I & Self-Discovery

by E. E. CUMMINGS

IN THE course of my first nonlecture, I affirmed that — for me — personality is a mystery; that mysteries alone are significant; and that love is the mystery-of-mysteries who creates them all. During my second outspokenness, I contrasted the collective behaviour of unchildren with the mystery of individuality; and gave (or attempted to give) you one particular child’s earliest glimpse of a mystery called nature. Now I shall try to communicate — clumsily, no doubt, but honestly — certain attitudes and reactions surrounding the mystery of transition from which emerged a poet and painter named E. E. Cummings.

As it was my miraculous fortune to have a true father and a true mother, and a home which the truth of their love made joyous, so — in reaching outward from this love and this joy — I was marvellously lucky to touch and seize a rising and striving world; a reckless world, filled with the curiosity of life herself; a vivid and violent world welcoming every challenge; a world worth hating and adoring and fighting and forgiving: in brief, a world which was a world. This inwardly immortal world of my adolescence recoils to its very roots whenever, nowadays, I see people who’ve been endowed with legs crawling on their chins after quote security unquote. “Security?” I marvel to myself “what is that? Something negative, undead, suspicious and suspecting; an avarice and an avoidance; a selfsurrendering meanness of withdrawal; a numerable complacency and an innumerable cowardice. Who would be ‘secure’? Every and any slave. No free spirit ever dreamed of ‘security’ — or, if he did, he laughed; and lived to shame his dream. No whole sinless sinful sleeping waking breathing human creature ever was (or could be) bought by, and sold for, ‘security’. How monstrous and how feeble seems some unworld which would rather have its too than eat its cake!”

For the benefit of any heretical members of my audience who do not regard manhood as a barbarous myth propagated by sinister powers envisaging the subjugation of womankind, let me (at this point) cheerfully risk a pair of perhaps not boring anecdotes.

Back in the days of dog-eat-dog — my first anecdote begins— there lived a playboy; whose father could easily have owned the original superskyscraper-de-luxe: a selfstyled Cathedral of Commerce, endowed with every impetus to relaxation; not excluding ultraelevators which (on the laudable assumption that even machinery occasionally makes mistakes) were regularly tested. Testing an ultraelevator meant that its car was brought clean up, deprived of safety devices, and dropped. As the car hurtled downward, a column of air confined by the elevator shaft became more and more compressed; until (assuming that nothing untoward happened) it broke the car’s fall completely — or so I was told by somebody who should know. At any rate, young Mr. X was in the habit not only of attending these salubrious ceremonies, but of entering each aboutto-be-dropped car, and of dropping with it as far and as long as the laws of a preEinsteinian universe permitted. Eventually, of course, somebody who shouldn’t know telephoned a newspaper; which sent a reporter: who (after scarcely believing his senses) asked the transcender of Adam point-blank why he fell so often. Our playful protagonist shrugged his well-tailored shoulders — “for fun" he said simply; adding (in a strictly confidential undertone) “and it’s wonderful for a hangover.”

Here, I feel, we have the male American stance of my adolescence; or (if you prefer) the adolescent American male stance of what some wit once nicely named a “lost generation”: whereof — let me hastily append — the present speaker considers himself no worthy specimen. My point, however, isn’t that many of us were even slightly heroic; and is that few of us declined a gamble. I don’t think we enjoyed courting disaster. I do feel we liked being born.

And now let me give you my second anecdote: which concerns (appropriately enough) not a single human being whose name I forget, but a millionary mish-mash termed The Public.

Rather recently—in New York City — an old college chum, whom I hadn’t beheld for decades, appeared out of nowhere to tell me he was through with civilization. It seems that ever since Harvard hI’d been making (despite all sorts of panics and panaceas) big money as an advertising writer; and this remarkable feat unutterably depressed him. After profound meditation, he concluded that America, and the world which she increasingly dominated, couldn’t really be as bad as she and it looked through an advertising writer’s eyes; and he promptly determined to seek another view — a larger view; in fact, the largest view obtainable. Bent on obtaining this largest obtainable view of America and America’s world, my logical expal wangled an appointment with a subsubeditor of a magazine (if magazine it may be called) possessing the largest circulation on earth: a periodical whose each emanation appears simultaneously in almost every existing human language. Our intrepid explorer then straightened his tie, took six deep breaths, cleared his throat, swam right up, presented his credentials, and was politely requested to sit down. He sat down. “Now listen” the subsubeditor suggested “if you’re thinking of working with us, you’d better know The Three Rules. “And what” my friend cheerfully inquired “are The Three Rules?” “The Three Rules" explained his mentor “are: first, eight to eighty; second, anybody can do it; and third, makes you feel better.” “I don’t quite understand” my friend confessed. “Perfectly simple” his interlocutor assured him. “Our first Rule means that every article we publish must appeal to anybody, man woman or child, between the ages of eight and eighty years—is that clear?” My friend said it was indeed clear. “Second” his enlightener continued “every article we publish must convince any reader of the article that he or she could do whatever was done by the person about whom the article was written. Suppose (for instance) you were writing about Lindbergh, who had just flown the Atlantic ocean for the first, time in history with nothing but unlimited nerve and a couple of chicken (or ham was it?) sandwiches — do you follow me?” “I’m ahead of you” my friend murmured. “Remembering Rule number two" the subsub went on “you d impress upon your readers’ minds, over and over again, the fact that (after all) there wouldn’t have been anything extraordinary about Lindbergh if he hadn’t been just a human being like every single one of them. See?” “I see” said my friend grimly. “Third” the subsub intoned “ws’ll imagine you’re describing a record-breaking Chinese flood — millions of poor unfortunate men and women and little children and helpless babies drowning and drowned; millions more perishing of slow starvation; suffering inconceivable, untold agonies, and so forth — well, any reader of this article must feel definitely and distinctly better, when she or he finishes the article, than when he or she began it.” “Sounds a trifle difficult” my friend hazarded. “Don’t be silly” the oracle admonished. “All you’ve got to do, when you’re through with your horrors, is to close by saying: but (thanks to an all-merciful Providence) we Americans, with our high standard of living and our Christian ideals, will never be subjected to such inhuman conditions; as long as the Stars And Stripes triumphantly float over one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all — get me?” “ I get you" said my disillusioned friend, “Good bye.”

