EGOTIST EIMI: CUMMINGS’ RUSSIAN EXPERIENCE
C.K. Sample, III
87 Pages
May 1998
Egotist EIMI: Cummings’ Russian Experience is the first critical look at EIMI
(1933), E.E. Cummings’ modernist Russian travelogue. Discussion is given to the neglect
that EIMI has received alongside discussion of the innovative step that EIMI represents for
the author.
APPROVED:
Date
Ray Lewis White, Co-Chair
Date
William T. McBride, Co-Chair
EGOTIST EIMI: CUMMINGS’ RUSSIAN EXPERIENCE
C.K. Sample, III
87 Pages
May 1998
Egotist EIMI: Cummings’ Russian Experience is the first extended critical
examination of EIMI (1933), E.E. Cummings’ travelogue of his trip to Russia. This thesis
begins with the assumption that EIMI should be studied and argues the importance of the
neglected EIMI for understanding the entirety of the author’s work. Ezra Pound’s view
that EIMI serves as the concluding book in a trilogy that begins with James Joyce’s
Ulysses (1922) and continues in Wyndham Lewis’ The Apes of God (1930) is examined.
This thesis includes a discussion of the critical reception of EIMI. Cummings’ Russian trip
is contextualized historically in light of the author’s life and in light of the socio-political
happenings in both Russia and the United States during the 1930s. Discussion of narrative
issues dealing with genre—whether EIMI is poetry, prose, fiction, or non-fiction—are
broached while taking a first extended look at the text from different critical perspectives.
APPROVED:
Date
Ray Lewis White, Co-Chair
Date
William T. McBride, Co-Chair
EGOTIST EIMI: CUMMINGS’ RUSSIAN EXPERIENCE
C.K. SAMPLE, III
A Thesis Submitted in Partial
Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Department of English
ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY
1998
©1998 C.K. Sample, III
THESIS APPROVED:
Date
Ray Lewis White, Co-Chair
Date
William T. McBride, Co-Chair
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The writer wishes to thank Dr. Ray Lewis White and Dr. William T. McBride for
constant advice and encouragement. Thanks to E.E. Cummings for writing a damnably
hard to read, interesting book entitled EIMI. Thanks to Ken and Karen Sample, my
parents, and to my brother, Kevin Sample, for support. I am indebted to the following
friends for keeping me from going insane while working on this thesis: John Aldridge,
Matt Badura, Jason Ball, Lynn Bulgrin, Matt Felumlee, Teresa Gill, Jill and Ethan Krase,
Nicole Matenaer, Chris Paddock, and Lucy Sopiarz. Gratitude to God for all. This work
is dedicated to every Am that Is and in opposition to any Un-ness that Was.
C. K. S.
i
CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
i
CONTENTS
ii
INTRODUCTION
1
CHAPTER
I. CONCLUSION TO A TRILOGY?
4
II. CRITICAL RECEPTION
15
III. DANTE’S RUSSIA AND CUMMINGS’ HELL
27
IV. MARX AND ART, INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUN(ISM)ITY
57
V. UN-BEING: AN ANTI-NOVEL
71
CONCLUDING REMARKS
76
BIBLIOGRAPHY
77
APPENDIX A: A ROUGH GUIDE TO EIMI
81
ii
INTRODUCTION
Although E.E. Cummings’ poetry and his war-novel The Enormous Room (1922)
receive much critical attention, the travelogue of his visit to Russia, EIMI (1933), is largely
ignored and has been out of print since 1958. Whereas this condition applies additionally
to several of Cummings’ dramas, many clues point to the importance of the neglected EIMI
for understanding the entirety of the author’s work. Strangely, pieces such as i: six
nonlectures (1953) which rely heavily upon ideas that clearly manifest themselves fully
within EIMI continue to receive more attention than this “vastly unpopular book entitled
EIMI (which, by the by, is written in a style of its own)” (i: six nonlectures 99). At the
same time that critics and publishers continue to disparage EIMI, they are ignoring
Cummings’ interesting perspective towards the early Soviet Union, which—after quoting a
chunk of his travelogue—he summarizes to some degree in i: six nonlectures:
So much (or so little) for one major aspect of the inhuman unworld: a
fanatical religion of irreligion, conceived by sterile intellect and nurtured by
omnipotent nonimagination . . . this gruesome apotheosis of mediocrity in
the name of perfectibility, this implacable salvation of all through the
assassination of each, this reasoned enormity of spiritual suicide. (103)
Additionally, Cummings’ perspective in EIMI towards this foreign realm, as towards
wartime France in The Enormous Room, sheds more light on his perspective towards his
native America and the philosophy that dominates the majority of his writing.
Ernest Hemingway, in a letter to Edmund Wilson in 1923, stated that “E. E.
Cummings’ Enormous Room was the best book published last year that I read” (105).
1
2
This high praise is substantiated by the continued study of The Enormous Room as one of
the important American novels to come out of World War I. Strangely, this novel
continues to be studied and republished, while EIMI remains practically unheard of and is
available only as a collector’s item. This peculiarity is made more evident when one notices
the numerous similarities between The Enormous Room and EIMI. The Enormous Room
is the diary of Cummings’ arrest and subsequent imprisonment for suspected treason
during World War I. Although The Enormous Room is essentially a prose piece, it is in its
design at times strikingly like Cummings’ poetry. This well-known fragmentary style is
carried over to and expanded upon in the pages of EIMI, which is also a sort of diary, but
this time Cummings reports his experiences while visiting early Soviet Russia in 1931.
Considering the large effect that the Communist experiment has had upon the course of the
twentieth century, it seems unjustifiable that critics should study The Enormous Room for
its picture of World War I and yet ignore EIMI, a work from the same author which
provides a unique and accurate picture of the phases of established Soviet Communism.
Henry McBride, while reviewing an exhibition of Cummings’ paintings in 1934,
criticized the art by saying: “You could never imagine [the paintings] to be by the author of
‘Eimi.’ They are thin, uncertain, and separated by some curious wall of inhibition from the
medium” (qtd. in Cohen 62). McBride’s remark offended Cummings, the painter, but can
be used, in the reverse, to vindicate Cummings, the writer of EIMI. In criticizing the
exhibit, McBride praised EIMI by preferring it to The Enormous Room or any of
Cummings’ other works. As EIMI was published originally a year before the art exhibit,
one could argue that McBride chooses EIMI as a touchstone simply because of its
closeness in time. Considering that McBride was writing for The New York Sun, his
statement would not have been aimed towards an audience who would have been familiar
with an esoteric, largely unknown work of a famous poet. This observation suggests that
EIMI maintained a certain amount of popularity and notoriety with the reading public for at
3
least a year after its publication. Taking this likelihood into consideration, the second line
of the criticism can be stretched a bit into saying something quite interesting about EIMI. If
the paintings are “thin, uncertain, and separated by . . . inhibition from the medium” (qtd.
in Cohen 62), then it follows that EIMI can be seen as thick (in the positive sense: filled
with deep meaning), certain, free of inhibition, and uniting the presentation with the
subject.
In this thesis, I bring the first extended critical attention to this wrongly neglected
work. I proceed with the assumption that the 432 challenging pages of EIMI should be
studied, begin this study by collecting the extant sparse criticism, and attempt to take an
extended “first look” at this work. In “Chapter I: Conclusion to a Trilogy?” I examine
Ezra Pound’s claim that EIMI concludes a trilogy of great modernist works including
James Joyce’s Ulysses and Wyndham Lewis’ The Apes Of God. This discussion
progresses into the second chapter, a survey of the critical reception of EIMI. “Chapter III:
Dante’s Russia and Cummings’ Hell” examines Cummings’ framing of his travels around
Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy. In “Chapter IV: Marx and Art, Individual and
Commun(ism)ity,” I discuss Cummings’ philosophy of the individual artist in light of
Communist Russia. The innovative style of EIMI is treated alongside questions of genre in
“Chapter V: Un-Being: An Anti-Novel.” In all respects, Egotist EIMI: Cummings’
Russian Experience will serve as the introductory guide to EIMI that will elicit more
focused examinations of differing aspects of this unique narrative.
CHAPTER I
CONCLUSION TO A TRILOGY?
Ezra Pound, in a letter to Cummings written in June of 1947, while speaking of
James Joyce’s Ulysses , states:
the end of a era.
but 1st of Trilogy
EIMI
Apes of G. (Ahearn 219)
The clue to the meaning of Pound’s rather abstract comment can be found in a previous
letter dated March 29, 1946: “I suppose the 3rd of 3 large vols—Ulysses; Eimi; & whats its
name by W.L. [Wyndham Lewis’ The Apes of God (1930)] will be cited in another 15 or
20 years” (Ahearn 176). Pound notes that he believes Cummings’ work to be the
concluding part of a trilogy which began with Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), continues in Lewis’
The Apes of God (1930), and ends with EIMI (1933). Yet in both of the letters, Pound
places EIMI in the second, central position between mention of the works by Joyce and
Lewis. This placement indicates that after thirteen years spent constantly trying to get
Cummings published in Great Britain, Pound began to place a large amount of literary
importance upon EIMI.
Pound’s initial response to EIMI in a letter to Cummings—dated April 6,
1933—lacks this estimation:
Thank either you or Covici for EIMI. I dunno whether I rank as them wot
finds it painful to read . . . . and if I said anything about obscurity it wd. far
4
5
ridere polli, in view of my recent pubctns. Also I do not think EIMI is
obscure, or not very BUT, the longer a work is the more and longer shd.
be the passages that are perfectly clear and simple to read. . . . I found it
difficult to read the stuff consecutively . . . which prob. annoys me a lot
more than it will you. At any rate damn glad to have the book and shall
presumably continue taken er chaw now here n naow there. . . . OH w ell
Whell hell itza great woik. Me complimenks. (Ahearn 24-25)
Slightly over a year later, in a letter dated October 25, 1934, Pound notes that EIMI “makes
SENSE if you read it carefully enough” and goes on to point out that “this [is] in
disparagus of Jhames Jheezus’ hiz later flounderings” (Ahearn 29). He concludes his
remarks by saying, “Wal/ anyhow/ EIMI was worth writin’ . . . . I’ll tell the trade if you
think it is the least damn use my saying so” (Ahearn 30).
