Self-portrait, 1927
E. E. CUMMINGS
A MISCELLANY
Revised Edition edited by
GEORGE J. FIRMAGE
CONTENTS
Introduction by George J. Firmage
Foreword by E. E. Cummings
The New Art
Gaston Lachaise
T. S. Eliot
The Soul Story of Gladys Vanderdecker
Vanity Fair’s Prize Movie Scenario
What Our Loving Subscribers Say
An Ex-Multimillionaire’s Rules for Success in Life
A Modern Gulliver Explores the Movies
When Calvin Coolidge Laughed
William Adams-Wiggley: Genius and Christian
Seven Samples of Dramatic Criticism
Unexpected Light on the Dawes Plan
Jean Cocteau as a Graphic Artist
How to Succeed as an Author
The Adult, the Artist and the Circus
The Very Latest School in Art
Helen Whiffletree, American Poetess
You Aren’t Mad, Am I?
“I Confess!”
“I Take Great Pleasure in Presenting”
The Theatre: I
The Theatre: II
Coney Island
Conflicting Aspects of Paris
Vive la Folie!
How I Do Not Love Italy
The Tabloid Newspaper
The Secret of the Zoo Exposed
Frenzied Finance
Ivan Narb: Abstract Sculptor of the Cosmic
The Agony of the Artist (with a capital A)
Why I Like America
The New Mother Goose
Mr. X
Miracles and Dreams
A Book without a Title
Brief Biography
A Fairy Tale
The Red Front
And It Came to Pass
Ballad of an Intellectual
Weligion Is Hashish
In Memoriam
Exit the Boob
Burlesque, I Love It!
Speech from an Unfinished Play: I
Speech from an Unfinished Play: II
Speech from an Unfinished Play: III
Fair Warning
What About It?
Re Ezra Pound: I
Re Ezra Pound: II
Foreword to an Exhibit: I
Foreword to an Exhibit: II
Foreword to an Exhibit: III
Foreword to an Exhibit: IV
Is Something Wrong?
A Foreword to Krazy
Words Into Pictures
Jottings
Videlicet
A Poet’s Advice to Students
INTRODUCTION
The prose and poetry of E. E. Cummings, as well as the life and times of the late poet-painter, have recently received the long overdue attention of several able critics and a biographer.1 To add yet another introduction to this body of Cummings criticism is not the intention of the editor nor was it the wish of Mr. Cummings. His own brief foreword to the original edition of this book was all that he wanted said. However, a word or two about this volume’s history might not be out of place.
A Miscellany—as published in 1958 in an edition limited to seventy-five signed and less than a thousand unsigned copies—contained “a cluster of epigrams,” forty-nine essays, a poem and three speeches from an unfinished play. All of these pieces had been written for or first published in magazines, anthologies or art gallery catalogues. A considerable number of them were published under pseudonyms; a few appeared anonymously.
The original Miscellany was intended to be a gathering of all the shorter pieces by Cummings that had not previously been published in book form by the author himself. This intention did not fall far short of total realization; only six known appearances were purposely omitted. Three fairy tales, first published in the Harvard Wake, were being held for publication in book form2; and three other stories3 were left out at the request of the author who did not consider them successful.
The publication of A Miscellany Revised has accomplished three things. First, the many textual errors that inadvertently crept into the first, limited edition of the book have been corrected. Second, the contents have been rearranged to reflect, as closely as possible, the original order of their first separate publication. And third, seven pieces and numerous unpublished line drawings by the author have been added to the book.
Four of the additions—“Foreword: I,” “Re Ezra Pound: I,” “Re Ezra Pound: II” and “Is Something Wrong?”—were collected in whole or in part in i: Six Nonlectures. “Brief Biography” was discovered after the limited edition of this book went to press. And Cummings’ book without a title, reprinted here with the illustrations drawn by the author for its limited hardbound appearance, has long been out-of-print and, it was felt, deserved the new audience its publication here might bring it. None of the foregoing needs any further word of explanation.
The final addition, E. E. Cummings’ translation of “Le Front Rouge” by Louis Aragon, was undertaken at the request of the Russian Revolutionary Literature Bureau as “a friendly gesture of farewell,” according to Cummings’ account of his 1931 visit to the Soviet Union in EIMI. Cummings was quick to point out that Aragon’s political beliefs were not his own4; but “The Red Front” was not without interest as a poem and its author and the translator had been friends in Paris. Above all else, the translation itself is excellent; it is also one of the few extant examples we have of this phase of Cummings’ art. “The Red Front” is printed here for the first time next to the long-suppressed original text.
The editor is indebted to many people for many kindnesses; but none more so than Mrs. E. E. Cummings. Without her assistance, understanding and generosity this book would not have been given a second life. A special thanks is due D. Jon Grossman; and to all those who lent a helping hand with the first, limited edition of this book the editor is still indebted.
