Once and for All: The Best of Delmore Schwartz

DR. BERGEN’S BELIEF

PERSONS OF THE PLAY

Anthony Norman: Mrs. Bergen

Dr. Newman: Martha Bergen

Dr. Bergen: Dr. Bergen’s Disciples

INTRODUCTION

[A room bare of all but an oval mirror and a table before which DR. BERGEN stands, regarding himself as he rehearses his speech, as if assuming an audience in an auditorium.]

DR. BERGEN:

There seems to be no Santa Claus. The air

Is free, the park’s nature open until

Ten o’clock comes once more, the starlight admirable,

The unemployed unobtrusive, the traffic’s hum

Subdued as one’s attention shifts,

but otherwise

A final emptiness confronts your eyes.

For otherwise, there is no Santa Claus,

Though the scene shifts to the seashore at dusk

— The summer over, the carousel rusts,

The twilight is cold, it is October—

Where he who walks in solitude, who pauses

At last upon the verge of rocks, dim, dim,

Gazing upon the curled and curling waters,

Does not look up unto the curving sky

Sure that his fate must be coherent there.

The sky is merely dim and vacancy

Through which the airman may ascend for years

And not hear any word, not one, nor see

A face intelligent amid the clouds

Unless the bulged face of the clouds’ heaped-up

And foaming coma.

If he lifted his arms

And bent his knee and bowed his head, what would

He to his own self seem? Grotesque, grotesque,

The sad comedian of cane and derby

Collapsed upon the pavement.

Prayer is now

Ridiculous. Appeal, apostrophe,

And invocation are but mutterings,

Turning from side to side in ignorant sleep.

No one regards you, no one cares for you, none

Shall find cake on the pavement, none

Shall have the past forgiven, and no one

Hears the benevolent white-bearded one

Descend the chimney, rise in the elevator,

Arrive to dispense gratis and for no toil

All justice, loving-kindness, and good will.

But every side is wrong, but every man

Is guilty, every child is used, and now

Effort is useful as spitting in the sea,

Good and evil are merely expressions of pain

In the perpetual return of the blind night

And the bit by bit disorder of the rain.

When music makes the whole room radiant,

Spreading the dream of sweet societies

Where all dance out their gifts, their needs, their choices,

One knows that heaven is epiphenomenal,

Rising from peaked musicians with bad complexions.

Breakfast is good. An income is good.

It is good to be sunburnt, warm, and clean.

Besides this, what can you say with certainty?

In fact, what can you mean but this,

The sunlight where you are in turning time?

Who will rise up, speak out, convinced, convinced,

Affirm once more that nothing can be done

Without the help of that great Santa Claus

Promised to children in the middle ages

— Not now! But with cigar-store Indians

Remembered only in old vaudeville.

— I will speak out! I will show you a wonder,

The secret satisfaction of every wish!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I know you all,

I know you all, I know all that you want.

Which is, though vaguely, all. O you require

A big black piano

And skates for poise

A safe for memory, a giant glass

To drink each dear,

Wit, learning, and a deck of cards

Stacked by the will,

The genuine she to whom your shameless he

Is me and me,

Double-delighting in a box which is

A tender sea—

None of these things are given. But you get

What you do not want, what you do not need,

Do not expect, or do not recognize—

Strength to be patient, naiveté to hope,

Perplexed affection, inexhaustible will,

Brief visits from the dead, and love unwanted,

Too much, too little, overwhelming all.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the emptiness

Which you know well, which is unbearable,

A boredom which no man escapes unless

An animal need preempts and but defers

The question all must face, which I have faced:

What is this life? What can man ask to have?

I know the answer, I have known enough

To leap, jump, jig, and somersault until

Absurdity itself is searched

For Who Knows Him, the dream behind the dream.

I come, I say, having understood in part

The formless vacancy between the stars,

The marvelous light in which all things move and seem,

And the Santa Claus of the obsessed, obscene heart.

[The living room of the Bergen apartment in the year 1920. French windows at the back are half-open, showing the terrace, which has a wide parapet. It is an afternoon in October. Enter ANTHONY NORMAN, fiancé of Eleanor Bergen, who killed herself three months before. He walks to the mantelpiece, gazes at the photograph of Eleanor which stands there.]

ANTHONY:

This is the house of the dead, this is the house

Perplexed by a girl who killed herself.

In the morning when they came to wake her

The time to dress herself, prepare her face,

Eat breakfast, and seek the day’s interests,

Had been evaded utterly by her;

Also my will, which I had given her.

— Here they construct a system to make their lives

Self-regarding, self-gratifying, self-conscious,

Indulging their minds in the old foolishness,

The vain vanity: to correct the heart of man,

A mission, a justification, a declaration.

— The true motive is private unhappiness.

But they cannot forget the girl who killed herself,

Though they seek to see in her death a deliberate witness,

As I seek to see in her death my own grave fault,

My weakness, my failure, having offered explicitly

My face, my heart, my will. The I beneath

My quivering eyes cannot support

Her utter rejection of my life, my face, my heart;

I cannot endure myself until I know

Why she turned from me, seeking nothingness.

I must come here again and again to stare

At her parents, her bedroom, her photograph,

While they make of her death their myth and mystery.

The love whose answer was the wish to die

Gasps in a vacuum, seeks the fading face,

Fading and flickering in memory’s cinema.

One million times a single question drags

Its incompleteness, its unfinishedness

Through the unending corridors of unconsciousness.

Why did she kill herself? The photograph

Shows only the look for the photographer.

[Exit ANTHONY, as MRS. BERGEN and DR. NEWMAN enter, MRS. BERGEN nodding to ANTHONY.]

MRS. BERGEN: Please smoke if you care to do so, Dr. Newman. There are cigarettes next to you.

DR. NEWMAN: Thank you, Mrs. Bergen. Suppose you tell me all that concerns you and exactly what you think I can do.

MRS. BERGEN: Dr. Newman, it was only after I had tried every other alternative that I decided to speak to you. If I were not desperate, I would not discuss these matters with anyone not of the family; but God only knows what will happen to us next, and my sister Emma has been urging me to speak to you for a long time.

DR. NEWMAN: I understand perfectly, Mrs. Bergen. You can be sure that no one else will hear of your family troubles. But on the other hand, I should remind you that complete frankness is necessary from you, even though you are not the patient. Only the full truth can enable me to do any good, and yet I have never had a patient who from the start hid nothing.

MRS. BERGEN: I will try to be the exception. As you know, my eldest child, Eleanor, killed herself, or seemed to do so, three months ago. She had taken too many sleeping powders. That is why we are not sure that it was a deliberate act. No one knows her reason for killing herself, although my husband, for reasons of his own, says that he does know. She seemed to be happy enough, although always an over-emotional girl. But we knew little of what she did during the past few years. She insisted, as she would say, on leading her own life. She wrote verse, she studied dancing, she studied for the theatre, she had many friends whom we did not know, she went from one interest to another, and although we were anxious about her moods and her unrest, her habits seemed typical of the girls of today. When she became engaged, I thought all my anxiety was over. And then, a few weeks before her marriage, she killed herself—

DR. NEWMAN: Perhaps before you go on to speak of your husband, I had better say now that I knew your daughter well, and intended to visit you, after she died, but hesitated for various reasons.

MRS. BERGEN [surprised]: You knew Eleanor? Was she a patient of yours?

DR. NEWMAN: Yes, she was. But I think we had better speak of that later. Now tell me about your husband.

MRS. BERGEN: A year ago, after a year of despondency, Dr. Bergen began his religious society, which has brought us so much trouble, and now I am afraid, Dr. Newman, that everything is becoming worse. My son Titus and I refuse to accept Dr. Bergen’s ideas and practices, and he considers that we are betraying him. We interfere only when he tries to do such things as giving away immense sums of money to his disciples, who are in the house night and day, and whom he supports. There are eight and my youngest child, Martha, and at least two of them are obviously after my husband’s money, which is to be used for various projects having to do with my husband’s religion. I am sure, however, that some of the others are quite sincere. [A short pause.]

Dr. Newman, I love my husband dearly. He is a kind and good man, and in the past we were very content. I am horrified when I think of attempting to have him declared legally insane and shut up in an asylum, but I will have no other recourse, there is so much conflict, so much money is being thrown away. Worst of all, my daughter’s death is taken as a great example by my husband who says that she killed herself in obedience to his doctrines, his imperatives, as he calls them, so that I am afraid that another one will kill himself.

DR. NEWMAN: What are these doctrines of your husband?

MRS. BERGEN: Perhaps it would be best if you found out from him. However, the main belief is that God’s blue eye is the sky. It is God’s organ of perception, he says, and he thinks that when the whole world can be brought to an awareness of this fact, then human life will be transformed and such horrors as wars and the oppression of the poor will cease.

DR. NEWMAN: I do not understand. Why will a belief that God regards human life do away with evil? Most religions have said that the deity knows all things at all times.

MRS. BERGEN: My husband thinks that he has found the true medium by which the deity acts and moves nature and human life. He thinks that other previous religions had only an abstract idea of the divine will, but he has found the direct experience. You must look at God’s blue eye, he says, then you will know what is good and what is evil. He calls this the intuitive understanding or inspiration. But it is all very complex. Perhaps I do not understand him. He says I do not, and that it is the evil of my nature which prevents me from understanding and believing.

DR. NEWMAN: You know, in America during the 19th century there were hundreds of such cults and societies, though few as original, and even today there is a man in Harlem believed to be God by thousands.¹

MRS. BERGEN: Yes, I know. My husband is not at all disturbed by such comparisons. He says that no other religion showed how to get a direct experience of the divine will. And he has a whole schedule of rituals, which his disciples perform, and which is supposed to bring this experience to all who will believe. No one of the disciples, no one but my husband, has had this intuitive experience as yet.