Less than a year later, in February 1935, Pound seems to think publication of EIMI
to be of some importance:
I am; concretely, and without hyperaesthesia, aiming at an eng/ edtn of
EIMI. . . . May I say to the rev/ etc/ and so forth e:e:c: as has been said to
me even thru years of greater etc/ so to speak gulf stream <flour’s in the
attic> etc . . . YOU ARE NOT known in England / however bad for yr/
feelings, this means that you aint known either MUCH or enough (Ahearn
55)
These instances of correspondence between Pound and Cummings provide the initiative to
ask and perhaps answer two questions that can be used as an effective starting place for
discussion of EIMI: Is Pound correct in comparing Cummings’ EIMI with the widely
praised Ulysses and the once highly praised The Apes of God? And if so, why have both
Lewis’ The Apes of God and Cummings’ EIMI disappeared to a great degree from the
literary canon, whereas Joyce’s Ulysses is considered one of the greatest literary
6
achievements of the twentieth century?
The second of these questions can be answered briefly through Pound’s
observation that Cummings never achieved the notoriety in England that he attained in
America. Conversely, Wyndham Lewis’ subject matter to a great degree remained
inherently British and European, dealing largely with attacks upon and caricatures of the
Bloomsbury group. However, Joyce’s Ulysses has been widely internationally accepted,
so much so that many translations have been made of the extremely difficult work. This is
a brief and, for now, satisfactory answer to this question which will be further addressed
and answered in the process of discussing Pound’s argument for a unity that exists among
these three works.
At the most basic level, all three books are rather large. Cummings’ EIMI numbers
432 pages, Lewis’ The Apes of God reaches 625 pages, and Joyce’s Ulysses finishes in
the lead with a quite substantial 644 pages. Additionally, all three books are innovative in
nature and therefore not entirely reader friendly. As noted in the first page of the Black
Sparrow Press edition of The Apes of God, several critics have made comparisons between
Joyce and Lewis. According to the Black Sparrow Press edition, Richard Aldington says,
“My final feeling is that The Apes of God is the greatest piece of writing since Ulysses ,”
and Roy Campbell states that The Apes of God “will certainly stand to Ulysses as Candide
does to the Confessions and the Emile of Rousseau.” Yet, Lewis’ work is normally placed
in opposition to Ulysses because of the differences between the two authors. Lewis often
criticized Joyce and even manages to parody a section of Ulysses in The Apes of God.
Although Pound locates EIMI third in the trilogy, he places it in the center of the
two other texts because Cummings’ book provides the concluding link that bridges the gap
between Joyce’s Ulysses and Lewis’ The Apes of God. This being the case, a comparison
will be made with Cummings’ book and Ulysses followed by a comparison of EIMI and
The Apes of God. By approaching the subject in this manner, some sort of conclusion can
7
be made regarding the similarities that the three works share, similarities that gave Pound
enough cause to group them into a trilogy of important modernist works.
EIMI and Ulysses
To begin with, both EIMI and Ulysses are modern epics loosely based upon
classical epics. Joyce’s Ulysses , while ostensibly a day in the life of Leopold Bloom, is
modeled largely—although not in the same narrative order—upon the tale of Odysseus that
is found in Homer’s Odyssey. Likewise, Cummings’ tale of a month spent travelling
through Communist Russia, leaving by way of Turkey, and eventually arriving in Paris is
modeled on Dante Alighieri’s descent into hell, journey through purgatory, and ultimate
arrival in paradise in The Divine Comedy. (Although it does not concern us here, a
thorough discussion of Cummings’ retelling of The Divine Comedy occurs in “Chapter III:
Dante’s Russia and Cummings’ Hell.”) This act of taking something old and “making it
new” is a common theme of modernism that Pound champions and, if the similarities
between the two texts stopped here, little argument could be made for a trilogy.
But Pound is not alone in comparing Cummings’ EIMI with Joyce’s Ulysses .
When EIMI first appeared several critics and reviewers made the comparison to Joyce’s
novels—both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake—before going on to contrast the two authors.
At times the comparison is used as an attack and at other times it is an act of praise, but in
both cases the parallels drawn between the two works are not unfounded. In “Cummings’s
Non-Land of Un-,” William Troy begins his review by stating, “Mr. Cummings has
written a very big book. It is almost as big a book as Ulysses , but the comparison—which
is suggested by a reference to ‘Comrade’ Joyce—must not be taken any further” (71). This
reference that Troy mentions occurs in the “Sat., 16 mai” section of EIMI: “Comrade
Joyce’s Ulysses I presently discover for myself—in the original” (83). Troy is mistaken in
believing that the similarities between the two authors end with this brief reference and the
8
size of the books.
Several reviewers, confronted with a book thick and hard to read, immediately
associated EIMI with Joyce’s writing without truly examining the differences between the
two writing styles. In the Akron Press on April 16, 1933, Harry Hanson stated that
Cummings “borrowed a method from James Joyce” (qtd. in Dendinger 138). Hanson
implies that there is nothing particularly original about EIMI. Cummings’ style is further
discriminated against in the June 1933 edition of Forum and Century, which said that
EIMI’s “ultra stream-of-consciousness style . . . in complexity and obscurity is second
only to James Joyce’s most recent work [Finnegans Wake]” (qtd. in Dendinger 153). In
“When We Were Very Young,” Francis Fergusson states that “there is a kinship between
Cummings’ style and the style of Pound’s Cantos (pastiche plus voice) and even the style
of Finnegan’s Wake, which appears to be sort of dissolved and digested pastiche” (83).
These critics do well in contextualizing Cummings among other modernists, but they tend
to misplace their evaluations. They cast Cummings’ style in a stance secondary to these
other writers, as if the highly original and individual EIMI were derivative.
In contrast, Richard S. Kennedy describes the experience of reading EIMI as
“similar to lingering over some of the difficult chapters in Joyce’s Ulysses where in spite of
problem passages, and indeed with the added intellectual invigoration of coping with
allusions and linguistic acrobatics, the reader experiences a deep enjoyment” (E.E.
Cummings Revisited 88). In certain ways, Kennedy seems to find EIMI as aesthetically
pleasing as Ulysses . However, in Dreams in the Mirror, Kennedy cautions that, although
there is a superficial “resemblance to Joyce’s Finnegans Wake,” readers should be aware
that this “likeness is in spirit, not in manner” and that the style of EIMI “is a unique
Cummings creation” (330). Kennedy acknowledges Cummings’ originality while at the
same time realizing the similarities that EIMI shares with Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.
In “The Poems and Prose of E.E. Cummings,” John Peale Bishop expands upon
9
this idea by noting that Cummings “was aware of Joyce’s experiments of prose in Ulysses ;
some of them he has repeated, concentrating them, as he might well do in the smaller space
of a poem; in his own prose he has carried them still further, especially in Eimi, by
accelerating their performance” (103). In “Is a New Classicism Formed?” (first appearing
in Providence Journal on April 23, 1933), S. Foster Damon concludes: “The result is a
new prose, liberated indeed by Joyce, but too individual to be mere imitation” (qtd. in
Dendinger 142). Damon, Bishop, and Kennedy seem to recognize enough similarity
between Joyce and Cummings to substantiate Pound’s idea for a trilogy without mistakenly
labeling EIMI as a counterfeit Ulysses . While the two works share similarities, Cummings
is not copying Joyce but attempting to improve upon Joyce, taking certain traits from
Joyce’s innovative style and adapting and innovating these traits into a narrative style of his
own.
An anonymous review appearing in the March 28, 1933, edition of Variety entitled
“Eimi Is a Book” realizes the importance of this new narrative development:
Cummings who now joins their [Joyce and Stein’s] ranks among the greats
of all time in literature, seems to derive more from the Joyce tangent than
from Stein. And yet traces of the other are there.
Miss Stein is cold, mathematical. Joyce is emotional. Cummings
combines the two, and adds a strain of humor. Which is an unfair analogy,
possibly because Cummings doesn’t need to be measured by the Joyce or
Stein yardsticks. . . . Eimi is a book that will live. (qtd. in Dendinger 130)
Another anonymous review, “Why Puzzle It Out?” appearing in the April 26, 1933, edition
of the Des Moines Tribune playfully exaggerates the progression that Cummings makes in
EIMI by saying that he “out-Joyces James Joyce, and super-Steins Gertrude Stein” (qtd. in
Dendinger 145). Cummings is not only making elements of Dante’s Divine Comedy new,
but also he is taking the best elements from his contemporaries—elements of Joyce, Stein,
10
and Pound—and molding these traits into something new and innovative, EIMI.
Another reason to align EIMI with Ulysses surfaces in Pound’s review of EIMI
appearing in the December 20, 1934, issue of the New English Weekly. Pound states:
For useful comparison with “EIMI,” Europe offers only the later Joyce and
Miss Stein. . . . I have gone to bat for Joyce sufficiently often. . . . Idiotic
as was the New York suppression, . . . “Ulysses” is at any rate by now
recognized as a part of letters and ignorant hogs can no longer impede the
book’s American circulation. (qtd. in Norman 278)
Both Ulysses and EIMI met great opposition upon release to the public. This resistance
came from both readers and critics. Joyce’s Ulysses managed to overcome much of the
hostility aimed at the book for its innovative and sometimes hard to read style and not
always proper—according to moral purists—subject matter. Unfortunately, as evidenced
by the continued neglect EIMI has received, Cummings’ book did not come out so
triumphantly as Joyce’s book. EIMI had the extra burden of being stridently opposed to
Communism in the 1930s, a time when many of Cummings’ fellow authors and many
Americans still suffering from the Great Depression of 1929 believed the Communist
Experiment to be the economic salvation of humanity.
