ISAAC ROSE NFELD
Isaac Rosenfeld, long a contributor to this magazine and
one of America's finest writers, died in July in Chicago at the age
of thirty-eight. About twenty-five years ago in Chicago Isaac and I
became close friends, and now the editors who were the first
to
recognize
his great talents have asked me to write a few last words about him.
What shall those last words be? There is something in Isaac that
repels last words. The traits that make a man most real and draw the
love of others to him are also his most mysterious traits. The better
we know them the less we can say about them. This reality, so concrete
it almost challenges death, is too mysterious to be named. Shall I tell
how he hummed, how he smoked a cigarette, how he laughed at the
end of a story, how he spoke when he was in deepest eamest? I can't.
He was no ordinary man. He swayed his friends with an unknown
power. We called it "charm," "wisdom," "genius." In the end, with
a variety of intonations, we could find nothing to call it but "Isaac."
So-no last words. The only way to him that lies open to me now
is that of recollection.
It is late afternoon, a spring day, and the Tuley Debating Club
is meeting on the second floor of the old building, since destroyed by
fire . T he black street doors are open, the skate wheels are buzzing on
the hollow concrete and the handbaIls strike the walls with a taut
puncturing sound. Upstairs, I hold the gavel. Isaac rises and asks for
the floor. He has a round face, somewhat pale, glasses, and his light
hair is combed back with earnestness and maturity. He is wearing short
pants. His subject is
The World as Will and Idea,
and he speaks
with perfect authority. He is very serious. He has read Schopenhauer.
Another day, a few years later: he is living on the South Side,
attending the University of Chicago. Oscar Tarcov and I come to visit
him. His father's house is always neat, but Isaac's room is a wilderness.
He is there with shades drawn and lights burning all day; on his small
tottering desk is a huge torn Webster's Dictionary, and on the dictionary
a large office typewriter. There is a small bust of Beethoven and a blue
