Humboldt’s Gift: A Panorama of Modern American Society

1975 saw the publication of Bellow’s novel, Humboldt’s Gift. Chicago and New York, which, with their gigantesque outer life contained the whole problem of poetry and the inner life in America, are, for the most part, the scenes of the novel’s action. Starting with his realistic attitude, humanistic care and metaphysical outlook, theming on the thoughts and destinies of two generations’ intellectuals (Von Humboldt Fleisher and Charlie Citrine) living in the cities of New York and Chicago, and using the broad canvas of life as its backdrop, Bellow gives a truthful portrayal of the spiritual crisis of modern society, as well as a vivid description of the oppression and destruction of the spiritual culture by American social environment. Although Humboldt’s Gift involves less contemporary political issues and less unobtrusive historical events than his other works composed in the 1960s, yet the novel is still a panorama of modern American society in depicting the oppression of the spiritual culture by materialism and the various contradictions among the contemporary writers under such oppression.