Humboldt's Gift

Summary

Humboldt's Gift is narrated by Charlie Citrine, a successful middle-aged Chicago writer who has won a Pulitzer Prize and made a fortune from a Broadway hit about the eighteenth-century adventurer Baron von Trenck, which was also made into a film. Now in his fifties, Charlie is distracted, spiritually restless and steadily losing his money. He looks back on his friendship with Von Humboldt Fleisher, a brilliant, voluble poet who burst onto the literary scene in the 1930s with a celebrated first book and became Charlie's mentor when Charlie arrived in Greenwich Village as a young admirer from the Midwest. Humboldt dreamed of using poetry to redeem America, but his talent dwindled amid drink, pills, paranoia and manic schemes to secure a chair at Princeton through political manoeuvring. He accused Charlie of stealing his personality for the von Trenck character, cashed a blank cheque Charlie had given him as a token of blood brotherhood, was committed to Bellevue after a violent episode, and died alone and impoverished in a shabby Times Square hotel; Charlie, who glimpsed him on the street shortly before but avoided him, carries guilt. In the present, Charlie's life is a comic chaos: his ex-wife Denise is pursuing him through the courts for more money; his voluptuous girlfriend Renata wants to marry him; a small-time Chicago hoodlum named Rinaldo Cantabile, to whom Charlie owes a gambling debt, smashes his Mercedes with a baseball bat and then attaches himself to him with a scheme; and Charlie studies the anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner, meditating on the dead and the immortality of the soul. Charlie's fortunes collapse: Renata leaves him in Madrid for an undertaker, leaving him to look after her son, and he is reduced to living in a cheap pension. Then Humboldt's posthumous gift arrives: a letter and two film treatments, one of which Humboldt and Charlie had written together years ago. One has already been plagiarised into a hit film, and Charlie, with Cantabile's help, negotiates a settlement that restores his finances. He uses part of the money to rebury Humboldt and Humboldt's mother in a better cemetery. At the reburial, in spring, a companion points out a flower, and Charlie identifies it as a crocus.

Plot or Argument

• Humboldt remembered

  Charlie recalls his arrival in New York, his devotion to Humboldt and Humboldt's meteoric rise and decline.

• Chicago chaos

  Cantabile smashes Charlie's car; Denise's litigation; Renata's demands; Charlie's Steiner meditations and his old friend George Swiebel.

• Humboldt's end

  Charlie revisits Humboldt's breakdown, his Bellevue confinement, the blank cheque, and his lonely death.

• Collapse in Madrid

  Renata abandons Charlie for another man; he is left penniless with her son.

• The gift and the reburial

  Humboldt's legacy of film treatments restores Charlie's fortunes; he reburies his friend among spring flowers.

Characters

• Charlie Citrine, narrator

  Successful, self-absorbed Chicago writer haunted by his mentor and by questions of the soul.

• Von Humboldt Fleisher, poet and mentor

  Brilliant, unstable poet who burns out in mania, paranoia and drink; based on Delmore Schwartz.

• Rinaldo Cantabile, small-time gangster

  Volatile hoodlum who attaches himself to Charlie after smashing his car.

• Renata Koffritz, Charlie's girlfriend

  Sensual, pragmatic woman who eventually leaves Charlie.

• Denise, Charlie's ex-wife

  Relentless litigant seeking a larger settlement.

• George Swiebel, Charlie's friend

  Earthy Chicago contractor and voice of practical life.

• Kathleen, Humboldt's ex-wife

  Woman Humboldt once confined and accused, who later helps Charlie.

Lessons

• America and the poet

  Humboldt's collapse is presented as partly personal and partly the fate of a poet in a country that worships money and celebrity. Bellow asks what place art and spirit have in a commercial culture.

  • Is Humboldt destroyed by illness, by America, or by his own ambition?
  • Has Charlie sold out?

• Guilt and repair

  Charlie avoided his dying friend and lives with that failure. The novel's ending, with its reburial, suggests that some debts to the dead can still be paid.

