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PARTISAN REVI EW
ICARUS GROUNDED
DELMORE SCHWARTZ: THE LIFE OF AN AMERICAN POET. By
James Atlas.
Farrar, Straus and G iroux. $15. 00.
When he spoke, his hearers saw thunders and heard light–
nings, antinomi es crumbl ed, he battered a subj ect like a heavy bag,
sprang farfetched conceits, quoted a Greek, a Shakespea re, a stumbl e–
bum in a seedy gym, lapsed into
echt-
Joyce, di scoursed on " bi g
broads," the deteriora tion of Ameri can gin, why Mel Ott raised hi s foot
so high before swinging, the dea th wish of Ameri can capitalism, who
made it with Warren Harding's fourth cousin 's third wife, wh y Marx
fai led, how Freud blew it, why Trotsky was like Kafka and Kafk a
like Chaplin and Chaplin like, well, Trotsky, dropped hints about
all egories, keys to, bombshell s to come, and loved most of all to pro–
nounce definitively, beginning " the poet is," "poetry must," "Amer–
ica means," "Europe was," " money today," " th e Jewi sh poet in
America shou ld," etc.
When Delmore Schwa rtz was in his twenti es he di sproved th at
Christian stuff about the way up being the way down. The way up was
the way up.
If
one had a grand purpose, deta il s fell into place. Talk
turned into lectures, lectures into articl es, articl es into books; chance
metaphors became profound poems, anecdo tes became sto ries, novels,
Broadway plays, film scripts tha t meant mounta ins of money, a
plenitude of gorgeous women , a permanent place on magazine mast–
heads, distinguished academic faculties, enshrinement in hi story books
and literary pantheons. The presiding Elijahs-Elio t, Pound, Stevens,
Wi ll iams-were anxious
to
cast their resp ective mantl es: the obvio usly
eligibl e Elisha was Delmore Schwartz. Before he was twenty-fi ve he felt
those mantles on hi s shou lders. Could a ll this be happening to a ni ce
New York uptown Jewish boy? Wha t would be left for an encore? The
wheel of fortune had an old tri ck pl ay of raising high those consigned
to the deepes t pit.
On February 1, 1938, poised for the publica tion of
In Dreams
Begin R esponsib ilities,
he confesses to James Laughlin , hi s champi on
and publisher, that praise and bounty "are accumul a tin g
to
the po int
where I am going to be terrifi ed. "
It
can 't last. I can 't be being praised for the right reasons by so many
people, it is much too soon, and it is taking my mind away from
working. I hope that it does no t make you expect me to p rogress in a
straight line. . . .
