Humboldt's Gift

By Saul Bellow

This book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for 1976.

Poor Charlie Citrine. His life is a shambles. A petty gangster has pounded Citrine's beautiful car to a pulp. Charlie's ex-wife is suing him for a bigger share of his assets and a judge has frozen Charlie's money telling Charlie that Charlie can always make more money. It is true that Charlie has been successful in the past but lately he hasn't done much of anything except sit around his house and meditate on death and the afterlife. Also, Citrine's girlfriend is angling for a marriage proposal and Charlie doesn't care to commit himself again. Charlie and the girlfriend are supposed to head off to Europe but Charlie has to deal with a legacy left to him by his old, estranged friend Humboldt. Humboldt was a failed poet with an alcohol addiction and mental problems so severe that he had to be committed. Humboldt and Charlie became estranged when Charlie wrote a play that was based on Humboldt's life without his permission. The play was very successful and made Charlie a lot of money.
Charlie is a strange fellow, a kind of walking encyclopedia, with literary allusions constantly falling from his lips. He is involved in something called Anthroposphy and he worries about death and about life after death and about art and destiny and reincarnation and philosophy.

Supposedly, the Charlie character is based on Bellow and the Humboldt character on his friend and poet, Delmore Schwartz. Bellow won the Pulitzer for this book, but in the story, this is what the Humboldt character says about the Pulitzer Prize: "The Pulitzer is for the birds -- for the pullets. It's just a dummy newspaper publicity award given by crooks and illiterates." That's probably one of the funniest things in the whole book.
Frankly, this book was a giant pain to read. There is practically not a page where some literary name (or two or three) is not dropped. In fact, I made a list of most of the names; you can see it below the list of new words. It includes names of books and other works and fictional characters and mythological characters. Too much of the book is about Charlie and his philosophy or search for a philosophy. I had never read Saul Bellow before and, after reading this book, I never want to read him again. Too much gobbledygook. I guess this book is just too sophisticated for me.

Review by Richard Rayner in the Los Angeles Times.

New Words
Grenadier: A member of the British Grenadier Guards or a soldier formerly bearing grenades. "With grenadier tails they [cats] bounded to sharpen their claws on trees."
Busby: A tall, full-dress, fur hat worn in certain regiments of the British Army. "His head was shaped like a busby, a high solid arrogant rock covered with thick moss."
Crepuscular: Of or like twilight; hazy, dim. "They brought crepuscular fortune to people down in the streets."
Anthroposophist: A spiritual philosophy based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner which postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world accessible to direct experience through inner development. "Under my head I put a needlepoint cushion embroidered by a young lady, ... a Miss Dora Scheldt, the daughter of the anthroposophist I consulted now and then."
Orphic: Of or ascribed to Orpheus; mystic, occult, esoteric. "He got a Rationalistic, Naturalistic education at CCNY. This was not easily reconciled with the Orphic. But all his desires were contradictory."
Sortilegio: Sortilege is the art or practice of foretelling the future by drawing lots; sorcery; witchcraft. "'What? Sorcery! Fucking sortilegio!' 'It's not sortilegio. It's mutual aid.'"
Morphology: The biological study of the form and structure of living organisms. Protoplasts: The living material of a cell as distinguished from inert portions. Ergastic substances: Metabolically inert products of photosynthesis, such as starch grains and fat globules. "I obtained a large botany book by a woman named Esau and sank myself into morphology, into protoplasts and ergastic substances, so that my exercises might have real content."
Attainder: The loss of all civil rights legally consequent to a death sentence or to outlawry for a capital offense. "The hereditary attainder rule was very strict."
Relume: To make bright or clear again. "I remember the shine of his [Humboldt] eyes when he dropped his voice to pronounce the word "relume" spoken by a fellow about to commit a murder, or when he spoke Cleopatra's words 'I have immortal longings in me.'"
Antinomian: In theology, the idea that members of a particular religious group are under no obligation to obey the laws of ethics or morality as presented by religious authorities. "But it was only antinomian, not free."
