Delmore Schwartz

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Poet and critic Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966) stunned the literary world with the breathtaking achievement of his first published volume in 1938, earning him adulation as "the American Auden." His early success raised critical expectations that Schwartz could never fulfill. Depression and alcoholism marked his later years. Through both his art and his tragic death, Schwartz influenced such literary legatees as John Berryman and Robert Lowell.

Delmore Schwartz was born in Brooklyn, New York on December 8, 1913. His parents, Harry and Rose (Nathanson) Schwartz, were immigrants from Romania, part of the first great wave of Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe. Harry Schwartz grew prosperous in the real estate business, enabling the couple to move to an affluent Brooklyn neighborhood. When their first son was born, they gave him a traditional Jewish middle name, David, but a first name, Delmore, they intended to sound sophisticated and "American." Always sensitive about his first name, Schwartz would later deal with the issue in his poetry. Rose Schwartz gave birth to a second child, Kenneth, in 1916. Marital problems, caused in part by Harry Schwartz's philandering, plagued their relationship. The couple separated for a time in 1923.

A precocious child with a flair for mimicry, Delmore Schwartz nonetheless had a difficult time in grade school. His only good subject was English, because it engaged his active imagination. His parents' tumultuous marriage, which ended in divorce in 1927, gave the boy plenty of material for morose reflection. He spent his time writing about his feelings in a series of journals. Early in childhood, Schwartz decided to become a poet.

Teachers who read Schwartz's early writing encouraged him to develop his talents. As a teenager, he began to identify with the European avant-garde. His early verses were published for the first time in the Poet's Pack of George Washington High School in 1929. That same year, Schwartz's family lost much of its savings in the stock market crash. His father died in June 1930. An unscrupulous executor embezzled the small amount of money that remained in hie estate after the collapse. At the age of 16, Delmore Schwartz was left practically penniless and without an inheritance. His mother now provided his only means of support

College Years

After graduating from high school, Schwartz enrolled in a college prep course at New York's Columbia University. In 1931, he transferred to the University of Wisconsin, where he was exposed to Marxist philosophy and the bohemian ethic. Schwartz did not apply himself too diligently to his studies, however, and he left the university in June 1932, without completing his final exams.

Schwartz returned to New York City and enrolled at New York University. Schwartz took courses in classical, analytical, and contemporary philosophy. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1935. While at NYU, Schwartz and a group of fellow students founded Mosaic, a literary magazine devoted to Marxist aesthetics. Norman Macleod, R.P. Blackmur, and William Carlos Williams were a few of the prominent poets and critics who had their work published in Mosaic. As editor, Schwartz used the publication as a vehicle to air his own critical opinions. His essays earned the attention of the New York literary community.

Working Writer

After completing his undergraduate degree, Schwartz began graduate study in philosophy at Harvard University. He remained there for the better part of two years, but left without receiving any kind of degree. During that time, Schwartz continued to write poems and critical essays, including some well-received translations of the French symbolist poet, Arthur Rimbaud. His work was published in Poetry magazine, and he was awarded the Bowdoin Prize for best essay by a graduate student in the humanities. In 1936, his poem Choosing Company was published in American Caravanmagazine. Schwartz later explained that this poem illustrated the two difficulties he struggled with in his work: "trying to make a dramatic image of an idea" and "trying to make dramatic poetry out of American speech."

During his second year at Harvard, Schwartz's mother informed him that she could no longer support him financially. So, in March 1937, Schwartz returned once more to New York City. He was now devoted to working full-time as a writer and critic. Later that year, editor James Laughlin included some of Schwartz's poems in his annual anthology New Directions in Prose and Poetry. Schwartz's criticism, fiction, and poetry also appeared in the pages of such eminent literary magazines as Poetry and Partisan Review.

Rising Star

Although Schwartz had yet to publish his first collection of poems, he was already being singled out as one of America's most promising young writers. Critics likened him to W.H. Auden and Hart Crane. In 1938, he attempted to meet those lofty expectations with his debut collection In Dreams Begin Responsibilities. The book, whose title was inspired by a line from William Butler Yeats, included a short story and a play, alongside numerous poems. It was widely praised as an audacious mix of styles and forms, proof positive of Schwartz's virtuoso mastery of the language. "[N]o first book of this decade in American poetry has been more authoritative or more significant than this one," wrote critic G.M. O'Donnell in the pages of Poetry magazine.

Still only 25, Schwartz was now recognized as one of America's pre-eminent poets. In June 1938 he married Gertrude Buckman, a high school friend. The couple divorced six years later. Schwartz's lofty reputation suffered the following year, when his translation of Rimbaud's A Season in Hell was criticized for its many verbal and grammatical errors. A shame-faced Schwartz was forced to revise the translation for publication the following year.

