Judging from his book’s dedication to Delmore Schwartz and from the sheer number of poems where he’s mentioned, Delmore’s death must have been devastating to Berryman. Perhaps that’s merely because Schwartz was once his teacher. If so, Schwartz must have had a powerful influence on him.

Interestingly, a Berryman interview from the the Paris Review touches both on Berryman’s view of fame, another major theme, and his relationship to Schwartz — not to mention a million other things.

As the interviewer points out, this one sounds a little Shakesperian:

147

Henry’s mind grew blacker the more he thought.

He looked onto the world like the act of an aged whore.

Delmore, Delmore.

He flung to pieces and they hit the floor.

Nothing was true but what Marcus Aurelius taught,

‘All that is foul smell and blood in a bag.’

He lookt on the world like the leavings of a hag.

Almost his love died from him, any more.

His mother & William

were vivid in the same mail Delmore died.

The world is lunatic. This is the last ride.

Delmore, Delmore.

High in the summer branches the poet sang.

His throat ached, and he could sing no more.

All ears closed

across the heights where Delmore and Gertrude sprang

so long ago, in the goodness of which it was composed.

Delmore, Delmore!

There’s certainly a point at which thinking becomes counterproductive, where one needs to just experience life directly if one is to function, as most of us have probably experienced at one point or another. Which is not to say that it is possible to quit thinking once you’ve reached that point.

The Marcus Aurelius quotation comes from this section of his meditations:

“Does Panthea or Pergamus now sit by the tomb of Verus? Does Chaurias or Diotimus sit by the tomb of Hadrianus? That would be ridiculous. Well, suppose they did sit there, would the dead be conscious of it? and if the dead were conscious, would they be pleased? and if they were pleased, would that make them immortal? Was it not in the order of destiny that these persons too should first become old women and old men and then die? What then would those do after these were dead? All this is foul smell and blood in a bag.”

I wonder if Berryman purposely drew a quotation from a section that begins:

THIS reflection also tends to the removal of the desire of empty fame, that it is no longer in thy power to have lived the whole of thy life, or at least thy life from thy youth upwards, like a philosopher; but both to many others and to thyself it is plain that thou art far from philosophy. Thou hast fallen into disorder then, so that it is no longer easy for thee to get the reputation of a philosopher; and thy plan of life also opposes it

Some have argued that tragedy is no longer possible in the 20th Century, but it certainly seems tragic to me when a poet with a beautiful voice descends into madness, “flung to pieces and they hit the floor.”

This poems suggests that Schwartz played a much more powerful role than merely teacher for Berryman, Henry:

149

This world is gradually becoming a place

where I do not care to be any more. Can Delmore die?

I don’t suppose

in all them years a day went ever by

without a loving thought for him. Welladay.

In the brightness of his promise,

unstained, I saw him thro’ the mist of the actual

blazing with insight, warm with gossip

thro’ all our Harvard years

when both of us were just becoming known

I got him out of a police-station once, in Washington, the world is tref

and grief too astray for tears.

I imagine you have heard the terrible news,

that Delmore Schwartz is dead, miserably & alone,

in New York: he sang me a song

‘I am the Brooklyn poet Delmore Schwartz

Harms & the child I sing, two parents’ torts’

when he was young & gift-strong.

I really don’t know why Schwartz was so important to him, but it’s clear that his loss affected “Henry” in the same way that the father’s suicide haunts these poems.

Perhaps it’s the “miserably” and “alone,” despite his fame and talent, that so terrifies Henry.

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