DR. NEWMAN: The whole matter is probably beyond my sphere. As you probably know, the psychiatrist deals with difficulties which are relatively contained in the individual — fixations, compulsions, fetiches which usually have their origin in some childhood event or misunderstanding, or some kind of deep-seated frustration. But your husband’s fantasy may not be pathological in this sense at all. The fact that he has won disciples suggests that it is not.

MRS. BERGEN: His disciples have good practical reasons for listening to him. He helps them financially and otherwise.

DR. NEWMAN: Still, your husband’s belief may be a response to the kind of world in which we now exist, not a personal fantasy. Our society is breaking up, tearing itself to pieces, being transformed, and that is why many curious schemes are invented by individuals who have a blind but intense awareness that their world, their way of life, everything dear to them, is turning into something else, slipping from them, becoming strange, repugnant, too difficult for them.

MRS. BERGEN [sighing]: I feel that way myself, Dr. Newman.

DR. NEWMAN: If such is the case, I cannot help your husband, and I assure you that he is not insane in the legal sense. Of course, I can as a reasonable person try to persuade him that he mistakes the source of his belief, but I would surely fail.

MRS. BERGEN: Speak to him, Dr. Newman, do what you can. I am afraid another person will kill himself now that they believe that Eleanor’s death was the most wonderful act possible.

DR. NEWMAN: I should have come here before this, knowing your daughter as I did. But I hesitated.

MRS. BERGEN: Please stay for their daily ceremony, which will begin on the terrace shortly, and you will see that something is wrong with them and that my husband’s doctrines are dangerous. Eleanor is dead, I am not concerned about her now, but perhaps you can speak to the others, especially my daughter Martha, who mistakes a devotion to her father for a belief in what he says.

DR. NEWMAN: Very well, if you wish me to do so. But I am afraid I can do nothing to help you. [Rising, he goes to the mantelpiece, and takes Eleanor’s photograph in his hand.] I should have come to you before this, but I did not want to intrude in a home of mourning, I did not know how your daughter’s death was understood, I was sure that my news would be unwelcome.

MRS. BERGEN: What did you know about my daughter?

[Before DR. NEWMAN can answer, DR. BERGEN enters with his nine disciples—HERRIOT, SCHMIDT, RAKOVSKY, FRIETSCH, ROSENBERG, PERRY, PORTER, MONTEZ—and his daughter MARTHA, who is by his side and holds his hand. The other disciples follow in twos, conversing quietly, and with looks of concentration and seriousness.]

DR. BERGEN: How do you do, sir?

MRS. BERGEN: Felix, this is Dr. Newman, a friend of Emma’s.

DR. BERGEN: O I see! You are that psychiatrist who is going to persuade me that I am merely a deluded old man. We shall see. We are glad to have you here and glad to have you present at our ceremony. Perhaps that persuasion will be other than you expect, although the cynicism I see on your face is a distinct handicap. [To the disciples: ] Let us proceed.

[They mount to the terrace, and seat themselves at the long table which stands there, DR. BERGEN at the head and MARTHA at the other end. They are at an obvious distance from the audience and all that they speak and do has a formalized character, which is partly created by the fact that the living room is intermediate between them and the audience, so that MRS. BERGEN and DR. NEWMAN, who remain in the living room and watch them, are as if a prior audience.]

DR. BERGEN: We will begin as we usually do, by reading this week’s version of our first imperative. [He reads.]

Be conscious of what happens to you from minute to minute, be conscious of what you have done and what is done to you, the event active or passive, multitudinous, misunderstood at the moment of being.

Be self-conscious of the complexities of the personal event by a certain effort. Write before sleep, at night, in a book which can be taken with you as the past is taken with you, as the past takes you, which you will read with shame, remorse, and astonishment long after, in other circumstances.

To keep a diary is an act of prayer, duplicating in your own meager power the gaze of the deity’s blue eye upon you. Pray then, by seeking the full awareness of what is written, which is not soon removed, which you must read once more when you are different, when you are disinterested.

Write before sleep, when, in the silence, the night sounds become distinct, and a car starts downstairs, and the typical

Ticking of the clock repeats its dry sound, while outside the bedroom window the great city squats,

Silent and black beneath the ignorance of night. Be conscious thus. Be troubled by the shortcoming of all through which justification is assured.

Write exactly what you have felt, your motives, your intention in appearance and after examination, your hope and desire, all that has happened

During the long day which has slipped past without being counted, which will never be renewed, which must be known.

Do not be concerned with the false tone, the affected phrasing, the necessary pretentiousness of all self-consciousness,

But deny the desire to invent, distort, defend, omit, forget, when confronted with your own foolishness.

Because this examination of consciousness is your duty and your consolation. Thus is the past carried forward, thus do you take hold of your life,

Otherwise it slips from you. Thus this nightly act will be your correction, your memory,

Your freely-given offering to the deity whose blue eye shines overhead, to whom

Our hearts are in debt forever.

[He pauses for a moment.]

And now before we go ahead to this week’s version of the second imperative, we will discuss “Problems.” Who will propose the problem?

RAKOVSKY: I will, Dr. Bergen. Last night as I wrote the day’s entries in my diary, the following predicament occurred to me. Suppose I were on an ocean liner which struck an iceberg and began to sink, and suppose that subsequently I was in the water, holding a spar, unable to swim (although I am able to swim) and another man came towards me and told me that he could not keep afloat much longer unless I let him hold the spar also, but it was obvious that the spar could not support the weight of two men. Furthermore, both myself and my suppliant were adult men, there was no question of a woman or a child. What ought one to do? Ought one to save one’s own life or that of one’s neighbor? How is one to decide, by what measure?

DR. BERGEN: The problem is of no slight interest. Will you attempt an answer, Rosenberg?

ROSENBERG: May I observe parenthetically that the problem is artificial in the sense that most moral questions are not so sharply a choice between the self’s good or another’s, but most ends turn out to be commonly held by the community.

RAKOVSKY [angered]: The problem is not artificial. On the contrary, it is just such an acute predicament that bares the moral and cuts away all other considerations.

DR. BERGEN: What is your answer, Rosenberg?

ROSENBERG: As an answer, I can suggest only the questionable one of an effort to decide which man is of greater value, professionally let us say, to humanity. A lawyer ought to sacrifice his life for a doctor. [Laughter] A good doctor, I mean. But I admit that one could hardly make a thorough inquiry into a man’s professional capacities while in the water. [Laughter]

DR. BERGEN: Your answer is weak and perhaps begs the question again. The good of humanity may be divided and contradictory. I will consider this matter myself and afford you the intuitive reply next week.

MRS. BERGEN [to DR. NEWMAN, sotto voce]: He stares at the sky until an answer comes to him. That is what he means by an intuitive reply.

DR. BERGEN: Let us continue with the second imperative. You will observe that a number of modifications have been made since last week. These changes flow from a greater grasp of the inspiration which the deity’s blue eye affords me.

You are with each other, you are not alone, you depend on each other, and you speak to each other.

To further a desire, or to make an hour interesting, or in order to have a friend and engage his affection,

Or to increase the aura and warmth of company, while eating or in the theatre or while two are alone and with their hands seek each other,

So that, in this ineluctable mixture of lives, the necessity of speech requires the perfect effort to speak

The word which occurs to you, the thought which oppresses you, the anger or love

Which rises to the fluent or hesitant tongue, which rises and is suppressed because of fear or tact or in order to avoid laughter.

Suppress nothing. Speak your whole mind fully and lucidly and without omission,

Do not exclude the least childlike pun, the sudden nonsense syllable, the comment which will surely be nursed in resentment.

For frankness, sincerity, articulation, explicitness are the attributes of the man aware that God’s blue eye regards him.

Permit yourself to be ridiculous as a man weeping, an actor hissed, a girl deliberately tripped.

Adopt with voluntary act the naive, the ingenuous, the stupid.

Accept harm

Until you are certain that you know what you do, and why your act is enacted, and that your whole heart and mind have consented.

Let every emotion be large, black and white, scrawled upon your countenance as a cartoon,

Gross, clumsy, foolish.

Pride, dignity, assurance

Are nothing without the power of righteousness, but once righteous.

They are garments, sweet fruits, the best pleasures of man.

[There is a pause. The DISCIPLES are obviously moved, and they display their emotions differently.]

DR. BERGEN: Let us continue with the third imperative in this week’s formulation, omitting today your proposal of “Questions of Exact Communication.” I will answer tomorrow, Herriot, your question as to how to communicate exactly the feeling of respect in the midst of desire, and the emotion of wishing to teach and yet not presume complete superiority.

Think of the objects for which you care. Discover why you care for them. Be conscious of the different worth you confer upon them, which would be surrendered, exchanged or passed over, which things are equivalent to life itself for you.

Because man’s desires govern his acts, if he governs them; because his desires are himself as an acting being and because by his desires and his choices man must be judged and understood,

Resort to a painstaking examination in the fullness of consciousness, examine your desires in the detail of a moment, seize the moment of feeling, grasp the care involved in such statements as “salt,” “sugar,” “a gleaming automobile,”

“The pungency of tobacco,” “the crinkling of her cheeks when she smiles,” “the pleasant sense of health which flows from a dinner well-digested,”

“The continuous exercise of the much-used body,” “the complexities of sleep when at times the mind confronts itself,” “the look of the white pitcher upon the brown dresser,” “the distortion of tiredness, weakness, and pain.”

Examine the times and conditions of these cares, the circumstances upon which they depend, the hours and the places when they become without meaning for you,

As well as the environment of their full meaning. Decide once and for all which sentiments, which cares, which desires are most permanent, justifiable, and necessary.

