© Opale

Saul BELLOW

Nobel Prize in 1976

“for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The history of Solomon Bellows, alias Saul Bellow, resembles that of many Jewish Americans at the beginning of the century. His parents had fled Tsarist Russia in 1913 to escape the repression enacted upon Jews by the regime. The Bellow family settled in Canada and remained there until Saul was 9 years old; the child was brought up in a polyglot and multicultural milieu made up of Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Greek and Italian immigrants.

In 1924, the family left Montreal to settle in Chicago.
Bellow’s life already had the characteristics of an adventure story; notably through the peripatetic quality of his existence. Educated by his father, who, a former businessman in exportation, had become a bootlegger, he had enjoyed many adventures for one who was destined to become a Talmudist, which was the dream of his beloved mother Liza. It was not surprising then given his background and the fact that he was the heir to a double culture that he would choose to study sociology and anthropology. At this point we should note as well that, although he was initially tempted by studying English literature, he was obliged to give up this idea because of a feeling that the university system was inclined to limit the access of Jewish students to academia.

Before starting at the University of Chicago in 1933, and then Northwestern a bit later, he suffered from a sad loss that signified the end of his adolescence – his mother Liza died, when he was 17. This signified the loss of a familial link that had tied him to Yiddish and Hebrew, and his sudden entrance into the brutal world of adulthood.

In 1937, having gained his degree in sociology and anthology, he decided to continue his studies at the University of Wisconsin. During the Christmas holidays, he fell in love and married the first of 5 wives.

Once he was married, he put his studies on hold and began to teach. It was a bohemian period about which we know very little, but that he participated in several literary projects.

In 1942, he began to work at the Encyclopedia Britannica. A few months later with the American entry into World War Two, he entered the Marine Corps. Once the war was over he returned to teaching .It was at this point that he plunged into writing. He finished Dangling Man. He continued teaching until 1948, at which point he left for Europe, notably to Paris where he began to write The Adventures of Augie March. Life continued, rhythm accelerated, and he returned to the United States with the publication of short stories, articles, rereading manuscripts, lectures in the evenings…

His importance in the world of fiction began to be recognised in 1952; he received a grant from the Institute of Arts and Letter and was honored by Princeton University. Then with the appearance of Henderson the Rain King in 1959, Herzog in 1964 and the magazine The Savage Nobel, of which he was the co-editor came the red carpet, grants, honors but also failures, of one of his plays, entitled The final Analysis, painful divorces, impetuous travels.

We should also acknowledge the new confrontation with the reality of war. In 1967 came the 6-day war. This event shook the world of intellectual Jewish Americans. For Bellow, it was the time of interrogation and doubt. The question of the shoah reappeared, whilst his attachment to Israel meant he had to rethink his political position. Certain groups from the New Left decried having an ambiguous point of view regarding Israel.
In 1976 - the ultimate honour: he was awarded the Nobel Prize…International renown accompanied it.
An nnstoppable literary force, Bellow did no stop there. He wrote up until his death in 2005. He had 4 children and his life as much as his work has stimulated discussion. Bellow lived by the example of his characters and the narrators of his novels, an elusive figure. He examined existence and conveyed the diversity of the living. We have but to read his last novel Ravelstein to see this.