LEITERS
To the Editor:
~r.
Shechner has done a
hatchet job in his review of
Portrait oj
Delmore: Journals and Notes oj Delmore
Schwartz,
1939-1959
(PR
3, 1987).
But Delmore's ghost is very much
alive, and it is ironic that the at–
tempted murder should take place in
Partisan Review
where Delmore was
an editor for many years.
~r.
Shechner is angry at the "aggressive
turn" (by which he means the publi–
cation of unpublished work) "the
movement to resurrect Schwartz has
taken." The early
Journals
are no bet–
ter than a teenager's, he accuses .
When teenagers begin remarking
that Tarzan books are "one of the
products of Darwinian theory" - I
will agree with him.
The general impression left by
~r.
Shechner's review is that the
Journals
are junk (to quote a non–
literary friend). They are not junk.
There are things on every page to ex–
cite and delight, observations, per–
ceptions, miraculously felicitous
phrases, witty and ironic remarks. It
is impossible to read the book with–
out laughter, plain or intellectual.
The review is a personal attack
on Delmore as well as on his cred–
ibility as a man of letters.
~r.
Shechner is furious that Delmore has
been "brought back to life as a sym–
bol of Jewish intellectual life" (and
speaks snidely of a "cottage indus–
try"). He cannot dismiss him as a
Jew, but he can try to destroy his in–
tellectual stature - which he at–
tempts to do without discussing at all
the body of Delmore's published
work. In his list of books and authors
participating in the "resurrection,"
he omits republications (often with
some additions) of essays, stories,
poems. The University of Chicago
Press (essays) cannot, I suppose, be
considered as participating in a "cot–
tage industry." He makes a mean–
spirited attack on the poet Robert
Phillips, who took on the sometimes
onerous and certainly unremunera–
tive task (as Dwight
~acdonald
com–
plained) of literary executor. Del–
more's reputation is quite healthy.
The paperback edition, now in its
eighth printing, of
Selected Poems
(New Directions) continues to excite
and engage the young. (Witness the
title of Richard Grayson's novel,
I
BrakeJor Delmore Schwartz
-
which be–
came a bumper sticker.) The book's
newest audience is in Japan where a
translation is currently selling in the
thousands.
~r.
Shechner writes, "The ter–
rible truth was that behind the po–
etry was a void that Schwartz sought
desperately to fill with words.... "
Poetry does not come out of a void,
nor great poetry or even good poetry
out of an intellectual vacuum.
~r .
Shechner found the
Jour–
nals
painful to read. He reacted with
anger, taking a myopic view and
assailing them as a "twenty-year
pathogram." Suffering is never sim–
ple. It also, as Auden reminds us,
has its "human position" and occurs
while most others are looking else–
where . Icarus fell; the ploughman
ploughed; the ship" ... that must
have seen/ Something amazing, a
boy falling out of the sky,/ Had
somewhere to get to and sailed
calmly on."
The
Journals
are full of suffer–
ing, but not only suffering: they are