Your decision decides your fate, your decision can be true only if you open your heart and give your mind to that being whose blue eye is actual in the arching, domed, and ineluctable scene which is infinite overhead, your decision before that being’s blue eye,

In whom “Justice,” “Truth,” “Beauty,” are genuine and absolute.

[There is a pause. DR. BERGEN appears to be exhausted. Then, raising his voice, he addresses DR. NEWMAN.]

I hope that you do not find our ritual too oppressive, Dr. Newman. [Several DISCIPLES turn to look at DR. NEWMAN.]

DR. NEWMAN: On the contrary, I have been completely absorbed. Please go ahead. I am very much impressed by the somewhat intellectual character of your doctrines, which is so different from the emphasis upon emotion in most latter-day religious societies.

DR. BERGEN: Thank you. I regard that as praise. [To the DISCIPLES.] Let us continue. I now ask each of you to render “Witness and Testimony” to your inmost cares, thoughts, and observations. Each one in turn. And let me quote from the second imperative: “Speaking your whole mind fully and lucidly and without omission, nothing excluded because of fear or tact or in order to avoid laughter.” In your usual order, beginning with Herriot.

HERRIOT: Last summer by means of playing tennis for five hours every day, I gained poise, dignity, bearing, rid myself of shyness, spoke with complete assurance. This effect has made me meditate on the relationship of the body to the mind. They seem to be one. And yet they seem to be two. Is consciousness the inside of what is seen from the outside as the nervous system? Is the spirit of man merely his nervous system? I do not think so.

DR. BERGEN: Thank you Herriot. I would remind you that we are not engaged in “Problems.” But your problem is very important and I will seek the intuitive answer. Schmidt!

SCHMIDT: I have been troubled by sexual desire. I reflected on the mot of a few years back: “Sexual intercourse is the lyricism of the people.” I remembered with a kind of sad glee my previous habit of asking all adults whom I encountered: “Have you had your orgasm today?” [Laughter.]

MRS. BERGEN [interrupts, in an anguished voice]: Felix, is it necessary that Martha hear all these things? Is it absolutely necessary?

DR. BERGEN: It is necessary, absolutely [ironically mimicking her]. Nothing may be secret or undisclosed. The secret corrupts. Thank you for being frank, sincere and explicit, Schmidt. Rakovsky!

RAKOVSKY: I summed up all the acts for which I have been unable to forgive myself. How, meeting S. last week, I fell into an attitude immediately, an attitude full of lies, though I wished merely to tell him of how radically my life had been altered. I had to compose, invent. I could not tell the truth without improving it, because the truth does not satisfy me. When shall I be truthful, utterly candid?

DR. BERGEN: Thank you. You have been candid today. Frietsch.

FRIETSCH: Last night I said to myself: what is there left of the day’s activity? Can anything be said of it but this, that it consisted of waiting for the moment of lucidity and prayer? We know not what we do from day to day until some external demand compels us, creates a great unrest and we work with immense nervousness until a whole is completed, so that we will be able to return to the other unrest of waiting. If it were true that our lives were created by our own wills… but the will is said to be a myth, hypostatized. This is the most modern belief, that what we call the will is muscular tension.

DR. BERGEN: Thank you, Frietsch. Your testimony is completely adequate. You too raise a problem demanding intuitive consideration. Rosenberg!

ROSENBERG: I considered the poor, how their lives are sucked from them in a thousand unseen ways. In work is happiness. Such is the old thought, I said to myself, old and no longer true for the work of the poor is the degradation of the automaton, the acquisition of perfectly behaving nervous reflexes until all sensitivity and imagination have been destroyed. Yet who would be happy? Children give no thought to happiness. Only brides embarking upon marriage think in such terms. The word “embark” betrays the inexactitude of the thought. Yet happiness may be the only term for the possession of all intrinsic goods.

DR. BERGEN: Thank you, Rosenberg. You are still concerned, quite rightly, with the injustices of society. Perry!

PERRY: I was concerned with understanding my adolescent passions — professional baseball and playing cards. I saw that the essence of baseball was constituted by the element of contingency. The game was a framework for spontaneous drama, quickly-rising. I remembered my greatest excitement: the World Series in which the conclusion was this — a base runner attempting to score from second base on a sharp and hard-hit single to right field. If he was safe, the score would be tied. The right fielder threw perfectly to the catcher on one bounce, a long and fatal arc, and the base runner was tagged out sliding into the catcher in a burst of dust, and the team for which I rooted had been defeated in the contest for the world’s championship. Reflecting upon this and gazing upon the sky, I understood that contingency is the most intoxicating of liquors, and I saw that this obsession also created the love of gambling. It was an interest in the processes of chance, which in turn depended upon our hope and poverty and wish to get rich quick, a sudden vast acquisition, which was in turn our enormous interest in the grace of God.

DR. BERGEN: Thank you. That is very interesting and useful. Porter!

PORTER: Dr. Bergen, I too considered games and remembered how in playing tennis, the racquet with which I swung toward my opponent seemed to me to be my will, and his racquet, his will — both adolescent swords.

DR. BERGEN: You are permitting your fellows to suggest the terms and the character of your thought to you. You ought to look into your own mind with greater care and freshness, Porter. Montez!

MONTEZ: I looked at the heaven at night, and it seemed to me, Dr. Bergen, that the stars might be compared to diamonds, and diamonds might in turn be compared to the values which surround the heart of man, so that there was this triple analogy — stars, diamonds, values, and the heart of man in the midst of them.

DR. BERGEN: I would say the same to you as to Porter. You are not using your own experience sufficiently, but merely my terms. Martha!

MARTHA: In my dream at night I wished with all my heart to participate in the minds of the people I like very much, I mean directly, not indirectly: to feel their consciousness as they do. And in my dream I was trying to open Eleanor’s forehead and look inside. And I told her how noble she had been to kill herself and how it had helped all of us. [MRS. BERGEN suppresses an outcry.]

DR. BERGEN: Thank you, Martha. You have done well. My own thoughts, which I must now testify, concern Eleanor also. She died in her enactment of the method of our belief. By gazing at the sky until the self-evident intuition was given to me, I have again confirmed my previous announcement of the reason for her death. She killed herself because she had come to the impasse where she could not understand her own heart and could not decide once for all what she wanted, except by examining her heart in the perspective of death. It is a method which we must use only as a last resort; but it was her last resort and she recognized it, and accepting our belief she killed herself and thus became our first witness. Let us hear once more the poem she wrote and made a recording of when she still hoped to find in poetry a way of life for herself.

[There is a victrola on the terrace, unseen by the audience. PORTER gets up and starts the victrola. The voice which issues from it is distant, low, husky yet feminine, and in a way, oracular and dramatic. It actually comes from a victrola record, and is not an off-stage voice.]

ELEANOR’S SONG:

I said, as by the river, we

Gazed at the sliding water’s gray,

“This life’s a dream, as others say,

A dream confirmed when memory

Holds up the past and dims the day,

As in the future we shall see

The present quickly passed away,

Irrelevant to our belief,

Misunderstood as every play,

Full of a secret actuality

Which worked its wish consummately

And held the conscious will at bay.”

[Enter ANTHONY, at right of living room. He walks toward the terrace and mounts the steps.]

ANTHONY:

Was that her voice? That was her voice indeed.

Who can distinguish now between the ghost

And the actual, the living and the immortal?

One hundred times the globe has whirled about,

Carrying her small grave in its turning ground.

One thousand times the I beneath my face

Has winced to think that she surpassed my love.

One million times a single question raises

Its expectation, its unfinishedness,

In the unending corridors of unconsciousness.

Why did she kill herself? The phonograph

Speaks only what’s plausible to the small ear.

But death in Gothic letters confronts my face,

Cannot be read, too near, cannot be known.

DR. BERGEN [obviously annoyed]: We are glad to have you here, Anthony, you are always welcome. But it is unnecessary for you to affirm continually your refusal to accept our reason for Eleanor’s death. [Turning to his DISCIPLES.] To conclude today’s ceremony we will have a second antiphony devoted to each one’s thoughts of Eleanor, our witness. Martha! And then all of you in that order.

MARTHA: I remember the day we went shopping together. Eleanor bought some things at Wanamaker’s, I do not remember what. We both had ice-cream sodas at their fountain, and then drove to Long Beach and went swimming. She was very excited. She swam as if she were hysterical or drowning.

MONTEZ: I remember how charming and vivacious she was last summer.

PORTER: I remember how devoted and loyal she was to her father.

PERRY: I remember with what poise and grace she tidied her hair before the looking-glass. She was very beautiful.

ROSENBERG: I remember her coming from the telephone one day and looking like one who has just taken off her glasses and has a dazed look and a welt on the bridge of the nose between the eyes.

FRIETSCH: I remember her coming from the telephone another day and when she saw me, looking as if I had seen her unexpectedly with her clothes off.

SCHMIDT: I had reason to believe that she was fond of me. I was in love with her. She was very beautiful.

RAKOVSKY: She was excited and high-strung and this gave her a theatrical quality which was very attractive.

HERRIOT: We dined together once at the Commodore when I returned from a trip to Chicago. I was amazed at the variety of her emotions during the course of one evening. She retired several times in order to make phone calls. Her life and death seem to me to be models for imitation.

DR. BERGEN: I agree with you, Herriot.

[A pause. Several DISCIPLES are weeping. DR. NEWMAN gets up and goes toward the terrace.]

DR. NEWMAN: [To MRS. BERGEN] An opportunity has come much sooner than I expected. [To DR. BERGEN] Dr. Bergen, in all sincerity and sympathy, I would like to suggest to you certain difficulties in your scheme of things. I would not intrude except for the fact that your wife has asked me to speak to you, and in addition, the fact that your doctrines have an aspect which would be impossibly dangerous and foolish, unless they are, in fact, true doctrines. I mean that your final test, that of dying to find one’s true self is indefensible unless you are sure that you are right. But perhaps you prefer to discuss these matters with me in private.

