take? All you could say was that you accepted this condition as a gambler would accept absurd odds, as a patient accepted his rare disease. In a city of four million people, no more than a dozen had caught it. The only remedy for it was to read and write stories and novels.
—“The Jefferson Lectures”
1932
To Yetta Barshevsky
May 28, 1932 South Harvey, Michigan
RESOLUTION [scrawled on back of envelope]
My dear Yetta:
I know this letter will be unexpected, less unexpected of course than my impromptu departure, but nonetheless unexpected. Even I had not anticipated it. I had only time enough to snatch my bathing suit and several sheets of paper. The day’s events have left my mind in turmoil, but I take this opportunity to write to you, Yetta, to tell you that which has for weeks been gathering, fermenting in my breast, that which has been seething and boiling in me, and finding no expression in spontaneity. It is something, Yetta, that more through uncertainty and cowardice than anything else I have not been able to broach to you. True, I am a self-confessed coward. Cowards we are all intrinsically, but the justification of cowardice lies in the confession.
It is dark now and the lonely wind is making the trees softly whisper and rustle. Somewhere in the night a bird cries out to the wind. My brother in the next room snores softly, insistently. The country sleeps. The waves surge angrily at the house, they cannot reach it, they snarl and pull back. Over me the light swings up and back, up and back. It throws shadows on the paper, on my face. I am thinking, thinking, Yetta, drifting with night, with infinity, and all my thoughts are of you. But my thoughts of you are not altogether kind, they sting, they lash. Or shall we talk business?
You will think, perhaps, “Phrase-monger.” For yours is a Young Communist League mind. Or: “What can have gotten into solid, bovine Bellow?”
But all the time you will have a presentiment, and all the time you will pray. (For you are devout, Yetta.)
“Why does he write, why does not the fool wait until he comes back so I can intimidate him?”
I hate melodrama. The only thing that I hate more intensely than melodrama and spinach is myself. You think perhaps that I am insane? I am. But I have my pen; I am in my element and I defy you. (Here there is a lengthy pause, a gusty sigh, and the indomitable Bellow rolls on in all his fullness and strength.)
As of late there has been a noticeable rift between us. It seems that the incorrigible [Nathan] Goldstein is uneasy. It seems that in the presence of others you are too lavish in your affection toward him. The situation indeed is critical. (By the way, Yetta, make it a point to show this to Goldstein.) Mind you, I make no sacrifice, no secret of giving you up. I abhor sacrifice and martyrdom—they are hypocrisy within hypocrisy—an expression of barbaric dogma and fanaticism—their motive, their masked motive, is a disgusting one—it is merely the hiding of the egoism of individualism.
So it is through mutual consent that we part. You to listen to Goldstein’s Marxian harangues with a half-feigned interest; I to loll on the bosoms of voluptuous time and space and stifle desire and hope. The Oriental, you know, is a fatalist. It is perhaps atavism that prompts me to say, “What is to be will be.” And so I am content. I have no regrets. For some time I will shroud myself in an injured reserve. Maybe I will find solace in the philosophic calm of the ascetic. Man ever seeks to justify his acts. To be a recluse is a justification of the wrongness of a right. In several weeks with a cynical droop to the lip and a weary eye on a sordid world, I the young idealist will lay his woes and his heart at Pearl’s feet. If she spurns them I will go home and write heart-rending poetry and play the violin. If not, I will lapse into a lethargic contentment that will last only as long as the love lasts. For love stupefies.
So I
—“The Jefferson Lectures”
1932
To Yetta Barshevsky
May 28, 1932 South Harvey, Michigan
RESOLUTION [scrawled on back of envelope]
My dear Yetta:
I know this letter will be unexpected, less unexpected of course than my impromptu departure, but nonetheless unexpected. Even I had not anticipated it. I had only time enough to snatch my bathing suit and several sheets of paper. The day’s events have left my mind in turmoil, but I take this opportunity to write to you, Yetta, to tell you that which has for weeks been gathering, fermenting in my breast, that which has been seething and boiling in me, and finding no expression in spontaneity. It is something, Yetta, that more through uncertainty and cowardice than anything else I have not been able to broach to you. True, I am a self-confessed coward. Cowards we are all intrinsically, but the justification of cowardice lies in the confession.
It is dark now and the lonely wind is making the trees softly whisper and rustle. Somewhere in the night a bird cries out to the wind. My brother in the next room snores softly, insistently. The country sleeps. The waves surge angrily at the house, they cannot reach it, they snarl and pull back. Over me the light swings up and back, up and back. It throws shadows on the paper, on my face. I am thinking, thinking, Yetta, drifting with night, with infinity, and all my thoughts are of you. But my thoughts of you are not altogether kind, they sting, they lash. Or shall we talk business?
You will think, perhaps, “Phrase-monger.” For yours is a Young Communist League mind. Or: “What can have gotten into solid, bovine Bellow?”
But all the time you will have a presentiment, and all the time you will pray. (For you are devout, Yetta.)
“Why does he write, why does not the fool wait until he comes back so I can intimidate him?”
I hate melodrama. The only thing that I hate more intensely than melodrama and spinach is myself. You think perhaps that I am insane? I am. But I have my pen; I am in my element and I defy you. (Here there is a lengthy pause, a gusty sigh, and the indomitable Bellow rolls on in all his fullness and strength.)
As of late there has been a noticeable rift between us. It seems that the incorrigible [Nathan] Goldstein is uneasy. It seems that in the presence of others you are too lavish in your affection toward him. The situation indeed is critical. (By the way, Yetta, make it a point to show this to Goldstein.) Mind you, I make no sacrifice, no secret of giving you up. I abhor sacrifice and martyrdom—they are hypocrisy within hypocrisy—an expression of barbaric dogma and fanaticism—their motive, their masked motive, is a disgusting one—it is merely the hiding of the egoism of individualism.
So it is through mutual consent that we part. You to listen to Goldstein’s Marxian harangues with a half-feigned interest; I to loll on the bosoms of voluptuous time and space and stifle desire and hope. The Oriental, you know, is a fatalist. It is perhaps atavism that prompts me to say, “What is to be will be.” And so I am content. I have no regrets. For some time I will shroud myself in an injured reserve. Maybe I will find solace in the philosophic calm of the ascetic. Man ever seeks to justify his acts. To be a recluse is a justification of the wrongness of a right. In several weeks with a cynical droop to the lip and a weary eye on a sordid world, I the young idealist will lay his woes and his heart at Pearl’s feet. If she spurns them I will go home and write heart-rending poetry and play the violin. If not, I will lapse into a lethargic contentment that will last only as long as the love lasts. For love stupefies.
So I
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