HUMANISM IN SAUL BELLOW’S THE DEAN’S DECEMBER

Dr S.S.Gill
The clash of cultures, science versus humanism, the search for self-know
ledge in a foreign land and coming to terms with death are the issues on which B
ellow has focused his creative imagination in the novel The Dean’s December. For
this reason Gilbert Porter calls Bellow a “new transcendentalist”1 as his “prin
cipal area of enquiry is the phenomenology of selfhood” 2 . In this novel, Bello
w embarks upon “the territory of social description and prescription so largely
abandoned by novelist during this century” 3 .Bellow has always been showing th
is profound concern for human values. At the same time, Bellow depicts the probl
em of human differences in this novel, because this issue is closely connected w
ith human relations and responsibility since meaningful relationships can only b
e possible if one is willing to accept the differences between human beings. His
heroes all suffer from ‘humanities’ yet they do not merely suffer, they act or
rather they speak. Through Herzog, Bellow communicates that the novelist can sh
ow, “the strength of a man’s virtue or spiritual capacity measured by his ordina
ry life”.4
This paper deals with this measures that exhorts Bellow to reject “Waste
land pessimism” and set his heroes on this journey where “they need to know what
it is to be human”.
The Dean’s December provides conclusive insights into the American dilem
ma, first and foremost it concentrates on the mental, sensual and spiritual proc
esses instrumental in procuring such insights . The novel deals with philosophic
al ideas, haphazard violence, corruption of language, deceptive appearance and e
ven death. Susan Roland comments:
The novel ranges from philosophical speculations to probings of apparently rando
m violence and depictions of the intimacy of family life. Corde’s quest for real
ity and transactions traverses through contemporary corruption of language, appe
arances, death. His consciousness delicately poised, Corde is seen as the novel’
s connection between warring boundaries .5
Bellow demonstrates the role of the individual self in a mass politicize
d society. When Dean Corde argues that the Hegelian spirit of the time is in us
by nature, he makes an important point that Corde belongs like others to the col
lective life of the country. However, some persons simply accept the prevailing
chaotic conditions, refusing to view them with detected objectivity. Corde endea
vors to bring some kind of a perspective on the problem from which he will be ab
le to learn a lesson about the essential human condition. Therefore, the indivi
duality with him means being responsible and sensitive to the course history and
he is not sympathetic to those who demand absolute extinction of individuality.
Corde observes “To belong fully to the life of the country gave one strength, b
ut why should these others, in their strength, demand that one’s own sense of e
xistence.. be dismissed with contempt” 6.
Albert Corde the protagonist in The Dean’s December, a former journalist
is now the Dean of student at a Chicago College. His effort is to improve the
quality of life by restoring love and human concern. He tries to establish orde
r, discipline and stability in a nihilistic society. He is disillusioned by the
city culture of Chicago where crime is increasing, emotional quotient deteriorat
ing, love and concern for one another vanishing in this materialistic society. E
ventually in this “self-absorbed internal world, the external world that he inha
bits begins to lose its distinction”6 . Corde observes that the political and so
cial problems are too complex for a qualitative approach. He emphasizes the need
for a more sophisticated approach for tackling these problems. Bellow points ou
t that even intellectuals like social scientists, journalists, and psychologists
are evading, details of the underlying reality through false descriptions. Bell
ow believes that:
...there is correspondence between outer and inner, between the brutalized city
and psyche of its citizens. Given their human resources, I don’t see how people
today can experience life at all. Politicians, public figures, professors, addre
ss “Modern Problems” solely in terms of employment. They assume that unemploymen
t causes incoherence, sexual disorders, the abandonment of children, robbery, ra
pe and murder. Plainly, they have no imagination of these evils. And in The Dean
’s December what I did, way to say, “look!” The first step is to display the fac
ts. But the facts. Perhaps I shouldn’t say “perceives” – I should say “passionat
ely takes hold”. As an artist does. Mr. Corde, The Dean, passionately hold of Ch
icago and writes his article like an artist rather than a journalist 7.
It is the external factor that obstructs the expression of inner desire
to communicate with others through love. The yearning of the self is to absorb c
ity culture and to promote surely what one feels. Corde’s desire is to be honest
to the truth, an essential quality of love, but social expectations and conform
ity render him helpless. Though he is in possession of the essentials of love, i
.e. responsibility ,knowledge, care, respect, welfare yet feels helpless in show
ing all these essentials in a materialism in contemporary society.