But even EIMI’s opposition to Communism is misjudged. Cummings is largely
unconcerned with politics and different economic philosophies, unless these social forces
happen to deter the celebration of the individual that is central to Cummings’ philosophy.
Cummings is anti-Communist and anti-Capitalist, because both systems tend to neglect the
needs of the individual in favor of the needs of the group. This approach to life is
reminiscent of one proposed by Leopold Bloom in the “Cyclops” section of Ulysses :
—But it’s no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. That’s no
life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it’s
the very opposite of that that is really life.
11
—What? Says Alf.
—Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred. (273)
Bloom’s centering life around love parallels Comrade Kemminkz’s romantic view of life
that prevents him from enjoying his time in Russia and enables him to see past the
Communist propaganda that fools most of Cummings’ contemporaries.
Finally, one of the strongest supporters of the tie between EIMI and Joyce is
Cummings himself. Within the “Sat.,16 mai” section of EIMI, Cummings refers directly
to Ulysses , having spotted it “in the original” (83) in the process of trying to avoid a lecture
on Communism from Monsieur Potiphar. After being cornered by Potiphar and subjected
to the lecture against his will, Cummings continues the allusions to Joyce:
find myself standing before A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man ;
watching a certain Jesuit father move heaven and earth to persuade a certain
Stephen Daedalus that he , Stephen , is fit for the holy task . . . which
Stephen(forever , but only after meditation)knows is not true : only knows
because of something around(under throughout behind above)him , or
which is always the artist ; his destiny. And although , when I finally
escape—nearly ecstatic with talk—into the open air, cadaverous’s eloquence
unaccountably disintegrates , nevertheless my(breathing)self salutes Karl
Santa Claus Marx , original if not only concocter of so invincible a thesis :
and very thankfully, I marvel that such prophets as KM cannot be poets ,
that always they must depend upon mere reality, always must attempt a
mere realization of themselves by others— (87)
Comrade Kemminkz, one of the many narrator-selves that Cummings utilizes in EIMI, here
compares himself to Stephen Daedalus from both Joyce’s A Portrait of The Artist as a
Young Man and Ulysses and draws a parallel between Potiphar and the Jesuit father trying
to convert the individual artist (Cummings / Daedalus) to the collective philosophy
12
(Christianity / Communism). For Cummings, attempting “a mere realization of themselves
by others” (87) is one of the ultimate transgressions that people can commit against their
ability to be artists and individuals. This philosophy is shared to some extent by Wyndham
Lewis and serves as a good point from which to move discussion away from Ulysses and
towards The Apes of God.
EIMI and The Apes of God
Paul Edwards, in his Afterword to The Apes of God, states: “In philosophy, in
politics, in both high and popular culture, a mechanical conformity was, in his [Lewis’]
opinion, disguising itself as freedom and spontaneity” (631). Edwards continues by
stating that according to Lewis an “ideological atavism was reconciling people to their own
enslavement by their rulers, both Communist and Capitalist” (632). In many ways, these
ideas correspond with Cummings’ rejection of both capitalist and communist systems in
favor of the individual artist in EIMI. Just as Cummings looks to the individual artist for
freedom, “[i]n Lewis’s model of social revolution, it was . . . art that would show the way
. . . The failure of the art world to fulfill that function makes it the target of Lewis’s satire”
(Edwards 634). Whereas Cummings satirizes any group that would step on the rights of
the individual, Lewis satirizes his fellow artists, individually and grouped, who in
neglecting their duty in the revolution have made themselves part of the mechanical
conformity, in effect becoming “Apes of God.”
Edwards points to another similarity shared by both EIMI and The Apes of God
when he says of the latter: “While respected canonical modernist texts have attained the
distinction of being classified as illisible, The Apes of God too often bears the derogatory
label ‘unreadable’” (629). Yet T.S. Eliot describes Lewis, the author of this “unreadable”
book, as “one of the permanent masters of style in the English language” (qtd. in Edwards
637). As with Cummings’ EIMI, the “unreadable” quality which many critics ascribe to
13
The Apes of God is due largely to their own unwillingness to give the text the attention
which it demands of the reader.
After mentioning that Pound did not have much difficulty with the text, Edwards
elaborates on the characteristics of this “unreadable” style:
A reader new to Lewis will not find the book as compulsively readable as
Pound did until he is attuned to Lewis’s prose style, a style unique in
English. It exploits the rhythmical effects of educated British middle-class
speech by means of eccentric punctuation, yet its loose syntax, in which
accumulating phrases and clauses only arrange themselves into a gestalt
with the reader’s imaginative co-operation, is reminiscent more of American
than British models. Lewis’s sentences are composed with an attention to
the play of vowels and consonants that is more characteristic of a poet than a
writer of prose. . . . it is alive and electric with controlled energy rather than
inert and sluggish. It demands to be read with something like the attention
with which it was written. (630)
With slight alteration, this entire group of statements could be appropriated for a discussion
of EIMI, the primary difference being Cummings’ status as an American writer. Many of
these rather surface similarities can be traced back to the status of both writers as painters.
Lewis was “the leader of the 1914 Vorticist movement” (Edwards 630) and as such was
interested in realistically painting with words literary pictures of his surroundings.
Throughout Cummings’ trip to Russia, whenever someone asked him about his
occupation, he replies, “Peesahteel y Hoodozhnik,” which is transliterated Russian for
“Writer and Painter.”
Much as Cummings’ EIMI was rejected by many as a direct attack on Communism,
Lewis’ satirical look at his contemporary intellectuals and artists in The Apes of God “was
for many years seen as a purely personal attack on people he happened to dislike”
14
(Edwards 634) and, therefore, was rejected by many for lacking the depth of a serious
work. Additionally, as Cummings was disfavored for being anti-Communist, Lewis was
often accused of being a fascist and therefore assumed to be misaligned in his satire and
caricaturization of his contemporaries. Nevertheless, Edwards contends that “however
comic, The Apes of God is a serious and deeply felt expression of, if not despair . . .
certainly of desperation” (630). While Cummings is almost continually cheerful and
humorous in describing his trip through Russia, EIMI is a remarkably serious work dealing
with the battle of an individual against the tyranny of the masses. At times the highly
impressionistic report of Cummings’ travels belies his desperation and depression in this
“world of Was—everything shoddy;everywhere dirt and cracked fingernails” (EIMI 8).
EIMI and Pound’s Trilogy
Cummings’ EIMI, structured around Dante’s The Divine Comedy, by itself
embodies the idea of a trilogy complete with its own Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise.
This characteristic of the work helps one in seeing why Pound would place it in the
concluding role of a trilogy of modernist texts including Joyce’s Ulysses and Lewis’ The
Apes of God. Given the similarities shared by the three works in reading difficulty,
stylistic innovation, and the amount of resistance they all received when emerging upon the
literary scene, Pound’s grouping of these three large modern volumes together is not so
entirely preposterous as it originally sounds. The part of the equation that still does not
entirely work out lies in the present status of EIMI in the canon. Why is the concluding,
unifying book in a proposed trilogy of important modern works currently out of print and
critically ignored when the two books which it unifies remain in print and in varying
degrees of study? In order to answer this question and inaugurate a modification of that
answer, a more detailed survey of the critical reception which EIMI has received proves
necessary.
CHAPTER II
CRITICAL RECEPTION
Aware of the incorrect original response to the innovative narrative of Joyce’s
Ulysses , while simultaneously faced with a completely new and baffling book critiquing a
foreign realm and ideology praised by other leftist contemporary authors, most critics did
not know exactly how to respond to EIMI when Covici, Friede first printed a subscriptionbased release of the book in February of 1933, with a second printing the following month.
As evidenced in a 1933 letter to S. Foster Damon, Cummings himself had difficulty
interpreting the initially confused critical reception of his work:
can report only vaguely on reception in general: apparently one
“Nathan” spectatorously called her “the worst book of the month” before
e[EIMI] was ever published; other nongentleunmen of ny’s pressless
sought gants [sic] (“the funniest book of the month”)—fearing another him?
—while curt cowflaps rolled in one from ye sticks inc as per etc . . . Silk
Hat Harry(they tell)beholding a Hound & a Horn,sprach “of course I don’t
mind for myself:but he really shouldn’t have made fun of poor Gene
Tunney” so the wellknown thorn was on trotsky’s wing again . . . ( Selected
Letters of E.E. Cummings 122)
On Tuesday, May 12, during Cummings’ journey, while warning him to avoid newspaper
correspondents, Virgil, Cummings’ newly found guide, tells Cummings about Gene
Tunney, whom Virgil describes as “really a nice fellow,perfectly honest at heart and of
course a Roman Catholic” (EIMI 18). Apparently, some correspondents arranged it so that
15
16
when Tunney entered a certain room where the Soviets were burning religious ikons, “a
lifesize statue of Our Lord Jesus Christ rolled right out of the flames clear to Gene’s most
Catholic feet. . . . it spoiled his entire Russian trip” (EIMI 19). Cummings, in his letter to
Damon, notes that one of his critics disapproved of the inclusion of Tunney’s story within
EIMI.
Other than in this letter to Damon, Cummings seems rather uninterested in the
critics’ appraisal of his work, continuing to value the response of individuals over those of
members of any group. Cummings indicates enthusiasm towards this sort of personal
response to EIMI in a letter to his mother dated May 26, 1933: “Eimi is read at last by one
Johnnie Bishop . . . he raveth now” (Selected Letters of E.E. Cummings 123). Although
the author appears somewhat indifferent to critical analysis of EIMI, in order to explore
further the reasons behind the disappearance of the book from print post 1958, it proves
necessary to explore and examine carefully a selection of the evaluations made by
Cummings’ contemporaries.
