too that our moral framework hinges not so much on the abstract theories of some divine force, but is more so defined by our practical experiences, considerations, and ethical respect for humanity. Such everyday considerations and moral determination are based not on some ideal concept, but on the acceptance that man is not perfect but endlessly strives to conquer his flaws.

The Role of the Author

There is a general belief that a major function of narrative art is to postulate a framework of moral values. The themes in such narratives are supposed to lift us out of our restricted and limited spheres of experiences in pursuit of various levels of enlightenment. Through our immersion of the text we become cognitive of the forms representing ideal standards leading to the moral high ground. Thus, as participants of the text, we are affected by plot, characters, themes, style, diction, setting and so on, to a point that the author is often relegated to obscurity for the simple reason that the narrative has taken on a life of its own. However, Longinus, in his treatise ―On the

Sublime,‖ suggests that the narrative should be an extension of the author and that any work of sublime and moral value must be in direct relation to the elevated language of the author. According to Longinus, there are five major requirements for elevated language: the first is that the author must be capable of ―the power of forming great conceptions‖ (79) followed by the narrator possessing ―vehement and inspired passion‖

(79). The other three prerequisites demand the author‘s expertise in figures of speech, noble diction, and elevated composition. In relation to the writer as a conduit for moral

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direction relative to the power of ―forming great conceptions,‖ Longinus suggests that as writers we must:

… nurture our souls to thoughts sublime, and make them always pregnant, so to say, with noble inspiration. Sublimity is the echo of great soul [and] … the truly eloquent must be free from low and ignoble thoughts. For it is not possible that men with mean and servile ideas prevailing throughout their lives should produce anything admirable and worthy of immorality. (79)

This idea of noble inspiration has been the universal call of the muse and from both an artistic and moral point of view it is perceptive how Bellow‘s canvas covers both the sublime and the ordinary: ―Instead, Bellow turns these monologues into aching meditations on what makes us human. But late Bellow is often great Bellow, in part because of this current rumination on ultimate things, on the stark contrast between the little disturbances of man and the cosmic chill of constellations …‖ (Dickstein 211).

Longinus further explains in his treatise that for authors to understand the form of the sublime, it is imperative that in their studies of the great and accomplished writers like

Homer and Demosthenes, they should practice the art of emulation and imitation, ―For many men are carried away by the spirit of others as if inspired‖ (83). On another level,

Longinus stresses the need for an author to immerse himself in the sublime for

―sublimity raises them near the majesty of God‖ (94); this is the awareness of awe that will connect the author to a sense of divinity that will invariably instruct his work.

The Unethical Stain: Some Justification

It would be remiss of me to ignore current and historic narratives in which certain moral and ethical standards or the inclusion of morally defective characters on a subsidiary or primary level are questionable within the text. This inclusion of morally deceptive characters and practices in the text has been problematic for thousands of

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years; does the bible suggest that man is superior to woman? Do the ancient and holy

Hindu texts suggest inequality by virtue of supporting the caste system? Should a novel‘s plausible justification of a master beating his runaway slave deter the reader from connecting to the bigger theme in the story? Some readers will assert that these obvious moral fractures do affect the value of the work as art but Matthew Kieran, in his essay ―In Defence of the Ethical Evaluation of Narrative Art,‖ admits that even though such moral imbalances may contaminate the plot, he argues ―that the insight that narratives are sometimes properly assessed as art in terms of their moral character can be adequately defended.‖ Of course such a defense will depend on the magnitude or triviality of the moral disconnection and for sure Kieran‘s defense will fall apart should he attempt to justify Adolph Hitler as a protagonist eliciting pity or sympathy.

Kieran justifies his argument that the subsidiary ethical infractions do not detract from the central theme once the writing is intelligible; the audience ought to bear in mind that the setting of place and time represented those actual realities now abhorrent to the modern reader. It is the essence of the thematic voice that should carry the narrative toward its moral apex, irrespective of the implied immoral detour:

Indeed, many art works of the past, not to say many contemporary works, have moral aspects which we believe to be at best partially if not downright wrong. From Homer's poetry and the Icelandic sagas, which prescribe admiration for certain heroic virtues at odds with an emphasis on forgiveness and mercy, to Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer and Jean Genet's The Balcony, which at least in part prescribe disdain for traditional sexual morality, many works successfully get us to imagine what we take to be, in real life, unmerited and yet we take this as a mark of their success, their imaginative power, rather than think lesser of them for it. (Kieran)

It is in this vein that the imaginative power, the intelligibility of the text, and the aesthetic values of the work as a whole overshadow the infractions. In his concluding

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paragraph, Kieran strengthens his point, ―Where a work is essentially concerned with moral features, attitudes, and perspectives, moral considerations are internally related to considerations of intelligibility.‖

Moral Conduct: The Play of Emotion

The more I delve deeper into Bellow, the more I discover the significance of emotion as a barometer for human behavior which can be construed as a trestle in his overall moral framework. In the first page of Dangling Man, his first novel, Bellow‘s protagonist insists on his right to embrace his emotions: ―Do you have emotions?

Strangle them. To a degree, everyone obeys this code. … To hell with that! I intend to talk about mine … (9). In his own words we can feel Bellow‘s respect for the role of emotion in his literature: ―Nothing is legitimate in literature or any work of art which does not have the support of some kind of emotional conviction. The ideological conviction means almost nothing. The emotional conviction means everything‖ (qtd. in

Abbot 272). On the matter of the heart as the vessel for emotions, Daniel Fuchs quotes

Bellow: ―Like Keats, he is certain of nothing but ‗the holiness of the heart‘s affections‘‖

(Fuchs, ―Saul Bellow …‖ 75).

So, what is this quarrel against emotions? Nussbaum addresses this question from the age-old perception that emotion is irrational: ―Emotions, it is said, are unreliable, animal, seductive. They lead away from the cool reflection that alone is capable of delivering judgment‖ (204-205). Nussbaum argues against this perception as she points out that the essence of these feelings dominates literature: ―Certainly, the novel as form is profoundly committed to the emotions; its interaction with its readers takes place centrally through them. So this challenge must be confronted‖ (205). Her

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answer to this challenge is posed in the thesis of her essay which confronts the perception that rationality supersedes emotions; she proposes that practical reasoning must include emotion to arrive at practical wisdom. Her main point is, ―that emotions are not only not more unreliable than intellectual calculations, but frequently more reliable, and less deceptively seductive‖ (205). Nussbaum infers that as readers we often view the world through the emotive terrain of the characters: ―Love, pity, fear, and their relatives – are all belief based in a similar way: all involve the acceptance of certain views of how the world is and what has importance‖ (205). It seems irrational that in a world driven by emotions, we still live by the caveat ―Don‘t be emotional!‖ Bellow, of course does not buy into this belief as his characters give free reign to their emotions that toss them all over the human stage. From the point of view that our emotions complement our moral determination, Nussbaum confirms her belief: ―Because the emotions have this cognitive dimension in their very structure, it is very natural to view them as intelligent parts of our ethical agency, responsive to the workings of deliberation and essential to its completion‖ (206).

Closure

The argument between art and moral conduct continues to ignite passions especially so as technology, science, and economics seem intent on molding a global society where the diversity of art can mean polarized moral interpretations. In America, however, if we may rely on legal statistics and closely look at the troubling images on television and on the big screen, much of our society seems intent on pursuing a nihilistic journey: ―We live in desperate times. Our culture is radically debased, and our intellectuals seem oblivious to the problem. Rape, torture, unspeakable cruelty, murder

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for hire, murder for fun, all are chattered about with bland sophistication. If evil is

"glamorized" successfully, we applaud …‖ (Hagen). Martin Heidegger, in his book,

Poetry, Language, Thought, dedicates a chapter titled ―What Are Poets For,‖ where he also examines our modern darkness as a destitute time where, ―The world‘s night is spreading its darkness. The era is defined by god‘s failure to arrive, by the default of god‖ (91). The default of god, according to Heidegger, forebodes grimness for the divine radiance has been extinguished from the world‘s history to be replaced by the world‘s night of destitution. But this destitution need not be permanent, for the return of the godly is possible when man recaptures the capacity for divine radiance; however, as

Heidegger believes, it is significantly through the beauty and truth of poetry that this divine regeneration is possible. As humans, our very existence is a place where revelation and meaning occur: ―The salvation must come from where there is a turn with mortals in their nature‖ (Heidegger 118). This salvation, I suggest, can only come through moral conduct rooted in the arts, especially in the literature that advocates community; this is the axis of Bellow‘s instruction that also includes the relevance of the soul.

I am inclined to believe that possession or loss of soul can determine health or sickness, and that pure art, in its most instructive morally, must be anchored in soulful endeavors. I find it very intuitive that Thomas Moore opens the introduction to his book

Care of the Soul with this passage: ―The great malady of the twentieth century, implicated in all of our troubles and affecting us individually and socially, is ―loss of soul.‖ When soul is neglected, it doesn‘t just go away; it appears symptomatically in obsessions, addictions, violence, and loss of meaning‖ (xi). I am convinced that no

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other writer understands this connection to the soul more than Saul Bellow who has rallied against the nihilism of his time:

In an age when the American novel often seems to have fallen on thin times, Bellow is a notable exception, not only because fiction remains for him what it always was--namely, "a sort of latter-day lean-to, a hovel in which the spirit takes shelter"--but also because he is one of the few contemporary writers unembarrassed to use the word soul or to talk about the need for spiritual exercises in a shoddy cultural moment. These preoccupations speak to his Jewishness much more than do his urban Jewish characters or nostalgic reminiscences of an immigrant Jewish childhood, for there is a strongly religious component to Bellow‘s intimations of higher spheres and the ways that they touch on the dailiness of daily life. (Pinsker)

I find the quoted words "a sort of latter-day lean-to, a hovel in which the spirit takes shelter" as the words that unequivocally define the theme of this chapter. Why would the human spirit take shelter in, of all places, a hovel, or a wretched hut? In a major way

Bellow is the quintessential Buddhist who understands the suffering of the spirit; his concern is with the quotidian in the symbolic wretched hut where man must deal with his existence in line with community.

I do believe that all art must have the properties of soul. And so we are moved by this essence of soul whenever we look at a painting, admire some architectural wonder, read good literature, find inspiration in some movie, listen a symphony, or just find wonder in the sublime. In the final analysis, all art should possess that capacity to move us in the direction of truth, beauty, temperance, justice, wisdom and so on; the magnetic pull of the arts should always point us toward the moral high ground. In

Bellow you can find this moral compass but the needle is always fluttering between the yin and yang.

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Chapter 5: Existential Play and Redemption in Bellow’s Dangling Man

Dangling Man: The Prototype Novel

Before I start exploring existential play and redemption in Dangling Man as

Bellow repudiates existential nihilism manifested through Joseph, it is material that I preface the significance of Bellow‘s first novel as it can be read as a standard defining his overall work. The essential character of Joseph remains the mold from which

Bellow has fashioned his other men who are the quintessential danglers polarized between action and introspection. Pifer, in the first sentence of her introduction to Saul

Bellow Against the Grain, confirms both the recurring presence of this model character and his predisposition to interior conflict: ―From his first novel, Dangling Man (1944) to his latest fiction, Saul Bellow has created a virtually unbroken series of protagonists doing mental battle with the world around them‖ (1). Opdahl also confirms Joseph as the prototype character in Bellow‘s novels: ―Joseph embodies within himself the polarity of Bellow‘s later contrasting characters … Bellow, in his first novel would return to character, and especially inner character, as the center of his fiction‖ (48-49).

So, even though Dangling Man is Bellow‘s first novel, its strength as a precursor to

Bellow‘s literary production, signifies that this original work can be perceived as a template on man‘s alienation, suffering, rational introspection, and redemption; these are the themes explored in Bellow‘s work.

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On another note, critics have argued that Bellow has not conclusively solved

Joseph‘s predicament in offering new possibilities to his existential dilemma and to what extent he does, his solutions are not clear. According to Ralph Berets, ―In

Dangling Man, The Victim, The Adventures of Augie March, and Seize the Day only ambiguous resolutions are attained.‖ Ellen Pifer ends her chapter on Dangling Man with these words: ―Unable, however, to accept that he is ―fallen,‖ Joseph keeps on drifting – suspended, morally and metaphysically, between free fall and faith‖ (39). Gilbert Porter concludes his discussion on this novel with this perspective: ―The baffling symbolic walls by which Joseph has been surrounded have finally given way a little. They have not revealed any universal secrets, but they have at least provided Joseph with a way back into the universe of man … (27-28). I certainly respect these observations from qualified Bellow scholars but I will argue that Bellow is not ambiguous, Joseph is drifting yes, but more toward faith, and that those symbolic walls have not given way a little but Joseph has actually broken out of his cell. My argument will be based substantively on a closer reading of Dangling Man.

Joseph‘s redemptive inclination is therefore based on the premise that Joseph represents the established paradigm of Bellow‘s characters who dwell in some form of existential anguish and then redeem themselves. Joseph‘s affirmation for life and his subsequent desire to redeem himself are defined by Bellow‘s central outlook which I have already referenced: ―There are, then, these two preparations: one for life and the other for death‖ (Bellow, DM 119). Joseph, as Bellow‘s instrument, is first plunged into his existential turmoil, both as a literary prerequisite and the need to evolve in order to confront the existential dilemma of life and death. It is pertinent that we note, as Opdahl

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pointed out, that Joseph‘s conflict is not between the self and the world but in his perspective of these two attitudes – life and death – through which he perceives the world. However, death, as much as it can be construed as a finality will also be explored as death of self instrumental in paving the way for Joseph who must confront, address, and filter out the vanities of self as he prepares for absorption in a larger community.

From another point of view, we must factor in the undercurrent of religious psychology that permeates Bellow‘s work; as much as the existentialist Joseph fights this psychology, his questions and musings indicate that he still acknowledges the grace of

God.

Redemption in Dangling Man occurs mostly not within a frame of conspicuous or remarkable actions, but within Joseph‘s mind; this itself is a paradox in that models of community are not prominent fixtures in Bellow‘s novels. Bellow scholars agree that

Bellow stresses community as the essential foundation for redemption and yet his books lack representative samples. However, irrespective of the absence of these samples,

Bellow works on the psychology of his dysfunctional protagonists to rewire their consciousness. In repudiating the existential element, Bellow instructs that man has the potential to renew his faith in humanity having suffered time in his existential prison.

So, in a sense, Bellow does not really need to spell out or paint the actuality of community; this is understood. Redemption and transcendence for Bellow are not achieved Hollywood style with clamorously happy endings. His characters, like Joseph, find salvation through openings here and there; they are acutely aware that such salvation is tenuous and like Buddhists, they learn that redemption demands constant guard and watch against the lure of the slippery existential slope.

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In the very first page of Dangling Man, Bellow introduces us to Joseph who admits, in his state of demoralization, that he has no intention of hiding his feelings and emotions. Unlike other hardboiled characters, Joseph intends to record his innermost thoughts and talk about them. This is a novel about a man‘s obsessive introspection as he slowly disconnects himself from the rest of society in search of an elusive identity.

Bellow cleverly positions Joseph in a state of identity-limbo since for almost a year the

U.S. military will not officially accept him as an American soldier since he was born in

Canada. While his official identity as a friendly alien is being investigated, he has been classified and reclassified from a ―1A‖ to a ―3A.‖ For seven months now Joseph has resigned his job at the Inter-American Travel Bureau, having expected to be inducted early; now unemployed, Joseph and his wife Iva have given up their apartment for a room in a cheap boarding house. The sole breadwinner is Iva who works in the library.

Dangling Man is a record of a man‘s interior voice debating with his exterior consciousness. Joseph thinks of himself as a scholar and has studied the Enlightenment and Romanticism; during his time waiting, he continues to write biographical essays on the philosophers of the Enlightenment but suddenly stops in the middle of Diderot. Like

Roquentin, he is also recording his thoughts in a journal in an attempt to study the ramifications of his existential journey. As he ponders his existence alone, Joseph becomes agitated and finds all kinds of reasons to estrange himself from his friends and relatives. In his state of isolation he falls prey to paranoia, has a meaningless affair, finds the wasting away of his elderly boarders unbearable and worries about impending death. He finally admits that four walls cannot provide the transcendence he is seeking and so his request for early induction into the army is granted. In the end Bellow

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significantly leaves him exposed outside of his four walls: ―Reduced to the same common physical, social, and historical denominators as everyone else, he is last seen standing in a line of naked military recruits …‖ (―Critical Overviews to Saul Bellow‘s

Novels‖). The imagery of being naked is symbolic in that Joseph entered the world naked and like a new-born could not have survived without the community of his mother and family; quite similarly he is being reborn having discarded his existential self and now seeks the umbilical support of the larger community symbolized by the army.

SECTION A: Existential Play in Dangling Man

Bellow and the Lure of the Existential

In this chapter I argue that there are several reasons why the protagonist in

Bellow‘s Dangling Man has been thrust into an existential journey but yet in the final analysis Bellow repudiates the central theme of Existentialism by arguing that man alone is helpless in confronting the perils facing his solitary existence. I have chosen

Dangling Man as the most ―existential‖ novel for two important reasons. Dangling Man is Bellow‘s first novel in which he felt compelled to honor the literary tradition of his time. In the vein of the alienated man, this is his concentrated effort exploring existential angst as man strives to determine his existence within the confines of his own intellectual and rational inquiry. From another point of view, Dangling Man can be considered as a parallel study to Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre‘s celebrated novel on

Existentialism, and since I have already discussed Nausea in some length, the reader will be able to connect the references to both novels that examine the same theme. Man, in Bellow‘s cosmic view, needs the company of his fellow man to ground him in a

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position where he can realize the potential for redemption. However, as much as Bellow realigns his sinking characters in an upward orbit into the abode of a healing community, he is aware that salvation is never permanent in a world (especially in his

Jewish sphere) constantly fraught with the daily doses of suffering. In Bellow‘s world, there is the constant flux of everyday anguish, (real or imagined) relief, (often comedic) and sporadic glimpses of spiritual reprieve; this dynamic is part of an overall scheme determined by the harsh realities of a world that guarantees more pain than happiness.

Bellow, both as author and narrator is acutely aware of this persistent disharmony; his utility of comedy and satire is the adhesive veneer that covers the pain in this inhospitable universe.

Bellow‘s trajectory into the existential plane is partly due to his own biological make-up; his introspective and depressive tendencies often challenge him as an artist to seek personal meaning in his own existence. Clayton points out this melancholy trait:

―Bellow is himself essentially a depressive; and his imagination is as horrified by the emptiness of modern life as is Ionesco‘s‖ (3). It is a reasonable assumption, then, that some of this melancholy and the perception of the emptiness of modern life would seep into Bellow‘s writing. Bellow has also admitted his deep respect for Dostoyevsky, whose existential themes would have inspired Bellow, especially so, in his first two novels that explore alienation and isolation of the human condition in trend with the

Wasteland concept. Bellow‘s reading of Nietzsche‘s philosophy would have also influenced his existential leaning; as an emerging writer he could not have escaped the fashionable and nihilistic ideas of Camus and Sartre that were impacting American literature in the wake of World War II. This was the time that American readers

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identified with the existentialist hero who had already established himself in the popular

French novels of Sartre and Camus. Also, we find that Bellow, as much as he instructs against the individual quest, cannot divorce himself from this essential theme of separation solidified by the Modernists: ―Bellow is particularly hostile to the devaluation of the ―separate self‖ in modern literature, and [yet] he values individuality nearly as highly as did Emerson‖ (Clayton 3).

Finally, I argue that Bellow utilizes the concepts of Existentialism as a means to an end. Bellow, like all great writers is fully aware that from time immemorial literature has included the agony of life, and in his case his Jewish heritage eclipses fiction with a long history of repression complete with genocide. So, in a paradoxical way, Bellow is propelling his protagonists into an existential mode that serves a dual purpose; this solitary quest for existence is the sacrificial journey in which this angst, always in the periphery, will function as the ballast for redemption not dissimilar to the interplay of the yin and yang dynamics. From another perspective, Bellow‘s man, in confronting his existence solitarily, accepts at some point the futility of such a direction and realizes that the agony of such despair overwhelms his mortal being; he needs not only the support of his fellow man, but he must be aware too of some divinity to which he must surrender his burden. As we approach Bellow‘s work on a deeper level, we must bear in mind that Bellow‘s fiction cannot escape the underlying currents of a religious psychology inherent in his early indoctrination. Keith Opdahl confirms this influence in

Bellow‘s work:

But Bellow‘s imagination, I shall argue, is basically metaphysical and religious, passing from the historic fact to the larger, universal issue ... Although I shall examine Bellow‘s social and psychological stories, I would emphasize that the problem and the goal of all of Bellow‘s heroes is religious transcendence – the 113

problem in that their rages derive from balked religious longing and the goal in that only transcendence will finally answer the problems they face. (6-7)

I suggest that Bellow understands that this religious transcendence is not given on a silver platter but must be earned through an existential journey; this methodology is not new for literature, other art forms, and religion have historically utilized this theme of the arduous journey as the bridge to salvation. So it is important we understand that the answer to Bellow‘s big question ―How should a good man live; what ought he to do?‖

(39) posed in Dangling Man is directly tied in to what extent a good man will seek religious transcendence and be prepared to endure degrees of suffering. Since the majority of Bellow‘s heroes are Jewish, I suggest that Bellow, as an artist is deeply troubled with the evil and atrocities leveled against Jews; to a great extent his work is indirectly addressing an intimate suffering that he would have understood in his time and place. Amy Hungerford, in her text The Holocaust of Texts: Genocide, Literature, and Personification, cites Saul Bellow and Philip Roth as writers affected by the

Holocaust: ―I choose these two in part because their work engages the idea of the

Holocaust … Far from discounting these sometimes coercive, sometimes empowering forces, both Roth and Bellow make them central to much of their fiction‖ (123).

