Letters (78 page)
Authors: Saul Bellow
I
should
have written you a letter, it was too late to make the deaths of my brothers an excuse. Since they died, I wrote a book; why not a letter? A mysterious but truthful answer is that while I can gear myself up to do a novel, letters, real-life communications, are too much for me. I used to rattle them off easily enough; why is the challenge of writing to friends and acquaintances too much for me now? Because I have become such a solitary, and not in the Aristotelian sense: not a beast, not a god. Rather, a loner troubled by longings, incapable of finding a suitable language and despairing at the impossibility of composing messages in a playable key—as if I no longer understood the codes used by the estimable people who wanted to hear from me and would have so much to reply if only the impediments were taken away. By now I have only the cranky idiom of my books—the letters-in-general of an occult personality, a desperately odd somebody who has, as a last resort, invented a technique of self-representation.
should
have written you a letter, it was too late to make the deaths of my brothers an excuse. Since they died, I wrote a book; why not a letter? A mysterious but truthful answer is that while I can gear myself up to do a novel, letters, real-life communications, are too much for me. I used to rattle them off easily enough; why is the challenge of writing to friends and acquaintances too much for me now? Because I have become such a solitary, and not in the Aristotelian sense: not a beast, not a god. Rather, a loner troubled by longings, incapable of finding a suitable language and despairing at the impossibility of composing messages in a playable key—as if I no longer understood the codes used by the estimable people who wanted to hear from me and would have so much to reply if only the impediments were taken away. By now I have only the cranky idiom of my books—the letters-in-general of an occult personality, a desperately odd somebody who has, as a last resort, invented a technique of self-representation.
You are the sort of person—and writer—to whom I can say such things, my kind of writer (without sclerosis in the matter of letters). I stop short of saying that you are humanly my sort. I have no grounds for that, I know you through your books, which I always read because they are written by the real thing. There aren’t too many real things around. (A fact so well known that I would be tedious to elaborate on it.) You might have been one of the dazzling virtuosi, like [William] Gaddis. I might have done well in that line myself if I hadn’t for one reason or another set my heart on being one of the real things. Life might have been easier in the literary concert-hall circuit. But Paganini wasn’t Jewish.
You probably see what I am clumsily getting at. I’ve been wending my way toward your
Messiah
[
of Stockholm
], and I speak as an admirer, not a critic. About Bruno Schulz I feel very much as you do, and although we have never discussed the Jewish question (or any other), and we would be bound to disagree (as Jewish discussants invariably do), it is certain that we would, at any rate, find each other Jewish enough. But I was puzzled by your
Messiah
. I puzzled myself over it. I liked the Hans Christian Andersen charm of your poor earnest young man in a Scandinavian capital, who is quixotic, deluded, fanatical, who lives on a borrowed Jewishness, leads a hydroponic existence and tries so touchingly to design his own selfhood. But when he is challenged by reality, we see the worst of him—nine times nine devils (to go to the other Testament for a moment) rush into him, and in his last state, because he is not the one and only authentic Schulz-interpreter, he becomes a mere literary pro, that is, a non-entity. I read your book on the plane to Israel, and in Haifa gave my copy to A. B. Yehoshua. He wanted it, and I urged him to read it. So in writing you, I haven’t got a text to refer to, and must trust my memory or the memory of my impressions. When I read it I was highly pleased. When I thought back on it I felt you might have depended too much on your executive powers, your virtuosity (I’ve often passed the same judgment on myself) and that you wanted more from your subject than it actually yielded. [ . . . ]
Messiah
[
of Stockholm
], and I speak as an admirer, not a critic. About Bruno Schulz I feel very much as you do, and although we have never discussed the Jewish question (or any other), and we would be bound to disagree (as Jewish discussants invariably do), it is certain that we would, at any rate, find each other Jewish enough. But I was puzzled by your
Messiah
. I puzzled myself over it. I liked the Hans Christian Andersen charm of your poor earnest young man in a Scandinavian capital, who is quixotic, deluded, fanatical, who lives on a borrowed Jewishness, leads a hydroponic existence and tries so touchingly to design his own selfhood. But when he is challenged by reality, we see the worst of him—nine times nine devils (to go to the other Testament for a moment) rush into him, and in his last state, because he is not the one and only authentic Schulz-interpreter, he becomes a mere literary pro, that is, a non-entity. I read your book on the plane to Israel, and in Haifa gave my copy to A. B. Yehoshua. He wanted it, and I urged him to read it. So in writing you, I haven’t got a text to refer to, and must trust my memory or the memory of my impressions. When I read it I was highly pleased. When I thought back on it I felt you might have depended too much on your executive powers, your virtuosity (I’ve often passed the same judgment on myself) and that you wanted more from your subject than it actually yielded. [ . . . ]
It’s perfectly true that “Jewish Writers in America” (a repulsive category!) missed what should have been for them the central event of their time, the destruction of European Jewry. I can’t say how our responsibility can be assessed. We (I speak of Jews now and not merely of writers) should have reckoned more fully, more deeply with it. Nobody in America seriously took this on and only a few Jews elsewhere (like Primo Levi) were able to comprehend it all. The Jews as a people reacted justly to it. So we have Israel, but in the matter of higher comprehension—well, the mental life of the century having been disfigured by the same forces of deformity that produced the Final Solution, there were no minds
fit
to comprehend. And intellectuals [ . . . ] are trained to expect and demand from art what intellect is unable to do. (Following the foolish conventions of high-mindedness.) All parties then are passing the buck and every honest conscience feels the disgrace of it.
