Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [66]
“These social wars are nothing to me, Humboldt. And let’s not forget all the hard things you’ve said about Ivy League kikes. And only last week you were on the side of Tolstoi—it’s time we simply refused to be inside history and playing the comedy of history, the bad social game.”
It was no use arguing. Tolstoi? Tolstoi was last week’s conversation. Humboldt’s big intelligent disordered face was white and hot with turbulent occult emotions and brainstorms. I felt sorry for us, for both, for all of us, such odd organisms under the sun. Large minds abutting too close on swelling souls. And banished souls at that, longing for their home-world. Everyone alive mourned the loss of his home-world.
Sunk into the pillow of my green sofa it was all clear to me. Ah, what this existence was! What being human was!
Pity for Humboldt’s absurdities made me cooperative. “You’ve been up all night thinking,” I said.
Humboldt said with an unusual emphasis, “Charlie, you trust me, don’t you?”
“Christ, Humboldt! Do I trust the Gulf Stream? What am I supposed to trust you in?”
“You know how close I feel to you. Interknitted. Brother and brother.”
“You don’t have to soften me up. Spill it, Humboldt, for Christ’s sake.”
He made the desk seem small. It was manufactured for lesser figures. His upper body rose above it. He looked like a three-hundred-pound pro linebacker beside a kiddie car. His nail-bitten fingers held the ember of a cigarette. “First we’re going to get me an appointment here,” he said.
“You want to be a Princeton prof?”
“A chair in modern literature, that’s what I want. And you’re going to help. So that when Sewell comes back he finds me installed. With tenure. The US Gov has sent him to dazzle and oppress those poor Syrian wogs with The Spoils of Poynton. Well, when he’s wound up a year of boozing and mumbling long sentences under his breath he’ll come back and find that the old twerps who wouldn’t give him the time of day have made me full professor. How do you like it?”
“Not much. Is that what kept you up last night?”
“Call on your imagination, Charlie. You’re overrelaxed. Grasp the insult. Get sore. He hired you like a spittoon-shiner. You’ve got to cut the last of the old slave-morality virtues that still bind you to the middle class. I’m going to put some hardness in you, some iron.”
“Iron? This will be your fifth job—the fifth that I know of. Suppose I were hard—I’d ask you what’s in it for me. Where do I come in?”
“Charlie!” He intended to smile; it was not a smile. “I’ve got a blueprint.”
“I know you have. You’re like what’s-his-name, who couldn’t drink a cup of tea without a stratagem—like Alexander Pope.”
Humboldt seemed to take this as a compliment, and laughed between his teeth, silently. Then he said, “Here’s what you do. Go to Ricketts and say: ‘Humboldt is a very distinguished person —poet, scholar, critic, teacher, editor. He has an international reputation and he’ll have a place in the literary history of the United States’—all of which is true, by the way. ‘And here’s your chance, Professor Ricketts, I happen to know that Hum-boldt’s tired of living like a hand-to-mouth bohemian. The literary world is going fast. The avant-garde is a memory. It’s time Humboldt led a more dignified settled life. He’s married now. I know he admires Princeton, he loves it here, and if you made him an offer he’d certainly consider it. I might talk him into it. I’d hate for you to miss this opportunity, Professor Ricketts. Princeton has got Einstein and Panofsky. But you’re weak on the literary creative side. The coming trend is to have artists on the campus. Amherst has Robert Frost. Don’t fall behind. Grab Fleisher. Don’t let him get away, or you’ll end up with some third-rater.’ “
“I won’t mention Einstein and Panofsky. I’ll start right out with Moses and the prophets. What a cast-iron plot! Ike has inspired you. This is what I call high-minded low cunning.