Saturday, April 30, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry by Owen Barfield
Owen Barfield's classic text Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry (1957) figures centrally in Charlie Citrine's quest for meaning in life in Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift. Bellow's masterpiece makes several references to idolatry and appearances as well as many references to the anthroposophist Rudolph Steiner. These words are well defined in Barfield's text and it pays to familiarize oneself with it.
Barfield graduated from Oxford in 1921 and becdame an attorney, but was best known as a philosopher, but studied philosophy as a non-academic. He died in 1997 at the age of 99. Barield became an anthroposophist after attending a lecture by Rudolf Steiner in 1924. He studied the work and philosophy of Steiner throughout his life and translated some of his works, and had some early essays published in anthroposophical publications. A study of Steiner's basic texts provides information on some of the ideas that influenced Barfield's work, but Barfield's work ought not be considered derivative of Steiner's. Barfield is to Steiner as Steiner was to Goethe.
Steiner built upon Goethe's conception of an imaginative power capable of synthesizing the sense-perceptible form of a thing (an image of its outer appearance) and the concept we have of that thing (an image of its inner structure or nature). In Steiner's view, we can overcome the subject-object divide through inner activity, even though all human experience begins by being conditioned by it. In this connection, Steiner examines the step from thinking determined by outer impressions to what he calls sense-free thinking. He characterizes thoughts he considers without sensory content, such as mathematical or logical thoughts, as free deeds. Steiner believed he had thus located the origin of free will in our thinking, and in particular in sense-free thinking. Though not well-known among philosophers, his philosophical work was taken up by Owen Barfield (and through him influenced the Inklings, an Oxford group of Christian writers that included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis) and Richard Tarnas.
Saving the Appearances. Saving the appearances is an expression that appears in the 8th book of Milton’s Paradise Lost:
Or if they list to try
Conjecture, he his fabric of the heavens
Hath left to their disputes, perhaps to move
His laughter at their quaint opinions wide
Hereafter, when they come to model heaven,
And calculate the stars; how they will wield
The mighty frame; how build, unbuild, contrive,
To save appearances; how gird, the sphere
With centric and eccentric scribbled o’er,
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb.
The phenomena or appearances, that is, the apparent movement of the heavenly bodies, could be watched by observation. The true knowledge, since it was acquainted with the divine spirits who ensouled or guided the heavenly bodies, had already laid down certain fundamental principles, not derived from observation. It was for the science of astronomy to ‘save’ the ‘appearances’ , that is, the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies, by devising hypothetical patterns of movement, which would account for the appearances without infringing the fundamental principles. The real turning point in astronomy came when Copernicus began to affirm that the heliocentric hypothesis not only saved the appearances but was physically true.
The Rainbow. Barfield argues that the difference between a dream or a hallucination of, say, a rainbow and the sight of an actual rainbow is that—while they are both appearances -- the former is a private appearance, whereas the second is a shared representation. Barfield argues that three components make up an appearance, say, of a real tree: (1) the particles, or what he calls the unrepresented (atoms, protons, neutrons, electrons, or quarks) (2) a person's vision, and (3) other sense-perceptions. In the first chapter, he wants to establish that
Everything in the "world" -- everything that we mean by the "world" -- is a system of collective representations.
Collective Representations. Barfield argues that one of the most important tests in distinguishing between an appearance that is an illusion and a representation of what is real is to resort to judgments by fellow human beings. Our representations must be collective for them to be in any meaningful sense real. Barfield wishes to stress the difference between the collective representations on the one hand and the particles, or the unrepresented, on the other. He wants to establish that
“if the particles, or the unrepresented, are in fact all that is independently there, then the world we all accept as real is in fact a system of collective representation” (p. 20).
In chapter one, Barfield had argued that the particles, or the unrepresented, are the only things that exist independently of human consciousness. Before human beings came into existence, the unrepresented particles existed. But now that human beings exist, when our perceptual systems and our consciousness interact with the particles, a world is produced, which is the world of collective representations.
Figuration. The mind’s conversion of sense contact with the unrepresented into conscious perception requires another process which Barfield terms “figuration.” One does not hear undulating molecules of air, one hears sound; one hears, for example, a thrush singing. To experience that perception it is necessary to hear not with the ears alone but with “all sorts of other things like mental habits, memory, imagination, feeling and (to the extent at least that the act of attention involves it) will.” Without figuration, the familiar world of collective representations would be closed to the mind. Figuration makes thinking possible. Barfield distinguishes two ways of thinking: “alpha-thinking,” that is, thinking about the phenomena that figuration produces as if they were wholly objective and independent of one’s perception—the sort of thinking science generally attempts—and “beta-thinking,” that is, thinking reflexively about the processes of thinking. Through “beta-thinking” one discovers, for example, that the phenomena are not totally outside and independent of oneself. The book’s subsequent investigation into the relation between mind and matter proceeds from this epistemological base.
Participation. Barfield’s term for the interaction of the two is “participation,” a rather difficult concept to grasp in his thought since he uses it to refer to a changing, indeed evolutionary, process that must be grasped analogically. Original participation, the sort experienced by the primitive mentality, is very different from that which is common in the modern West. Citing the findings of anthropology as evidence, Barfield argues that primitive alpha-thinking was substantially different because figuration at that time was different. The primitive mind does not dissociate itself from phenomena—does not, that is, perceive itself as distinct from them, as modern people habitually do. Such a mind, in its act of original participation, perceives representations as synthetic wholes from which the percipient is not distinct, wholes that include an awareness which we no longer have, of an extra-sensory link between the percipient and the representations. This involves, not only that we think differently, but that the phenomena (collective representations) themselves are different.
Idolatry. Idolatry is the effective tendency to abstract the sense-content from the whole representation. Or stated differently (p. 143) idolatry is experiencing objects in their own right existing independently of human consciousness. Barfield refers (p. 176) to the Old Testament discourse on idolatry (from the 135th Psalm):
The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. they have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not; They have ears, but they hear not: neither is there any breath in their mouths. They that make them are like unto them: so is every one that trusteth in them.
And Barfield offers (p. 161) his own commentary on it:
What the Psalmist wrote of the old idols is true no less of the idols of the twentieth century. "They that make them are like unto them." The soul is in a manner all things, and the idols we create are built into the souls of our children; who learn more and more to think of themselves as objects among objects; who grow hollower and hollower. In the long run we shall not be able to save souls without saving the appearances, and it is an error fraught with the most terrible consequences to imagine that we shall.
Barfield makes the point that (p. 112) Moses was angry with his people making idols when he returned with a system of laws from the mountain. He was angry with them for creating idols of gold because he was creating idols of words. The reason the name of God was so rarely spoken by the Jewish people was because the word itself was an idol. Kept in their secret heart of hearts, they took it out and spoke it only on the holiest of occasions.
