In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

“In Dreams Begin Responsibilities,” a short story by Delmore Schwartz, remains arguably his most influential piece of writing. Schwartz drafted it in the summer of 1935, when he was just 21 years old. The events it describes closely match his real-life family experience. For example, his parents, Harry and Rose, really were Brooklynites who formed a disastrous marriage. They divorced when Schwartz and his younger brother were still children. The story was published in 1937; it found immediate success and made the author’s name.

Due to the strength of “In Dreams,” “The World Is a Wedding,” and other early stories, critics greeted Schwartz as one of the emerging literary spokesmen of his generation. His prodigious talent burned out fairly early, however. His post-1940s fiction received mixed reviews and remains infrequently anthologized. His epic poem Genesis (1943) was a critical flop and has never gained a wide readership.

Twice married and twice divorced, Schwartz seemed to replicate his parents’ troubled relationship—the subject of “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities”—in his own romantic life. Increasingly, he struggled with alcohol misuse, mental health conditions, and financial woes. In 1959, he received a major poetry award, the Bollingen Prize, for his volume of New and Selected Poems, but this was the last hurrah of a fading career.