Part of EIMI’s doom lay in an early review released by The American Spectator in
the April 1933 issue of the magazine that had gone to press before there were even galley
prints of Cummings’ novel:
THE WORST BOOK
OF THE MONTH
Eimi. By e. e. cummings.
61 /2 x 81 /2 . Pp. 464. $3.00
New York: Covici-Friede. (qtd. in Norman 273)
Covici, Friede quickly responded to this declaration against EIMI by stating: “The
Spectator editors are to be congratulated for discovering a unique method of book
reviewing” (Norman 274). The American Spectator’s action of awarding EIMI—a book
they could not possibly have read—the award for “Worst Book of the Month” quickly
17
became a trend among many reviewers who balked at Cummings’ 432 pages of innovative
narrative. The few entirely negative reviews which EIMI received, as with The American
Spectator which had even the page numbers of the book incorrect, appear to originate from
people who did not bother to read the book or who read only small bits of the narrative.
Some of these reviews make entirely incorrect assertions about EIMI and about Cummings.
Conversely, the reviewers who bothered to read the book universally have something
positive to say about it, even when they do not hail it as a masterpiece.
An anonymous review titled “Eimi is a Book” that appeared in the March 25, 1933,
edition of Variety states that Cummings, “who without any question takes a place among
the first two living poets of importance, has just finished a book titled Eimi, his second
prose contribution to bookdom” (qtd. in Dendinger 129). This reviewer goes on to say that
EIMI “shows Cummings to have a command of English such as has always been suspected
but never before realized. It . . . will immediately get itself stamped ‘important’ in many
places” (qtd. in Dendinger 129-30). This review does well in praising Cummings’ skill,
but it fails to engage the text in any meaningful way and offers little defense against more
negative reviews.
Also appearing on March 25, 1933, Robert H. Wilson’s review, “Speaking of
Books” in The Chicago Herald Examiner, states:
Cummings has a great many fan readers in spite of the fact that he is the
only author writing in his language. . . . He speaks as a survivor of the
great Babel disaster, in a confusion of tongues . . . Cummings has
undoubtedly destroyed more inhibitions than any other writer. Sometimes it
carries him into fields peopled with new flora and fauna and again it seems
to drop him into a vacuum. . . . Try Cummings first and it may lead on to
esperanto. They are not dead languages. They merely stroll about too
helpless to seek burial. (qtd. in Dendinger 129)
18
Although Wilson appreciates Cummings ability to do away with “more inhibitions than any
other writer,” he does not understand Cummings’ style and considers his popularity to be a
matter of a large number of “fan readers” (129). The difficulty with Cummings, and
especially with EIMI, is that the reader must adapt his/her reading habits to accommodate
Cummings’ narrative. EIMI is a very demanding text, and if a reader approaches it
unprepared to invest energy into the reading, the text could indeed appear incomprehensible, as if it were written in an artificially constructed language. Nevertheless, EIMI is
written predominantly in English with small pieces of French, German, Italian, Latin,
Polish, and Russian. The presentation of these languages is something new and
innovative, a style that is unique and which many readers shy away from.
In “Cummings’s Non-land of Un-” from the April 12, 1933, issue of The Nation,
William Troy, while discussing Cummings’ style, states: “Mr. Cummings’s fierce
individualism is to be seen reflected in the style and manner of his book. The style is of
course the same highly personal, ultra-mannered style that we have been made familiar with
in Mr. Cummings’s poetry” (qtd. in Dendinger 135). Troy’s observation that Cummings’
individualism permeates EIMI is fair enough. But Troy’s following assertion that EIMI’s
style is the same as that of Cummings’ poetry is misguided. Anyone familiar with
Cummings’ poetry knows that the style varies from poem to poem. Cummings’
typographical gymnastics, while a definite characteristic of his writing, often are mislabeled
as his style. These methods are employed by Cummings’ as part of his style, but his style
supercedes these acts of abnormal typography. To state that the 432 page EIMI’s style is
the same as that of the poems borders on absurdity, especially when one compares the
book to his only other extended narrative, The Enormous Room, which is not as mature as
EIMI and lacks the strength of several of the impressionistic qualities which EIMI
maintains. There is an obvious growth between Cummings, the author of The
Enormous Room, and Cummings, the author of EIMI. True, several of the passages of
19
EIMI could be mistaken for stand-alone poems, but they are part of a larger narrative that in
style and scope dwarfs the brevity of both The Enormous Room and Cummings’ poetry.
Troy continues his appraisal of EIMI by stating: “There is no design or pattern to
give unity (cf. ‘Comrade’ Joyce) to this jumble of crisply developed instances” (qtd. in
Dendinger 136). Yet anyone who reads EIMI will find easily a design and pattern that
follows Dante’s The Divine Comedy and the unifying presence of Cummings’ continued
reportage of everything he encounters in Russia. Many latter-day critics who briefly
mention EIMI rely on Troy’s review. However, Troy, by missing one of the most obvious
structural elements of the narrative, reveals that he did not give EIMI the reading that it
deserves and demands and, therefore, provides a review of the book that—along with The
American Spectator’s unfounded label of “Worst Book of the Month”—should be
examined with a fair amount of skepticism.
Harry Hansen provides a more positive review in the April 16, 1933, issue of The
Akron Press, stating: “To me it’s the funniest book of the month, and half the time I was
laughing not at the author but with him” (qtd. in Dendinger 139). While Cummings
displays many burlesque, satirical, and comedic characteristics in constructing EIMI, to
discuss the book purely in this light limits the narrative and depreciates the seriousness of
the work. In an anonymous review, “Manifesto,” appearing in Time on the day after
Hansen’s review, a more accurate view of how to read and appreciate the seriousness of
EIMI is presented: “If [Cummings] is read as carefully as he writes, he has few Joycean
perplexities . . . ; what looks like a puzzling short-hand will resolve itself into a longhand
of his own invention, painstaking and descriptive” (qtd. in Dendinger 139).
James Church provides a more accurate evaluation of EIMI in the April 22, 1933,
edition of The Cleveland Bystander: “EIMI may be called a diary, but in reality its scope is
far greater. It is the reaction of a sensitive being’s direct contact with a vast and terrifying
experiment; and as such, a distinct and valuable contribution to our modern literature” (qtd.
20
in Dendinger 141). Church describes the narrative as being constructed from “. . . not
uninteresting words, and for the most part strung together in a rhythm of epic proportions”
(141). He concludes by stating that “. . . EIMI is well worth your serious reading and a
careful absorption of the first few seemingly confusing pages drops you gently and surely
into delightful reading” (142). Unfortunately, this last statement sounds slightly too
positive. EIMI is definitely worth “serious reading,” but it is not always “delightful
reading,” nor did Cummings intend it to be so. The narrative is highly impressionistic, and
as EIMI’s depiction of Russia parallels Dante’s depiction of Hell in the Inferno, several of
the passages contained within its pages are particularly hellish in design. The difficulty of
these passages is not from mistakes made by Cummings within the text, but strong
evidence of Cummings’ masterful ability to convey his own impressions of difficulty and
complexity when confronted with a society whose collective ideology lies in direct
opposition to his own beliefs in individualism.
S. Foster Damon provides one of the first self-aware reviews of EIMI in April 23,
1933:
Every so often (but none too often) a strange book appears which gathers
into a unit the experiments which the younger writers have persistently been
fumbling at, and thus establishes the literary mode of the next decade or
longer. Invariably the critics find such books perplexing, perverse,
affected, irritating; and they tend to say so with positiveness, even though
critics write more cautiously today, having learned from history that their
denunciations, springing from an exasperated common sense, have a way
of boomeranging back.
Eimi, by E.E. Cummings, has all the earmarks of being one of these
books. (qtd. in Dendinger 142)
Damon appears to have given EIMI the reading that it deserves, and many of his comments
21
effectively answer some of the questions or arguments suggested by other critics of the
book. Damon acknowledges the importance of Cummings’ typography to his
impressionistic style by observing: “Now he has utilized every conceivable type-device to
make his prose as immediate an approximation of reality as possible” (142). Damon avoids
placing EIMI within the confines of a specific genre by asserting that “it is far more than a
mere travelogue. It is an attitude towards life. . . . [Cummings’] literary creed is the exact
representation of Reality; his social creed is Individualism” (143). In reply to critics who
would dismiss EIMI as the embittered response of an author towards a land and ideology
that he despises, Damon says, “It must be admitted that Cummings is an expert satirist; but
he differs from all other satirists in that sensitiveness and not hate is the heart of his
writing” (143). Cummings satirizes Russia and the people that he sees there not out of
feelings of superiority or hatred towards them, but out of pity and a growing concern that
“noone in Russia must actually be near anyone, . . . [that] everyone must from everyone
else keep that meaningly infinite distance known as Altruism” (EIMI 133). Damon
specifies the importance of EIMI to modern literature, by revealing that in EIMI “are drawn
together all the important tendencies of the moderns. His style is not the old style, written
merely for the eye; nor the Imagist style, written merely for the ear; Cummings writes for
both” (qtd. in Dendinger 143). Cummings’ style represents a fusion of realism and
impressionism, a new flavor of modernism that strives to represent its surroundings as
realistically as possible through an immediate expression of the senses.