Humboldt’s Gift. In Bellow’s novel, the protagonist, Charlie Citrine, tires of the splendid ‘veil’ of “appearances” distracting his vision. Refusing to look at the charming view of the French countryside outside his train window, he explains, “I rejected the plastered idols of the Appearances. These idols I had been trained, along with everybody else, to see, and I was tired of their tyranny. I even thought, The painted veil isn’t what it used to be. The damn thing is wearing out…..I was thinking of the power of collective abstractions, and so forth. We crave more than ever the radiant vividness of boundless love, and more and more the barren idols thwart this. A world of categories devoid of spirit waits for life to return” (HG pp. 16-17). These collective abstractions are, of course, Barfield’s collective representations.
Monday, April 25, 2011
In Dreams Begin Responsibilities by Delmore Schwartz
Saul Bellow creates a fictionalized version of American author Delmore Schwartz in his novel Humboldt’s Gift (1975). Readers interested in better understanding the context of Bellow’s masterpiece and the character of Von Humboldt Fleisher would do well to read Schwartz’s short stories. New Directions republished his short stories in 1978 under the title of his best known story. Schwartz examines the life of New York intellectuals in the Great Depression. Many of the stories contain thinly disguised avatars for the author. The White Horse Inn (photo) was a key hangout and still exists.
In Dreams Begin Responsibilities. Written in 1937, this short story appeared in an early issue of the Partisan Review, and is his best known piece, divided into 6 brief sections. It is based on his intense dissatisfaction with his own personal life, due to the failure of his parent's marriage. It opens in June, 1909, in Brooklyn, where his father is courting his mother “Rose” (p. 2), her actual name. They visit Coney Island, ride the merry-go-round, and eat at a restaurant where his father proposes, lifted up by the waltz that is being played (p. 8). They then go sit in front of a photographer and ultimately have their fortune told. Schwartz uses a clever technical innovation, he tells the story as if he is in a movie theater, the unborn son, watching newsreels unfold of his parent’s courting. At the conclusion of each section, there is an interruption in the “dream screen”, whether it be a break in the film, or the narrator’s multiple departures from the theater as a result of uncontrollable grief. In effect, the film ends in his conception.
When his father proposes in the restaurant, he shouts out “Don’t do it. It’s not too late to change your minds, both of you. Nothing good will come of it, only remorse, hatred, scandal, and two children, whose characters are monstrous” (p. 6). He tries to shut his eyes, but the film is unreeling in the theater of his mind. In the photo session, the photographer has trouble staging a photo that is “right” (p. 7), of course, the narrator knows there is no right in this pairing. In the final fortune-telling scene, an usher drags him out of the theater, telling him “Don’t you know that you can’t do whatever you want to do ?” (p. 8). The usher’s statement is given a central place in the story as if to say “how presumptuous yet inevitable that we should want to unwind the reel of our lives” (p. viii). The narrator awakes on his 21st birthday, his fortune has been foretold. It has been an anxiety dream, befitting of his well known insomnia. To have wished his parents not to marry is to have wished his own extinction.
America ! America ! The narrator now takes the name Shenandoah Fish in this second story about telling a story. He is an author, unable to write, who listens to his mother’s story about their neighbors, the Baumanns. He feels his loss of fluency as “a loss, or a lapse of identity” (p. 11). He feels that no one knows him, “I do not see myself. I do not know myself. I cannot look at myself truly” (p. 33). “He was not sure at any given moment whether the cruelty of the story was in his own mind or in his mother’s tongue” (p. 16). Because of his vocation as an author, Shenandoah “reflected upon his separation from these people, and he felt that In every sense he was removed from them by thousands of miles, or by a generation, or by the Atlantic Ocean. What he cared about, only a few other human beings, separated from each other too, also cared about” (p. 19). Yet he begins to doubt himself, “he began to feel that he was wrong to suppose that the separation, the contempt, and the gulf had nothing to do with his work” (p. 20). Ultimately, he realizes his own lassitude and indolence are equal to the Baumanns’.
The expression “The World is a Wedding” is based on the marriage of God and Nature. Jacob is reminded of Peter Breughel’s famous painting The Peasant Wedding (see image). Jacob points out the details of the painting, expounding on how it is a reflection of life.
The expression in vino veritas appears in this story (p. 77), well before Martin Amis pens it in Experience (see 10/24/10 post). Best lines: “I am not a failure because I never wanted to be a success” (p. 84) and “The best pleasure of all is to give pleasure to another being” (p. 89).
New Year’s Eve. This short story is horribly dated (1938), since the intrigue is based upon the caricatures of the New York intellectual cliques, especially the Partisan Review crowd, who are sardonically painted as very frail. These include the author (Shenandoah Fish); Gertrude Buckman, Schwartz’s 1st wife and PR book reviewer (Wilhelmina Gold); Dwight McDonald, PR editor (Grant Landis); William C. Barrett, Schwartz’s close friend, editor PR, wrote philosophical texts for non-experts (Nicholas O’Neil); F.W. DuPee, PR editor (Oliver Jones); and Lionel Abel, critic (Leon Berg). The death/rebirth issue is a regular feature of Schwartz’ stories and is revisiting at the opening “This secular holiday is full of pain because it is both an ending and a beginning” (p. 94). It is to be the year of the Munich pact (permitting Nazi Germany annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland), a foreboding of the next world war, inevitable and hopeless. Delia, Oliver’s wife, laments that she did not marry the man who courted her before Oliver, because of certain idiosyncrasies. She considers “…why should anyone have to pay for another human being’s childhood” (p. 106), meaning that we all carry baggage from our childhood that gets foisted on our adult relations. Best line – “[Sex] is different with everyone” (p. 107).
The Commencement Day Address. Dr. Isaac Duspenser seeks to épater les bourgeois, with pessimistic sentiments and a machine gun. A student calls out from the audience challenging his intellectual exhibitionism, yet he replies “Must I, too, pay for your childhood” (p. 121), an epigram that we saw in the previous story. Best line – “I see all History as a lovesick boy fumbling his sex in the darkness” (p. 120).
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Lectures on Don Quixote by Vladimir Nabokov
Nabokov entered the U.S. in 1940. He was given a leave of absence from Cornell so that he could accept a visiting appointment at Harvard in the Spring semester of the academic year 1951-1952 (3c years before writing Lolita). Harry Levin taught a well-known course at Harvard on the novel. Nabokov took his place and they both agreed to cover Don Quixote. He delivered six lectures that were captured in book form in 1983, edited by Fredson Bowers, distinguished American bibliographer.
