彼方の超新星に向かって : 『ハーツォグ』試論

概要

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Moses Herzog in Saul Bellow's Herzog begins to write letters to the famous dead, apparently shocked by his wife's relations with a man for whom he found a job. In his letter to Niezsche, for instance, Herzog observes that humankind lives mainly upon perverted ideas adding that Niezsche's perverted ideas are no better than those of the Christianity he condemns. Niezsche declared the death of God, but in Herzog's view death is God. Herzog also confesses that he struggled and drowned in Spengler's oceanic vision. Spengler was a very influential philosopher whom Bellow was interested in. According to Spengler, the West is in the process of decline. Herzog, like Bellow himself, seems to be desperately pondering on Western civilization including religious thoughts. But Herzog comes to sense that gases, minerals, heat and atoms are eloquent to him. He decides to stop writing letters and thinks it all right if he is out of mind. Bellow informs as follows near the end of Herzog: "the feeling that he was easily contained by everything about him Within the hollowness of God, as he noted, and deaf to the final multiplicity of facts, as well as, blind to ultimate distances. Two billion light-years out. Supernovae." This passage might indicate the author's hope that men's spiritual agonies can finally be lead to a magnificent dream.