Surat Saul Bellow Kepada Bernard Malamud
[Dear Hogarth,
Saya belum habis membaca DUBLIN. Oleh itu, saya tidak ingin memberikan penjelasan panjang di sini selagi saya belum bacanya sampai hujung. Namun apa yang saya boleh katakan setakat ini Hogarth? Realistik. Itu yang saya fikir. Realistik. Kamu pasti faham maksud saya.
Selain itu Hogarth, saya ingin kongsikan dengan kamu surat yang ditulis antara Saul Bellow dan Bernard Malamud. Kedua-dua orang mereka adalah Yahudi kan? Mungkin kamu akan suka perbualan mereka.
(...)
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| Saul Bellow |
December, 1953, Barrytown
Dear Bernard:
I don’t get may letters about Augie that I feel like answering. By pressure of numbers, society can make a specialist of you, if in no other way. Augie
threatens to become my specialty as flying the Atlantic became
Lindberghs’—allow me one more immodest analogy: as jumping from he
bridge became Steve Brodie’s.
With this preface, let me say that I thought your letter one of the
best, a terribly acute criticism. I’m not at all inclined to counter
your criticisms. You’re a writer yourself, a real one; you know that
self-defense is not what we ought to be thinking of. I made many
mistakes; I must plead guilty to several of your charges. Yes, Augie is
too passive, perhaps. Yes, the episodes do not have enough variety; the
pressure of language is too constant and uniform. That he is too august I
think I might dispute. At least I felt his suffering sharply—maybe I
didn’t get it across. He isn’t, to me, an Olympian. Only, he’s engaged
in a War of Independence and the odds are vastly against him. It is
devaluation of the person that he fights with. No doubt this war, like
any war, produces exaggerations. Our passivity often is so deep
that we do not recognize that the active spirit underneath has meanwhile
organized an opposition, an opposition that wears the face of
passivity. Some of the trouble is Augie’s; some of it the
world’s. That is no excuse in literature, though it may be one in
history. But I can’t claim that I was trying for perfection. There are
times when I think how nice it would be to edit a new and better novel
out of it. But I can’t allow myself to forget that I took a position in
writing this book. I declared against what you call the constructivist
approach. A novel, like a letter, should be loose, cover much ground, run swiftly, take risk of morality and decay.
I backed away from Flaubert, in the direction of Walter Scott, Balzac
and Dickens. Having brought off my effort as well as I could, I must now
pay the price. You let the errors come. Let them remain in the book like our sins remaining in our lives. I hope some of them may be remitted. I’ll do what I can; the rest is in God’s hands.
Two things about the book please me still: the comedy and the
characters. Many people have missed what, to me, is the fun of the book.
They suffer from culture-gravity. They say “picaresque” and don’t
laugh. The baseball experts landing on your Natural with both feet are in the same league: sinners against imagination and the spirit of comedy.
I’m very grateful to you for writing.
Yours,
Saul Bellow
(...)
Dan sekian juga daripada saya Hogarth.
Sahabat anda di Lisbon,
A]
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