SAUL BELLOW'S CONCEPTS OF ART AND LITERATURE

SAUL BELLOW'S CONCEPTS OF ART AND LITERATURE

Conrad's Influence

Saul Bellow has explained his views on life and literature in his Nobel Prize lecture delivered on December 12, 1976. He has first of all made a clean breast of the fact that he was greatly impressed by Joseph Conrad because, he says, "He was like an American-he was an uprooted pole, sailing exotic seas, speaking French and writing English with extra-ordinary power and beauty." It appears from the above statement that Bellow had regard for Conrad's command over languages. But it was not merely his knowledge of languages that had impressed him. He admired Conrad's themes and art of presentation. He says, "His themes were straightforward-fidelity, command, the traditions of the sea, hierarchy, the fragile rules sailors follow when they are struck by a typhoon. He believed in the strength of these fragile-coming rules, and in his art'.
Elaborating the views of Conrad on art, Bellow has observed that Conrad considered art as "an attempt to render the highest justice to the visible universe,.... to find in that universe, in matter as well as in facts of life, what was fundamental, enduring, essential". Conrad's method of attaining the essential was different from that of the thinker or the scientist. Bellow observes that Conrad descended within himself to find the terms of his appeal. Conrad himself has said that he appealed "to that part of our being which is a gift, not an acquisition, to the capacity for delight and wonder..... our sense of pity and pain, to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation-and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts.... which binds together all humanity-the dead to the living and the living to the unborn." 

Love for Fellow Beings

Bellow has respect for Conrad's principle for feeling of fellowship with all creation, but he thinks that the statement made about 80 years ago must be read with a few grains of contemporary salt. He noted that Hemingway could see on the contrary, that 'the horrors of the twentieth century had sickened and killed humanistic beliefs with their deadly relations'. Bellow thought that Conrad's rhetoric must be resisted, yet Bellow never thought that Conrad was mistaken. He felt, "He spoke directly to me. The feeling individual appeared weak-he felt nothing but his own weakness. But if he accepted his weakness and his separateness and descended into himself, intensifying his loneliness, he discovered his solidarity with other isolated creatures." 

Character-A Thing of the Past

Bellow agrees with some of the modern writers that the novel of character has become a thing of the past. In this connection he refers to M. Alain Robbe-Grillet, one of the leaders of French Literature, who spoke about thingism-chosisme.
Bellow observes that there are no characters in Sartre's Nausea', 'Camus' "The Stranger', or Kafka's, The Castle'. There are entities, but no individuals in these books. Individuals have virtually been wiped out. He quotes Robbe-Grillet, who had said, "The world's destiny has ceased for us, to be identified with the rise and fall of certain men of certain families."
Explaining the idea, Bellow says that in the days of Balzac's bourgeosie, it was important to have a name and a character, as 'personality represented both the means and the end of all exploration. It has renounced the omnipotence of the person'. Robbe-Grillet finds, that it is more ambitious as well, "Since it looks beyond. The exclusive cult of 'human' has given way to a larger consciousness, one that is less anthropocentric." It is argued against psycho-analytic conception of character that it is an ugly rigid formation-something we must resign ourselves to, not a thing we can enjoy. Totalitarian ideologies, too, have attacked bourgeois individualism, sometimes identifying character with property.
Nevertheless, the tendency of presenting characters has survived the onslaught. In this connection, Robbe-Grillet writes, "Characters? Fifty years of disease, the death notice signed many times over by the serious essayist, yet nothing has managed to knock it off the pedestal on which the Nineteenth century had placed it. It's a mummy now, but one still enthroned with the same-phony-magesty, among the values revered by traditional criticism".
But Saul Bellow asks why serious essayists should be allowed to sign the death sentence of 'character', and even the literary farms. The all important question is whether art should follow culture or art should give direction to culture. As for the 'characters', they are not created; He refers to Elizabeth Bowen who has said that characters pre-exist and they have not to be found. If we do not find them, if we fail to represent them, the fault is ours". But Bellow admits at the same time that it is not esay to find characters.

New Development

Bellow observes that life at present is not a private affair since it is affected by questions which are related with the whole society. The effects of up-to-date teachings, concepts, sensitivities, the pervasiveness of psychological, pedagogical, political ideas were felt for the first time in sixties. There are problems in private lives. In families, husbands, wives, parents, children make a confusion in relationships. People read about Russian and American satellites at war in space. Milton Friedman, an economist, declared that Great Britain would soon go the way of poor countries like Chile by its public spending. Bellow doesn't want to get into debates on such questions, but as a novelist he has to draw public attention to "The terrible predictions we have to live with, the background of disorder, the visions of ruin".
As the war puts stress on the public psyche, crimes like drug addiction, pornography, frivolity, deteriorated educational standards, have proved that America's immense power counts for nothing. Racial conflicts, such as Jews' war in South Africa, or Anti-Semitism of Hitler threaten to divide the human society into so many factions, each eyeing the after with anger and enmity.

