'n Mens moet liewer lewenslank al die boeke hou wat jy versamel het. Jy kan dink dat jy met sommige boeke klaar is en nooit weer na hulle sal terugkom nie. Maar 'n mens se omstandighede en belangstellings verander en soms lei dit jou onvoorsiens na waar jy voorheen was. Daar is dwingende praktiese redes waarom ek van tyd tot tyd van boeke ontslae raak, maar in uitsonderlike gevalle was ek verplig om van daardie boeke weer aan te skaf. Saul Bellow (1915-2005) se Ravelstein (London: Penguin, 2000, 240p; Amazon Kindle $11.99) is so 'n boek.
Ek het die gedrukte weergawe kort na sy verskyning gelees, maar mettertyd daarvan ontslae geraak. In my elektroniese weergawe is daar iets wat ek nooit voorheen by 'n Penguin-publikasie teëgekom het nie, want ek het Penguins deurgaans as uitstekend versorgd ervaar. In my Kindle-uitgawe staan op die buitebladsy: Ravelstien. Op die titelbladsy staan: Raveltein. In die inhoudsopgawe staan daar weer: Ravelstien. Na hierdie drie foute in die voorwerk word die titel in die res van die boek korrek as Ravelstein weergegee. Daar is 'n nota wat lui: "The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to [Bellow] in 1976 'for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work'" (Kindle 13).
In die uittreksels uit resensies wat in die boek opgeneem is, is daar net lof vir hierdie werk. Nadat ek Greg Bellow se boek oor sy pa, Saul Bellow's Heart (SêNet 3 deser) gelees het, het ek Ravelstein weer gelees. Ek dink ek weet of verstaan nou heelwat meer van Saul Bellow en Allan Bloom (1930-1992) as in 2000. Soos so dikwels na die toekenning van die Nobel-prys gebeur, bv in die geval van Albert Camus (SêNet 10 Feb), kon Bellow volgens talle kenners nie naasteby weer dieselfde literêre hoogtes bereik nie. My indruk in 2000 was egter dat Ravelstein 'n uitsondering op hierdie reël was. Maar moontlik was dit bloot omdat ek gewoonlik meer aanklank by nie-fiksie as by fiksie vind.
Die aanleiding vir my belangstelling in Bloom is sy boek oor die Amerikaanse universiteitswese, The Closing of the American Mind: How higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today's students (London: Penguin, 1988, 392p; bespreek op SêNet 7.12.2011). Dit is ook waarom ek Ravelstein in 2000 met waardering gelees het, want die teks is wesenlik 'n biografiese werk oor Bloom. In daardie stadium het ek nog nie vrye toegang tot die internet gehad nie en was dit moeilik om inligting oor Bloom te bekom. In my bespreking van Greg Bellow se boek het ek doelbewus alle verwysings na Bloom weggelaat omdat ek dit liewer in 'n aparte skrywe wou aanspreek. Voordat ek by die boek Ravelstein as sodanig uitkom, stel ek wat Greg Bellow oor hierdie onderwerp geskryf het aan die orde. Ek verwys na die seun as Greg en na sy vader as Bellow. Dit is ook nodig om Bellow en Bloom deurgaans uitmekaar te hou.
Greg bevestig deels wat ek pas geskryf het: "Saul's last work, Ravelstein, is a magnificent memoir of Bloom, barely disguised as a novel ... I take the book as largely a work of nonfiction" (2259). Bellow het Bloom leer ken nadat hy in 1961 aan die University of Chicago in die Committee on Social Thought begin werk en in 1962 daar 'n permanente aanstelling gekry het. Hulle het bv saam doseerwerk gedoen, naby mekaar gewoon en oor en weer gekuier. Bloom "sufficiently endeared him to Saul that my father overcame a lifelong aversion to homosexuals" (2258). Later was Bellow se vierde vrou die vlieg in die salf, want sy kon Bloom nie verdra nie: Alexandra "thought Saul's attitudes toward women got worse when he and Allan Bloom became friends" (1813). Bellow se vyfde vrou het egter baie goed aanklank by Bloom gevind.
"In 1987 Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind, in which he argued that overly liberal attitudes had actually closed the American mind in the name of openness. After a careful reading, I found the book so closely paralleled views I was hearing from my father that I considered it a joint intellectual venture by two friends who had grown ideologically close. Bloom put forth views that appealed to social, cultural, and political conservatives in the Reagan White House [1981-1989], and Saul dit not protest being included among thinkers with whom he often agreed. When Saul and I discussed the book I expressed distress that it was filled with 'aristocratic notions.' I took his silence about my characterization as tacit agreement and as a measure of the extent to which my father's mind had closed to anything but 'superior' forms of culture, an attitude that bordered on the elitism I found in Allan's book that was the exact opposite of my understanding of 'young Saul's' views" (1847).
