The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-09-27
Reviewed by
JOSEPH NORTH


Swamp. The people Of the Swamp
constituted those Of the middle
classes who feared both God and
the devil. They shrsnk from rev.
olution; they we're frightened by the
Whites. They hoped they could
somehow, by some miracle, be able
to sit through the revolution. They
Rugged the warmth of the samovsr.
quaffing Of Chekhov and Chat
while outside the machine guns we're
rat-tat-tating through the streets.
Edward Dahlberg, in "ThOse Who
Perish" acts as guide in the world
Of these people in pre-Red America,
He conducts us through the Swamp,
and a misty. dank region it is. Per-
petually swatred in fog, clammy,
you find it hard to breathe, hard to
see your way through. It's like some
submarine region, polyps float by
and deep-sea monsters and every
things blurred and green. (Puce is
the word Dahlberg uses.) And
shimmering balefully in the gloom
is the Hakenkreuz-the Swastika.
Joshua Bosz and Eli Melamed and
Regina Gordon are Swamp people
They are upper and ex-upper middle
class Jews. They love Judea. AS
Boaz puts it:
Regina, we must stand alone;
I have come to realize that more
and more; as long as there is a
half-pint Of Jewish blood in our
veins we will be forced to stand
apart; the American Legions, the
OARS and the patriotic hundred
per cent Vigilantes will see to
that. Because Just as soon as we
step out of our invisible Ghetto
they'll call us Bolsheviks. YeSter-
day they called us ritual muir
derers. just as you are afraid of
being alone, am more panic
stricken when I hear of our CO.
religionists becoming Communists.
Even if I believe in Communism
should shout from the housetop:
MY Jewish brothers you are fated
to be alone; break this covenant,
and the blood which you have vio-
lated will flow from your eyes and
mouths. We are Jews yesterday,
today and tomorrow. Jews, Jews,
Jews-from David, from Saul, from
Samuel"
DERILOUS days have come on
L these people in their mausoleun-
like sanctuary Hitler's hordes;
Perish Judea! Hannah lives again!
Regina's cousin, a student at the
University Of Berlin, had been muir
dered by Storm Troopers. His body
the face an anonymous multilated
mask. the fingers scissored, the
chest network of splinters, tattooed
with the Hakenkreuz sign, had been
returned in black Swsstika coffin
to his parents. ="
Beginning here, Dahlberg shows us
these people reacting in their sew
eral ways to the first law of nature
for survival. Regina alone. the
strongest of the lot, catches a
glimpse Of the way out. But she
cannot make the grade. She sym
bolizes those of the Swamp who see
dry land but fail Of courage-are
too deeply mired to make it.
Regina is fifty years old, middle
aged. To be fifty means to be on
the downgrade. past ripe, an en-
Der already on the wane; it means
to be dying, not little but much,
dying so that the eyes, the mouth,
the teeth and the. hair know it,
are moldering intuitions of it. :"
She is the bourgeois on the wane.
The tragic heroisms of Goethean
Werners are gone and gone are the
epic-sized miseries of the bourgeois
when they were on the make-when
they had world to win and wept
when it was less than that. Today
their tragedies are picsyune; mean
cowardly little tragedies scurrying
across history like mice.
MELAMED-th formerly prosper
wi Gus salesman; how Dahlberg
unravels him, brutally, almost vio-
lently, giving no quarter to the man
who can say when he listens to
proletarian soap-boxer delivering an
anti-war. anti-fascist speech, Fight
sake, no." This same Melamed
penniless, his wing collar flushed
down a toilet when he understood
finally it was worse than useless in
winning a job, even bootblack's
job. hurries away mumbling:
an the next war Of gas and bac-
terra where will I run to? Where?
Where? No, no, love peace; I
love my fellow men. He was just
a cheap soap-box orator-wore a
dirty collar and shirt too; how
can he tell people what to do? -"
And Dahlbetg harries this mite
Melamed. pursues him relentlessly
from park bench to Bowery to the
flophouse and to the brink of the
grave. And the little Melamed
stands there, about to leap and he
cries:
II am being murdered and I
don't know why or for what. and
no one will help me, neither
Church. Gcd nor America. I don't
know where to 60; am bounded
from no place to no place. -
And he gees to the only haven
he deserves.
It is in this last despairing cry
that Dahlserg's sympathy for his
characters leaps out at you. He
deals with them brusquely, violently,
at times sadistically, but it is the
sadism of tortured lover And