Portrait of Delmore/The Middle Generation:
Phillips, Robert
on form, diction, meter and rhythm, Punished, unfinished,...
...So much is over and The fantasy and the horror of the but oh, Euclid...
...He compared mal...
...writing he could accomplish was to copy A December 31, 1958 entry predicts for The journals also contain ideas and out sections of Finnegans Wake...
...An almost intolerable entry for the influence throughout the work of all four, own right...
...Schwartz, is however depicted in some himself to Melville and Rembrandt, both Other interesting poems include "Old hilarious moments, as when she of whom also lost early fame...
...In The Middle Generayoung...
...The act himself an untimely death from not tak- beginnings for essays...
...Delmore Schwartz never finished, "Dear Pope...
...this entry the poet was barely thirty-one...
...For the first time Schwartz apostasy from Eliot and the influences of shipped overseas or saw combat, he...
...24 October 1986: 563...
...and the unfinished and appeased, and envied and begins, mathematician's song, "I love my wife, hardly understood...
...While none journals he discovered witty phrases and I NN the end, he possessed nothing but his ranks with Schwartz's best - typically puns he later would lard into his poems, self-awareness - which those who he would copy out the most promising stories, essays, and letters: "A horse diknew him hoped he mercifully had lost...
...Anyone who reads The New pathological excesses of behavior...
...Each related to women Bawer discusses Schwartz's later poems, Fruits Had Fallen," "The Innocent & in unorthodox ways...
...Subjects include satisfied some deep need beyond love of ing care of himself, working too hard, Dostoevsky's later work, Ring Lardner, language...
...on form, diction, meter and rhythm, Punished, unfinished, untouched color and stress: The duty of prose is to be a PORTRAIT OF DELMORE lishers...
...Based on who was also Schwartz's second wife, Lowell's example, the work of all four has devoted four years to transcribing tended to lose tension in form...
...void of any sense whatever...
...SCHWARTZ, RANDALL JARRELL, JOHN three glasses of sherry, three quarts of BERRYMAN, AND ROBERT LOWELL beer, and three shots of whiskey...
...Throughout, and notes, which became a 1400-page Bawer draws parallels between their typescript eventually reduced to 900 lusiveness, ambiguity, indirection, intel- lives as well as their work, and limns pages...
...Bawer is also the first oeuvre...
...While Jarrell never to name two...
...thoughts...
...He began to see In a black top hat, notable and for- life...
...Just as Henry James dutifully re- window...
...grace and roar, 'What a marriage...
...The object is to be as brief as possible, not as copious...
...They repretranscendence and exaltation" even in father with the figure of the poet he most sent a clean break with Schwartz's early the midst of disintegration and despera- admired - T.S...
...Bawer editor Elizabeth Pollet states, that Bawer also demonstrates that each un- proves these late verses are modeled after Schwartz was writing poems "in a key of consciously sought to replace his own Whitman rather than Eliot...
...The critic to observe that the prose pieces Criterion has to believe that Bruce Bawer father of each died, either actually or which precede Vaudeville's poetry sec- is a critic of the first order, one of the best metaphorically, when the child was tions echo the themes of the poems them- we have today...
...the tension and editing 2400 sheets of journal entries was now in the material...
...did not conceal he had little use for much convincingly argues that Schwartz's But Bawer is to be commended for his of Schwartz's writing...
...short stories, and he also posits notes freer dancing and transcending...
...are devoted to his work...
...Clearly a taking on of imposing forms," the book from the outside - Yeats on Berryman, labor of love, Portrait of Delmore is in- was perfect raw material for The New Auden on Jarrell, the Symbolists on deed a portrait of the writer's innermost Criticism...
...He found just "the preliminary 1966, in another seedy hotel where he Isabel Archer...
...One day he took eight Dexed- the secret of life...
...Schwartz recorded in his journal, "mar- of the unpublished poetry is fine...
...They exhibited which rejects everything Eliot preached olutionary examination of Schwartz's some of the same stresses, problems, and about tradition...
...poetic passages, type them, and begin vided against itself cannot stand...
...so much rejected, so much desired and circus, Much of the black humor involves tossed and untouched...
...Estrangement, insecurity, re- selves...
...Vaudeville for a Princess (1950) was a impatience with most of late Berryman, Bawer's thesis is that the four poets deliberate nose-thumbing at Eliot, a book and especially for his fresh and revshared a generic life...
...There are beginnings of arrangement of material gives inspiration was still living alone...
...the formidible task of preparing this vol- Bawer also reveals how Lowell's Life ume...
...poems on his alter ego, exclaims, on hearing her sister has entry reads, Rinehart...
...Schwartz seems throughout these journals is, "Who is dressed to have had an Oedipal trauma early in Delmore Schwartz...
...A small, largely illegible scrawl, Studies became the new "keynote voloften racing in all directions across a ume" for the Middle Generation's late page, his hand sometimes defeats even a period, as Schwartz's In Dreams .. . magnifying glass...
...Another day after dinner he drank the lyric is the emotions...
...in Bruce Bawer Yet there are reasons why anyone in- the end, it is one book, ColArchon Books, $22.50, 280 pp...
...critic to take an extended look at that Only one who has seen Delmore book, published in 1979 to universal siSchwartz's handwriting can appreciate lence...
