The introduction of a variety of ideas in a carnivalistic fashion and with no relation with each other cannot be the end of novel. It is true that carnivalization is the most radical form of dismantling the authority of the canonical discourses, that when a variety of ideas are present no ideologist can assume or impose himself as the philosopher-King; and in literary affairs, no author can impose his or her own code and intentions on the text. Although this decentralization and decanonization of ideas are one of the consequences of carnivalization (and an important one), yet, the end is not just to decrown the King or to write the name of the Author with small letters. When the idea-King is dethroned in the carnivals of ideas that novel provides, there is the danger of atomization of ideas. That is, each idea may grow autonomous with no relation with the other ideas. Speaking relatively, this phenomenon has occurred in the movement of art for art's sake, when art, having freed itself from the restraints of nineteenth century morality (which was a morality just in favor of the dominant powers rather than the real 'other'), refused any form of relationship and dialogue.
Carnival, the process of fundamental inversion of every institution in the city by the people, is a natural process if it is seen as a response to a totalitarian monologic discourse. But an absolute inversion, to write a Flaubertian book about nothing, is not the real end of novel. Bakhtin says:
To be sure, language diversity and speech characterizations remain important in polyphonic novel, but this importance is diminished, and most important, the artistic functions of these phenomena change. For what matters here is not the mere presence of specific language styles, social dialects, and so forth, a presence established by purely linguistic criteria; what matters is the dialogic angle at which these styles and dialects are juxtaposed or counterpoised in the work. (Dostoevsky's Poetics 182)
Purely linguistic polyphony and formal carnivalization without a dialogic relationship either leads to a fundamental form of anarchism or to the dominance of another equally monologic ideology. The movement of art for art's sake negates any form of dialogic morality -- the morality that recognizes all the other voices not only as valid but also addressable -- therefore, it neither lasted nor had a significant effect upon the others. The interaction and dialogue of different voices within the artistic whole of novel, and also between the text and the realistic whole of culture, the world "outside literature" should work side by side with the pluralization and carnivalization process, so that the various voices and consciousnesses could define themselves and their position in the world not in the air, but in their relationship to each other.
Bakhtin talks about these different sets of relationships as "external and internal dialogicality [of the novel's] approach to human life and human thought" (Dostoevsky's Poetics 120). Internal dialogicality is the answerability of the ideas and consciousnesses within the artistic whole of the text, and external dialogicality is the addressing of social and cultural issues by the text and its different voices. It should be made clear, however, that any form of dialogicality without the strategic functions of pluralization and carnivalization in the novel is inevitably under the control of some monologically dominant power and is doomed to failure. Also, cutting the text from the external world and paying attention only to internal dialogicality, if it is possible at all, cannot produce a socially significant work of art. According to Bakhtin, the works of the French novelist Gustave Flaubert (1821-80) show how even a social genre as novel may withdraw into the Ivory Tower of its own formal beauty:
Would it ever occur to anyone to participate in any of the numerous conversations in L'education sentimentale ? But we do enter into discussions with Raskolnikov, and not only with him, but with every bit-player as well.< yes"> (Dostoevsky's Poetics 6)
Elsewhere Bakhtin appreciates Dante for his polyphonic works and depreciates him for representing the different voices as different chronological stages rather than simultaneously coexisting, hence "interactive" voices (Dostoevsky's Poetics 31).
