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| Quotation 1602-An Apology for Delmore Schwartz |
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| 1602. An Apology for Delmore Schwartz Meanwhile, in his dark cell, a hermit writes down against you a terrible indictment From "Boris Godunov" by Alexander Pushkin What led me to think and eventually to write on this subject is the life of Delmore Schwartz, a New York writer who burst onto American literary scene in the late 30th and disappeared from it ten years later. By now he is largely forgotten. Few people know who he is and even fewer read him. To the contemporary reader he is better known as Humboldt, the eponymous character of Saul Bellow's "Humboldt's Gift, the same Saul Bellow who once made a wry observation about academics earning their daily bread by studying the dead authors - "the dead own us a living". Which proves, if proof is needed, that even the most capable of us often practice themselves what they condemn in others. By all indication the beginning of Delmore Schwartz's writing career was spectacular. His early works were met with a wide and enthusiastic acclamation. As a poet he was compared to Eliot and Pound. He was 24 when his first book "In dreams begin responsibilities" was published. After that he wrote series of short stories which established his reputation as an outstanding practitioner of this genre. And then it was all over. From mid- 40th and on he tried again and again to repeat the initial success but to no avail. He couldn't finish any story he started. He worked on several novels but abandoned them as well. He died in 1966 not producing anything in the last 20 years of his life. And thus he entered into history of American letters as a tragic failure, a brilliant comet burnt too fast. How fair is this assessment? The following are the various comments one may agree or disagree with, but which, I hope, in their totality would make my answer to this question perfectly clear. The only thing a writer owns to his reader is quality, for there are enough writers, past and present, to supply quantity. Therefore, by producing even one good book a writer fulfil his obligation to the reading public. To do more is an icing on the cake, not a necessity. And though a "writer's block" may be a personal tragedy for an individual writer and a financial catastrophe if writing is the only way he can make a living, to the readers it could be a blessing of a sort. For many a writer after producing a masterpiece slide after that into routine and mediocrity, a source of an anguish to them and of the great disappointment to their readers. Often the first book (or the second, the first being just a "warm up", the acquiring of the basic writing skills) is also the best one they would ever write. "Sons and lovers" by D.H. Lawrence, "The naked and the dead" by Norman Mailer immediately come to mind. How much would have been lost if Lawrence stopped writing after "Sons and lovers" or Mailer after "The naked and the dead". Since the best is the enemy of the mere good, and considering the fact that the best is a rare thing indeed, one striving for perfection, either as a producer or a consumer of art, does not lead a very satisfactory existence. My fellow writers, let me clarify something. If you can only put aside your pens for a moment and take a look, as an impartial bystander, at what you're doing, you would immediately realize that your obsession to write is just that - an obsession. And so, the next time you're having a "writer's block" consider it as a recovery from obsession, and instead of feeling miserable, rejoice in the newly founded freedom. Read it - this is my blood One of the reasons, it seems to me, that so many writers have devoted so many pages in their books to childhood, adolescence and youth is that, for the majority of them, this was the only time when they were leading ordinary lives of ordinary people in all its fullness, richness and complexity, without thinking how to put it on paper. In the process they acquired invaluable for a writer firsthand knowledge. In other words, this was a period of their own and other people's lives they would always know the best. Because as soon as one becomes a writer one ceases to be a full participant in everyday life and is turned instead into an outside observer, more or less detached from it, depending on how much time is spent alone, in front of a typewriter, writing about life while other people are living it. But one does not gain a full knowledge of life without full participation in it. And one certainly can not write well about something one does not know well enough. That's why,in my view, the best works of literature are not those which spring from author's imagination but which are the retelling , albeit in a fictional form, his own life experience. Paradoxically, the best fiction is documentary and journalistic in its essence, thus proving the proverbial expression that "The truth is stranger than the fiction.". Delmore Schwartz is a clear example of this. All his stories are about people he knew personally, his family, his friends, his acquaintances and most of all, himself. But there is an inherent danger in this kind of writing. The mine of personal experience is not inexhaustible and sooner or later is get emptied and must be abandoned. Hence the inevitable crisis of running out of the subjects to write about such writers must face. Delmore Schwartz is again a case in point. Read it - this is my body There is a peculiar danger in being a fictional writer, especially a good one, in being able to imagine what different people may experience, feel, think and do in various circumstances. To write convincingly about them one has to become many. Which may eventually lead to a split personality. After being many different characters one naturally loses oneself and doesn't know who one is. A poet is a slave of Muse with no more freedom left to choose how to lead his daily life than husband of capricious wife. It is accepted as axiomatic that one endowed with a gift of one sort or another is supposed to exercise it for as long as one is physically capable of it, going from one glorious manifestation of this gift to another. Consequently, a failure to do so is seen as a regrettable case of not fully realized potentials or even as a tragic waste when the great talent is involved. It is as if not a man possesses the gift but the gift, like daimon of Socrates, possesses a man and rule his life. Disobedience to this dictatorship of a gift is universally condemned or at least strongly disapproved of. What emerges through this is a portrait of an artist as a veritable slave of a gift. The implications are that one has a duty to one's gift, that one's life is not one's own. One is a mere pawn of a gift and defying its dictates is like defying God who chooses one as his tool by giving one a gift. And I see a man sitting in a dark room holding an open book, which he cannot read because of darkness. But neither can the man close the book and put it aside, for he is the book and the book is him. Nor can the man leave the dark room, for he is the room and the room is him. And so, the man sits in the room he cannot leave, turning the pages of the book he cannot read. And he waits, and waits, and waits... Suddenly the lights go on, and the man begins to read the page the book is opened on at this moment, somewhere between the beginning and the end of it. And as he reads, the man tries to understand what he is reading. And sometimes he thinks he does, and sometimes he knows he doesn't. Then, without warning, the lights go off. And the man and his book are surrounded by darkness again. And again the man cannot read the book, and the book cannot be read by the man. And they cannot leave the room because they are the room, and the room is them. And all they can do is to sit in darkness, blindly turning page after page, waiting for the next moment of light. But they know not when or if it will ever come again. And I say to myself - such is the Fate of Man. |
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