So ends the second anecdote. You may believe it or not, as you wish. As far as s’m concerned, it’s the unbelievable — but also unquestionable — selfportrait of a one hundred and one percent pseudoworld: in which truth has become televisionary, in which goodness means not hurting people, and in which beauty is shoppe. Just (or unjust) how any species of authentic individualism could stem from such a collective quagmire, I don’t — as always know: but here are four lines of a poem which didn’t:

As regards my own self-finding, I have to thank first of all that institution whose initial I flaunted unknowingly during my very earliest days. Officially, Harvard presented me with a smattering of languages and sciences; with a glimpse of Homer, a more than glimpse of Aeschylus Sophocles Euripides and Aristophanes, and a deep glance at Dante and Shakespeare. Unofficially, she gave me my first taste of independence: and the truest friends any man will ever enjoy. The taste of independence came during my senior year, when I was so lucky as to receive a room by myself in the Yard - for living in the Yard was then an honour, not a compulsion; and this honour very properly reserved itself for seniors, who might conceivably appreciate it. Hitherto I had ostensibly lived at home; which meant that intimate contacts with the surrounding world were somewhat periculous. Now I could roam that surrounding world sans peur, if not sans reproche: and I lost no time in doing so. A town called Boston, thus observed, impressed my unsophisticated spirit as the mecca of all human endeavors — and be it added that, in this remote era, Boston had her points. Well do I recall how our far from hero (backed by the most physically imposing of his acquaintances) dared a stifling dump near Howard Street, denominated Mother Shannon’s; and how we stopped short, to avoid treading on several spreadeagled sailors; and how my backer, with irreproachable nonchalance, exchanged a brace of dollar bills for two tumblers of something even viler than honest Jack Delaney served during soi-disant prohibition; and finally how, having merely sampled our nonbeverages, we successfully attained Scollay Square — to be greeted by the dispassionate drone of a pintsize pimp, conspicuously stationed on the populous sidewalk under a blaze of movie bulbs and openly advertising two kinds of love for twenty-five cents each. Moreover that distant Boston comprized such authentic incarnations of genius as Bernhardt, whose each intonation propitiated demons and angels; Pavlova, who danced a ditty called Nix On The Glowworm into the most absolute piece of aristocracy since Ming; and a lady of parts (around whose waist any man’s hand immediately dreamed it could go three times) named Polaire. Those were the days (and nights) of The Turkey Trot and The Bunny Hug; of Everybody’s Doing It, Alexander’s Ragtime Band, Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly, There’s A Little Bit Of Bad In Every Good Little Girl, On The Banks Of The Saskatchewan, and Here Comes My Daddy Now (O Pop, O Pop, O Pop, O Pop). Nothing could exceed the artistry of Washington Street bartenders, who positively enjoyed constructing impeccable Pousse-Cafés in the midst of Ward Eights and Hop Toads; nor could anything approach the courtesy of Woodcock waiters, who never obeyed any ring but your own and always knocked twice before entering. I am further indebted to Boston town for making me acquainted (and in no uncertain manner) with the sinister splendors of censorship. One evening, The Old Howard would be As Is; the next, you guessed you were embracing a funeral. When Miss Gertrude Hoffman brought her lissome self and her willowy girls to Boston, they and she were violently immersed in wrist-and ankle-length underwear. A local tobacconist drew jail for selling a box of cigars adorned with the usual gauzily apparelled but unmistakably symbolic females; and vainly did an outraged lawyer object, that his client was happily married. Meanwhile, watching-and-warding Mr. Sumner’s matchless collection of indecent items constituted a favorite topic of conversation with high and low alike. But if the predations of puritanism astonished me nearly forty years ago, I was recently more than amazed to learn that you cannot now show a woman’s entire breast in any American moviehouse unless she isn’t (to coin a plagiarism) white. Verily, democracy unquote is a strange disease: nor (I submit) can any human being help sympathizing, in his or her heart of hearts, with the bad bald poet who sings

guilty
scamper(you bastards throw dynamite)
let knowings magic
with bright credos each divisible fool)

(life imitate gossip fear unlife mean
-ness,and
to succeed in not
dying)

Let us now consider friendship.

