of lawyers—he collected lawyers and psychoanalysts. Treatment was. not the object of his visits with the analysts. He wanted to talk, to express himself. The theoretical climate of their offices stimulated him. As to lawyers, he had them all preparing papers and discussing strategies. Lawyers didn’t often meet writers. How was any lawyer to know what was going on? A famous poet calls for an appointment. Referred by so-and-so. The entire office is excited, the typists put on make-up. Then the poet arrives, stout and ill but still handsome pale hurt-looking terrifically agitated, timid in a way, and with strikingly small gestures or tremors for such a large man. Even seated he has leg tremors, his body is vibrating. At first the voice is from another world. Trying to smile, the man can only wince. Odd small stained teeth control a trembling lip. Although thickset, really a big bruiser, he is also a delicate plant, an Ariel, and so on. Can’t make a fist. Never heard of aggression. And he unfolds a tale—you’d think it was Hamlet’s father: fraud, deceit, betrayal of pledges; finally, as he slept in his garden, someone crept up with a vial and tried to pour stuff into his ear. At first he refuses to name his false friends and would-be murderers. They are only X and Y. Then he refers to “This Person,” “I went along with this X-Person,” he says. In his innocence he entered into agreements, exchanged promises with X, this Claudius Person. He said yes to everything. He signed a paper without reading it, about joint tenancy of the New Jersey house. He was also disappointed in a blood-brother who turned fink. Shakespeare was right, There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face: he was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust. But now recovering from shock he’s building a case against the said gentleman. Building cases is one of the master preoccupations of human beings. He has Citrine dead to rights—Citrine grabbed his money. But restitution is all he asks. And he fights, or seems to fight, the rising fury. This Citrine is a deceptively handsome fellow. But Jakob Boehme was wrong, the outer is not the inner visible. Humboldt says he is struggling for decency. His father had no friends, he has no friends—so much for the human material. Fidelity is for phonographs. But let’s be restrained. Not all turn into poisoned rats biting one another. “I don’t want to hurt the son of a bitch. All I want is justice.” Justice! He wanted the fellow’s guts in a shopping bag.
Yes, he spent much time with lawyers and doctors. Lawyers and doctors would best appreciate the drama of wrongs and the drama of sickness. He didn’t want to be a poet now. Symbolism, his school, was used up. No, at this time he was a performing artist who was being real. Back to direct experience. Into the wide world. No more art-substitute for real life. Lawsuits and psychoanalysis were real.
As for the lawyers and the shrinkers, they were delighted with him not because he represented the real world but because he was a poet. He didn’t pay—he threw the bills out. But these people, curious about genius (which they had learned from Freud and from movies like Moulin Rouge or The Moon and Sixpence to esteem), were hungry for culture. They listened with joy as he told his tale of unhappiness and persecution. He spilled dirt, spread scandal, and uttered powerful metaphors. What a combination! Fame gossip delusion filth and poetic invention.
Even then shrewd Humboldt knew what he was worth in professional New York. Endless conveyor belts of sickness or litigation poured clients and patients into these midtown offices like dreary Long Island potatoes. These dull spuds crushed psychoanalysts’ hearts with boring character problems. Then suddenly Humboldt arrived. Oh, Humboldt! He was no potato. He was a papaya a citron a passion fruit. He was beautiful deep eloquent fragrant original—even when he looked bruised in the face, hacked under the eyes, half-destroyed. And what a repertory he had, what changes of style and tempo. He was meek at first— shy. Then he became childlike,