Bellow and Anthroposophy

Can anyone shed light on this topic for me, or let me know your opinion?
What is Bellow's real position vis a vis anthroposophy? Charlie Citrine is an anthro, but to what extent does he represent SB himself, and to what extent does CC's views on anthroposophy (god: that's a hellish word to type) represent SB's own? Does anthroposophy appear in any other of SB books?
Any thoughts on this anyone?

Tomcat- reading your entry i felt immediately stumped and my first step sent me to Wikipedia where i found links to Theosophy, Krisnamurti...both names from my past readings at a younger-searching stage of life.

I would love to hear more about your thoughts- I have a certain soft spot for Charlie Citrine- Humboldt's Gift is my very favorite Belloe work

Bert, It's been a while since I read the book, but I guess there are two ways of looking at this.
One is that Anthrop. (I'm not going to be typing that word all the time) stands for the spiritual that CC is searching for: one of the central themes of the book, as I recall, is the conflict (?) between the spiritual and the material: Charlie often talks about the veil of Maya (this is not an Anthro term or concept btw,). Charlie's interest in what lies beyond the physical and his extreme passivity to life in the end actually, after many vicissitudes, have an extremely positive result, just when you think it's all going to go wrong for him. So we could say that Anthro as a spiritual system represents the metaphysical aspect of the book: it works on a structural and thematic level only, as a purely arbitrary image of a spiritual system: it could just as well be Theosophy or Hinduism or the Cabbalah.

On the other hand, the descriptions of Anthro. are entirely accurate: the rose meditation described in the book is actually one of Steiner's key meditations. Bellow has obviously done his homework regarding this. So we could perhaps imagine that Bellow is conflating his own interest in Anthro with Charlie's.

This raises several questions for me, hence my initial posting. Apart from the eternally vexed question of the overlap between a character and an author (this is especially vexed in Bellow who writes predominantly in 1st person singular narratives), there is also the question of Bellow's own personal attitude towards anthro. Was he a paid up member (so to speak) of the Anthro Society? was he just flirting with it? was he using it as a symbol in this book? as far as I know, Anthro does not appear in any of his other works.

I have not read the Atlas biography, which I assume might have some of these answers. Perhaps someone how has read it might be able to shed light in this.

i did not read the Atlas bio (yet) but I did read Atlas bio of Delmore Schwartz on whom Humbodlt is based...i recall no reference to Steinerin that book.

I was befriended with Saul Bellow for three years, 1978-1981, when I was a student in the college of the U of Chicago. We met in an anthroposophical study group with Peter Demay (not LeMay), the man on whom the character of Professor Scheldt in Humboldt's Gift is based. After that first meeting, Bellow and I saw each other a great number of times in his office and at lunch as well as in the study group with Peter.

Our common work with Anthroposophy culminated in a seminar with Bellow, Warner Wick, Wayne Booth, Sandy Zabell, and myself (not two graduate students, as his biographies relate, but one college student; Wayne Booth records this rightly in a later work). The seminar examined the first part of Owen Barfield's Saving the Appearances.

Bellow was deeply connected to Anthroposophy, and said to me on the occasion of our last meeting (though we did not know it at the time): "I have to meditate."

Edward- based on your personal connection to Bellow I would expect you could add some interesting topics and insights for discussion in this group.