fit
to comprehend. And intellectuals [ . . . ] are trained to expect and demand from art what intellect is unable to do. (Following the foolish conventions of high-mindedness.) All parties then are passing the buck and every honest conscience feels the disgrace of it.
I was too busy becoming a novelist to take note of what was happening in the Forties. I was involved with “literature” and given over to preoccupations with art, with language, with my struggle on the American scene, with claims for recognition of my talent or, like my pals of the
Partisan Review
, with modernism, Marxism, New Criticism, with Eliot, Yeats, Proust, etc.—with anything except the terrible events in Poland. Growing slowly aware of this unspeakable evasion I didn’t even know how to begin to admit it into my inner life. Not a particle of this can be denied. And can I really say—can anyone say—what was to be done, how this “thing”
ought
to have been met? Since the late Forties I have been brooding about it and sometimes I imagine I
can
see something. But what such brooding may amount to is probably insignificant. I can’t even begin to say what responsibility any of us may bear in such a matter, in a crime so vast that it brings all Being into Judgment. [ . . . ] “Metaphysical aid,” as somebody says in
Macbeth
(God forgive the mind for borrowing from such a source in this connection), would be more like it than “responsibility”; intercession from the spiritual world, assuming that there is anybody here capable of being moved by powers nobody nowadays takes seriously. Everybody is so “enlightened.” By ridding myself of a certain amount of enlightenment I can at least have thoughts of this nature. I entertain them at night while rational censorship is sleeping. Revelation is, after all, at the heart of Jewish understanding, and revelation is something you can’t send away for. You can’t be ordered to procure it. [ . . . ]
Partisan Review
, with modernism, Marxism, New Criticism, with Eliot, Yeats, Proust, etc.—with anything except the terrible events in Poland. Growing slowly aware of this unspeakable evasion I didn’t even know how to begin to admit it into my inner life. Not a particle of this can be denied. And can I really say—can anyone say—what was to be done, how this “thing”
ought
to have been met? Since the late Forties I have been brooding about it and sometimes I imagine I
can
see something. But what such brooding may amount to is probably insignificant. I can’t even begin to say what responsibility any of us may bear in such a matter, in a crime so vast that it brings all Being into Judgment. [ . . . ] “Metaphysical aid,” as somebody says in
Macbeth
(God forgive the mind for borrowing from such a source in this connection), would be more like it than “responsibility”; intercession from the spiritual world, assuming that there is anybody here capable of being moved by powers nobody nowadays takes seriously. Everybody is so “enlightened.” By ridding myself of a certain amount of enlightenment I can at least have thoughts of this nature. I entertain them at night while rational censorship is sleeping. Revelation is, after all, at the heart of Jewish understanding, and revelation is something you can’t send away for. You can’t be ordered to procure it. [ . . . ]
Some paragraphs back I said that you didn’t seem to be getting what you really wanted from your
Messiah
novel. I can’t think that I would offend you by speaking as I speak to myself. I have often rushed into the writing of a book and after thirty or forty pages, just after taking off, I felt that I had made a crazy jump, that I had yielded to a mad convulsion, and that from this convulsion of madness, absolutely uncalled-for and self-generated, I might never recover. At the start the fast take-off seemed such a wonderful and thrilling exploit. I believed in it still. But could I bring it off, would I land safely or fall into the ocean? I experienced the same anxiety in the middle of your novel (the Mediterranean below). You would be fully justified in calling this a projection and turning it against me. Anyway, I did have the sensation of turbulence, a dangerous air-storm. I felt you were brilliant and brave at the controls. [ . . . ]
Messiah
novel. I can’t think that I would offend you by speaking as I speak to myself. I have often rushed into the writing of a book and after thirty or forty pages, just after taking off, I felt that I had made a crazy jump, that I had yielded to a mad convulsion, and that from this convulsion of madness, absolutely uncalled-for and self-generated, I might never recover. At the start the fast take-off seemed such a wonderful and thrilling exploit. I believed in it still. But could I bring it off, would I land safely or fall into the ocean? I experienced the same anxiety in the middle of your novel (the Mediterranean below). You would be fully justified in calling this a projection and turning it against me. Anyway, I did have the sensation of turbulence, a dangerous air-storm. I felt you were brilliant and brave at the controls. [ . . . ]
With best wishes,
To Karl Shapiro
July 31, 1987 West Brattleboro
Dear Karl,