Depending on different socio-historical factors, especially the degree of dominance of the monologic powers, different writers have taken different strategies. The geographical-historical situation of Bellow is different with that of Bakhtin and Dostoevsky. Both Dostoevsky and Bakhtin experienced acute forms of authoritarian and monologic forms of power in society. Because of his ideas, Dostoevsky spent many years in prisons and in exile. When Bakhtin was pursuing his investigations on Dostoevsky's poetics, and the theory of genres, the reigning politics was the totalitarian regime of Stalin. This dictatorial worldview had affected everything from epistemology to relationship between husband and wife. Literature was not an exception and was under the influence of this worldview: the only accepted school being Social Realism, any other school was either taken as bourgeois or as capitalist, therefore, imperfect. Bakhtin's theories are attempts to show texts, and in general cultures as 'hybrid constructions' of heterogeneous elements. The governing philosophy, that of Stalin, imposed its own monologic definition of text and culture to the people. In Bakhtin's time (and place) government had a supervising position on the production of texts and interpretation of them. It was a time when culture was an industry in the control of the dominant party. Since texts, and in general cultures, in themselves are heterogeneous and plural, the Stalinian government repressed this plurality and introduced its own politically and ideologically favored form. As this was a monologic form of text, it was a severely distorted version and had no place for the voice of the people, only a chorus of passive and obedient people. The preachers of this form of texts and cultures (i. e., the Social Realists) talked about commitment, but they actually meant commitment to the party, not to the people and humanity. This definition of culture became a means, a weapon in the hands of the ruling party to control and suppress creativity and heterodoxy in socio-political affairs as well as the literary ones. In such a time and place Bakhtin (and his group) raised to show the actual plurality and heterogeneity of texts and of cultures. It was a situation wherein pluralization and carnivalization of discourses, texts, and cultures was more important than maintaining a dialogue between them. Manifested in the Hegelian idea of dialectics, a distorted, mutilated, and dead form of dialogue was in the air. The task of Bakhtin was to pluralize the 'theses' of the dialectic principle. Indeed, for him, the dialogic property of culture is to show the heterogeneity and polyphony of culture and of texts. The government that supported its own preferred and favored voice saw any other voice as a danger to its own closed system. Before dismantling this ideological system, any form of dialogue is hard to achieve success; therefore, Bakhtin saw pluralization and carnivalization as the best form of fight against monologic authority.
The situation in America was entirely different. As early as the time when the Pilgrims landed there, America was populated with a multiple of nations. The early Puritans were a dominant culture, but their dominance did not last for a long time; it was also limited in space and even quantity. What is distinctive about America is that she has never experienced a King, or a Royal Society or a Tsar. True, there were, beside the puritans, some other ideologies and cultures that were dominant for a short period of time, but no ideology could maintain its dominance over cultural affairs with an absolute exclusion of the other ideologies. Besides, being populated by a variety of mixed nationalities, no radical form of nationalism could settle there. Therefore, America developed a culture that could not produce such nationalistic genres as epics.
The governments in America were at times monologic and hostile to the other nations, but the people of America have experiences of such figures as Abraham Lincoln who even in his first Inaugural Address states:
this country, with its institutions, belong to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. (qtd. in Kammen 263)
No form of monologism, the way it grew in Russia, can grow in a country where the people have the memory of such officials.
Translated into aesthetic terms, this politics demands an author who instead of creating mouthpieces to express his or her own worldview, creates free characters and allows them to use their own internal logic. The characters of such a fiction have their own free internal vision of the world which is not only different from that of the author (as no two persons in actual life are not the same), but also, they may question the worldview of the author. If the institutions of the Lincoln's politics "belong to the people who inhabit it," the artistic elements of a work of art that is based on a similar methodology belong to its characters, and Herzog is such a fiction.
In general, in the novels of Saul Bellow "the vision of the novel is ultimately that of the central character" (Opdahl 8); and Bellow, especially in Herzog , does not impose his own worldview on his characters. Despite the many similarities, the characters of Bellow's fiction have different ideologies from that of their author. They are not mouthpieces for the author, the way, say, Hemingway's characters are. The heroes of Hemingway, as different as they may be with their author, are his mouthpieces. The heroes are just there to represent the worldview of the author; and the author with his 'grand style' is there to reinforce the voice of the hero. The reciprocity between the hero and the author is not as free as they are in Bellow, even sometimes the hero and the author seem extremely identical.
Bellow chooses schlemiels as his heroes. This is because, in the first place, he does not want the characters to become or to be read as identical with himself; also, he wants to make his characters as free as possible. They do not have the excessive pride of Hemingway's characters. Herzog is aware of this fact and only mocks himself further: "Losing self-respect! Lacking clear ideas!" (110). This is a prerequisite of a dialogic character who does not have an inflamed ego and can honestly listen to the discourse of other people.