In the beginning of my second chapter, I pointed out that Bellow is no

Hemingway bent on honoring masculine codes; I suspect that Bellow must have discovered early on that his niche in American letters would best be served through positioning his men as introverts constantly (and comically too) waging unending battles within themselves. This recurring mode of introspective excavation is not much different from the existentialist burrowing into his consciousness in search for the answers to his existence. Aharoni also shares this point of view: ―A close analysis of 114

Bellow‘s novels reveals there is a profound link between his introspective mode of fiction and modern European Existentialism. This influence is prevalent throughout his thirty-eight years of writing, from his first novel, Dangling Man (1944), to his latest,

The Dean’s December (1982)‖ (151). In Dangling Man, I will argue that Bellow, from an existential point of view, proposes that personal and subjective experiences of great pain and suffering isolation are the most trusted empirical tools in determining the realities of life and human existence. However, Bellow does not allow his characters to wallow too long in their existential darkness, but time and again he rescues them on the verge of mental exhaustion to be nursed back to mental and spiritual stability, not through discursive reasoning but by immersion in the community of the ordinary. In

Dangling Man, we see how Bellow plays with the idea of man‘s personal freedom and to what extent this freedom can also suffocate him; he is at his finest in Herzog as he explores the interior process of man who believes that his intellectual rationalization is sharp enough to pierce the veil of life‘s mysteries.

Bellow’s Existential Anti-Hero

It is not clear whether Bellow read Sartre‘s Nausea published in 1938 prior to his writing Dangling Man but it is interesting to note that both novels employ the same journal structure where Roquentin and Joseph are recording their daily angst-ridden lives. The belief that man is free to determine the trajectory of his existence is a central theme in both Bellow and Sartre: ―The Sartrian view of man as a free, indeterminate being who is thrust into a variety of situations, but who can control them and model himself into whatever he wants to be, is one of the motivating forces of Bellow‘s fiction‖ (Aharoni 155). The concept of man being enslaved in opposition to his desire

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for freedom has been one of the standard themes in literature; Marxism, for example has spawned volumes of social and literary commentary on this enslavement. However,

Bellow‘s argument of man‘s essential freedom moves away from these oppositional forces between man and the world and instead focuses on man‘s pursuit of freedom within the interiority of his mind where he confronts the primal questions of life, existence, and death. Joseph is preoccupied with the specter of death as he is aware that his induction in the Army can quickly hasten his end but at the same time he believes that his self-determination is the only faith that will prepare him as he says: ―There are, then, these two preparations: one for life and the other for death‖ (Bellow: Dangling

Man 119). Thus conflict for Bellow is not confined between world and man but:

The conflict which Bellow defines, however, lies not between the self and the world but two attitudes toward the world. Joseph speaks of ―preparation‖ rather than action; he admits the victory of the world over his physical being and seeks a source of value that is inherent in his inner self. He seeks not to do battle with the world, like the ordinary hero, nor to make those symbolic gestures by which the Hemingway hero proves his dignity, but to discover within himself the reality which renders such conflict superfluous. (Opdahl 28-29)

I am uneasy with Opdahl‘s declaration that Joseph admits ―the victory of the world over his physical being.‖ Is he suggesting, at this point of time, after the Holocaust, that the

Jew, represented by Joseph, has accepted defeat in face of the hostile forces that have subjugated him for centuries but that his true strength therefore lies in his ability to locate that ―source of value‖ that will define his reality? Perhaps it is not a relevant question but if Joseph is given carte blanche to discover that defining reality ―within himself,‖ then he is choosing the existential methodology. In any case, Joseph‘s existential battles are conducted within the deep recesses of the mind, but unlike

Sartre‘s Roquentin who has denied God, Bellow‘s Joseph is fighting the pull of God.

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For Joseph, this tug-of-war between mortal and God is the ultimate predicament; we will see later how Bellow repudiates this central existential doctrine in favor of God.

Bellow has indeed boxed-in Joseph as the quintessential existentialist as we listen to Joseph‘s thoughts: ―In a city where one has lived nearly all his life, it is not likely that he will ever be solitary; and yet, in a very real sense, I am just that. I am ten hours a day in a single room‖ (Bellow, DM 10). On pages 12 and 13 we begin to have a stronger sense not only of his isolation but the alienation common in the existentialist:

―My Chicago friends and I have been growing steadily apart. I have not been too eager to meet them;‖ ―And so I am very much alone;‖ and ―I have begun to notice that the more active the rest of the world becomes, the more slowly I move, and that my solitude increases in the same proportion as its racket and frenzy.‖ Like Sartre‘s Roquentin,

Joseph discovers a specific moment in time when he began to ―dangle;‖ it was in the middle of an essay on Diderot. Bellow could have said, ―I was in the middle of one of the Enlightenment essays when I stopped,‖ but it seems that something about Diderot must have triggered a synapse in Joseph to close and to further plunge him into a deeper malaise. I suggest that Joseph must have been reading Diderot‘s anonymous essay

―Letter on the Blind For the Use of Those Who See‖ (1749); in this essay a blind philosopher rejects, at his deathbed and during his last hours on earth, the concept of a providential God. This essay infuriated the ecclesiastical powers to such an extent that it was tracked down by the French police to Diderot who was arrested and imprisoned for some months. So, could it be that this declaration from such a prominent philosopher that God does not exist could have unhinged Joseph to the point of dangling? In any case, Gilbert Porter offers this explanation:

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He [Joseph] dangles not merely between the military world and the civilian world, but between the material world of action and the ideal world of thought, between detachment and involvement, between life and death. He becomes more and more introspective and isolated. As time drags on and the disparity between the ideal world and the real world becomes more apparent to him, he grows less confident of his ability to make sense out of the universe or to discover his proper relationship to it. (6)

Porter‘s analysis of Joseph‘ predicament fits nicely into Bellow‘s overall plan where he sets up Joseph to experience for himself that his existential pursuit only compounds his misery; the more Joseph delves into himself for answers the more he realizes that the pursuit of the ideal is an existential construction far removed from the real world.

Bellow repudiates this construction in favor of the real world outside of self where the answers to life‘s pressing questions can only be found in the participatory circle and dialogue of one‘s group. The metaphor of the circle symbolizing safety and protection is of foremost value to Bellow who understands that it is only within that circle that the energy of life can be redeemed, maintained, and shared.

Joseph continues his slide into existential hell as he loses those essential values that had previously fortified him; we note the progressive descent into his own world of existential bitterness: ―There is nothing to do but wait, or dangle, and grow more and more dispirited. It is perfectly clear to me that I am deteriorating , storing bitterness and spite which eat like acids at my endowment of generosity and good will‖ (Bellow: DM

15). In the same manner we have witnessed Roquentin slowly losing contact with the everyday world to the extent he had admitted ―Perhaps it was a passing moment of madness after all‖ (Sartre 2), which of course was not a passing moment. In a flashback to the Servatius party that Joseph and his friends had attended, we are with him just after he has returned and undressed his drunken wife laying her naked on the blanket

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with her wrist over her eyes shielding the light. Earlier in the novel Joseph had expressed his desire to find ―a colony of the spirit‖ or ―a group whose covenants forbade spite, bloodiness, and cruelty. To hack, to tear, to murder was for those in whom the sense of the temporariness of life had shrunk‖ (Bellow, DM 39). Joseph believed he had found such a colony in his friends but had been revolted by the cruelty, rage, and spite in the ―game‖ his friends had played at the party. He had not wished to attend this occasion as he was already sensing his internal disorientation, but now he is shocked and disillusioned at the corruption and falsehood he has witnessed at this party:

And it came to me all at once that the human purpose of these occasions had always been to free the charge of feeling in the pent heart; and that, as animals instinctively sought salt or lime, we, too, flew together at this need as we had at Eleusis, with rites and dances, and at other high festivals and corroborees to witness pains and tortures, to give our scorn, hatred, and desire temporary liberty and play. Only we did these things without grace or mystery, lacking the forms for them and, relying on drunkenness, assassinated the Gods in one another and shrieked in vengefulness and hurt. (Bellow, DM 46)

Opdahl argues that Joseph‘s perception of this corruption provides a major insight in the novel: ―He [Joseph] sees that it is the ideal construction – the means by which we seek salvation – that corrupts us. Our many conflicting ideals preclude any communal form for the expression of scorn and anger‖ (33). This ideal construction, I suggest, is too fragile since it constantly insists we submerge our true feelings but this ―ideal,‖ like a submarine, cannot bear the pressure of constant and deep submersion for long and without fail-safety valves, this fragility explodes. Bellow is sinking Joseph deeper into the existential pit when Joseph fails to understand the failings and frailties of the human condition and the need for accommodation and forgiveness. Joseph falsely believes that the existential quest for the ideal is what will define his ideal existence, but this construction hinges on the abstract and not on the reality that life is an everyday play of 119

transgressions and imperfections. Bellow rejects this existential claim by unveiling the existentialist‘s ideal constructions as impractical in the real world of shifting human emotions and values.

Joseph, in pursuit of the ideal construction loses his bearing in the real world where humanity, albeit flawed, constantly strives for some moral balance. His drive for an existence divorced from commandments rockets him out of the orbit of the quotidian. But for Bellow, it is in this sphere of the ordinary people where life blooms both with joy and suffering. Perhaps we can argue that Joseph, the self-labeled scholar, in his preoccupation with the abstract ideals of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, has drifted too far into the realm of existential rationality. We can pity him as he wobbles without direction having given up on those values that had previously grounded his humanity. He is musing to himself after the party as the walls are closing in on him:

―This was only the beginning. In the months that followed I began to discover one weakness after another in all I had built around me‖ (Bellow, DM 57). In the same fashion that Roquentin has repudiated the safety and comfort of humanity and God,

Joseph is heading in this same nihilistic direction. His angst is palpable as he is torn between his existential potential and the grace of God; he has just finished listening, for the second time, a ―Haydn divertimento for the cello, played by Piatigorsky‖ (Bellow,

DM 67):

And was I to become this whole man alone, without aid? I was too weak for it, I did not command the will. Then in what quarter should I look for help, where was the power? Grace by what law, under what order, by whom required? Personal, human, or universal, was it? The music named only one source, the universal one, God. But what a miserable surrender that would be, born out of disheartenment and chaos; and out of fear, bodily and imperious, that like a disease asked for a remedy and did not care how it was supplied. The record

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came to an end; I began it again. No, not God, not any divinity. That was anterior, not of my own deriving. (Bellow: DM 68)

Joseph is at the most existential of crossroads and even though he seems decided against the road to God, I suggest that he has not fully made that decision as he wants to listen once more to the word of God, so to speak (he plays the record again). It is important to note that Joseph is aware that surrender is possible, albeit a miserable one. Bellow is admonishing on the pride of self and that yes, salvation is indeed ―born out of disheartenment and chaos; and out of fear…‖

The Issue of Identity: The Existentialism Dilemma

I have already alluded to Joseph‘s identity crisis as he is being classified and reclassified by the military authorities. This period of indecision about his citizen status, the fact that he is not a productive member of society, and his absorption in self, contribute to his dangling position. In his detachment from society and as he loses that communal connection, he digs deeper into himself but this self-imposed isolation breeds paranoia as he believes the world is against him. From an existential standpoint, we can understand Joseph‘s state of emotional estrangement; since he refuses to participate in the flow of humanity, he is unable to exercise the human conduct of being humane, kind, and benevolent. This is the plight of the existential man as he insists that he alone has the power to determine and define his human condition. In this state of inner turmoil, Joseph imagines he must constantly be on the defensive even against his wife, family members, friends and members of the public. Joseph, as much as he believes he can existentially define his own identity, constantly seeks to be recognized as a member of society, and when others fail to acknowledge him, he overreacts. I believe Bellow is signaling that once Joseph has determined to disconnect himself from society, in 121

exchange for his ―freedom,‖ he loses the right to a communal identity though it seems that Joseph wants his freedom and communal respect as well. There are several instances in Joseph‘s paranoid mind where he has reasons to believe his identity as a human being has diminished as he senses disrespect from certain quarters. Bellow, like a father figure, plays a cat and mouse game with his son Joseph by luring him into the existential abyss as a lesson, but yet he dangles a rope from which Joseph can extract himself from his existential pit. In a very circumspect manner, Bellow repudiates the existential doctrine and warns us that we can expect this abandonment into oblivion when we decide to create our own destiny and believe we can also reward ourselves with salvation.

Joseph is aware that in his existential detachment he loses his identity and self- respect; he glides into an oblivion that torments him. However, his progression into the periphery of community is of his own construction as he admits early on in the novel: ―I have fallen into the habit of changing restaurants regularly. I do not want to become too familiar a sight in any of them, friendly with sandwich men, waitresses, and cashiers, and compelled to invent lies for their benefit‖ (Bellow, DM 14). He senses too that his status of being unproductive provokes disrespect as he refers to the maid who comes in to clean his room with a lighted cigarette in her mouth: ―I think I am the only one before whom she dares smoke; she recognizes that I am of no importance‖ (Bellow, DM 15). I would argue that the following incidents where Joseph fights to affirm and reestablish his identity are all indications that irrespective of his existential drifting, he is acutely aware that if he were to totally lose his identity through the perspectives of others, then life in the freedom of the existential lane would be excruciatingly lonely and painful.

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Roquentin can certainly confirm Joseph‘s expectations for he knows firsthand the disillusion and turmoil he had experienced at that moment of his existential baptism: ―I am alone in this white, garden-rimmed street. Alone and free. But this freedom is rather like death‖ (Sartre157).

Joseph experiences another situation where a former colleague does not acknowledge his presence. He is waiting for his friend Myron Adler at the Arrow restaurant when he notices Jimmy Burns, an old acquaintance he had known during his involvement as a Communist. However, Burns does not return Joseph‘s greeting; this lack of disrespect in Joseph‘s eyes propels him to confront Burns:

―I said hello to you before, didn‘t you notice?‖ He made no reply. ―Don‘t you know me? It seems to me that I know you very well. Answer me, don‘t you know who I am?‖ ―Yes I know you,‖ Burns said in a low voice. ―That‘s what I wanted to hear,‖ I said. (Bellow, DM 36)

We are struck with Joseph‘s vehemence demanding recognition; it is obvious that the need to belong has not been fully usurped by his existential values. It seems that

Bellow, as the master puppeteer realizes that he cannot totally submerge Joseph in the existential Wasteland but keeps dangling him between chaos and community. In another incident, Joseph‘s identity is questioned by Mr. Frink, the vice president of a bank where Joseph tries to cash Iva‘s check: ―How do I know you‘re this person?‖ Joseph replies, ―You can take my word for it‖ (Bellow, DM 174). But the official does not take his word and in Joseph‘s mind he believes that ―if I had been clean-shaven and my shirt had not been frayed, or if bits of torn lining had not shown from my coat sleeve‖

(Bellow, DM 174) then he would have been more credible. Joseph feels he is further insulted when Mr. Frink addresses him by his first name, ―Now, where do you work, 123

Joseph?‖ Joseph feels that he is insulted as ―though I were an immigrant or a young boy or a Negro‖ (Bellow, DM 175). Of course, Joseph loses all prospects in cashing the check when he states that he is unemployed and is waiting for his draft call. In a moment of anger Joseph raises his voice and addresses the official by his first name as he shows the man his card: ―Here, you will notice I have a surname, Frink‖ (Bellow,

DM 175). Porter explains that these seemingly small infractions that would not have bothered Joseph in the past now seem to indict him based on his dangling position:

Because he has no role in society, Joseph feels a curious guilt in the presence of those who do have a social role, however menial. Hypersensitive and defensive, Joseph experiences an implied indictment wherever he goes … To be ignored by Burns, deluded though he is, is similar to being censured by maids, waitresses, and bank officials. Although none of these people is important to Joseph personally, they represent to him, in his agitated state, withdrawal of social recognition. (14)

I am certain that Bellow would agree with Porter‘s interpretation that what bothers

Joseph most is that even though the existential journey promises him the ideal constructions that will fortify his existence, he still cannot perceive a world void of social recognition. This is the recurring theme in Bellow‘s work where man is not complete until he is merged in the social circle of community; it is no wonder that

Joseph fights for this recognition.

Joseph’s Existential Preoccupation with Evil and Death

In the opening pages of his book The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker explains that the greatest existential fear of man is his terror of death which has remained the major psychological problem that haunts our waking moments. This haunting becomes more pronounced especially so when man disconnects himself from God and mythology and assumes full responsibility for his actions. Becker alludes to this state of

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angst not alien to an existentialist: ―For behind the sense of insecurity in the face of danger, behind the sense of discouragement and depression, there always lurks the basic fear of death, a fear which undergoes most complex elaborations and manifests itself in many indirect ways‖ (qtd. in Becker 16). The specter of death has haunted Joseph from the time he was a young child through adulthood; Bellow has unraveled how Joseph‘s preoccupation with mortality has manifested itself through his recollections, dreams, and the incidents that affect him. Throughout much of Dangling Man, Joseph is absorbed in self but the more he pursues his egotistical shelter, the more his consciousness reverts to his early formative beliefs that he may be evil; the awareness of this sin frightens him with death. Clayton suggests that Joseph needs to accept his fear of death but he must first reject his existential quest for selfhood: ―Joseph must first lose his selfhood; to be fully human he must reconcile himself to humanity; he is unable to do so until he can reconcile himself to death; fleeing from his own death he flees from other people, flees the recognition of his own moral humanity, flees a recognition of personal evil which would be punished by death and hell‖ (100). In the following paragraphs, I will examine Joseph‘s perception of evil as a precursor to death as we recollect his childhood, interpret his dreams, and decipher incidents that throttle him down his existential path. The intention here is to argue that Joseph fits the existential mold by virtue of his preoccupation with solitude, introspection, despair, loss of community, and most of all, his obsession with death.

Joseph‘s first inkling to death is when, as an adolescent he recollects the matter about the cutting of his curls when he was four years old. Against the wishes of his mother, his aunt Dina had taken him to the barber for a Buster Brown haircut and she

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had brought back the curls in an envelope to his mother who had cried seeing the lifeless curls. Joseph connects the story of his hair to the photograph of his grandfather; this image had attracted Joseph from a young age: ―It was a study of my grandfather, my mother‘s father, made shortly before his death. It showed him supporting his head on a withered fist, his streaming beard yellow, sulphurous, his eyes staring and his clothing shroudlike. I had grown up with it‖ (Bellow, DM 75). When Joseph was about fourteen years old, he had taken out the curls from the same drawer his grandfather‘s photograph was kept and as he studied the picture, it had occurred to him that the skull of this relative would in due time overtake him, curls and all for the picture was a clear evidence of his own mortality. This sudden sense of his temporal status alarmed him as he realized he too was destined by the way of his grandfather: ―I was upright in my grandfather‘s bones and the bones of those before him in a temporary loan. But he himself, not the further past, hung over me. Through the years he would reclaim me bit by bit, till my own fists withered and my eyes stared … And it had a corrective effect on my vanity‖ (Bellow, DM 76).

Joseph‘s vanity and his perception in how he sees this world through his hubris is a significant flaw; it is actually considered a sin, an evil being a part of pride which is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Joseph acknowledges the root of this vanity:

We were a handsome family. I was brought up to think myself handsome …By this time my face was to me the whole embodiment of my meaning. It was a register of my ancestors, a part of the world and, simultaneously, the way I received the world, clutched at it, and the way, moreover, in which I announced myself to it. (Bellow, DM 76)

Joseph‘s perception of the world filters through his vanity, and it is material to note that pride is considered the most serious of the deadly sins from which the other six sins find

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root. It is seen as the desire to be more important than others; seeing the world through this singular filter of excessive self-love restricts one‘s humility in loving God wholeheartedly. Lucifer‘s fall from heaven and God‘s grace is directly in consequence to the angel‘s pride that he could equal God. It is instructive how Dante saw the need to suffer as an antidote to pride as the sinners in his Divine Comedy were forced to carry slabs of stones on their backs. Here again we note that Joseph‘s existential disconnect differs from Roquentin‘s in the sense that Joseph sees the world through his egotistical prism; he is apart from community.

Joseph, in another recollection remembers the first time he was made to perceive evil in himself. He had visited Will Harscha, a high school friend and a German when, having met his friend‘s father for the first time, the older man had inquired about Joseph from his wife; she had answered: ―Mephisto war auch schon‖ (Bellow, DM 77). Joseph had immediately understood that he was being labeled the evil Mephistopheles, the

Faustian character symbolizing the devil. The reference to his being evil had troubled

Joseph to the extent that he ended his friendship with Will, but he could not escape the lingering stain of the accusation: ―And I spent sleepless hours thinking of what Mrs.

Harscha had said. She had seen through me – by some instinct, I thought then – and, where others saw nothing wrong, she had discovered evil‖ (Bellow, DM 77). Clayton argues that these two recollections about the grandfather and Mephistopheles suggest a deeper significance behind Joseph‘s vanity and his wish to please people as a young man:

The relationship under prettiness is death is parallel to the relationship under affability is evil. Joseph is hiding something he does not want uncovered: that he is going to die, that he is evil; or, more accurately, that he is evil and is therefore going to die. Under the child‘s locks is the grandfather‘s skull. In order not to be 127

found out, he must fence himself in, must reject any knowledge of his own evil – tantamount to a knowledge of his own death – and avoid those who may find him out. (Clayton 98-99)

Joseph‘s existential trajectory is compounded by his inner and personal turmoil and thus, as a consequence of his anxiety, he armors himself which leads to further disconnection from both his true self and from his inner circle. Earlier on he had already declared the route of his alienation: ―I have fallen into the habit of changing restaurants regularly. I do not want to become too familiar a sight in any of them, friendly with sandwich men, waitresses, and cashiers, and compelled to invent lies for their benefit‖

(Bellow, DM 14). However, I am not certain that Joseph can reject any knowledge of his own evil; he is too much ―into‖ himself to evade his own mental inquisition.