Through Harvard, I met Scofield Thayer; and at Harvard, Sibley Watson two men who subsequently transformed a dogooding periodical called The Dial into a firstrate magazine of the fine arts; and together fought the eternal fight of selfhood against mobism, the immortal battle of beauty against ugliness. It would not even slightly surprise me to learn that most of you have remained, till now, quite unaware of the existence of these literally heroic individuals and of their actually unparalleled achievement. Never have I seen courage and courtesy, taste and intelligence, prodigious patience and incredible generosity , quite so jealously mistrusted or so basely misprized or so savagely detested as by The Dial’s detractors. Even today, more than twenty years after this true and noble adventure’s culmination, the adventurers’ chastisement continues — through such a conspiracy of silence on the part of America’s intellectual gangsters as would be ludicrous if it were not abominable; nor will that chastisement begin to diminish while general good outflanks minute particulars and spiritual treachery is the order of the unday.

At Harvard (moreover) I met Stewart Mitchell, who soon became editor-in-chief of our university’s only serious undergraduate magazine — The Monthly — and was subsequently managing editor of The Dial; John Dos Passos, through whose devoted efforts a dangerous compilation known as Eight Harvard Poets appeared; and S Foster Damon, who opened my eyes and ears not merely to Domenico Theotocopuli and William Blake, but to all ultra (at that moment) modern music and poetry and painting. Nor can or do I forget Theodore Miller; who gladly brought me such treasures as the exquisite

of Catullus; the sublime

of Horace; and Sappho’s magically luminous invocation

but the token of whose most memorable kindness was a volume combining poems and letters by that glorious human being who confessed

Whereupon — deep in those heights of psychic sky which had greeted my boyish escape from moralism— an unknown and unknowable bird began singing.

After Harvard, I thank (for self-discovery) a phenomenon and a miracle. The phenomenon was a telemicroscopic chimaera, born of the satsmic rape of matter by mind; a phallic female phantasm, clothed in thunderous anonymity and adorned with colossally floating spiderwebs of traffic; a stark irresistibly stupendous newness, mercifully harboring among its pitilessly premeditated spontaneities immemorial races and nations

fifth’s deep purring biceps, the mystic screetch
of Broadway, the trivial stink of rich

in New York I also breathed: and as if for the first time.

The truly first of first times was (however) still to come. It arrived with a socalled war. Being neither warrior nor conscientious objector, saint nor hero, I embarked for France as an ambulance driver. And as my earliest taste of independence had been excelled by the banquet which I later sampled among Manhattan’s skyscrapers, so was that banquet surpassed by the freedom which I now tasted;

two realms, elsewhere innately hostile, here cordially coexisted — each (by its very distinctness) intensifying the other—nor could I possibly have imagined either a loveliness so fearlessly of the moment or so nobly beautiful a timelessness. Three thousand oceanic miles away and some terrestrial years before, a son of New England had observed those realms bitterly struggling for dominion: then, as a guest of verticality, our impuritan had attended the overwhelming triumph of the temporal realm. Now, I participated in an actual marriage of material with immaterial things; I celebrated an immediate reconciling of spirit and flesh, forever and now, heaven and earth. Paris was for me precisely and complexly this homogeneous duality: this accepting transcendence; this living and dying more than death or life. Whereas — by the very act of becoming its improbably gigantic self — New York had reduced mankind to a tribe of pygmies, Paris (in each shape and gesture and avenue and cranny of her being) was continuously expressing the humanness of humanity. Everywhere I sensed a miraculous presence, not of mere children and women and men, but of living human beings; and the fact that I could scarcely understand their language seemed irrelevant, since the truth of our momentarily mutual aliveness created an imperishable communion. While (at the hating touch of some madness called La Guerre) a once rising and striving world toppled into withering hideously smithereens, love rose in my heart like a sun and beauty blossomed in my life like a star. Now, finally and first, I was myself: a temporal citizen of eternity; one with all human beings born and unborn.

Thus through an alma mater whose scholastic bounty appeared the smallest of her blessings — and by way of those even more munificent institutions of learning, New York and Paris — our ignoramus reaches his supreme indebtedness. Last but most, I thank for my self-finding certain beautiful givers of illimitable gladness

and so we turn to poetry.

At the end of my preceding non lecture, I read you five poems celebrating spring. Tonight I shall try to read you five poems in celebration of love. The first and second of these poems, by Dante and by Shakespeare, are sonnets (for me the greatest sonnets which exist). How anyone could say anything about the third poem, a lyric by Robert Burns, I don’t know. The fourth poem — appropriately enough a big and long one — is called To His Mistris Going To Bed; and John Donne wrote it. Finally comes my favorite love poem: Unter Der Linden, by the early German poet Wall her Von Der Vogelweide.