Theosophy: Religious speculation dealing with the mystical apprehension of God, associated with various occult systems; or the doctrines and beliefs of a religious sect, the Theosophical Society, incorporating aspects of Buddhism and Brahmanism. "If he added theosophy to literature and the insurance business, what would become of him?"
Exousiai: In anthroposophy, based on the teachings by Rudolf Steiner, the Exousiai represent the sixth realm of the Christian angelic hierarchy of the Roman Catholic tradition. This hierarchic level of divine spirits is immediately above the three levels comprising the Angels, Archangels and Archai/Principati. The role of the Exousiai in spiritual evolution is essential, since the human Self has emanated from them. Having their residence in the spiritual spheres of the Sun, the Exousiai are specially devoted to the development of Earth and humanity. "But when Humboldt cried, 'Life!' he didn't mean the Thrones, Exousiai, and Angels."
Havelock: A cloth covering for a cap, having a flap to protect the back of the neck. "On her head was a garrison cap and a Sam Browne belt crossed her chest --the works: fleece boots, mittens, her neck protected by an orange havelock, her figure obliterated."
Tinia crura Tinea crura is a fungal infection in the skin of the groin. "And Dr. Tim Vonghel gave me a bucket of gentian violet to sit in. He told me I had a bad case of tinia crura."
Hydrostatics: The statics of fluids, especially incompressible fluids. Statics is the equilibrium mechanics of stationary bodies. "He was quite old now, and the unkind forces of human hydrostatics were beginning to make a strained and wrinkled bag of his face, but his color remained fresh and he was still the Harvard radical of the John Reed type, one of those ever-youthful lightweight high-spirited American intellectuals, faithful to his Marx or his Bakunin, to Isadora, Randolph Bourne, Lenin and Trotsky, Max Eastman, Cocteau, André Gide, the Ballets Ruses, Eisenstein -- the beautiful avant-garde pantheon of the good old days."
Mansard: The upper story formed by the lower slope of a mansard roof, which is a roof having two slopes on all four sides. "Renata was still criticizing the mansard room."
Inductive: Of reasoning; proceeding from particular facts to a general conclusion. "'It isn't mysticism,' I said. 'Goethe simply wouldn't stop at the boundaries drawn by the inductive method.'"
Epistemologies: Epistemology is the philosophy that investigates the nature and origin of knowledge; a theory of the nature of knowledge. "Five different epistemologies in an evening. Take your choice. They're all agreeable, and not one is binding or necessary or has true strength or speaks straight to the soul."
Tremor cordis: Irregular heart beat. "I recalled how he had looked in Connecticut, when he quoted me King Leontes in my yard by the sea. 'I have tremor cordis on me: my heart dances; but not for joy, not joy.'"
Carabiniere: A military body that polices both military and civilians. "Thaxter's carabiniere costume looked sick by comparison."
Soutane: A cassock worn by Roman Catholic priests. "'Priests' pockets are picked under the soutane.'"
Chandala: An untouchable; especially someone engaged in the profession of carrying of dead bodies and in the process of cremation. "I knew all of that would-be Shavian wit you could hear at dinner tables on Lake Shore Drive: they wanted to make an untouchable and a chandala of Flonzaley, a scavenger, but he would take their gold into the gloom with him, and he would be a Prince there -- that sort of stuff I could do without."