Damon appears to be a rare reviewer and a rare reader. As the review appearing in
The Omaha World Herald on April 23, 1933, points out: “you may get a lot of enjoyment
out of the book. You may. My bet is you won’t get anything out of it but a desire to throw
it from you” (qtd. in Dendinger 144). Michael March in his review “Page After Page,”
appearing in The Brooklyn Citizen on April 26, 1933, also reacts negatively to EIMI:
“Cummings . . . has done everything possible to frighten readers away. That, however, is
22
his business. Lucid writing, or course requires correspondingly lucid thinking” (qtd. in
Dendinger 146). March assumes in this statement that he qualifies as a lucid reader,
capable of following the extremely intricate writing that is EIMI. It is a difficult text, but
regardless of March’s estimation of him, Cummings possesses one of the most perceptive
minds of his generation. This perceptive quality is evidenced by Cummings’ ability to
avoid the clutches of Soviet-run tour groups that would prevent him from truly
experiencing Russia. Of Cummings’ contemporaries, John Dos Passos and other
Communist-sympathetic authors mistakenly went along with these groups and therefore
were prevented from seeing anything negative in the great Communist experiment. These
authors returned to the United States and wrote books proclaiming the success of the
Soviets. Cummings is quite possibly the only author of his generation to explore Russia
without the typical blinders, to experience the pros and cons of this new government, and
to relate his experiences as truthfully as possible within the pages of EIMI.
Cummings’ ability to discern what lay beyond the propaganda unleashed upon the
world by the Soviets is praised in an anonymous April 27, 1933, review from The
Baltimore Observer:
His descriptions and comments on Russia are among the best things of the
sort I have ever read. He portrays the intellectual struggle of the individual
against the mass machine without literary flourish. It’s as if the reader steps
into Cummings’ mind and takes a journey through Cummings’ eyes. One’s
own personality is lost in the force of his word-conveyed impressions.
(qtd. in Dendinger 147)
This reviewer continues to note: “According to E.E. Cummings the Russian experiment is
a horrible ordeal that seems to be killing the inner-selves that shout for freedom” (148).
Cummings did not respond negatively to Russia because it was communist and anticapitalist, as many believed, but because Russian communism, like American capitalism,
23
suppressed and oppressed the individual in favor of the masses. In “Eimi More Unusual
Prose by Cummings,” appearing in the April 29, 1933, St. Louis Democrat, Frances
Dawson reaffirms Cummings’ perception by stating that Cummings “saw the Russians
when they were not performing for the world at large. . . . The book is profoundly
amusing” (qtd. in Dendinger 148).
The innovative narrative of EIMI is praised by K.D.C. in the Harvard Crimson on
May 26, 1933, followed by speculations regarding the difficulty of the text:
Technically, Eimi may well be an advance, and a contribution. It suggests
ways and means that English fiction-writers can adopt, in modified form,
and use to advantage. What dullness the story may have is due, not to the
manner, but to the length of the telling. It is obviously too drawn out; it
could be compressed by a third without great harm. (qtd. in Dendinger
152)
While EIMI is of considerable density and would still be a remarkable work if it were a
third the length its 432 pages presently comprise, the compression of the narrative would
greatly harm the realistic impressions which Cummings is attempting to impart to his
readers. The narrative becomes intentionally tiresome in sections, because many of
Cummings’ experiences in Russia were tiresome for him.
By June of 1933, there had been enough positive response to EIMI for the editors
of The American Spectator—although not retracting their original label of “Worst Book of
the Month”—to print a favorable review of EIMI. In “Eimi, Eimi, Meimi, Mo,” Ben Hecht
states:
Eimi is a tome of some importance, not only as a graphic, diverting, almost
Mark Twainish account of a New England Bo-Peep among the wolves, but
as an indication of a new style in American radicalism. . . . every redblooded American should really do his best to wade through the thing.
24
(qtd. in Dendinger 153)
Ironically, the first publication to deride EIMI publicly is also one of the few publications to
actively recommend Cummings’ book to “every red-blooded American” (153). In The
Dayton Herald on June 22, 1933, Herbert Gorman’s “Mr. Cummings, the Dante of Soviet
Inferno” proclaims that the “innumerable American writers who continue to consider
Soviet Russia the Great Experiment will hardly care for Eimi. They will dismiss it as the
peculiar and one-sided scribbling of a man who did not recognize what he saw. . . They
will be wrong in every particular” (qtd. in Dendinger 155). Gorman’s review proves to be
a sort of prophecy about both EIMI’s reception and the original leftist perspective towards
Soviet Russia: both impressions prove to “be wrong in every particular.”
Ezra Pound, in his December 20, 1934, review of EIMI, “E.E. Cummings Alive,”
expresses his disappointment with the negative critical reception of EIMI:
I thought I was through with introducing new writers. Heaven knows I
don’t want to write about literature. But here is a new piece of literature
—or it was new, and I didn’t expect to be called on. I thought there was
enough young critical talent in both Britain and America to take care of work
by men younger than I am. Or at any rate to see that such work was looked
at, once it had come from its publisher. (qtd. in Norman 279)
The majority of EIMI’s reviewers did not bother to look at the book in the way that it
demands to be read, and this failure was evident to Pound. The objective position that
Cummings takes within the narrative is one that Pound does not believe anyone else would
have been capable of communicating:
. . . something would have got us. We would have forgotten to be writers.
We would have forgotten to take it in at the pores, and lay it there pellucidly
on the page in all its slavic unfinishedness, in all its Dostoievskian
slobberyness, brought up to date with no past reference, no allusion, just
25
Russia 1920 whatever must have been 1929. Laid there on the page not
reading the least bit like [W.H.] Hudson, but good as “Huddy” was good
about birds in the South American wilderness.
This fauna was present. This habitat was its habitat. The Kumrad saw
it and smelt it, and wandered about in its darkness. (qtd. in Norman 279)
Pound believes Cummings is the only individual capable of responding to the Russian
experiment with accuracy and without being influenced by outside forces.
M.R. Werner verifies the exactitude of EIMI in response to accusations that “it was
not an accurate account of Russia” by saying, “If there is one thing you can count on, it’s
that Cummings is accurate” (Norman 263). But as accurate as Cummings’ report of
Communist Russia may be, EIMI was not favorably received by many of his
contemporaries. Cummings told Charles Norman, “When the book [EIMI] appeared,
some of my ‘best friends’ crossed the street to avoid talking to me” (Norman 263).
Norman notes that despite occasional reprintings, EIMI remains, of all of Cummings’
books, the one with the fewest readers. Norman notes that “1933 may have been a ‘bad’
year for such a book, for then the Soviet could do no wrong, and nothing that was right
was being done anywhere else” (265).
Just as the popular positive opinion of the Great Soviet Experiment over time has
proven incorrect, EIMI’s negative reception and continued neglect can be seen as a mistake
that has occurred largely due to social and political circumstances working against the
release of such a progressive view of Russia compounded by the normal critical resistance
towards any new or innovative form of narrative. In The Poetry and Prose of E.E.
Cummings, Robert E. Wegner—while discussing different aspects of Cummings’
philosophy permeating his writing—refers to EIMI as often as, if not more frequently than,
he refers to any of Cummings’ other works. This attention to EIMI is characteristic of
most critics who attempt any sort of discussion of Cummings’ career as a writer. Yet
26
despite its importance to the entirety of Cummings studies, EIMI has never received an indepth appraisal, evaluation, and examination. The remaining chapters will continue the
process of rectifying this mistake.
CHAPTER III
DANTE’S RUSSIA AND CUMMINGS’ HELL
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.
Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinova la paura!
Tant’ è amara che poco è più morte;
ma per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai,
dirò de l’altre cose ch’i’ v’ho scorte.
—Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto 1.1-9
Cummings, like Dante upon beginning his Divine Comedy, had already journeyed
through half of his life when he entered the dense and difficult forest of Mother Russia.
Just like the Dante of the Inferno, Cummings in EIMI strives to report truthfully all the
horrors which he witnesses so that he will be capable of reporting to the world what good,
if any, perseveres in the Great Communist Experiment. The good for Cummings lies no
doubt in the act of experiencing. In a letter to his second wife, Anne, Cummings stated:
“. . . & I imagine to have missed Moscow in 1931 would have been for me a curse
unparalleled” (qtd. in Dreams in the Mirror 310-11). In “The Poetry and Prose of E.E.
Cummings,” John Peale Bishop discusses the treasure trove of experiences Cummings
encountered: “For in Russia, Cummings was not only in a new country; he was in a new
27
28
world. Impressions pressed, one on another, in such confusing rapidity that no one with
less than his skill could possibly have caught and recorded them” (107). The entirely
foreign realm of Russia struck the impressionistic Cummings so strongly that he based the
432 page EIMI upon his experiences, he relates his experiences to those of Dante’s journey
through the Inferno, and these experiences result in a change in the path of Cummings’
career as an individual artist.
In “Dante and E.E. Cummings,” Allan A. Metcalf discusses the influence of Dante
upon the entirety of Cummings’ writings. As Virgil guides Dante through hell, “Dante
guides [Cummings] the practitioner of ‘the new art’; the Inferno provides occasional
touchstones with which to judge the modern world” (Metcalf 376). As Metcalf reveals,
before ever entering Russia, Cummings utilizes Dante as a mentor-poet throughout his
early career. However, Metcalf also believes that “Eimi marks a turning point. It signals
the end of simple passing references to Dante and the beginning of a more subtle concern,
suggesting a growing awareness on Cummings’ part that his positive vision and Dante’s
were in many respects congruent” (381). Upon reaching Russia in EIMI, Cummings
assumes the place of the Dante of the Inferno, having his own Virgil and Beatrice who help
guide Cummings through his experiences in this modern Soviet hell.
Metcalf cautions against equating EIMI with the Inferno, because EIMI “does not
correspond point by point with the Inferno . . . since Russia is a modern, improved
twentieth century hell . . . [that] lacks the harmony and order of Dante’s underworld.
Cummings’ visit is therefore not an imitation of Dante’s; the two stand in pointed contrast”
(377). This “pointed contrast” exists between Cummings’ Russia and Dante’s Hell, not
between Cummings’ EIMI and Dante’s Inferno. True, the two individual works are
different in subject matter and style and can be contrasted easily. Cummings’ EIMI
is by no means an imitation of the Inferno. Yet there are enough similarities for an
interesting comparison revealing the organization contained within EIMI. This organization
29
is often overlooked due to the difficulty for the reader in interpreting Cummings’
manipulation and restructuring of traditional narrative techniques. In “Dante and E.E.