Effect of Literature

In this atmosphere of violence, threats and prejudices, the literateurs have managed to save themselves from the malaise. Bellow observes, "The purer, subtler, higher activities have not succumbed to fury or to nonsense. Books continue to be written and read". The literary output have registered increasing output for the simple reasons 'when complications increase, the desire for the essentials increase too? It was due to books that there was an observable "shrinkage of prejudices, a casting off of disappointing ideologies, an ability to live with many kinds of madness, an immense desire for certain human goods-truth, for instance, freedom or wisdom".
There is lot of disintegration, but art and literature have resisted the forces of disintegration to a great extent. Bellow finds that Proust was aware of it, as he had written, "Only art penetrates of what pride, passion, intelligence and habit erect on all sides the seeming realities of the world". Proust had further observed that realities send some hints which we shall lose sight of without art. He calls them true impressions.
He elaborates, "The true impressions, our persistent intuitions will, without art, be hidden from us, and we will be left with nothing but a terminology for practical ends which we falsely call life." Thus Proust insists that art is a necessity of life, a great independent reality, a magical power.

Moved to Margin

It is admitted by Hegel, as observed by Edgar Wind in "Art and Anarchy" that in the age of science art had moved to the margin. People did write poetry and painted pictures, made splendid images of gods, in works of art, but it was of no use, because people did not bend their knees with devotion. Hegel wrote, "It is a long time since the knees were bent in piety. Ingenuity, daring exploration, freshness of invention, replaced the art of direct relevance". Hegel further noticed that the most significant achievement of pure art was that it raised the soul 'through serenity of form above any painful involvement in the limitations of reality'.
Saul Bellow regrets that art has gone to the periphery, but he hopes that the force of crisis is so great that it may summon the artists to the centre. Psychologists, sociologists, historians, journalists and writers see the people in contractual daylight as consumers, civil servants, football fans, television viewers. In the contractual daylight version, the life of Americans is a kind of death. Bellow thinks that it is a false picture of life, and the secret and incoherent resistence of the artists cannot stop it. At the same time, Bellow notices that there are some attitudes which have of late gripped the writers. They think about society, human nature, class, politics, sex, about mind, about the physical universe, the evolution of life. Such attitudes are perceptible in the works of James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence. Literature has for nearly a century used the same stock of ideas, myths, strategies.

Appeal to Basics

Saul Bellow thinks that Conrad is right to appeal to that part of our being which is a gift. We must hunt for that under the wreckage of many systems. After all, nobody lives according to the formulations. Man live mainly in basic instincts. That is why Bellow dismisses respectable opinions that he had lived by. He respects Hegel whose art was freed from seriousness and tried to raise the soul above painful limitations of reality.
Bellow thinks that art has to deliver something which theology, philosophy, social history or even pure science cannot give. In the opinion of Saul Bellow literary artists present a wider perspective of life, 'a broader, more flexible, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, and what this life is for. Bellow thinks that art is at the periphery of life as it appears to the people in general, but art can come to the centre, occupy the central stage, becuase it is art and art alone which gives a comprehensive view-not merely philosophical, theological or even scentific. Saul Bellow says, "If writers do not come to centre it will not be because the centre is pre-empted. It is not. They are free to enter. If they so wish." 

True Impressions

Saul Bellow holds the view that the essence of our reality comes to us in glimpses but it is not easy to express it fully because our language is incapable to express it. Proust and Tolstoy have found it in 'true impressions'. Bellow speaks of these impressions in the language of a mystic. He says that the people with the sensitiveness of a mystic find "This essence reveals, and then canceals itself. When it goes away it leave as again in doubt. But we never seem to lose our connection with the depths from which these glimpses come. The sense of our real powers, powers we seem to derive from the universe itself, also comes and goes". So even the artists or systems get the glimpses of essence by fits and starts. They come in the moments of inspiration. The artist and mystics are reluctant to speak of these glimpses because they defy logic-they cannot be proved. At best, they would say, "There is a spirit' and that is a taboo. So almost everyone keeps quiet about it, although almost everyone is aware of it."
Bellow finds that value of literature lies in their attempt to convey these intermittently coming 'true impressions'. Describing a novelist's attempt to transcribe the true impressions, he says, "A novel moves back and forth between the world of objects, of actions, of appearances, and that other world from which these 'true impressions' come, which moves us to believe that the good we hang onto so tenaciously-in the face of evil, so obstinately is no illusion."
Bellow thinks that novel is different from epic or poetic drama, because a novel has an admixture of the true impressions and the common happenings which we call life. He writes, "A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up what we call life. It tells us that for every human being there is diversity of existences signify something, lend to something, fulfil something; it promises us meaning, harmony and even justice." Bellow agrees with Conrad that art attempts to find what is 'fundamental, enduring and essential' in matter as well as in the facts of life.