...heart attack in Bellevue (the result of space in which we walk...
...La Bogan never He records his absence of passion, obsesAlmost penniless - in the 44th gave Schwartz a good or even fair re- sion, or pleasure...
...The As early as January 1944, Delmore revision for possible publication - some wife you save may be your own...
...She was frigid, he was rigid...
...Ultimately he learned to write and taking too many drugs...
...They "speak as powerfully to last journal, found in his last hotel room, but feels that influence reaches its apogee our senses as his early poems speak to our is indicative of both the depths of his in Schwartz's In Dreams Begin Respon- minds...
...Edited by Elizabeth Pollet Schwartz renders astonishing accounts of Form is an endless effort, Farrar Straus & Giroux, $35, 663 pp...
...He traces Eliot's style, and are highly successful in their tion...
...poems in the collection as based on There are better and fuller discussions Bruce Bawer's The Middle Genera- Eliot's chief poetic theme, which of Lowell in print...
...THE MIDDLE GENERATION rines (which gave him a lift for only one The proper subject matter of THE LIVES AND POETRY OF DELMORE hour...
...Bauer says that in its "al- the later poems in Summer Knowledge The poisonous world flows into my (1959), but also those in Last and Lost mouth Poems...
...Bawer reads most of the Lowell...
...There also Schwartz was totally conscious of enOctober 28, 1957 is uncollected light verse, including a tering and leaving all his manic phases, seven-line invective against "Bogan, which could last as long as six months...
...America's Middle Generation should Much of this material is stated epigramRobert Phillips read this book...
...One called them "Haphazard, Fulfillment," "Vivaldi," and his shared the irony that the very conditions euphonious, virtually incomprehensible luminous late "Seurat's Sunday After- which crippled them as men gave their effusions . . . " that "verge on being denoon Along the Seine," demonstrate, as poetry its greatest vigor and distinction...
...Even his biographer, James Atlas, man, upon the four poets' later work...
...tion he has produced a first book which sentment, guilt, and insomnia marked More new ground is broken when confirms that belief...
...For one, there is a surpris- matically, and elsewhere in writing his ing amount of new poetry...
...What will surprise some readers is perspicacity to aver that Eliot's influence as well as somewhat misleading when he how Bawer places Schwartz at the center dominated poetry of the middle period...
...did receives his due as poet and poetic influ- Pound and Whitman, especially Whit- enlist in the Air Corps as a pilot in 1942 ence...
...Eliot...
...Only Much of this long book is depressing toward symbology in his own work: the writing of new poems (and occasional - accounts of gas and lights being snow, a central image for Schwartz, he financial rescue) could pull him from the turned off for non-payment, insomnia, a calls "Newness, renewal, freedom, the pit...
...Pollet, a novelist was for their early period...
...There are instructive entries late in his career, a feat not commonly Commonweal: 562 acknowledged...
...Death in fact Heinrich Heine, and comparisons be- his own poems even when deeply dedid come early, but not until July I1, tween Fitzgerald's Gatsby and James's pressed...
...JOURNALS AND NOTES OF DELMORE corded the number of dinner engage- The effect of poetry is to be SCHWARTZ, 1939-1959 ments he accepted in London society, so a stained-glass window...
...And Bawer is a Schwartz, Jarrell, Berryman, and Low- It hardly bespeaks remarkable bit niggardly in his treatment of Jarrell, ell...
...Alone, in a hotel room, Louise, a Poetess...
...of the four poets, he is tion is a comprehensive and unified his- Schwartz called "the fate of Western the academics' darling, and entire books tory and critique of the lives and works of Culture and the historic scene...
...A psychoanalyst The question he repeatedly asks The lion and the whip of reason could have a field day...
...At the time of The crude coarse cruelty...
...the number of pills and drinks he con- and not only that, but perhaps sumed...
...among the four of work most critics have ignored or Infinite Windows of Childhood," "The them, they had ten' wives...
...So far as I know, he is the first Like water into a drowning man's...
...It is a valuable document...
...For months the only year of his age .. . view...
...One late Letters...
...In his reassessment of despair and the undeniable fact that his sibilities (1938), which he calls "a key- Schwartz, Bawer has examined not only gift stayed with him: note volume...
...terested in Schwartz and the poetry of lected Poems...
...His mother, the redoubtable Rose every birthday as a funeral...
...The wives...
...Poems such as "All the their early years...
...You are all ried and parted, published and punished,' includes a thirty-three-line lyric which a tossed generation...
...and sections of a long work cancer, "Everything happens to me...
...This "Gentlemen prefer bonds...
...states that the predominate subject of the of his generation, at the expense of But where Bawer begins to make an orig- poet's early work is "a war in which he Theodore Roethke and Elizabeth Bishop, inal contribution is when he traces the did not participate...
...One revelation of this book is that abrupt withdrawal-from all drugs and se- More important are Schwartz's notes Schwartz did manage to write splendidly dation), rejection by friends and pub- on prosody...
...And they lamented...
...He and was not discharged until 1946...
...Her notes are scrupulouly accu- ligence, impersonality, and audacious their influences on one another as well as rate and her observations fair...
Vol. 113 • October 1986 • No. 18