In conjunction with these recollections, we are allowed license into Joseph‘s unconscious through Bellow‘s utility of dreams. Joseph admits these dreams portend a bigger dread: ―But now my dreams are bare and more ominous. Some of them are fearful‖ (Bellow, DM 120). Joseph‘s first dream is that he is in a low chamber in which there are rows of large cribs or wicker bassinets containing the bodies of victims he believes were killed in a massacre. He informs the guide there that he has come to claim a body for a particular family but he does not really know the deceased. In response to this information, the guide ―turned smiling, and I guessed that he meant – there was not enough light in the vault to make his meaning unambiguous, but I thought I understood

– ―It‘s well to put oneself in the clear like this.‖ This was his warning to me. He approved of my neutrality‖ (Bellow, DM 120). To Joseph, the bodies looked like infants with their faces pinched and wounded which reminded him of an unholy story his father had told him; he compares the scene in the dream to the imagery in his father‘s story

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which was, ―an atmosphere of terror such as my father many years ago could conjure for me, describing Gehenna and the damned until I shrieked and I begged him to stop

…‖ (Bellow, DM 121). In the second dream Joseph is a sapper in the Army in North

Africa. He had crawled into a house to disarm the grenade traps in the house and found a rigged grenade; in his anxiety he was not sure where to start so with his pistol he shot at the shell but missed. He then realized that had he hit the grenade, he would have killed himself.

Clayton, in his interpretation of the first dream, points out the significance of

Joseph‘s neutrality in claiming the body: ―Joseph avoids involvement with death and with those who die; in other words, with all humanity. The reason is clear: the atmosphere of the dream is of Gehenna – of death and punishment of sin; anxiety over his death and damnation as the punishment for his sins‖ (99). But what are Joseph‘s sins? Could it be that he is being punished for his vanity? Is he being exiled to the world of Gehenna because he insists that he is the creator of his own existence? Has he sinned by disavowing God? Has Joseph incurred the anger of God because he has turned his back on humanity? Bellow has already indicted Joseph on all counts bearing in mind

Opdahl‘s earlier remarks on the undercurrent that drives Bellow‘s fiction: ―But

Bellow‘s imagination, I shall argue, is basically metaphysical and religious, passing from the historic fact to the larger, universal issue ... I would emphasize that the problem and the goal of all of Bellow‘s heroes is religious transcendence …‖ (6-7).

How can Joseph transcend his circumstances when he is still victim to his vanity?

Clayton further interprets the imagery of cribs and infantile bodies in relation to

Joseph‘s childhood of terror; this imagery ―leads us to associate the body he seeks with

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his own childhood self, his original self, which has died, and with his childhood anxieties – his father‘s threat has been realized, the guilty boy is dead (Clayton 100).

Here again, as Clayton notes, we can ascertain that in his fear of death Joseph is not only fleeing the specter of death but he is also fleeing from himself. Opdahl‘s interpretation of the second dream suggesting that Joseph, ―By attempting to avoid death he had put himself in jeopardy‖ (40) is similar to Clayton‘s interpretation: ―The second dream is a comment on the first …Put most simply, the message becomes: try to preserve your life and you lose it. Once again, then, if Joseph begins by defending the self, he ends up seriously qualifying the defense‖ (100).

It is significant to note that Joseph, outside of the dream, recognizes the guide in the first dream as an ancient figure whom he had first encountered as a child in a muddy back lane. He had heard footsteps behind him and in the deserted evening hour, he became fearful when he felt someone had touched him on his back. He had turned to look and saw a swollen face coming up close to his until he felt the bristles and the cold nose pressing as the man kissed him on the temple; the man had laughed and groaned.

Fear had throttled his young legs: ―Blindly I ran, hearing again the gritting boots. The roused dogs behind the snaggled boards of the fences abandoned themselves to the wildest rage of barking. I ran, stumbling through drifts of ashes, into the street‖

(Bellow, DM 122). Porter suggests that the kiss to Joseph‘s temple ―was a kiss of death.

Cerberean dogs howled …‖ (22-23). The imagery of desolation and three-headed guard dogs howling their death calls at the entrance of Hades is indeed a frightening premonition of death, albeit via metaphors.

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We get closer to Joseph as we become aware of his inner anxieties, the awareness of his evil, and his preoccupation with death through his recollections and dreams. Additionally, there are incidents of near and approaching death that startle and worry Joseph. On his sixth wedding anniversary, Joseph is heading downtown to meet

Iva and he disembarks from the El at Randolph and Wabash station. Bellow makes the timing here symbolic as he paints the twilight of the evening as a backdrop to urban activity at the end of the day:

There were crooked streaks at red of one end of the street and, at the other, a band of black, soft as the stroke of charcoal; into it were hooked the tiny lights of the lake front. On the platform, the rush-hour crowds were melting under the beams of oncoming trains. Each train was followed by an interval of darkness, when the twin colored lamps of the rear car hobbled around the curve. Sparks from the street below were caught and blanked in the heavy, flat ladder of ties. (Bellow, DM 114)

Porter infers there is a Dantean connection in this twilight scene with its bustling activity; this is the urban simulacrum of Dante‘s gateway to oblivion: ―The Styx is a lake and the ferry is a train, but it is clear from the imagery that the crowds and their ultimate destination are the same‖ (21). I would suggest too that imagery of red emanating from the sinking sun, the blackness of charcoal, beams of light and sparks suggest potential transformation in the same vein St. John of the Cross, the Christian mystic compares the soul to a burning log that gets blacker. This process of burning into coal, the mystic suggests, is essential to clear away the impurities so that the soul can become one with the divine fire of creation. However, as Joseph comes to a ―smoky alley,‖ he sees a man sprawled senseless in front of him; he is soon the center of a large crowd and notes a mounted policeman gazing down at the scene. Joseph tears open the man‘s collar but he draws back to make room for the dismounted policeman and at that

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moment his attention shifts to the face of policeman: ―It was long and as narrow as a boot. His features were sharp, red, wind-scarred, his jaws muscular, his sideburns whitish, intersected by the straps of his stiff blue cap‖ (Bellow, DM 115). Porter sees this policeman ―as Death‘s functionary, a modern Charon‖ (21) and that the policeman and the swollen face man are interchangeable in Joseph‘s mind as both are death figures. An older policeman had arrived and as the functionary looked at the man‘s wallet, Joseph notes it was an ―old-fashioned strap-fastened wallet like my father‘s‖

(Bellow, DM 115). As the unconscious man is taken away by the ambulance, Joseph feels a stinging pain in his forehead just in the same area that his aunt Dina had scratched him on the night his mother had died.

We do not need an outside interpretation of this scene involving the dying man, the connection to the man‘s wallet and to the scratch on his forehead as Joseph explains his premonition of death:

To many in the fascinated crowd the figure of the man on the ground must have been what it was to me – a prevision. Without warning, down. A stone, a girder, a bullet flashes against the head, the bone gives like a glass from a cheap kiln; or a subtler enemy escapes the bonds of years; the blackness comes down; we lie, a great weight on our faces, straining toward the last breath which comes like the gritting of gravel under a heavy tread.

Clayton implies that ―Bellow‘s defense of Man is related to this fear of death. The fallen man is analogous to Fallen Man‖ (101). It is likely that Joseph‘s premonition of death is based on his imminent induction in the army, but I suspect that Bellow is also alluding to the Holocaust where the millions could not have anticipated such inhumanity. The imagery of a kiln as a burning furnace, the bullet, so powerful and efficient that it shatters the bone in the head like weak glass, and the motif of a face grinding in gravel

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under tread/jackboots do bring to mind the manner in which a Jew would have been slaughtered in Hitler‘s death camps.

The Holocaust: Memory and Death

At this point I would like to reinforce the belief that the most troubling human fear is the fear of dying; this fear, as I have referenced Becker earlier, is more pronounced when man disengages himself from his cultural mythologies. I would like to suggest too that the modern man (by modern here I mean the period between late seventeenth-century to present time) has more reasons to fear death; the world‘s military industrial machinery, beginning with the Gatling Gun to our nuclear arsenal guarantees human obliteration; the record of the millions who have died and are still dying testify to the power of this arsenal. In addition to this real threat that hovers in our collective imagination, we have witnessed, over the past century, the wide-scale reemergence of the most immoral act of humanity: the practice of genocide. I will argue in the following paragraphs that Joseph‘s existential fear of death is also symbolically tied in to the inhumanity of the Holocaust. Joseph represents Bellow and all Jews of

Bellow‘s time: babies, children, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, and grandparents who would have cried in deep despair believing that God had deserted them as they died in the millions in front of firing squads and in the cold vapors of the gas chambers.

And what was their crime? They died because they were Jews. It is my opinion that

Saul Bellow, as a Jew, is painfully affected by this unholy suffering and as much as his novels do not directly address this great inequity of mankind, this existential terror is masked in his work. Thus, Joseph, without a surname, represents all the dangling Jews in his period of time who witnessed, whether up close or from a continent away, the

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genocide of their people. Of course it would have been foolhardy for Bellow, as a Jew in 1944 and wishing to make his name in the WASP world of literary publishing to advertise his first book as a testimony to the pain of his people. But look deep and you will find his lamentation.

Prior to writing the above paragraph, I was tormented by this obvious question:

―Why is Joseph so frightened of death?‖ I feared this question since I could not have come up with an acceptable answer. But having reread the following passage in

Dangling Man, I am now confident that Joseph‘s existential fear of death is not only the fear of a natural dissolution or death of self but it is in direct correlation to the recent history of the Holocaust. As a Jew and in 1944, Joseph, albeit fictional, would have been keenly aware that six million men, women, and children were exterminated for one reason only: they were Jews. Would he not have been aware too that the world looked and did nothing to stop this inhumanity? And if his history has been one of incessant persecution culminating in six million murdered, where was the assurance that such atrocities will not be repeated? I strongly believe that Bellow positions Joseph to background this collective existential fear that hovers over those that escaped the firing squads and gas chambers. To realize the impact of this genocidal horror as it underlines the existential agony of a group of people, it is imperative that we shift not only our imagination, but our compassion to this period of history as Bellow observes: ―From the great sadness and desperation of Werthers and Don Juans we went to the great ruling images of Napoleons; from these to murderers who had their right over victims because they were greater than the victims; to men who felt privileged to approach others with a

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whip …‖ (Bellow, DM 89). And thus the greater man with his license to kill and whip reversed the commandment to ―Thou shalt kill.‖

To fully comprehend this great evil of the Holocaust as outsiders, we need to be compassionate as we return to the scene of horror and step into the shoes of the Jew. It is only then that in the depth of our compassion that we will understand the unspeakable horror of man‘s misconduct recorded in the death camps at Auschwitz, Sobibor,

Treblinka, and Dachau that belched scorched humanity from the chimneys. Here is that long passage that cannot be paraphrased. I am aware that this pivotal passage can be interpreted as a testimony to the brutality of death in war, but I am confident I can defend my argument that Bellow is actually shadowing the fear of the Jew who knows his executioner. Listen to Bellow as he laments the anguish and fear of the Jew who suffers the agony knowing that at any moment the bolt will slide or the vapor will descend; this is the fear of death where man‘s existence hangs on a thread; this is the ultimate existential fear that you know your murderer:

Could the fallen man of last week have seen, had he chanced to open his eyes, his death in the face of that policeman who bent over him? We know we are sought and expect to be found. How many forms he takes, the murderer? Frank or simple, or a man of depth and cultivation, or perhaps prosaic, without distinction. Yet he is the murderer, the stranger who, one day, will drop the smile of courtesy or custom to show you the weapon in his hand, the means to your death. Who does not know him, the one who takes your measure in the street, or on the stairs, he whose presence you must ignore in the darkened room if you are to close your eyes and fall asleep, the agent who takes you, in the last unforgiving act, into inexistence? Who does not expect him with the opening of the door; and who after childhood, thinks of flight or resistance or of laying any but ironic, yes, even welcoming hands on his shoulders when he comes? The moment is for him to choose. He may come at a climax of satisfaction or of evil; he may come as one comes to repair a radio or a faucet; mutely, or to pass the time of day, play a game of card; or with no preliminary, colored with horrible anger, reaching out a muffling hand; or, in a mask of calm, hurry you to your last breath, drawn with a stuttering sigh out of his shadow.

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How will it be? How? Falling a mile into the wrinkled sea? Or, as I have dreamed, cutting a wire? Or strafed in a river among chopped reeds and turning water, blood leaking through the sleeves and shoulders? (Bellow, DM 122-123)

This passage is a both a biography of a people who have murdered and of those people who are painfully aware that at any moment the axe will fall on them. This too is a passage about the agony of waiting for death knowing that you have already been sentenced having been found guilty by virtue of tribal blood and the honoring of the old

God. Is it not strange that Bellow floods this passage with so many painful questions?

To whom, in 1944, is he directing these questions? Are we still in the realm of fiction or are we face to face with the Bellow who believed ―that literature should hew to one of its original purposes – the raising of moral questions‖? Is it possible that he is hoping that God is listening even though He was the silent onlooker when the murderers came as friends and neighbors and ―with no preliminary, colored with horrible anger, reaching out a muffling hand; or, in a mask of calm, hurry you to your last breath, drawn with a stuttering sigh out of his shadow‖? In a very personal way Bellow seems to implore us with painful questions. How will death be? Do you prefer falling a mile in a wrinkled sea or do you prefer to be strafed in a river? And who will say a prayer for your soul when hot lead tears the bone in your head like cheap broken glass or when, in that blessed chamber, the irony of ironies, eternal sleep takes you home. Who will be there to comfort you?

I may have allowed my emotion to misdirect my scholarly intention, but I would like to believe that most of art and literature achieve their telling moments by filtering their themes through emotions. Our quest for humanity, I suppose, is ultimately tied in to our collective emotions that make us cry, laugh, and lament on our fortunes and

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misfortunes. And so as I have segued into the Holocaust to establish that this horror is matchless in its existential agony, I will now discuss how Bellow will lead Joseph out of his existential crisis.

SECTION B: Redemption in Dangling Man: Bellow’s Repudiation of Existentialism

Redemption: The Power of Poetry, Emotion, and Love

Our first glance of a redemptive opening can be construed from the fact that

Bellow, on more than one occasion has filtered Goethe‘s redeeming poetry through

Joseph‘s anxious consciousness. I would like to establish and argue up front that

Bellow‘s redemptive diagnosis is also based on both the power of poetry and the cathartic influence of man‘s emotions that ultimately define, to a great extent, his place in life. In Chapter 4, I have already discussed the significance of emotions as this human trait determines our relationship with art but it is pivotal now that I bring Bellow to the stand to defend his perspective that emotions can determine Joseph‘s ascent from his existential chaos. Abbott, in his essay ―Saul Bellow and the ―Lost Cause‖ of

Character,‖ discusses Bellow‘s indebtedness to the emotional influence of Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky whom Bellow insists are writers and not philosophers who fully incorporate the passion of the heart in their work. Abbot quotes Bellow who confirms the fundamental role and influence of emotion in literature: ―‗Nothing is legitimate in literature or any work of art which does not have the support of some kind of emotional conviction. The ideological conviction means almost nothing. The emotional conviction means everything‘‖ (qtd. in Abbot 272). On the metaphor of the heart symbolizing emotion, Daniel Fuchs, in his essay ―Saul Bellow and the Modern Tradition‖ also quotes Bellow: ―Bellow is the heir of the first modernists, the romantics, rather than the

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archmodernists. Like Keats, he is certain of nothing but ―the holiness of the heart‘s affections‖; he has not lost belief in the self or even the soul‖ (75). Thus, as I continue to reference the impact of Goethe‘s poetry on Joseph‘s unstable mind, I am implying that Bellow is utilizing the power of ―emotional conviction‖ in conjunction with ―the holiness of the heart‘s affections‖ as part of his overall strategy to rescue the fallen

Joseph. We must also bear in mind the moral imperative that hinges Bellow‘s work so irrespective of Joseph‘s existential pursuit of self, Bellow is appealing to his (Joseph‘s) inner moral foundation and hopes that both his moral conscience and the compass of his emotions will lead him out of his chaos.

Joseph is reading Goethe‘s Poetry and Life in which Goethe offers the reasons for both loathing and exultation in life but though Joseph is inclined to sink with the loathing, I suggest that Bellow is providing an early and viable alternative through

Goethe‘s poetry that argues for the richness of life. The fact that Bellow has included additional references to Goethe in the similar context exulting life indicates that he,

Bellow, is throwing a lifeline to Joseph. What makes the following lines from Goethe significant is the allusion to external phenomena (verses Joseph‘s internal dialogue) that provide the basis for human comfort:

This loathing of life has both physical and moral cause. All comfort in life is based upon a regular occurrence of external phenomena. The changes of the day and night, of the seasons, of flowers and fruits, and all other recurring pleasures that come to us, that we may and should enjoy them – these are the mainsprings of our earthly life. The more open we are to these enjoyments, the happier we are; but if these changing phenomena unfold themselves and we take no interest in them, if we are insensible to such fair solicitations, then comes on the sorest evil, the heaviest disease – we regard life as a loathsome burden. (Qtd. in Bellow, DM 18)

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I am aware that Goethe‘s perspective on human comfort can be construed as an existential paradigm in that the mainsprings of our earthly life are not manifestations of

God, but I suspect that Bellow will agree that these external phenomena, from a cosmic point of view, can be credited to a higher realm. In sinking Joseph in his existential quagmire, Bellow‘s intention is purely instructive as we listen to Joseph musing on this struggle: ―No one … came simply and of his own accord, effortlessly, to prize the most truly human traditions, the heavenly cities. You had to be taught to struggle your way toward them. Inclination was not enough. Before you could get your screws revolving, you had to be towed out of the shallows‖ (Bellow, DM 98). In a sense then, Bellow, with aid from Goethe, is throwing a line to the sinking Joseph; this is a line anchored to the mainsprings of earthly life.

Joseph does clutch at this line and much later in the novel he truly experiences a communal afternoon when Iva comes home to nurse him in bed. She had bought strawberries and rolled them in powdered sugar and having read to him for an hour, they both dozed off. This is the beginning of a healing process as Joseph appreciates the endearing virtue of another human being, in this case his wife. His existential armor is cracking, and his renewed awareness of the existence of his wife and the palpable emotion he rediscovers indicate a symbolic reconnection to humanity; his thoughts are:

―She was at her most ample and generous best … I awoke in the middle of the afternoon; she still slept. I gazed up at the comfortable room and heard the slight mixed rhythm of her breathing and mine. This endeared her to me more than any favor could‖

(Bellow, DM 118). This emotional awakening becomes the catalyst for Joseph who now finds he is in rhythm with another human being. This is a symbolic and defining

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moment as Joseph next experiences the full flavor of the external phenomenal world; this is Goethe‘s antidote to that loathsome burden hanging around Joseph‘s neck. Here again I am quoting this long passage in full both to maintain integrity of Bellow‘s words and to present Joseph‘s metamorphosis toward personal redemption. Joseph is still in the room but he is looking out of the window as Iva is sleeping:

The icicles and frost patterns on the window turned brilliant; the tree, like instruments, opened all their sounds into the wind, and the bold, icy colors of sky and snow and clouds burned strongly. A day for a world without deformity or threat of damage, and my pleasure in the weather was all the greater because it held its own beauty and was engaged with nothing but itself. The light air gave an air of innocence to some of the common objects in the room, liberating them from ugliness. I lost the aversion I had hitherto felt for the red oblong of rug at the foot of the bed, the scrap of tapestry on the radiator, the bubbles of paint on the white lintel, the six knobs on the dresser I had formerly compared to the ugly noses of as many dwarf brothers. In the middle of the floor, like an accidental device of serenity, lay a piece of red string. (Bellow, DM 118-119)

Joseph no longer accepts his existential status as a prisoner neither within himself nor within the four walls; through the window, both literal and metaphoric, he can now see the unfolding of the earthly phenomena. Note the action verbs suggesting transformation: ―turned‖ brilliant; ―opened‖ all their sounds; and ―burned strongly.‖

Joseph‘s first foray back into the normal world is sweetened by the loss of his existential aversion to the common items that he now sees without distaste. Unlike

Roquentin who remains troubled with the existence of common things, ―I must tell how

I see this table, this street, the people, my packet of tobacco, since those are the things that have changed‖ (Sartre 2), Joseph no longer suffers the existential aversion to common objects. He is by no means anywhere near full redemption but from here on, he begins his return to a normal world, albeit within his mind. Now, what about this red string? I wish to believe that Bellow‘s allusion to an ―accidental device of serenity,‖ in

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relation to the red string is much more symbolic spiritually. According to the teaching of the Kaballah, a believer ties a red string around the left wrist that serves as a

―spiritual vaccine‖ to ward off the Evil Eye. It is interesting that Bellow should locate this piece of symbolism just after Joseph begins his upward climb buoyed by the endearing virtue of his loyal and loving wife. We can then understand this requirement:

―It‘s important that someone who loves us—someone we deeply trust—ties the string around our wrist. As they do, we should ask for the power to radiate kindness, compassion, appreciation, and absence of the Evil Eye to everyone around us‖ (―Red

String‖). It is insightful that these human virtues of kindness, compassion, and appreciation are radiated not within self but out of self to affect others in a moral way.

The Ordinary: Bellow’s Bridge to Redemption

We must remember that Bellow is honoring the literary formula of his time by positioning Joseph as a product of existential calamities; however, as much as Joseph is an existential creation, he is aware of a deeper but elusive connection that has sustained mankind. In his present agony amidst his dismal environment he asks, ―Where was there a particle of what, elsewhere, or in the past, had spoken in man‘s favor?‖ (Bellow,

DM 24). In his existential delusion, Joseph is unable to relate to this cosmic particle especially so that he feels spiritually suffocated by the physical wretchedness that surrounds him:

Not far off there were chimneys, their smoke a lighter gray than the gray of the sky; and, straight before me, ranges of poor dwellings, warehouses, billboards, culverts, electric signs blankly burning, parked cars and moving cars, and the occasional bare plan of a tree … The streets, in contrast, looked burnt out; the chimneys pointed heavenward in openmouthed exhaustion. The turf, intersected by sidewalk, was bedraggled with the whole winter‘s deposit of deadwood, match cards, cigarettes, dogmire, rubble. (Bellow, DM 24,172)

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It may seem strange that I have cited this bleak environment to support my argument on redemption but the bleakness here is a matter of Joseph‘s perception as he sees the world only through the prism of his own darkness. In Bellow‘s world, however, redemption lies in the ordinary as Clayton confirms: ―Thus, Bellow rejects the denigration of the ordinary life of the individual … In all his novels the defense of human dignity and human possibilities, even in a dehumanized age, stands central‖

(24). Bellow confirms this relationship between redemption and the ordinary as he recalls a story in one of his interviews. Bellow had visited a Jewish cardiologist, one of the heroes of the Warsaw ghetto in a barren manufacturing town and had inquired as to why the doctor had settled in such a gloomy place to which came this reply, ―What differences surroundings make?‖ (qtd. in Roudane 67). Bellow remembers reprimanding himself for asking the question as he explains: ―His answer referred me to

Jewish history, to the ancient, the millennial Jewish power of accommodation to place.