DR. BERGEN [impatiently]: Go right ahead, sir. I hide nothing from my students and we believe, as you heard, that to hide anything is to multiply ignorance and blindness.

DR. NEWMAN: How, then, do you know that your belief in the sky as God’s great eye is true? What possible proof have you?

DR. BERGEN: I know by intuition — by gazing upon the inevitable blue until it becomes self-evident that it is so.

DR. NEWMAN: Intuition is not proof. Proof is afforded when an hypothesis is framed — forgive me for using the jargon of science — making certain predictions about future events. If these events occur, the statement or hypothesis is true. If not, they are false. But intuition is something else again. The drunkard and the lunatic also have their indubitable intuitions — although I am not, I humbly assure you, suggesting that you are like one or the other. Many people have different and contradicting intuitions. Suppose another person had an intuition of the sky as God’s round wall to hide the realm of heaven. How would you show him that he was wrong and you, on the contrary, correct?

DR. BERGEN [becoming heated, but still full of assurance]: How do you know that the grass is green? By looking at the grass. But some are color-blind. How can you prove the greenness of the grass to them? You cannot because of their incapacity to see color. Thus to some the sky is merely blueness and nothingness. Only by looking at the sky, grasping its nature by means of pure attention, can you be convinced that the sky is God’s sensorium, God’s blue eye. [There is a murmur of pleasure among the DISCIPLES.]

DR. NEWMAN: What you are saying amounts to this, that your belief can neither be proven nor disproven, for you provide no specific test of your assertion. The sky remains what it is for perception, no matter what is said about it, and almost anything can be said. If one does not see the sky in your fashion, one is blind.

DR. BERGEN [sharply]: Yes, one is blind. You are blinded by scientific method which looks past and beneath the facts of direct experience and forgets them. Consider, for example, the difference between the physicist’s time — readings on a clock, a machine’s abstract numbers — and felt time, time as we experience it from moment to moment. Surely you cannot deny that the latter is prior and ultimate, for without that actual experience how could the physicist get his kind of time? How could he have any experience whatever?

DR. NEWMAN [as if concerned with other thoughts]: There are a hundred other religions, a thousand more systems of belief, all of them asserting that they have the true path to the divine.

DR. BERGEN [smiling with assurance]: All of them fail in one thing, they have not attained knowledge of what mediates between the divine and the human, the infinite and the finite, which is the chief religious problem. Some have had direct experience of that mediator, which accounts for their frequent truths. But none have recognized fully nor correctly named the actual fact which mediates between God and man. I know I am right because I have direct experiences of what I assert, the only means of arriving at certainty.

DR. NEWMAN: Dr. Bergen, I am full of misgivings about what I now must do. I have delayed this interview with you for weeks, fearing the consequences of what I am about to tell you. But worse may come if I do not speak.

You believe that your daughter Eleanor killed herself because of one of your doctrines. You think that she believed as you do, and you say that intuition has made you certain that she killed herself, accepting your doctrine. You are wrong. She killed herself for a wholly different reason. She was in love with a man who would not marry her, partly because he was already married. Though he loved your daughter, he would not divorce his wife for her. He brought her to me, hoping that an analysis might free her from her obsessive passion for him. It did not, unfortunately, although we tried for more than a year. She became desperate because he had refused to see her for almost three months, and she killed herself when she was convinced that he would never marry her. Her predicament was almost commonplace in modern life. Only her means of adjusting herself was extraordinary, and that is accounted for by her inability to control her emotions, such an emotion of despondency as is clear in the victrola record you played. She killed herself because she was in love with a married man.

DR. BERGEN [shocked and at a loss]: You are lying! How can you prove what you say? It is what you wish to believe, not the truth. Whether consciously or not, you lie.

DR. NEWMAN: I have conclusive proof, the kind which you do not possess for your fantastic belief. It is a letter from your daughter written and posted an hour before she killed herself. You will see why I hesitated so long before coming to you, though I knew that her death was a mystery. By the time this letter was written, I was the only one in whom she would or could confide. The point is that despite your intimacy with God’s blue eye, you wholly misconstrued her act. [He reads the letter.]

“Dear Dr. Newman:

You have been so kind to me that I don’t like to use you for an unpleasant task, but M. (her lover’s name) destroys all letters from me. I am killing myself because I cannot live without him. I want him to know that in his heart, but without any scandal which will hurt his wife and children, and he will not know this unless you tell him because I am trying to be good and useful for something for once by letting my poor father suppose that I am killing myself in obedience to his religious belief, of which you will hear more from others. Please forgive me and do this for me — tell M. that he was wrong to let anything stand in the way of love.

Your poor friend,

Eleanor.”

DR. BERGEN [desperately]: Is that your sister’s handwriting, Martha? [DR. NEWMAN gives MARTHA the letter. She looks at it and reads it.]

MARTHA [after a moment, in a strange tone]: O Father! Yes — it is her handwriting. He read the letter correctly.

DR. BERGEN [as if completely humbled]: Agh! I have shown myself a deluded fool, I suppose. I have been taken in by my own fraud, it seems. It seems that I deceived myself and I deceived all of you. No! It is inconceivable to me.

DR. NEWMAN: The whole thing will pass from your mind quickly. In a few months it will be merely a bad dream, or something about which you smile. Perhaps I should have broken the true story to you differently, in gradual stages.

MRS. BERGEN [going over to her husband, who holds his face in his hands]: This has separated us for a long time. It is probably for the best that this should have happened. It may be that her death has saved us from unending hatred for one another.

DR. BERGEN: No, I was sure. It was no illusion.

ANTHONY:

What of myself and my illusion,

Who loved her very much in perfect blindness?

I loved a phantom which my infatuation

Engendered. She was, it seems, a dream

Foisted upon me by my fatuous mind,

While in my sleep I walked near an abyss

Upon the 57th story window ledge,

Teetering on tiptoe.

Belief contrives

A curious house, peculiar pyramid

Which narrows as it must to nothingness.

And on that tiny top we stand until

The actual sand shifts as it must, betrays

The desert of our lives, our broken sleep.

All right, let it be so. The worst has come.

I to the common world must pass

Who lived long privately. O worst of all,

I was not insufficient, but I was

Merely irrelevant to her being and her pain.

DR. BERGEN [as if decided]: That does not apply to me. I did not deceive, I was not deceived, except by one poor miserable distraught girl. One example proves nothing. She deceived me. But I was not deceived in all, only in her.

[He steps quickly from the long table on the terrace to the parapet, lifting himself upon it clumsily and standing up to full height before them, as all move toward him in a ring, uttering their dismay variously.]

Now I am going to kill myself! If you come closer, it will serve no purpose, except to make me jump sooner. I wish to make several idle remarks before I depart. If you wish to hear them, you will keep your distance. I am decided. There is nothing you can do to prevent me.

MARTHA: Father! Father!

MRS. BERGEN [hysterical]: For God’s sake, for our sake, don’t kill yourself. Wait! Wait! You said that one example proves nothing. You said so. You have no reason for killing yourself.

DR. BERGEN: Every reason. I wish to be sure once and for all. I cannot endure the long experience of doubt once more. Will you listen to me and hear what I have to say?

DR. NEWMAN: Wait! Do not increase the tragedy in this house. Time takes away both good and bad. In three months all will seem different to you. It will always be possible for you to die.

VARIOUS DISCIPLES [successively]: We need you! We depend on you! We are lost without you! We believe in you! You taught us!

DR. BERGEN: It is too late, there is only one act left for me. The horror of doubt crowds my mind and I cannot endure it. [Turning and looking down.] Will you listen to me? On the tiny street fifteen stories below the tiny figures of human beings and of cars move with sharp, short motions, quickly, neatly, and wholly without meaning. I am going the shortest distance past them, which will at least convince you of my sincerity.

MARTHA: Father, wait!

DR. BERGEN: This is what terrorizes you, a human being about to die of his own will.

DR. NEWMAN: If you kill yourself now, they will say that you are insane.

DR. BERGEN: I am not concerned about what will be said any longer. I am going to perfect certainty. I am going to find out for myself. Let me say what I have to say. [To MRS. BERGEN] Elsa, I am sorry. You do not understand, but I do not blame you. You were good to me for a long time, not lately; but my gratitude remains. [To MARTHA] Martha, be a good girl, be satisfied with what life itself provides, although it is insufficient. Do not imitate your father. [To the DISCIPLES] I can no longer help you, but you will know that I am sincere, and you will surely know once and for all at some time if I was right. I can not tolerate the mere possibility that I have suffered from some dream or hallucination.

I knew long ago that I would come to this pass, when death alone would be left for me, as a means of satisfying my mind and my heart. For a long time, I lived from one satisfaction to another — my profession, my wife, my family, my increasing success as a doctor. Then one day I became wholly aware of what all deliberately forget — that life is not a self-contained sphere, which exists unendingly. I knew to my fingertips that I must die, as I had seen so many die. This me must die, this body must rot; I would see, hear, feel, taste, touch, think, no more. For a year I was a prey to the worst despondency. Nothing had meaning for me. Then I was visited by the first of repeated special experiences and all was changed until now. Do you understand me? I cannot return to my old unrest and uncertainty. What does one have, having lived long? What is the virtue and fruit of old age? A bedpan, a failing memory, a drooling mouth, the sense of one’s own inadequacy at last. But I am going to find out for myself once and for all. There is only one means of knowing.

DR. NEWMAN: I believe that you were right! I accept your belief! One example proves nothing.

