AN OUTLINE OF THE NOVEL HERZOG BY SAUL BELLOW

 AN OUTLINE OF THE NOVEL HERZOG BY SAUL BELLOW

Herzog, as the title suggests is a character study of Herzog, but this study is largely made by Herzog himself. The famous historian of American fiction, Frederick Robert Karl, has said in this connection, "There is little distancing in the novel, that is, we learn nothing which is not Herzog's apperception. Other characters are emanations from his sensibility; and we only rarely (and marginally) learn how others see him. We know they respect his learning, but we do not know what he is likely to live with. He appears attractive to dependent women, but again, that is from Herzog's perception; we never learn of his rebuffs". Thus Herzog narrates his own story without caring to know what others think about him.
The old man had no hopes of meeting his children in his life. He wrote, "Shall I ever see the faces of my children? And who will bury me?" These letters were read out to the family by father Herzog with throat choked and eyes flooded with tears of emotion. Mother Herzog was doing everything that was possible in her present condition even at the risk of her health. She wanted her children to be gentlemen in spite of strict warning from Zipporah. Father Herzog was in a broken state since he had failed miserably in his effort to find wherewithal. He asked, "What should I do, then! work for the burial society? Like a man of seventy only fit to sit at deathbeds? Wash corpses ? I? Of should I go to the cemetery and wheedle mourners far a nickel ?" The reasons for their pitiable condition was clear to Zipporah more than anybody else. She said, "You think you can make a fortune out of swindlers, thieves and gangesters? You? You're a gentle creature. I don't know why you didn't stay in the yeshivah. You wanted to be a gilded little gentleman. I know these hooligans and razboiniks? You can never keep up with these teamsters and butchers?" This account of Herzog's family makes it clear that it was a family of gentle folks, had fallen on evil days. and failed to make an honourable living in a society of cheats and swindlers.
Of these members of Herzog family, Shura and Willie became successful businessmen, but Moses became a renowned professor, working on Romanticism and Christianity. He had made a brilliant start in his Ph.D. thesis. His books were on many reading lists, and the younger generation of historians accepted his work as a model of new sort of history. His thesis had been translated into French and German. The Narraganett Corporation had paid him fifteen thousand dollars over a number of years to continue his studies in Romanticism. Jobs came to him without asking. Being a man of ideas, he was preoccupied with ideas on different topics, and would often get lost in ideas during lectures. He would stop speaking due to rush of ideas and say 'sorry' to the students.
Moses Herzog had become something of a Cynic. When he had a desire to write something, when some thought gripped his heart, he would go to the kitchen, which had become his headquarters, to write it down, though the white paint in the kitchen was ealing from the walls, and Herzog sometimes had to wipe mouse droppings from the table with his sleeve, and eat the loaf a part of which had been nibbled by the field mice.
Herzog was married to Daisy, whom he had met when she was a student. Daisy was a devoted and systematic housewife. She would put his pocket money in an envelop, had a green metal file for budgeting, put daily reminders, concert tickets on the bulletin board, mark calenders well in advance. Herzog remembered that stability, order, contentment were Daisy's strength. She had borne all kinds of difficulties when her husband was in studies. She had to bear Herzog's turbulence of spirit and had to make a compromise with Herzog's food habits which were not compatible with hers. Daisy didn't say anything about the cruelty that her husband had inflicted upon her. A devoted wife was to stand by her husband in all circumstances. Herzog went to Connecticut when he was writing 'Romanticism and Christianity'. It was a difficult life. Whether was extremely cold. Pipes had frozen and freezing blasts penetrated the clapboard walls. To add to her difficulties, Herzog played oboe which he had taught himself. All of it was tortuous to Daisy.
But Herzog was dissolute in his habits. He was enjoying himself in the company of Wandas, Zinkas, Ramonas, one after another. He had started visiting Sono Oguki. This fact was brought to the notice of Moses Herzog's father by Daisy but Moses Herzog refused to care for it, saying that his father had nothing to do with his personal life, and that he was fed up with a very regular life he had lived with his father.
He took fancy for Madeline. He was fascinated by her physical charms and intellect. Madeline insisted on his divorcing his first wife. It was a condition for his marriage with Madeline. He was so much besotted with Madeline's beauty that he married her in spite of wearning from Pontritters, her parents, that she was not in their control. Then, he spent twenty thousand and more on a house in Ludeyville. He wrote the cheque with trembling hands, conscious as he was that it was his 'papa's savings, representing forty years of misery in America'. But it was not all. The house needed lot of repairs and huge expenditure to make it liveable. Herzog chose to do the repairs himself with the help of 'Do-It-Yourself' Encyclopaedia. When he was working as a mason and plumber, Madeline was on a spending spree. She toured the antique shops with her friend, Valentine Gersbach, brought home loads of groceries. She spent five hundred bucks on maternity outfits. On being questioned by Herzog, she told him that she was not going to live like his mother who wore flour sacks.
Nevertheless, Herzog loved Madeline passionately-"There was a flavour of subjugation in his love for Madeline. She was domineering, and since he loved her, he had to accept the flavour that was given". Madeline was unlike Daisy who was ultramodern. In her ambivalent conduct, she had religious inhibitions and never-to-be-satisfied passion. She wanted Herzog at night, but would have liked him to disappear in day. She was against her mother who she thought was slavishly going after her father in spite of being divorced by him.
In course of time, she came to have an aversion for Moses Herzog. She told him frankly that she was not going to waste her youth, beauty and intellect on him. Aunt Zelda explained to Moses Herzog why Madeline wanted to divorce him. She said that Moses was overbearing, gloomy, very demanding, would have his own way. Herzog accepted that he was hasty, irascible and spoiled. Over and above all this, aunt Zelda told him that he was a fool to have buried himself in the Berkshire with nobody to talk to, and he was a dictator, a regular tyrant, who bullied Madeline constantly. For all these hundred and one reasons, Madeline divorced Herzog.
Herzog was in deep depression. He believed he was a bad husband, twice divorced, a bad father of this two children, a bad son to his father and a good-for-nothing brother to his siblings. Dr. Edvig advised him to go on a tour of Europe with a young woman to regain his confidence. He was also of the view that the erotic must be admitted to its rightful place in an emancipated society which understands the relation of sexual repression to sickness, war, property, money, totalitareanism. Therefore he went to Ramona.
As Moses Herzog believed in the necessity of carnality in life Ramona believed that there was no sin but the sin against the body, the true temple of the spirit. There was a very happy and cordial chemistry between Moses and Ramona. Ramona was an extremely attractive, slightly foreign and well educated. She was in her thirties and doing business alongwith M. A. in History at Columbia. She was enrolled in the Herzog's evening course. Ideas excited her, and she loved to talk. Moses liked her immensely, had supper with her several nights a week. Ramona also liked Moses. She said that there was something 'so dear, so loving, so healthy, and basically so steady' in Herzog. About his present state of depression, she thought that he needed the right woman. She advised him to go to Montauk where she had a house. She had a sincere desire to bring Herzog out of his present state of depression. She told him, "Why do you wear such drab things? You still have a youthful figure.... you know you are a good looking man. And you can take pride in being one. In Argentina they'd call you macho-masculine. You like to come on week and tame, and cover up the devil that's in you. Why you put the devil down? Such remarks of encouragements were all that he needed She turned Herzog's miseries into sexual excitement and turned his grief in a useful direction. But Ramona wanted to make it clear that she was not a flirt. She was conscious that 'man and woman are in constant struggle. Man wants to deceive the woman and then to disengage himself, while woman wants to disarm and detain him'. Even Herzog felt that Romona wanted to instil Orphic element in him.
Herzog came to visit Sono Oguki during the troubled time when he was being divorced from Daisy. Herzog enjoyed himself in her company. He said, "To tell the truth, I never had it so good. But I lacked the strength of character to bear such joy." Sono also loved Herzog truly and sincerely. She told him that 'she was not so she believed in God, but that if he did she would also try to have faith'. She did not want anything from him. She was not like Daisy who wanted him to discharge his duties as a husband. Herzog recalled that Sono 'did not want me to work for her, to furnish her house, support her children, to be regular at meals or open charge accounts in luxury shops. She asked only that I should be with her from time to time."
After indulging in sexsual pleasure, Herzog came to realize that real joy or happiness was something altogether different. In the last scene of the novel, he assured his brother, Willie, that he was not in the hands of anybody and he did not express any desire for sensual pleasure from Ramona who was coming to meet him for dinner. After being free from carnality, he felt a happiness which he thought had nothing to do with the physical world. He realised, "My face too blind, my mind too limited, my instincts too narrow" to feel the depth of that happiness. He thought that it was 'a sign, a proof, of eternity."
Herzog's story will not be completed without a reference to his habit of writing letters. He wrote to all, including the dead ones, and were never posted. His mind was so full of ideas that he kept on expressing them without caring whether people knew them or not.