The List of References from Humboldt's Gift:

Adventures of Ideas by Alfred N. Whitehead
Aida opera by Giuseppe Verde
American Mercury magazine
Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare
Antigone by Sophocles
Balzac sculpture by Auguste Rodin
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
Bonnie and Clyde movie
Carmen opera by Georges Bizet
Comédie Humaine by Honoré de Balzac
Deep Throat porno film
De Anima (On the Soul) by Aristotle
Diaries by Franz Kafka
Elégie song by Jules Massenet
Encyclopedia of Unified Science
Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce
From Hegel to Marx by Sidney Hook
Guernica painting by Pablo Picasso
Hamlet by Shakespeare
I Am Curious Yellow movie
Ils Ne M'auront Pas (They shall not have me) by Jean Hélion
Intimate Journals by Charles Baudelaire
King Solomon's Mine by H. Rider Haggard
Knock play by Jules Romains
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment by Rudolf Steiner
La Comédie Humaine by Honoré de Balzac
Les Amours Jaunes by Tristan Corbière
Letters by John Keats
"Liebestod" from Richard Wagner opera
Maja paintings by Francisco Goya
New World Symphony by Antonín Dvorák
Oedipus at Colonus play by Sophocles
Pagliacci opera by Ruggero Leoncavallo
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Pastorale symphony Ludwig van Beethoven
Phaedrus by Plato
Phenomenology by Georg Wilhelm Hegel
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
Revista de Occidente magazine
Satyricon movie by Frederico Fellini
State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin
Symposium by Plato
The Barber of Seville opera
The Dial magazine
The French Connection movie
The Godfather movie
The Great McGinty movie
The Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics by James Hastings
The Magic Flute opera by Mozart
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek movie
The Modern Theme by José Ortega y Gasset
"The Pardoner" (excerpt) by Geoffrey Chaucer
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life by Sigmund Freud
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Sense of Beauty by George Santayana
The Spoils of Poynton by Henry James
The Tempest by Shakespeare
The Triumph of the Therapeutic by Philip Rieff
The Winter's Tale by Shakespeare
Timaeus by Plato
Women's Wear Daily magazine
Abel, Lionel
Acheson, Secretary Dean
Adams, Henry & Mrs.
Adonais
Agamemnon
Ahriman
Aiken, Conrad
Alger, Horatio
Alighieri, Dante
Amin, General (Idi Amin Dada)
Amundsen, Roald
Antony, Mark
Apollinaire, Guillaume
Aquinas, Thomas
Ardrey, Robert
Aristophanes
Aristotle
Armstrong, Louis
Artaud, Antonin
Ash, Paul
Ashurbanipal
Atlantis
Babbitt (character by Sinclair Lewis)
Bach, Johann Sebastian
Bacon, Francis
Baedeker
Bakunin, Mikhail
Ballets Russes
Balzac, Honoré de
Baron, Salo Wittmayer
Baruch, Bernard
Batista, General Fulgencio
Baudelaire, Charles
Beethoven, Ludwig van
Bergotte (character by Proust)
Bernhardt, Sarah
Bernini, Gian Lorenzo
Berryman, John
Beyle, Marie-Henri
Binet, Alfred
Blake, William
Blavatsky, Madame
Bloomgarden, Kermit
Boehme, Jakob
Boito, Arrigo
Bolling, Edith
Bonaparte, Louis
Bonaparte, Napoleon
Bosch, Hieronymus
Botticelli, Sandro
Bourne, Randolph
Brecht, Bertolt
Bretonne, Restif del la
Browning, Edward West "Daddy" & Frances Heenan "Peaches"
Bryan, William Jennings
Buchalter, Louis "Lepke"
Buddha
Bukharin, Nikolai
Burnham, James
Burns, Robert
Burton, Sir Richard Francis
Caeser, Julius
Caliban (character by Shakespeare)
Carus, Titus Lucretius
Caruso, Enrico
Casals, Pablo
Chapman, George
Chaney, Lon
Chaplin, Charlie
Charlus, Baron de (character from Proust)
Chaucer, Geoffrey
Chekhov, Anton
Chiaramonte, Nicola
Christian (character by John Bunyan)
Churchill, Winston
Circe
Clair, René
Clarissa (character by Samuel Richardson)
Claudius
Cleopatra
Cocteau, Jean
Cohen, Morris R.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Colman, Ronald
Coolidge, Calvin
Corbière, Tristan
Corelli, Arcangelo
Corvo, Baron (Frederick William Rolfe)
Crane, Hart
Cutting, Sen. Bronson
Cyclops
Daniels, Samuel
Dante Alighieri
Darwin, Charles
Davies, Marion
Defoe, Daniel
DeGaulle, Charles
Closerie Des Lilas (restaurant)
d'Evry, Baron Hulot (character by Balzac)
Dimaggio, Joe
Dimmesdale (character by Hawthorne)
Dirksen, Sen. Erv
Disraeli, Benjamin
Don José (character by Bizet)
Donlevy, Brian
Donne, John
Dostoevsky, Fyodor
Douglas, Justice William O.