It is hoped that everyone who contributed to the adventure which this book represents will join the undersigned in dedicating this volume to the memory of the poet-painter who IS E. E. Cummings.
—GEORGE J. FIRMAGE
1965
1. Charles Norman, The Magic Maker: E. E. Cummings (New York: 1958; revised edition, New York: 1964); Norman Friedman, e. e. cummings: the art of his poetry (Baltimore: 1960) and e. e. cummings: The Growth of a Writer (Carbondale: 1964); S. V. Baum, EΣΤI: ee—E. E. Cummings and the Critics (East Lansing: 1962); and Barry Marks, E. E. Cummings (New York: 1964). The Prose and Poetry of E. E. Cummings, Robert E. Wegner, is scheduled for publication in 1965.
2. The three tales and a fourth, unpublished one are soon to be issued in an edition illustrated by the young Canadian artist John Eaton.
3. “The King” (The Harvard Monthly, July 1915); “Everybody’s Mother, Anybody’s Mate,” by “An Anonymous Author” (Vanity Fair, October 1925); and “Little Red Riding Hood,” by “Eugene Heltai” (Vanity Fair, March 1926).
4. See “A Fairy Tale” in this collection and EIMI, in particular pages 142–143 where Cummings analyses certain lines and images in Aragon’s poem.
A MISCELLANY
FOREWORD to the First Edition
This book consists of a cluster of epigrams,forty-nine essays on various subjects,a poem dispraising dogmata,and several selections from an unfinished play.
Play and poem and epigrams need (I feel) no comment.
As for my essays—here grouped under three headings: Etcetera, Appreciations,VanityFair—the earliest is dated 1915 and the latest 1957;but more than half of them (comprising much of A Miscellany’s second and most of its third portion) appeared during the twenties in Vanity Fair magazine,having been graciou
sly commissioned by a charming personage named Frank Crowninshield.
Taken ensemble,the forty-nine astonish and cheer and enlighten their progenitor. He’s astonished that,as nearly as anyone can make out,I wrote them. He’s cheered because,while re-reading them,I’ve encountered a great deal of liveliness and nothing dead. Last but not least;he’s enlightened via the realization that,whereas times can merely change,an individual may grow.
—E. E. CUMMINGS
THE NEW ART
The New Art has many branches—painting, sculpture, architecture, the stage, literature, and music. In each of these there is a clearly discernible evolution from models; in none is there any trace of that abnormality, or incoherence, which the casual critic is fond of making the subject of tirades against the new order.
It is my purpose to sketch briefly the parallel developments of the New Art in painting, sculpture, music, and literature.
I.
Anyone who takes Art seriously, who understands the development of technique in the last half century, accepts Cézanne and Matisse as he accepts Manet and Monet. But this brings us to the turning point where contemporary criticism becomes, for the most part, rampant abuse, and where prejudice utters its storm of condemnation. I refer to that peculiar phase of modern art called indiscriminately, “Cubism,” and “Futurism.”
The name Cubism, properly applied, relates to the work of a small group of ultramodern painters and sculptors who use design to express their personal reaction to the subject, i.e.—what this subject “means” to them—and who further take this design from geometry. By using an edge in place of a curve a unique tactual value is obtained.
Futurism is a glorification of personality. Every socalled “Futurist” has his own hobby; and there are almost as many kinds of painting as artists. For instance, one painter takes as his subject sounds, another, colours. A third goes back to old techniques; a fourth sees life through a magnifying glass; a fifth imposes an environment upon his subject proper, obtaining very startling effects; a sixth concerns himself purely with motion—in connection with which it is interesting to note the Japanese painters’ wholly unrealistic rendering of the force of a river.
The painter Matisse has been called the greatest exponent of Cubist sculpture. At the 1913 exhibition the puzzled crowd in front of Brancusi’s “Mlle. Pogany” was only rivalled by that which swarmed about the painting called “Nude Descending a Staircase.” “Mlle. Pogany” consists of a more or less egg-shaped head with an unmistakable nose, and a sinuous suggestion of arms curving upward to the face. There is no differentiation in modelling affording even a hint of hands; in other words, the flow of line and volume is continuous. But what strikes the spectator at first glance, and focuses the attention throughout, is the enormous inscribed ovals, which everyone recognizes as the artist’s conception of the subject’s eyes. In this triumph of line for line’s sake over realism we note the development of the basic principles of impressionism.
II.
Just as in the case of painting, it is a French school which brought new life to music; but at the same time, Germany has the honour of producing one of the greatest originators and masters of realism, Richard Strauss.
The modern French school of music finds its inspiration in the personal influence of César Franck. Debussy, Ravel and Satie all owe much to this great Belgian, who (like Maeterlinck and Verhaeren), was essentially a man of their own artistic nationality.
