CHARACTER OF MOSES
Awake to the Public Weal
In spite of his self-indictment, he continued to be academically active, and close observer of life. He wrote to the President that Internal Revenue regulations were so complicated that one would have to be an accountant of a sort to calculate taxes, and he feared that if the things continued to be so 'the Revenue regulations 'will turn us into a notion of book-keepers'. It is an impassioned appeal to make Revenue regulations easy and simple. He further wrote that Americans in general had become businessmen, having little to do with social and moral aspects of the society. He bewailed, "The life of every citizen is becoming a business. Thus, it seems to me, is one of the worst interpretations of the meaning of human life history has ever seen. Man's life is not a business."
He wrote to Dr. Vinoba Bhave who had started Bhudan Movement in India to ensure equitable distribution of land and to reclaim the barren land. Herzog expressed his desire to join the movement and even to offer his house in Ludeyville to the Bhave Movement. But at the same time he could not envisage how it could serve Bhave's mission. He knew he could at best send Hindus to Berkshire. But it was not possible for him to give his house to Bhave's Movement because it was already mortgaged and he would have to raise eight thousand bucks to redeem it. Herzog frankly admitted that buying that house was one of his greatest mistakes. Anyway, Herzog had a desire 'to lead a moral, useful and active life'.
He wrote to the President that he had not liked his new taxation policy because he thought 'the new legislation was discriminatory' and he was equally against the policy of automation as it would 'aggravate unemployment problem', and as a consequence thereof 'more adolescent gangs will dominate the underpoliced streets of big cities. Stresses of over-population, the race question..... Moses felt concerned like an awakened citizen and desired that new avenues of employment should be opened.
Showing his concern for the public health, he wrote to Dr. Strawforth, a government scientist, that the problem of pesticides and contamination of water had become a threat to the public health. The genetic effects of radioactivity and over fallout had already afflicted a large number of persons.
Moses Herzog was fully aware of the opportunistic and unethical conduct of the politicians. He wrote, "In every community there is a class of people profoundly dangerous to the rest. I don't mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably the most dangerous" people seek the power". He knew that law could deal with criminals, but not with the political leaders. Hence the political leaders were far more dangerous. He wrote angerily to the Editor, "We are bound to be the slaves of those who have power to destroy us."
He wrote to Shapiro about erosion of moral values, 'about the decay of religious foundations of civilization'. He believed that Proudhon's visions of darkness and evil was too evident to be passed over, though he refused to accept the foolish dreariness of 'Prussion socialism' which invoked the wasteland outlook, 'Inauthenticity and Forlornness'. He noticed the rising plebian envy and ambition in modern Europe which he thought would provide material for interesting chapter on the history of Romanticism. The plebian classes were fighting for 'food, power, sexual privileges, etc. and also 'to inherit the aristocratic dignity of the old regimes'. They were fighting against 'industrial defilement of landscapes".
Moses Herzog wrote a letter to General Eisenhower to inform him that he was in the press gallery when he spoke about 'the risk of error in precipitating nuclear war'. He was present also on the day when Premier Khrushchev pounded the desk with his shoe. There was no time for the general questions in that tense atmosphere. Referring to the letter that Eisenhower had written to Hughes about spiritual values, Moses Herzog pointed out that the committee on National Aims appointed by him didn't have the really deserving people on it. He wrote, "I wonder whether the people you appointed to it were the best for the job-corporation lawyers, big executives, the group now called the Industrial Statesman". What he meant to say was that there should have been people of social sciences and religious institutions instead of bureaucrats and corporate lawyers.
Views on Democracy
He further comments that common man had no say, in the functioning of the so-called democratic government. He pointed out that according to Pascal (1623-1662) man is a reed, a thinking reed, but in the modern age man is 'reed bending before the centrally generated winds'. Public opinion was nothing but a cry in the wilderness. In this connection he quoted Tolstoi who had said, "Freedom is entirely personal. That man is free whose condition is simple, truthful-real. To be free is to be released from historical limitation", while GWF Hegal says that the essence of human life is to be derived from history-History, memory-that is what makes us human". The universally accepted priority, however, is "No civil power, and no higher development of mankind. The goal, however, is freedom". Moses Herzog held that the modern system did not allow freedom in the true sense.
