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

MRS. BERGEN: What did you know about my daughter?

[ Before DR. NEWMAN can answer , DR. BERGEN enters with his nine disciples —HERRIOT, SCHMIDT, RAKOVSKY, FRIETSCH, ROSENBERG, PERRY, PORTER, MONTEZ— and his daughter MARTHA, who is by his side and holds his hand. The other disciples follow in twos, conversing quietly, and with looks of concentration and seriousness .]

DR. BERGEN: How do you do, sir?

MRS. BERGEN: Felix, this is Dr. Newman, a friend of Emma’s.

DR. BERGEN: O I see! You are that psychiatrist who is going to persuade me that I am merely a deluded old man. We shall see. We are glad to have you here and glad to have you present at our ceremony. Perhaps that persuasion will be other than you expect, although the cynicism I see on your face is a distinct handicap. [ To the disciples : ] Let us proceed.

[ They mount to the terrace, and seat themselves at the long table which stands there, DR. BERGEN at the head and MARTHA at the other end. They are at an obvious distance from the audience and all that they speak and do has a formalized character, which is partly created by the fact that the living room is intermediate between them and the audience, so that MRS. BERGEN and DR. NEWMAN, who remain in the living room and watch them, are as if a prior audience. ]

DR. BERGEN: We will begin as we usually do, by reading this week’s version of our first imperative. [ He reads. ]

Be conscious of what happens to you from minute to minute, be conscious of what you have done and what is done to you, the event active or passive, multitudinous, misunderstood at the moment of being.

Be self-conscious of the complexities of the personal event by a certain effort. Write before sleep, at night, in a book which can be taken with you as the past is taken with you, as the past takes you, which you will read with shame, remorse, and astonishment long after, in other circumstances.

To keep a diary is an act of prayer, duplicating in your own meager power the gaze of the deity’s blue eye upon you. Pray then, by seeking the full awareness of what is written, which is not soon removed, which you must read once more when you are different, when you are disinterested.

Write before sleep, when, in the silence, the night sounds become distinct, and a car starts downstairs, and the typical

Ticking of the clock repeats its dry sound, while outside the bedroom window the great city squats,

Silent and black beneath the ignorance of night. Be conscious thus. Be troubled by the shortcoming of all through which justification is assured.

Write exactly what you have felt, your motives, your intention in appearance and after examination, your hope and desire, all that has happened

During the long day which has slipped past without being counted, which will never be renewed, which must be known.

Do not be concerned with the false tone, the affected phrasing, the necessary pretentiousness of all self-consciousness,

But deny the desire to invent, distort, defend, omit, forget, when confronted with your own foolishness.

Because this examination of consciousness is your duty and your consolation. Thus is the past carried forward, thus do you take hold of your life,

Otherwise it slips from you. Thus this nightly act will be your correction, your memory,

Your freely-given offering to the deity whose blue eye shines overhead, to whom

Our hearts are in debt forever.

[ He pauses for a moment. ]

And now before we go ahead to this week’s version of the second imperative, we will discuss “Problems.” Who will propose the problem?

RAKOVSKY: I will, Dr. Bergen. Last night as I wrote the day’s entries in my diary, the following predicament occurred to me. Suppose I were on an ocean liner which struck an iceberg and began to sink, and suppose that subsequently I was in the water, holding a spar, unable to swim (although I am able to swim) and another man came towards me and told me that he could not keep afloat much longer unless I let him hold the spar also, but it was obvious that the spar could not support the weight of two men. Furthermore, both myself and my suppliant were adult men, there was no question of a woman or a child. What ought one to do? Ought one to save one’s own life or that of one’s neighbor? How is one to decide, by what measure?

DR. BERGEN: The problem is of no slight interest. Will you attempt an answer, Rosenberg?

ROSENBERG: May I observe parenthetically that the problem is artificial in the sense that most moral questions are not so sharply a choice between the self’s good or another’s, but most ends turn out to be commonly held by the community.

RAKOVSKY [ angered ]: The problem is not artificial. On the contrary, it is just such an acute predicament that bares the moral and cuts away all other considerations.

DR. BERGEN: What is your answer, Rosenberg?

ROSENBERG: As an answer, I can suggest only the questionable one of an effort to decide which man is of greater value, professionally let us say, to humanity. A lawyer ought to sacrifice his life for a doctor. [ Laughter ] A good doctor, I mean. But I admit that one could hardly make a thorough inquiry into a man’s professional capacities while in the water. [ Laughter ]

DR. BERGEN: Your answer is weak and perhaps begs the question again. The good of humanity may be divided and contradictory. I will consider this matter myself and afford you the intuitive reply next week.

MRS. BERGEN [ to DR. NEWMAN , sotto voce ]: He stares at the sky until an answer comes to him. That is what he means by an intuitive reply.

DR. BERGEN: Let us continue with the second imperative. You will observe that a number of modifications have been made since last week. These changes flow from a greater grasp of the inspiration which the deity’s blue eye affords me.

You are with each other, you are not alone, you depend on each other, and you speak to each other.

To further a desire, or to make an hour interesting, or in order to have a friend and engage his affection,

Or to increase the aura and warmth of company, while eating or in the theatre or while two are alone and with their hands seek each other,

So that, in this ineluctable mixture of lives, the necessity of speech requires the perfect effort to speak

The word which occurs to you, the thought which oppresses you, the anger or love

Which rises to the fluent or hesitant tongue, which rises and is suppressed because of fear or tact or in order to avoid laughter.

Suppress nothing. Speak your whole mind fully and lucidly and without omission,

Do not exclude the least childlike pun, the sudden nonsense syllable, the comment which will surely be nursed in resentment.

For frankness, sincerity, articulation, explicitness are the attributes of the man aware that God’s blue eye regards him.

Permit yourself to be ridiculous as a man weeping, an actor hissed, a girl deliberately tripped.

Adopt with voluntary act the naive, the ingenuous, the stupid.

Accept harm

Until you are certain that you know what you do, and why your act is enacted, and that your whole heart and mind have consented.

Let every emotion be large, black and white, scrawled upon your countenance as a cartoon,

Gross, clumsy, foolish.

Pride, dignity, assurance

Are nothing without the power of righteousness, but once righteous.

They are garments, sweet fruits, the best pleasures of man.

[ There is a pause. The DISCIPLES are obviously moved, and they display their emotions differently. ]

DR. BERGEN: Let us continue with the third imperative in this week’s formulation, omitting today your proposal of “Questions of Exact Communication.” I will answer tomorrow, Herriot, your question as to how to communicate exactly the feeling of respect in the midst of desire, and the emotion of wishing to teach and yet not presume complete superiority.