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

Rudyard told the circle of this discovery when Jacob was absent, and they were very much moved and impressed. Often after that, when they were among strangers, they spoke of “the great moment,” and “the great rejection.” When strangers wished to know what this moment was, they were left unanswered, except that Edmund often said that Jacob had discovered the essential vanity and emptiness of our society. The success of these teasing sentences about “the great recognition,” made the boys invent variations, delicious to them, of the enigmatic sentences. It was said that Jacob has renounced a million dollars; Jacob has rejected a million dollars; Jacob has recognized that a million dollars are worthless.

Thus it came about that for the wrong reasons outsiders and strangers suffered the illusion that Jacob was a fabulous heir.

Yet at this time Jacob’s feeling about himself and about the circle was undergoing a change.

“We have all come to a standstill,” he said to himself, “as on an escalator, for time is passing, but we remain motionless.”

“What do I want?” he continued, “Do I know what I want? Does anyone know what he or she wants?”

He decided to visit Edmund, who had once again endured the period when scholarships and teaching appointments are awarded and who had once again been rejected. In seeking to find motives or reasons to explain his rejection, Edmund let himself go into a kind of hysteria, discussing the matter with anyone he found to listen, speaking of his rare and many labors, and making use of a terminology which no one but a peer in his subject could understand. This had occurred at this time for the past five years and the circle found Edmund’s obsession with it boring. Consequently when Francis French had entered in the midst of Edmund’s monologue with a piece of sensational news everyone had stopped listening to Edmund, and Edmund, much offended, arose and departed, and he had now been absent from the circle for more than a week.

This was the reason that Jacob, the conscience of the circle, visited Edmund, keeping silent, however, about Edmund’s offended departure.

“Do you know,” said Jacob, seating himself in an armchair in Edmund’s study, “practically everyone is unhappy, though few will admit the fact?”

“Yes,” said Edmund, pleased by the renewal of this theme, “that’s just what I’ve been thinking. It would be hard to overestimate the amount of unhappiness in America. The cause can’t be just the depression, though I don’t want to slight the depression, for obviously the rich are just as unhappy as the poor, though in different ways.”

“Yes,” said Jacob, “it is not only the depression. The depression is as much an effect as a cause, and the amount of unhappiness was perhaps as great in 1928 as in 1934.”

“I know just what you mean,” said Edmund, “I saw the other day that ninety-five per cent of the bathtubs in the world are in America. Now if anyone reflects sufficiently upon this interesting fact, he will conclude with the whole story of America.”

“Everyone feels that it is necessary to have certain things of a certain quality and kind,” said Jacob.

“Bathtubs come from an obsession with personal hygiene, the most consummate form of Puritan feeling,” said Edmund, “but the essential point is that human beings waste the best years of their only life for the sake of such a thing as a shining automobile, the latest model. Since such things are regarded as the truly important, good, and valuable things, is it any wonder that practically everyone is unhappy?”

“The fault is not this desire for things,” said Jacob, “but the way in which the motive of competition is made the chief motive of life, encouraged everywhere. Think of how competition is celebrated in games, in schools, in the professions, in every kind of activity. Consequently, the ideas of success and of failure are the two most important ideas in America. Yet it’s obvious that most human beings are going to be failures, for such is the nature of competition. Perhaps then the ideas of success and failure ought to be established as immoral. This strikes me as a truly revolutionary idea, although I suppose it has occurred to others.”

“It has occurred to you,” said Edmund, “as it has occurred to me because we are both failures, and we have to be young men in a time of failure and defeat, during the black years of the great depression.”

“Yes, we are both failures,” said Jacob, “but I have no desire for the only kinds of success that are available. The other day I heard the cruelest question I ever expect to hear. Two composers met at a music festival in the Berkshires last summer and one of them said to the other: ‘Calvin, why are we both failures?’ That’s more cruel than any other question I ever heard. The other one answered him in a hurry: ‘I am not a failure,’ he said, ‘I am not a failure because I never wanted to be a success.’ That’s the way I feel too. Nevertheless the fact remains that practically everyone is unhappy. Now if the idea of love supplanted the ideas of success and failure, how joyous everyone might be! and how different the quality of life!”

“You’re just dreaming out loud,” said Edmund to Jacob, thinking again of how he had failed once more to be appointed a teacher.

TEN: “THE BEST PLEASURE IS TO GIVE PLEASURE”

The circle altered as the great depression was stabilized and modified. The idleness which had been beyond reproach because no one was successful, because most were frustrated, because the parents’ generation had lost so much of its grip and pride, ended, for now there were jobs for everyone, although not the jobs each one wanted. Some had gone to Washington to take the new Federal jobs made necessary by the New Deal, and in New York too it was no longer difficult to get a job. Rudyard refused to be employed in the Federal project for playwrights, authors, musicians, and other artists, and he defended his refusal, as from the first, by speaking of his principles. Laura was angry at this refusal, but after a time she declared once again that Rudyard was a genius and he ought not to have to earn a living.

Soon all who belonged to the circle except Rudyard and Jacob had jobs which enabled them to pay for the modest round of luxuries upon which Ferdinand insisted. The theatre began to be for Ferdinand a kind of ritual. No matter how poor the play was, the ceremonial of going to the first night of a Broadway play had for Ferdinand the rigorous and expensive qualities he had desired since he put aside his desire to be an author. His marriage became by imperceptible degrees of which no one dared to speak, a recognized union, but this did not change in the least Ferdinand’s participation in the circle or his mode of life. Irene was accepted by the circle as being just like Marcus, and the circle’s judgment of her was formulated by Rudyard when he said: “Personally, I like her,” a statement which meant that he understood very well all the reasons for not liking Irene, and which was understood by all to mean that Irene was detestable.

Marcus went to Bermuda for the Christmas holidays, and at Easter he went to Cuba, trips paid for by his labors in the public school system. After his trip to Cuba, he spoke of the Weltanschauung of the cabin cruise and of the nature of time and duration on a luxury liner. Rudyard declared that Marcus had become a beachcomber and an idler. When Marcus replied that Rudyard was in no position to accuse anyone of being an idler, Rudyard told him that he was being ridiculous. “Don’t be too obvious, ” said Rudyard to Marcus, “it is expected that you will be obvious, but please draw the line somewhere .” Roaring, Marcus answered: “Obvious, obvious! what do you mean, obvious? If I say that the sun is shining, I suppose you will say that I am being obvious.” “Yes!” said Rudyard in triumph and joy. “Who discusses the weather? Who discusses sunlight? We are not peasants. The weather is an old story, it is old hat.”