Literary Fixture

In 1940, Schwartz was appointed Briggs-Copeland Instructor in English Composition at Harvard. He was granted a Guggenheim Fellowship, a cash grant which allowed him the freedom to complete the manuscript of a new verse play, Shenandoah. The new work, which was published in 1941, examined the naming rites of a Jewish child in the Bronx. Reviews were mostly negative, causing some to question whether Schwartz would ever live up to the promise of In Dreams Begin Responsibilities.

Schwartz was named the poetry editor for the Partisan Review in 1943. He remained with the magazine for the next four years, using the influential position to publish the works of other young poets. Schwartz also continued to write his own poetry. His semi-autobiographical piece Genesis: Book One, intended as the first book of a multi-volume epic, was his most ambitious work to date. Critics responded unfavorably, however, causing Schwartz to doubt his own creative abilities.

A better reception greeted The World Is A Wedding, a collection of Schwartz's short stories which appeared in 1948. "In so far as authenticity means truth, these short stories are the most authentic I have read in a long time," declared critic John Hay in the pages of Commonwealth. Shortly before the book's publication, Schwartz stepped down from his teaching post at Harvard and gave up the editorship at Partisan Review. He retained the post of associate editor and lectured on a visiting basis at such institutions as New York University, Princeton University, and the University of Chicago. Schwartz married for the second time, to Elizabeth Pollett, in June 1949.

Later Works

In 1950, Schwartz published his next major volume of poetry, Vaudeville for a Princess and Other Poems. The 56 poems reflected a prevailing sense of failure and regret, which some critics attributed to Schwartz's inability to live up to the potential of his earlier work. Whether he was disappointed in the critical response to this volume or not, Schwartz spent most of the next decade writing only occasionally for magazines and anthologies. In 1955, he left the Partisan Review to take over as poetry editor of the New Republic, where he remained until 1957. His marriage to Elizabeth Pollett ended in divorce in 1955.

A retrospective collection of Schwartz's work Summer Knowledge: New and Selected Poems, 1938-1958 was published in 1959. More than half the poems in the collection were drawn from In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, with only three coming from Vaudeville for a Princess and Other Poems. Schwartz personally re-ordered and re-titled some of the poems, and included a few of his more recent efforts. For the most part, critics dismissed these newer works as embarrassingly sentimental and labored, but praised the collection as a whole.

Long out of critical fashion, Schwartz enjoyed a brief revival of his reputation in the early 1960s. Summer Knowledge: New and Selected Poems, 1938-1958 received the Shelley Memorial Prize, earning Schwartz a $1100 award. In 1960, the poet was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry, and with it a stipend of $2500. A second volume of Schwartz's short fiction, Successful Love and Other Stories appeared in 1961.

Final Years

Despite these accolades, Schwartz remained a troubled, unhappy man. He believed that critical recognition had come too late to save his tattered reputation as a poet who had showed early promise, but failed to live up to it. He wrote very little during the final six years of his life. In place of poetry, Schwartz filled his life with a diet of liquor, barbiturates, and amphetamines. His physical and mental condition deteriorated precipitously. Friends and supporters repeatedly tried to steer Schwartz away from his chemical dependencies, but their efforts proved fruitless. Novelist Saul Bellow, a friend of Schwartz's, based the title character of his classic Humboldt's Gift on the despondent, ruined poet.

Schwartz's condition became so grave that he was repeatedly committed for psychiatric treatment at New York's Bellevue Hospital. He resisted all treatment, however, and in January 1966 he left home to take up lodging in a succession of dilapidated hotels across the state of New York. On the morning of July 11, 1966 Schwartz suffered a massive heart attack while riding an elevator in New York City. His body lay in the morgue for two days before being identified. Coroners later determined that a lethal mixture of alcohol and drugs probably caused the poet's death.

Further Reading

Atlas, James, Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet Farrar, Straus, and Guroux, 1997.

Bawer, Bruce, The Middle Generation: The Lives and Poetry of Delmore Schwartz, Randall Jarrell, John Berryman, and Robert Lowell Archon Books, 1986.

McDougall, Richard, Delmore Schwartz Twayne, 1974.

Phillips, Robert S., Letters of Delmore Schwartz Ontario Review Press, 1984.

Quotes:

"Time is the school in which we learn, time is the fire in which we burn."

Delmore Schwartz (8 December 1913 – 11 July 1966) was an American poet and short story writer from Brooklyn, New York.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Published works 3 Trivia 4 References 5 External links

Biography

Schwartz was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. His parents separated when he was nine, and their divorce had a profound effect on him.

Schwartz spent time at Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin before finally graduating from New York University in 1935. Soon after graduation, he made his parents' disastrous marriage the subject of his most famous short story, "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" which was published in 1937 in the first issue of Partisan Review.^[1] This and other short stories and poems were collected and released in his first book, under the same name (1938). (The story was later republished in the collection In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories (1978).) This first work was well received, and made him a well-known figure in New York intellectual circles. His work received praise from some of the most respected people in literature, and he was considered one of the most gifted writers of his generation.

In 1937, he also married his first wife, a book reviewer for Partisan Review, Gertrude Buckman, whom he divorced after six years.