  • Why did Charlie avoid Humboldt on the street?
  • What is Humboldt's real 'gift'?
  • Does the reburial redeem anything?

• Comedy and metaphysics

  Bellow mixes slapstick about smashed cars and lawsuits with meditation on death and the soul. The novel insists that big questions arise in messy ordinary lives.

  • What does Charlie find in Steiner's anthroposophy?
  • How does Cantabile serve the novel's themes?

Context

Humboldt is closely based on Bellow's friend the poet Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966), whose early brilliance gave way to alcoholism, amphetamine and barbiturate use, paranoia and psychiatric hospitalisation, and who died alone in a Manhattan hotel. The novel also reflects the literary New York of the 1930s–1950s and Chicago in the 1970s.

Composition

Bellow wrote the novel in the early 1970s and published it in 1975. Its interest in Rudolf Steiner reflects Bellow's own study of anthroposophy in that period.

Reception

The novel won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and preceded Bellow's Nobel Prize the same year. Critics praised its comic energy and its elegy for Schwartz, though some found it diffuse.

Comparisons

• death-of-a-salesman

  Both depict American men undone by the gap between their visions of greatness and a commercial culture's verdict.

• the-new-york-trilogy

  Both are New York novels about writers, doubles and the uncertain line between life and art.

• the-master-and-margarita

  Bulgakov's persecuted Master and Bellow's ruined Humboldt are writers crushed by their societies, and both novels mix comedy with metaphysics.

• on-the-road

  Kerouac's Dean Moriarty and Humboldt are both manic, charismatic figures adored and finally abandoned by a narrator-friend.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The scene where Rinaldo Cantabile smashes Charlie's Mercedes with a baseball bat over a poker debt. Watch how Bellow places this slapstick violence beside Charlie's meditations on death and the soul.
• Charlie's memories of arriving in Greenwich Village as a young admirer of Humboldt, and the later blank cheque given as a pledge of blood brotherhood, which Humboldt fills in and cashes.
• The day Charlie sees Humboldt on a New York street shortly before his death and avoids him. Notice how often Charlie returns to this moment.
• Charlie's study of Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy and his attempts to meditate on the dead. Ask whether Bellow treats these as comedy, as seriousness, or as both.
• The reburial of Humboldt and his mother at the end, in spring, and the small flower Charlie identifies.

Key terms and names

Charlie Citrine

The narrator, a Pulitzer-winning Chicago writer in his fifties whose Broadway play brought him money and fame. He is distracted, generous, self-absorbed and steadily losing his fortune.

Von Humboldt Fleisher

The brilliant poet who became famous young, mentored Charlie, and declined into drink, pills, paranoia and a lonely death. Bellow based him on his friend Delmore Schwartz.

Von Trenck

The eighteenth-century adventurer who is the hero of Charlie's hit play. Humboldt accuses Charlie of building the character out of his own personality.

Rinaldo Cantabile

A small-time Chicago hoodlum who attaches himself to Charlie after smashing his car. He is ridiculous and menacing, and he later helps Charlie collect what Humboldt left him.

Anthroposophy

The spiritual teaching of Rudolf Steiner, which Charlie studies in the hope of understanding the soul and its life after death.

The blank cheque

The cheque the two friends exchange as a token of trust. Humboldt fills in a large sum and cashes it, and the act marks the breakdown of their friendship.

Humboldt's gift

Most plainly, the film treatments Humboldt leaves Charlie, which restore his finances. The title also points to the poet's talent and to what the friendship itself gave Charlie.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension How did Charlie and Humboldt first become friends, and what did each want from the other in those early years?
2. Comprehension What does Humboldt do with the blank cheque Charlie gave him, and how does Charlie respond?
3. Comprehension What is in the legacy Humboldt leaves Charlie, and what does Charlie do with part of the money it brings?
4. Interpretation Charlie avoids Humboldt on the street shortly before the poet's death. Why does he do it, and why does this moment weigh on him more than Humboldt's accusations against him?
5. Interpretation Why does Bellow fill the novel with comic chaos, Cantabile's bat, Denise's lawsuits, Renata's demands, while Charlie is thinking about the immortality of the soul?
6. Interpretation Humboldt hoped poetry could help redeem America. Does the novel suggest that his failure came from illness, from the country's love of money and celebrity, or from his own ambition?
7. Big Question Charlie believes he has a debt to his dead friend that he can still pay. Can we owe things to the dead, and can such debts be paid?