In a ghetto, a slum, a hole in the ground, a tenement, your spirit lived independently.

You had not need of a supporting culture. Your soul made – no, burnt – its own clearing‖ (qtd. in Roudane 68).

Joseph, like Roquentin, arrives at his existential junction with a full history of his tradition and heritage and even though he now relies on his rational and introspective capability to define his existence, he is aware that his shift from tradition and heritage has isolated him painfully within four walls. It is no wonder then that he inquires about this particle that had once spoken in man‘s favor. I have maintained that

Bellow deliberately sinks Joseph in this existential hell to experience the suffering and isolation believing, though falsely, that he can define his own existence outside of

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community. Hence, Joseph is rethinking his existential quest as he becomes aware of a collective and abiding soul that exists even in the squalor of his ghetto surroundings. In a sense he is returning to his heritage that instructs on the accommodation to place. Here are his thoughts as he contemplates comfort in ordinary place:

There could be no doubt that these billboards, streets, tracks, houses, ugly and blind were related to interior life … In their businesses and politics, their taverns, movies, assaults, divorces, murders, I tried continually to find clear signs of their common humanity. It was undeniably to my interest to do this. Because I was involved with them; because whether I liked it or not, they were my generation, my society, my world. We were figures in the same plot, externally fixed together. I was aware, also, that their existence, just as it was, made mine possible. (Bellow, DM 24-25)

It is very insightful that we cannot discuss Jewish history without referencing the role of the Jewish ghettoes. We can make the argument that it was a sense of ingrained community that flourished in these peripheral communities. Joseph, as a Jew, is not constructed to bear for long the agony of isolation and separation from the very source of the whole that complements his social being. He acknowledges the essence and pull of community in his reflection: ―We were figures in the same plot, externally fixed together. I was aware, also, that their existence, just as it was, made mine possible.‖

Bellow, like the advertising executive on Madison Avenue, hooks Joseph in with the line that he can only redeem himself by returning to the very community that has nurtured him and his heritage for centuries.

Transformation: Bellow’s Religious Psychology

So far and through the eyes of Bellow, I have identified Joseph‘s existential dilemma as the burden of selfhood he perceives that will truly define his existence.

Bellow has consistently advocated that for any transformation to occur, the constructed self must be dissolved into the larger self of community. But why is Bellow so anti-self? 143

He is because he has consistently proposed that the vanity of self is antithetical to God and community. Bellow‘s point of view is also echoed in the words of Krishna: ―If thy soul finds rest in me, thou shall overcome all dangers by my grace; but if thy thoughts on thyself, and thou wilt not listen, thou shall perish‖ (The Bhagavad Gita, 18:58). As I have already mentioned twice in this chapter and in introducing Bellow, I am again reinforcing that Bellow‘s undercurrent of religious psychology streams through

Dangling Man as well. So, from the point of view of annihilating self and seeking a higher transcendence, Clayton says this of Bellow and Dangling Man: ―For Bellow attacks the self as strongly as does Sartre in Nausea. Both writers move in their novels toward a new idea of human life without selfhood … [but] Bellow‘s novel works toward selflessness of a different, more traditional sort – closer to religious brotherhood and the mystical death of the self‖ (115-116). Again, Joseph‘s transformation is not heralded by remarkable actions, but occurs within his mind; Joseph knows in his heart that in the final analysis self is poor comfort to his soul which is crying out for a larger abode.

It is an interesting coincidence that both Roquentin and Joseph are affected by the transcending power of music. At the end of Nausea, on pages 174-177, Roquentin is waiting in the cafe for his train to leave Bouville; he is listening to his favorite jazz composition as he reflects that ―A while ago I was certainly far from swimming in beatitudes;‖ he admits, ―But there was no music then, I was morose and calm … the world was so ugly.‖ And, ―Now there is this song on the saxophone. And I am ashamed.

A glorious little suffering has just been born, an exemplary suffering.‖ Roquentin credits his joyful suffering to ―this little jeweled pain which spins around above the

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record and dazzles me. Not even ironic: it spins gaily, completely self-absorbed; like a scythe it has cut through the drab intimacy of the world and now it spins in all of us …‖

As the music washes over his soul, Roquentin cannot deny his emotion, ―And there is something that clutches heart: the melody is absolutely untouched by this tiny coughing of the needle on the record.‖ As he continues to listen, he contemplates: ―She sings. So two of them are saved: the Jew and the Negress. Saved … they have washed themselves of the sin of existing.‖ And then unexpectedly, Roquentin experiences, ―Something I did not know anymore: a sort of joy.‖ It is worth noting that the only words mentioned in the song are: ―Some of these days /You‘ll miss me, honey.‖ The power of music here suggests transcendence; in a similar fashion Joseph is affected as he is engrossed listening to a piece of music.

Joseph‘s epiphany occurs when he alludes to the presence of God as he listens to

Haydn‘s composition. This is a long passage that includes both affirmation and renouncement; I see a humble, penitent, and perhaps a frightened Joseph as the music affects him:

It was the first movement, the adagio, that I cared most about. Its somber opening notes, preliminaries to a thoughtful confession, showed me that I was still an apprentice in suffering and humiliation. I had not even begun. I had furthermore, no right to expect or avoid them. So much was immediately clear. Surely, no one could plead for exception; that was not a human privilege. What I should do with them, how to meet them, was answered in the second declaration: with grace, without meanness. And though I could not as yet apply that answer to myself, I recognized its rightness and was vehemently moved by it. Not until I was a whole man could it be my answer, too. And was I to become this whole man alone, without aid? I was too weak for it, I did not command the will. Then in what quarter should I look for help, where was the power? Grace by what law, under what order, by whom required? Personal, human, or universal, was it? The music named only one source, the universal one, God. But what a miserable surrender that would be, born out of disheartenment and chaos; and out of fear, bodily and imperious, that like a disease asked for a remedy and did not care how it was supplied. The record came to an end. I 145

began it again. No, not God, not any divinity. That was anterior, not of my own deriving. (Bellow: DM 67-68)

Bellow ambiguously positions Joseph to both allude to the existence of God and at the same time to renounce God. I have already presented Joseph‘s denial of God to support his existential leaning, but I am now returning to this same passage to argue that albeit ambiguous, this piece serves more to reinforce two layers of belief that haunt Joseph.

The first belief is that because of his existential instability and that he must define his own existence, then he has no choice but to abandon God. However, this belief is superimposed on the deeper value that God is present. I argue for this superimposition based on two reasons: first, Joseph arrives at his existential quandary with a consciousness already indelibly stained with a heritage and history soaked with divine commandments. This religious psychology is too deeply imprinted to be overshadowed by the secondary value devised by a typical Bellovian character noted for his

Chaplinesque indecision, especially in those areas of the metaphysical. Secondly, and please forgive me if I blaspheme here, Joseph has been created in the same image of

Bellow, his creator and thus is a product of a man ―who writes in the manner of an Old

Testament prophet, for Bellow is essentially a religious person and literature for him ―is of coming closer to God.‖ Throughout his oeuvre, which comprises his ―song of songs,‖

Bellow‘s humanistic voice intones the anthropocentric concerns of his heritage‖

(Goldman 64). Bellow, like a good father, has enough reason to repudiate his son‘s existential wandering and bring him home.

Joseph slowly becomes aware that his idea of the ideal construction originally meant to guarantee his freedom is paradoxically reinforcing the four walls of his prison; we begin to sense a shift from inner reason to his recognition that true freedom can only 146

be bestowed by an outside source. In his journal dated February 22, Joseph is reflecting on the justification for self and the potential for grace:

If I HAD [had] Tu As Raison Aussi with me today, I could tell him that the highest ―ideal construction‖ is the one that unlocks the imprisoning self. We struggle perpetually to free ourselves. Or, put it somewhat differently, while we seem so intently and even desperately to be holding on to ourselves, we would far rather give ourselves away. We do not know how. So, at times, we throw ourselves away. When what we really want is to stop living so exclusively and vainly for our own sake, impure and unknowing, turning inward and self- fastened … All the striving is for one end. I do not entirely understand this impulse. But it seems to me that its final end is the desire for pure freedom. We are all drawn to the same craters of the spirit – to know what we are and what we are for, to know our purpose, to seek grace. And if the quest is the same, the differences in our personal histories, which hitherto meant so much to us, become of minor importance. (Bellow, DM 153-154)

Joseph is beginning to accept that his ―ideal construction‖ is flawed; I suggest that he realizes the absurdity that freedom cannot be decreed to self by self. The double question is why does Joseph seek freedom and what is his true perception of freedom?

Sartre would answer that Joseph seeks freedom in order to define his true existence and to be free from the constraints and commandments of God. But Joseph admits that we should stop living so ―exclusively and vainly‖ since such obsession with self is actually sinful (Mrs. Harscha had already pointed out this defect in him.) and thus discourages grace. The fact Joseph accepts that ―We are all drawn to the same craters of the spirit – to know what we are and what we are for, to know our purpose, to seek grace‖ implies that Joseph perceives that true freedom is paradoxically a spiritual bondage within ―the same craters of the spirit.‖ I argue that Joseph is no longer at the crossroad of his life; in the first place he was never built to withstand the agony of isolation but having withstood the test, he is heading toward grace. Pifer explains Joseph‘s justification for his revised direction: ―Implicit in Joseph‘s perception of freedom, in other words, is the

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religious concept of ―binding.‖ Only through attachment to a higher purpose, a transcendent or divine principle, does the human being discover the ―pure freedom‖ that is identical with ―purity of the heart‖ …‖ (38).

Induction and Death: Final Surrender

Death, both on a metaphorical and literal level symbolizes shifts in Joseph‘s journey from existential status to reclaiming his part in humanity. On the other hand, movement from civilian life to the regimentation of the army unshackles Joseph from his existential walls to humanity as well. I have extracted the following lines from my long quotation above to present a distinction Clayton has pointed out: ―… while we seem so intently and even desperately to be holding on to ourselves, we would far rather give ourselves away. We do not know how. So, at times, we throw ourselves away.‖

Clayton argues that there is an important difference between giving ourselves and throwing ourselves away. The man who joins a mass movement who gives up personal choice and is not asked to think or feel belongs to the class of ―throwing ourselves away.‖ This is what Joseph does by joining the army as he exults: ―Hurray for regular hours! And for supervision of the spirit! Long live regimentation!‖ (Bellow, DM 191).

However, Joseph, in ―giving‖ himself away is also casting off self as Clayton explains:

―But a different loss of selfhood – a giving yourself away, joining the human brotherhood, longing for such a loss of selfhood, is also implicit in Joseph‘s giving himself to the army‖ (117). In either case, Joseph is now a deserter from his existential camp as he now enlists in the brigade of his fellow men.

In the beginning of my section titled ―Bellow‘s Existential Anti-Hero,‖ I had suggested that Joseph‘s battle with his existential angst and his struggle for redemption

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are waged within Joseph‘s mind. Up to this point Joseph is packed and ready for entry in the army, but we never see him in uniform as the novel ends just where it began: in his mind. However, in the final analysis there is reason to believe that Joseph has emerged from the existential suffocation of his four walls. In the symbolic warm air of the spring evening, Joseph is walking outside and through his thoughts we see him at one road‘s end and at the beginning of another; he has lost the battle with himself as he surrenders: ―I believe I had known for some time that the moment I had been waiting for had come, and that it was impossible to resist any longer. I must give myself up.

And I recognized that the breath of warm air was simultaneously a breath of relief at my decision to surrender. I was done‖ (Bellow, DM 183). This is a spiritual surrender where Joseph relinquishes control of self in exchange for the embrace of grace. Almost to the very end of the novel, Joseph admits again, ―I had not done well alone. I doubted whether anyone could. To be pushed upon oneself entirely put the very facts of simple existence in doubt‖ (Bellow, DM 190-191). Thus the army becomes the metaphor for community as Opdahl confirms: ―In joining the army Joseph joins society, accepting historical limitation, and takes his place among other mortal men, accepting physical limitation‖ (47-48).

As much as Dangling Man is about man‘s existential agony and his quest for transformation, this novel is about death both on literal and symbolic levels. However, both levels allude to the symbolic death of Joseph‘s selfhood. I have argued earlier in this chapter that Joseph‘s existential fear of death can also be attributed to the reality of the Holocaust, but he is also troubled by his belief that he is sinful and thus will die because of his sins. Joseph sins because of his pride and vanity, but more so because in

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his pursuit of self, he has turned his back on God. Joseph defeats the metaphorical death of self since he surrenders and admits that he ―had not done well alone.‖ His surrender also satisfies Clayton‘s requirement: ―the metaphorical death is partly the death of the old self – of the egocentric individual who must die before Joseph can become human‖

(118). Now, how can I argue that Joseph has redeemed himself from the physical threat of death? I am not certain that man as an animal, especially as he becomes more rational, will ever totally escape the looming fear of death. Nevertheless, as I have prefaced earlier in this chapter, Joseph, created in Bellow‘s image, is keenly aware of the juxtaposition between life and death as he has been preparing for these axial lines throughout the novel. My argument is that Joseph is already prepared for death, and the paradox is that this preparation is in direct correlation to his existential suffering that serves as the catalyst for transformation. Again, earlier in this chapter I had referenced this idea of transformation where the soul is compared to a burning log; through this fire the soul‘s impurities are burnt out after which it (the soul) can become one with the divine fire of creation. In this same vein Becker quotes the American philosopher,

William James: ―This is the salvation through self-despair, the dying to be truly born, of

Lutheran theology, the passage into nothing of which Jacob Behmen [Boehme] writes.

To get to it, a critical point must usually be passed, a corner turned within one.

Something must give way, a native hardness must breakdown and liquefy … (Becker

88). So, from an existential point of view, Joseph has redeemed himself by confronting and accepting death having attained ―coal‖ status walking through the fire of death.

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Closure

The more I closely read Dangling Man, the more I agree with some of Bellow‘s scholars who saw this novel as a focus for all of Bellow‘s subsequent writing. This is a tightly-packed novel open to extensive critical analysis and levels of interpretation. I have taken the risk to approach this one novel (I have explained my choice in the beginning of this chapter) to argue on two major points: even though Bellow does not see himself as an existentialist writer, he felt compelled to honor the literary trend of the time, and in following in the footsteps of Sartre, I have argued that Dangling Man closely examines the themes of Existentialism. I have also argued that as much as

Bellow has plunged his protagonist in the existential abyss of isolation and angst,

Bellow repudiates the existential doctrine in favor of community. In the final analysis, even though Bellow‘s work is steeped in paradoxes, irony, comedy, and ambiguities, he is driven by a deeper essence that rescues his dangling men from their mental and spiritual polarization. I have argued too that Bellow‘s work is influenced by his culture:

―One of the most enigmatic aspects of the Jewish people is its ability – despite pogroms, massacres, and holocausts – to survive. This tenacious clinging to life results from viewing life as a gift from God which must be preserved at all costs. Bellow‘s novels are a form of survivor literature, testimonials to life‖ (Goldman 54).

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Chapter 6: Buddhist Allusions in Bellow’s Herzog

Overview of Herzog

Herzog is a novel that begins from the end: the rambling resemblance to a plot ignores the linear tradition as Bellow randomly snatches moments and episodes from the past and jig-saws them into the present. One moment we are listening to the philosophical musing of Moses Elkanah Herzog alone in his apartment, and the next moment we are transported to a live conversation he is having with an ex-wife, a lover, a friend, or a professional acquaintance. Philosophers jump in and out of the narrative as

Herzog challenges the integrity of their doctrines; the first-time reader barely clings on to the thread, not of a story, but of the rambling both in Herzog‘s mind and in the letters he writes. Philip Roth notes an existential sense of introspection and mental agitation in his introduction to this novel: ―The long, shifting, fragmented interior monologue of

Herzog seems to have more in common with Gogol‘s ―Diary of a Madman,‖ where the disjointed perception is dictated by the mental state of the central character …‖ (Roth xix).

In the first page of the novel, we are introduced to Herzog who is ambling around the grounds of his dilapidated house in the Berkshires in Western

Massachusetts. He seems weak, colorless, and is obviously confused, but in this low state of affairs amidst the natural beauty and serenity of his surroundings, Herzog senses

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feelings of regeneration as he emerges from what we will discover later as his journey of despair and alienation. From the Berkshires Bellow parks us in front of a small apartment in New York City where Herzog now resides. He is a professor, but at this junction he is not affiliated with any university but teaches adult classes in the evenings.

In a state of emotional and intellectual disarray, he utilizes his time writing imaginary letters. He has been married and divorced twice; he left his first wife Daisy for

Madeleine who later put him out of his house to make room for Herzog‘s best friend,

Valentine Gersbach. He loses connection with his young daughter from his marriage with Madeline, and in a state of mental anguish, he suspects that he is being manipulated by his psychiatrist, his lawyer, and his doctor. He is financially distressed and in his disordered mind he is unable to pursue his academic and scholarly interests; he is bewildered that his tools of reason and intellect cannot diagnose his predicament, but only produce hypotheses upon hypotheses.

Herzog, therefore, solicits more pity than judgment, as he is increasingly cast in the light of victim in a callous world of ugliness, betrayal, and deception. He is victim not because he does not fight back, but simply because he is not equipped for such confrontations; consequently, he fights with himself. This is the conflict that drives the novel; Herzog‘s internal turmoil dominates the novel and as the novel progresses, his disquietude increases to the point that he sees himself as the case of the instructor instructed. It is a paradox that the topic of instruction should be reality; this should be his forte, but reason is no longer sufficient to explain, much less comfort, his painful psyche; and comfort is indeed the security blanket that the lost Herzog yearns for. Thus, his overarching intellectual and rational inclination precludes him from the capacity to

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absorb any intellectual or emotional comfort, as we see him at his most vulnerable.

Herzog represents, to an arguable extent, modern man‘s inability to cry or grieve, especially because he is a victim to his belief that cold intellect and reason can put the world in order. Herzog is built entirely around Herzog‘s recollection of a long journey that recounts the trips, both literal and metaphorical, that have defined his life. This entire novel, with the exception of a few pages at the beginning and end, is a travel into the complex mind of a man who seeks meaning through intellect and synthesis. Brigitte

Scheer-Schazler explains this approach to the novel: ―The narrative perspective is complicated by the fact that Herzog not only remembers but remembers himself remembering, not only thinks but thinks about himself thinking, and it is the content of these secondary memories and reflected-upon ideas that is of the utmost importance for an understanding of Herzog‘s character and predicament‖ (96). Herzog overwhelms outer self with inner self almost at the point of insanity, but of course Bellow does rescue his protagonist, and in the end as Herzog is falling to pieces, Bellow gently lifts him up and brings him home. However, it is material to briefly retrace the trajectory of this prodigal son to truly understand his ascent, fall, and return to the fold.

On a blank page before the contents of her book Saul Bellow Against the Grain,

Ellen Pifer inserts a quotation from Milan Kundera. I think Bellow, were he alive, would agree when I suggest that Kundera‘s reference below very well describes the state of his (Bellow‘s) thinking man, Herzog:

There is a fine Jewish proverb: Man thinks, God laughs. … But why does God laugh at the sight of a man thinking? Because man thinks and the truth escapes him. Because the more men think, the more one man‘s thought diverges from another‘s. And finally, because man is never what he thinks he is.

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I have cited this proverb because it represents the conundrum of the intellectual man as represented by Herzog, the man who believes that profound questions in life can be answered through thought. But the paradox is that the intellectual man of the scientific twentieth-century has been conditioned to perceive his environment from a rational basis, but the universal theme of renewal, regeneration, or rebirth, in most of literature

(especially in the ancient stories), is in direct consequence of some divine intervention or magnanimous force eclipsing the effort of the rational human animal. But we are more concerned, at this point, to examine the process of alienation and distortion of self that haunts our protagonist, for it is the underlying process of this distemper that Bellow seeks to address.

Herzog is an intellectual who is part of the academic establishment; his tools are words, language, and rationality. Prior to leaving his first wife and the university,

Herzog had carved out a solid academic reputation. His thesis was published in German and French, and his first book, which was included in many reading lists, ―… showed by objective research what Christianity was to Romanticism … He had a strong will and talent for polemics, a taste for the philosophy of history‖ (Bellow, Herzog 8). Yet, irrespective of his talent for rationally addressing major issues in philosophy and history, we find him at loose ends when reason fails him as his personal life falls apart.