Dryden, John
Duncan, Isadora
Durkheim, Emile
Durnwald, Richard
Dvorák, Antonín
Dzerzhinsky, Felix E.
Eastman, Max
Eckhardt, Meister
Eddington, Arthur
Einstein, Albert
Eisenhower, Dwight
Eisenstein, Sergei
El Greco (Domenicos Theotokopoulos)
Eliot, T.S.
Ellenbogen, Wilhelm
Eller, Morris
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
English, Woody (baseball)
Eriksen, Erik
Eros
Escamillo (character from opera Carmen)
Fafnir
Fellini, Frederico
Ferenczi, Sándor
Fields, W.C.
Figaro (opera character)
Fitzgerald, Scott
Flaubert, Gustave
Ford, Henry
Fort Dearborn
Fowler, Gene
Freud, Sigmund
Friedman, Milton
Frost, Robert
Gabor, Zsa Zsa
Galli-Curci, Amelita
Galvani, Dr. Luigi
Genet, Jean
Gide, André
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
Goldoni, Carlo
Goodman, Paul
Goya, Francisco
Grey, Zane
Haggard, H. Rider
Hal, Frans
Halas, George
Hamlet (character by Shakespeare)
Hart, Liddell
Hastings, James
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Haydn, Franz Joseph
Hearst, Patty
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm
Heine, Heinrich
Held Jr., John
Hélion, Jean
Hemingway, Ernest
Herodias
Hickok, Wild Bill
Himmel, Richard
Hirschfeld, Al
Hobbes, Thomas
Hoffmann, E.T.A.
Holmes, Justice Oliver Wendell
Homer
Hook, Sidney
Hoover, Herbert
Hoover, J. Edgar
Hopkins, Harry
Houdini, Harry
Humphrey, Hubert
Hur, Ben
Ibsen, Henrik
Jacobsen, Dr. Edmund
James, Henry
James, Dr. William
Jannings, Emil
Jarrell, Randall
Javits, Sen. Jacob Koppel
Jenner, Sen. William Ezra
John of the Cross, St.
Johnson, Dr. Samuel
Joyce, James
Jung, C.G.
Kafka, Franz
Kahn, Herman
Kai-shek, Chiang
Kamenev, Lev
Kant, Immanuel
Karamazov (character by Dostoevsky)
Karo, Rabbi Joseph
Keats, John
Kennedy, Jackie
Kennedy, John
Kennedy, Robert
Keynes, John Maynard
Kierkegaard, Søren
Kinsey, Alfred C.
Koestler, Albert
Köhler, Wolfgang
Kun, Béla
Lardner, Ring
Laughton, Charles
Lawrence, T.E.
Leakey, Louis
Lear, King (Shakespeare character)
Le Corbusier
Lenin, Vladimir
Leontes, King (Shakespeare character)
Levi, Paul Alan
Lewis, Sinclair
Lincoln, Abe
Lindbergh, Charles
Lorca, Frederico Garcia
Lorenz, Konrad
Lovelace (character by Richardson)
Loyola, St. Ignatius
Lucretius
Lugosi, Béla
Luxemburg, Rosa
Lyons, Leonard
MacArthur, Douglas
Macbeth (Shakespeare character)
Machiavelli, Niccolò
Maja (Goya subject)
Mallarmé, Stéphane
Malraux, André
Malthus, Thomas Robert
Mammon
Manville, Tommy
Mao Zedong
Marais, Eugene
Marshall, Gen. George C.
Marvell, Andrew
Marx, Karl
Mosca, Count (from Stendhal)
Massenet, Jules
Masters, William
Mastroianni, Marcello
Matisse, Henri
McCarthy, Sen. Joseph
McCormick, Colonel Robert R.
McLaglen, Victor
Melville, Herman
Mencken, H.L.
