Delmore Schwartz - Once and for All - The Best of Delmore Schwartz

The best of anything was truly a necessity to Ferdinand and he suffered very much when he was deprived of it. He insisted also that his friends of the circle join with him, accepting his criterion. This was difficult because they had little money or no money at all. Often Ferdinand paid for them, and he always paid for Rudyard, whom he admired very much. But when he did not care to pay for one of the boys, at dinner or at the theatre, and when they suggested that they come at less expense, Ferdinand strictly forbade their coming. He refused to go or he went by himself to the best restaurant and sat in the best seat at the Broadway play. When he was asked by a stranger the reason for his concentration upon dining well, Ferdinand replied in the curt and stern tone he so often used that dinner was extremely important: if one dined well, one felt good; otherwise, one did not.

A severe, private, hardly understood code ruled Ferdinand in all things. He regarded certain acts as good behavior and everything else, every difference, change, or departure as infamous and to be denounced. It was often necessary to prevent Ferdinand from making remarks of virtually insane cruelty to newcomers and strangers who visited the circle, for if they behaved in a way of which he disapproved or in a way indifferent to what he regarded as proper, he was likely to tell them that they were unpardonable fools. Visitors and strangers did not know what it was impossible for them to know, the strict and personal standard by which Ferdinand judged all acts and all remarks. Fortunately Ferdinand’s constraint and stiffness made him speak in a very low voice, so that often enough the most extraordinary insult was left unheard. It was then necessary for Rudyard or Jacob to translate the sentence of final condemnation into a mild euphemism. When Ferdinand said to a stranger: “You must be out of your mind!” Rudyard explained that Ferdinand disagreed with what the stranger had just said, while Ferdinand turned aside, indifferent to the reduction of his insult and feeling that he had made his stand.

Jacob had arrived at Riverside Drive. He looked down on the Hudson River and, feeling the overwhelming presence of the great city, he thought of his friends as citizens of the city and of the city itself in which they lived and were lost.

“In New York,” he said to himself, often concluding his slow tours with such monologues, “there are nineteen thousand horses, three hundred thousand dogs, five hundred thousand cats, one million trees and one million sparrows: more than enough!

“On the other hand, there are at least six million human beings and during holidays there are more than that number. But, in a way, these numbers hardly exist because they cannot be perceived (we all have four or five friends, more or less). No human being can take in such an aggregation: all that we know is that there is always more and more. This is the moreness of which we are aware, no matter what we look upon. This moreness is the true being of the great city, so that, in a way, this city hardly exists. It certainly does not exist as does our family, our friends, and our neighborhood.”

Jacob felt that he had come to a conclusion which showed the shadow in which his friends and he lived. They did not inhabit a true community and there was an estrangement between each human being and his family, or between his family and his friends, or between his family and his school. Worst of all was the estrangement in the fact that the city as such had no true need of any of them, a fact which became more and more clear during the great depression.

“Yet,” thought Jacob, seeking to see the whole truth, “there is the other side, which always exists. They say of New York that it is like an apartment hotel. And they say: ‘It’s fine for a visit, but I would not want to live here.’ They are wrong. It’s fine to live here, but exhausting on a visit.

“Once New York was the small handsome self-contained city of the merchant prince and the Dutch patroon’s great grandsons. And once it was the brownstone city ruled by the victors of the Civil War. Then the millions drawn or driven from Europe transformed the city, making the brownstone mansions defeated rooming houses. Now, in the years of the great depression, it is for each one what he wants it to be, if he has the money. If he has the money! Coal from Pennsylvania, oranges from California, tea from China, films from Hollywood, musicians and doctors of every school! Every kind of motion, bus and car, train and plane, concerto and ballet! And if the luxuries of the sun and the sea are absent, if life in this city seems brittle as glass, every kind of vehicle here performs every kind of motion to take the citizen away from the city, if he has the money! The city in its very nature contains all of the means of departure as well as return. Thus the city gives to the citizen a freedom from itself, and thus one might say that this is the capital of departure. But none of my friends will go away: they are bound to each other. They have too great a need of each other, and all are a part of the being of each.”

Jacob Cohen was through for the day. He had said to himself all that he wanted to say. Thus he had conversed with himself during the years that he had dedicated himself to being the kind of a citizen that he thought he ought to be. And if he seldom uttered these thoughts to anyone, nevertheless their feeling was contained and vivid in all that other human being saw of him. This was the reason that he seemed to some, strange; to some, preoccupied; to some, possessed by secrecy and silence.

FOUR: “TEARS FOR THE HUMAN BEINGS WHO HAVE NOTHING TO SAY TO EACH OTHER”

Jacob Cohen for long had been the conscience and the noble critic of the circle. No one knew precisely how this had come about. In school, as editor of the university daily, the students too had felt an incomparable devotion and loyalty to him. It was said that they would do anything for him. And in his family, when he refused to become part of the family business, his father and his brothers were not distressed. They did not think that he was wasting his time when, except for his tours of the neighborhood and the city, he did nothing at all, although in all other families there was concern and anger when the young man appeared to be making no effort to earn a living and to get ahead. It was felt that what Jacob did was right, no matter what he did. No one was surprised when Jacob refused to be a reporter on a Hearst newspaper because he felt that the Hearst newspapers were in sympathy with Fascism. No one was surprised although to be a reporter was Jacob’s dear vocation because of which he refused to be anything else.

So too in the circle itself, Jacob’s moral preeminence was absolute, although no one in the least understood it. Jacob’s judgment, approval or disapproval were accepted as just. It was felt spontaneously that his judgment flowed from principles independent of personal desire or distortion. It is true that all knew a hardly conscious desire that such a person as Jacob should exist, but this did not explain their spontaneous recognition of him as that person.

No one but Jacob knew how much hopelessness and despair he felt at times, emotions bottomless and overpowering which made him lose all interest or power to be interested in anything outside of himself. Jacob did not understand these emotions which persisted for months and made him withdraw from others. Yet these emotions made possible Jacob’s noble indifference, an important part of his moral authority.

It was natural that Rudyard and Laura should turn in the end to Jacob for his opinion about an argument which they had disputed for weeks. This argument concerned Rudyard’s habit of reading the newspaper at the dinner table when no one was present but Laura.