It is important to note at what point Herzog begins losing his balance:

In marrying Madeleine and resigning from the university (because she thought he should), and digging in at Ludeyville, he showed a taste and talent also for danger and extremism, for heterodoxy, for ordeals, a fatal attraction to the ―City of Destruction.‖ What he planned was a history which really took into account the revolutions and mass convulsions of the twentieth century, accepting, with de Toqueville, the universal and durable development of the equality of conditions, the progress of democracy. (Bellow, Herzog 8)

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Herzog has already lost his most important asset as an individual; he can no longer viably make his own decisions, and in relinquishing this central freedom, he can only define himself through the approval of his wife. In his weakness for the female form, his vanity enslaves him to the temple of Madeleine‘s beauty. Now that he is under the expectations of his very ambitious wife who senses she can also define her intellectuality through his achievements, he then sets the bar way too high, planning to write ―a history which really took into account the revolutions and mass convulsions of the twentieth century.‖ In a state of weakness tethered to Madeleine, he realizes he is being used, as he admits in this letter to a friend: ―I understood Madeleine‘s ambition was to take my place in the learned world. To overcome me. She was reaching her final elevation, as queen of the intellectuals, the castiron bluestocking. And your friend

Herzog writhing under this sharp elegant heel‖ (Bellow, Herzog 84). So like a moth drawn to the flame, intoxicated by Madeleine‘s feminine beauty, and vainly believing he can single-handedly tackle such an encompassing project, we can understand, as

Pifer suggests, that Herzog is fatally drawn to the ―City of Destruction.‖

Herzog, with the twenty-thousand dollars inheritance from his father, buys a dilapidated house at Ludeyville and through hard labor and guidance from home repair manuals, repairs the house himself since he can no longer afford to pay for such services due to Madeleine‘s irresponsible and excessive spending. Herzog had already lost his own will when Madeleine had convinced this urban man that he needed a bucolic landscape for a greater ambition: ―At first she did not want him to be an ordinary professor‖ (Bellow, Herzog 9). So instead of concentrating in synthesizing his work on Romanticism, he discovers that Ludeyville exhausts him: ―His ambitions

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received a sharp check. Hegel was giving him a great deal of trouble … something had gone wrong‖ (Bellow, Herzog 8-9). Herzog may not have been aware of his imminent decline but in abandoning the ―ordinariness‖ and the grounding of his first marriage to

Daisy, he is already separated from his mooring. In addition, his enslavement to

Madeleine‘s agenda, his desire for false vanity (it was Madeleine‘s desire for him to be more than he was), and desiring to synthesize ―revolutions and mass convulsions of the twentieth century,‖ Herzog is already adrift and out of his league.

In his drift from stability that once grounded him, it is necessary to examine the route to Herzog‘s decline and mental disarray especially from the relations of his ex- wife and current wife. Madeleine is no Daisy, and it is important to revisit the position

Daisy occupied as a complement to Herzog: ―Now Daisy had been a very different sort of person – cooler, more regular, a conventional Jewish woman … Daisy was a country girl … She was childishly systematic about things … Stability, symmetry, order, containment were Daisy‘s strength‖ (Bellow, Herzog138). On the other hand,

Madeleine is far from any resemblance of orderly domesticity: ―The kitchen was foul enough to breed rats. Egg yolks dried on the plates, coffee turned green in the cups – toast , cereal, maggots breeding in marrow bones, fruit flies, house flies, dollar bills, postage stamps and trading stamps soaking in the formica counter‖ (Bellow, Herzog

133). Madeleine represents the illusion of the vain man who believes that the acquisition of a beautiful ―trophy‖ woman will add worth to his own being. The domestic disarray, as Herzog realizes, quickly shatters this illusion as he soon perceives

Madeleine as a bitch-goddess.

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From Ludeyville, Madeleine drags her husband and their little daughter to

Chicago, where Herzog secures employment and connections for Valentine Gersbach, his best friend and Madeleine‘s lover. Herzog is ignorant of Madeleine‘s infidelity at this time, but Madeleine, having ensured her own security, puts Herzog out of the house. Even up to this point, the cuckolded Herzog pleads his love to his wife. In humiliation and disgrace, having lost wife, daughter, friendship, profession, and dignity,

Herzog turns to intellect and reason in search of answers, not only to his personal turmoil but queries the alienation of his fellow man. Pifer explains Herzog‘s failure at self-affirmation:

Herzog … hacks his way through a verbal forest of philosophical, scientific, and legal formulations. Through the deterministic thickets of psychoanalysis, historicism and countless fashionable ideologies, he presses forward in search of his soul. The torrent of words, formulations, hypotheses that swell Herzog‘s private monologues and unsent letters … insistently ringing, day and night in his own head like an incubus … has ―impregnated‖ him ―with modern ideas‖ that challenge and ―chop‖ his every attempt at ontic self-affirmation. (115)

Herzog‘s hacking away is an apt metaphor for his struggle, but both reason and intellect in this verbal forest fail to provide the illumination he seeks. Consequently, Herzog becomes more entangled in the undergrowth of countless discourses, and as Kundera had pointed out earlier, ―the more men think, the more one man‘s thought diverges from another‘s.‖ Kundera‘s observation about God laughing at a thinking man such as

Herzog, at his altar of reason, suggests that Herzog‘s intellectual and rational debate precludes him from achieving self-affirmation from an ontological point of view.

Earlier in Chapter 1, I alluded to Bellow‘s interest in the ideal of Romanticism, and it is material to examine this influence as it partly defines Herzog‘s outlook and

Bellow‘s opposing attitude toward the nihilistic consciousness of the Wasteland

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perspective. In Saul Bellow in the 1980s: A Collection of Critical Essays edited by

Gloria L. Cronin and L. H. Goodman, the chapter ―Bellow and English Romanticism‖ provides an insider‘s point of view on Saul Bellow as a product of Romanticism. We see how Bellow superimposes this imprint on Herzog through his (Bellow‘s) own awareness of the earlier ideals of Romanticism: ―A key to this sensibility can be found, however, in his repudiation of what he considers to be ‗the Wasteland outlook‘ of modernism and in his allegiance to the older tradition of early nineteenth-century

English Romanticism‖ (Cronin 67). This Wasteland landscape, for Bellow, represents the belief that much of modern life is spiritually and emotionally arid, but Bellow indicts the literary and philosophical fashionableness for promoting this nihilistic consciousness. In one of his letters, Herzog addresses Shapiro whose scholarly study he was asked to review; here are snippets of this long letter in which Herzog examines and questions the alienation of the modern man:

I think it must have started in that seminar on Proudhon and the long arguments we had, back and forth with old Larson about the decay of the religious foundations of civilization. Are all the traditions used up, the beliefs done for, the consciousness of the masses not ready for the next development? Is this the full crisis of dissolution? …But we must not forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of the intellectuals. The canned sauerkraut of Spengler‘s ―Prussian Socialism,‖ the commonplaces 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 …In the sphere of culture the newly risen educated classes caused confusion between aesthetic and moral judgments. They began with anger over the industrial defilement of landscapes and ended by losing sight of the old-fashioned moral characteristics of the Ruskins. Reaching at last the point of denying the humanity of the industrialized, ―banalized‖ masses. (Bellow, Herzog 82-84)

As much as Herzog implies that the Wasteland outlook is consequential to the fracture with Romanticism, his quarrel is with the underlying pessimism that permeates Western culture and values. Cronin suggests that ―The romanticism of Herzog serves as an 159

antidote to the poison of the ‗Wasteland outlook‘‖ (71). The undertow, however, is alienation, but Bellow refuses to sink with this current. Bellow‘s belief, according to

Cronin, is in alignment with a Romantic such as Wordsworth, whose major theme is the power of the imagination. It is this visioning which can free the alienated individual from the shackles, drudgery, and distractions of life‘s pounding and dehumanizing routine. Thus, for Bellow as well, imagination has the potential to heighten man‘s consciousness in favor of a more humanitarian landscape. Consequently, the recurring epistolary plea of Herzog is to battle the forces of modernism that threaten the very core of humanity; Cronin quotes Bellow: ―[Modernism] is not satisfied simply to dismiss a romantic, outmoded conception of Self. In a spirit of deepest vengefulness it curses it. It hates it. It rends it, annihilates it‖ (68).

The theme of man‘s alienation, whether alienation from self or from community, has been a recurring motif in the history of literature. Over the decades and centuries, the circumstances dictating alienation have differed and evolved, but there seems to be a central undertow that closely resembles Bellow‘s discussion of the primordial man and

Jung‘s idea of the shadow, which I have discussed in Chapter 1. There are several other passages in Herzog that suggest alienation both from Herzog‘s discursive rationality and from the perspective of modern man‘s breach with the values of Romanticism.

Herzog suffers, but the real problem, according to Cronin, looms ahead of him in his inability to cope and survive in this contemporary wasteland. He is in the abyss; both his private and professional lives are ripped at the seams; his idealism fails him, and he is almost at the point of a nervous breakdown. Throughout this novel we have witnessed, not a heroic figure, but often a frail, falling, and even sad man as he tries to

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understand the world that is closing in on him. Of course, like Camus‘ Jean Baptist

Clamence in The Fall, Herzog can be envied for his trophy women and his life style of ease. Nevertheless, this is a novel where the instructor gets instructed in reality, and from beginning to end, our protagonist probes the depths of his psyche as he unravels his anguished past. Herzog, despite the constant undercurrent of anxiety that haunts him, does not fall victim to the nihilism but challenges the perpetrators of this fashionable outlook. Here we sense his disagreement with Heidegger; Herzog‘s biting sarcasm is obvious: ―Dear Doktor Professor Heidegger, I should like to know what you mean by the expression ―the fall into the quotidian.‖ When did this happen? Where were you standing when it happened?‖ (Bellow, Herzog 55). It is interesting that the book he fails to finish ―… was supposed to have ended with a new angle on the modern condition, showing how life could be lived by renewing universal connections; overturning the last of the Romantic errors about the uniqueness of the Self … investigating the social meaning of Nothingness‖ (Bellow, Herzog 39).

Moses E. Herzog never does finish his magnum opus; at the end of the novel he no longer cares about this failure, but like his namesake Moses, he will at least see the

Promised Land. In tracing Herzog‘s journey from contentment through self-destruction,

Bellow, like the Buddha, argues that man does not need the metaphysics defined by intellect and reason, since he can find his place in the community of man. It is significant that as Cronin closes her discussion on Herzog, she alludes to the Buddhist principle that man must first achieve a balance between mind and nature in order to graduate into the society of brotherhood: ―He [Herzog] suggests that mankind can overcome its excessive self-consciousness by achieving a marriage of mind and nature;

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can affirm the worth of the individual but avoid Faustian glorification of the self; and can establish a society based on brotherhood in place of the Hobbesian jungle that exists in contemporary society‖ (72). Hence it is fitting that at the beginning and end of the novel, Bellow returns to the Romantic ideal of nature to suggest a catalyst for healing and renewal, as he positions the bearer of his words in a pastoral setting. This is a landscape where the silence of quietness is prescriptive for alienated souls; in this vein coupled with Cronin‘s observation of ―marriage of mind and nature,‖ we can understand how solitude and quietness soundlessly echo Herzog‘s final words that close the novel: ―At this time he had no messages for anyone. Nothing. Not a single word.‖ It is insightful that Bellow, the Romantic, is also practicing an essential Buddhist principle of silence and solitude when he lays his suffering Herzog in the nurturing harmony of the quiet earth.

The Buddhist Argument

There are several dominant influences that have shaped Bellow‘s work. First,

Bellow cannot escape his religious inculcation; both he and his critics have confirmed the religious psychology inherent in his novels. Besides the impression of the religious imprint, Bellow has also acknowledged that growing up in an Orthodox Jewish home with Yiddish being his first language, learning Hebrew, and his Jewish heritage have been ―the foundations that I draw from in my art ...‖ (qtd. in Goldman 57). Bellow has also acknowledged that there have been several writers who have deeply influenced his writing but, ―I have come back time and again to certain writers without knowing why –

Dostoyevsky, Conrad, Hardy, Dreiser, and Lawrence‖ (Galloway 21). As I have discussed under the section ―Influence of the Romantic Ideology‖ in Chapter 1, Bellow

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also acknowledges his respect and indebtedness to the Romantic Movement. Finally,

Bellow‘s respect for literature as an art and the moral imperative of man has anchored the major themes in his work. His central question – ―What can a good man do?‖ – represents the moral inquiry and ethical dimension in his writing; note the answer to his question in an interview: ―I‘d say you have to struggle with the evil in life. Not with the abstract, but with the evil as you see it and feel it around you. If you abdicate to it – and that‘s so easy to do – then you succumb to the common life, the unenlightened, unillumined life‖ (Cook 18). I have referred to these influences to suggest that in a very general way it can be argued that there are undertones of the Buddhist principle of transcendence connected to the manner in which these influences affect Bellow. For example, Bellow‘s answer to his most important question is given in the negative – ―the unenlightened, unillumined life‖ – this is in the same fashion that the Buddha would have answered: ―The Buddhist precepts are traditionally couched in negative terms, as acts we undertake not to do. But each embodies a positive principle, a state of mind, or an emotion that we need to develop and express as part of our spiritual practice‖

(Pauling 20). Bellow‘s answer proposing that the good man should strive for a path of enlightenment and illumination parallels the essential Buddhist doctrine as Bellow toils to elevate Herzog from his existential quicksand to a plateau of spiritual transcendence.

I will argue in this chapter that Herzog‘s transcendence from his mental anguish is attained in the similar manner as the solitary Buddhist who, as he seeks the enlightened Path, embarks on a long and arduous journey where the highway to spiritual attainment offers exits, rest stops, and entrance ramps. In this same fashion, Herzog travels alone in his disquietude; his suffering is a natural element in Buddhist humanity.

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Of course, the intellectual Herzog does not begin his journey with a wooden staff, but instead he leans on his rational mind as he struggles and suffers on the road to his destination. Herzog‘s long road of suffering until the point that he is relieved of his burdens conforms to the Buddhist doctrine that all life is suffering, that there are causes for this suffering, and that there is finally an end to suffering. It is mostly during

Herzog‘s solitary moments that we become aware of his pain and struggle, as he tries to understand the undercurrents of his instability. Herzog‘s journey of transformation is internal; like the Buddhist, he perceives reality from an inner dimension. The forthcoming sections of this chapter will present various scenarios linking Herzog to a

Buddhist frame of mind; my argument for these Buddhist allusions will be restricted to a close reading of Herzog, since I am not aware of any scholar who has written on any

Buddhist connection in Bellow‘s work.

A Preface to Herzog’s Buddhist Journey

Before Herzog embarks on his journey that runs parallel to certain lanes of the

Buddhist Path, we need to recap a brief overview of the salient points of Buddhism as they relate to a transcendent journey. Buddhism does not categorically denounce the existence of God nor does it confirm such an entity, and since there is an absence of hell or heaven, transcendence is limited to and by human experiences and realities. In view of this neutrality, Buddhism advocates that man‘s salvation lies in deciphering and rewiring his existence as it relates to his personal harmony vis-à-vis the larger harmony both within nature and community. From this point of view that ―Buddhism starts rather from an experience of the human condition, an intuition concerning its essential character, and an aspiration to transcend it‖ (Theodore deBarry xviii-xix), we can argue

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that Herzog is practicing a Buddhist principle by virtue of his belief that he can define, falsely or not, his human condition through intellectual and rational investigation.

To reinforce this concept of Buddhist suffering as a metaphorical journey and the extent that Herzog travels the Path, I reference Harvey again as he quotes the

Buddha on what constitutes suffering (dukkha): ―(i) Birth is dukkha, ageing is dukkha, sickness is dukkha, death is dukkha; (ii) sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are dukkha; and (iii) association with what one dislikes is dukkha, separation from what one likes is dukkha, not to get what one wants is dukkha‖ (qtd. in Harvey 47-48). These are the afflictions that plague Herzog throughout the novel, and to make matters worse, his state of anxiety and turmoil is compounded by the fact that his intellectual and rational constructions provide weak fortifications against the onslaught of suffering inherently built into life. The overall Buddhist emphasis is not only on the concept of ―arriving,‖

(though Nirvana is the ultimate aim), but of man‘s deliberation to confront the innate suffering of life as expounded by the Buddha in his First Holy Truth; it is from this realization and deliberation that the Buddhist disciple embarks on his journey. The devout Buddhist can expect to arrive at Nirvana, but not all travelers ascend this final plateau; nevertheless, adherents enjoy the rewards of the journey. We will see that

Herzog, by far, remains a traveler as most Buddhists are. As we ride with Herzog as he takes off on his journey to transcendence, we must bear in mind that this travel is not in real time, but in typical Bellow fashion, occurs as reflections in the narrative and thus lacks a linear track.

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Herzog’s Buddhist Detour: The Road to Suffering

The beginning of Herzog‘s journey begins in a cab in New York City; he is on his way to Grand Central Station where he will join a train heading to the Vineyard on the coast of Massachusetts where he anticipates the healing water of the Atlantic will soothe his soul. He is visiting Libbie, an old friend who is newly married; this is a friendship outside of sex so Herzog believes he will be comfortable resting in Libbie‘s house. As he travels in the cab, Herzog reflects on the detours and pit stops of his life in an effort to understand the sources of his misery. This mode of deep and painful reflection is a recurring activity during Herzog‘s many journeys in the novel; this need for inner reflection as it identifies the basis for Herzog‘s suffering is also part of the

Buddhist psychology of healing that relies on meditative introspection. Since the narrative starts from the end, we are already in the mind of Herzog. Like his eldest brother Joseph in Dangling Man who had declared decades earlier that he was not going to remain silent like the hardboiled, but talk about his emotions, in the same vein

Herzog saddles his reader with his grief. However, Herzog is penitent as he acknowledges his transgression: ―What he was about to suffer, he deserved; he had sinned long and hard; he had earned it. This was it‖ (Bellow, Herzog 11).

It is evident that Herzog is at a breaking point as he takes stock of himself:

―Still, Herzog considered, he did look terrible, caved-in; he was losing more hair, and this rapid deterioration he considered to be a surrender to Madeleine and Gersbach, her lover, and to all his enemies‖ (Bellow, Herzog 21-22). Even at this point of near- collapse, Herzog worries about his hair loss, and we will see later how his vanity contributes further to his mental turmoil. In this frame of mind he seeks, like a

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Buddhist, the comfort and solitude of a quiet horizon to calm his painful consciousness.

But what is his condition that frightens him? Even as he passively sits as a passenger,

Herzog holds on to the hanging strap in the cab for support, as he reflects on his inner turmoil:

Somehow he felt himself part of it all – in the rooms, in the stores, cellars [NYC] – and at the same time he sensed the danger of these multiple excitements … He was overstimulated. He had to calm down these overstrained galloping nerves, put out the murky fire inside … His duty was to live … This was why he was running from the city now, overheated, eyes smarting. He was getting away from all burdens, practical questions … There were times when you wanted to creep into a hiding, like an animal. (Bellow, Herzog 31)

Herzog‘s desire to escape the concrete jungle and the masses in search for the calmness of solitude has been a staple Buddhist theme: ―In solitude that few enjoy, let him find his joy supreme: free from possessions, free from desires, and free from whatever may darken his mind‖ (The Dhammapada 46:6:88). Herzog‘s ―murky fire inside‖ is in direct consequence to the incessant clamor raging in his mind as he battles with reason and intellect to synthesize both his inner and outer worlds. Herzog is not only literally running away from the city and its multitude of noises and distractions, but he is also escaping his ―overheated‖ mind which is almost at the point of imploding. He senses a spiritual death but at the same time recognizes the larger impulse of life: ―His duty was to live.‖

Herzog can be simplistically summarized as the story of an intellectual man in search of God through reason and intellect but fails in this quest since Bellow‘s overall theme is that such divinity cannot be perceived through the science of reason. I fully support Bellow‘s theme, but Herzog fails as well because he is so preoccupied with self that he cannot connect with the larger community so essential to his spiritual growth; he

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fails too because he technically sins as a human being. However, the overall Buddhist doctrine does not label these infractions as failures or sins but embraces them naturally as part of the overall idea that the life‘s journey is littered with suffering. We can see this cause and effect of suffering as Herzog, in his own words, indicts himself as he questions his character:

What sort of character was it? Well, in the modern vocabulary, it was narcissistic; it was masochistic; it was anachronistic. His clinical picture was depressive … Returning to his self-examination, he admitted that he had been a bad husband – twice. Daisy, his first wife, he had treated miserably … To his son and his daughter he was a loving but bad father. To his own parents, he had been an ungrateful child. To his country, an indifferent citizen. To his brothers and his sister, affectionate but remote. With friends, an egotist. With love, lazy. With brightness, dull. With power, passive. With his own soul, evasive. (Bellow, Herzog 6-7)

Here is a clear picture of the intellectual who is the quintessential outside observer unable to commit himself to others. Herzog cannot commit to others because he cannot commit to himself, as Bellow aptly points this out: ―With his own soul, evasive.‖

Herzog‘s center is dominated by his ego and for this sin of pride he is unable to share in the collective essence of the larger community because he has nothing to give since he gives all to himself. Consequently, Herzog‘s actions are all in line with the Buddhist precept that he must suffer, and since Herzog recognizes ―His duty was to live,‖ he is already in the second Buddhist phase that seeks meaning in suffering. Dutton‘s point of view can be interpreted as the Buddhist premise on suffering from which one emerges to another level:

Bellow develops this theme of the socially maladjusted intellectual or humanist by projecting Herzog through a series of experiences that culminate in purging his mind of distractions. These experiences, for the most part, consist of confrontations with characters who act out their roles in the forms of these distractions: they are symbols of forces that lead Herzog into this confused state.

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These confrontations, which occur throughout the novel, serve as appropriately placed stepping stones to the next level of meaning. (120-121)

Bellow‘s process of submerging Herzog in these confrontations, as they occur throughout the novel, confirms the Buddhist precept that life is suffering and that these various sufferings are the prerequisite ―stepping stones‖ required to move away from the vanity of self into the embrace of a larger community. Herzog perceives his outer world through the inner lens of his ego, and for Bellow to rescue his protagonist from this center of self, he must demolish Herzog‘s vanity. And so Herzog‘s suffering increases when his vanity is repeatedly deflated: his second wife abandons him for his best friend; he is belittled and even used by his doctor, lawyer, and psychiatrist; he is financially in distress; he fails academically, and he is, consequently, pitied by his friends and family. Herzog, of course does not realize this, but he is just another spoke in the Buddhist wheel of suffering; these are the karmic travails Herzog must endure in order to glimpse the light of Nirvana.