Guy Davenport's foreword is very insightful. Nabokov tore apart the novel before 600 students in Memorial Hall (photo), much to the horror and embarrassment of colleagues. Nabokov discovered that "professors had gentrified the cruel and crude old book into a genteel and whimsical myth about appearance and reality" (p. xiii). Nabokov's new reading was an event in modern criticism. Steady sentimentalization of the book is evidenced by modern connotations of the word "quixotic." It should mean hallucinated, self-hypnotized, yet now connotes admirably idealistic.
Nabokov came to learn the book is not what people think it is, especially with the interpolated novellas that impede the plotless plot. The book elicits cruel laughter. Cervantes' lifetime saw expulsion of the Jews and Moors. Spain kept gladiatorial slaughters in the arena long after the Roman Empire abandoned them. The national entertainment, the bullfight, sets Spain aside among civilized people even today. Nabokov wasted no time disabusing the students of any preconceived notions of knight-errantry. He drew detailed pictures of a windmill on the blackboard, and explained why a country gentleman might mistake them for giants, since they were an innovation in 17th century Spain. Nabokov sees that Cervantes created a character greater than the book from which he has wandered. Don Quixote remains a book of peculiarly Spanish cruelty. It was written in an age hen dwarfs and the afflicted were laughed at, when dissenters from official thought were burnt alive in city squares to general applause. Nabokov states "Don Quixote has been called the greatest novel ever written. This, of course, is nonsense" (p. 27).
Cervantistas have reacted bitterly to Nabokov's comments. I reproduce the opening paragraph of an article written by Catherine Kunce for the Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America (1993).
Many cervantistas will recall that Vladimir Nabokov famously objected to Don Quixote because of its “hideous cruelty —with or without the author's intent— which riddles the whole book and befouls its humor”. A more contemporary look at “hideous cruelty,” intentional or otherwise, may be in order here. While Don Quixote's inability to see the “real” Dulcinea does no harm to Aldonza Lorenzo, Humbert's disregard of the “real” Dolores enslaves a vulnerable and lonely pre-pubescent child and befouls the humor of Nabokov's Lolita. That Humbert's actions destroy Lolita psychologically is evidenced by his parenthetical recollection of her “sobs in the night —every night— the moment I feigned sleep”. Lolita sobs for good reason: Humbert himself admits that, to Lolita, he is “not a boy friend, not a glamour man, not a pal, not even a person at all, but just two eyes and a foot of engorged brawn”. Lolita's attempts to escape from those eyes and brawn only increase Humbert's rapacity: “thrusting my fatherly fingers into Lo's hair from behind, and then gently but firmly clasping them around the nape of her neck, I would then lead my reluctant pet to our small home for a quick connection before dinner”. Nabokov fans have tended to regard this rape of a resistant child as cavalierly as does his hero. The time has come to rethink the label of “hideous cruelty,” which is radically qualified by Nabokov's use, and abuse, of Cervantes.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Don Quixote of the Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
The First Part of The Delightful History of the Most Ingenius Knight Don Quixote of the Mancha was written by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in 1605 and first translated by Thomas Shelton in 1612. Cervantes was compelled to complete the Second Part after a spurious Second Part was published by Avellaneda in 1614, an admirer of Lope de Vega, Cervantes' rival. There is no consensus as to who Avellaneda was. The well known Harvard Classics edition (1910), translated by Shelton (1612), is limited to Part One (52 chapters spanning 4 books) and states that Part Two "is generally regarded as inferior." That was in 1910 - generally critics now agree that Part Two is more developed and deeper. Ironically, must editions of the book are either abridged (Parts I and II) or Part One only. Amis (The War Against Cliché) opines "While clearly an impregnable masterpiece, Don Quixote suffers from one fairly serious flaw - that of outright unreadability...Written in the day before novel-reviewing - indeed, in the days before novels - Don Quixote was probably never intended to be read in the modern manner: that is, straight through. Group or family recitations of a chapter a night were, in all likelihood, the most that Cervantes expected anyone to manage. His epic is epic in length only; it has no pace, no drive. An anthology, an agglomeration, it simply accrues. The question 'What happens next?' has no meaning, because there is no next in Don Quixote's world: there is only more."
Cervantes chooses to act the role of historian in the book, rather than novelist. The representation of authorship in the novel is intriguing, since Cervantes intercedes early in the book (1st Part, Book 2, Chap 1) explains how the history of the famed knight has been cut off at this point. In the first 8 chapters, mention is made of an anonymous chronicler: "Who doubts, in the ensuing ages, when the true history of my famous acts shall come to light, but that the wise man who shall write it....And, thou wise enchanter, whosoever thou beest, whom it shall concern to be the chronicler of this strange history..." (1st, 1, 2).
In his Moorish travels the author has discovered in Toledo an old manuscript written in Arabic by an historian named Cid Hamet Benengeli. Cervantes uses this as a device to ensure the objectivity of the storyteller, the author is a Moor, for an infidel would try very hard to understate the achievements of a Spaniard. This assures the reader that the history of Don Quixote is true and unexaggerated. "And if any objection be made against the truth of this, it can be none other that the author was a Moor; and it is a known property of that nation to be lying: yet, in respect that they hate us mortally, it is to be conjectured that in this history there is rather want and concealment of our knight's worthy acts than any superfluity; which I imagine the rather, because I find in the progress thereof, many times, that when he might and ought to have advanced his pen in our knight's praises, he doth, as it were of purpose, pass over them in silence; which was very ill done." In effect, the balance of Part I is based on the pretended discovery of a pretended translation of a pretended Arabian account. In the Burning of the Books chapter (1st, 1, 6) there is a reference made to "The Galatea of Michael Cervantes." The priest claims Cervantes is a friend of his, his book is clever but does not fulfill its potential. He saves the novel, expecting that the sequel Cervantes has promised will be published.
At the end of the book, Cervantes finds an aged physician who has found parchments with sonnets ad epitaphs in a leaden box. The final sentence gives hope to eager readers that a scholar has pieced together a manuscript "with the cost of many nights' watching and other great pains, and that he means to publish them, and also gives hope of a third sally made by Don Quixote" (1st, 4, 25).
The structure of the First Part is based on two quests or "sallies," the first solo by Don Quixote and the second with his squire Sancho Panza. These "adventures" comprise the most famous scenes from the novel (comprising 22/52 chapters) included in the first sally (the "castle" inn, knight dubbing, the whipped boy André, return and burning of the books) and second sally (conscription of Sancho Panza, attack of the windmills, duel with Biscainer, fight with the Yanguesian Carriers, mix up with Maritornes, flock of sheep episode, the funeral party, the fulling-mill hammers, Mambrino's helmet, and the galley slaves). I have described some of these in the post on Bellow's Henderson the Rain King. DQ and Sancho reach the Sierra Morena where DQ does penance in the wilderness and the balance of the novel is comprised of listening to inset tales or novellas. In some ways, the tales are most interesting and all revolve around lost love. Of course, DQ devotes all his knight-errantry to Aldonsa Lorenzo, whom renames Dulcinea del Toboso. Cynics claim that the epic length of the tales is a result of Cervantes running out of ideas for adventures.