Hierby kan gevoeg word dat Bellow die uitstekende voorwoord tot Bloom se The Closing of the American Mind geskryf het. Daar het Bellow die volgende opsomming verskaf: "The heart of Professor Bloom's argument is that the university, in a society ruled by public opinion, was to have been an island of intellectual freedom where all views were investigated without restriction. Liberal democracy in its generosity made this possible, but by consenting to play an active or 'positive', a participatory role in society, the university has become inundated and saturated with the backflow of society's 'problems'. Preoccupied with questions of Health, Sex, Race, War, academics make their reputations and their fortunes and the university has become society's conceptual warehouse of often harmful influences ... increasingly, the people 'inside' are identical in their appetites and motives with the people 'outside' the university" (p 18).
Maar was Bellow in 2000, toe hy 85 jaar oud was en Ravelstein as sy laaste boek gepubliseer is (of eintlik kort voor dit) nog in staat om uitstekende werk te lewer? Die teks toon dat hy steeds goeie prosa kon skryf, maar die struktuur van en die inligting in die boek toon duidelik dat 'n grysaard met verminderde vermoëns hier aan die woord is. Ek sê dit enersyds omdat die struktuur sodanig is dat daar geen hoofstukke of selfs duidelik omlynde afdelings is nie. Andersyds gebruik Bellow die teks om nie net op Bloom te fokus nie. Glad te dikwels en veels te veel skryf Bellow oor sy eie ingekorte omstandighede. Aan sy bekende selfgesentreerdheid word vir oulaas vrye teuels gegee. Die relatiewe struktuurloosheid van die werk laat hom toe om skynbaar willekeurig oor sowel Bloom as homself te skryf, asook oor ander dinge wat oor sy weg kom. Dit is die gemymer van 'n ou mens.
Bloom het aan Bellow die verpligting opgelê om sy biografie te skryf. "'You could do a really fine memoir. It's not just a request,' he added. 'I'm laying this on you as an obligation'" (1780). "I want you to show me as you see me, without softeners or sweeteners" (1842). Bellow: "In choosing me or setting me up to write this memoir, he obliged me to consider my death as well as his" (1790). Maar Bellow was weens sy ouderdom skynbaar glad nie meer in staat om bv dokumentêre navorsing te doen nie. Daarom het hy sy herinneringe eerder as 'n roman, wat ruimte vir fiksie laat, ingeklee. Bellow het in drie stadia sy taak makliker gemaak: van biografie tot herinneringe tot roman. Bellow noem dat dit nie 'n "psychobiography" is (257) soos wat Greg oor sy pa geskryf het nie.
Ek het die indruk dat Bellow die teks moontlik (deels) gedikteer het, eerder as om dit te skryf soos voorheen sy gebruik was. Dit is heeltemal moontlik dat Bellow se vyfde en laaste vrou Janis, wat oor 'n doktorsgraad in Franse letterkunde beskik, en sekerlik ook die redakteurs van die uitgewery, hom bygestaan het. Wat ek die hinderlikste gevind het, is die talle plekke dwarsdeur die teks waar Bellow vir Janis komplimenteer. Dit is in skrille kontras met die verdoemende houe wat hy in sy vorige romans teen sy vorige vroue ingekry het; ook in Ravelstein, waarin sy vierde vrou Vela pleks van Alexandra genoem word. Dit is Bloom wat Bellow oor haar "various affairs" ingelig het (1580). In sy laaste boek noem Bellow homself "a serial marrier" (1478). Die outeur is 'n oud-rondloper wie se avonture weens ouderdom ten einde geloop het. Hy moet daarin berus dat sy vyfde vrou sy laaste sal wees.
Allan Bloom word in die teks, wat as fiksie aangebied word, Abe Ravelstein genoem. Bellow word Chick genoem. Sy vrou, Janis Freedman, word Rosamund/Rosie genoem. Bloom se katelknaap, wat in sy dertigerjare was, word Tay Ling/Nikki genoem. Hy is 'n Chinees afkomstig uit Singapoer en was 'n hotel- en spysenieringstudent in Switserland. Sy regte naam is Michael Z Wu, die persoon aan wie Bloom sy laaste en postuum gepubliseerde boek, Love and Friendship (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993, 591p), opgedra het. Bloom het teen die einde van sy lewe aan Wu 'n nuwe BMW 740-motor geskenk. Hy sou ook Bloom se (enigste) erfgenaam wees. Ek hou by hierdie mense se werklike name.
