Volume 32, Number 6 · April 11, 1985
Dear Delmore,
By Helen Vendler
Letters of Delmore Schwartz
selected and edited by Robert Phillips, foreword by Karl Shapiro
Ontario Review Press, 384 pp., $24.95
The life story that can be pieced together from Delmore Schwartz's letters has already been told, if rather externally, in James Atlas's biography (where Schwartz is called 'Delmore' throughout, a choice that comes to seem patronizing). The central fact of Schwartz's life—declared but only sketchily described in these letters—was his manic-depressive illness, which began in his youth as inexplicable and prolonged periods of inertia, apathy, and reclusiveness alternating with periods of intense activity and intenser hope. The illness culminated in the squalor of his paranoid lawsuit (after involuntary commitment at Bellevue in 1957) against 'Hilton Kramer, Elizabeth Pollet, James Laughlin, Marshall Best, Saul Bellow, The Living Theatre, William Styron, Perry Miller, Harry Levin'—the list includes his publisher, his second wife, fancied rivals for women, and old friends. By the time of his death in 1966, in his fifty-third year, Schwartz was unrecognizable as the brilliant boy he had been in 1937, when the Partisan Review published his story, 'In Dreams Begin Responsibilities.'
Review, 3408 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |