Modernism....bywayofprotest....e.e. Cummings

E.E. Cummings, or e.e. Cummings, as he preferred to write his name, is someone who I became interested in, as a result of reading his book, The Enormous Room. The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Second Edition makes mention of Cummings's incarceration in France during W.W.I.

Being held in the 'enormous room' at Mace, he was basically in a no-man's land - he was held in La Ferte Mace (which was not classified as a prison) but rather as a place of detainment for those whom the French government considered to be threats, and it was never known how long one would remain there. It was his friend, Wm. Brown who actually landed him in this place, because of some letters Brown had written back home to the United States, concerning his impression of the war, and the state of the troops. The censors jumped on these and Brown, and included Cummings because of his 'suspect' friendship with Brown.

Cummings had volunteered for the ambulance corps. because it meant he could help with the war effort, but not have to bear arms. Somewhere in the background, the officer in charge (Anderson), hated both Cummings and Brown, because they decided, while they were there, to begin learning French and fraternized with some of the locals. This also made them suspect by their U.S. fellow ambulance crew, who, mostly from the mid-west of the United States, had no desire to expand their linguistic ability. When Cummings was arrested and taken away, he believed he was being taken to Marseilles, not Mace. Cummings's father, wrote to the President, Woodrow Wilson in an attempt to have his son released from Mace. I realize there are always books to be read, but I would recommend this book if you are interested in a first hand glimpse into conditions within places of detention during W.W. I.

Cummings was a Harvard graduate in Greek and English Literature, and was living in New York as a cubist painter, when the War called him. He was not interested in politics, but was drawn by atrocities that he had heard of occurring in Belgium. Cummings has included drawing sketches he made of his fellow inhabitants at Mace, and sprinkles French throughout the book, and writes some intriguing and insightful character sketches of his fellow citizens of the enormous room, and also of the 'keepers'. There is no question in my own mind that this experience affected his views. It can been seen in his poetry, that he rebelled against much of what was perceived to be 'sacred rites and rituals' of those 'nice people' who wielded power - the establishment.

The Norton Anthology says that "part of Cummings's attack on the establishment was directed against the typographical establishment. He used punctuation only for special effects, and many of his poems expoloited odd typographical arrangements, allowing letters of words to trail over from one line to the next in total indifference to syllables. By persisting, Cummings won acceptance for it as a kind of wisdom. It became clear that the arrangement of a poem on a page reflected the way it was to be read aloud, roused tensions and effected resolutions, offered an intriguing puzzle, and gave vent to Cummings's iconoclasm [iconoclast is a person who seeks to overturn or destroy traditional beliefs and practises]. It is in fact the badge which he wears as a self-styled misfit, one still capable of feeling love and lust in an unfeeling, mechanized world. He is in revolt against people in high places, in crowded cities, in ruts, to whom the only pronoun that he considers applicable is "it"."

[a man who had fallen among thieves*]

a man who had fallen among thieves
lay by the roadside on his back
dressed in fifteenthrate ideas
wearing a round jeer for a hat

fate per a somewhat more than less
emancipated evening
had in return for consciousness
endowed him with a changeless grin

whereon a dozen staunch and leal [loyal]
citizens did graze at pause
then fired by hypercivic zeal
sought newer pastures or because

swaddled with a frozen brooks
of pinkest vomit out of eyes
which noticed nobody he looked
as if he did not care to rise

one hand did nothing on the vest
its wideflung friend clenched weakly dirt
while the mute trouserfly confessed
a button solemnly inert.

Brushing from whome the stiffened puke
i put him all into my arms
and staggered banged with terror through
a million billion trillion stars

*A modern version of Christ's parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37).

e.e. Cummings 1926

[plato told]

plato told

him:he couldn't
believe it(jesus

told him;he
wouldn't believe
it)lao

tsze
certainly told
him, and general
(yes

mam)
sherman;
and even
(believe it
or

not)you
told him:i told
him;we told him
(he didn't believe it,no

sir)it took
a nipponized bit of
the old sixth
avenue
el;in the top of his head:to tell

him

Notes:
"tsze" - Lao Tse, the ancient Chinese philosopher and originator of the doctrine of Taoism.

"sherman" - William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891), Union general in the Civil War, who is reported to have told a military academy's graduating class that "War is hell."

last line "him" - A scandal of the late thirties arose over the sale to Japan of scrap metal obtained when the elevated railway over New York's Sixth Avenue was pulled down; it was made into weapons and ammunition which were subsequently used against American forces in the Second World War.

e.e. Cummings 1944

[maggie and milly and molly and may]

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

e.e. Cummings 1958

To close this posting, I have chosen a quote from e.e. Cummings, again found in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Second Edition, which I think gives much food for thought:
He is against expressions like "most people," which he runs into one word: "it's no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. Mostpeople have less in common with ourselves than the squarerootofminusone. You and I are human beings; mostpeople are snobs...Life,for mostpeople, simply isn't. Take the socalled standardofliving. What do mostpeople mean by 'living'? They don't mean living. They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to singular prenatal passivity which science,in its finite but unbounded wisdom,has succeeded in selling their wives." He is against science as an impersonalizing force when the only reality is the person.