As a freshman at University of Wisconsin, poet Delmore Schwartz frequently exchanged letters with his high school friend, the Dadaist Julian Sawyer. (Sawyer was said to be “pathetic in his adoration of Delmore.”) Below, Schwartz tells his friend of his thoughts on love and creativity, peppering in bits of literary gossip.
TO JULIAN SAWYER
[Adams Hall
October 1931]
Dear Julian:
// Love is to feel about a thing, as if that thing were yourself; so that the seasons of its existence have the same meaning of hope, fear, desire, preservation, as the seasons of your own existence; so that your me is so united to that thing as to make it a part of yourself.
That which you see, you become a part of.
That which is near you, becomes a part of you.
The beauty of the natural world is the order of God.
That of which you have a conception, exists.
There is no good and evil (absolutely) but expansion and contraction of life. It is evil since it is a contraction to stop thinking, to murder, to read The Saturday Evening Post.
To eat when it is time to think is to live less: a contraction.
To think, to see, to make is to live more: an expansion.
The holiest act is to create, to bring more things into existence.
The justification of destroying is future recreation.
To see a thing is to possess it.
The artist gives his possessions new existences with words, colors, tones, shapes. But first he must see. In our time every writer, save one, is deficient in that he does not see to completely possess, or does not translate, give a new, greater existence to his possessions, so that nothing more need be done for them, so that their existence is fixed and eternal.
and do you want gossip?
E.E. Cummings is left-handed.
Lindbergh was discharged from Wisconsin.
H.G. Wells says Wisconsin has “a great Institution of Learning.”
I. A. Richards was here last summer, and nearly drowned.
T. S. Eliot was a banker.
No more now, Julian.
Delmore
Postscript: you should read Stuart Chase’s book about Mexico because we are going there to live some day. And Chase said Madison was the most beautiful city in America, when he was here.
From Letters of Delmore Schwartz. Edited by Robert S. Phillips. Ontario Review Press, 1984. Print.
FURTHER READING
Read a pair of Schwartz’ poems, “In the naked bed…” and “The heart, a black grape…”
Read Lou Reed’s ode to Schwartz, who the musician cited as a great influence.
Listen to Ricky Ian Gordon’s musical arrangement of Schwartz’ poem “‘I Am Cherry Alive’ The Little Girl Sang”.