I must point out, at this junction, that Buddhism has been accused of being pessimistic in its emphasis on suffering. I reject this perception as it relates to Herzog‘s state of affairs and his desire to transcend his mental turmoil. I suggest Bellow is aware that salvation is fleeting and like the Jew who knows a thing or two about suffering, he has Sandor reminding Herzog about this ancient emotion: ―When you suffer, you really suffer. You are a real genuine old Jewish type that digs the emotions. I will give you that. I understand it. I grew up on Sangamon Street, remember, when a Jew was still a

Jew. I know about suffering – we are on the same identical network‖ (Bellow, Herzog

93). It is imperative, then, to really closely examine the Buddhist role of suffering, the reward of suffering, and the tenuousness of salvation: 169

Buddhism‘s reply is that the transcending of suffering requires a fully realistic assessment of its pervasive presence in life. One must accept one‘s ‗ill‘ if a cure is to be possible: ignoring the problem only makes it worse. The path to the end of suffering, moreover, is one in which the deep calm and joy of devotion and mediation play an important part. Buddhism, then, does not deny the existence of happiness in the world – it provides ways of increasing it – but it does emphasize that all forms of happiness (bar that of Nibbana) do not last. Sooner or later they slip through one‘s fingers and leave an aftertaste of loss and longing. In this way, even happiness is seen as a dukkha. (Harvey 48)

Herzog, even with his sharp tools of intellect and reason, lacks a coherent assessment and control of the realities and the undercurrents that propel his misery. He does, however, like any suffering addict, admit his illness and is fully cognizant that the continuation of his suffering can harm him beyond repair. But, of course, Bellow is already opening a Buddhist window for Herzog when he prescribes the calmness and solitude of nature at the Vineyard as the antidote to his anxiety and turmoil. I explore this foray into nature under my forthcoming heading ―Ludeyville: Herzog‘s Buddhist

Ashram.‖ Bellow, in battling the Wasteland consciousness, is also straddling a thin line maintaining a balance between suffering and salvation. Herzog, in one of his letters does allude to this dichotomy when he admits, ―I know that my suffering, if I may speak of it, has often been like that, a more extended form of life, a striving for true wakefulness and an antidote to illusion‖ (Bellow, Herzog 345). Bellow is cognizant that suffering is the more defining human condition, and even as Herzog finds his moments of salvation, Bellow, in his typical penchant for paradox, yokes him back to this ancient dance of suffering: ―When a man‘s breast feels like a cage from which all the dark birds have flown – he is free, he is light. And he longs have his vultures back. He wants his customary struggles, his nameless, empty works, his anger, his afflictions and his sins‖

(Bellow, Herzog 185).

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We need to ask at this point: is Bellow somehow suggesting that there is joy in suffering? As a Jew in his time and place, he is certainly qualified to instruct on suffering but I believe that in addition to his yarmulke, Bellow wears the saffron robe of the Buddhist who understands, and to some degree, accepts his lot of suffering. We see this acceptance of suffering when Herzog reminisces about the time his father came home beaten and robbed and no one in the family even spoke of fighting back. In this same sense this is the Buddhist dukkha that the Herzogs experience; this is the cosmic scheme that authenticates the Buddhist doctrine that such suffering, even though its origin stems from an immoral justification, is not to be battled but to be accepted with equanimity. Herzog reflects on this sense of destiny: ―So we had a great schooling in grief. I still know these cries of the soul. They lie in the breast, and in the throat. The mouth wants to open wide and let them out. But all these are antiquities – yes, Jewish antiquities originating in the Bible, in a Biblical sense of personal experience and destiny‖ (Bellow, Herzog 162). Further in the novel, Herzog ponders the melancholy face of his mother as compared to his face: ―Yes, it reflected the deep experience of a race; its attitude toward happiness and toward mortality … this splendid face [Herzog‘s] showed the responses of his mother‘s finest nerves to the greatness of life, rich in sorrow, in death‖ (Bellow, Herzog 252). Herzog also references Kierkegaard on the need for suffering: ―For when will we civilized beings become really serious? Said

Kierkegaard. Only when we have known hell through and through‖ (qtd. in Bellow,

Herzog165). In my attempt to justify Buddhist allusion of suffering in Herzog, I wish to state that I am not suggesting a Judaic valorizing of suffering as though this is something that Jews seek. Also, it is not my intention to suggest that Jewish

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victimization over the centuries is to be attributed to fate which implies such suffering is acceptable.

Herzog, like many of Bellow‘s other protagonists, is quite familiar with

Kierkegaard‘s passage through hell; his heritage as a Jew already defines the trajectory of his suffering though the Buddhist argues that such anguish is part and parcel of the overall scheme in life. However, this embrace of suffering is not to be construed as a permanent state of affairs; in the same manner Bellow prepares Herzog for the warmer embrace of community after having him suffer through his journey, similarly, the

Buddhist arrives at the community of man having confronted his suffering. Herzog, as a

Jew, understands the correlation between suffering and surviving; in the same manner, the Buddhist works through his suffering in quest for the lightness of being. I again refer to Goldman who points out this balance between suffering and survival from a

Jewish perspective:

One of the most enigmatic aspects of the Jewish people is its ability – despite pogroms, massacres, and holocausts – to survive. This tenacious clinging to life results from viewing life as a gift from God which must be preserved at all costs. Bellow‘s novels are a form of survivor literature, testimonials to life. Bellow‘s protagonists opt for life. Hounded by terrifying beasts, either of the soul or of the flesh, either Spirits of the Alternative, reality instructors, bitchy women, black thieves, or WASP demons, they nevertheless overcome such traumas and move on with their lives. (54)

It can be argued that Herzog is the most representative sufferer in Bellow‘s oeuvre.

Throughout the novel, we travel with an anti-hero who consistently affects us with a heavy heart. It is quite obvious that with all his education, his success as an academic author, his respected position at the university, beautiful and sensuous women in his life, and his good physical health, Herzog is trapped in a cycle of internal anguish that continually eclipses all of these good things in his life. From page after page, Herzog 172

suffers as he tenaciously clings to life; to a great extent he is experiencing the natural disharmonies according to the essential Buddhist law which decrees that all life is suffering.

Herzog the Good and Peaceful Buddhist

In a very in-between-the-lines approach, Bellow is evoking the Buddhist theme of peace over anger and wrath. Herzog is not the hardboiled character, and even though his adulterous activity led to his separation from his first wife and son, in the end he elicits sympathy more than disdain. For all his intellectual worth, Herzog can be seen as a Charlie Brown character; he is a loser in a sad way. He fails in love, friendship, career, fatherhood, but most of all he is aware that he fails himself. But for all his faults, there is nothing conniving or evil in Herzog and so he evokes pity. Herzog is Bellow‘s humanist suffering in a brutal world; in a Buddhist fashion he does not fight back but accepts his suffering and never lowers himself to the standards of those that demean him. In a sense Herzog is honoring this Buddhist directive: ―Watch for anger of words: let your words be self-controlled. Hurt not with words, but use your words well‖ (The

Dhammapada 68:17:232). In all of his conversations with his friends, family, and acquaintances, and even in his several letters, Herzog is always respectful and chooses his words with consideration for the other person. In a classic mold, Bellow has constructed Herzog out of Buddhist clay; he is a man of peace and compassion and in a world driven by self-interest, Herzog is on loose footing. In a very profound way,

Herzog, for all his infractions and failures, represents the good of mankind in opposition to the evil in the world; he is the instrument and agency in Bellow‘s larger theme of how a peaceful man should live. Herzog answers his call to duty in line with Bellow‘s

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short answer to his central question: ―I‘d say you have to struggle with the evil in life‖

(qtd. in Cook 18). Thus, in an indirect way, Bellow is utilizing the good in Herzog as his weapon against evil in the same fashion as this Buddhist precept: ―Overcome anger by peacefulness; overcome evil by good. Overcome the mean by generosity; and the man who lies by truth‖ (The Dhammapada 68:17:223). Herzog, as an instrument of good, is cast in the role of innocent (―suffer the innocent‖) as he drifts in a world that goes against his essential grain. Here is Robert Dutton‘s observation of Herzog the humanist:

Herzog, the innocent, has lost himself in deep woods; with a full heart he has wandered out of his element and has caught the full force of a reality that challenges his sanity. The conflict is Herzog versus the world and its ugliness. Time and again, Bellow‘s protagonist finds himself face to face with walls of brute fact, as when he learns of the deceptions of Madeleine and her mother, or when he discovers the affair between Gersbach and his wife, or again in the courtroom scene when as a casual observer he leaves the room in a sickened state because of his insight into man‘s inhumanity and into the callous workings of the law. (115)

Herzog suffers not so much for his own transgressions, but the Buddhist humanity in him tears at his heart when he is forced to confront a virulent world bent on the abdication of the moral impulses that threaten the very fabric of man‘s peaceful existence. Buddhism, as a philosophy on life, instructs that man has the potential to advance from his lower self to a higher plateau based on three essential principles: insight and wisdom (prajna), morality and ethics, (sila), and meditation and concentration (samadhi). These three areas are the overarching principles that govern the Buddha‘s Noble Eightfold Path which determine the larger moral inclination. Thus,

―morality, a morally good life, presupposes insight, an understanding in what is really important in and about life. But in order to awaken, deepen and complete such insight

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and make moral virtue flow from one‘s heart, meditation is needed‖ (Schmidt-Leukel

38). I suggest that Herzog is no stranger to this essential meditation; his life of constant introspection, examining, analyzing, and formulating syntheses is the process by which he, like the Buddhist, awakens his consciousness so that moral virtue can flow from his heart. Bellow, the man of emotions, understands the connection between moral virtue and the emotional pull of the heart; consequently, Herzog‘s gravitation, respect, and tolerance for all that is good brings him closer to the Buddhist concept that fights evil not with evil but with good.

From a Buddhist point of view, Herzog certainly transgresses, but I believe that

Bellow utilizes the basic foundation of this Buddhist precept: ―At its simplest level it

[Buddhism] asks us wherever possible to refrain from violence or other actions that would physically hurt living beings. It also asks us to refrain from harming beings in a mental or spiritual way …‖ (Pauling 22). Similarly, Herzog, within his full rights to demand that Madeleine should leave the house, momentarily contemplates violence before returning to a Buddhist perspective:

What if he had knocked her down, clutched her hair, dragged her screaming … flogged her … He rejected this mental violence … [and instead reasons] … But suppose even that he had told her to leave the house. After all, it was his house. If she couldn‘t live with him, why didn‘t she leave? … Only it had never entered Herzog‘s mind that, in that parlor of flashing bottles, to stand his ground. He still thought perhaps that he could win on the ground of being, after all, Moses – Moses Elkanah Herzog – a good man, and Madeleine‘s benefactor. He had done everything for her – everything! (Bellow, Herzog 12-13)

Herzog, however, rejects violence and his rightful and legal option in demanding

Madeleine leave his house, because he truly sees himself as a good man, and like the closet Buddhist he is, Herzog is compassionate. His compassion hinges not only on his love for his wife and for the welfare of his daughter, but on his natural inclination to the 175

Buddhist principle of accommodation, respect, and tolerance for humanity. The

Tibetans‘ peaceful struggle for their autonomy in face of the Chinese imperialistic power stands as an example of this ancient Buddhist doctrine that promotes peaceful negotiation over angry confrontation. We see Herzog in this frame of mind as he listens calmly, even as his world is falling apart, to the dictate of his morally unjust wife that he should leave the house. He does not explode (but then Bellow‘s men do not explode but implode), but though deeply hurt, he returns to the task of putting up the storm windows. He is outside working on the window, and the metaphor suggests that he will always be ―outside‖ and from now on he will be only allowed glimpses into a life that now ―shutters‖ him out. Concurrently, he withstands the potential violence churning

"inside" by symbolically sealing it off by establishing preventative and protective

"storm windows.‖

Ludeyville: Herzog’s Buddhist Ashram

Before I argue that Ludeyville represents a Buddhist ashram in Herzog, I must point out that some critics have found Bellow‘s pastoral closure to be problematic. It is clear in the closing pages of the novel that Herzog is a man transformed; the despair that has haunted him has fallen like dead leaves to sprout an inner peace that glows with joy.

In this idyllic frame, Herzog ―washes his hands of the two diseases with which society – and Herzog – are infected: the romantic glorification of the self and the devaluation of the self‖ (Clayton 227). In his letter to Nietzsche, Herzog rejects Nietzsche‘s celebration of the Dionysian concept of indulgence in evil and pain, but suggests that the true celebration of life can be experienced in context with man‘s relation to nature. Herzog tells Nietzsche, ―Nature (itself) and I alone together, in the Berkshires, and this is my

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chance to understand … I send you greetings from this mere border of grassy temporal light, and wish you happiness, wherever you are. Yours, under the veil of Maya,

M.E.H.‖ (Bellow, Herzog 347-348).

It is understandable that critics should question this simplistic pastoral setting as the catalyst for the very urban Herzog whose life has been defined by his intellectual and rational instruction. Forest Reid, in his essay, ―Herzog: A Review,‖ questions this closure: ―But the question remains: is the ending an oversimplification? Is it really adequate to the weight and density of violence of the world Herzog has come from? …

Another thought occurs: is the ending excessively pastoral?‖ (204). Jonathan Wilson, in his On Bellow’s Planet: Readings from the Dark Side, echoes a larger consensus which argues that Bellow‘s theme of community is lacking in this bucolic setting where

Herzog is portrayed at his happiest: ―Herzog is quite happy to be terminally estranged from the world he inhabits – a fact that calls into question the sincerity of his constant expressions of communal yearning and that undermines the supposedly humanistic version that critics have discovered in so many Bellow novels‖ (137). It is John

Clayton, however, who severely indicts Bellow‘s closing picture of Herzog as a holy man in nature: ―He is a child, he is a guru in the woods – not the Jewish family man. If

Bellow has attempted in Herzog to bridge the gap between the isolated self and society, he has not succeeded. Herzog is a man communing with God and nature, not with men‖

(227). Nevertheless, as much as I respect these views from Reid, Wilson, and Clayton, I argue that Bellow understands the deeper ramifications which determine that personal salvation must first be achieved before man can graduate into the larger community.

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Thus, my argument is that Ludeyville, as a pastoral retreat, serves as a Buddhist platform from which Herzog will redefine himself into his extended community.

Herzog transcends into a Buddhist frame of mind, both from a sentient and

―place‖ perspective, when he returns to Ludeyville; he is nowhere close to Nirvana, but it is obvious that he sees the world of living things and place from a Buddhist perspective. He is now closer to and respectful of the land that Buddhists revere as

Mother Earth. Harvey references a Zen painting to representatively reflect the harmony between humans and their natural landscape: ―Human life is shown harmoniously blending in with nature and its rhythms, in accordance with the Zen ideal. In the foreground, the asymmetric ruggedness of trees and rocks emphasizes naturalness, while the mid-ground is much empty space, suggesting the mysterious emptiness from which everything emerges‖ (279). Herzog‘s desolate Ludeyville, far away from the noise of industrial noise, evokes this mysterious emptiness. So, in another cab ride in his larger journey, Herzog comes home to a space and place that Buddhists see as holy.

For a Buddhist, place as dwelling in nature plays a significant and spiritual role in the sense that the Buddhist, in his respect and tolerance for all living beings, does not kill any animal for food, but shares the earth with all other sentient beings, thus place for living and sharing life is deemed sacred. I believe that Bellow would certainly agree with Edward Casey who, in The Fate of Place, links this idea of abode with the primordial by suggesting that the fate and mystery of things owe much to place as

―place configures and situates the face of the deep Dark‖ (Casey 21). There is a religious connotation associated with place long before it evolved into space, and Casey cites Heidegger who sees place as ―the closeness, the intimacy, of things as they are

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gathered, and themselves actively gather, in a particular place. To be in a place is to be near whatever else is in that place … What more? In a word: dwelling. For dwelling is always dwelling in nearness‖ (qtd. in Casey 281). This nearness, from a Buddhist point of view, is the embrace of nature as a prerequisite for a higher spiritual grounding: this is the essential harmony between man and nature. Bellow alludes to this harmony in one of his interviews, when he answers a question on emotional connection: ―I suppose I am thinking of something that Goethe said – I can‘t remember it literally – but it is something like the following: that a man is happy when for everything inside him there is something outside to correspond‖ (Roudane 78).

I am not arguing that Herzog has fully transformed into a Buddhist, (Bellow is too Jewish for that,) but he is definitely walking the Buddhist Path as he becomes aware of his piece of earth at Ludeyville. There is a sense of a Buddhist awakening as Herzog arrives at his dwelling in this bucolic setting far away from the bustle and noise of the city. The metaphors of healing, transformation, and rest bloom in the following passage as Herzog becomes, like the Zen Buddhist, one with his surrounding; Ludeyville is his ashram:

The house was two miles beyond the village, in the hills. Beautiful, sparkling summer weather in the Berkshires, the air light, the streams quick, the woods dense, the green new. As for birds, Herzog‘s acres seemed to have become a sanctuary. Wrens nested under the ornamental scrolls of the porch. The giant elm was not quite dead, and the orioles lived in it still. Herzog had the driver stop in the mossy roadway, boulder lined. He couldn‘t be sure the house was approachable. But no fallen trees has blocked the path … and here (his heart trembled) the house rose out of weeds, vines, trees, and blossoms … What a struggle I waged! – left-handed but fierce. But enough of that – here I am. Hineni! How marvelously beautiful it is today. He stopped in the overgrown yard, shut his eyes in the sun, against flashes of crimson, and drew in the odors of catalpa-bells, soil, honeysuckle, wild onions, and herbs. Either deer or lovers had lain in this grass near the elm, for it was flattened. (Bellow, Herzog 336- 337) 179

We see, from Buddhist lens, the vision of nature symbolizing movement, growth, rejuvenation, nurturing, and procreation all within the sanctuary of solitude so essential to the Buddhist journey. Herzog has certainly arrived at a deeper place that mystics, especially of the Buddhist sort, have referred to as the abode, dwelling, or sanctuary from which the human spirit can alight and rest. Far away from the noise, concrete, steel and the masses, Herzog is experiencing the joy of nature. Normann Nilsen refers to

Herzog‘s final retreat not dissimilar to a Buddhist experiencing a primordial connection to nature. In the deep solitude of Ludeyville, Herzog is sleeping in a hammock in his garden and at 5 AM, he ―tentatively experiences a mystic vision of nature as symbol of the spirit: ―the stars were near like spiritual bodies,‖ and though he knows they consist of heat and atoms, they appear ―eloquent‖ to him‖ (Nilsen 174). This imagery of the urban intellectual Jew lying in a hammock far away from his deadbolt security is almost comedic, but of course we are in Bellow‘s world. However, comedy or not, this setting of being under the stars in communion with nature is a Buddhist staple; we must remember that the Buddha spent years travelling in the forest and finally under a Bodhi tree under the stars ―he entered the first jhana, and then gradually deepened his state of concentrated calm till he reached the fourth jhana, a state of great equanimity, mental brightness and purity‖ (Harvey 21). Herzog is definitely no Buddha but, as I had pointed our earlier, Bellow is aware that salvation is fleeting but, nonetheless, he allows

Herzog to experience the brightness of ―spiritual bodies.‖ Even Bellow admits that

Herzog‘s blissful state is indicative of a spiritual arrival, not in a synagogue, but like the

Buddha, under a tree when Herzog exclaims in Hebrew, ―Hineni!‖ – ―here I am‖ – the

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response of Abraham and other biblical patriarchs when God calls on them to do something important.

Sentient Beings: Herzog the Compassionate

No other philosophy, doctrine, or religion has so strenuously advocated the rights of all sentient beings as Buddhism has. Under ―Right Action‖ which is the fourth of the Noble Eightfold Path, there are five precepts; the first is to refrain from harming and taking any life. Of course there are exceptions to this rule where, for example, a venomous snake will be killed if it is deemed a danger. Under ―Right Livelihood,‖ the

Buddha firmly prohibits his followers from the occupations of raising animals for slaughter, working in meat production, producing and dealing in weaponry. From a

Buddhist point of view, all life is dear and honoring this precept is vital in achieving that ultimate harmony between self and the rest of nature: ―The Buddhist ideal of being a friend to the world finds its strongest expression in the ideal of the bodhisattwa –

Sanskrit for a being whose essence is Enlightenment‖ (Pauling 22). This precept, highest in the hierarchy, clearly defines its aim: ―The first precept, regarded as the most important, is the resolution not to kill or injure any human, animal, bird, fish or insect‖

(Harvey 202). Herzog, to some degree, has attained this level of Buddhist enlightenment when he finally arrives, at the last leg of his journey, at his refuge at

Ludeyville. In harmony with the rest of nature, his consciousness is now respectful and tolerant of the other inhabitants who share his home. The Buddhist in Herzog realizes that home is no longer strictly demarcated by human boundaries, as we witness his compassion for the other living creatures in the place that is now his dwelling.

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In the second page of the novel, we recoil at Herzog‘s insanitary eating habit as he ―breaks‖ bread with a rat at Ludeyville: ―A rat chewed into a package of bread, leaving the shape of its body in the layers of slices. Herzog ate the other half of the loaf spread with jam. He could share with rats too‖ (Bellow, Herzog 4). I suggest that

Bellow is not only preparing Herzog for the community of men but he is instructing his creation in the community of the larger world of sentient beings. We witness this morphing of consciousness from internal to external as Herzog becomes cognizant of an awareness teeming with the sounds and sights of nature alive:

All the while, one corner of his mind remained opened to the external world. He heard the crows in the morning. Their harsh call was delicious. He heard the thrushes at dusk. At night there was the barn owl. When he walked in the garden, excited by a mental letter, he saw roses winding about the rain spout; or mulberries – birds gorging in the mulberry tree. The days were hot, the evenings flushed and dusty. He looked keenly at everything but he felt half-blind. (Bellow, Herzog 4)

Herzog, in this state of elevated consciousness begins to clearly see and hear a world that never existed in his mind previously prone to the exigencies of self; the turbulent noise of his constant war facing off intellect and reason against heart and emotions had previously deafened him to any such outside beauty. But why does Bellow suggest that even with such a keen perception that Herzog is half-blind? I suggest that Bellow must shield Herzog, the Jew, from the blinding ―light‖ of full grace, knowing full well that such awareness is restricted to the domain of God only. In addition, we must not forget that in Bellow‘s world transcendence is the embrace of the ordinary as Herzog mentions in his letter to the Monsignor: ―The strength of man‘s virtue or spiritual capacity [is] measured by his ordinary life‖ (Bellow, Herzog: Text 106). Although he is far from full salvation, his rest stop at Ludeyville can be considered as a Buddhist plateau inclining

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toward Nirvana. Now that he has endured his suffering to this point and having admitted at the very end of the novel that, ―At this time he had no messages for anyone.