DR. BERGEN: No! You are insincere! I hear the duplicity in your voice. I am faced by my own doubt. I have the will to know and nothing else. Death is the only satisfaction left to me. The stench of this life offends me too much at last. I am done. Whereas the consequence is final and the exodus is irreparable; whereas the notion is unanalyzed, the dream unexhausted, the procedure without rationale, the belief a verbalism, there remains the complete conclusion of utter light or at least a little unnervous peace. I will feel the parts of my body one last time, for my own patience is intolerable to me; I can no longer endure my own thoughts, I have much to say, but my own speech appalls me. There is a fine abyss which waits to receive me and please me and satisfy me as never before.

MARTHA [moving towards him]: Father! Father!

DR. BERGEN: Stand back, Martha. I am faced with my own ignorance. But I am going to find out for myself once and for all!

[He jumps to his death as several scream. MARTHA, running from among them, jumps up and also leaps from the parapet.]

DR. NEWMAN: Nothing is left to say, everything to do, question my own heart, justify myself, if I can. Belief and knowledge consume the heart of man.

RAKOVSKY [as if in echo]: Knowledge and belief devour the mind of man.

ANTHONY: Belief, knowledge, and desire — desire most of all.

DR. NEWMAN: Man destroys his own heart.

CURTAIN

1. believed to be God by thousands: Allusion to Marcus Garvey (1887–1940), leader of the first important U.S. black nationalist movement, based in New York City’s Harlem.

TITLE PAGE OF THE ORIGINAL

NEW DIRECTIONS EDITION, 1941.

SHENDANDOAH

It is the historic nature of all particulars to try to prove that they are universal by nature—

ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITTANICA

Wer sass nicht bang vor seines Herzens vorhang?

Der schlug sich auf: die Szenerie war Abschied….

RILKE

PERSONS OF THE PLAY

Shenandoah Fish: Sarah Harris

Elsie Fish: Edna Harris

Mrs. Goldmark: Jack Strauss

Jacob Fish: Harry Lasky

Walter Fish and wife: Edith Strauss

Joseph Fish and wife: Bertha Lasky

Leonard Fish: The baby Shenandoah

Dolly Fish: Dr. Adamson

[Enter SHENANDOAH, to the right. A spotlight shines on him as the theater is darkened and the curtain rises on a darkened stage.]

SHENANDOAH:

This was the greatest day of my whole life!

I was eight days of age:

Twenty-five years

Consume my being as I speak (for we

Are made of years and days, not flesh and blood),

And no event since then is as important!

In January 1914 a choice was made

Which in my life has played a part as endless

As the world-famous apple, eaten in Eden,

Which made original sin and the life of man

— Or as the trigger finger with a bitten nail

Which Prinzip’s mind was soon to press

In Sarajevo, firing at Verdun,

St. Petersburg, Vienna, and Berlin—

And like the length of Cleopatra’s nose,

And like the grain of sand in Cromwell’s kidney,

As Pascal said, who knew a thing or two,

Or like the pinpoint prick which gave the great

Eloquent statesman lockjaw in the prime of life

(O Death is eminent, beyond belief!)

— Return with me, stand at my point of view,

Regard with my emotion the small event

Which gave my mind and gave my character,

Amid the hundred thousand possibilities

Heredity and community avail,

Bound and engender,

the very life I know!

[The stage lights up and the curtain rises.]

The curtain rises on a dining room

In the lower middle class in 1914:

Gaze briefly at the period quality,

Not at the quaintness, but at the pathos

Of any moment of time, seen in its pastness,

The ignorance which prophet, astrologist,

And palmist use as capital and need

— The dining room contains in vivid signs

Certain clear generals of time and place:

Look at the cut glass bowls on the buffet,

They are the works of art of these rising Jews,

— The shadow of Israel and the shadows of Europe

Darken their minds and hearts in the new world.

They prosper in America. They win the jewels

(My mind intends no pun, but falls on one:

Jews are no jewels, as Angles are no angels.)

Of cut glass bowls to place upon their tables,

Moved by the taste and trend of the middle class—

[Enter ELSIE FISH with her child in a bassinet and EDNA GOLDMARK, her next door neighbor. Both are young married women, but MRS. GOLDMARK is plainly the older of the two. As SHENANDOAH speaks, ELSIE is engaged in tending the baby, while MRS. GOLDMARK regards her.]

Explain the other furniture yourself,

But lift your mind from the local color,

For the particular as particular

Is not itself, as a house is not its front,

And as a man is not his flesh:

Come now,

See the particular as universal,

Significance like sunlight, the symbol’s glory,

As two crossed sticks of wood shine with the story

Of Jesus Christ and several institutions,

— The union of particular and universal,

That’s what one ought to see, as Aristotle

Has said for years:

he knew a thing or two—

[During the speeches of all the characters except SHENANDOAH, there is a systematic shift back and forth from formal speech to colloquial speech, a shift which is reflected in their actions, and echoed, so to speak, in the shift from verse to prose.]

ELSIE FISH: My father-in-law is coming to see me before the ceremony. I wonder what he wants. When he called, he was very disturbed and upset.

MRS. GOLDMARK: Maybe he wants to spend some time with his new grandson before the ceremony. We do not know what it is to be a grandparent, we are too young. Just think, a grandparent has all the pleasure, none of the pain and expense.

ELSIE FISH: I do not think he is so pleased. This is no novelty to him. He has been made a grandparent five times already by his other sons and daughters. Do you know, he said it was a question of life and death that he wanted to speak to me about. What can it be? But he is always like that, always nervous, always disturbed.

MRS. GOLDMARK: Maybe he wants to speak to your husband too. Where is your husband now?

ELSIE FISH: How should I know where my husband is? Who am I to know such a thing?

SHENANDOAH[standing at an angle to the scene, unseen and unheard]:

This marriage is a stupid endless mistake,

Unhappiness flares from it, day and night,

The child has been desired four long years,

For friends have told the young married woman

The child will change his father, alter herimage

Both in his mind and heart. For he is cruel.

How can two egos live near by all their days,

If Love and Love’s unnatural forgiveness

Do not give to the body’s selfishness

And the will’s cruelty lifelong carte blanche?

[A doorbell rings. The negro SERVANT GIRL passes from the kitchen at the left through doorway in back of dining room which leads to the hall.]

ELSIE FISH: That must be my father-in-law now. Since he has come about something very important, would you go now, Mrs. Goldmark, and come back when he has gone? You have been a wonderful neighbor.

MRS. GOLDMARK [departing]: I have had two children myself. I know what it is to be a mother for the first time.

[Enter JACOB FISH, a man of sixty.]

JACOB FISH [plainly preoccupied]: Dear Elsie, I was very anxious to see you before the ceremony. So this is my new grandson: what a fine boy! May he live to a hundred and ten!

SHENANDOAH:

God save me from such wishes, though well meant:

This old man has not read Ecclesiastes

Or Sophocles. Yet he has lived for sixty years,

He should know better what long life avails,

The best seats at the funerals of friends.

JACOB FISH: My dear girl, last night I heard that you were going to name the boy Jacob, after your dead father. Have you forgotten that Jacob is my name also? Have you forgotten what it means to have a child named after you, when you are still living?

ELSIE FISH: What is it, except an honor? An honor to you, father-in-law, as well as to my dear dead father, although I admit I had him in mind first of all.

JACOB FISH: Elsie, I do not blame you for not knowing the beliefs of your religion and your people. You are only a woman, and in this great new America, anyone might forget everything but such wonderful things like tall buildings, subways, automobiles, and iceboxes. But if the child is named Jacob, it will be my death warrant! Thus all the learned ministers have said. It is written again and again in various commentaries and interpretations of the Law. It has been believed for thousands of years.

SHENANDOAH:

How powerful the past! O king of kings,

King of the elements,

king of all thinking things!

ELSIE FISH: I am surprised that you accept such beliefs, father-in-law. I never thought that you were especially religious.

JACOB FISH: Wisdom comes with the years, my dear girl. When you are my age, you will feel as I do about these matters.

SHENANDOAH:

This old man is afraid of death, though life

Has long been cruel as jealousy to him.

How often death presides when birth occurs:

Yet to disturb the naming of a child

Is wrong,

though many would behave like this—

O to what difficult and painful feat

Shall I compare the birth of any child

And all related problems? To the descent

Of a small grand piano from a window

On the fifth-floor: O what a tour de force,

Clumsy as hippos or rich men en route

To Heaven through the famous needle’s eye!

Such is our début in the turning world….

ELSIE FISH: How can I change the child’s name now? Some of the presents already have his initials and his name has been announced on very expensive engraved cards. What will I say to my mother, my father’s widow? This is her first grandchild. Do you really think a name will make you die?

JACOB FISH: Elsie, look at the problem from this point of view: why take a chance? If I die, think of how you will feel. There are hundreds of names which are very handsome.

ELSIE FISH: Father-in-law, you know I would like to please you.

JACOB FISH: You are a good woman, Elsie. You are too good for my son. He does not deserve such a fine wife.

ELSIE FISH: You do not know how he behaves to me. You would not believe me, if I told you. I have not had a happy day in the four years of my marriage.

JACOB FISH: I know, I know! He ran away from home as a boy and has never listened to anyone. I tell him every time I see him that he does not deserve such a wife, so intelligent, so good-looking, so kind and refined!

ELSIE FISH: I will do what you ask me to do. I will change the child’s name. Jacob is not a fine name, anyhow. I want the boy to have an unusual name because he is going to be an unusual boy.

[The BABY begins to howl, in a formalized way which does not get in the way of the dialogue, but seems a comment on it.]

You understand, I would not do this for anyone but you.

JACOB FISH: I will be grateful to you to my dying day!

ELSIE FISH: You have many years of life ahead of you!

JACOB FISH: You are a wonderful woman!

