ellauri052.html on line 87: And what is more regrettable still is how these same types reappear in Humboldt’s Gift. Citrine encounters three kinds of women in his travels: his lover Renata, a deceitful sexual priestess, Denise, his cold, hate-filled ex-wife, and a variety of leggy, doe-eyed students and secretaries.
ellauri052.html on line 89: Harold Bloom is right to dismiss Bellow’s female characters of the later novels as “third-rate pipe dreams.” When a reader, holding Humboldt’s Gift in his hands, looks back at Augie March, the journey Saul Bellow has taken in his depiction of people is a very sad one. There is no way to compare the daring, principled Mimi Villars, Augie March’s one equal in oration, to the simple Ramona (Herzog), or to the comically shallow Renata (Humboldt’s Gift). Where is a woman equal to Augie’s Thea in these later books?
ellauri052.html on line 91: And the male cast goes on a similar, if less marked, decline. Cantabile in Humboldt’s Gift is a hilariously manic plot device, but as an individual he no offers no comparison at all to the volcanic ambitions, peculiar code of honour, and suicidal longings of Simon, Augie March’s elder brother.
ellauri052.html on line 93: It seems that as Bellow re-focused his lens on thought, and a main character’s deliberations over it, the fictional world around that central character darkened and cheapened. As the narrator / protagonist’s internal action grows, around him warmth and depth shrinks, until, by Humboldt’s Gift, it is clear that on a mental level, Citrine is utterly alone.
ellauri052.html on line 929: Kun Salen halvexima sen vanhin poika psykiatri sanoo suorat sanat paskamaisesta isästään, pörähtään sen kimppuun äkäinen lauma Salen kirjallisia häntäkärpäsiä. The difficulty Greg Bellow has in grasping his father’s work is almost immediately apparent. His literary interpretations range from calling Humboldt’s Gift (1975) “a novel permeated by death consciousness” to writing that the protagonist of Henderson the Rain King (1959) “chooses a life path that brings him into contact with suffering and death.” (The very phrase “life path” would undoubtedly have made his father cringe.) Ehkäpä, just six että se on osuvaa.
ellauri052.html on line 977: The most important person in Bellow’s life—Maury, his oldest brother. As Leader shows, Maury was both the driving force in Bellow’s Americanization and a major presence in his work. Parents and wives came and went, but Maury remained: Simon in Augie March, Shura in Herzog, Julius in Humboldt’s Gift. As peremptory and violent as their father but more competent, Maury epitomized the cult of power and material success that both fascinated and repelled Bellow. “I recognized in him the day-to-day genius of the U.S.A.,” Bellow said in an interview with Philip Roth. In the same conversation, Roth observed that Maury’s reckless, angry spirit was “the household deity of Augie March.” By the time Maury finished law school, he had already started collecting graft for a corrupt Illinois state representative, skimming off the top for himself and his mother. A charismatic ladies’ man with an illegitimate son, Maury was “very proud of his extraordinary group of connections, his cynicism, his insiderhood,” Bellow told Roth. Maury was disdainful of his brother’s nonremunerative choice of profession, which he considered luftmenschlich—frivolous, impractical.
ellauri222.html on line 175: The decorum in Bellow criticism is to acknowledge the original of the fictional character when the person is famous, and otherwise to insist on treating it all as fiction. Thus everyone knows that, in “Humboldt’s Gift,” Von Humboldt Fleisher “is” Delmore Schwartz, and that, in “Ravelstein,” Abe Ravelstein “is” Allan Bloom, the Chicago professor who wrote “The Closing of the American Mind” and was a good friend of Bellow’s.
xxx/ellauri128.html on line 201: Ausschlaggebend war die Vereinigung von Menschen unterschiedlicher Stände und Berufe, religiöser oder politischer Orientierung zu Gesprächen: Dichter, Naturforscher, Politiker, Schauspieler/-innen, Aristokraten und Reisende kamen zusammen. Die Nähe des Theaters, der Börse und der Französischen Gemeinde sorgte für Vielfalt. Mitunter wurde, wie im Elternhaus der Henriette Solmar (einer Cousine Rahel Varnhagens), mit Rücksicht auf Besucher aus fremden Ländern französisch gesprochen. Berühmte Gäste in dieser ersten Phase waren Jean Paul, Ludwig Tieck, Friedrich von Gentz, Ernst von Pfuel, Friedrich Schlegel, Wilhelm und Alexander von Humboldt, Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, Prinz Louis Ferdinand und dessen Geliebte Pauline Wiesel. Allerdings gibt es nur wenige zeitgenössische Quellen und gar keine zeitgenössischen Bilder dieser Geselligkeiten. Es wurden nicht nur Prominente eingeladen, sondern auch viele Personen, die kaum Spuren hinterlassen haben. Fanny Lewald (die Rahel Varnhagen nicht mehr kennengelernt hat) gibt allerdings zu bedenken: „Man hört die Namen Humboldt, Rahel Levin, Schleiermacher, Varnhagen und Schlegel, und denkt an das, was sie geworden, und vergißt, daß die Humboldt’s ihrer Zeit nur zwei junge Edelleute, daß Rahel Levin ein lebhaftes Judenmädchen, Schleiermacher ein unbekannter Geistlicher, Varnhagen ein junger Praktikant der Medizin, die Schlegel ein paar ziemlich leichtsinnige junge Journalisten gewesen sind“.
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