Schwartz, Delmore (Vol. 4) - Schwartz, Delmore 1913–1966
Schwartz, Delmore 1913–1966
Schwartz, an important American poet, playwright, and short story writer, is best known for In Dreams Begin Responsibilities. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 17-18; obituary, Vols. 25-28.)
There have been other tragic generations before the one we identify with Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, and Delmore Schwartz, perhaps Sylvia Plath as well. Yeats, in Autobiographies, called his "The Tragic Generation," and it was the last sentence in that chapter that A. Alvarez made the title of his book, The Savage God, on writers and suicide.
Theirs has been a tragic generation, an overpublicized truth, and with the exception of Lowell, a generation where the sons died before the fathers (in this case, John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate). It's even possible that, having listened to their voices over and over, we know too much about them, or at least more than we should....
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