Chrysostom's Tale. Chrysostom, a shepherd, has died of love for Marcela, beautiful daughter of a rich merchant (1st, 2, 4-6). She dresses as a shepherdess and toils in the fields. Marcela appears at the funeral and screams "I cannot conceive why, for the reason of being beloved, the party that is so beloved for her beauty should be bound to love her lover." Marcela's life as a shepherdess parallels DQ's life as a knight-errant. Both exemplify the nobility of free will overcoming society-dictated reality. While Chrysostom pines to death, DQ, equally unsuccessful in love, sublimates his frustration ans is inspired to accomplish immortal deeds.
Sancho's Tale. A simple but amusing tale, a gag, is told by Sancho in a manner which drives DQ crazy (1st, 3, 6). A goatherd was going with his flock where his eyes would never more behold the girl who had been unfaithful to him, Torralva. He came to the bank of the flood-swollen Guadiana River, which he could not cross. He saw a fisherman with a boat that could only take one man and a goat. He agrees to take the flock of 300, but it will take 300 trips. Sancho asks DQ to keep track of the number of trips. If he loses count, the story ends. "'Make account,' quothe Don Quixote, that thou has passed them all over; for otherwise thou will not make an end of passing them in a whole year's space.' 'How many,' said Sancho, 'are already passed over?' 'What a devil know I?' said Don Quixote." This is likely the funniest dialog in the book.
Cardenio's Tale. Cardenio’s Tale (1st, 3, 13) was later adopted by Shakespeare for a play of the same name. In brief, it is a story about Cardenio falling in love with Lucinda. Yet his friend, Don Fernando, isolates Cardenio from Lucinda, and marries her through some sleight of hand. Cardenio secretly watches the ceremony from a distant vantage point. Cardenio’s narrative presents problems because it is not exclusively his. He is not the only source for the story. His story is in part that of other characters in the book. The story is also fractured by the interrupted text presentation. Later, Dorothea relates details (1st, 4, 1) of the same story as she intersects with Cardenio’s tale by way of Don Fernando (she was a former lover, also shorted by the marriage to Lucinda). As different characters relate different aspects of the story, the skewed viewpoints offer a way for the reader to gather more of the facts than the individual characters have themselves. When Dorothea relates her knowledge of the wedding ceremony, Cardenio is shocked to hear that the letter that was found on Lucinda when she fainted at the wedding ceremony was a declaration in her hand that she was already Cardenio’s wife (in principle). Dorothea watched Fernando reading it. Hence, Cardenio is not fully apprised of his own tale until he hears Dorothea’s version. Finally, Don Fernando joins the others, and tells his own version of the story (1st, 4, 9).
The Novel of the Curious-Impertinent. As told by the curate at the Inn (1st, 4, 6-8), this tale is about Lothario and Anselmo and his wife Camella, a beautiful, rich, devoted and virtuous maiden. Anselmo desires to est his wife's virtue and wants Lothario to seduce her. Of course, despite Lothario's reluctance to follow through, he and Camilla ultimately fall for each other. Leonela, Camilla's assistant is bold about her own affair in the compound. Lothario mistakes Leonela's lover for another suitor to Camilla and reports this to Anselmo. Knowing Anselmo has returned and is spying on her, the two women stage a mock tragedy. Stabbing herself (superficially) she convinces Anselmo of her unimpeachable love. Eventually, Leonela's indiscretion shatters the fragile state of "affairs" amongst the two men and Camilla. Anselmo confronts Leonela about her behavior, and Camilla jumps ship for fear Leonela will spill the beans. Anselmo dies of melancholy upon hearing of his wife's departure.
This story tells of a man who depends entirely on tested experience as a way to determine truth. Anselmo is so persistent in demanding proof of his wife's virtue that he succeeds despite his deepest desires, in making her unfaithful. DQ would never submit his ideals to a test of the senses. He knows that an attitude of seeing-is-believing uncovers, not truths, but lies. Anselmo, an unfortunate cuckold dies, a victim to a faith which could not free itself from depending on tangible proofs.
The Captive's Tale. The so-called Captive’s Tale spans 7 chapters (1st, 4, 10-16) that take place at the Inn. Nabokov (Lectures on Don Quixote, p. 146) points out that the interpolated story unwittingly spans two “beavers” or luncheons served at the Inn, as apparently Cervantes lost track of his guest’s meal times. The “captive” and his Moorish lady friend arrive at the Inn, where he tells his tale. It is the story of Ruy Pérez of Viedma (name revealed in final chapter when he meets his long lost brother John), one of 3 sons who each chose among three callings according to their father’s wishes: “The Church, the Sea, or the Court” (1st, 4, 12). He became a soldier serving God and his king at the same time. He leaves his family in Castile and heads to Alicante where he boards a ship headed for Genoa. He joins the Duke of Alba's army in Flanders. He is captured at sea at Lepanto (name revealed in last chapter): “I leapt into the enemy’s vessel, the which falling off from that which had assaulted her, hindered my soldiers from following me; by which means I saw myself alone amidst mine enemies, against whom I could make no long resistance, they were so many. In fine, I was taken, full of wounds” (1st, 4, 12), then sent to Constantinople as a slave on the Turkish galleys. He and camarades are jailed in a special prison house called a bagnio, by Moors in Algiers, only to meet a beautiful woman, Zoraida, daughter of Aguimorato, whose villa overlooked the prison courtyard. As a young girl, she learned the ways of Christianity through a housekeeper. She sets up letter communications, frees the Christians, and escapes to Spain.
Historically, the Battle of Lepanto was in 1571 and allowed Spain and allies to defeat the main fleet of the Ottoman Empire. Cervantes fought in the battle and mentions his name in the text: the Captive says “Only one Spanish soldier, called such a one as Saavedra,…I would recount unto you things done by this soldier, which might both entertain and astonish you much more than the relation of my life” (1st, 4, 13). Cervantes took 3 gunshot wounds, 2 in the chest and one rendering his left arm useless. Based out of Naples (under Spanish control) for several years, he was captured on the seas by Algerian corsairs and spent 5 years in prison in Algiers before ransomed by his parents.
Historically, the Battle of Lepanto was in 1571 and allowed Spain and allies to defeat the main fleet of the Ottoman Empire. Cervantes fought in the battle and mentions his name in the text: the Captive says “Only one Spanish soldier, called such a one as Saavedra,…I would recount unto you things done by this soldier, which might both entertain and astonish you much more than the relation of my life” (1st, 4, 13). Cervantes took 3 gunshot wounds, 2 in the chest and one rendering his left arm useless. Based out of Naples (under Spanish control) for several years, he was captured on the seas by Algerian corsairs and spent 5 years in prison in Algiers before ransomed by his parents.
