In a span of more than 60 years of prolific writing, the Jewish-American novelist Saul Bellow (1915-2005) devoted his efforts to reflect on key issues —man, history, life and death, among others. Taking one or more of these subjects as a point of departure, Bellow approaches the calamitous situation the contemporary man/woman has been going through in the light of religion, philosophy, etc. This paper focuses on the influence of the Platonic concept of eros in Bellow's novella The Actual (1997) and attempts to demonstrate how Bellow's characters Harry Trellman, Amy Wustrin and Jay Wustrin are, respectively, the counterparts of Plato's figures of the lover, the beloved and false lover, as explained in Plato's The Phaedrus.

The Jewish-American novelist Saul Bellow (1915-2005) wrote for almost six decades—from his "Two Morning Monologues" (1941) to his Collected Stories (2001). Within this time span, Bellow was primarily concerned with the major issues—history, love, freedom, life and death, among others—that man has tackled throughout his history. For instance, in novels such as Augie March (1953), Bellow advocates man's freedom and independence by alluding to the Whitmanesque concept of democratic temperament. In novels like Herzog (1964) and Humboldt's Gift (1975), Bellow's Moses Herzog and Charlie Citrine, respectively, focus on the individual's role in history and how history, using Hegel's thesis, can use man/woman to fulfil its goals. Finally, the issues of love and death appear closely interrelated in his last novel Ravelstein (2000) and his novella The Actual (1997).

In The Actual, Bellow introduces the protagonist of the story, an elderly man called Harry Trellman, who has returned home to meet his lifelong—actual—love after forty years. Clearly influenced by Plato's The Phaedrus and more specifically by the concept of eros—erotic love—as it appears in that dialogue, Bellow conceived of The Actual as a love story in which the issue of love could be approached, as Plato did in The Phaedrus, from different points of view: from the standpoint of the lover, Harry Trellman; the beloved, Amy Wustrin; and the false lover, Jay Wustrin, Amy's ex-husband—and the relationship between the three of them.

A Man's Road Back to Himself Is a Return from His Spiritual Exile: Platonic Influences in Saul Bellow's The Actual, Jewish-American novelist, calamitous situation, philosophy, democratic temperament, successive reincarnations, presidential campaigns, repetition, regression.