Faith Connections

• 1 Corinthians 15:35-44 (Scripture)

  Paul says that what is sown in dishonour is raised in glory, comparing the body to a seed placed in the ground. The reburial of Humboldt in spring, with a flower already pushing up, places the novel's last image near Paul's answer to the question of what becomes of the dead.

• Ecclesiastes 5:10-15 (Scripture)

  The Preacher warns that whoever loves money will not be satisfied with money and that a man goes out of the world as naked as he came. Charlie's fortune, made and lost through plays, lawsuits and lovers, illustrates both halves of the warning.

• Pascal, Pensées, on diversion (Great Conversation)

  Pascal argued that people fill their lives with distraction to avoid thinking about death and their own condition. Charlie, besieged by lawyers, gangsters and lovers while trying to meditate on the dead, is almost a case study in Pascal's diagnosis.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: A culture devoted to money, celebrity and distraction has little room for the poet or for the soul. Humboldt, a gifted poet, is undone by that culture and by his own mania, while Charlie, who succeeded in it, finds that success leaves him spiritually asleep and morally in debt to the friend he abandoned. Therefore the novel suggests that waking up means turning from distraction to questions of death and the soul, and paying what one owes to the dead, as Charlie does in the reburial.

Rhetorical device: bathos. Bellow repeatedly drops from high meditation to low comedy, as when Charlie's reflections on Steiner and the soul are interrupted by Cantabile's attack on the Mercedes or by Denise's lawyers. The sudden falls keep the metaphysics honest by setting it in the middle of ordinary chaos.

Debate: Resolved: Charlie Citrine betrayed Humboldt.

Writing Prompts

Essay: The title Humboldt's Gift can mean the poet's talent, the film treatments he leaves, or something larger. Using the blank cheque, the avoided meeting on the street, and the reburial, argue what Humboldt's real gift to Charlie is.

Comparison with Death of a Salesman: Willy Loman and Von Humboldt Fleisher are both American men undone by the gap between their dreams of greatness and the world's verdict, and each is watched by someone who loved him. Compare how Biff and Charlie come to terms with the man they could not save, and argue which work offers more hope.

Medical Lens

Humboldt's arc is a vivid literary portrait of what modern readers often recognise as bipolar illness complicated by substance use: grandiose schemes, pressured talk, insomnia, paranoid jealousy, violent episodes, and mixing of alcohol with prescription stimulants and sedatives. The novel depicts his commitment to Bellevue and the legal manoeuvres around it, and his lonely death. Because Humboldt is modelled on Delmore Schwartz, whose documented history included psychiatric hospitalisation and drug and alcohol use, the novel is a useful case for discussing the relation between creativity and mood disorder, but diagnostic labels should be presented as readings. Charlie's guilt and his meditations on contact with the dead are an extended study of grief.

• Early sections (Charlie's memories)

  Humboldt's torrential talk, grand plans and sleepless energy in the 1940s and 1950s.

  ManiaObsession Monomania
• Middle sections

  Humboldt's paranoid accusations, violence toward his wife, use of drink and pills, and commitment to Bellevue.

  Madness PsychosisAlcoholPharmacology PoisonsAsylum Institution
• Middle sections

  Humboldt's death alone in a Times Square hotel, and Charlie's memory of avoiding him shortly before.

  Death DyingGrief
• Final section

  Reburial of Humboldt and his mother.

  GriefDeath Dying

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Compare Humboldt with what is documented of Delmore Schwartz's illness. What does fiction add to a case history?

• Fiction

  Write the scene on the street from Humboldt's point of view, the day he sees Charlie avoid him.

Further Reading

• Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet, James Atlas

• In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, Delmore Schwartz

• Herzog, Saul Bellow

• Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, Kay Redfield Jamison