CHARACTER OF MOSES
Unheroic
As the title of the novel suggests, the novelist aims at presenting character of Moses Herzog, who is the prima mobile in each and every episode of the novel. It can be said in a customary sense that he is the hero, but there is hardly any heroic quality in him. All the incidents are reported by him. The opening sentence of the novel. 'If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Herzog' reveals that he is at odds with the world. The novelist informs that 'some people thought he was cracked and for a time he himself had doubted that he was all there'. In spite of being an angry spirit, he is confident, cheerful, clairvoyant and strong.
Cynic with Varied Interests
His varied interests and desire to speak out his mind, incite him to write letters 'to everyone under the sun', to newspapers, to people in public life, to friends and relatives, even to dead ones, his own obscure dead, and finally the famous". But most of those letters were not even posted. Being a cynic of sorts, whenever he was gripped by some new idea, he would go nowhere but to the kitchen, which was his headquarters to write down even though it was littered with mouse-droppings which he wiped with his sleeve, and ate loaf the half of which had been nibbled by the mouse. His friend Valentine Gersbach and his ex-wife Madeline had spread the rumour that he had lost sanity. Considering his entire life, he thought that he was ruined having symptom of disintegration. His face revealed what a beating he had taken and lent his attackers strength.
Family Background
Moses was influenced by other members of his family. His father J. Herzog was of irascible temper. In his frequent bursts of temper, he would slap his sons violently with both his hands Father Herzog failed in Petersberg, where she went through two dowries in one year. He was caught by the Police for illegal residence, convicted and sentenced. The account of the trial was published in a Russian journal which Father Herzog sometimes unfolded and read out to entire family. He never served his sentence. He got away. He was 'nervy, hasty, obstinate, rebellious'. He came to Canada where his sister Zipporah Yaffe was living. In 1913 he bought a piece of land near Valleyfield, Quebec, but he failed as a farmer, as a baker, as a jobber, as a sack manufacturer, when none else had failed, partly because he lacked the cheating imagination of a successful businessman'. He started selling a bottle here and there. American rum-runners would buy the stuff at the border, any amount, spot cash. "The Revenue was trying to catch him. Spotters were after him. Willie and Moses were sickly Helen studied the piano. Shura was fat, greedy, disobedient, a plotting boy. The rent, back rent, notes due, doctor's bills to pay, and he had no English, no friends, no influence, no trade, no assets, but his bills-no help in all world. His sister Zipporah in St. Anne was rich, very rich, which only made matters worse". Thus, father Herzog was a broken man.
Grandfather in Straight Circumstances
Grandfather Herzog was also in a equally difficult situation. As the Herzogs had an instinct for grand things, he took refuge in Winter Palace in 1918. The old man had lost his books during the Revolution. It was difficult for him to find minyan, a quorum of 13 persons for Jewish public worship. He thought the Revolution would fail. Therefore he acquired Czarist bills which proved of worth. Grandfather Herzog was in eighties but still very strong. The letters he wrote about cold, lice, famine, epidemics, the dead, were read aloud by Father Herzog. The old man wrote whether he would ever see the faces of his children, and whether they would be able to bury him. It used to be a very touching scene. Father Herzog would find it difficult to read the letters aloud "The tears were in his eyes and he suddenly put his hand over his moustached mouth and hurried from the room".
Dejected Mother
Mother Herzog had a "dreaming look, melancholy, and seemed to be seeing the old world." She often thought of her father, her tragic mother, her living and dead brothers, her sister, her comfortable living in Petersburg. But now she was a cook, washerwoman, seamstress on Napoleon Street in the slum. Her hair had turned grey, she had lost teeth, her finger-nails were wrinkled and her hands smelled of the sink. Still, she had the strength and will to 'spoil her children'. Once at nightfall, she was pulling Moses on the sled with such great difficulty that an old man said to her out of pity not to sacrifice her strength on children. When she received news of the death of her brother, Mikhail, who had died of typhus, she gave a cry and fainted. Only Moses and she were in the house. Moses was terrified when she lay with her legs spread, her long hair undone, lids brown, mouth-bloodless, death-like".
In the morning Moses and his brothers said the same prayer, age after age, and loved whatever they found. Mother did the washing, father was desperate and frightened, Shura was plotting to master the world, Willie struggled with asthmatic fits, Moses and Helen struggled with music.
Censorious Aunt
Aunt Zipporah was critical of Herzog family. She mother Herzog's ambition for her children, because she wanted them 'to be lawyers, gentlemen, rabbis or performers' in spite of her abject poverty. She told Herzog that she and her husband, Yaffe, had to work hard to make a living-"It's no secret how we started out. By labour, Yaffe took a pick and shovel on the CPR until we saved up a little capital." In contrast to this Herzogs she said 'were born in a silk shirt', 'putting on style in Petersburg with servants and coachmen'. She advised them to forget the luxuries they had enjoyed in the past, and begin working hard for livelihood-"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 g to work like mine." Finally, she told them bluntly-"What do you go expect? With your four children, if I started to give, and indulged your bad habits, it would be endless. It's not my fault you're a pauper here." The only solution of Herzog's problem according to Zipporah, was to send children to work-"Let your Helen and your Shura go to work. Sell the Piano. Cut expenses".