Every time I publish a novel it turns out that a test has been administered—no, two tests; in one I am graded by reviewers, while the other is mine, unintentionally given to my fellow Americans. Half of these are totally illiterate, thirty percent more are functionally illiterate, and the rest, while intellectually capable are tremendously unwilling to go along. Democrat that I am, I write for everybody but as you well know not everybody gives a damn. Grateful for what I can get, I absolve one and all. We weren’t brought up, you and I, to feel superior. The idea of giving the entire USA a Rorschach test in the arts is horrifying. Still, the fatal facts (for example, that our souls are gasping for oxygen) can’t be covered up. Sometimes I see in the entire species a single animal as represented in the paintings of the Northwest Coast Indians. All the parts of the creature—eyes, teeth, belly, tail—have been separated and are arranged in the foreground so that teeth or ears or claws are hypertrophied whereas other important parts are diminutive. Well, everything is
there
, but the parts for whose development I pray are atrophied. One day they will be restored and judgment will occupy its rightful place.
there
, but the parts for whose development I pray are atrophied. One day they will be restored and judgment will occupy its rightful place.
Meantime my hopes are in people—like you and Sophie—who, like me, have devoted their lives to novels, poems, music, painting, religion and philosophy. To most Americans we are respected freaks entitled, like everybody else, to live. They don’t have to eliminate curbstones for us, as for the blind. Like spastics whose brains outpace computers, or like those clairvoyants to whom the cops turn to find missing bodies when all police methods are exhausted, we have our place. On TV recently I saw a science prodigy with a strange disease, lecturing an audience of astrophysicists through an interpreter trained to understand him. He used a language only two could speak, and long formulas were written on the blackboard. This has
got
to mean something to you.
got
to mean something to you.
But there is nothing to complain about. I am lucky to find a few readers who actually approve. To have even a
minyan
[
104
] is ecstasy. (Do I catch myself saying, after so many decades of devotion to Anglo-American literature, that the Happy Few resemble the Jews!)
minyan
[
104
] is ecstasy. (Do I catch myself saying, after so many decades of devotion to Anglo-American literature, that the Happy Few resemble the Jews!)
What I intended when I sat down to write was to thank you and Sophie for your assurance that I was indeed on track, doing what I thought I was doing and even directing my attention to things that had escaped me in my frenzy. And then enclosing the poem, which I re-read several times a week, was magnificently symbolic, an act of certification from another initiate; going me one (or more) better. This is a poem Catullus might have written if he had reached your age—“Goodbye to all that.” Liberation ladies may be incensed when they read you, but the poem contains history, and history, as Lincoln assured us, we can’t escape.
My friend Janis and I will be leaving Vermont toward the end of September, but we can and will entertain you almost as splendidly in Chicago.
Yours ever,
The enclosed poem was, in all likelihood, Shapiro’s “Adult Bookstore.”
To John Auerbach
August 5, 1987 W. Brattleboro Dear John,
You haven’t heard from me because of my mad obstinacy. I have insisted on reaching you by telephone and after some fifty attempts Janis and I were once or twice rewarded with a ring. There was, however, no answer at your end. So I am writing to say that we’re well, thriving, recovering from heavy and fatiguing burdens—convalescing. I begin to have hopes of recovery and one of these days you will hear that I have gone back to my desk. [ . . . ]
To tell the truth I have felt somewhat waterlogged and half-sunken in the green heat of New England (an unusually stifling summer), and while I have a lively desire to do things I have very little power to act, so I am both agitated and torpid. I have to tell you that I was, however, moved to write a fairly severe letter to Tony [Kerrigan]. He sent a communication to
Commentary
to explain how it was that Borges had been passed over by the Swedish Academy and why it was that so many lesser writers had gotten the prize. I did not feel that Yeats, Eliot, Samuel Beckett, Camus, Churchill, etc. were so very far beneath Borges and I was taken by surprise that Kerrigan should say publicly what I have always thought him to think privately. I went after him for that and if he ever does reply to my letter he will probably take refuge in the usual eccentricities. He may or may not mention this to you, and I think it best to speak about it now. I don’t really care whether I stand high or low in Tony’s hierarchy but I think that my friends or friendly acquaintances should not surprise me in print with their negative opinions. Only yesterday I recommended Tony to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a translator’s grant saying that there was no better interpreter of Borges in English. I mention this to assure you that I am not persecuting him.