Knight of the Woeful Countenance. Sancho adorns DQ with this name (Knight of the Ill-favored Face in Shelton translation, Sad or Rueful Countenance in others) during the second sally (1st, 3, 5), which basically means "sad face." Careful readers will note that this is a result of lost teeth in the previous chapter (1st, 3, 4), not his mental state. DQ is hit by a rock in the jaw during the Sheep adventure. He asks Sancho to check his mouth "Yes, I pray thee, give me thy hand, and feel how many cheek teeth, or others, I want in this right side of the upper jaw." "'Well then,' quoth Sancho, 'you have in this nether part but two cheek teeth and a half; and in the upper neither a half, nor any; for all there is as plain as the palm of my hand.'" Presumably, cheek teeth are molars. In the next chapter, Sancho introduces him as "'...the famous Don Quixote of the Mancha, otherwise called the Knight of the Ill-favored Face.'...Don Quixote demanded of Sancho what had moved him to call him Knight of the Ill-favored Face" to which Sancho replied "'I stood beholding of you a pretty while by the taper light which that unlucky man carrieth, and truly you have one of the evil-favourdest countenances of late that I ever saw, which either proceedeth of your being tired after this battle, or else through the loss of your teeth.'"
DQ believes it was a sage rather than Sancho who came up with the name: "'This is not the reason,' said Don Quixote; 'but rather, it hath seemed fit to the wise man, to whose charge is left the writing of my history, that I take some appellative name...'"
Don Quixote's mole. Dorothea enquires about the knight-errant, whose name she can't remember (1st, 4, 3). Dorothea pretends her father said "'that he should be high of stature, have a withered face, and that on the right side, a little under the left shoulder, or thereabouts, he should have a tawny spot with certain hairs like to bristles.' Don Quixote, hearing this, said to his squire, 'Hold my horse hear, son Sancho, and help me to take off mine apparel; for I will see whether I be the knight of whom the wise king hath prophesied.'" Is Cervantes making a mountain out of a mole? According to Hodges, in the Muslim tradition, the seal of the prophet is sometimes interpreted as a physical seal in the form of a mole on Muhammad's back.
Best Lines. I was curious when I saw the expression "as they say, out of the frying-pan, into the fire" (1st, 3, 4). Later in the book: "What ails you, good madam ? I pray you think if it be any of those inconveniences to which women be subject" (1st, 4, 9) may be the first reference to menstruation in the western canon of literature !
Sancho's Wife Ain't Buying it ! The final scene in the book (1st, 4, 25) involves the return of the knight-errant and squire home. This is the most amazing corollary to the plight of the modern entrepreneur's wife you could hope to imagine ! Sancho's wife cuts to the quick:
At the news of this his arrival, Sancho Panza's wife repaired also to to get some tidings of the good man; for she had learned that he was gone away with the knight, to serve him as his squire; and as soon as ever she saw her husband, the question, she asked him was, whether the ass were in health or no ?
Sancho answered that he was come in better health than his master.
'God be thanked,' quoth she, ' who hath done me so great a favour; but tell me now, friend, what profit hast thou reaped by this thy squireship ? What petticoat hast thou brought me home ? What shoes for thy little boys ?'
'I bring none of these things, good wife,' quoth Sancho; 'although I bring other things of more moment and estimation.'
'I am very glad of that,' quoth his wife: 'show me those things of more moment and estimation, good friend I would fain see them, to the end that this heart of mine may be cheered, which hath been so swollen and sorrowful all the time of thine absence.'
'Thou shalt see them at home,' quoth Sancho, 'and therefore rest satisfied for this time; for and it please God that we travel once again to seek adventures, thou shalt see me shortly after an earl or governor of an island, and that not of every ordinary one neither, but of one of the best in the world.'
'I pray God, husband, it may be so,' replied she, 'for we have very great need of it. But what means that island ? for I understand not the word.'
"Honey is not made for the ass's mouth,' quoth Sancho; 'wife, thou shalt know it in good time, yea and shalt wonder to hear the title of ladyship given thee by all thy vassals.'
'What is that thou speakest, Sancho, of lordships, islands, and vassals?' answered Joan Panza (for so she was called, although her husband and she were not kinsfolk, but by reason that in the Mancha the wives are usually called after their husband's surname).
"Do not busy thyself, Joan,' quoth Sancho, 'to know these things on such a sudden; let it suffice that I tell thee the truth, and therewithal sew up thy mouth. I will only say thus much unto thee, as it were by the way, that there is nothing in the world so pleasant as for an honest man to be the squire of a knight-errant that seeks adventures. It is very true that the greatest number of adventures found out succeeded not to a man's satisfaction so much as he would desire; for of a hundred that are encountered, the ninety-and-nine are wont to be cross and untoward ones. I know it by experience, for I have come away myself out of some of them well canvassed, and out of others well beaten. But yes, for all that, it is a fine thing to expect events, traverse groves, search woods, tread on rocks, visit castles, and lodge in inns at a man's pleasure, without paying the devil a cross.'
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow's 1959 novel followed his breakthrough The Adventures of Augie March (1953), yet received perplexed and lukewarm reviews at best, notably Prescott's review (2/23/59) in The New York Times, citing parallels to Don Quixote, calling it "an unsuccessful experiment, noble in purpose but dismal in result." Nevertheless, the Pulitzer Prize committee for fiction recommended it be awarded the prize for that year. The passage of time has been kind to Bellow and informed critics soon realized the scope of this uplifting buildungsroman with its ample allusions and demands on the reader's intellect. A week before the novel appeared in book stores, Bellow published an article in The New York Times Book Review (2/15/59) entitled "The Search for Symbols, a Writer Warns, Misses All the Fun and Fact of the Story," claiming that too much thinking about symbols and allusions might lead readers to misunderstand a novel. As an aside, Bellow uses the term reisemotif ("journey" motif), relevant to the book and to the pseudo-eponymous blogger !! Critics have never understood why Bellow published this article before the symbol-packed Rain King hit the shelves. Yet there exists an eerie parallel to Don Quixote. We will revisit DQ.
Story. Eugene Henderson, a 55-year old millionaire and pig farmer from Danbury, Connecticut lives on an estate which his father wanted to bequeath to his older brother, who died young. Establishing the piggery was based on an anti-Semitic impulse based on a conversation with a fellow Jewish soldier during the War: "I knew that if Goldstein had not been a Jew I might have said cattle and not pigs" (pp. 25, 253). He is searching for purpose and meaning in his life and decides to find it in an undisclosed area of East Africa (since Lamu Island and Malindi, Kenya are mentioned on numerous occasions - I visited both in 1973). At the outset, Henderson warns the reader "What made me take this trip to Africa ? There is no quick explanation. Things got worse and worse and worse and pretty soon they were too complicated" (p. 9). His first marriage to Frances ended in divorce and his marriage to Lily is aggravated by his hot temper.