Mill, John Stuart
Milton, John
Molière
Momigliano, Arnaldo
Monet, Claude
Monroe, Marilyn
Mostel, Zero
Mozart, Wolfgang
Murray, Mae
Mussolini, Benito
Nietzsche, Friedrich
Nobile, Umberto
Novalis
O'Banion, Dion
Olivier, Sir Laurence
Orpheus
Ortega y Gasset, Jose
Ouspenskaya, Maria
Paganini, Niccolò
Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da
Panofsky, Wolfgang
Pascal, Blaise
Pershing, General John Joseph
Picasso, Pablo
Pickford, Mary
Piguet, Audemar
Plato
Plautus, Titus Maccius
Pluto
Poe, Edgar A.
Polonius (Shakespeare character)
Pope, Alexander
Post, Emily
Pound, Ezra
Praz, Mario
Prospero (Shakespeare character)
Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph
Proust, Marcel
Prufrock, J. Alfred (TS Eliot character)
Psyche
Qaddafi, Muammar al
Rahv, Philip
Rameau, Jean-Philippe
Rasputin, Grigori
Reed, John
Rhadamanthus
Rhadames (character from Aida)
Richardson, Samuel
Richelieu, Cardinal
Rieff, Philip
Rilke, Rainer Maria
Robinson, Sugar Ray
Rockefeller, J.D.
Rodin, Auguste
Romains, Jules
Romberg, Sigmund
Rommel, General Erwin
Roosevelt, Franklin .D.
Rosicrucian
Rossini, Gioachino
Rostovtzeff, Michael
Roth, Cecil
Rothko, Mark
Roualt, Georges
Ruffo, Titta
Ruth, Babe
Santayana, George
Sarnoff, Gen. David
Sartre, Jean-Paul
Schaller, George
Schapiro, Meyer
Schipa, Tito
Schliemann, Heinrich
Schopenhauer, Arthur
Schumann-Heink, Ernestine
Schumpeter, Joseph
Schweitzer, Albert
Scott, Robert F.
Sebastian, St.
Sejanus (Lucius Aelius Seianus)
Shakespeare, William
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Simon, St.
Sitwell, Edith
Smith, Red
Smith, Adam
Smith, Al & Johnny Walker
Smolny Institute
Snerd, Mortimer (Edgar Bergen dummy)
Socrates
Sombart, Werner
Sophocles
Sorel, Julien
Soutine, Chaim
Spens, Sir Patrick
Spinoza, Baruch
Stalin, Joseph
Stanton, Edwin M.
Steichen, Edward
Stein, Gertrude
Steiner, Rudolf
Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Stevens, Wallace
Stevenson, Adlai
Stravinsky, Igor
Sturges, Preston
Suetonius
Sullivan, Louis
Swanson, Gloria
Swift, Jonathan
Swinburne, Algernon Charles
Tamiroff, Akim
Tawney, R.H.
Temple, Sir William
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
Teresa, St.
Thaw, Harry & Evelyn Nesbitt
Thompson, William Hale "Big Bill"
Thoreau, Henry David
Thucydides
Thurmond, Sen. Strom
Tiberius
Tillich, Paul
Tocqueville, Alexis de
Toklas, Alice B.
Tolstoi, Leo
Toynbee, Arnold
Triton
Trotsky, Leon
Tumulty, Joseph
Ustinov, Peter
Valéry, Paul
Vallee, Rudy
Van der Weyden, Rogier
Velásquez, Diego
Verdi, Giuseppe
Vesco, Robert Lee
Vico, Giambattista
Villa, Pancho
Virgil
Vishinsky, Andrei
Von Trenck, Pandour
Wagner, Richard
Walker, Johnny & Al Smith
Walpole, Horace
Weber, Max
Welles, Orson
Wharton, Edith
Wheeler, Sen. Burton K.
Wheeler-Bennet, John
Whitehead, Alfred North
Whitman, Walt
Wilde, Oscar
Wilmot, Chester
Wilson, Woodrow
Wilson, Earl
Wilson, Edmund
Wilson, Hack
Wimsey, Lord Peter (Dorothy Sayers character)
Winchell, Walter
Wittgenstein, Ludwig
Wordsworth, William
Yeats, William Butler
Yerkes, Robert Means
Yokum, Mammy (cartoon character by Al Capp)
Zarathustra
Ziegfeld, Florenz
Zinoviev, Grigory
Zuckerman, Solly Baron
(Whew!)