[In this dialogue, the shift back and forth between formalized and colloquial speech becomes especially pronounced. ELSIE FISH hands the child to SHENANDOAH, as if absentmindedly, and leaves the dining room to go to the door with her father-in-law.]

SHENANDOAH:

She thinks to please her husband through his father.

Do not suppose this flattery too gross:

If it were smiled at any one of you

You would not mind! You might not recognize

The flattery as such. And if you did,

You would not mind! Such falseness is too pleasant:

Each ego hides a half-belief the best is true,

Good luck and sympathy are all it lacks

To make the bright lights shine upon its goodness,

Its kindness, shyness, talent, wit, and charm!

— In any case, what can she do? Fight Death,

The great opponent ever undefeated

Except perhaps by Mozart?

As for belief,

To make a man give up but one belief

Is just like pulling teeth from a lion’s mouth—

[SHENANDOAH turns his attention to the child in his arms, regards the child with lifted eyebrows and a doubtful smile. As he does so, the spotlight falls on him, while the scene is left in a half-light.]

Poor child, the center of this sinful earth,

How many world-wide powers surround you now,

Making your tears appropriate to more

Than the un-understood need and disorder

Your body feels. True and appropriate

Your sobs and tears, because you hardly know

How many world-wide powers surround you now,

And what a vicious fate prepares itself

To make of you an alien and a freak!

— I too am right to sympathize with you,

If I do not, who will? for I am bound

By the sick pity and the faithful love

The ego bears itself, as if Narcissus

And Romeo were one: for I am you

By that identity which fights through time,

No matter what Kant and other skeptics say

— Is it not true that every first-born child

Is looked on by his relatives as if

They were the Magi, seeking Zion’s promise?

At any rate, children for long have been

The prizes and angels of the West,

But what this signifies let us omit

— Now in the great city, mid-winter holds,

The dirty rags of snow freeze at the curb,

Pneumonia sucks at breath, the turning globe

Brings to the bitter air and the grey sky

The long illness of time and history,

And in the wide world Woodrow Wilson does

What he can do. In the wide world, alas!

The World War grows in nations and in hearts,

Bringing ten million souls an early death!

— Forgive my speech: I have nor youth nor age,

But as it were an after-dinner speech,

Speaking of both, with endless platitudes—

[The spotlight goes out, the scene is once more fully lighted, ELSIE FISH returns to the dining room with MRS. GOLDMARK, SHENANDOAH gives the child back to his mother, who acts as if he were not there, and then SHENANDOAH returns to his position at the side, removed from the scene and at an angle to both audience and scene.]

ELSIE FISH: I felt for the old man and you know how I am: I always give in to my sympathies. I know it is a weakness. But what a shame that he should let such beliefs make him afraid.

MRS. GOLDMARK: When one is old, one is like a child.

ELSIE FISH: And after all, I said to myself, he is a poor unhappy old man who came to America because his children had come. His wife abuses him because he does not work and his grown-up children support him, but give the mother the money, so that he has to come to his wife for a dollar.

MRS. GOLDMARK: That’s the way it is, that’s old age for you.

ELSIE FISH: But now I must find a new name for my boy before the guests come. My husband’s relatives are coming and some of the men who work for my husband, with their wives. Mrs. Goldmark, you gave your children such fine names, maybe you can think of a name for me.

MRS. GOLDMARK: Thank you for the compliment. I like the names Herbert and Mortimer more all the time. They are so distinguished and new and American. Do you know how I came to think of them? I was reading the newspaper in bed after my first boy was born. I was reading the society page, which is always so interesting.

ELSIE FISH: Let’s get the morning paper and we will see what luck I have. I wish my husband were here, I must have his approval. He gets angry so quickly.

[MRS. GOLDMARK goes into the living room at the right and returns with the newspaper.]

ELSIE FISH [to herself]: I wonder where Walter is.

MRS. GOLDMARK: Now let us see what names are mentioned today.

SHENANDOAH:

While they gaze at their glamorous ruling class,

I must stand here, regardant at an angle,

I must lie there, quite helpless in my cradle,

As passive as a man who takes a haircut—

And yet how many minds believe a man

Creates his life ex nihilo, and laugh

At the far influence of deities,

and stars—

MRS. GOLDMARK: “Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Somerville sailed yesterday for Havana—” What a life! to be able to enjoy sunshine and warmth in the middle of winter: one would never have colds—

ELSIE FISH: Maybe some day you too will be able to go south in the winter. Who would have believed we would all be as well as we are, ten years ago? Read some of the first names, one after another.

MRS. GOLDMARK: Russell, Julian, Christopher, Nicholas, Glenn, Llewellyn, Murray, Franklin, Alexander: do you like any of those?

ELSIE FISH: I like some of them, Mrs. Goldmark, but I might as well pick one from a whole many. Read some more.

MRS. GOLDMARK: Lincoln, Bertram, Francis, Willis, Kenneth—

ELSIE FISH: Kenneth: that’s a fine name—

MRS. GOLDMARK: I don’t like it: it sounds Scandinavian—¹

ELSIE FISH: What’s wrong with that?

MRS. GOLDMARK: You should hear some of the things my husband tells me about the Scandinavians! Marvin, Irving, Martin, James, Elmer, Oswald, Rupert, Delmore—

ELSIE FISH: Delmore! What a pretty name, Mrs. Goldmark—

MRS. GOLDMARK: Vernon, Allen, Lawrence, Archibald, Arthur, Clarence, Edgar, Randolph—

SHENANDOAH:

This shows how all things come to poetry,

As all things come to generation’s crux:

Every particular must have a name,

Every uniqueness needs a special sound,

In the Beginning is the word

and in the End

Gabriel will call the blessèd by their nicknames,

And summon up the damned by the sweet petnames

They called each other in adulterous beds—

MRS. GOLDMARK: Elliott, Thomas, Maxwell, Harold, Melvin, Mitchell, Tracy, Norman, Ralph, Washington, Christopher—

ELSIE FISH: I like those names, but none of them really stands out. How do you think they would sound with Fish? Washington Fish? Christopher Fish? I would like an unusual sound.

SHENANDOAH:

She comes close to the problem’s very heart,

She has a sense of connotation. But wrongly,

As if, somehow, she stood upon her head

And saw the room minutely,

upside down!

MRS. GOLDMARK: Do you know, I could read the society page for weeks at a time? If I am ever sick, I will. I feel as if I had known some of the members of the Four Hundred, the Vanderbilts and the Astors, for years. And I know about the less important families also. I know their friends and where they go in winter and summer. For instance, the Talbot Brewsters, who are mentioned today: every year they go to Florida in January. Mr. Brewster has an estate in the Shenandoah Valley…

ELSIE FISH: Shenandoah! What a wonderful name: Shenandoah Fish!

[The baby begins to howl.]

MRS. GOLDMARK: It is not really the name of a person, but the name of a place. Yet I admit it is an interesting name.

ELSIE FISH: He will be the first one ever to be called Shenandoah! Shhhhh, baby, shhhhh: you have a beautiful name.

SHENANDOAH:

Now it is done! quickly! I am undone:

This is the crucial crime, the accident

Which is more than an accident because

It happens only to certain characters,

As only Isaac Newton underwent

The accidental apple’s happy fall—

[As before, the spotlight shines on SHENANDOAH, the scene itself is left in a half-light, ELSIE FISH gives SHENANDOAH the crying child and leaves the dining room with her neighbor. SHENANDOAH steps to the footlights, goes through motions intended to soothe the crying child, and speaks as if to the infant.]

Cry, cry, poor psyche, eight days old:

Primitive peoples, sparkling with intuition,

Often refuse to give the child a name,

Or call him “Filth,” “Worthless,” “Nothingness,”

In order to outwit the evil powers.

Sometimes a child is named by the event

Which happened near his birth: how wise that is—

This poor child by that rule would thus be named

“The First World War”—

Among the civilized,

A child is often named his father’s son,

Second and fresh identity: the wish is clear,

All men would live forever—

Some are named

After the places where they live, tacit

Admission of the part the milieu plays

And how it penetrates each living soul—

Some are called the professions, some are saints

As if to’express a hope of lives to come:

But everywhere on all sides everyone

Feels with intensity how many needs

Names manifest, resound, and satisfy—

The Jews were wise, when they called God

“The Nameless”

(He is the’anonymous Father of all hearts,

At least in my opinion). Legal codes

Are right too when they make most difficult

The change of names, flight from identity—

But let me now propose another use,

Custom, and rule: let each child choose his name

When he is old enough? Is this too great

An emphasis upon the private will?

Is not the problem very serious?

[The dining room fills with relatives and guests. Among those present are the infant’s father, WALTER FISH; Walter Fish’s brothers, JOSEPH and LEONARD, and their wives; JACOB and DOLLY FISH, Walter’s father and mother; Elsie Fish’s mother, SARAH HARRIS, and her sister, EDNA HARRIS; JACK STRAUSS and HARRY LASKY, two men who work for WALTER FISH, and their wives, EDITH STRAUSS and BERTHA LASKY. SHENANDOAH passes the infant in his arms to one of the relatives, and for a moment the infant is passed from person to person like a medicine ball, while everyone wears a broad grin. Then the infant is placed in his bassinet. Some are eating the sandwiches and fruits on the buffet, and WALTER FISH gives one of the men a drink. An argument is in progress.]

JACK STRAUSS: To me, Shenandoah is a beautiful name, original and strange. I will give fifty dollars to be this boy’s godfather.

ELSIE FISH [to her sister, EDITH]: He is just trying to win favor with the man he works for.

BERTHA LASKY [to her husband]: What’s the matter with you? Make an offer quickly: don’t let him get ahead of you.

HARRY LASKY: I will give sixty dollars to be the boy’s godfather—

JACK STRAUSS: I will go higher and make it seventy-five—

WALTER FISH: Gentlemen, Gentlemen: you will make me think I ought to have a few children a week.