Being produced in a plural situation, Herzog is a theory-text that lays primary stress on dialogue. This, of course, does not mean that pluralizing and carnavalizing mechanisms do not work or are not necessary. As shown in chapter three, these processes are radically at work in Herzog . But pluralization is a strategy that is taken by Bellow on the way to a dialogue of the multiple systems, discourses and ideologies. Herzog is a text located at the point of contact between many texts. The text of the novel shows this fact through direct reference to such a theory. There are certain instances when Bellow lays bare his device in the very content itself and talks about the situatedness of the text in a context and the hybridity of the structure of the text and context:
For instance? Well, for instance what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organized power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes. In a society that was no community and devalued the person. Owing to the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible. . . . . . You -- you yourself are a child of this mass and a brother to all the rest. (Herzog 208-9)
In spite of the efforts of the politicians of the McCarthy era, the mass that Herzog describes is not a unified and homogenous mass; it is rather a conglomerate and heterogeneous mass. There are certain cracks in the society that makes it plural and multilevel. The plural quality of the society, which is fully manifested in the text of Herzog , is more than formal; the different layers and levels act, interact, and through interaction, evolve. (The evolution, however, does not imply a Darwinian world in which only the 'fittest' would survive.)
Herzog takes issue with almost all the discourses of the American society. The different discourses are artistically put beside each other so that they could be contrapuntal points for each other. These points have complex sets of relationships with each other and are juxtaposed in a variety of ways. It is very hard even for an actual reader to synthesize and merge these points into a final message. Even if the reader could forget the possible readings of the novel other than his or her own, he or she is inevitably confronted with the different readings that the text has of itself. According to H. Porter Abbot, "Herzog himself is reading Herzog. He reflects upon himself as he would upon a character" (279). Herzog's reading of himself is not a unified and homogenous reading from one single point of view. He sees himself through different eyes. As an example, while writing a letter, he remembers his visit to Simkin, Herzog's Chicago lawyer. Instantly he begins to read himself through the eyes of Simkin:
[Simkin] called him 'Professor' but not mockingly. Though Simkin was a clever lawyer, very rich, he respected Herzog. He had a weakness for confused high-minded people, for people with moral impulses like Moses. Hopeless! Very likely he looked at Moses and saw a grieving childish man, trying to keep his dignity. (Herzog 35)
At another occasion, Herzog reads himself as reflected in the mind of Phoebe:
Anyway, to her, having Madeline's body could never seem a big deal. She might have pitied Herzog's stupid eagheadedness, his clumsy way of putting his troubles into high-minded categories; or simply his suffering. But she probably had only enough feelings for the conduct of her own life, and no more. Moses was sure that she blamed him for aggravating Valentine's ambitions.(Herzog 64)
Sometimes "Herzog momentarily join[s] the objective world in looking down on himself. He too [can] smile at Herzog and despise him" (Herzog 73). He has his own doubts about himself that ultimately makes him momentarily join the point of view of the others and judge himself from another point of view:
Suppose I am absolutely right and the monsignor, for instance, absolutely wrong. If I am right, the problem of the world's coherence, and all responsibility for it, becomes mine. How will it make out when Moses E. Herzog has his way?< yes"> (Herzog 162)
The different versions of Herzog are, at least, as many as the different characters of the text. The actual reader cannot merge all these voices into one final synthesis. All that happens in the act of reading is a juxtaposition and counterpoising of the different versions of Herzog that are read from different points of view. Herzog is a place of contact for many different views, and the actual act of reading it cannot reduce the different views to a final resolution of the conflict of perspectives. Reading Herzog is like adding a mirror to the number of mirrors that are already there, facing each other.
Herzog does some quasi-heroic actions; like Hamlet he wants to take revenge, but when the scene is ready, he withdraws into meditation. However, despite his heroism, he is not a hero in the traditional sense of it. James M. Mellard calls him "a hero of consciousness" (90) and asserts:
. . . . in contrast to the popular heroes -- the cowboy, the detective, the spy, the adventurer, even the lover -- Herzog plays out his role not in the realm of action (although he does act eventually) but in the realm of consciousness. (Mellard 90)
Perhaps it would be suggestive to add that Herzog is the hero of maintaining a multiple of irresolvable dialogues in the realm of consciousness. Mellard is aware of this fact, but looking at the novel from another perspective, he comes to a different conclusion. Earlier in his article he reads Herzog as a relativist:
There is a certain irresolvable equivocation in Herzog's position, for, all the while he studies the patterns and meanings of history, he believes that any answer he arrives at shall necessarily be partial, incomplete. Consequently, his critiques of the historical philosophers really appear only in obiter dicta in the course of his many letters. He offers no systematic arguments, nor can one do here in his stead. (Mellard 87)
The "irresolvable equivocation" and the unsystematically of Herzog are better premises for a dialogic reason than "narrative reason" that Mellard reads into the novel. He has adopted the term from 'historical reason,' a key terminology of the ish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) who in a book of the same title talked about it.