Bellow's Africa is the Africa of books, notably Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Ernest Hemingway ("E.H.") as portrayed (see photo) in Life magazine (p. 93): "the world is a mind. Travel is mental travel" (p. 159).
Henderson's inner voice keeps crying out "I want, I want, I want" (p. 17), but he has no clue as to what he wants, yet it compels him to leave his tedium vitae of a home in Danbury for deepest Africa. He hires a native guide Romilayu, who takes him to Arnewi (imaginary), where he befriends the chief Itelo. The Arnewi teach him about "grun-tu-molani" (pp. 84, 266) which means "I want to live." He gains the chief's respect after beating him in a wrestling match. He attempts to rid their cistern of pesky frogs, by devising an explosive device, but eliminates the water as well as the frogs. Sensing his welcome is expired, he travels to the Wariri tribe, where he meets King Dahfu, who is widely travelled and educated in Beirut. He makes a bet with Dahfu that it will not rain. In a ceremony to bring on the rainy season, Henderson jumps in and uses his massive strength to move the giant wooden statue Mummah, and unwittingly is anointed the Rain King (the "Sungo" (p. 186) as in "sun go") for the village. Of course, this carries some responsibilities, unanticipated, like becoming the next King, when Dahfu succumbs to injuries, suffered in an entanglement with a lion, supposedly the reincarnation of the late King Gmilo. Anticipating no good, Henderson Sungo and Romilayu get out of Dodge. He leaves with a lion cub believed to contain the reincarnated spirit of Dahfu: "The King would want me to take it along...he's got to survive in some form" (p. 306).
Biblical references abound. He eliminates the cistern frogs as if he was Moses dispensing with a plague. His imitations of Atti's roaring become invocations with biblical resonance: "Moooorcy!....Secoooooooor...De profooooondis" (p. 258) (mercy, au secours, de profundis). The book is replete with references to Handel's Messiah (pp. 38, 84, 314).
Love and Death. The themes of love and death fill the novel. Henderson relates that he has "observed a connection between women's love and the great principles of life" (p. 95). Henderson realizes that love is the goal toward which all human striving should be directed. Life should achieve a constant spiritual growth to the accomplishment of achieving love.
Novel as Quest. Henderson has been identified with many quest novels, particularly Don Quixote, but more recently Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets. At one point he says to Itelo: "Your Highness, I am really kind of on a quest" (p. 66). Ultimately, the reader is not convinced that Henderson has achieved the illumination appropriate to a successful quest. It is unclear if the epic atonement of his journey generates at "at-one-ment" with his father. Four Quartets is referenced: "There is that poem about the nightingale singing that human-kind cannot stand too much reality. But how much unreality can it stand ?" (p. 104). Kiernan (Saul Bellow) points out that Bellow debunks a tradition that limits questers to aristocrats such as Holden Caulfield and the Eliot persona. The vulgarian Henderson is a clown, more of a Sancho Panza than a Don Quixote. Embarrassed that his life is developing an epic dimension, he says "I don't even deserve to be chronicled on toilet paper" (p. 200). Henderson's vulgarity is important to Bellow's parody: "I didn't want to be a shit about it" (p. 56), although he can be clever, describing Lily as "the altar of my ego" (p. 150). Henderson is so far from a traditional quester, he is a caricature. He resembles Jewish comedian or meshuggah. While Henderson fails to embrace his leonine self with Atti, he does recall at the end of the novel a decrepit brown bear named Smolak, with whom, as a 19-year old, he did tricks at a carnival in Canada: "Smolak and I were outcasts together" (p. 317).
Don Quixote. Contemplating reading this book ? Read Don Quixote first, it informs the reading of Bellow's book. The Don Quixote/Sancho Panza pair is an uncanny set-up for the Henderson/Romilayu pair. Perhaps the weirdest connection relates to the caveat/disclaimer that Bellow published a week before the book's release and the Author's Preface of Don Quixote in which Cervantes attacks the scholarly display of knowledge and describes himself as bringing "a book as dry as a kex, void of invention, barren of good phrase, poor of conceits, and altogether empty both of learning and of eloquence...I am naturally lazy and unwilling to go searching for authors to say that which I can say well enough without them" (Shelton translation, 1612).
In Dahfu's court, Henderson says "my purpose was t see essentials, only essentials, nothing but essentials, and to guard against hallucinations. Things are not what they seem anyway" (p. 154). Don Quixote also has a preoccupation with reality, notwithstanding Sancho's constant chiding for failing to resolve hallucinations; truth is the basis for knight-errantry.
Bellow faithfully follows the Cervantine model. Both Don Quixote and Henderson launch their quest at the age of about 50. DQ is searching for immortality: “Oh, happy the age, and fortunate the time, wherein my famous feats shall be revealed, feats worthy to be graven in brass, carved in marble, and delivered with most curious art in tables for a future instruction and memory” (1st part, book 1, chap 2). Henderson, the anti-hero says “I’ll say it straight out, I don’t even deserve to be chronicled on toilet paper” (p. 200). Both protagonists wish to connect with their ancestry. DQ finds an old suit of armour in his attic and takes it as his knight’s attire (1st, 1, 1). Henderson goes to his storeroom and “I found the dusty old case and I opened it, and there lay the instrument my father used to play, inside that little sarcophagus” (p. 29) and “my main purpose was to reach my father playing on his violin” (p. 34). Henderson is described as “a regular bargain basement of deformities” (p. 83). For his part, DQ adopts the name “Knight of the Ill-favored Face” (1st, 3, 7). Both are influenced greatly by literature. Those surrounding DQ thinks he goes crazy with books, at one point his library is burned (1st, 1, 6). Henderson knows “I am a nervous and emotional reader. I hold a book up to my face and it takes only one good sentence to turn my brain into a volcano” (p. 229).
Parallels exist between the protagonists’ attendants. While DQ offers his squire Sancho Panza an island (1st, 1, 7), Henderson offers Romilayu a jeep ! (p. 110). Both offer gentle resistance to their masters. In the famous windmill scene, Sancho cannot believe that DQ hallucinates and sees them as giants (1st, 1, 8). The adventure where DQ attacks the sheep is similar (1st, 3, 4). Most absurd is the barber’s basin that DQ adopts as the Helmet of Mambrino (1st, 3, 7). DQ is teased about the helmet in the galley slaves chapter (1st, 3, 8). At the end of Bellow’s novel, Henderson uses the helmet as a basin for the lion cub ! (p. 313).