SHENANDOAH:

Clearly these business men feel in the father

A man whose day will come: he will be rich,

They feel his power. They feel his strength. He is

A man whose friendship must be cultivated,

sought and won—

ELSIE FISH: Walter, you promised me. I want my brother Nathan to be the child’s godfather.

WALTER FISH: I promised you and I will keep my promise. Nathan is a fine young man, studious and intelligent. What better godfather could a child be given than a promising young doctor? Nothing is too good for my son. Thank you, Jack and Harry, when the boy is old enough I will tell him how much money you were willing to spend to be the boy’s godfather. No doubt, he will then feel kindly to you.

SHENANDOAH:

He has a brutal tongue, cannot resist

Speaking his brutal insights as if

No one else knew the human heart. Yet this

Proves that such motives are intense in him,

How would he know them, why would he mock them,

Smiling with keen pleasure when he sees them

At work in other hearts, except in great

Relief at finding colleagues, finding peers?

JACK STRAUSS: I bet the boy will make a million dollars—

HARRY LASKY: I bet that he will be a famous lawyer—

GRANDMOTHER HARRIS: I hope that he will be a famous doctor—

SHENANDOAH:

How utterly they miss the mark, how shocked,

How horrified if they but knew what I

Will one day be: if from their point of view

They saw me truly, saw my true colors,

grasped

And understood the rôle of my profession!

O, their emotions would approximate

Those of a man who has found out his wife

Has been unfaithful or was born Chinese—

[Enter NATHAN HARRIS, a good-looking and tall young man who has recently become a doctor. It is obvious as he is greeted that he is well-liked and respected by all and as he shakes hands, his boundless self-assurance and sense of authority shows itself.]

NATHAN HARRIS: Where is my wonderful nephew, Jacob or Jacky Fish?

ELSIE FISH: Nathan, we have decided to give him another name since my father-in-law has the same name. We are going to call him Shenandoah—

NATHAN HARRIS: Shenandoah! How in a hundred years did you think of such a foolish name?

WALTER FISH: I fail to see anything foolish about Shenandoah?

NATHAN HARRIS: It is foolish in every way. It does not sound right with Fish. The association of ideas is appalling. The boy will be handicapped as if he had a clubfoot. When he grows up, he will dislike his name and blame you for giving it to him.

SHENANDOAH:

How moved I am! how much he understands!

He is both right and wrong. He sees the danger,

But does not see the strange effect to come:

Yet what a friend he is to me, how close

I feel to him! He means well and he knows

How difficult Life is,

climbing on hands and knees—

JACK STRAUSS: You are exaggerating, Dr. Harris.

HARRY LASKY: This is not a matter of the human body, in which you are an expert, Dr. Harris.

NATHAN HARRIS: No, not the human body, but the human soul: nothing is more important than a name. He will be mocked by other boys when he goes to school because his name is so peculiar—

SHENANDOAH:

He is intelligent, that’s obvious:

Perhaps his youth permits a better view

Of cultural conditions of the Age—

NATHAN HARRIS: Don’t you see how pretentious the name is?

WALTER FISH: Nathan, there is nothing wrong with me. I am as good as the next one and maybe better. My son has a right to a pretentious name.

NATHAN HARRIS: Walter, to be pretentious means to show off foolishly.

[The infant has begun to cry again and cries louder as they quarrel.]

WALTER FISH: Thank you very much for explaining the English language to me. That’s very pretentious of you—

NATHAN HARRIS: Excuse me, Walter: what I meant to say is that the two names of Shenandoah and Fish do not go well together—

WALTER FISH: I suppose you think something like Fresh Fish would be better? [Laughter from the others.]

NATHAN HARRIS: All right, go ahead and laugh. But if this helpless infant is going to be named Shenandoah, I don’t want to be his godfather.

WALTER FISH: Don’t do me any favors! Others are willing to pay for the privilege. I am glad that you don’t want to be his godfather—

NATHAN HARRIS: I am glad that you are glad!

GRANDMOTHER HARRIS: Nathan, don’t lose your temper. What a shame, to quarrel on a day like this: what will the minister think?

WALTER FISH: He has come here to insult me and to insult an eight-day old child. Who do you think you are, anyway? Just because you are a doctor does not mean you are better than us in every respect—

ELSIE FISH: Nathan, you ought to be ashamed of yourself: you should have heard the fine things Walter was just saying about you and how he wanted you to be the boy’s godfather. I was the one who chose the name of Shenandoah—

NATHAN HARRIS: Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself! I am not going to stay here another moment to see a helpless child punished for the rest of his life because his parents have an inadequate understanding of the English language—

[NATHAN goes out as everyone follows him, trying to stop his departure. The child is given to SHENANDOAH again. Spotlight and half-light once more, as SHENANDOAH comes to the footlights, trying to stop the child’s tears.]

SHENANDOAH:

This is hardly the last time, little boy,

That conflict will engage the consciousness

Of those who might admire Nature, pray to God,

Make love, make friends, make works of art,

make peace—

O no! hardly the last time: in the end

All men may seem essential boxers, hate

May seem the energy which drives the stars,

(L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle!)

And war as human as the beating heart:

So Hegel and Empedocles have taught.

— It is impossible to tell you now

How many world-wide causes work this room

To bring about the person of your name:

Europe! America! the fear of death!

Belief and half-belief in Zion’s word!

The order of a community in which

The lower middle class looks up and gapes

And strives to imitate the sick élite

In thought, in emptiness, in luxury;

Also the foreigner whose foreign-ness

Names his son native, speaking broken English—

Enough! for this is obvious enough:

Let us consider where the great men are

Who will obsess this child when he can read:

Joyce is in Trieste in a Berlitz school,

Teaching himself the puns of Finnegans Wake—

Eliot works in a bank and there he learns

The profit and the loss, the death of cities—

Pound howls at him, finds what expatriates

Can find,

culture in chaos all through time,

Like a Picasso show! Rilke endures

Of silence and of solitude the unheard music

In empty castles which great knights have left—

Yeats too, like Rilke, on old lords’ estates,

Seeks for the permanent amid the loss,

Daily and desperate, of love, of friends,

Of every thought with which his age began—

Kafka in Prague works in an office, learns

How bureaucratic Life, how far-off God,

A white-collar class’ theology—

Perse is in Asia as a diplomat,

— He sees the violent energy with which

Civilization creates itself and moves—

Yet, with these images, he cannot see

The moral apathy after The Munich Pact,

The’unnatural silence on The Maginot Line,

— Yet he cannot foresee The Fall of France—

Mann, too, in Davos-Platz finds in the sick

The triumph of the artist and the intellect—

All over Europe these exiles find in art

What exile is: art becomes exile too,

A secret and a code studied in secret,

Declaring the agony of modern life:

The child will learn of life from these great men,

He will participate in their solitude,

And maybe in the end, on such a night

As this, return to the starting-point, his name,

Showing himself as such among his friends—

[The lighting changes as before, the whole cast comes back, and as the child is returned to the dining room by SHENANDOAH, it is obvious that the argument has continued with greater and greater heat. For a moment, as the argument waxes fast and furious, the infant is passed from person to person hurriedly and painfully, like something too hot to handle. NATHAN has been backed against the wall by his mother and several of the men, who are trying to keep him from making his departure.]

NATHAN HARRIS: I say again that the name Shenandoah is inexcusable and intolerable, and I will not stay here unless the boy is given another name—

GRANDMOTHER HARRIS: What an unlucky thing for the baby, to have his godfather go away on this day: this day of all days—

WALTER FISH: Let him go, if he feels that way. He thinks he is too good for all of us—

ELSIE FISH: What name would you suggest for my child, Nathan? Just what is wrong with Shenandoah?

NATHAN HARRIS: I have explained again and again that Shenandoah is not a name, to begin with, and secondly, it does not go well with Fish.

MRS. GOLDMARK: He is just a snob—

JACOB FISH: I wish I had not started this whole business. But after all, a great tradition was at stake.

DOLLY FISH: You ought to be ashamed of yourself: you would like to live forever.

NATHAN HARRIS [scanning the paper]: Mrs. Goldmark, you are so resourceful, here, turn to the sport pages and read out the names of the entries at the race-tracks. [MRS. GOLDMARK turns aside in anger.]

SHENANDOAH:

My God in Heaven: what piercing irony,

To think of naming me after a horse—

NATHAN HARRIS: “Straw Flower, About Face, Cookie, Royal Minuet, Sandy Boot, Rex Flag, Hand & Glove, Fencing, Key Man, Little Tramp, Wise Man, Domkin—”

SHENANDOAH:

These names are fairly pleasant, after all:

But I am not the best judge, prejudiced—

WALTER FISH: This is too much: how long am I supposed to stand here and be insulted without opening my mouth? To name my son after a horse: who do you think you are, anyway?

NATHAN HARRIS: Who do you think the child is, anyway?

[The child howls and SHENANDOAH holds his hand to his head and then to his heart with feeling.]

SHENANDOAH: I often wonder who I am, in fact—

WALTER FISH: Please depart from this house at once—

SEVERAL RELATIVES: Nathan! Walter! Nathan! Walter!

NATHAN HARRIS: This is my sister’s home. I refuse to go.

WALTER FISH: I am going to get a policeman—

[Enter the rabbi, DR. DAVID ADAMSON.]

DR. ADAMSON: Ah, this is the house blessed by the birth of a child; what a wonderful thing it is to bring a human being into the world—

SHENANDOAH:

Here is the man of God: what will he say?

How relevant are his imperatives?

Can he express himself in modern terms?

And bring this conflict to a peaceful end?