Mellard rightly puts narrative or historical reason in contrast to historicism, a view that insists on an objective, detached study of history. He argues that Herzog certainly is not a traditional historicist, but arriving at "a kind of existential historicism," Herzog is "a historian of the contemporary mode" (86). From another perspective, narrative or historical reason can be contrasted with instrumental reason, the rationality that views others as instruments in the way of one's own improvement. However, dialogic rationality, equally different from instrumental rationality, is the term that can describe the mentality of Herzog better. Historical reason of Ortega y Gasset and narrative reason of Mellard can describe the changes that happen to a consciousness through time, but, even if it does not fail to recognize the role of the other in the changes, it ultimately fails to see the other consciousnesses and voices as valid and a true subject for communication. Dialogic reason sees all the other voices and ideas as existing in the present moment of novel, constructing the novel through the process of dialogue.
The actions of Herzog are dialogic actions and he is a hero of dialogue. His doctoral thesis, The State of Nature in 17th and 18th century English and French Political Philosophy, (10) and his book, Romanticism and Christianity (10), are attempts to make a dialogue between the past and the present:
His thesis had been influential and was translated into French and German. His early book, not much noticed when it was published, was now on many reading lists, and the younger generations of historians accepted it as a model of the new sort of history, 'history that interests us' -- personal, engagče -- and looks at the past with an intense need for the contemporary relevance.(Herzog 11-12)
Mellard's analysis of Herzog's letters is a "historical" reading of the novel, yet they are suggestive for a dialogic reading. He finds Rousseau "the political philosopher whose historical theory draws Herzog's greatest ire" (87). On the other hand, he rightly believes that Herzog "cares perhaps even less" for the twentieth century opponents of Rousseau, the Wasteland theorists such as Piorre Joseph Proudhon, T. E. Hulme, and of course, T. S. Eliot (87-9). None of these ideas Herzog rejects absolutely. About Hulme he writes to one of his rivals:
Dear Dr. Mossbach, I am sorry you are not satisfied with my treatment of T. E. Hulme and his definition of Romanticism as 'split religion'. There is something to be said of his view. He wanted things to be clear, dry, spare, pure, cool and hard. With this I think we all sympathize. (Herzog 135)
And this is despite the fact that he believes "It was easy for the Wastelanders to be assimilated to totalitarianism , . . .< . . [into]cultural fascism " (Herzog 82). Herzog heroically does not totally reject the Wastelanders, nor any other ideology. His heroism lies in the fact that he assimilates the strong points of each group and like an architect, builds his vision of the world using the other's most efficient building blocks of worldview. Perhaps the metaphor of architectonics could not represent the dialogicality of Herzog's consciousness, but it is a fair metaphor in showing the mind of Herzog as a hybrid construction; "he is to be found at the center of organization where all levels intersect (Dialogic Imagination 49).
Sandor Himmelstein, is one of those "reality instructors" that is situated diametrically in an opposed point to Herzog. He is the embodiment of the Wasteland outlook among the characters of the novel. He believes, "Facts are nasty" (Herzog 92). Herzog describes him as a "fierce dwarf with protruding teeth and deep lines in his face" (92), Herzog is momentarily angry with himself for asking help from this hunchback lawyer. At the same time, he imagines Himmelstein as a man who could "be attractive, too, generous, convivial, even witty" (92). This is nothing but the ability to juxtapose contrapuntally the character traits of one person (Dostoevsky's Poetics 40), to make a dialogue between the different layers of one specific consciousness. Here the reader is not confronted with a subjective psychologism like the works of Joyce or Proust (see Dostoevsky's Poetics 37), but with an intersubjective and dialogic psychologism. Herzog is not an isolated consciousness, but a mind in relation to others, a related and, of course, "relating animal " who is sometimes "sentenced " to relationships (Herzog 268). What distinguishes him from many other characters of the genre is his unique awareness of this fact. "I really believe that brotherhood is what makes a man human," he says to Asphalter, his friend who endangered his life to save a monkey. "When preachers of dread tell you that others only distract you from metaphysical freedom then you must turn away from them" (280). And Herzog is a hero of dialogue because he maintains a dialogue even with the preachers of dread, as well as with all the other monologic constituents of the Western culture.
