in anthroposophy 228 Words

saul bellow’s letters

From a review in New Statesman of a recently published collection of Saul Bellow’s letters:

‘While at work on Humboldt’s Gift (1975), Bellow had developed an interest in the work of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy. And although he insisted, in a letter to the English barrister and “historian of consciousness” Owen Barfield, that he could not call himself a Steinerian, he was using – and refusing – the handle as a measure of knowledge rather than appetite. [. . .] So while Bellow, who was happy to identify himself as “American, Jew, novelist, modern­ist”, did not deem himself fit to be called a Steinerian, he had, in another sense, “always” been one. Some of the most fascinating letters in this book are addressed to Barfield, for whose work Bellow expressed great admiration but from whom he received little in return. [. . .] [W]hile Barfield evidently enjoyed Bellow’s company and encouraged his interest in Steiner, he was unable to finish the Steiner-heavy Humboldt’s Gift. Almost desperate, Bellow wrote in 1979, “I can’t easily accept your dismissal of so much investment of soul.” In defence of “‘novelistic’ expression”, he quoted Steiner: “If a man has no ordinary sense of realities, no interest in the details of others’ lives, if he is so ‘superior’ that he sails through life without troubling about its details, he shows he is not a genuine seer.”‘ Read!

12 thoughts on “saul bellow’s letters”

  1. Zooey,

    Many thanks for posting this. I’ll have a more to say later about my own correspondence with Barfield, and even my correspondence with Samuel Beckett about Steiner & anthroposophy, way back when I had literary pretensions as a poet, actor and playwright in the 1980’s — also back when I was also working out Steiner’s “Sprachgestaltung” exercises for American theater. You might be interested to know that I performed in a Samuel Beckett theater festival held at the Rudolf Steiner Summer Institute in 1987. Yes, there’s a long story there about Sammy’s own connection with Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy. Not as deep as Bellow’s, but definitely there.

    But back to Bellow. The review mentions his son Gregory, but you need to read this reminiscence by his other son Adam in the NYT from 2005
    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/10/opinion/10iht-edbellow.html

    When I lived in Texas (1986-1998), I got to know a fellow Waldorf High School math & physics teacher, who had taught Bellow’s son at the Rudolf Steiner School in NYC, the one located off 5th Ave., right by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

    I’m pretty sure it was Adam, but it could have been Gregory mentioned in the review you cited. (I think the 3rd son is too young, having been born in 1989, when Daddy was 84, a tribute I suppose to the human power of fructification, aided by fame and money.)

    But actually Adam writes like he did spend some time in a Waldorf School. he doesn’t really care too much for his absent father.

  2. ‘I’ll have a more to say later about my own correspondence with Barfield, and even my correspondence with Samuel Beckett about Steiner & anthroposophy’

    Oh, exciting! (I chose Beckett as an essay assignment in high school. It was a sort of pick-any-Nobel-laureate assignment. I loved Beckett. Had no idea about a Steiner connection. But how karmic…)

    There’s an old post somewhere on the blog, with a Swedish newspaper clip from when Bellow recieved the Nobel prize and visited that dreadful waldorf school I went to. I think (and I’m guessing wildly now, I don’t remember at all, I may totally be misrepresenting this) he said something about wanting to have sent his children to waldorf but they were too old. This was long before his last child (or children) was born, though perhaps he didn’t plan to have more of them then.

  3. this is the right place for all of this, of course, in fiction. My son, who is reading Bellow, says he loves him but that he is self-indulgent… Hitchen’s favourite book too.. the world is fascinating.

    I had a tutor at Uni who knew Beckett – she returned from an encounter with him with flowers in her hair, tripping across the lawn. A woman in her 50s then, singing. I thought she was odd – the old bugger was so gloomy. It didn’t occur to me that she could have been drinking, in one way or another.

    Better Bellow than Barfield.

  4. My son, who is reading Bellow, says he loves him but that he is self-indulgent…

    Ah, Thetis, you said the magic word: self-indulgent

    Two Bellow stories now. First, I vaguely recall sometime back in the 1980’s, someone broke into the office of Bellow’s psychiatrist in Chicago and found Bellow’s file, and actually pilfered many of the shrink’s notes about their sessions. Or maybe he made Xerox copies and left the notes, I’m not sure.

    Anyway, I think the burglar managed to get some tabloid to print some of the records, and all I remember was the focus on Bellow’s consummate Narcissism and his actually pathological sociopathic inability to relate to another human being as an equal — except through the ultimate soul defense mechanism of his writing.