His insights, old as Pharaoh, sometimes work,

But there is always something wholly new,

Unique, unheard-of, unaccounted for,

Under the sun, despite Ecclesiastes—

DR. ADAMSON: But why did I hear such shouting and angry voices? What must God think, seeing anger in the house of a newborn child? Men were not born to fight with one another—

JACOB FISH: Why not let Dr. Adamson decide who is right?

WALTER FISH: This is my son: I am the one to decide his proper name—

DR. ADAMSON: A child is not a piece of property, Mr. Fish—

WALTER FISH: Are you here to insult me too?

DR. ADAMSON: Now, now: my remark was ill-considered: but let us get to the bottom of this improper quarrel—

ELSIE FISH: Let me explain quickly: we cannot name the child Jacob after my dear dead father because his other grandfather’s name is Jacob and here he is—

JACOB FISH: Thank God for that!

DR. ADAMSON: You are right, a child ought to not be named after a living man: that is the habit of the Gentiles.

JACOB FISH: Let us not imitate them—

ELSIE FISH: We decided to name him Shenandoah because that sounds like such a fine name. But my brother Nathan seems to think it is disgraceful. What do you think, Dr. Adamson?

NATHAN HARRIS: I wonder how much sense this anachronism has? He knows more than the father, however.

DR. ADAMSON: It is a most unusual name. There are so many fine names which belong to our people: why go far afield?

WALTER FISH: There has been enough discussion. I have made up my mind. The boy is going to be called Shenandoah.

SHENANDOAH:

This shows the livid power of my father:

For fifteen years he will behave like this—

DR. ADAMSON: I do not want to add fuel to the flames of this regrettable dispute. I must admit that there is nothing seriously wrong with the name, although it is unusual—

NATHAN HARRIS: You see, he is not sure. He does not know. He would like to stop the quarrel, but he speaks without conviction—

SHENANDOAH:

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity—”²

DR. ADAMSON: Young man, I am full of conviction.

WALTER FISH: Go on, Nathan, just go on like that: attack everyone in the house: did you ever see anyone so sure of himself?

ELSIE FISH: Walter, maybe Nathan is right, who knows? Why don’t you call up Kelly and ask him?

SHENANDOAH:

What a suggestion! fearful and unsure,

She seeks the Gentile World, the Gentile voice!

The ancient wisdom is far from enough,

Far from enough her husband’s cleverness—

WALTER FISH: All right; everyone always says that I am unwilling to take advice and listen to reason. I will show you I can and I do. I will call my lawyer Kelly and we will find out what he has to say about the name. Not that I think for one moment that you’re right, Nathan—

NATHAN HARRIS: Go ahead, Walter, call up Kelly: I won’t think for one moment that you think I am right—

JACOB FISH: Who is this Kelly?

HARRY LASKY: Kelly is Walter’s lawyer, one of the best young lawyers in town, one of the coming men. And they say he knows the right people in Tammany through his wife’s sister—

DR. ADAMSON: Mr. Fish, to one and all it is perfectly clear that you have no need of me, since you have your lawyer Kelly. I would like to suggest that he perform the ceremony of circumcision—

[He starts for the door. Walter stops him.]

HARRY LASKY: Another one wants to go! Soon no one will be left!

WALTER FISH: Now, now, Dr. Adamson, no offense intended. With all due respect for you, you know it is always best to hear what everyone has to say. After all, this child is going to live in a world of Kellys! Just sit down for a moment while I call. I am going to make this worth your while.

DR. ADAMSON [to himself]: Forbearance and humility are best: what good will it do for me to become angry? The modern world is what it is.

[WALTER goes out to call. DR. ADAMSON helps himself to a piece of fruit from the buffet.]

SHENANDOAH:

His feelings have been hurt. The war between

Divine and secular authority,

Is old as man in Nature! Ah, he knows

He is a kind of chauffeur and no more,

Hence he adjusts himself with a piece of fruit—

[WALTER can be seen in the hallway, holding up the telephone to his mouth.]

WALTER FISH: Hello, Kelly: this is Fish. Fine and they’re fine too. Nothing like being a father. And how are you? And the wife and children? That’s good. Sorry to disturb you on a Sunday (hope you put in a good word for me with the Almighty! ha! ha!) I have a problem on my hands and I could use some of your advice (just put it on the bill, ha! ha!).

SHENANDOAH:

For this did Alexander Graham Bell

Rack his poor wits? For this? Was it for this

The matchless English language was evolved

To signify the inexhaustible world?

WALTER FISH: You know how today we are giving my boy a name. The ceremony is just like a christening, except that it’s different — Yes, ha! ha!

NATHAN HARRIS [To the rest, who are listening intently]: What a marvellous sense of humor—

WALTER FISH: I would like to have invited you, but you know how it is. Now the thing is this: we thought of naming the boy Shenandoah. Yes, Shenandoah: it seems to be some place down South. But my brother-in-law is making a scene about the whole thing. He says the name is no good—

NATHAN HARRIS: As if it were merely a matter of opinion!

SHENANDOAH:

Ah, what a friend! How close I feel to him!

Almost as close as to that sobbing child—

WALTER FISH: I don’t agree with him. It sounds fine to me, very impressive. But this is not the kind of thing you like to take a chance about. After all, a name is one of those permanent things. People will be calling him that every day in his life. O, now you’re joking: sure, Francis is a fine name, but not for us. It would not go well with Fish—

NATHAN HARRIS: Inch by inch, against enormous odds, a certain amount of progress is, with luck, made now and then—

GRANDMOTHER HARRIS: Nathan, be quiet: no more fighting—

WALTER FISH: Now what do you think of Shenandoah, Kelly?

SHENANDOAH:

Mark the dominion of the Gentile world:

This Irish Catholic will not quote Aquinas

Who wrote a treatise on the names of God—

WALTER FISH: Are your sure? All right, then Shenandoah it will be! Many thanks, and give my best to Mary: good-bye—

[WALTER returns to the dining room with a look of triumph.]

WALTER FISH: He says it is a fine name, an elegant name. He guarantees that it is a good name! What have you to say now, Nathan? I suppose you think you know more than Kelly?

NATHAN HARRIS: I give up. No one can say I did not do my best—

WALTER FISH: Let’s shake hands, Nathan, let’s eliminate all hard feelings. I am sorry that I lost my temper. Some day the two of us will tell the boy about today and the three of us will have a good laugh about the whole thing from beginning to end—

NATHAN HARRIS: He may not share your sense of humor—

DR. ADAMSON: Yes! let kindness, forgiveness, good will, and rejoicing triumph in every heart on a day like this, the day which belongs to the first-born child.

NATHAN HARRIS: Here is my hand, Walter, but my left hand is for little Shenandoah!

[He stretches out his left hand at an angle toward the bassinet. SHENANDOAH stretches out his hand to NATHAN. But NATHAN’s back is turned.]

SHENANDOAH:

Nathan! here is my hand, across the years—

[SHENANDOAH regards his unacknowledged hand with great sadness.]

I am divorced from those I love, my peers!

DR. ADAMSON: This is the way that all conflicts should end. They should end with a sacred rite. Nothing is so beautiful, nothing is so good for the heart and the soul, and the mind as a ceremony well-performed. Let us go into the next room and begin the ritual of circumcision. The sacred nature of the rite will uplift our hearts—

JACOB FISH: This ceremony of circumcision gives me more pleasure, the older I get, although I hardly know why. And after that, the food and drink: no matter how old one is, that makes Life worth living, if one has a good stomach—

SHENANDOAH:

Prime Mover of this day, you are a card!

How many lives the Pleasure-Principle

Rules like an insane king,

even in dreams—

[The men begin to go to into the living room. The women remain behind, for they are barred from the ceremony. SHENANDOAH takes the infant in haste, and stands before the curtain.]

They are about to give this child a name

And circumcise his foreskin. How profound

Are all these ancient rites: for with a wound

— What better sign exists — the child is made

A Jew forever! quickly taught the life

That he must lead, an heir to lasting pain:

Do I exaggerate, do I with hindsight see

The rise of Hitler?

O the whole of history

Testifies to the chosen people’s agony,

— Chosen for wandering and alienation

In every kind of life, in every nation—

VOICE FROM THE LIVING ROOM: May the All-Merciful bless the father and mother of the child; may they be worthy to rear him, to initiate him in the precepts of the Law, and to train him in wisdom—

[There is the sound of moving about and arranging and preparing in the living room.]

May the All-Merciful bless the godfather who has observed the covenant of Circumcision, and rejoiced exceedingly to perform this deed of piety—

[Again there is the sound of moving about and murmuring, then a pause and silence, while the faces of the women are turned toward the other room, full of pained sympathy.]

For thy salvation have I waited, O Lord. I have hoped, O Lord, for thy salvation, and done thy commandments—

[There is an appalling screech, as of an infant in the greatest pain.]

And I passed by thee, and I saw thee weltering in thy blood, and I said unto thee, in thy blood, live. Yea, I said unto thee, in thy blood, live.

SHENANDOAH:

Silent, O child, for if a knife can make you cry,

What will you do when you know that you must die?

When the mind howls with the body, I am I?

When the horrors of modern life are your sole place?

When your people are driven from the planet’s face?

When the dying West performs unspeakable disgrace

Against the honor of man, before God’s utter gaze?

Though now and then, like the early morning light’s pure greys,

Transient release is known, in the darkened theater’s plays….

CURTAIN

1. “… Scandinavian”: A private joke; Schwartz’s brother Kenneth (1916–1990) was the object of ambivalent feelings. Schwartz persistently turned Kenneth into a girl in his autobiographical fiction, as noted by his biographer, James Atlas. See his Delmore Schwartz: The Life of An American Poet (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1977), p. 13.

2. “… passionate intensity—”: Schwartz’s protagonist quotes from Yeats’s poem, “The Second Coming.”