Mtalba, Queen of the Arnewi, offers herself to Henderson: “time was when I would have felt differently about the love she offered me” (p. 103). In a hilarious sequence, DQ mistakes a prostitute’s (Maritornes) late night sojourn towards a guest at an inn, as a come-on when she stumbles at his bedside: “I could wish to find myself in terms, most high and beautiful lady, to be able to recompense so great a favour” (1st, 3, 2).
The subject of teeth is frequent in both novels (as also adopted in Martin Amos’ Dead Babies). Henderson’s second bridge is “acrylic, supposed to be unbreakable – fort comme la mort” (p. 125). DQ loses his cheek teeth on one of his adventures: “a mouth without cheek teeth is like a mill without a mill stone; and a tooth is much more to be esteemed than a diamond” (1st, 3, 4).
Both protagonists must face the lion. They both take on new names. DQ adopts the name “Knight of the Lions” (2nd, 17) after braving two lions whose cage has been opened by a lion tamer. This is after DQ has been "captured" in an ox cart (1st, 4, 19) to return to his village: "and ended it will be when the furious Manchegan lion and the white Tobosian dove shall be united in one." Later (1st, 4, 22): "it is necessary to shut you up in a cage and carry you on a team of oxen, even as one carries a lion..." Henderson writes to Lily “I want you to enroll me at Medical Center and give my name as Leo E. Henderson” (p. 267). The letter to Lily is entrusted to Romilayu, but he is stopped on his way and fetched to return and help Henderson’s escape. Bellow has mimicked the famous letter scene in DQ. Sancho is waylaid on the road to El Toboso by the barber and the priest who convince him to rescue his master in the Sierra Morena where he is in seclusion (1st, 3, 9).
Both DQ and Henderson come in direct contact with death. DQ comes upon a corpse in the adventure of the hearse (1st, 3, 5). Later, DQ encounters a group of itinerant players who have just performed ‘The Parliament of Death’, they personify the roles they play (2nd , 13). Henderson finds a corpse in his hut in the Wariri village (p. 130).
An obvious reference to Moses, Henderson seeks to eliminate the frog infestation in the Arnewi’s cistern. For his part, DQ seeks to free a young man, Andrés, from the beatings of his master (1st, 1, 4). Later he frees a group of galley-slaves (1st, 3, 8). Both protagonists have messianic qualities. Late in the book, DQ descends into the legendary cave of Montesinos (2nd, 23) and spends 3 days there – a direct corollary to Christ’s visit to Hell between the crucifixion and the resurrection. This is the only adventure in which DQ has no witness – suggesting an adventure of the spirit. Henderson’s excerpts from Handel’s Messiah, identify him with the “man of sorrows” (p. 258). Henderson is also resurrected – from the tomb after Dahfu’s death. In the Wariri village it is said that “The view of the Bunam is you have been expected” (p. 180).
Arnewi vs. Wariri: Reich vs. Freud. Kiernan (Saul Bellow) points out that the two tribes are diametrically opposed. The Arnewi are all about light: "they had played catch with the light and some of it had come off" (p. 54). The Wariri live in a fallen world, given to political assassination and to scourging their gods. They are "chillen darkness" (p. 112) in Romilayu's phrase. They "play catch" (p. 78) not with the light but with the skulls of former kings. Kiernan posits tat in psychological terms, the Arnewi and Wariri offer Henderson a choice between Wilhelm Reich and Sigmund Freud. Reich believes that a society free of repression would find itself naturally happy. The Wariri embody Freud's notion that societies are repressive and that nature and culture are antithetical. The Arnewi emphasize stasis, being (p. 153), and cyclical time. The Wariri emphasize progress, becoming (p. 153), and linear time: "maybe time was invented so that misery might have an end" (p. 295). Yet the distinction is not black and white as Dahfu has Reichian tendencies. His classification of men into types such as "the immune elephant," "the shrewd pig," "the fateful hysterical," "the hollow genital," and "the narcissus intoxicated" (pp. 205, 252) is an echo of Reich's classification of human types into clinical categories like hysterical, compulsive, and masochistic.
From an existential viewpoint, the Arnewi symbolize the masochistic aspect of a relationship in that they reify themselves by wishing to make themselves into objects to be dominated by others, they submit themselves to fate. The Wariri are the sadistic type, trying to dominate others, e.g., beating the gods.`
Speaking Somatically. Henderson feels a great chasm between reality and ideas: "I often want to say things and they stay in my mind. Therefore they don't actually exist; you can't take credit for them if they never emerge" (p. 166). He believes in a reciprocity between body and mind: "That's how it is with my ideas...They seem to get strong while I weaken" (p. 94). Dahfu believes with Reich that man's experience originates in his own mind: "Disease is a speech of the psyche" (p. 224). The key to the novel is to be found in the "reality" into which King Dahfu ("daffy" ?) initiates Henderson. Pifer (Saul Bellow: Against the Grain) nails it with here explication. Dahfu's insights are profound. Dahfu instructs his friend on the "connection between insides and outsides, especially as applied to human beings" (p. 222). He tells Henderson "You are in the flesh as your soul is" (p. 252). By "speaking somatically" (p. 204), Dahfu illustrates the "utterly dynamic" (p. 222) non-Cartesian union of body and mind - "the flesh influencing the mind, the mind influencing the flesh, back again to the mind, back once more to the flesh" (p. 222). Henderson resists: "thinking of mind and flesh as I knew them" (p.222). Dahfu embodies elements of Psalm 19 "You are related to all. The very gnats are your cousins. The sky is your thoughts. The leaves are your insurance, and you need no other. There is no interruption all night to the speech of the stars" (p. 250). By urging Henderson to come face-to-face with the lion Atti, Dahfu compels his friend to confront "somatically" rather than abstractly the fact and terror of death. Henderson gradually enters into a relation with the lion, until dread no longer paralyzes him. Henderson undergoes an epiphany: "And so I was the beast. I gave myself to it, and all my sorrow came out in the roaring. My lungs supplied the air but the note came from the soul" (p. 251). The spiritual release in this physical ordeal verifies the "connection between insides and outsides."
Existentialism. Holm (American Studies in Scandinavia) points out the role of French Existentialism in Bellow's novels, especially the novels of Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre maintains that existence precedes essence. Human beings exist, but what they are or what they may become depends on what they choose to do and they must take responsibility for it. For some that freedom may be unbearable. In an effort to escape this anguish, the individual may shirk responsibility for himself and cling to some transcendent belief in Destiny. Sartre calls this "mauvaise foi" (bad faith). Bad faith denies freedom of choice. After the two World Wars, the existentialist notion of the absurdity of life has attained wide acceptance. In existentialist terms, teal life (acceptance of reality) is an opportunity, a form of being that must be chosen by the individual. Man is free to make his own choices, but no matter what, the choice will be for nothing. It is absurd. The only thing that man can rely on is death. Man must accept that death is part of reality.