In sy laaste boek Bloom "saw love as possibly the highest blessing of mankind" (Kindle 230), volgens Bellow. "Love is the highest function of our species - its vocation" (1931). "At the core of the soul is Eros" (1657). In sy laaste boek skryf Bloom: "Animals have sex and human beings have eros" (p 19). "Eros is a natural longing for the beautiful ... a perfection of the human sociability by way of the passions" (p 21). "It is imaginative activity that converts sex into eros" (p 24). Shakespeare "portrays with simpathy love's promise of unity, its mysterious attraction to beauty, and its hope to overcome even the ugliness of death" (p 35). Maar Bloom "had hated and shaken off his own family" (381). "He was a very complex man" (370), maar ook 'n "great-souled man" (470). "He's a serious person, not comfortable with himself" (527).
Bloom word baie ryk genoem, danksy die onverwagte gewildheid van sy blitsverkoper: "a book difficult but popular ... no popularizing ... It's no small matter to become rich and famous by saying exactly what you think - to say it in your own words, without compromise" (79). Bloom het Bellow bedank "for the support he had given him in the writing of his bestseller. The idea of the entire project, he said, was mine from the first" (285). Bloom het sonder notas doseer en was verplig om die teks vir sy boek in groot mate vir die eerste keer te skryf.
Toe Bellow en Bloom in Parys was, was hulle in dieselfde hotel as Michael Jackson, wat deur Bellow 'n "little glamour monkey" genoem word (89), ooreenkomstig sy en Bloom se afkeer van populêre kultuur. Kort daarna volg hierdie raak karakterisering: Bloom "when he was feeding and speaking made you feel that something biological was going on, that he was stoking his system and nourishing his ideas" (100). Later erken Bellow: Bloom se "feeding habits needed getting used to" (531). "Faculty wives knew that when Ravelstein came to dinner they would face a big cleaning job afterwards" (542).
Bloom was "at ease with large statements, big issues, and famous men, with decades, eras, centuries" (179). Bellow: "I was always drawn to people who were orderly in a large sense and had mapped out the world and made it coherent" (516). "For him Jerusalem and Athens were the twin sources of civilization" (233). "But in his last days it was the Jews he wanted to talk about, not the Greeks" (2389). "He was full of Scripture now. He talked about religion and the difficult project of being man in the fullest sense" (2456). Bloom het tot die gevolgtrekking gekom "that it is impossible to get rid of one's origins" (2467).
Bloom was "a teacher ... an educator" (223). "He was a teacher through and through" (790). "He was going to direct them [students] to a higher life, full of variety and diversity" (381). "In his classroom, and the lectures were always packed, he coughed, stammered, he smoked, bawled, laughed, he brought his students to their feet and debated, provoked them to single combat, examined, hammered them ... 'With what, in this modern democracy, will you meet the demands of your soul?'" (292). As Bloom besig was met "walking, smiling, expounding, stammered, it was not from weakness but from overflow" (459). "He seldom had a night of uninterrupted sleep ... it was the excitement, the wringing, the tension of his pleasures, of his mental life" (267).
Bloom se "character was far more cheerful than mine - a wide-open broad-daylight outlook" (2305). "He laughed like Picasso's wounded horse in Guernica, rearing back" (216). "The pleasure of a moment consumed him" (415). "What we were laughing about was death, and of course death does sharpen the comic sense" (220). 'n Voorbeeld: "a good man, usually generous, would say 'my late wife' and then, for laughs, he'd add that she never was punctual" (576). Bellow: "Maybe an unexamined life is not worth living [Socrates, 469-399 vC]. But a man's examined life can make him wish he was dead" (492). Bellow: "In the interval of light between the darkness in which you awaited first birth and then the darkness of death that would receive you, you must make what you could of reality" (1313).
Bloom word beskryf as "a man not free with his praises" (129). "He despised campy homosexuality and took a very low view of 'gay pride'" (2207). Hy "didn't think well of Bloomsbury intellectuals. He disliked their high camp, he disapproved of queer antics and of what he called 'faggot behavior.' He couldn't and didn't fault them for gossiping. He himself loved gossip too well to do that. But he said they were not thinkers but snobs, and their influence was pernicious" (142). Bloom: "When I do it, it's not gossip, it's social history" (915). Hy "detested Sartre ... and despised his ideas" (602). "The greatest heroes of all, the philosophers, had been and always would be atheists" (749) en dit is wat Bloom ook was. "He lived by his ideas" (761).
Johannes Comestor