STEVEN
J.
ZIPPERSTEIN
107
around a "helpless, tragic conflict ...a true and acute perception, the
very stuff of which literature is made." Yet, in his memoir
A Margin of
Hope
written some forty years later, he sums up his impressions of the
book quite differently: "Little remains of his flawed, noble spirit. A
minor first novel, some fine critical miniatures, and a legend of charm
and waste." "At thirty-eight," he adds, Rosenfeld "died in lonely sloth."
"Lonely sloth" is the most frequently utilized description for Rosen–
feld; the term recurs, in various guises. Rosenfeld died, it is said often,
alone and in a dreadful room-the most palpable signs of a misspent
life. Rosenfeld himself spoke often of his various, rented rooms. He
described the isolation of his last few years, in particular-an isolation
all the more jarring because for so much of his life he was surrounded
by lively, adoring friends, by family, by lovers, by worshipful students,
by a small, but eager coterie of disciples. "It's awful being alone in
Chicago," he writes to his friends Oscar and Ruth Tarcov, half a year
before his death, "I've had enough of living in exile in rooming houses,
I want to be back where my life is."
Much of the work he produced even in his best, most fertile years was
built around lonely men living in rooming houses. The last short story
he wrote before his death described a King Solomon contemplating his
demise in a place that looked, smelled, and sounded much like a board–
ing house. The king here is disarmingly sloppy, sexually indifferent, and
he lives in a city that is something of an unlikely cross between
Jerusalem and the Lower East Side. He is unmoved by the Queen of
Sheba, herself portrayed as resembling a middle-aged widow in the
Catskills. Here is the story's end:
The counselors vouch for it, they swear they have seen the proof.
That King Solomon now takes
to
bed, not with a virgin, as his
father, David, did in old age, or even a dancing girl, but with a hot
water bottle.... [I]f there were any rewards, he'd settle for a good
night'S sleep. But sleep does not come. He hears strange noises in
the apartment, scratching...Mice? He must remember to speak
to
the caretakers...at last he drowses off, to sleep awhile. And if he
does not sleep? Or later, when he wakes, and it is still the same
night? Does he think of the Queen of Sheba and wonder, whom is
she visiting now? Does he remember how she danced on the table?
Or the song he wrote soon after her departure, with her words still
fresh in his mind, resolved to pour out his love
to
her, but from the
very first line pouring her love for him. Let him kiss me with the
kisses of his mouth, for thy love is better than wine.
It
has been
years since he heard from her. ..