We meet Albert Corde; he is in Romania. He has accompanied his wife, Min
na – a world renowned astronomer- to visit her dying mother, a doctor who has f
allen out of grace with the communist party. Corde’ situation in Romania is clau
strophobic. He had come with his wife to lend support to her mother , Valeria. H
e rarely speaks with the local inhabitants because, “Language was a problem. Peo
ple spoke little French, less English” (DD7). Staying at house of his mother-in-
law, Corde experiences isolation. Life seems to him irregular in all spheres. “I
n Bucharest, the American Corde finds himself physically, socially, professiona
lly and linguistically cut off from his regular life in Chicago”8. His predicame
nt can be seen in Joseph’s, the protagonist of Bellow’s first novel Dangling Man
. However, Joseph’s alienation is self-imposed. Albert Corde’s situation is not
his own choosing, but he is largely isolated from those who visit Valeria’s ap
artment by his inability to speak the language and aware of his importance in a
society in which he is literally ‘alien’.
He consequently spends much of his time as Joseph did, brooding alone in a dingy
room looking out on to a depressing city scape. The Dean too is ‘dangling man’
suspended between two worlds as seeks a meaning for human history, and putting
a misplaced faith in the certainly of his own understanding 9.
Albert Corde’s mother-in-law has suffered a heart attack and she is in t
he intensive care unit. Visitors are forbidden to go there. All are intimated by
the secret police. As a defector to the West shielded by an American passport a
nd husband – Minna is hardly in favour with the authorities. Most troublesome of
all is a colonel in the secret police. Thus, a cruel and unforgiving bureaucrac
y, represented by a colonel, is using its power to prevent Minna from visiting h
er mother in the hospital. The energies of Corde and Minna are mainly expended o
n a struggle with this bureaucracy as they try first to arrange to see Valeria
in the hospital and then, after her death, to give her a dignified funeral. Duri
ng this time Corde lives in Valeria’s decaying apartment. He is visited by rela
tives and well-wishes. He observes the bleak existence of the inmates of what he
calls a ‘penitentiary society’ grubbing for even the most basic material neces
sities and silenced by fear of wire tapers and informers. His distaste for this
grim place is aggravated by his anxieties about Minna, who he fears still be su
bject to Romanian law, “In The Dean’s December, Bellow more directly attacks neg
ative social forces that challenge human dignity” 10.
On his visit to the crematorium, Corde accompanied Minna to make arrange
ment for her mother’s funeral; he was astonished by confronting the material fac
t of death that it undermines rather than reinforces rational orthodoxy. Standin
g there, he acknowledges that the earth and its creatures contain within them th
e material fact of connection. Finding that his perceptions are becoming much m
ore clear and singular as he contemplates the fact of his mother-in-law’s death,
Corde reflects:
Valeia was certainly dead. She had died and she was dead, and last arrangements
were being made. But he couldn’t say that she was dead to him. It wouldn’t have
been an accurate statement, one might call a comforting illusion, but in fact th
ere was nothing at all comforting about it, he could take no comfort in it. Nor
was it anything resembling an illusion. She was more like an internal fact of w
hich he became conscious. He hadn’t been looking for it. And he was not prompted
to find a ‘rational’ cause for this. Rationality of this sort left him cold. He
 owned it nothing. It was particularity that interested him… (DD 175-76).
Corde is convinced that this ‘internal fact’ is his transcendent connect
ion to Valeria, despite her physical obliteration. The only possible language fo
r articulating the internal fact of Valeria’s inextinguishable life is the range
of attachment. Corde knows that he loves Valeria even though he cannot empiric
ally locate the seat of love’s power. Corde understands that his love for Valeri
a is really a mystery emanating from an invisible source that ‘something’ to whi
ch we assign names but we cannot objectively locate.
Brooding over the burning of Valeria’s body, Corde sees his old friend D
ewey Spangler with awakened eyes. It is a direct manifestation of Corde’s develo
ping power of attachment.
Then for some reason, with no feeling of abruptness, he became curiously absorbe
d in Dewey… He say now that Spangler was down slanted in spirit…. Seeing him so
actual, vanities were dissipated, you were in no position to judge, and there wa
s no need for judging… May be on this death day Corde was receiving secret guida
nce in seeing life. Perhaps at this very moment in seeing life. Perhaps at this
very moment flames were finishing Valeria, and therefore it was especially impo
rtant to think what a human being really was (DD 242).
Corde discovers the power and freedom of attached observation. In such a
vivid form of attachment, he comes to know that this soul has a life freehold.
He understands that there is no freedom, no reality without connection. “What yo
u didn’t pass though your soul didn’t even exist…Reality didn’t exist out there.
It began to be real only when the soul found its underlying truth. In generalit
ies there was no coherence – none”(DD 262). The highest responsibility for man t
hen is to realize the world by connecting with its particular. Corde affirms, mo
re directly than any previous Bellow protagonist, “the soul’s connection to crea
tion”11.