Caught in a Society of Criminals
The Herzogs were in a broken state. And there was hardly any prospects for them of making a living by honest means in a society of thieves and cut-throats. Zipporah made it clear-"You think you can make a fortune out of swindlers, thieves, gangsters, you? You're a gentle creature. I don't know why you didn't stay in the Yeshivah. You wanted to be gilded little gentlemen. I know these hooligans and razboiniks. They don't have skins, teeth, fingers like you but hides, fangs, claws. You can never keep up with these teamsters and butchers." Thus Zipporah made it clear that there was no way to make a living in such a society except by hard work.
But Mama Herzog could not appreciate the bitter truths spoken by Zipporah. She thought that Zipporah had become her enemy for no reason. She laughed as she said this but ended by crying.
Moses was right to say that his Mama was archaic, filled with old legends, with angels and demons'. Naturally she couln't appreciate the realistic criticism of society given by aunt Zipporah. She had advised father Herzog not to try to run bootleg whisky to the border, and get into the big time. He and Voplonsky borrowed from money-lenders, loaded a truck with cases. They were hijacked, beaten up and left in a ditch. Father Herzog got the beating because he risisted. The hijackers tore his clothes, knocked out one of his teeth and trampled him. Father Herzog had the big question in his mind 'how would he provide for his family? He had had very difficult times all his life. Sometimes he narrated the stories of misfortune and sometimes did his wife. The children heard nothing but the stories of struggles and failures.
A Scholar of Reputation
Willie became a businessman, while Moses became a professor of great reputation. His thesis was translated into French and German. His early book was on many reading lists, and younger generation of historians considered his work as 'a model of the new sort of history'. In his first work he traced relationship between Christianity and Romanticism. He had plans to write a history of the revolutions and mass convulsions of the Twentieth century and progress of democracy. Herzog was a man of ideas and language, and took opportunities to express his ideas about politics. He was of the opinion that romantic, inheritance had led the world to ideas of modern selfhood, the contemporary narcissism, which had left him in impotent privacy. In moments of rage, he fired off letters to the newspapers, to people in public life, to friends and relatives, including the dead ones. He addressed letters to such great persons as Eisenhower, and schopenhaur, Nietzsche, and Hegel. The ideas came to him in floods at all hours, even when he was delivering lectures-"At that time he had been giving adult-education lectures in New York night school... Professor Herzog had the unconscious frankness of a man deeply preoccupied. And toward the end of the term there were long pauses in his lecturers. He would stop muttering 'Excuse me' reaching inside the coat for his pen. The table creaking, he wrote on scraps of paper with a great pressure in his hand; he was absorbed, his eyes darkly circled. His white face showed everything-everything. He was reasoning, arguing, he was suffering, he had thought of a brilliant alternative... One could see it all. The class waited three minutes, five minutes, utterly silent." He wrote in between his lectures such notes as "Answer a fool according to his folly lest he be wise in his own conceit", but immediately after that he wrote, "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou be like unto him". Such contradictory ideas arose in his mind at all hours, indicating that Professor Herzog was constantly in the process of thinking and correcting himself.
Positive Outlook
Herzog's letters which were mostly in the form of notes reflect his views on several different problems of the contemporary society. At the same time, they revealed the inner self of Herzog. He had a regret all his life that he had "mismanaged everything. He thought that his life was 'ruined, yet he didn't think there was anything to grieve about, because he 'hadn't much to begin with'. He knew that grieving would not help. Therefore he wrote "Grief, sir, is a species of idleness".
His face revealed that he had received beating, ironically because he had lent attackers strength'. He said about himself that he was 'narcissistic', ' mesochistic', and 'anachronistic'. If it is true as people often say that man is a sick animal, he was 'the sick animal', 'spectacularly sick', 'exceptionally blind, extraordinarily degraded'. His intellect would have been more effective if he had been 'agressive paranoid character', eager for power. Herzog never thought of acquiring power over anybody or anything. As to his learning, he had written a brilliant thesis on The state of nature in 17th and 18th century English and French Political Philosophy, wrote several articles and a book on 'Romanticism and Christianity'. It was on account of his academic work that jobs came to him without asking.
Self-indictment
In his self-examination, he admitted that he had been a bad husband as his two wives had left him. This fact had upset him deeply. His first wife, Daisy, had treated him indifferently and his second wife, Madeline, was cruel to him, "To son and his daughter he was a loving but bad father. To his own parents he had been an ungrateful child. To his country, an indifferent citizen. To his brothers and sister, affectionate but remote. With his friends, an egotist. With love, lazy. With brightness, dull. With power passive. With his own soul, evasive."
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