Cummings,” Metcalf remains concerned with Cummings’ career as a whole and avoids an
in-depth discussion and examination of the influence of the Inferno on Cummings’
structuring of EIMI. By extending a detailed reading of EIMI, investigating the similarities
it shares with the Inferno, discussion will be opened to issues involving Cummings’ style,
his political/ideological response to Russia, and the change that EIMI represents for
Cummings as a writer.
In his “Sketch for a Preface to the Fourth Edition of EIMI,” Cummings elaborates
on the pattern that the book follows:
When my diary opens, I’m on a train bound for the Polish-Russian border.
At N (Negoreloe) I enter “a world of Was” (p 8)—the subhuman
communist superstate, where men are shadows & women are nonmen; the
preindividual marxist unworld. This unworld is Hell. In Hell I visit
Moscow, Kiev, Odessa. From Hell an unship takes me to Istanbul
(Constantinople) where I reenter the World (pp 377-386)—returning to
France by train (i)
This journey to Hell begins on Sunday, May 10, on a train traveling through Poland on its
way to Russia. Cummings’ first words set the mood for his descent into the modern day
hell of Russia: “SHUT seems to be The Verb” (3). For Cummings, “The Verb” is the
most important thing. Verbs represent action or inaction, being and not being. The title for
the book itself, EIMI, the Greek verb for “I am,” represents Cummings affirmation of his
existence as an individual artist in the face of a collective non-existence, “the preindividual
marxist unworld.”
The emphatic “SHUT” with which Cummings begins EIMI literally refers to the
window on the train, but this “SHUT” alludes also to Cummings’ impending entrance into
30
an “unworld” and the inevitability of his journey. As Dante is predestined to take his
journey into the underworld, Cummings feels destined to visit Russia. The first several
pages of EIMI discuss the trip through Poland, which serves as a parallel to the AnteInferno of Dante’s Inferno where Dante travels before crossing the River Acheron. The
second paragraph of EIMI indicates this:
and lunch was more Shut than a cemetery:4 separate corpses collectively
illatease:no ghost of conversation. Ponderous grub;because(last night, Shut
in a breathless box with a grunting doll)I rushed sidewise into Germany(but
that swirling tomb of horizontality was less Shut than the emptiest
rightangledness which called itself “essen”) (emphasis added; 3)
Cummings, approaching Russia/Hell, senses the lifelessness surrounding him as he sits
down for a meal. The entire meal is likened to the feeling of “Shut” found in a cemetery.
He enjoys this meal with four corpses who do not show signs of even a “ghost of
conversation.” These grim surroundings make Cummings contemplate the previous night.
When passing through Germany he felt “Shut in a breathless box” like being shut in a
coffin. Yet he prefers that former “swirling tomb” of sleep to his present company of
corpses eating lunch.
Despite these images and shadows of death, Cummings has not yet entered Hell
proper. When the train stops for a while, Cummings notices a family comprised of a
“horribly roboty child,” a “fallenarches mother,” and a “hairless father” (3), entering the
train. This family, although characterized by artificiality or by deficiency, begin playing
with a balloon and cause Cummings to note: “. . . but life, life!—they’ve detached the inert
poisonous ball and are batting it among themselves” (3). In the “Shut” of the train, three
somewhat lifeless people manage to act, to play, and therefore to provide Cummings with a
glimpse of life, albeit through batting around an “inert poisonous ball.” As the train rolls
on, Cummings loses the good humor which this sign of life instilled in him and he begins
31
to wonder “what spirits go & come?curiously into Whom are we all unpossibly melting?”
(5). Cummings senses the impending lifelessness of Russia approaching and characterizes
this modern Hell as a “Whom” into which the passengers of the train are “melting.” The
collective mentality of Marx and Lenin threatens to engulf the individuals on board.
On Monday, May 11, Cummings enters his Inferno proper. The transition into the
“world of Was” (EIMI 8) occurs after he passes through customs and officially crosses the
border into Russia. While waiting to be approved for entrance into Mother Russia,
Cummings expresses a temporal change that occurs before he enters the Inferno: “Time
yawns. . . . Time sighs. . . . Etcetera,ad infin., time goes to sleep” (EIMI 8). This
temporal slowing down of reality is followed hard upon by another strange shift:
Something?—ah,the ticket,from here to Moscow. . . . but what a ticketless
ticket! So,in dream moving,preceding by trifles, through very gate of
Inexorably has magic wand been waved;miraculously did reality
disintegrate:where am I?
In a world of Was—everything shoddy;everywhere dirt and cracked
fingernails—guarded by 1 helplessly handsome implausibly immaculate
soldier. Look! A rickety train , centuries BC. Tiny rednosed genial
antique wasman,swallowed by outfit of patches,nods almost merrily as I
climb cautiously aboard. (EIMI 8)
Just as the Dante of the Inferno must cross Acheron, experience a supernatural earthquake,
and faint before awakening in the First Circle of the Inferno, Cummings must pass through
customs, crossing the border into Russia with a supernatural disintegration of reality that
leaves him bewildered in “a world of Was.”
This “Was,” as a capitalized verb, is important to Cummings. From the opening
32
page of EIMI, Cummings describes his surroundings as different types of “shut.” Either
“shut” is an imperative, an order/command attempting to control the individual, which
Cummings would fight against, or “shut” is a past idea that should have no bearings on the
present in which Cummings, the great “I am” of the book, exists. Nevertheless, this verb
seems to cow Cummings in the early sections of EIMI and to “shut” out a good deal of life.
But “shut” is at least a verb that enacts a command or that at one time was an action. Upon
entering Russia, Cummings is confronted with first a slowing down and termination of
time and then by a verb which is entirely more non-existent than “shut.” Suddenly, the
verb is “Was.” Cummings who constantly affirms, “I am” and “I exist” is thrust into a
realm that does not exist, that has no time, a particularly dreary non-world and negation of
his belief in Being and Is.
The Greek verb ειµι which is used as the title for this book and which Cummings
uses as a shield against this “world of Was”—is an aorist verb. In the Greek, verbs do not
have the same strong association with the time of action that English verbs possess.
Instead, Greek verbs are defined more clearly by the type of action they convey: linear
action, considered to be continuous or progressive action as with a line (————), or
punctiliar action, regarded as a point (.) or contemplated as a single perspective. The aorist
ειµι is punctiliar in nature, occupying a point as opposed to a continuity. The Greek for “I
am” represents Cummings’ individual, pointed perspective in opposition to the continuing
line of collectivism upon which Communist Russia was based. Additionally, the phrase
“world of Was” does not convey for Cummings the idea of a world which used to be, but
instead it embodies the idea of a world which is not or a non-world that is the opposite of a
world that exists, a non-substantive thing.
This non-existent condition helps explain the negative, blank spaces that Cummings leaves
in his narration relating the physical act of passing through customs. He begins this
33
movement into nothingness by stating: “So,in dream moving,preceded by trifles,through
very gate of” (EIMI 8). This gate which is never named or revealed is followed by only a
line of blank space on the page of EIMI. This is the gate that enters into the un-world of
Russia, corresponding to Dante’s gate that leads into the Inferno with its warning:
“LASCIATE OGNE SPERANZA, VOI CH’INTRATE” (Inferno 3.9). Cummings bravely
continues forward into the unnamable gate of nothingness, as does Dante, refusing to
relinquish his hope for future escape.
For a moment, much like Dante fainting upon the edge of Acheron, Cummings is
bewilderingly marooned upon the page: “inexorably has a magic wand been waved;
miraculously did reality disintegrate:where am I?” (EIMI 8). Cummings’ question is
surrounded before and after on the physical page by blank lines and negative space. This
nothingness serves as Cummings’ answer when he suddenly continues narration with the
realization: “in a world of Was—everything shoddy;everywhere dirt and cracked
fingernails” (EIMI 8). With the exception of one guard who stands nearby, almost angelic
in his cleanliness, this new realm of Was is completely “shoddy,” peopled with “wasmen,”
and lacking the feeling of existence which Cummings associates with reality.
Remaining Virgil-less in a time of his journey when the Dante of the Inferno already
had a guide, Cummings continues to doubt his location and present circumstances: “. . .
But tell,O tell me:where are me? Who lives? Who has died? Is there space or time or both
for e.g. a drink?—Yes?” (EIMI 9). He realizes that he is traveling, but the destination and
mode of transportation remain somewhat befuddled: “trainless train hobbles Whereward”
(9). This confused state continues into a more concrete realization of the negative nonexistence of his surroundings in the dining car of the train:
The headwaiter sits,sullenly reading a perfectly blank piece of paper. . . .
and everywhere exist moth-eaten flyspecked unnecessaries of
ultraornamentation . . . nobody seems anything except lonesome;hideously
34
lonesome in hideousness,in rundownness,in outatheelness,in neglectness,in
strictly omnipotent whichnessandwhatness. . . . But everybody’s actually
elsewhere(I thou he she or it we you they don’t have to be told they you we
it or she he thou I am elsewhere because nothing if not elsewhere possibly
is possible). Elsewhere being where? Perhaps in Russia—for obviously
this whateveritis or defunct-Ritz-on-square-wheels isn’t anywhere or
anything,isn’t Russia,isn’t a diningcar,isn’t(incredibly enough)Isn’t. Never
hath been begotten,never shall be conceived, . . . such nonlife and such
undeath and such grim prolifically cruel most infraSuch (EIMI 10)
In this passage, Cummings provides the first picture of the suffering inhabitants of his
modern Inferno. Everyone remains lonely and used, unsure of their location or their
existence, engaged in useless acts such as reading a blank piece of paper and surrounded
by useless objects, “unnecessaries of ultraornamentation,” that seems to mock them by
alluding to a beauty that is not there. Cummings reinforces this realm’s supernatural
position outside of time and state of non-existence by proclaiming it an “Isn’t. Never hath
been begotten,never shall be conceived.” This “infraSuch” surpasses Dante’s Inferno in
that it is not only “nonlife” but also “undeath.” Cummings positions his “world of Was” in
the negative tension between the dialectic of life and death, and he accomplishes this
through everyday monstrosities rather than through the mythical monstrosities such as the
demons and Charon whom Dante encounters during his journey.