Herzog informs us that he has come of a family which was once quite well off but now it is pauperized. The family had migrated from Russia to Canada where Moses Herzog's aunt Zipporah had made a fortune for her family by dint of hard work, but aunt Zepporah refused to help them, and asked them plainly to earn their bread and butter by hard work. She said, "You got used to putting on style, in Petersberg, with servants and coachmen. I can still see you getting off the train from Halifax, all dressed up among the greeners.... Now forget the feathers, the gloves". She advised them to be ready to earn by the sweat of their brows. She said, "Everyone must work. Not suffer your whole life long from a fall. Why must your children go to the conservatory, the Baron de Hirsch School, and all those special frills? Let them go to work, like mine". Herzogs were doing their best to make a living. They were a big family, consisting of his mother, who did the washing and mourn, his father was desperate and frightened, his brother, Shura, 'was plotting to master the world, to become a millionaire, his brother, Willie, struggled with asthamatic fits and his sister, Helen, carried a leather music roll as she had got diploma in music. Father Herzog failed as a farmer, failed as a baker, failed as a jobber, failed as a sack manufacturer in the war when no one else had failed, failed as a junk dealer and failed as a boot-legger. He failed because he lacked the cheating imagination of a successful businessman' Grandfather Herzog was in his eighties, but still strong. He was left behind. He wrote letters in Hebrew and spoke of cold, lice, famine, expidemics.