For the next couple of decades, he continued to publish stories, poems and plays, and edited the Partisan Review from 1943 to 1955 as well as The New Republic. In 1948, he married the much younger novelist, Elizabeth Pollett. This relationship also ended in divorce.

In 1959, he became the youngest-ever recipient of the Bollingen Prize, awarded for a collection of poetry he published that year, Summer Knowledge: New and Selected Poems. His poetry differed in many respects from his stories in that it was not especially autobiographical and was much more philosophical. His verse would also become increasingly abstract in his later years. He taught creative writing at six different universities, including Syracuse, Princeton, and Kenyon College.

In addition to being known as a gifted writer, Schwartz was considered a great conversationalist and spent much time entertaining friends at the White Horse Tavern in New York City.

Much of Schwartz's work is notable for its philosophical and deeply meditative nature, and the literary critic, R.W. Flint, wrote that Schwartz's stories were, "the definitive portrait of the Jewish middle class in New York during the Depression."^[2]

He was unable to repeat or build on his early successes later in life as a result of alcoholism and mental illness, and his last years were spent in reclusion at the Hotel Marlon in New York City (this downward spiral following his initial success formed the basis for Saul Bellow's novel Humboldt's Gift (1975). In fact, Schwartz was so isolated from the rest of the world that when he died on July 11, 1966 at age 53, two days passed before hotel management discovered his body.

Schwartz was interred at Cedar Park Cemetery, in Emerson, New Jersey. ^[3]

Published works

• In Dreams Begin Responsibilities (1938), a collection of short stories and poems
• Shenandoah (1941), a verse play
• Genesis (1943), a prose poem about the growth of a human being
• World Is a Wedding (1948), a collection of short stories
• Vaudeville for a Princess and Other Poems (1950)
• Summer Knowledge: New and Selected Poems (1959)
• Successful Love and Other Stories (1961)
• In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories (1978), a short story collection

Published posthumously:

• Selected Essays (1970, ed. Donald Dike, David Zucker)
• Letters of Delmore Schwartz (1984, ed. Robert Phillips)
• The Ego Is Always at the Wheel: Bagatelles (1986, ed. Robert Phillips), a collection of humorously whimsical short essays
• Last and Lost Poems (1989, ed. New Directions Publishing)

Trivia

• The last episode of the TV show My So-Called Life was named "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities."

• In the U2 song "Acrobat (song)", Bono references "In Dreams Begin Responsibilites" in the lyric.

• Schwartz had the rock star Lou Reed as one of his students at Syracuse University and reportedly told Reed at one point, "You can write—and if you ever sell out and there's a Heaven from which you can be haunted, I'll haunt you."^[4] He attended Schwartz's funeral in 1966 and dedicated several songs to his mentor (most notably "European Son" from The Velvet Underground and Nico and "My House" from The Blue Mask).

• In the film Star Trek: Generations, while conversing with Captain Picard, Dr. Tolian Soran uses the line "...time is the fire in which we burn", which is in the poem "Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day".

• Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum's collection Essential Cinema: On the Necessity of Film Canons includes an essay titled "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities: Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut"

• The title of his story "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" came from the Irish poet William Butler Yeats' 1914 volume of poems Responsibilities, which has an epigraph "In dreams begins responsibility," attributed to an "Old play."

• John Berryman dedicated his book His Toy, His Dream, His Rest "to the sacred memory of Delmore Schwartz" and wrote 12 elegiac poems in Schwartz's honor in this book.^[5]

• The Delmore effect, a term in psychology, occurs when attention is directed toward low priority goals rather than more pressing ones, and the term was derived from Delmore Schwartz since, according to Standford's psych department, Schwartz had a pattern of this type of behavior.^[6]

References

1. ^ Howe, Irving. Foreword. In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories. By Delmore Schwartz. New York: New Directions, 1978. vii.
2. ^ Flint, R.W. "The Stories of Delmore Schwartz." Commentary, April 1962.
3. ^ "Sometimes the Grave Is a Fine and Public Place". New York Times. March 28, 2004. "Cedar Park Cemetery in Paramus [sic] tends toward performers. Martin Balsam, who won both a Tony and an Oscar was buried there in 1996. Joe E. Lewis, the comic whose rough life was portrayed by Frank Sinatra in the 1957 movie, The Joker Is Wild, is nearby. (As are two illustrious nonperformers, the Nobel Prize writer Isaac Bashevis Singer and the poet Delmore Schwartz.)" 
4. ^ Bockris, Victor (2002). Up-tight: The Velvet Underground story. Omnibus Press. ISBN 0711991707. 
5. ^ Berryman, John. His Toy, His Dream, His Rest. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1968.
6. ^ http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~wit/PhDraft.pdf

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Delmore Schwartz

• Delmore Schwartz Papers at Yale University Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
• Delmore Schwartz-The Academy of American Poets
• Arguing the World a PBS documentary
• 64 Poems by Delmore Schwartz

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