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

JACK STRAUSS: To me, Shenandoah is a beautiful name, original and strange. I will give fifty dollars to be this boy’s godfather.

ELSIE FISH [ to her sister, EDITH]: He is just trying to win favor with the man he works for.

BERTHA LASKY [ to her husband ]: What’s the matter with you? Make an offer quickly: don’t let him get ahead of you.

HARRY LASKY: I will give sixty dollars to be the boy’s godfather—

JACK STRAUSS: I will go higher and make it seventy-five—

WALTER FISH: Gentlemen, Gentlemen: you will make me think I ought to have a few children a week.

SHENANDOAH:

Clearly these business men feel in the father

A man whose day will come: he will be rich,

They feel his power. They feel his strength. He is

A man whose friendship must be cultivated,

sought and won—

ELSIE FISH: Walter, you promised me. I want my brother Nathan to be the child’s godfather.

WALTER FISH: I promised you and I will keep my promise. Nathan is a fine young man, studious and intelligent. What better godfather could a child be given than a promising young doctor? Nothing is too good for my son. Thank you, Jack and Harry, when the boy is old enough I will tell him how much money you were willing to spend to be the boy’s godfather. No doubt, he will then feel kindly to you.

SHENANDOAH:

He has a brutal tongue, cannot resist

Speaking his brutal insights as if

No one else knew the human heart. Yet this

Proves that such motives are intense in him,

How would he know them, why would he mock them,

Smiling with keen pleasure when he sees them

At work in other hearts, except in great

Relief at finding colleagues, finding peers?

JACK STRAUSS: I bet the boy will make a million dollars—

HARRY LASKY: I bet that he will be a famous lawyer—

GRANDMOTHER HARRIS: I hope that he will be a famous doctor—

SHENANDOAH:

How utterly they miss the mark, how shocked,

How horrified if they but knew what I

Will one day be: if from their point of view

They saw me truly, saw my true colors,

grasped

And understood the rôle of my profession!

O, their emotions would approximate

Those of a man who has found out his wife

Has been unfaithful or was born Chinese—

[ Enter NATHAN HARRIS, a good-looking and tall young man who has recently become a doctor. It is obvious as he is greeted that he is well-liked and respected by all and as he shakes hands, his boundless self-assurance and sense of authority shows itself. ]

NATHAN HARRIS: Where is my wonderful nephew, Jacob or Jacky Fish?

ELSIE FISH: Nathan, we have decided to give him another name since my father-in-law has the same name. We are going to call him Shenandoah—

NATHAN HARRIS: Shenandoah! How in a hundred years did you think of such a foolish name?

WALTER FISH: I fail to see anything foolish about Shenandoah?

NATHAN HARRIS: It is foolish in every way. It does not sound right with Fish. The association of ideas is appalling. The boy will be handicapped as if he had a clubfoot. When he grows up, he will dislike his name and blame you for giving it to him.

SHENANDOAH:

How moved I am! how much he understands!

He is both right and wrong. He sees the danger,

But does not see the strange effect to come:

Yet what a friend he is to me, how close

I feel to him! He means well and he knows

How difficult Life is,

climbing on hands and knees—

JACK STRAUSS: You are exaggerating, Dr. Harris.

HARRY LASKY: This is not a matter of the human body, in which you are an expert, Dr. Harris.

NATHAN HARRIS: No, not the human body, but the human soul: nothing is more important than a name. He will be mocked by other boys when he goes to school because his name is so peculiar—

SHENANDOAH:

He is intelligent, that’s obvious:

Perhaps his youth permits a better view

Of cultural conditions of the Age—

NATHAN HARRIS: Don’t you see how pretentious the name is?

WALTER FISH: Nathan, there is nothing wrong with me. I am as good as the next one and maybe better. My son has a right to a pretentious name.

NATHAN HARRIS: Walter, to be pretentious means to show off foolishly.

[ The infant has begun to cry again and cries louder as they quarrel. ]

WALTER FISH: Thank you very much for explaining the English language to me. That’s very pretentious of you—

NATHAN HARRIS: Excuse me, Walter: what I meant to say is that the two names of Shenandoah and Fish do not go well together—

WALTER FISH: I suppose you think something like Fresh Fish would be better? [ Laughter from the others. ]

NATHAN HARRIS: All right, go ahead and laugh. But if this helpless infant is going to be named Shenandoah, I don’t want to be his godfather.

WALTER FISH: Don’t do me any favors! Others are willing to pay for the privilege. I am glad that you don’t want to be his godfather—

NATHAN HARRIS: I am glad that you are glad!

GRANDMOTHER HARRIS: Nathan, don’t lose your temper. What a shame, to quarrel on a day like this: what will the minister think?

WALTER FISH: He has come here to insult me and to insult an eight-day old child. Who do you think you are, anyway? Just because you are a doctor does not mean you are better than us in every respect—

ELSIE FISH: Nathan, you ought to be ashamed of yourself: you should have heard the fine things Walter was just saying about you and how he wanted you to be the boy’s godfather. I was the one who chose the name of Shenandoah—

NATHAN HARRIS: Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself! I am not going to stay here another moment to see a helpless child punished for the rest of his life because his parents have an inadequate understanding of the English language—

[NATHAN goes out as everyone follows him, trying to stop his departure. The child is given to SHENANDOAH again. Spotlight and half-light once more, as SHENANDOAH comes to the footlights, trying to stop the child’s tears. ]

SHENANDOAH:

This is hardly the last time, little boy,

That conflict will engage the consciousness

Of those who might admire Nature, pray to God,

Make love, make friends, make works of art,

make peace—

O no! hardly the last time: in the end

All men may seem essential boxers, hate

May seem the energy which drives the stars,

( L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle! )

And war as human as the beating heart:

So Hegel and Empedocles have taught.

— It is impossible to tell you now

How many world-wide causes work this room

To bring about the person of your name:

Europe! America! the fear of death!

Belief and half-belief in Zion’s word!

The order of a community in which

The lower middle class looks up and gapes

And strives to imitate the sick élite

In thought, in emptiness, in luxury;

Also the foreigner whose foreign-ness

Names his son native, speaking broken English—

Enough! for this is obvious enough:

Let us consider where the great men are

Who will obsess this child when he can read:

Joyce is in Trieste in a Berlitz school,

Teaching himself the puns of Finnegans Wake —

Eliot works in a bank and there he learns

The profit and the loss, the death of cities—

Pound howls at him, finds what expatriates

Can find,

culture in chaos all through time,

Like a Picasso show! Rilke endures

Of silence and of solitude the unheard music

In empty castles which great knights have left—

Yeats too, like Rilke, on old lords’ estates,