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

DR. ADAMSON [ to himself ]: Forbearance and humility are best: what good will it do for me to become angry? The modern world is what it is.

[WALTER goes out to call. DR. ADAMSON helps himself to a piece of fruit from the buffet. ]

SHENANDOAH:

His feelings have been hurt. The war between

Divine and secular authority,

Is old as man in Nature! Ah, he knows

He is a kind of chauffeur and no more,

Hence he adjusts himself with a piece of fruit—

[WALTER can be seen in the hallway, holding up the telephone to his mouth. ]

WALTER FISH: Hello, Kelly: this is Fish. Fine and they’re fine too. Nothing like being a father. And how are you? And the wife and children? That’s good. Sorry to disturb you on a Sunday (hope you put in a good word for me with the Almighty! ha! ha!) I have a problem on my hands and I could use some of your advice (just put it on the bill, ha! ha!).

SHENANDOAH:

For this did Alexander Graham Bell

Rack his poor wits? For this? Was it for this

The matchless English language was evolved

To signify the inexhaustible world?

WALTER FISH: You know how today we are giving my boy a name. The ceremony is just like a christening, except that it’s different — Yes, ha! ha!

NATHAN HARRIS [ To the rest, who are listening intently ]: What a marvellous sense of humor—

WALTER FISH: I would like to have invited you, but you know how it is. Now the thing is this: we thought of naming the boy Shenandoah. Yes, Shenandoah: it seems to be some place down South. But my brother-in-law is making a scene about the whole thing. He says the name is no good—

NATHAN HARRIS: As if it were merely a matter of opinion!

SHENANDOAH:

Ah, what a friend! How close I feel to him!

Almost as close as to that sobbing child—

WALTER FISH: I don’t agree with him. It sounds fine to me, very impressive. But this is not the kind of thing you like to take a chance about. After all, a name is one of those permanent things. People will be calling him that every day in his life. O, now you’re joking: sure, Francis is a fine name, but not for us. It would not go well with Fish—

NATHAN HARRIS: Inch by inch, against enormous odds, a certain amount of progress is, with luck, made now and then—

GRANDMOTHER HARRIS: Nathan, be quiet: no more fighting—

WALTER FISH: Now what do you think of Shenandoah, Kelly?

SHENANDOAH:

Mark the dominion of the Gentile world:

This Irish Catholic will not quote Aquinas

Who wrote a treatise on the names of God—

WALTER FISH: Are your sure? All right, then Shenandoah it will be! Many thanks, and give my best to Mary: good-bye—

[WALTER returns to the dining room with a look of triumph. ]

WALTER FISH: He says it is a fine name, an elegant name. He guarantees that it is a good name! What have you to say now, Nathan? I suppose you think you know more than Kelly?

NATHAN HARRIS: I give up. No one can say I did not do my best—

WALTER FISH: Let’s shake hands, Nathan, let’s eliminate all hard feelings. I am sorry that I lost my temper. Some day the two of us will tell the boy about today and the three of us will have a good laugh about the whole thing from beginning to end—

NATHAN HARRIS: He may not share your sense of humor—

DR. ADAMSON: Yes! let kindness, forgiveness, good will, and rejoicing triumph in every heart on a day like this, the day which belongs to the first-born child.

NATHAN HARRIS: Here is my hand, Walter, but my left hand is for little Shenandoah!

[ He stretches out his left hand at an angle toward the bassinet. SHENANDOAH stretches out his hand to NATHAN . But NATHAN’s back is turned. ]

SHENANDOAH:

Nathan! here is my hand, across the years—

[SHENANDOAH regards his unacknowledged hand with great sadness .]

I am divorced from those I love, my peers!

DR. ADAMSON: This is the way that all conflicts should end. They should end with a sacred rite. Nothing is so beautiful, nothing is so good for the heart and the soul, and the mind as a ceremony well-performed. Let us go into the next room and begin the ritual of circumcision. The sacred nature of the rite will uplift our hearts—

JACOB FISH: This ceremony of circumcision gives me more pleasure, the older I get, although I hardly know why. And after that, the food and drink: no matter how old one is, that makes Life worth living, if one has a good stomach—

SHENANDOAH:

Prime Mover of this day, you are a card!

How many lives the Pleasure-Principle

Rules like an insane king,

even in dreams—

[ The men begin to go to into the living room. The women remain behind, for they are barred from the ceremony. SHENANDOAH takes the infant in haste, and stands before the curtain. ]

They are about to give this child a name

And circumcise his foreskin. How profound

Are all these ancient rites: for with a wound

— What better sign exists — the child is made

A Jew forever! quickly taught the life

That he must lead, an heir to lasting pain:

Do I exaggerate, do I with hindsight see

The rise of Hitler?

O the whole of history

Testifies to the chosen people’s agony,

— Chosen for wandering and alienation

In every kind of life, in every nation—

VOICE FROM THE LIVING ROOM: May the All-Merciful bless the father and mother of the child; may they be worthy to rear him, to initiate him in the precepts of the Law, and to train him in wisdom—

[ There is the sound of moving about and arranging and preparing in the living room. ]

May the All-Merciful bless the godfather who has observed the covenant of Circumcision, and rejoiced exceedingly to perform this deed of piety—

[ Again there is the sound of moving about and murmuring, then a pause and silence, while the faces of the women are turned toward the other room, full of pained sympathy. ]

For thy salvation have I waited, O Lord. I have hoped, O Lord, for thy salvation, and done thy commandments—

[ There is an appalling screech, as of an infant in the greatest pain. ]

And I passed by thee, and I saw thee weltering in thy blood, and I said unto thee, in thy blood, live. Yea, I said unto thee, in thy blood, live.

SHENANDOAH:

Silent, O child, for if a knife can make you cry,

What will you do when you know that you must die?

When the mind howls with the body, I am I?

When the horrors of modern life are your sole place?

When your people are driven from the planet’s face?

When the dying West performs unspeakable disgrace

Against the honor of man, before God’s utter gaze?

Though now and then, like the early morning light’s pure greys,

Transient release is known, in the darkened theater’s plays….

CURTAIN

1. “… Scandinavian ”: A private joke; Schwartz’s brother Kenneth (1916–1990) was the object of ambivalent feelings. Schwartz persistently turned Kenneth into a girl in his autobiographical fiction, as noted by his biographer, James Atlas. See his Delmore Schwartz: The Life of An American Poet (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1977), p. 13.

2. “… passionate intensity —”: Schwartz’s protagonist quotes from Yeats’s poem, “The Second Coming.”

The characteristic of modern poetry which is most discussed is of course its difficulty, its famous obscurity. Certain discussions, usually by contemporary poets, have done much to illuminate the new methods and forms of contemporary poetry. Certain other discussions have illustrated an essential weakness inherent in all readers, the fact that the love of one kind of writing must often interfere with the understanding of another kind. Wordsworth was undoubtedly thinking of this weakness when he wrote, in his justly well-known preface, that