In “Dante and E.E. Cummings,” Metcalf comments upon this difference in the
focus of the two books, claiming that
. . . the Inferno is eternal, allegorical, dreamlike, free from petty everyday
distractions, while Russia is even more mundane, terrestrial, and pedestrian
than the everyday Western world. . . . while Dante is liberated from the
everyday cares of the flesh to pursue his vision, Cummings is forced to
35
attend to trivialities. (377)
Yet just as the ethereal world Dante explores in the Inferno represents a commentary upon
the political world that surrounded him in Italy, EIMI’s trivialities are also allegorical, all
representative of larger concerns. In Cummings’ perspective, these trivialities are
symptoms of the problems faced by the individual suppressed by collective Soviet Russia
and, on a more global scale, they are the symptoms of the problems faced by modern man
under the tyranny of the modern world. Like Russia, the modern world is peopled by
“innumerable nonmen(all Elsewhere Looking,some stoically nursing fretful offspring” who
look on with “bovine stares,a few pitying leers . . . between frustration and
disappointment , Carybdis and Scylla , T.S. Waistline and the Eliot (this almost and almost
that)” (EIMI 36). Cummings expands T.S. Eliot’s picture of a city become Wasteland to
an entire country, political system, and philosophy that threaten to engulf the entire modern
world in a waste existing “between frustration and disappointment.”
In his “Sketch for a Preface to the Fourth Edition of EIMI,” Cummings discusses
how “[D]uring my first Moscow day (May 12),” his initial guide through the modern day
Russian Inferno
“1 ultrabenevolent denizen of Cambridge mass (who hibernates half of each
year in Russia, spinning meanwhile an opus on the theatre)” becomes Mr.
Spinner & mentor & the benefactor of benefactors & Virgil & Sibyl &
benevolence & wc (walking corpse) & the 3rd good Cantabrigian & our
guardian angel & Dante’s cicerone & the recorder. As VIRGIL, he is one
of eimi’s chief characters. (ii)
In real life, Virgil is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, a professor studying theater in
Russia. As with many of the characters of EIMI, Cummings continually names and
renames his Virgil to reflect the different roles he plays and the different impressions he
forces upon Cummings.
36
As God sends Virgil to guide Dante through part of his journey in The Divine
Comedy, Cummings seems destined to meet his Virgil in Russia. Having missed Vladimir
Lidin, the Russian dramatist, who was supposed to meet him on his arrival in Moscow,
Cummings is left in the hands of the Moscow branch of Intourist, “the official travel
agency for foreigners” (Dreams in the Mirror 309) that continues to plague Cummings
during his journey in a fashion similar to the way different demons and evil spirits haunt
Dante. Through Intourist’s suggestion, Cummings ends up staying in the expensive Hotel
Metropole. When Cummings begins to ask the clerk at the Metropole how he should go
about finding Virgil, the clerk snatches Dana’s card from Cummings’ hand and says, “Yes
. . . I think he lives here” (EIMI 17). Cummings responds with astonishment: “‘?’ (my
Here had meant USSR;his means the Hotel Metropole)” (17). The clerk rings Virgil’s
room and he arrives, eager to see Cummings ready to experience the wonders of Mother
Russia: “Mymymymymy. How I envy you. Seeing Moscow for the first time” (18).
Virgil quickly realizes the role he is to play in the larger scheme of the book:
hm. I think that’s a very sound idea;not to mention the pleasure it would
give me . . . I know personally several of the people to whom you have
letters. Yes. It’s almost as though one were seeing Russia with virgin
eyes , one’sself. Quite , in fact. HAH-RAH-SHOH! ( EIMI 20)
Virgil becomes Cummings’ guide through Russia, but he is an eager pro-Communist guide
who acts as an interesting, often comic foil to Cummings’ apolitical viewpoint. In Dreams
in the Mirror, Richard S. Kennedy describes Dana as effeminate and notes that back in
America, “some of the Americans called him ‘Mrs.’ Dana behind his back” (310). Dana’s
philosophy and “mothering” of Cummings stand in pointed contrast to the Virgil of the
Inferno who realizes the dangers of Hell and guides Dante carefully through the depths of
the Inferno. Dana, believing in the Communist movement, remains largely unaware of the
“dangers” which Cummings notices and which Dana as Virgil should shield him from.
37
Once Cummings finds and is found by his guide, Virgil, he has a better realization
of where he is—or what it means to be in Russia—than he did during his bewildered
period upon the train. Virgil’s enthusiasm towards Russia appears to make Cummings
more aware of his disapproval of Soviet Moscow:
“I like it here so much!” lyrically exclaims Virgil “have you noticed a
particular feeling in the air—a tension?”
“Have I!”
and Dante has. Apparently one cubic inch of Moscow is to all the
metropolis of New York—so far as “tension” goes—as all the metropolis of
New York is to tensionless Silver Lake,New Hampshire: around,through,
under,behind,over myself do amazingly not physical vibrations contract,
expand,collide,mesh, and murderfully procreate : each fraction,every
particle,of the atmosphere in which moving moves,of my moving,of me,of
cityless city,of peopleless people,actually is charged to a literally prodigious
degree with what might faintly be described as compulsory psychic
promiscuity. Whereby (if in no other respect) Moscow of the inexorably
obsessing mentality, and merely mad New York(not to mention most
complacent Cambridge Mass and proudly peaceful New Hampshire)belong
to different universes. . . verily,verily have I entered a new realm, whose
inhabitants are made of each other;proudly I swear that they shall not fail to
note my shadow and the moving of the leaves. (EIMI 21)
The completely foreign/otherworldly nature of Russia clearly manifests itself to Cummings
at this moment and he rises to the challenge of making his presence as an individual felt
among the members of collective Russia. In a June 29, 1931, interview appearing in the
Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune, Cummings elaborates on the tension he describes
here by saying, “If you said ‘boo’ to some of those people they might drop dead. . . . They
38
are in a particularly nervous condition” (qtd. in Norman 263). Cummings likens himself to
Christ, the bringer of peace to the nervous worrisome masses, by modeling his language,
“verily,verily,” after that of Jesus in the New Testament. This reference to the New
Testament strengthens the parallel between Cummings’ EIMI and Dante’s “divinelyinspired” The Divine Comedy.
Dana, like the Virgil of the Inferno, begins to show Cummings around Moscow,
taking him to different sights and to meet different people. Strangely he begins by offering
to take Cummings to Lenin’s mausoleum:
“. . . I’ll show you Lenin’s mausoleum”
Seeing the Sights
The Slogan of Slogans
...
L’s M
a rigid pyramidal composition of blocks;an impurely mathematical game
of edges . . . perhaps the architectural equivalent for “boo!—I scared you
that time!”
the lump ends at Something Fabulous
a frenzy of writhing hues—clusteringly not possible whirls together
grinding into one savage squirtlike ecstasy : a crazed Thinglike dream
solemnly shouting out of timespace,a gesture fatal,acrobatic . . . –utterly
a Self,catastrophic;distinct,unearthly and without fear.
The tearing of mere me and this miracle from each other demands effort on
part of failing benevolence . . . who increasingly resembles a walking
corpse. ( EIMI 25-26)
But it proves too early in Cummings journey through Soviet hell for him to encounter
39
Lenin, the Soviet equivalent to Dante’s three-faced Satan. Cummings only witnesses the
outside of the mausoleum before Virgil, whose lunch is disagreeing with him, loses his
vivacity and must be helped back to the Hotel Metropole. Suddenly, Cummings’
“benefactor of benefactors” has transformed into a “walking corpse,” joining the numbers
of the undead who walk the streets of Russia. During this first encounter with Lenin’s
mausoleum, Cummings receives a more positive impression of the tomb than he will later
hold, largely due to “Something Fabulous,” the nearby church of St. Basil, and seems to
regret that he must be torn away by Virgil, his “failing benevolence.”
Paul Rosenfeld in “The Enormous Cummings” notes that “In this scientific inferno,
the Essence of Evil at first is hidden from our eyes” (74). Cummings does not encounter
this evil fully unveiled before his eyes until much later, on Saturday, May 30, when he has
passed from the care of Virgil to the hands of Beatrice. For the time being, Dana leads him
around Moscow, introducing Cummings to several of the denizens of the Russian
unworld, including the president of the Writer’s Club. Here, Cummings feels welcomed,
but fears that “Lenin’s bust listens just outside” (EIMI 31). Although Cummings has not
entirely realized the significance of Lenin as Lucifer in his modern narrative of a journey
into the Inferno, Cummings’ future encounter with the “Essence of Evil” continues to loom
in the shadows of this early part of his journey.
The more time Cummings spends in Virgil’s company, the more often he alludes to
Dante’s journey through the Circles of Hell. Cummings often conveys the similarities
through fleeting references at the beginnings of new sections of the narrative:
underground
—with nothing more incredible than sunlight! (EIMI 39)
Here, in a brief disjointed line, Cummings locates Russia in the mystical underworld that
the Inferno occupies and accentuates the descending motion of his journey by breaking the
line after “underground” into a descending pattern upon the page. He affects this same
40
sense of movement in a later section by a simple repetition at the beginning of the section:
“stairs , stairs , stairs” (54). From time to time, Cummings drops a reminder that this
entire journey exists somewhat outside of time: “unborn of this dayless day” (40).