Commentary
to explain how it was that Borges had been passed over by the Swedish Academy and why it was that so many lesser writers had gotten the prize. I did not feel that Yeats, Eliot, Samuel Beckett, Camus, Churchill, etc. were so very far beneath Borges and I was taken by surprise that Kerrigan should say publicly what I have always thought him to think privately. I went after him for that and if he ever does reply to my letter he will probably take refuge in the usual eccentricities. He may or may not mention this to you, and I think it best to speak about it now. I don’t really care whether I stand high or low in Tony’s hierarchy but I think that my friends or friendly acquaintances should not surprise me in print with their negative opinions. Only yesterday I recommended Tony to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a translator’s grant saying that there was no better interpreter of Borges in English. I mention this to assure you that I am not persecuting him.
Borges declared long ago that contemporary writers ought not to do novels and as Tony is faithful to the master I have a rabbinical problem with him. Every man to his own orthodoxy. Even if I say so myself,
More Die of Heartbreak
is a better read than the Borges story on Raimondo Llull, submitted by Tony with his application for the National Endowment for the Humanities, with its mystical diagrams from the Middle Ages. But I know that a falling out between two of your friends makes you uncomfortable, so I want to tell you simply that I wasn’t falling out but only acting from self-respect, drawing the line with Tony. Nor do I intend to quarrel with [A.B.] Yehoshua, for whom I have a genuine liking (with only minimal reservations). I intend to write him a conciliatory epistle this very day.
More Die of Heartbreak
is a better read than the Borges story on Raimondo Llull, submitted by Tony with his application for the National Endowment for the Humanities, with its mystical diagrams from the Middle Ages. But I know that a falling out between two of your friends makes you uncomfortable, so I want to tell you simply that I wasn’t falling out but only acting from self-respect, drawing the line with Tony. Nor do I intend to quarrel with [A.B.] Yehoshua, for whom I have a genuine liking (with only minimal reservations). I intend to write him a conciliatory epistle this very day.
The flowers around the house come and go and only Janis holds her ground, flower-like but not subject to blossoming and decay like the vegetable kingdom.
Affectionate greetings to Nola.
With much love,
To Wright Morris
August 10, 1987 West Brattleboro
Dear Wright,
I hope you will send me a copy of
The Origin of Sadness
which you say is a meditation on our shared losses. We have had a long friendship and an unusual one, if you bear in mind a certain oddity in our two shapes, a permanent incongruity. I mention it because this time we got out of hailing distance entirely.
More Die of Heartbreak
is a funny book, or was meant to be. Your radar for laughter must have been pointed the wrong way. Your welcome and charming letter compliments me on restoring the word “soul” to common usage and then you say that I confuse “ego-crack” (a Californian category) with heartbreak. Now it seems to me that people who will not use the word
soul
and are by now unaware that any such thing exists will surely experience a kind of inner suffocation. I have taken the liberty to describe this as heartbreak. Killing sorrow would be an acceptable alternative as in our old friend Chaucer: “Sorrow at hearte killeth full many a manne.” With this double invocation of poetic license I send you a comradely embrace.
The Origin of Sadness
which you say is a meditation on our shared losses. We have had a long friendship and an unusual one, if you bear in mind a certain oddity in our two shapes, a permanent incongruity. I mention it because this time we got out of hailing distance entirely.
More Die of Heartbreak
is a funny book, or was meant to be. Your radar for laughter must have been pointed the wrong way. Your welcome and charming letter compliments me on restoring the word “soul” to common usage and then you say that I confuse “ego-crack” (a Californian category) with heartbreak. Now it seems to me that people who will not use the word
soul
and are by now unaware that any such thing exists will surely experience a kind of inner suffocation. I have taken the liberty to describe this as heartbreak. Killing sorrow would be an acceptable alternative as in our old friend Chaucer: “Sorrow at hearte killeth full many a manne.” With this double invocation of poetic license I send you a comradely embrace.
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