370
PARTISAN REVIEW
first day of official adu lt responsibility. The word "responsibility" in the title
implies that the dream ends with the narrator's acceptance of self-gover–
nance. Thus, the dream of Schwartz's story, reduced to its elements, states
the opposite theme in two parts: 1 dreamed that my actions are my parents'
fault, but then I woke up.
Most deeply, recognizing "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" as a
source for
Purgatory
clarifies that Yeats's Old Man sinned most vilely in
rejecting his parents. But in doing so he abdicated responsibility for his actions,
stagnated his own life in
self~hatred ,
and condemned those around him
to
literal or figurative death.
Coming in
Partisan Review:
• Mario Vargas Llosa:
The Country to Corne
• Julia Kristeva on the French Revolution
• Helen Frankenthaler:
Thoughts Jrorn an Occasional Journal
• William Phillips:
The Function oj Criticisrn Today
• Stanislaw Baranczak:
Letter Jrorn Poland
• Philippe Raynaud:
Ferninisrn and the Ancien Regirne
• Louis Simpson:
A Leave oj Absence
• Peter Loewenberg:
The Uses oj Anxiety
• A.
B. Yehoshua:
The Israeli Novel
• Clancy Sigal:
Second Thoughts
• Anthony Kerrigan:
A Nicaraguan Story
• Nathan Glazer on Life in the Bronx
• Herbert Gold:
A Blazing Inquest
I
