ISAAC ROSENFELD
S67
"intelligent opinion." I saw
III
this an obscure and hidden wisdom.
This same opinion was death to many of its exponents.
He did not follow the fat gods. Of politics-I use the term in its
minor sense-he had no understanding. Others got into corporations and
universities, into publishing and government. Not he. Neither success nor
failure interested him. I think he liked the miserable failures in the
Village better than the miserable successes Uptown, but I believe he
understood that the failures had not failed enough but were fairly well
satisfied with the mild form of social revolt which their incomplete
ruin represented.
He did not trust his own intelligence too far. A strong sense of
honor prevented him from accepting its early and easy victories. The
victories he wanted were those of the heart. Ecstasy was what he pur–
sued, and he paid the cost in suffering, a horrible and bloody cost.
But I don't think he had much choice. The evils that wear out our
power to focus clearly and strain our faces until we no longer sec any
good, any justice, had attacked him too. He endured boredom and dead–
ness, despair, even madness. This is the truth about the reign of the
fat gods. It is not merely dull and harmless.
It
destroys and consumes
everything, it covers the human image with deadly films, it undermines
all quality with its secret rage, it subverts everything good and exalts
lies, and on its rotten head it wears a crown of normalcy. Most do not
fight but make their peace with it. Isaac fought.
He won. He changed himself. He enlarged hi; power to love.
~"'lany
loved him. He was an extraordinary and significant man.
He died in a seedy furnished room on Walton Street, alone-a bitter
death to his children, his wife, his lovers, his father.
Meanwhile we live, we have our reflexes, habits and duties, we
button shirts and brush teeth and answer letters-write and read last
words about our dead friends. The lungs, the viscera, the eyes, seek what
they need in air, food and light. Love too we seek, though some of it
lies in dead hands and can neither be given nor taken. This is one of
our peculiarities. Like the Persian in Isaac's picture we stand fixed where
it lies buried.
Saul Bellow
