Commentary The America poet Delmore Schwartz (1913-1968) had a number of good one-liners. His mot about existentialism, for example, is hard to beat: “Existentialism,” he said, means no one else can take a bath for you. Given the level of pretension that surrounded the French-German import, and given its dour currency in the academic stock market at the time, that deflationary observation was just the thing. Schwartz’s comment seized upon something essential in that school of philosophy—its radical individualism—and then gave it a comic twist.  Not the Heidiggerian “Dasein” whose essence is “being-unto-death” but a nice warm bath that is yours and yours alone. It was nicely done. Another comment by Schwartz has special relevance to our own situation.  I mean his observation “Even paranoids have enemies.” I reckon that Rudy Giuliani can savor the truth of that apothegm.  Likewise Victoria Toensing.  Both were raided by Joe Biden’s secret police, the NKFBI, …
Commentary The America poet Delmore Schwartz (1913-1968) had a number of good one-liners. His mot about existentialism, for example, is hard to beat: “Existentialism,” he said, means no one else can take a bath for you. Given the level of pretension that surrounded the French-German import, and given its dour currency in the academic stock
Read More