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

Think of the objects for which you care. Discover why you care for them. Be conscious of the different worth you confer upon them, which would be surrendered, exchanged or passed over, which things are equivalent to life itself for you.

Because man’s desires govern his acts, if he governs them; because his desires are himself as an acting being and because by his desires and his choices man must be judged and understood,

Resort to a painstaking examination in the fullness of consciousness, examine your desires in the detail of a moment, seize the moment of feeling, grasp the care involved in such statements as “salt,” “sugar,” “a gleaming automobile,”

“The pungency of tobacco,” “the crinkling of her cheeks when she smiles,” “the pleasant sense of health which flows from a dinner well-digested,”

“The continuous exercise of the much-used body,” “the complexities of sleep when at times the mind confronts itself,” “the look of the white pitcher upon the brown dresser,” “the distortion of tiredness, weakness, and pain.”

Examine the times and conditions of these cares, the circumstances upon which they depend, the hours and the places when they become without meaning for you,

As well as the environment of their full meaning. Decide once and for all which sentiments, which cares, which desires are most permanent, justifiable, and necessary.

Your decision decides your fate, your decision can be true only if you open your heart and give your mind to that being whose blue eye is actual in the arching, domed, and ineluctable scene which is infinite overhead, your decision before that being’s blue eye,

In whom “Justice,” “Truth,” “Beauty,” are genuine and absolute.

[ There is a pause. DR. BERGEN appears to be exhausted. Then, raising his voice, he addresses DR. NEWMAN.]

I hope that you do not find our ritual too oppressive, Dr. Newman. [ Several DISCIPLES turn to look at DR. NEWMAN.]

DR. NEWMAN: On the contrary, I have been completely absorbed. Please go ahead. I am very much impressed by the somewhat intellectual character of your doctrines, which is so different from the emphasis upon emotion in most latter-day religious societies.

DR. BERGEN: Thank you. I regard that as praise. [ To the DISCIPLES.] Let us continue. I now ask each of you to render “Witness and Testimony” to your inmost cares, thoughts, and observations. Each one in turn. And let me quote from the second imperative: “Speaking your whole mind fully and lucidly and without omission, nothing excluded because of fear or tact or in order to avoid laughter.” In your usual order, beginning with Herriot.

HERRIOT: Last summer by means of playing tennis for five hours every day, I gained poise, dignity, bearing, rid myself of shyness, spoke with complete assurance. This effect has made me meditate on the relationship of the body to the mind. They seem to be one. And yet they seem to be two. Is consciousness the inside of what is seen from the outside as the nervous system? Is the spirit of man merely his nervous system? I do not think so.

DR. BERGEN: Thank you Herriot. I would remind you that we are not engaged in “Problems.” But your problem is very important and I will seek the intuitive answer. Schmidt!

SCHMIDT: I have been troubled by sexual desire. I reflected on the mot of a few years back: “Sexual intercourse is the lyricism of the people.” I remembered with a kind of sad glee my previous habit of asking all adults whom I encountered: “Have you had your orgasm today?” [ Laughter .]

MRS. BERGEN [ interrupts, in an anguished voice ]: Felix, is it necessary that Martha hear all these things? Is it absolutely necessary?

DR. BERGEN: It is necessary, absolutely [ ironically mimicking her ]. Nothing may be secret or undisclosed. The secret corrupts. Thank you for being frank, sincere and explicit, Schmidt. Rakovsky!

RAKOVSKY: I summed up all the acts for which I have been unable to forgive myself. How, meeting S. last week, I fell into an attitude immediately, an attitude full of lies, though I wished merely to tell him of how radically my life had been altered. I had to compose, invent. I could not tell the truth without improving it, because the truth does not satisfy me. When shall I be truthful, utterly candid?

DR. BERGEN: Thank you. You have been candid today. Frietsch.

FRIETSCH: Last night I said to myself: what is there left of the day’s activity? Can anything be said of it but this, that it consisted of waiting for the moment of lucidity and prayer? We know not what we do from day to day until some external demand compels us, creates a great unrest and we work with immense nervousness until a whole is completed, so that we will be able to return to the other unrest of waiting. If it were true that our lives were created by our own wills… but the will is said to be a myth, hypostatized. This is the most modern belief, that what we call the will is muscular tension.

DR. BERGEN: Thank you, Frietsch. Your testimony is completely adequate. You too raise a problem demanding intuitive consideration. Rosenberg!

ROSENBERG: I considered the poor, how their lives are sucked from them in a thousand unseen ways. In work is happiness. Such is the old thought, I said to myself, old and no longer true for the work of the poor is the degradation of the automaton, the acquisition of perfectly behaving nervous reflexes until all sensitivity and imagination have been destroyed. Yet who would be happy? Children give no thought to happiness. Only brides embarking upon marriage think in such terms. The word “embark” betrays the inexactitude of the thought. Yet happiness may be the only term for the possession of all intrinsic goods.

DR. BERGEN: Thank you, Rosenberg. You are still concerned, quite rightly, with the injustices of society. Perry!

PERRY: I was concerned with understanding my adolescent passions — professional baseball and playing cards. I saw that the essence of baseball was constituted by the element of contingency. The game was a framework for spontaneous drama, quickly-rising. I remembered my greatest excitement: the World Series in which the conclusion was this — a base runner attempting to score from second base on a sharp and hard-hit single to right field. If he was safe, the score would be tied. The right fielder threw perfectly to the catcher on one bounce, a long and fatal arc, and the base runner was tagged out sliding into the catcher in a burst of dust, and the team for which I rooted had been defeated in the contest for the world’s championship. Reflecting upon this and gazing upon the sky, I understood that contingency is the most intoxicating of liquors, and I saw that this obsession also created the love of gambling. It was an interest in the processes of chance, which in turn depended upon our hope and poverty and wish to get rich quick, a sudden vast acquisition, which was in turn our enormous interest in the grace of God.

DR. BERGEN: Thank you. That is very interesting and useful. Porter!

PORTER: Dr. Bergen, I too considered games and remembered how in playing tennis, the racquet with which I swung toward my opponent seemed to me to be my will, and his racquet, his will — both adolescent swords.

DR. BERGEN: You are permitting your fellows to suggest the terms and the character of your thought to you. You ought to look into your own mind with greater care and freshness, Porter. Montez!

MONTEZ: I looked at the heaven at night, and it seemed to me, Dr. Bergen, that the stars might be compared to diamonds, and diamonds might in turn be compared to the values which surround the heart of man, so that there was this triple analogy — stars, diamonds, values, and the heart of man in the midst of them.