Existentialism and Henderson the Rain King. Bellow's characters are unable to accept reality because of their fear of facing death as the only certainty in an absurd world, entangling themselves in a web of alienation which is a result of bad faith. Trying to escape from physical nature, the protagonists are confronted with a sense of unreality. The final obstacle to overcome in seeking a meaningful existence is the evasion of physical nature. Man must accept that he is part of the physical existence, that he too will perish. Man only then may he realize himself as an existing person. Henderson senses that the acceptance on one's own mortality is a prerequisite of self-realization: "All the major tasks and the big conquests ere done before my time. That left the biggest problem of all, which was to encounter death. We've just got to do something about it" (p. 260). The individual's search for a fulfillment of his life, for a search from a life of unreality to reality, is dependent upon acceptance of death. Holms opines that this is the overall theme of Bellow's fiction. Henderson is an existential hero.
In the novel, Henderson plays at being God, resulting in the alienation from life. Looking down at his dead housekeeper Miss Lenox, he thinks: "So this was it, the end - farewell?" (p. 42). He now feels he has no significance, he is shocked to see the parallels to his own life. In his trip, Henderson goes to the Africa of his soul. His experiences in Africa represent his various stages of his development in this Bildungsroman: "maybe every guy has his own Africa" (p. 259). He opines "It is the strangeness of life - a thing that makes death more remote" (p. 84) and later "You did not believe you had to perish" (p. 245). While visiting the Wariri, Henderson confronts death directly: he is "maddened by the provocation of [a] corpse" (p. 133). Henderson wonders if someone is teaching him a lesson: "Why was I lately being shown corpses ? " (p. 131). Moreover, "the dead man in his silence sending a message to me such as, 'Here, man, is your being, which you think so terrific.' And just as silently I replied, 'Oh, be quiet dead man, for Christ's sake'" (p. 132). At least he recognizes the warning: he is "convinced that the presence of this corpse was a challenge which had to be answered" (p. 132). He throws the dead body into a ravine, only to awake to find it has been returned to his hut, symbolic that he can not ignore dealing with the death issue.
Dahfu knows that "Grun-tu-molani was just a starter" (p. 205). So begins the sessions with the lion Atti (attitude, relaxed). Atti is an embodiment of reality. Dahfu wants Henderson to accept reality: "You ask, what can she do for you ? Many things. First she is unavoidable...And this is what you need, as you are an avoider...She will force the present moment on you" (p. 244). Henderson acquiesces and lets himself "act the lion" (p. 271). In accordance with Sartrean notion that "the Other" is a foil against which to define oneself, he says "I had a voice that said, I want! I want? I? It should have told me she wants, he wants, they want...The opposite makes the opposite" (p. 269). Henderson faces his own symbolic death in Dahfu's. Did Henderson change from his journey "into the interior [?] Yes, I did. I have had a look into some of the fundamentals, but don't expect me to tickle your idle curiosity' (p. 311) he writes to Lily. Henderson informs Lily that he has decided to pursue a medical career, in effect a death-fighting art. This casts further doubt as to his willingness to accept death. So, did he change ? Holms believes not, that the meeting of the Persian boy, who speaks "only Persian" (p. 315) on the plane is symbolic of his adolescent self, "with hair like Persian lamb's fur" (p. 10). Before his quest, he spoke only "Hendersonian" (p.). Bellow's tendency toward "open" endings cast doubt on the success of self-realization. "We are the first generation to see clouds from both sides. What a privilege! First people dreamed upward. Now they dream both upward and downward" (p. 263). People's dreams upward symbolize their belief in religious transcendentalism, whereas their dreams downward are symbols of the existential theory of the absurdity of life. Henderson and Bellow both are caught in between.
The Pith Helmet. Attentive readers will note the symbolism of Henderson's pith helmet. Pifer (Saul Bellow: Against the Grain) has the insight on his "Linus blanket." Worn to shield himself from the blazing African sun, the helmet also emblemizes Henderson's militant resistance to reality. He tells Dahfu "I always have some headpiece or other. In Italy during the war I slept in my helmet, too" (p. 196). Dahfu protests at wearing it indoors: "'But surely a headcover indoors is not necessary'...I refused to take the hint. I sat before him in my white pith hat" (p. 196). When stripped by the natives: "I've got to have my helmet" (p. 191). Later, terrified by the lion Atti, he fails to "reset my helmet when it sunk over my brows" (p. 211). As Henderson affirms the union of mind and flesh: "The hair on my head, especially at the back...[was] thriving. I was growing black curls, thicker than usual, like a merino sheep, very black, and they were unseating my helmet. Maybe my mind, beginning to change sponsors, so to speak was stimulating the growth of a different man" (p. 256). His regenerated psyche appears to be unseating the "carapace-like helmet" (p. 270) along with the dread that enslaved him. Towards the end of the book, Henderson adopts a new relationship with his helmet. He shows a willing divestment in his headgear when taking the lion cub "I can carry it in my helmet" (p. 306). On the plane flying over the Atlantic, he removes the helmet one final time and places it "inside the wicker basket with the cub" (p. 313). The cub "needed a familiar object to calm him" (p. 313). For Henderson, the helmet is no longer a shield.
Summary. Kiernan (Saul Bellow) is eloquent in his summary analysis of the novel: Bellow is amused by myths and rituals that reduce the world to coherence - he offers an alternate vision that embraces the inconsistent and irreconcilable. Everything consorts with its opposite: the dialectically opposed Arnewi and Wariri are the same tribe; Freudians are functional Reichians; Sancho Panzas are ideological Don Quixotes. The inconsistency and inconclusiveness that are often thought of as a failing of Henderson the Rain King are Bellow's narrative postulate, and it is his particular achievement to have turned the postulate into novelistic terra firma.
Both Sides Now. Joni Mitchell's song "Both Sides Now" was inspired on a flight she took while reading the novel and coming across the line "We are the first generation to see the clouds from both sides" (p. 263). Later, Henderson says to Romilayu "We're supposed to think that nobility is unreal. But that's just it. The illusion is on the other foot. They make us think we crave more and more illusions. Why, I don't crave illusions at all" (p. 298). Joni sings "I've looked at clouds from both sides now, From up and down, and still somehow....It's life's illusions I recall, I really don't know life at all."
Favorite Lines. "maybe every guy has his own Africa" (p. 259) and "I am a true adorer of life, and if I can't reach as high as the face of it, I plant my kiss somewhere lower down" (p. 144),
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