After Valeria’s funeral Corde challenges, in conversation with Vlada Voy
nich, Professor Beech’s assumption that “Liberal humanist culture is weak becaus
e it lacks scientific knowledge”(DD 220). He tells Vlada that a misplaced faith
in scientific knowledge may constitute the real source of current social and cu
ltural distress. Although Corde is convinced that Professor Beech is a man of fe
eling and even a visionary yet Corde finds the scientist’s language highly dange
rous. Corde says, “where Beech sees poison lead, I see poison thought or poison
theory. The view we held of the martial world may put a case as heavy as lead…”
(DD 225). As Corde shifts between immediate events in Romania and troubling dev
elopments at home, Bellow juxtaposes the worlds of Bucharest and Chicago, past a
nd present, East and West. Like the Chicago Winter it constantly recalls, Decem
ber in Bucharest more than the end of a year. More than the old social order is
dying. At both ends of the world, Bellow suggests the values by which humankind
has aligned itself with creation are being obliterated. Moral principles, the di
stinction between good and evil, have been abandoned. Mechanization concepts and
data are the of reality only approved signposts. To erode, contemporary society
is a monstrous superstructure precariously erected.
In The Dean’s December, Bellow presents his most horrified version of a
modern world on the edge of apocalypse. Both Bucharest and Chicago are examined
through the shifts of consciousness of the protagonist to reveal significant res
emblances. America as represented here by Chicago is an urban hell and male domi
nated. In Bucharest, the oppressors are men but at all that is positive and heal
ing comes from women. In this world of women. Corde’s own testing takes place.
He has to prove his worth to Valeria for getting married to her daughter, Min
na. Corde has a reputation as a swinger. But he insists on having decency, matur
ity, intelligence, responsibility and marital stands.
Albert Corde is a protestant. Bellow’s protagonists are burdened with pr
oblems and many of them are related to their Jewishness. Corde too has several p
roblems. However, they are not monumental problems interfering with life but rat
her the disturbances of everyday living. These problems call for an inner stren
gth that comes with security of place, self-acceptance and social acceptance. Co
rde does not wrestle with angels or alter egos. He is eventually “a strong indiv
idual with a moral mission to right the wrongs of the worlds or at least to diss
eminate information concerning troubled mankind”12. Whenever, Corde gets an oppo
rtunity he discourses upon, “Western humanism, civilized morality, nihilism East
and West (DD 68). Albert Corde shows the strength of character during all phase
s of his life.
The novel The Dean’s December ends with a clear picture of connection with socie
ty. This vision is not the product of mere sentiments. Saul Bellow firmly sugges
ts that the soul and the world are together so subjectively related. This intern
al fact constitutes. Corde’s ultimate revelation of this bond with all people.
You were drawn to feel to penetrate further as if you were being informed that
what was spread over had to do with your existence, down to the very blood and t
he crystal forms inside your bones. Rocks, trees, animals, men and women, these
also drew you to penetrate further, under the distortions (comparable to the atm
ospheric ones, shadows with shadows), to find their real being with your own (DD
306).
From this deep experience of attachment Albert Corde’s consciousness is
transcended.
Works Cited:
1. Gilbert Porker. “Whence the Power?” The Artistry and humanity of
. Saul Bellow. (Missouri: univ. Of Missouri Press,1974) 195.
2. Nathan A. Scott. Three American Moralist: Mailer,Bellow, Trilling
( Nortre Dame,Ind. :UNiv. Of NortreDame Press,1973)105.
3 .Daniel Fuchs. Saul Bellow: Visin and Revision.(New Delhi:Affiliated East-
West PressPvt.Ltd.1992)84.
4. Robert Alter. After the Tradition: Essays On Modern Jewish Writing
( New York: Dutton,1969)18.
5. Susan Roland, “ The Need for alchemy” Saul Ballow Journal 13:2(Fall 1995) 29
6. Saul Bellow. The Dean’s December ( New York,1982)117. Subsequent references
will be incorporated in the text with an abbreviation DD.
7 Jonathan Wilson.On Saul bellow’s Plant, Reading from the Dark Side
( New jersey: fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press,1985)31.
8. Ellen Pifer. Saul Bellow:Against the Grain( Philadelphia: Univ. Of
Pennysylvnia Press,1990)165.
9 Peter Hyland. Saul Bellow ( New York : St. Martin’s Press,1992)92.
10 Roger Matuz.ed. “Saul Bellow” Contemporary Literary Criticism
( Detroit:Gale research Inc. 1991)26
11. Ellen Pifer, 176
12 L.H. Goldman. Saul Bellow’s Moral Vision:A Critical Study of the Jewish Expei
ence ( New York: Irvington publishers Inc.1983)239.