    Of course the shrink was Freudian and since Bellow hated Freud so much, it’s a wonder he went to a shrink at all, but he did. In his brilliant way, though, he was a cruel sadistic bully mother-fucker to all his wives — except the 5th, and to all his children — except the 5th.

    (and “mother-fucker” is a technical psycho-therapeutic term here, because Bellow (like so many successful male writers) was the Ultimate Momma’s Boy — all the women he ever fructified in his adult life were fructifications of his own mother, from whose womb he never left in the deeper psychological sense.)

    The other story is of my own Narcissism in relation to Bellow. Plus, true confessions. (You’re hearing this confession of my sins for the first time anywhere — so please be lenient on the penance you prescribe for me.)

    Back in 1991, when I was living in Austin, Texas, I was sent as a delegate to an annual conference of the Anthroposophical Society in America, which at that time had its HQ in Chicago. There were not enough accommodations to go around, and I couldn’t afford a hotel, so they let me stay overnight at the Society HQ there.

    So late one night when I had returned from the meetings, I started looking through books in the library, then papers on the desk, then it hit me. Whoa, I’m in Chicago. Saul Bellow is a member. Let’s see if he really is. So, I managed to rifle through enough drawers (all unlocked of course) until I found the official members list of the Chicago group, and sure enough I was able to see Saul Bellow’s name there, but even more important, his actual street address, (which back then in the days when privacy meant something was quite an invasion of such on my part) which I copied down, and weeks later I mailed him a package of my writings, but of course, never heard anything back. And not even to this day and he’s been in Kama Loka for 5 years now!

    NOTE: 5 years in Kama Loka means you have retraced 5 x 3 = 15 years of your recent life. Thus Saul is mulling over whatever nasty stuff he did to people in 2005 – 15 = 1990. So maybe he will finally get back to me.

    NOTE: The 3 to 1 Kama Loka ratio is based on Steiner’s indication that in Kama Loka, you work over consciously as a discarnate spirit now, everything that you experienced during your sleep time when you were alive. Since our average daily sleeping to waking rule of thumb is 8 hours sleep during a 24 hour span, then 24/8 = 3. Since Bellow died at age 90, he will spend 30 years in Kama Loka.

    (I know what you’re thinking, but please don’t be a wise-ass and ask me about insomniacs. Steiner said one third your life span so goddamnit that’s what it is!)

  6. And you posted while I wrote that! I certainly can’t be a wise-ass about insomniacs, or kama loka come to that.

  7. Maybe Bellow only liked Bellow. Maybe he saw the merit in your stories and chewed them into oblivion. Anyway, you needed a literary agent, not a narcissistic, mother-fucker of a novelist. Why do people think novelists know anything? Don’t take his silence for anything in particular.

    Have you read the Hitchens autobiography? In this – from memory – he meets Bellow at a meeting set up by Martin Amis. Amis is mortified as Hitchens disagrees with the great man almost immediately and starts arguing with him. It was inevitable.

  8. It’s a residual reflex from teaching high school kids. I found that if I was able to anticipate a smart-ass or wise-ass remark and utter it before they did, I got some points from them. I was able, on average, to score once for every 20 of their remarks.

    Actually, it’s worse with adults. If you’ve ever lectured to a group of adults on anything, you know there’s always someone who asks a question in order to show everyone their intellectual superiority over you.

    I was in the audience for this one at Steiner College, while some A-pop member was lecturing on Kama Loka and brought up this 3-1 ratio. Someone of course asked: “But what about insomniacs? They certainly don’t sleep 8 hours a night. Does that apply to them?”

    And that started a feeding frenzy as someone else asked: “Yeah, what about Thomas Edison? He only slept like 2 hours a night.” And then someone else said: “Yeah and I heard Rudolf Steiner only slept 2 hours a night himself.” And that sidetracked the discussion into whether or not Rudolf Steiner would even have to go to Kama Loka at all (which is Purgatory, after all, if you’re Catholic.)

    The speaker finally said that he didn’t know about insomniacs, but the Doktor said that it was your time spent asleep and that since Kama Loka was not really a punishment like Purgatory, then he felt RS did go to Kama Loka.

  9. Please forgive me: Kama Loka sounds like a holiday resort in Indonesia. If it is, he might still be there ;)

  11. Lovely Bellow story, Tom!!

    And a nice holiday resort, Kama Loka. If you think about it, those who sleep less than average, like Steiner probably did, deserve a longer time in Kama Loka. At least if it’s anything like a holiday place. (I think he sat on a beach, drinking cognac, satisfied to finally be watching the ocean instead of endless eurythmy performances…)

    Now I must read Hitchens’ bio.

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