On The Theme Of Humboldt's Gift

Saul Bellow is regarded as another master after Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner in American literature. In 1976, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for"his human understanding and subtle analysis of the contemporary culture that are combined in his works"by the Swedish Academy. From his first published novel Dangling Man in 1944 to the novel More Die of Heartbreak published in 1987, Bellow concerns for the modern man's existence and fate all the time. In his novel Herzog which was published in 1964, Saul Bellow portrayed a typical image of a Jewish intellectual for the first time, showing the readers his existential dilemmas in the modern society. From then on, Bellow insists on exploring and portraying the spiritual characteristics of these characters, revealing their existential situations under the special historical environment in the modern America, and their exploration and thoughts on the fate of mankind in the process of their seeking for the footholds in the society.Humboldt's Gift,which wins the Pulitzer Prize in 1976, is one of Bellow's most outstanding works. It is in many ways Bellow's richest and most complex work. It portrays the plight of the artist,especially the Jewish American writers in modern American society, in the form of the monologue of Citrine, the protagonist. They have to face a series of problems such as anxiety, puzzlement, suffering and quest, where Bellow shows his profound humanistic concerns for and sympathy of their existential dilemmas and spiritual crisis, and he doesn't forget to show a way out for his tormented Jewish protagonists for their spiritual salvation.The thesis consists of three parts: the introduction, the main body, and the conclusion.The first part gives a brief account of the purpose and meaning of this thesis and the status of the research on Saul Bellow at home and abroad, its development tendency, the background of his time and the critical receptions of it. This part lays groundwork for the analysis of the significance of the theme.The main body is divided into three chapters. Chapter I deals with the theme of agony of the two artists in Humboldt's Gift. As a writer, Bellow cares a lot about his heroes'inner world. Bellow diagnoses his protagonists carefully and reveals their diseases in detail in this novel: anxiety and depression. Von Humboldt Fleisher, the titular hero of the novel, is a Romantic poet of America in the thirties. His poems, innocent and humanitarian, are praised by many celebrities and press at that time. But in the late forties, with the pervasion of materialism in American thoughts, humanitarian things have become out of date. Humboldt, who wants to transform America with Plato spirits and love, is forgotten by people gradually. Unable to sustain his early success, he seeks security in the academic world, turns to women and booze, becomes a manic-depressive, and dies as a bum. He exemplifies the plight of the poet in modern America. Charlie Citrine, the narrator and real hero of the novel, is also a successful artist, a writer of Broadway plays and historical and political books. He is a successor of Humboldt—not of the poet's alcoholism, medication obsession, conflict between literature and lucre, and jealousy of what he has not, but of his anxiety concerning the rough reality and his ingenious creativity. He is haunted by Humboldt all his life, and he can identify himself only through Humboldt. He is suffering many evils himself—fame troubles, money troubles, women troubles...Chapter II focuses on the deep root of such agony. In modern American society, which is characterized by materialism, emptiness, and lack of spiritual concern, both Humboldt and Citrine act out the agony of American artists. Humboldt is a famous artist, yet at last he is penniless and frustrated, and dies in silence. As to Citrine, after establishing his reputation, he spends money without restraint, and leads a dissolute and degenerate life. What's more, gangsters and tricksters all come to swindle his money out of him. He is weighed down with anxieties all the time till his bankruptcy. They enjoy the materials their fame and money have brought to them on one hand, but on the other hand, they have higher spiritual life and find it hard to satisfy their spiritual need in a world of materialism and utilitarianism. Nevertheless, they always find themselves incapable of dealing with things in reality, depressed and trying to find an escape in the ideal world they have constructed for themselves. The root of their agony mainly lies in the fact that all of them are of Jewish origin and have received higher education and live a middle-class life in America. Nearly all of them are aware of the duality in their cultural identity, which also makes it difficult for them to fit into the American society and gives them the sense of marginality. Citrine and Humboldt are men of ideas, and revolutionists of the age. But they are alienated, marginalized, victimized, degraded, humiliated, disregarded, and forgotten in spite of their celebrity and their contributions to American culture, partly due to their romantic, unrealistic and anachronistic characteristics, but mainly because of the fundamentally barren American cultural soil. Humboldt's success as a harbinger of American poetry in the thirties and forties has a close relation with American economic and social condition of the time. The age is positive, hopeful, generous, and open to romantic poetry, in spite of the dark and dismal shadow spread over American society in general because of the Depression. But as America gets more industrialized after the Second World War, Humboldt declines, forgotten, and wiped out, whose poems are deleted from the American modern canon. However, Humboldt is not salable after the fifties. He is out of business. He is omitted from American consumers'list of purchases. Instead it is Citrine who is marketable and profitable, and who therefore has a higher possibility to survive in American society in terms of business. But he is not exempt from the ordeal of the artist in America. It is the whole system of capitalism that alienates the artists. Obsession of death is another root for the agony. As a historian, Charlie Citrine writes about people who are dead. This puts his subjects into perspective for him and gives him a measure of control over death. We can look at Charlie's meditation on Humboldt as an attempt put the dead poet into a perspective with which he can live. Charlie's narrative elegy is also a eulogy, given to accompany the physical activity of reburying Humboldt. It serves as a living memorial to Humboldt, because through the meditation preserved in the pages of this novel, Bellow restores Humboldt to eternal life for his protagonist and for his readers.Chapter III is a discussion about the yearning for spiritual redemption. On the one hand, by portraying the conflict between ideal and reality, Bellow reveals the spiritual crisis and the unremitting pursuit for ideals of the intellectuals in modern society, which to a great extent gives us a deep insight into the intellectuals as a whole in America and in the world as well. On the other hand, it presents the process of the two artists'spiritual transformation: their vexation and puzzlement; their brave struggle with the crazy world; their self-awareness of their suffering situation and their compromise with the reality. It also expounds the way out Bellow shows for his Jewish protagonists'spiritual salvation.The last part is a summary and conclusion of the whole thesis, and further points out the significance of this thesis. Saul Bellow, as a writer who has high responsibility, echoes with the summons of his time, examines and thinks over the existential situation of mankind from the visual angle of existential philosophy through the Jewish culture. What Humboldt's Gift reveals is not only the spiritual progress of the Jewish intellectuals and the ordinary social problem, but also the typical theme of the crisis of the whole modern civilization and the existential dilemmas and spiritual crisis of the modern man. Through an analysis of the portraying the intellectuals'depression, alienation and pursuit of spiritual paradise, the thesis discloses the main themes of the novel, and further reveals the true meaning of the novel.