'Face death. That's Heidegger. What comes out of this?'
'As I gaze up from my coffin at first I can keep my attention on my death, and on my relations with the living, and then other things come in -- every time' (Herzog 277)
The consciousness of Herzog is located at the point of contact between many worldviews that are sometimes even contradictory. This, as showed, makes Herzog a dialogic character. But what are the dialogues that he maintains? The very first sentence of Herzog shows how much the other's ideas are active in his mind: "If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog" (7). The discourse of the others is present in the if clause of the conditional sentence in its living and active totality. This idea, that he is out of his mind, is the subject of Herzog's mental dialogue. Without repressing the discourse of the others about himself, he fully articulates them and then juxtaposes his own discourse as a contrapuntal point: "it's all right with me." Even this first sentence of the novel is a free location for a contact between two ideas. In this sentence it is not explicitly stated that the if clause is the discourse of the others about Herzog, neither, according to Bakhtin is it necessary. The two juxtaposed ideas may exist within the consciousness of one specific person.
Interestingly, the next utterance of the novel shows that the different ideas belong to different consciousnesses: "Some people thought he was cracked and for some time he himself had doubted that he was all there. But now, though he still behaved oddly, he felt confident, clairvoyant and strong" (Herzog 7). The idea of the others about Herzog and his temporal assimilation of that idea does not negate the necessity of dialogue. He only affirms the thought of the others about himself. His identity, so to speak, is formed through his relationship with the other people; and as the rest of the text shows, he is dependent upon the others for his realization of the self.
What is more important is that Herzog's dialogicality lets the other people enter his territory. This acceptance of the others (or dialogic rejection of them) is something that is with him from the very beginning. He feels "confident, clairvoyant and strong" (7) because he is able to maintain a dialogue with the others, those who are at times opposed to him and the cause of his "sufferings." Such a dialogue is also maintained between different layers of his consciousness, which is formed as a result of his contact and communication with the other people of the city, and is as multiple and plural as the world around himself.
The dialogues of Herzog with others are not just about his personal affairs. At the same time they are concerned with larger cultural and intellectual issues; it is the obsessed and relating mind of Herzog that finds a close relationship between the two.
Bellow's adoption of the epistolary tradition is indeed a dialogue with the genre; it is also a genuine technique for addressing the ideas that are not instantly present on the contemporary intellectual scene. He makes a dialogue between the romanticism of Rousseau and the Wasteland outlook of the twentieth century, juxtaposing their ideas with each other. One of the other best examples that can be provided here is the old opposition between Nietzsche (and his followers) and Christianity. This opposition has been the cause of many intellectual tensions of the twentieth century. Herzog in a letter to Nietzsche compares his ideas with those of Christianity:
No, really, Herr Nietzche, I have great admiration for you. Sympathy. You want to make us able to live with the void. . . .Humankind lives mainly upon perverted ideas. Perverted, your ideas are no better than those of Christianity you condemn. (Herzog , 326)
Herzog is in opposition with both Christianity and Nietzsche, but he has "great admiration" for both of them. It is not important whether this is the attitude of the author or not. What is important is that these ideas and this kind of treatment of ideas are present in the novel. The text of the novel is not simply plural; it is a dynamic plurality. The ideas are not just there in an inert, neutral, and passive way, they are in conflict with each other.
The conflict of ideas in the novel is strategic. Carnivalization of ideas was a strategy for maintaining a free dialogue between the ideas; for representing the ideas in a horizontal and less absolute way. When an idea is no longer hierarchically higher, it is possible to question it and to talk with it. It is no longer a matter of overthrowing and oppressing an idea. This is impossible and no idea, whether of Nietzsche or of Christ can die. The dialogization of ideas is a strategy to make them alive and plastic and evolving. The death of an idea happens when it does not have any relationship with the outer reality, with the other ideas. "To be means to communicate " (Dostoevsky's Poetics 287).