Nothing. Not a single word‖ (Bellow, Herzog 371), Herzog frees himself from the turmoil of his mental and intellectual battles. Herzog surrenders; he is out of ammunition; there is not even one word left in his mental magazine. (Silence and emptiness are important concepts in the Buddhist journey of transcendence and I will explore these ideas later.)

Herzog has not only freed himself from his intellectual and mental cacophony, but in his Buddhist awareness of contentment, he realizes has also emancipated himself from the chain of his second marriage and from his sensual bondage to Madeleine.

Herzog‘s new awareness opens his mind to the rest of life that is far more meaningful than the abstract complexities borne out of intellect and reason. For the first time in his adult life, he is grounded in a Buddhist calmness of solitude (both internal and external) that provides him with that cathartic experience that earthly life is communal not only with his fellow man but in sharing his bread with a rat.

Herzog continues to display kindness and tolerance to the other living creatures in his house. In the first afternoon before he builds a fire (the electricity had to be reconnected), he builds a draft first believing that ―Birds or squirrels might have nested in the flues. But then he remembered that he had climbed out of the roof to fasten wire mesh over the chimneys‖ (Bellow, Herzog 337). Herzog‘s respect for the life and possible suffering of the birds and squirrels is taken to another level when he displays a

Buddhist respect for insects as well. As he is building the fire, ―The old bark dropped away and disclosed the work of insects underneath – grubs, ants, long-legged spiders

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ran away. He gave them every opportunity to escape‖ (Bellow, Herzog 338). As

Herzog tours the house, he discovers the skeletons of birds in the toilet bowl; he figures that the birds had nested in the dry bowl but died when the lid had fallen. Herzog grieves thinking how the birds must have suffered before dying: ―He looked grimly in, his heart aching somewhat at this accident‖ (Bellow, Herzog 340). He next discovers owls in his bedroom and again, ―He gave them every opportunity to escape, and when they were gone, looked for a nest‖ (Bellow, Herzog 340). Herzog does find the nest in a light fixture over the bed and ―Unwilling to disturb these flat-faced little creatures,

Herzog pulled the mattress of his marriage bed into June‘s room. He opened more windows, and the sun and country air at once entered. He was surprised to feel such contentment‖ (Bellow, Herzog 340). Herzog alludes to this contentment as being free from Madeleine, but I suggest that his respect and awareness that all life has value complements his contentment. As a budding Buddhist gardener of life, he is now beginning to see the world through the prism of tending and nurturing life outside of his own; this is a transcendent point in Herzog‘s consciousness. Thus, Herzog experiences contentment because he is returning to Bellow‘s primordial landscape where he is at one with the throbbing beat of nature. Juan Mascaro hints at this reconnection from a

Buddhist perspective: ―It is a feeling that there is a division in us, a separation from something infinite with which we want to be reunited, because we are like a lost child who is crying in the dark for his home‖ (12). Herzog can dry his tears; in his emerging respect, tolerance, and compassion for sentient beings, nature embraces him in his new home filled with light and the noises of life. In a very quiet way, Herzog is earning the silent respect of the Buddha who instructs that, ―A man is not a great man because he is

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a warrior and kills other men; but because he hurts not any living being he in truth is called a great man‖ (The Dhammapada 73:19:270).

Buddhist Silence and Emptiness

I have always been intrigued by the opening and closing words of an author. It is my theory that these opening thoughts, commentaries, or observations hinge the essence of the text to come, and at the end, those closing words are the most chosen to reflect the finality of that very essence hinted at the beginning. Herzog begins from the end and ends full cycle back at the beginning. We see this connection in the opening one-line paragraph: ―If I am out of my mind, it‘s all right with me, thought Moses Herzog‖

(Bellow, Herzog 3) to the closing words, ―At this time he had no messages for anyone.

Nothing. Not a single word‖ (Bellow, Herzog 371). On page 343, Herzog returns to the same frame of mind in the beginning when he acknowledges again, ―But if I am out of my mind, it‘s all right with me.‖ I propose that Bellow‘s essence mined from these few opening and closing words suggests that Herzog, in the classic Buddhist tradition, has emptied his mind and in this clearing he has attained a settling of the mind. Thus,

Bellow‘s desire to essentially free Herzog from his mental entanglement and anguish to a state of emptiness by locating him in the solitude of the Berkshires parallels the

Buddhist theme of silence and emptiness. ―I am out of my mind‖ is not to be understood in today‘s context of being on the crazy side, but rather Herzog is literally emptying his mind in Buddhist fashion so he may be able to experience the healing power of silence.

The fact that Herzog does not have ―a single word‖ for anyone also implies a Buddhist state of ―nothingness.‖

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In order to understand Herzog‘s arrival at this Buddhist rest stop at his ashram in the mountains of Massachusetts, we need to revisit Herzog as Bellow‘s manifestation of a man tortured by forces seemingly beyond his control. Herzog is Bellow‘s most representative creation of the man who believes that his essential problems of life can be addressed and solved through the science of intellect and reason, the cold instruments of the mind. Herzog, as much as he represents the quintessential modern man, is also that ancient being troubled by the anxieties of existence:

Herzog as a universal figure represents … a struggle that has been operative since man‘s beginnings. This struggle is particularly evident today when, owing to all kinds of developmental knowledge and to a runaway population, man seems to be especially subjected to a thwarting, masochistic, disintegrative self- examination that often leaves him as nothing more substantial than a few cents worth of chemicals, which are already a drug on the market. Specifically, this ultimate theme is built upon man‘s inability to come to terms with his own nature; and Moses E. Herzog, acting as Everyman, is torn between elements, ―more or less stable, more or less controllable, more or less mad‖ (16). This old theme goes back to the medieval debates between body and soul, and further back to the dramatic agonies of the Greeks. (Dutton 120)

It is significant from a Buddhist angle that Bellow paints Herzog as being ―more or less stable, more or less controllable, more or less mad.‖ This state of existing between opposites that suggests a center (as it were on a scale,) represents the central Buddhist concept of a balance found in the concept of moderation known as the Middle Way, which ―avoids both the extremes of devotion to mere sense-pleasures and devotion to ascetic self-torment‖ (Harvey 23). The question, then, is why does Bellow ease

Herzog‘s suffering from his ―thwarting, masochistic, disintegrative self-examination‖ in the solitude of Ludeyville and not in an actual community of men complete with synagogue, tradition, and heritage? My answer is that Bellow, in his belief of the primordial impulse, is cognizant that such an impulse can only be attained through

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man‘s meditative dialogue with nature. In Buddhist practice, man needs the essence of solitude to listen to his inner silence and it is only through this meditative and cathartic silence that Herzog can empty his mind and then later move into the community of his fellow men.

This concept of silence and emptiness is a central doctrine prescriptive for the enlightenment of the Buddhist traveler. Many of the stories and legends of the Buddha confirm his gravity for silence as an ―indispensable means towards an interior experience of the Truth‖ (Chandrakanthan 146). There is an interesting historical perspective on the origin of Buddhism and the choice of the Buddha as it compares to

Herzog‘s pursuit of his own truth via metaphysical debates and the final choice he makes in favor of silence and solitude at Ludeyville:

Buddha was born in or around 563 B.C. into a religious milieu which had in its tradition two distinct approaches to the pursuit and personal discovery of the Truth. The first approach was that of sharpening one's intellect through active engagement in philosophical inquiries. Truth was sought through metaphysical debates and discussions. This approach placed strong emphasis on the power of rational knowledge. The second way was to enter into seclusion and solitude and to search for the Truth in personal silence. Here the emphasis was placed on renunciation, detachment, and an ascetical way of life. Eschewing the first approach, Buddha deliberately and decisively chose the second. Mauna, rendered in English as "silence," was the chief characteristic trait of this path. Mauna means blissful calmness, joyous recollection, tranquil quietude, and peaceful stillness. (Chandrakanthan 146)

It is provocative that more than three thousand years ago there was a Herzog counterpart roaming the hills of North-East India sharpening his intellect through philosophical and metaphysical debates and perhaps at the same time quilling his letters on parchment. I suggest that Bellow, the university professor, as much as he recognizes and relates to the agenda emphasizing the power of rational knowledge, realizes that language, as a science is limited in explaining the primordial recesses of man‘s psyche. 187

Like the Buddha, he finally opts for the seclusion of silence as deciphering agent when he transports Herzog to his Ludeyville ashram. Matthew Roudane, in an interview, had asked Bellow to give an example of that recurring primordial impulse in Bellow‘s work to which Bellow had replied:

Waking one morning, somewhere in the heart of Africa, Henderson the Rain King sees a pink light on the clay wall, and embraces it with his whole soul. The pink reminds him of something he knew before he knew anything at all. Or Moses Herzog, at the very end of the book, realizes that his education was utter nonsense, but there had been an aboriginal Moses E. Herzog – who was by no means extinct. This is what I am talking about. In an essay called ―Le Pientre de la vie Moderne‖ – ―The Painter of Modern Life‖ – Baudelaire says that genius is a power to recover our childhood voluntarily. You can go back at will to the earliest years of your life, before ―education‖ had enclosed you in its patterns and representations.‖ (qtd. in Roudane 78)

I have segued into Bellow‘s point of view on the primordial to reinforce my argument that Bellow‘s decision to empty Herzog of words runs parallel to the Buddhist concept that it is only through attaining silence that man can perceive his true nature. Herzog can only connect to this primordial state by renouncing the noise, clutter, the blinder of his rational education, and the burden of selfhood; his earlier contemplation here alludes to this ancient remedy: ―It was enough to make a man pray to God to remove this great, bone-crushing burden of selfhood and self-development, give himself, a failure, back to the species for a primitive cure‖ (Bellow, Herzog 102). But in order for Herzog to regress to this state, Bellow relocates Herzog to the solitude of his Ludeyville ashram where in Buddhist silence, Herzog empties his being and returns to the bounty of nothingness. The imagery of silence and solitude is a recurring theme in Buddhism as evident in the following verses in pages 47, 54, and 64 respectively of The

Dhammapada:

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In solitude that few enjoy, let him find his joy supreme: free from possessions, free from desires, and free from whatever may darken his mind. If you can be in silent quietness like a broken gong that is silent, you have reached the peace of Nirvana and your anger is peace. When a man knows the solitude of silence, and feels the joy of quietness, he is free from fear and sin and he feels the joy of the DHAMMA.

The Buddhist commandment honoring silence and solitude bridges the path to truth or

Dhamma. For the Buddhist, Dhamma is of paramount importance as it ―the right path of life which we make with our footsteps, our own actions, and which leads us to the supreme Truth‖ (Mascaro 9). Herzog, too, is aware of this need for Dhamma as he explains in his letter to Smithers: ―The people who come to evening classes are only ostensibly after culture. Their great need, their hunger, is for good sense, clarity, truth – even an atom of it. People are dying – it is no metaphor – for lack of something real to carry home when day is done‖ (Bellow, Herzog 32).

Bellow, the moralist, seeks any avenue that leads to truth; it is insightful that he utilizes the Buddhist concept of silence as a vehicle for truth. Chandrakanthan explains this correlation between silence and truth:

For Buddha, Silence as the inevitable path that leads to the Truth is not distinct from the Truth itself. That is, as the way to the Truth, Silence already contains the reality of the Truth. They are two aspects of the same reality … Satya, the word translated "truth" in English, is one of the oldest words in the Indian religious heritage. It too has a wealth of meanings. Derived from the root sat, meaning "being," "existence," "pure," "holy," "perfect;" etc., satya signifies the Truth in all its unlimited perfection and plenitude. As the ground of all existence, satya can only be experienced through the medium of Silence. (147)

I find it enlightening that the quest for satya or truth demands the honoring of silence and that in the region of silence, the Buddhist follower is led to the divine abode of the heart, as Chandrakanthan further emphasizes: ―silence is always referred to as the prerequisite for an interior experience of the divine. Silence is often eulogized as the

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language of the heart‖ (148). Bellow is also certainly aware of the emotions of the heart as Corner had earlier pointed out: ―there are those who see his [Bellow‘s] fiction as the record of an inward journey, from outer to inner truth, from the confusions of discourse to the truth of the heart. For such critics, Bellow is one kind of romantic: the romantic of inner, immanent truth, of direct illumination, of the ascetic inward journey to self- knowledge‖ (370). Bellow, like the Buddha, understands that man‘s quest for any spiritual inclination is in direct correlation to an ascetic determination that will define his existence; such determination must include the practice of silence as a means to decipher the primordial impulse of the human psyche. In emptying Herzog of words,

Bellow runs a close parallel to the Buddha who honors silence because he is aware of the ―narrow boundaries of rational knowledge and the blind alleys of metaphysical queries. He knows the frailty and feebleness of words and concepts. His discovery of the language of Silence helped him dispel the inner darkness and void created by a rational thirst for knowledge‖ (Chandrakanthan 149). It is rather profound that in some interconnected way we can link Bellow‘s larger theme that transcendence and salvation cannot be experienced through the process of intellectual and rational discourse but such illumination can be ignited via an inner meditation beyond language. Here, again,

Bellow reinforces his belief of the hollowness of an education based on intellect and reason; he cites Herzog as an example of this failure: ―Herzog is a comic enfeeblement of the educated man, a person of good instincts and decent feelings who, in the crisis of his life, casts about for help from his ―education‖ and finds that this ―education‖ is little more than a joke‖ (qtd. in Roudane 67).

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It is interesting too that Herzog‘s historical and philosophical perspectives are processed through words that come alive from his ―Remington office machine with the black hood‖ (Bellow, Herzog 113). I propose that imagery of the black hood also suggests that Herzog‘s intellectual and rational production fails to guide him, since his intellectual brilliance, obviously artificial, cannot ―light‖ his path, because it is covered under a ―black hood.‖ Analogously, Buddhism avoids intellectual and rational approaches in addressing man‘s transcendence; instead, ―Buddha found NIRVANA , the union of the finite with the Infinite, that Truth that according to the Kena

Upanishad, ‗comes to the thought of those who know him beyond thought, not to those who think it can be attained by thought‘‖ (Mascaro 15). This Buddhist concept that the ultimate transcendence is beyond thought and words is not dissimilar to Bellow‘s belief that in order to truly understand man‘s cosmic relevance, it is imperative to return to the state of the primordial man. Herzog, almost at the end of his journey, acknowledges the pull of this ancient consciousness: ―I am the specialist in … spiritual self-awareness; or emotionalism; or ideas; or nonsense. Perhaps of no real use or relevance except to keep alive primordial feelings of a certain sort‖ (Bellow, Herzog 334).

Bellow is also aware that this deep hunger for truth can only be satisfied when the will of man is free of the ―patterns and representations‖ of institutional indoctrination. It is therefore incumbent that Bellow, in rewiring Herzog‘s consciousness to override these misguided patterns and representations, finds it healing to replant his creation in a more fertile ground nurtured by silence and solitude in the holiness of nature. From a Buddhist perspective, immersion in the sanctuary of nature serves as an essential catalyst for transformation in relation to man‘s deep will to live

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truthfully and in harmony with the rest of nature. Schopenhauer, a student of Buddhism, alludes to this primordial force of nature as an agency for salvation: ―Nature leads the will to the light, just because only in the light can it find its salvation. Therefore the purposes of nature are to be promoted in every way, as soon as the will-to-live, that is her inner being, has determined itself‖ (400). Bellow, of course, understands that man can only connect to this ―inner being‖ of nature when he himself realizes his inner being. This is the ultimate harmony of Buddhism when man is able to synchronize his harmony with the larger symphony of nature. It is in this environment of silence that

Herzog, the Buddhist traveler, can potentially experience some semblance of truth, having emptied himself from the limitation of words.

Closing the Buddhist Argument

In Herzog, Bellow explores, among other themes, the moral ramifications of humanity, especially from the point of view of suffering and the potential for evil in mankind. Nowhere in the novel does he bring home this lamentation so vividly than in the courtroom scene as Herzog listens to the account of how an innocent child suffered and was finally killed by its mother. Allan Chavkin comments on this scene as a catalyst for Herzog which shifts ―the turning point of his meditation, for here in a devastating spot of time he recognizes the reality of death and evil that cannot be subsumed under any philosophical system‖ (388). In no manner do I wish to justify this gruesome atrocity but from a Buddhist perspective, this is the kind of dukkha that man cannot escape; this is the suffering of the Buddha‘s First Holy Truth. In this same vein of suffering, I follow Herzog and retrace his steps from his heritage as a Jew to the consequences of his own actions to establish a Buddhist trajectory littered with a life of

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suffering that is part of the human landscape. Herzog not only suffers the circumstances life throws at him, but the failure of his intellectual and rational values sinks him deeper into his mental turmoil and anguish.

I also allude to Herzog as a man of peace following the Buddhist tradition of non-violence. I argue that Herzog represents the essential Buddhist by virtue of his inclination toward peace and compassion. In insisting on these values, Herzog is presented in opposition to the real world that justifies self-interest at any cost and the evil manifested in aggression. Irrespective of Herzog‘s transgressions, he steadfastly remains loyal to his moral impulse, advocating a peaceful world in the same manner a

Buddhist lives by the doctrine that peace is the antidote to violence. Herzog‘s goodness defines him as an innocent in a world of scams and betrayals; thus he suffers as he clings to his moral values. Herzog‘s accommodation, respect, and tolerance for humanity run a close parallel to the Buddhist doctrines that advocate such moral principles.

From the Buddhist point of view, place is sacred, and I propose that Bellow conveniently navigates his weak and weary Herzog to exit at the rest stop at Ludeyville so that in embracing nature Herzog experiences his Ludeyville dwelling as an abode conducive to the healing of his fragmented mind. Bellow, in Buddhist fashion, honors the sacredness of place as the route back to a primordial state of being where Herzog experiences the primal connection between the finite and infinite. Ludeyville as a place of nature symbolizes movement, growth, rejuvenation, and nurturing so essential to the

Buddhist journey. It is by no accident that Bellow begins and ends his major work far away from the noise, steel, asphalt, and the masses. It is only in this seclusion that

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Herzog experiences that original communion with the healing power of nature; in a sense Bellow returns Herzog to Ludeyville for his Buddhist baptism where he

―experiences a mystic vision of nature as symbol of the spirit‖ (Nilsen 174).

I also present Herzog following the precepts of the Buddhist doctrine that honors the commandment not to kill or injure any human, animal, bird, fish or insect. It can be argued that Ludeyville represents a minor Nirvana for Herzog as he graduates into a

Buddhist frame of mind when he becomes aware, respectful, and tolerant of other life forms that share his dwelling. In respecting this precept that all life is dear, Herzog is moving up the Buddhist ladder that brings him closer to the harmony between self and nature; this is the harmony that leads to enlightenment as Pauling alluded to earlier:

―The Buddhist ideal of being a friend to the world finds its strongest expression in the ideal of the bodhisattwa – Sanskrit for a being whose essence is Enlightenment‖ (22). In his new awareness, Herzog is now closer to other forms of life that constitute the collective throb of nature; in honoring the Buddhist doctrine that all life is sacred, he becomes, in Zen fashion, one with a nature that tends and nurtures. And so in his emerging compassion for the sentient beings that share his place, nature fills his consciousness with light and the noises of life.

Finally, I argue that Herzog arrives at a consciousness similar to that of a

Buddhist who, in his silence empties his mind to begin anew from the primordial nothingness of his being. At his silent ashram in Ludeyville, Herzog contemplates his turmoil and in this quietness of mind, he relieves himself of the intellectual and rational blueprints that have imprinted and tormented his consciousness. Ludeyville is the

Buddhist symbolic forest where Herzog reconnects back to his primal state as he

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empties his mind of the debris accumulated after years of being indoctrinated in the patterns and representations of that questionable education that Bellow terms a ―joke.‖

In the solitude and silence of Ludeyville, Herzog perceives that larger Buddhist harmony between man and nature now that he unshackles the blinders of his rational education and the burden of selfhood. Bellow‘s larger theme is that transcendence and salvation cannot be experienced through the process of intellectual and rational discourse, but my argument concludes that such illumination can be ignited via the

Buddhist meditation of a silence that is beyond language.

In this chapter, I present Bellow‘s protagonist as a man alienated from the very center of his being as he falsely seeks meaning in the hollowness of philosophical and historical discourses. In this vein Dutton offers this point of view on Herzog‘s travails:

―Through his hero, Bellow seems to be saying that man‘s earthly salvation is not to be gained in social movements, utopian visions, political nostrums, scientific investigations

(and this compulsive activity is what Herzog‘s letter are all about) but in learning to live with himself as he exists in the subangelic position of man‖ (134). I also, for the better part of this chapter allude to several Buddhist allusions manifested in Herzog. Having investigated these allusions and in arguing for the justification for these references, I conclude that Bellow straddles the Buddhist Middle Path. Bellow cannot escape his natural trajectory for intellectual introspection; similarly, the Buddhist dwells in the internal chambers of the mind to understand his natural role and place in the world.

Bellow‘s Herzog, in this same paradoxical fashion, has no choice but to utilize the same instrument of internal analysis to first define his essential self in preparation for the

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larger community. This same self-introspection aided by silence and solitude determines Herzog‘s Buddhist declaration of emptiness: ―Nothing. Not a single word.‖

It is a paradox that Buddhism does not embrace God as the center of its philosophy, but it is not a difficult argument to make that one who follows the Buddhist

Path is already in God‘s sight. In a biographical essay on Bellow, Rosette Lamont offers this perspective on Bellow‘s novel: ―Herzog is a religious book, for in going beyond the

I of God, the I want of man, the hero accedes to a higher spiritual life. His reverence for existence is that of a Buddhist. By ordering his relations with nature and divesting himself of personality, Herzog enters into a theandric relationship with the world‖ (20-

21).