It is safe to say that there will always be somebody who still refuses to accept modernism in music; quoting in his defense the sovereign innovator, Beethoven! On a par with the sensation produced by the painting and sculpture of the Futurist variety was the excitement which the music of Strauss and Debussy first produced upon audiences. At present, Debussy threatens to become at any moment vulgarly common; while Strauss is fatuous in his clarity beside Schönberg; who, with Stravinsky, is the only god left by the public for the worship of the aesthetes.
Erik Satie is, in many respects, the most interesting of all modern composers. Nearly a quarter of a century ago he was writing what is now considered modern music. The most striking aspect of Satie’s art is the truly extraordinary sense of humour which prompts one of his subjects, the “sea cucumber,” to console himself philosophically for his lack of tobacco.
The “Five Orchestral Pieces” of Arnold Schönberg continue to be the leading sensation of the present day musical world. Their composer occupies a position in many respects similar to that of the author of the “Nude Descending a Staircase.” I do not in the least mean to ridicule Schönberg—no lawlessness could ever have produced such compositions as his, which resemble bristling forests contorted by irresistible winds. His work is always the expression of something mysteriously terrible—which is probably why Boston laughed.
I have purposely left until the last the greatest theorist of modern music—Scriabin. Logically, he belongs beside Stravinsky, as leader of the Russian school. But it is by means of Scriabin that we may most readily pass from music to literature, through the medium of what has been called “sense-transference,” as exemplified by the colour music of the “Prometheus.”
This “Poem of Fire” is the consummation of Scriabin’s genius. To quote the Transcript: “At the first performance, by the Russian Symphony Society, on March 20, for the first time in history a composer used a chromatic color score in combination with orchestration. . . . At the beginning of the orchestration, a gauze rectangle in about the position of a picture suspended on the back wall became animated by flowing and blending colours. These colours were played by a ‘colour-organ’ or ‘chromola,’ having a keyboard with fifteen keys, and following a written score.”
III.
The suggestion of an analogy between colour and music leads us naturally to the last branch of the New Art—to wit, literature. Only the most extreme cases will be discussed, such as have important bearing upon the very latest conceptions of artistic expression.
I will quote three contemporary authors to illustrate different phases and different degrees of the literary parallel to sound painting—in a rather faint hope that the first two may prepare the way for an appreciation of the third. First Amy Lowell’s “Grotesque” affords a clear illustration of development from the ordinary to the abnormal.
“Why do the lilies goggle their tongues at me
When I pluck them;
And writhe and twist,
And strangle themselves against my fingers,
So that I can hardly weave the garland
For your hair?
Why do they shriek your name
And spit at me
When I would cluster them?
Must I kill them
To make them lie still,
And send you a wreathe of lolling corpses
To turn putrid and soft
On your forehead
While you dance?”
In this interesting poem we seem to discern something beyond the conventional. The lilies are made to express hatred by the employment of grotesque images. But there is nothing original in the pathetic fallacy. No one quarrels with Tennyson’s lines.
“There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate”—
Let us proceed further—only noting in the last three lines that brutality which is typical of the New Art—and consider the following poem by the same author:
“THE LETTER”
“Little cramped words scrawling all over the paper
Like draggled fly’s legs,
What can you tell of the flaring moon
Through the oak leaves?
Or of an uncurtained window, and the bare floor
Spattered with moonlight?
Your silly quirks and twists have nothing in them
Of blossoming hawthorns.
And this paper is chill, crisp, smooth, virgin of loveliness
Beneath my hand.
I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against<
br />
The want of you;
Of squeezing it into little ink drops,
And posting it.
And I scald alone, here under the fire
Of the great moon.”
This poem is superb of its kind. I know of no image in all realistic writing which can approach the absolute vividness of the first two lines. The metaphor of the chafed heart is worthy of any poet; but its fanciful development would have been impossible in any literature except this ultramodern.
I shall now quote from a sonnet by my second author, Donald Evans:
“Her voice was fleet-limbed and immaculate,
And like peach blossoms blown across the wind
Her white words made the hour seem cool and kind,
Hung with soft dawns that danced a shadow fête.
A silken silence crept up from the South.
The flutes were hushed that mimed the orange moon,
And down the willow stream my sighs were strewn,
While I knelt to the corners of her mouth.”
In the figure “Her voice was fleet-limbed,” and the phrase “white words,” we have a sought-for literary parallel to the work of the “sound painters.” It is interesting to compare Dante’s expressions of a precisely similar nature, occurring in the first and fifth cantos, respectively, of the Inferno—“dove il Sol tace,” and “in loco d’ogni luce muto.”
From Donald Evans to Gertrude Stein is a natural step—up or down, and one which I had hoped the first two might enable us to take in security. Gertrude Stein subordinates the meaning of words to the beauty of the words themselves. Her art is the logic of literary sound painting carried to its extreme. While we must admit that it is logic, must we admit that it is art?
Having prepared the way, so far as it is possible, for a just appreciation, I now do my best to quote from the book “Tender Buttons,” as follows:
(1)A sound.
Elephants beaten with candy and little pops and chews all bolts and reckless reckless rats, this is this.
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