In his letter to his tutor, Harris Pulver, he asked whether he believed in 'trascendence downward as well as upward' or in impossibilty of transcendence'. He was right to say that the questions involved 'historical analysis'. He pointed out that the emerging consciousness in mass civilization was 'expressive', and derived a fundamental principle, "The spirit released from servile dumbness, spits dung and howls with anguish stored during long ages. This expressive tendency, he said, had led to 'self- awareness' and 'self-revenge'. It is revenge taken by numbers on the impulses of narcissism or personal freedom. The spirit of 'self-awareness tends to reveal us to ourselves as monsters'.
Technology in Service of Mankind
He proceeded to say that according to some thinkers 'inspired condition is attainable only in the negative as in philosophy and literature, it is said to be attainable in sexual experience, or with the aid of narcotics, or in philosophy'. But he observed that higher values of life had been absorbed by technology, which promised' bread to the hungry and clothes to the naked'. Moses Herzog asked, "Don't we obey Jesus in shipping machinery to Peru or Sumatra ?" The modern technology did stand against Romanticism, yet Moses Herzog did not revile at Romanticism since, he held, it guarded the 'inspired condition, preserved the poetic, philosophical, and religious teachings?" Nonetheless, technology has metamorphosed the form of spiritual pursuits. Spirit is no more rarefied, because 'practical questions have become ultimate questions as well... Good and Evil are real. The inspired condition is therefore no visionary matter. It is not reserved for Gods, kings, poets, priests, shrines, but belongs to mankind and to all of existence'. In the same vein, he added, 'belief based on reason', as against blind beliefs, supersititions etc. can lead to inspired state as without it the disorder of the world would never be controlled by mere organization.
All of the above ideas go to show that Herzog was a thinker par excellence, yet he was a thinker of a different sort. He cared not for transcendence, since he was to be practical and pragmatic in the age of technology. Eroticism, he held, should not be considered as a taboo; should rather 'be admitted to its rightful place, at least, in an emancipated society which understands the relation of sexual repression to sickness, war, property, money, totalitarianism'.
Faith in Carnality
Moses Herzog lived in a narcissistic Freudianized America. He appreciated or rather admired women who had intense carnal desire. After being divorced from his two wives he was in deep depression. Dr. Edvig, a psychologist, advised him to go on a tour with a woman. He didn't have a better choice than Ramona who appreciated and loved him. Ramona was once a student enrolled in Herzog's evening course. She told him 'there was something about him so dear, so loving, so healthy and basically so steady", and that "you're a good looking man.... In Argentina they would call you mecho-masculine. You like to come on meek and tame, and cover up the devil that's in you". Herzog needed such words of encouragement to come out of depression and torpor. She even indulged in carnal activities with him which revived his drooping spirits. Another woman who rendered similar service to him was Sano Oguki to whom he went after being divorced from his first wife, Daisy. However, Herzog's carnality and desolute life, was one of the reasons for estrangement from his first wife. He admitted that he was a bad husband to his two wives and Daisy had complained to Herzog's father about his wayward erotic activities, but he refused to listen to his father's exhortation. He said, "It was none of Papa's business... I gave up the shelter of an orderly, pur- poseful, lawful existence because it bored me, and I felt it was simply a a slacker's life". Though Daisy swore that there would be no divorce, she became cold and indifferent to him. When he went to meet his son Marco, she saw him from the top of the stairs with folded arms and asked him curtly to bring Marco home within two hours.
Daisy of different Outlook
Another very apparent reason for his estrangement from Daisy was that she was markedly different from her husband. She was 'cool, regular, conventional Jewish woman'. Moses had a clear and distinct picture of Daisy in his mind. He could evoke it at will. In a jifffy he saw her large green eyes 'golden but lustreless hair, a clear skin'. He could see her as she had appeared on a summer morning, when she was a college student holding grimy texts in her hands. Daisy was a country girl, Buckeye (native of the state of Ohio), 'Childishly systematic'. When they were married, she would put his pocket money in an envelop, ready to be pocketed by him, and pin bills, concert tickets by thumbtacks to the bulletin board, mark calendars well in advance so that nothing was neglected or overlooked. "Stability, symmetry, order, containment were Daisy's strength". She has many good qualities except humour as Moses Herzog had observed. In contrast, Moses was irregular and irascible in nature. He admitted, "By my irregularity and turbulence of spirit, I brought out the very worst in Daisy's strength". A major cause of rift in their relations was that Herzog was bewitched by Madeline who had asked him to divorce Daisy.