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Chapter 7: Conclusion

I have examined, in this study, the philosophies of Existentialism and Buddhism in context of Saul Bellow‘s Dangling Man and Herzog respectively. A biographical and autobiographical overview of Bellow serves to introduce and explain the influences that have shaped Bellow as a writer. In my exploration of Existentialism, I have outlined the basic precepts of this philosophy, and through Sartre‘s Nausea, I have established an existential counterpoint to Bellow‘s Dangling Man. I have argued that from the point of view of Bellow, Existentialism is insufficient in providing a moral, ethical, and spiritual compass, and has instead fashioned our contemporary consciousness with a nihilistic darkness. I have also presented the basic doctrines of Buddhism which also served as a platform and backdrop for my later exploration of Buddhist allusions in Bellow‘s

Herzog. As a parallel conversation to my overall discussion, I have examined the relevance of the aesthetic and moral conduct in art and literature. As I close this dissertation, I revisit the central areas that bind my overall discussion together, and at the same time offer additional perspectives.

The Essential Bellow

Critics, readers, and reviewers of Bellow‘s work agree that few writers are able to explore serious philosophical debates on the same page with irony, ambiguity, paradox, satire, and comedy as Bellow does. I, too, observe Bellow‘s talent for shifting

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moods, especially his penchant for humor in the most serious and painful experiences.

Alfred Kazin, Bellow‘s friend, points out the relevance of this Yiddish line, ―If God lived on earth, his windows would always be broken‖ (Kazin 8) to suggest, ―That wit is

Bellow‘s habitat, and the terms of the joke are natural to him … In Bellow, anguish and wit have always been natural companions‖ (Kazin 8). There is, however, no other influence that defines the work of Saul Bellow more than his Jewish heritage and his early and scholarly study of Judaism. Bellow‘s humanism, extracted from his Judaic instruction, energizes the themes of moral and ethical relevance found in his work. This moral framework nurtures and sustains Bellow‘s themes that magnify the personal and domestic struggles of the ordinary Jews who are fully aware of their heritage and history, and who dwell in a neurotic world constantly agonizing over their everyday problems, real or imagined.

Bellow‘s art, as I point out in Chapter 1, ―is not only to make sense of the painful realities sapping the energies of the modern man, but to dig deeper into understanding and reconnecting that ancient spirit that grounds man with the mystery of his being.‖ Bellow‘s recurring references to this ancient spirit and to God define much of his work, but Bellow does not preach as he is aware that the men he writes about are already in some kind of spiritual disarray, so within his trademark mix of satire, comedy, paradox, and anguish, he weaves his theme that the celebration of life is not to be found through intellectual and rational discourses and analysis, but in the everyday ordinariness of life. Bellow is aware of the tenuous position of his characters who are controlled by a larger force: ―he [Bellow] is aware of the ultimate helplessness of man before fate and takes it, without sentimentality or apology, as something mysterious; but

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his final appeal is not to the resolution of man‘s conflict with fate but to the spectacle of man seeking resolution‖ (Opdahl 27). Thus Joseph‘s resolution propels him out of his inner turmoil and into the community of men; similarly, Herzog resolves his anxieties through immersing himself in the harmony of nature and accepting the limitations of intellect and reason.

Bellow‘s central theme is the celebration of life. This lust for the magnanimity of life is central to Judaic thought which states that man is created in God's image, and it is therefore man‘s duty to follow in his Maker‘s footsteps by consecrating life. Bellow‘s insistent theme is that since life is sacred, there is a moral obligation to survive. Bellow single-handedly defies the literary establishment by refusing to dwell on the popular and fashionable themes of nihilistic despair. Gloria Cronin aptly categorizes Bellow‘s oeuvre as antithetical to the various despairs of the modern man of the twentieth century:

Such interest hinges largely on the fact that no other post-WW II American writer has analyzed so completely and so humanely the effects of American cultural anxiety with the age of technology and rationalism, existentialism, and the legacy of high modernism. Scorning absurdism, nihilism, alienation ethics, and belief in Deus Abscondus, refuting historical pessimism, preaching against the void, and defending the embattled masculine self of Western metaphysics, Bellow has affirmed Judeo-Christian religious and social values more strongly perhaps than any other twentieth-century writer. From within this space he has tried to restore the integrity of feeling, the meaning of ordinary existence, and the primacy of social contract to a society in which he perceives these things to be in eclipse. (Cronin: ―An Intro ...‖ 1)

This is the central mindset steeped in a sense of moral duty that drives Bellow‘s literary production. It is significant that he unfailingly manages to stand his ground, novel after novel, defending a set of religious values against the fortified literary establishment that celebrates the devaluation of life. Saul Bellow‘s interviews and essays ―are saturated

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with ―revelation,‖ ―mystery,‖ and ―rapture‖ – the language of faith. His novels offer us more direct counsel in mysticism … Like Rembrandt‘s chiaroscuro, Bellow‘s writing drives toward the place where illumination gives way to shadow‖ (Goldman ―In Praise

…‖ 15). This is characteristically the quintessential Bellow who is driven by a social conscience, but this is not a brittle, cold conscience absorbed in abstract ponderings. His close readers realize that Bellow, first and foremost, is a poet who still sees the wonder of the world as though he is seeing it through the eyes of a child; this explains his constant references to the mystery of life and his interest in the primordial. Bellow‘s interest in the mystery of mankind and his instruction that this mystery should be honored and even praised reflects his deep poetic inclination, as Eusebio Rodrigues confirms: ―Four elements, soul, heart, love, imagination, melt and flow into each other to form a glowing, pulsing center that seeks to throw light on the human mystery‖

(110).

The Existentialist Bellow

I present Existentialism as a counter-point to Bellow and as a preparation for my later study that explores Dangling Man from an existential context. I expound on the background of Existentialism and examine the existential theme of Jean-Paul Sartre‘s

Nausea, which bears a striking parallel to Dangling Man, and therefore serves as appropriate support for my close reading of this first novel from Bellow. I justify

Bellow‘s foray into Existentialism based on two points. I argue that Bellow envelopes his leading men, as represented by Joseph, with an existential consciousness as a necessary prerequisite to experience the sterility of life which is in direct consequence of their egotistical pursuit, and hence, their disconnect from society. I contend that

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through this existential immersion Bellow‘s characters experience the agony of spiritual loneliness, and having realized the futility of a godless existence, they thus return to their heritage of communal participation and sharing. My central argument establishes

Joseph as an existentialist; here is a man who is indeed dangling all the time, and who, one by one, cuts off his connections with friends, strains his relations with his family, is no longer engaged in any form of economic production, and typically lives isolated in a cheap apartment. This pattern of existential agony, as represented by Joseph, runs deeply in Bellow‘s work.

I argue, on another level, that Bellow had determined early on to explore the current and fashionable existential isolation of man. It was in Bellow‘s literary interest that in order to join ranks with the literary establishment that had secured the imagination of the public and the universities, that his first two novels, Dangling Man and The Victim, had to reflect ―existentialist premises and modernist literary techniques in their representations of alienated heroes, hostile environments, and apparently absurd worlds‖ (―Overview of Dangling Man‖). In addition to my discourse on Existentialism,

I closely examine Sartre‘s Nausea as the essential existentialist novel which counterpoints Bellow‘s philosophy in his defense of man. Sartre‘s existential perspective is that there is no God and that man has no choice but to define his own existence; however, in severing this ancient safety net, man freefalls into a terrifying void, but he can ultimately regain his balance once he is courageous enough to erase the nostalgia of God. Consequently, Sartre‘s existential man realizes that he is now the architect of his freedom; he is no longer dependent on the generosity of a questionable

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higher force. This is the central existential premise against which I postulate Bellow‘s opposing argument: Bellow‘s humanist themes evoke the spirit of God.

Buddhism as a Platform

My study on Buddhism serves as a preface and background to my exploration of

Buddhist allusions in Herzog. I also tie in that the major Buddhist premise that all life is suffering applies as well to the historical reality of the Jewish experience beginning from the early persecution of the Jews since Roman times to the Holocaust. In exploring the central Truths of Buddhism that all life is suffering, the causes of suffering, the end of suffering, and the Eightfold Path, I position the basic argument (which I amplify in

Chapter 6), that the suffering of Jews validates the first Buddhist Truth. I also point out that Buddhism‘s distrust of metaphysical analysis on spiritual questions parallels

Bellow‘s recurring theme that challenges intellect and reason as prescriptive tools for debating matters of the spirit. Both the Buddha and Bellow instruct not on the value of words, but on the value of meaningful action as it benefits the rest of community.

I compare Buddhism and Judaism from the perspective that both are acquainted with the underlying reality of suffering as a direct result of persecution. Like the Jews of the past who suffered and believed in living peacefully, Buddhists also avoid aggression and confrontation; their insistence on non-violence make them easy prey to the might of the Chinese army. On a final note, I allude to the close connection between Bellow, the humanist, and the spiritual essence of Buddhism. The Buddha‘s instructions are simple: he wants to elevate us from a life of suffering to a higher plane where man loves and does not hate; his is the voice of compassion, peace, and holy respect for all sentient beings. The Buddha‘s message does not ring from the mountain top, but springs out of

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the spiritual experience of man that is universal. Bellow is no stranger to this Buddhist humanity as Gloria Cronin notes:

Bellow attempts to renew our universal connections with ourselves and each other. Assuming the common denominator of all human experience to be suffering and humiliation, he binds his hero upon a wheel of fire similar to Lear‘s in order to demonstrate the great saving Judeo-Christian paradox that the outcome of suffering can just as logically be love and accommodation as it can be despair and alienation. (―The Seduction …‖ 345)

By now we know that Bellow definitely chooses love and accommodation as he is the lone prophet battling despair and alienation. Bellow, on the periphery of the establishment, and in the same manner of the Buddha void of congregation and rituals, throttles his characters to face the agony of their internal anxieties of self in order to reconnect them back to the external world of love and accommodation.

The Aesthetic and Moral Blueprint

This section, ―The aesthetic and Moral Blueprint,‖ while seemingly outside of the main discussion, acts as a centrifugal force that binds the discourses on

Existentialism, Buddhism, and the moral themes in Bellow‘s work. In context that

Bellow‘s moral impulse and his respect for the function of art dominate his writing, I examine the relevance of the arts where the forms of painting, sculpture, and music are utilized interchangeably to express a broad sense of the aesthetic and the moral.

However, I concentrate more on the form of literature as a blueprint to establish the aesthetic and moral perspectives that define our lives. In my exploration of Bellow vis-

à-vis Existentialism and Buddhism, I argue that in view of our contemporary world being plagued with moral ambiguities and unethical practices, as dogmas cloud and distort our values, and as we lose our moral compass, the more we need to seek the redemptive powers of art and literature. 203

Faced with our moral fragmentation, I examine the function of art as a vehicle not only to produce works that are aesthetically beautiful, but to argue that, for Bellow, it is the responsibility of all forms of art to instruct on the moral imperative. However, I clarify that this moral direction must be grounded less in institutional and religious dogmas, but more so in the cardinal virtues such as truth, beauty, wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. I reinforce the notion that historically art and its aesthetic values have served as the touchstone from which we have conceptualized morality. From another point of view, I examine literature as a conduit for transcendence where the literary text is perceived as a mirror which can reflect the emotions of the heart, and thus pacify us that our feelings are not unique, but shared. This section also amplifies the idea that our experiences are too limited, but by reading literature, we are able to expand our confined awareness to other possibilities, and to be participants in a larger consciousness. The substance of my discussion in this section reinforces the belief that all art should move us in the direction of truth, beauty, temperance, justice, wisdom, and so on. This direction is the moral compass, and it shines brightly in Bellow‘s work.

Dangling Man: A Study in Existentialism and Redemption

In my reading of Dangling Man, I define this novel both from an existential perspective and as a work steeped in the theme of redemption. My central argument in

Chapter 5 establishes that Bellow molds Joseph, his protagonist, in an existential state of mind, and that Joseph remains the standard from which other Bellow characters are developed. I contend that Bellow‘s decision to plunge Joseph in a state of existential nihilism hinges on Bellow‘s all-encompassing theme: ―There are, then, these two preparations: one for life and the other for death‖ (Bellow, DM 119). I emphasize that

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Joseph cannot escape his trajectory of existential agony, as he needs to evolve in order to deal with the ultimate question of life and death. I also examine the idea of death, not as the final condition, but as death of self as it relates to Joseph. In positioning my argument for Joseph‘s redemption, I also acknowledge the undercurrent of Bellow‘s religious psychology as being instrumental in this healing process.

I maintain that redemption in Dangling Man does not play out through remarkable actions, but is worked out within Joseph‘s mind. Bellow‘s existential novel grows from the inner turmoil of Joseph who, in his obsessive introspection, slowly disengages himself from friends and family in pursuit of an existential identity. This chapter explains Joseph‘s passage into his existential journey and argues that in the final analysis, Bellow repudiates the existential theme. In conjunction with Bellow, I argue that man alone is incapable of facing the perils of his solitary existence. I point out that

Bellow, in his first novel, is already on the attack against Joseph‘s preoccupation with self; this is the beginning of Bellow‘s battle against his men who slide into this realm of introspection. Bellow battles, on another front, Joseph‘s belief that he can existentially define his life through his intellect and reason. As reinforcement to my argument that

Dangling Man is an existentialist novel, I compare it with Sartre‘s acclaimed Nausea, which is considered the existential bible of its time.

I have structured my examination of Dangling Man in this chapter to first argue that Joseph is Bellow‘s existential anti-hero by virtue of his determination to define his own existence. I then examine Joseph‘s issue of identity as an existential dilemma where as much as he isolates himself, he still seeks the recognition of his peers. My discussion on Joseph‘s preoccupation with evil and death establishes his existential

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inclination, and as a final existential determination, I argue that the Holocaust as memory and death contributes to Joseph‘s existential trajectory. From the perspective of redemption, I explain how the power of poetry, emotion, and love play a role in rescuing Joseph from his existential depression. I further contend that Bellow rejects the denigration of the ordinary life as he maintains that the redemption of human dignity and human potential can be found in the very ordinariness of life. I also confirm that

Bellow‘s religious psychology is instrumental in Joseph‘s transformation, and, in my final point, I explain how Joseph‘s induction in the army and the death of self are pivotal in his road to redemption.

Bellow, as a young writer in 1944, challenges the dominant existential stoicism, nihilism, and masculine codes pervasive in American literary culture, with a different set of values and a male voice that refuses to endure silently, but babbles incessantly.

How does Bellow manage to pull this off? He does this by evoking man‘s humanism, not through the artificial realities constructed by intellect and reason, but by insisting that we engage with humanity. Sukhbir Singh, in his essay on the novels of Saul

Bellow, echoes this sentiment on Bellow‘s humanity: ―Bellow‘s novels capture a glimmer of the ―genuine‖ reality – the kinship of one with all other humans – which one loses sight of while hiding behind the ―constructions‖ of self-invented realities …

Bellow thus creates a new humanism in his novels – an existential humanism – based on human integration, human equality, and human kinship‖ (Singh, ―The Pretender …‖

290).

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Bellow and Buddhist Allusions in Herzog

This chapter formulates the crucial thrust of this dissertation as I argue, mostly on my own, that there are Buddhist allusions in Bellow‘s most acclaimed novel,

Herzog. The structure of my argument begins with an overview of Herzog followed by a statement of the Buddhist argument and a short preface to Herzog‘s Buddhist journey.

The central argument that establishes Buddhist allusions is supported by five major points which I develop through a close reading of the novel.

My overview of Herzog is an attempt to provide some semblance of a linear account of this novel and to emphasize an existential sense of introspection and mental commotion that haunts Bellow‘s protagonist, Herzog. I retrace Herzog‘s trajectory from the safety of his first marriage and stable job to his long journey of mental anguish. In my discussion on the Buddhist argument, I explain the basic premise for my contention that Herzog‘s journey of turmoil and agony is connected to the Buddhist concept that all life is suffering. From despair to transformation, Herzog, like a Buddhist, perceives reality from an inner dimension, and in this fashion he climbs his way to a final place that bears a close resemblance to Nirvana. Having positioned my argument, I include a preface to Herzog‘s Buddhist journey that reiterates the salient points of Buddhism as they apply to Herzog‘s situation; in a sense, I prepare the reader for a state of mind in relation to the quintessential Buddhist journey.

My first point argues that Herzog is on a Buddhist detour from that point of time when he leaves the safety of his first marriage and then begins his road to a series of major disappointments. I have pointed out that Herzog‘s failures and his internal agony are not unnatural, but are part of the Buddhist concept that the journey of life is littered

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with suffering. I also allude to Herzog as a good and peaceful Buddhist. In his failures at love, friendship, career, and fatherhood, Herzog, even as he sinks into despair, and has enough reason to be bitter at his wife and acquaintances, remains peaceful in his relationships with those who have demeaned him. Herzog‘s inclination toward compassion and peace aligns him with the Buddhist doctrine of non-violence, and in a very profound way he represents the good of mankind in opposition to the evil that surrounds him. From the point of view of place being holy, I establish that Ludeyville, as a place of solitude, fulfills the Buddhist respect for place in nature that constitutes the sacredness of dwelling. Ludeyville is no longer synonymous with the constant battling between Herzog and Madeleine and the deep unhappiness of this union, but it is now not only a home for Herzog, but a dwelling for other sentient beings as well. From a

Buddhist perspective, Ludeyville is now an ashram.

From Ludeyville as a Buddhist ashram, I argue that Herzog achieves compassion as a human being which plays out in his respect for the other sentient beings that occupy his dwelling. In his careful consideration and compassion for lives that share the house and the land, Herzog earns a Buddhist diploma. Finally, I argue that

Herzog enters the Buddhist space of silence and emptiness when he declares he does not have a ―single word‖ for anyone. In the quiet and solitude of Ludeyville, Herzog, by emptying himself from the construct of words, enters the Buddhist domain of nothingness.

Closing the Dissertation

Critics of Bellow concur that a central theme in Bellow‘s work advocates that man does not live his full potential when he is absorbed in his egotistical self, but

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experiences a much fuller and rewarding life when he meaningfully participates in his community. But it is a paradox that models of community are not prominent fixtures in

Bellow‘s novels. This absence of actual community puzzled me, but the more I read deeply into Bellow, the more I realize that his argument for community is in direct correlation to his argument against absorption in self; herein lies the essence of the true

Bellovian theme that warns against the sin of self-pride. Bellow, in his very first novel in 1944, indicts Joseph‘s vanity and hubris as a significant flaw that bars him from his heritage of humanity; this is the same problem Bellow addresses in 1964 as he deals with Herzog‘s preoccupation with self. So, in an indirect and plausible manner, Bellow, like the Buddha, advocates that man can only belong and function within the community of his peers when he is no longer a slave to this ego.

Another paradox in Bellow‘s work is his recurring indictment of the university, intellect, and reason. Here is a writer that spent much of his life in academia, and yet he constantly belittles the value of education. This attack also puzzled me, but again as I see Bellow directly from his interviews and from his own words outside of his novels, I have come to understand that Bellow is indicting reason and intellect only from the point of view that modern man relies too much on these tools of reason (and less on the human emotion of the heart), to answer his spiritual questions. In this same manner

Bellow is close to the Buddha who steered away from metaphysical inquiries; the

Buddha understood the metaphysical trap that there was no end to ―reasoning.‖ Bellow understands that humanity is not practiced through intellectual parlance or brilliance, but by right action as the Buddhist precept declares: ―A man is not a follower of righteousness because he talks much learned talk; but although a man be not learned, if

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he forgets not the right path, if his work is rightly done, then he is a follower of righteousness‖ (The Dhammapada 73:19: 258). It is through this consciousness of the ordinary that Bellow shepherds his men.

We are not surprised, then, that Bellow finds the practice of Existentialism antithetical to his values, but why do his characters suffer existential angst? Bellow is a victim of his own depressive tendencies which are transferred to his characters.

However, I believe that Bellow, as a Jew and as a product of centuries of persecution culminating in genocide, has come to accept the spiritual concept that man‘s salvation is in direct correlation to his ability to locate and confront his deepest fears, and one effective way of accomplishing this task is by deep existential introspection. I suspect that Bellow believes that suffering is that common denominator that binds humans together to seek the helping hand of God. I find it appropriate that Bellow remembers his near-death illness as a child, and the healing effect of the words, read to him by a

Christian woman that gave him divine comfort: ―suffer little children to come unto me.‖

I am not certain what drew me to Saul Bellow in the first place; what I do know is that, in my first reading of Herzog, I had totally misinterpreted Bellow‘s novel, believing it to be a testament to alienation. I do not think I would have written a dissertation on Bellow if I were in my thirties, but now that I am almost sixty years old, it occurs to me that Bellow‘s themes of life and death resonate more with older people who understand suffering, and who no longer laugh at death. From the embryonic stage of this dissertation, beginning with the Jewish writers I read and examined in the course

―Jewish American Fiction,‖ I have been affected by the evil of human suffering inflicted upon man by his fellow man. I am a man of peace, and like Bellow, I am

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susceptible to the pull of the heart; my compassion for sentient beings often brings tears to my eyes. In a much more meaningful context, I believe that Bellow‘s novels resonate with compassion for his fellow six million Jews who were forced to face their deaths; this, I believe, is the epitome of evil. I am no stranger to suffering, but I realize my level of angst and pain can never match the agony of those who are remnants from any war, conflict, or battles who witness, first hand, the wanton destruction of human life and the atrocities perpetuated in the name of some abstract ideology. However, we can argue that at least in war a soldier has a fighting chance; he has a weapon to defend himself, but when the power of that weapon, licensed with legitimacy and driven by genocidal intent, is turned against the helpless, then there is suffering beyond words. There is perhaps no greater terror in the consciousness of a human being when he is aware that the noose of death awaits him, and that he can expect no pity from the one who will take his life.

This is the specter of death and suffering that you will find in Saul Bellow when you read him deeply. And yet, Bellow the Jew, like the Buddhist, understands the power of compassion, forgiveness, and redemption that are so central in his theme of humanity.

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