The weak at war

"The weak, at war, never know how hard they are hitting you." ["Os fracos, na guerra, nunca sabem o quão forte eles estão batendo em você."]

Saul Bellow (1915-2005). Humboldt's Gift (1975). London: Penguin Books, 2008, p. 226

Death

"As we approach, through technology, the phase of instantaneous realization, of the realization of eternal human desires or fantasies, of abolishing time and space the problem of boredom can only become more intense. The human being, more and more oppressed by the peculiar terms of his existence – one time around for each, no more than a single life per customer – has to think of the boredom of death. O those eternities of nonexistence! For people who crave continual interest and diversity, O! how boring death will be! To lie in the grave, in one place, how frightful!

Socrates tried to soothe us, true enough. He said there were only two possibilities. Either the soul is immortal or, after death, things would be again as blank as they were before we were born. This is not absolutely comforting either."

Saul Bellow (1915-2005). Humboldt's Gift (1975). London: Penguin Books, 2008, p. 203-204

Insane

"...psychotherapists may become the new spiritual leaders of mankind. A disaster. Goethe was afraid the modern world might turn into a hospital. Every citizen unwell. The same point in 'Knock' by Jules Romains. Is hypochondria a creation of the medical profession? According to this author, when culture fails to deal with the feeling of emptiness [...] other agents come forward to put us together with therapy, with glue, or slogans, or spit, or as that fellow Gumbein the art critic says, poor wretches are recycled on the couch. This view is even more pessimistic than the one held by Dostoievski's Grand Inquisitor who said: mankind is frail, needs bread, cannot bear freedom but requires miracle, mystery, and authority. A natural disposition to feelings of emptiness and panic is worse than that. Much worse. What it really means is that we human beings are insane."

Saul Bellow (1915-2005). Humboldt's Gift (1975). London: Penguin Books, 2008, p. 177

Light

"...I speak as a person who had lately received or experienced light. I don't mean 'The light'. I mean a kind of light-in-the-being, a thing difficult to be precise about [...]. And this light, however it is to be described, was now a real element in me, like the breath of life itself. I had experienced it briefly, but it had lasted long enough to be convincing and also to cause an altogether unreasonable kind of joy. Furthermore, the hysterical, the grotesque about me, the abusive, the unjust, that madness in which I had often been a willing and active participant, the grieving, now had found a contrast. I say 'now' but I knew long ago what this light was. Only I seemed to have forgotten that in the first decade of life I knew this light and even knew how to breathe it in. But this early talent or gift or inspiration, given up for the sake of maturity or realism (practicality, self-preservation, the fight for survival), was now edging back. Perhaps the vain nature of ordinary self-preservation had finally become too plain for denial. Preservation for what?".

Saul Bellow (1915-2005). Humboldt's Gift (1975). London: Penguin Books, 2008, p. 179

I

"We turned into Forty-seventh Street, the boundary between rich man's Kenwood and poor man's Oakwood, passing the locked tavern which lost its license because a fellow had gotten twenty stab wounds there over a matter of eight dollars. This was what Cantabile meant by 'crazy buffaloes'. Where was the victm? He was buried. Who was he? Nobody could tell you. And now others, casually regardant, passed the place in automobiles still thinking of an 'I', and of the past and the prospects of this 'I'. If there was nothing in this but some funny egoism, some illusion that fate was being outwitted, avoidance of the reality of the grave, perhaps it was scarcely worth the trouble. But that remained to be seen."

Saul Bellow (1915-2005). Humboldt's Gift (1975). London: Penguin Books, 2008, p. 190-191

Talent

“Suppose then that you began with the proposition that boredom was a kind of pain caused by unused powers, the pain of wasted possibilities or talents, and was accompanied by expectations of the optimun utilization of capacities. […] Modern French literature is especially preoccupied with the theme of boredom. Stendhal mentioned it on every page, Flaubert devoted books to it, and Baudelaire was its chief poet. What is the reason for this peculiar French sensitivity? Can it be because the ‘ancien régime’, fearing another Fronde, created a court that emptied the provinces of talent?”

Saul Bellow (1915-2005). Humboldt's Gift (1975). London: Penguin Books, 2008, p. 201

Sorry

"Humboldt's big intelligent disordered face was white and hot with turbulent occult emotions and brainstorms. I felt sorry for us, for both, for all of us, such odd organisms under the sun."

Saul Bellow (1915-2005). Humboldt's Gift (1975). London: Penguin Books, 2008, p. 126

Humboldt

"Ah Humboldt had been great – handsome, high-spirited, buoyant, ingenious, electrical, noble. To be with him made you feel the sweetness of life. [...]. To talk to him was sustaining, nourishing. But I used to think, when he mentioned people who had been his friends, that it could be only a question of time before I too was dropped. He had no old friends, only ex-friends. He could become terrible, going into reverse without warning. When this happened, it was like being caught in a tunnel by the Express. You could only cling to the walls, or lie between the rails, praying."

Saul Bellow (1915-2005). Humboldt's Gift (1975). London: Penguin Books, 2008, p. 164

Wives and husbands

"'You're not getting enough air with that woman. You look as if you're suffocating. Your tissues aren't getting any oxygen. She'll give you cancer.'

'Oh', I said. 'She may think she's offering me the blessings of an American marriage. Real Americans are supposed to suffer with their wives, and wives with husbands. Like Mr. and Mrs. Abraham Lincoln. It's the classic US grief, and a child of immigrants like me ought to be grateful. For a Jew it's a step up.'"

Saul Bellow (1915-2005). Humboldt's Gift (1975). London: Penguin Books, 2008, p. 43