HUMBOLDT’S GIFT – SAUL BELLOW’S FREUDIAN SLIP OF THE TONGUE

After Henderson the Rain King from 1959 and Herzog from 1964, Humboldt’s Gift won
his author, Saul Bellow, both a Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976.
Humboldt’s Gift is an account of one person’s memories. The narrative is based on two amusing
characters, two friends who analyze each other’s personality, inner structure, relationships and
lives in general. The biographical evidence is to be detected from the start yet there is a clear
distinction to be made between the fictional and Bellow’s own life.
The author’s attempts to sketch a double portrait of the two main characters stems from a
personal desire to rebel as a full-fledged intellectual against society norms and restraints. The
narrative is told by Charlie Citrine, who is a successful writer. The story he tells actually covers
American history from the 30s to the 70s. The structure is the story very much resembles the two
main characters in the sense that they are both maniacs suffering from forms of borderline
personality and alienation. Thus, the sequences are not presented in chronological order but the
narrative is a random account of memoirs and philosophical insights as well as recollections of
childhood. Citrine’s best friend is Von Humboldt Fleisher, Citrine’s mentor.
Charlie starts his story with memories from his youth, telling the reader about a book
which had a tremendous impact on him, namely, Humboldt’s book, The Harlequin’s Ballads.
This book makes him want to become a friend to Humboldt whom he shortly meets and
befriends. “The book of ballads published by Von Humboldt Fleisher in the Thirties was an
immediate hit. Humboldt was just what everyone had been waiting for (…) an avant-garde
writer, the first of a new generation, he was handsome, fair, large, serious, witty, he was learned.
(…) I read Harlequin Ballads enthusiastically (…) Humboldt revealed to me new ways of doing
things.” (Bellow 1)
In order to achieve that goal, he takes the greyhound bus to the city where his idol was
living. They meet in Greenwich Village where they start sharing a bohemian existence governed
by red wine and Marxist ideas that they uphold and believe in their dismissal of capitalism. Their
relationship is a kind of symbiotic friendship and proof stands the dominance exerted by
Humboldt over Citrine long after the former’s death. Charlie’s alter ego governs his actions and
reactions. His goal in life becomes passing over Humboldt’s gift in the sense that his literary
creed needs passing over.
 From a Freudian perspective, both intellectuals are depressive because despite striving
hard to achieve adaptation to a materialistic society they dramatically fail to. They are two adults
who embrace art as an escapist attempt of a suffering soul. “Maybe America didn’t need art and
inner miracles. It had so many outer ones. The USA was a big operation, very big. The more it
the less we. “ (Bellow 6) Not surprisingly, their failure to adjust to society and its norms resides
in a sense of fragmentation as individual triggered by the separation from the mother. “This was
the background of those witty cheerful ballads. He was a manic depressive (his own diagnosis).
He owned a set of Freud’s works and read psychiatric journals. Once you had read the
Psychopathology of Everyday Life you knew that everyday life was psychopathology.” (Bellow
5)
According to Freud, childhood holds the answer to all adult psychological issues.
Citrine’s and Humboldt’s inability to cope with the arid industrialism and materialism of
American society brings forth a need for self-protection which ultimately degenerates into a
psychological disorder. They are two manic-depressive individuals who build a fortress out of
their convictions and commonly-shared philosophical beliefs.
To Humboldt history and poetry are but rescuing ointments for his ailing heart. His
literary productions are methods meant to get him a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment which
he used to posses during his golden age. This very subconscious obsession to restore wholeness
lies at the basis of Citrine’s romantic relationships. His love affairs are aimed at providing him
with a sense of affection and protection of the motherly type long lost. Be it Naomi from high
school or his ex-wife Denise or the seductive Renata, they all instill in his mind a sense of
comfort and maternal security which is embedded in a child’s mind from the womb. At times,
this feeling of reunification with his maternal figure is so powerful that it supersedes his fright of
being dead. He feels the reactions and actions of the people in his life as aggressions, attacks
against his frail self.
In his turn, Humboldt reacts to this aggression from society even more powerful than
Citrine and he succumbs to his demons, falling into shear madness. His ongoing inner turmoil,
the terror of not being good enough sexually for his wife Kathleen whom he suspects of
cheating on him with Rockefeller himself, an embodiment in his mind of a very potent alpha
male, and, last but not least, his feeling of insufficiency in social life all this led Humboldt to a
final realization. He becomes aware of his own truth, that is that happiness is never to be
attained, at least not in the real order of things. “….if Energy is Delight and if Exuberance is
Beauty, the Manic Depressive knows more about Delight and Beauty than anyone else. (…)
Didn’t Freud say that Happiness was nothing than the remission of Pain? So the more Pain, the
intenser the Happiness.“ (Bellow 7)
At a symbolic level, both Citrine and Humboldt are alienated orphaned children who
have taken real pains into submitting to a despotic foster father embodied by the American
society of their time. Freud claimed that people are growing up dragging along all the
insecurities, frustrations, and traumas of their childhood.
The psychological insight offered by Bellow in Humboldt’s Gift is yet another instance
of a biographical account of the author’s life and personal issues. Real friendship and satisfying
intellectual conversations smooth the path to understanding metaphysical questions.
And either it is death or heartfelt disappointment both characters, Citrine and Humboldt
reinforce the author’s belief that the soul doesn’t die with the person. The narrator, Charlie
Citrine is obsessed with death and its immanence. Old ages is also pondered over as a
heartbreaking, stress-inductive matter which leads Charlie to alienated sexual decisions like
trying out having a male partner. The “two protagonists Humboldt and Citrine in Humboldt’s gift
are characterized as restless even lunatic, for they are constantly or madly seeking something
such as honor, power or intimate relationship something or other. They both have” psychological
troubles […..] which are rooted in the sense of fragmentation and lack caused by the separation
from mother, and their struggle to seek safety and satisfaction is further destroyed by the
industrialism and materialism prevalent in this novel.” (Xiang Fang 87)
It is beyond doubt that both characters can be seen as psychologically deranged and ailing
basically on account of their intelligence which enables them to deeper understand the world
around them. The feeling of inadequacy and misfit leads them both to self destruction.
Bellow attempted to reveal nonetheless a soothing solution to this predicament which is
the eternal immortal soul of humans which is the only thing to remain after death. The novel is
an investigation of the mind and both main characters perform a self-analysis aimed at
understanding their own suffering.