Differences with Madeline
Moses Herzog, however, could not live with Madeline though the fascination never came to end, even after he had been cuckolded by Valentine Gersbach, and she had told him plainly that she wanted divorce. She considered herself too young, too intelligent, too sociable to be buried in Berkshire and to live with Moses Herzg though Herzog was mad in her love-"There was flavour of subjugation in his love for Madeline". Herzog was not entirely unprepared when Madeline told him that she had no love for him and that it was not possible to live together any more, yet he came under great psychological pressure because he had thought that matters were improving. Dr. Edvig, the Chicago paychiatrist, had to advise him to leave town and come back when he felt better. The two divorces had shaken his faith in himself. He was strong in body. He could knock her down, clutch her hair, flog her until her buttocks bled, but he didn't do all that because he thought he could win by the appeal of passivity, of personality, win on the ground being after all Moses-Moses Elkanah Herzog-a good man and Madeline's benefactor'. But those considerations did not weigh with her.
Changes in Herzog
Herzog remained, in the final count, a complex character Being an intellectually awakened person, he was furious in his criticism of the Government policies, but he knew that he would not be able to bring desired changes. He, of course, wrote letters, carried his valise full of papers with him, but most of them were not even posted. It clearly indicated that he was an angry man, without resources to affect the social order. His own beliefs and convictions incited him to fight the battles of the world's historical thought. He tried to find his way through such contradictory thinkers as Tolstoi and Hegel. The former being saintly, thought that freedom was entirely personal, a simple and truthful life, without encrumbances of materialistic paraphernalia was freedom to him. Hegel, on the other hand, believed that History, memory, knowledge of death, etc. would get real freedom. Herzog had been in search of freedom and reality, but he realized that 'irreconcilable energies of mind and sexuality lead to no clear outcome. In the end of the novel, Moses Herzog realised that this body-"chest. thighs, feet-head. This strange organization. I know it will die ". As he felt the truth that the physical world was subject to decay and the lease of life was very short, he disengaged himself from the world. Even the company of Ramona became repulsive-"To have Ramona coming troubled him, it was true. But they would eat. She would help him with the dishes, and then he would see her to her car." This indifference to the world gave him happiness-there was "something, something, happiness... "Thou movest me". The learned professor that he was felt the true knowledge and wisdom had come to him after he had become almost a recluse. Happiness grew in his heart in a natural process, without any effort. "He felt something produces intensity, a holy feeling, as oranges produce oranges, as grass green, as birds heat. Some hearts put out more love and some less of it, presumably. Does it signify anything? There are those who say this product of hearts is knowledge". And as this happiness, he felt, was self-generating and the true knowledge that had come to him eventually had no limit, he felt that he still had it in a small measure. He felt, "My face too blind, my mind too limited, my instincts too narrow. But this intensity, doesn't it mean anything?" It was a sudden and new experience, the full. significance of which he could not comprehend. Therefore he tried to know-the mystery of the joy that had come to him so suddenly and all unsought. He mused, "Is it an idiot joy that makes this animal, the most peculiar animal of all, exclaim something? And he thinks this reaction a sign, a proof of eternity. And he has it in his breast? But I have no arguments to make about it. Thou movest me"? He realised that it was not 'idiot joy', it was the 'proof of eternity'. He was in a state of samadhi, of unsullied joy. untrammeled by worldly wishes and considerations. Herzog wanted nothing more he had the ultimate joy. Therefore Herzog said, "But what do you want, Herzog ?" But that's just it--not a solitary thing. I am pretty well satisfied to be, to be just as it is wilted, and for as long as I may remain in occupancy. It was the trance of a saint which could last for a short while or continue for long-it just depended. But in every case it was a heavenly experience for Herzog.
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