Cummings also notes the movements of the denizens of the un-world he passes
through:
Left.
Left.
Left! right! left! tiddledy-AH—Dee : Die-dy ; Doe-dy ,
Dummm. . . Parade,rade,rade;parade,rade,rade. The uniformly moving
monotonously uniform comrades imply vision in which dreamless Virgil
unwishfully and wishfully my dreaming self swim , through dreamed
uniform wishless monotonously walkers &
“here” pointing , giggling “is the terror of Europe.
Look at it”
“I am” (EIMI 56)
The large amount of space between the initial repetitions of the word “Left” represents not
only the absence of the corresponding “right” which later emerges in the familiar chant but
also gives the described Russian soldiers large strides. Cummings’ capitalization of the
first steps of the feet indicates large powerful steps and draws the reader’s attention to these
seeming giants whom Dana-Virgil and Dante-Cummings admire from different
perspectives. Dana giggles at the idea of these soldiers being “the terror of Europe,”
feeling safe and secure behind their terror because he shares their Communist philosophy.
However, Cummings’ response is stark and succinct, lacking the playfulness of Dana’s
observation. He states simply, “I am,” the encapsulated proclamation of Cummings’ entire
philosophy of the individual that stands in direct opposition to everything that the large,
striding soldiers represent. This difference in perspective—alongside Cummings’
unwillingness to continue paying for the luxury of the Hotel Metropole—soon causes
Dante to leave Virgil behind in favor of a new guide, Beatrice, who allows him more
freedom.
41
In his “Sketch for a Preface to the Fourth Edition of EIMI,” Cummings reveals that
Beatrice is
Lack Dungeon’s daughter (from the standpoint of the marxists; who’ve
canonized her moderately popular father as a Great i.e. Proletarian writer)
alias BEATRICE (in relation to VIRGIL) alias Turkess or Harem with
respect to chief character number three—who’s the TURK, sometimes
called Assyrian or that bourgeois face or Charlie. (ii)
On May 17, Cummings meets Beatrice, Joan Malamuth, and her husband, Charles
Malamuth, alias Turk, for the first time at dinner, and on May 19, while attending an opera
at the Bolshoy theatre, Cummings is “invited by Turk via Turkess to be their guest as long
as [he] remain[s] in Moscow” (“Sketch for a Preface . . .” vi). Cummings provides the
name of Turk for Charles in response to his initial reaction to the Malamuths’ place of
residence which is described as being “much more comprehendingly complex than any
Muscovite I’ve yet encountered—immediately whose encounter implies goodliving and to
me suggests a Turk” (EIMI 92). Upon seeing the Turkess, alias Beatrice, Cummings notes
that she is “the best looking female I never quite expected to see in that little bit of Eaven on
Hearth, Marxland” (92). Here, Cummings accentuates his irony at finding an angelic
Beatrice in hellish Russia by making Heaven on Earth “Eaven on Hearth,” while
simultaneously alluding to his belief that the Malamuths’ particularly bourgeois home and
“hearth” shelter them somewhat from the proletarian nightmare that surrounds them. In
Russia, Beatrice, an angelic heavenly presence, could exist nowhere else.
Unlike Dante’s Divine Comedy, where Virgil is prevented from travelling further
with Dante due to his status as one of the noble damned and is therefore replaced by
Beatrice, Cummings’ Virgil and Beatrice have a slight power-struggle over being
Cummings’ guide. The disagreement seems to be largely on the side of Dana, who
responds badly to Beatrice’s critique of the Russian theatrical interpretation of one of her
42
father’s short stories:
“Merci monsieur” bowing the hostessly thanks gaily. “—It’s not a very
good short story” she seriously added “and the play’s probably worse.”
—Crash—
upstarted(vomitgreen)mentor : “excuse me!” trembling , he lays down
cloudwhite napkin. “I—I really must be ; er, going”—darting at me what
poisonousness! “Of course that doesn’t mean the rest of you need . . .
well , you see (scathingly) I take MY theatre very , very SERIOUSLY.”
“What a pity” our hostess , gently.
“Hm. Er,yes. I hate to deprive you of—”
“Not at all” lightly.
“Well—er—the rest of the company will be along later, I presume”
Virgil(hatefully shaking hands with the Turk)snapped. “I’ll expect to see
YOU”(me)“anyway.”
“Dahsveedahnyah” quietly said Beatrice. (EIMI 94)
In this section, Cummings frames his description of Dana in a somewhat reptilian manner:
“vomitgreen”; “darting at me what poisonousness!” Virgil in Cummings’ eyes has
digressed from “benefactor” to “walking corpse” and ultimately to a monstrosity that reacts
jealously towards Cummings’ willingness to remain with the cool, collected Joan
Malamuth, whom Cummings renames Beatrice in light of Virgil’s transformation. The
motherly, controlling nature of Dana manifests itself in such passages as “‘I’ll expect to see
YOU’(me)‘anyway’” (94). After abandoning his Virgil—who for the remainder of EIMI
becomes ex-, ex-Virgil, and ex-mentor—and moving in with the Turk and Turkess,
Cummings is allowed more freedom. Beatrice’s place as guide lies more in the inspiration
that her beauty provides for Cummings. He is no longer haunted by the Virgil who
accompanies Cummings through the majority of his travels during the first section of his
43
stay in Moscow. Cummings is no longer held back by Virgil’s sickly nature and, so,
strengthened by Beatrice as inspiration, Cummings is free to return to Lenin’s mausoleum.
Cummings’ tour of Lenin’s tomb comprises four full pages of EIMI. As such, it is
one of the details of his Russian experiences that Cummings spends a great deal of
narrative time describing. In order to do justice to Cummings’ encounter with the LeninLucifer of the Inferno-Unworld-U.S.S.R., it is necessary to quote a large amount of this
section. Cummings begins his description of this encounter with a rather abstract yet
detailed description of the line waiting to enter the tomb:
facefacefaceface
handfinclaw
foothoof
(tovarich)
es to number of numberlessness ( un
-smiling )
with dirt’s dirt dirty dirtier with others’ dirt with dirt of themselves dirtiest
waitstand dirtly never smile shufflebudge dirty pausehault
Smilingless.
Some from nowhere ( faces of nothing ) others out of
somewhere ( somethingshaped hands ) these knew ignorance ( hugest feet
and believing ) those were friendless( stooping in their deathskins ) all—
numberlessly
—eachotherish
facefacefaceface
44
facefaceface
faceface
Face
: all ( of whom-which move-do-not-move numberlessly ) Toward
the
Tomb
Crypt
Shrine
Grave.
The grave.
Toward the ( grave.
All toward the grave ) of himself of herself ( all toward the grave of
themselves ) all toward the grave of Self.
Move ( with dirt’s dirt dirty ) unmoving move un ( some from nowhere )
moving move unmoving ( eachotherish )
: face
Our-not-their
face-face ;
Our-not-her
, facefaceface
Our-not-his
—toward
Vladimir our life! Ulianov our sweetness! Lenin our hope!
All—
(handfin-
45
claw
foothoof
tovarich )
es : to number of numberlessness ; un
-smiling
all toward Un- moveunmove , all toward Our haltpause ; all toward All
budgeshuffle : All toward Toward standwait. Isn’tish. (EIMI 240-42)
Cummings’ impressions of the collective Soviet system materialize in his description of the
procession walking forth to view Lenin. He begins by focusing on the faces of the masses
and then starts describing these people as creatures lacking individual identities by shifting
their hands into fins and claws and their feet into hooves. To Cummings, their large
numbers mean nothing, because they fail to feel, to exist as individuals, by remaining “unsmiling” and therefore amount only to a “numberlessness.” He describes them as dirty and
as “deathskins.” Cummings pulls these descriptions of deficiency into an idea of
“eachotherish”-ness which they share. This anonymity is reinforced by the repetition that
Cummings uses throughout the section and the realization that the grave that they
continually “shufflebudge” towards is not merely the grave of Lenin. They also move
towards “the grave ) of himself of herself ( all toward the grave of themselves ) all toward
the grave of Self” (241). Although Cummings joins in the chant of the masses—“Vladimir
our life! Ulianov our sweetness! Lenin our hope!” (241)—he does not put any weight in
this proclamation. If Cummings did believe that Lenin represented “life,” “sweetness,” and
“hope,” he would have accentuated the words through capitalization. By worshipping the
collective philosophy of a dead man, the Russians have in Cummings’ eyes become that
dead man, abandoned their individuality, their “Self,” and must “face” the inevitability of
the grave. The result is another tribute to non-existence, another “Isn’tish” (242).
46
After this description of the people in line, Cummings locates himself and the
waiting masses within the narrative:
The dark human All warped(the Un-)toward and—facefacefaceface—
past Arabian Nights and disappearing . . . numberlessness ; or may
possibly there exist an invisible , a final , face ; moveunmovingly which
after several forevers will arrive to(hushed)look upon its maker Lenin?
“pahjahlstah”—voice?belonging to comrade K. Said to a most tough
cop. Beside shufflebudging end of beginninglessness , before the Tomb of
Tombs , standunstanding.
(Voice?continues) I , American correspondent . . .
(the toughest cop spun : upon all of and over smallest me staring all 1
awful moment—salutes! And very gently shoves) . . . (into smilelessly the
entering beginning of endlessness : (EIMI 242)
The two pages preceding this passage represent Cummings’ astonished reaction to the
length of the line entering Lenin’s tomb and a contemplation of what it all means. In this
passage, Cummings notes that the line stretches past “Arabian Nights”—Cummings’ code
name for “Item: the church of St Basil in atheist Moscow” (Sketch for a Preface . . .
ii)—into a disappearing distance. When he approaches an official and announces himself
as an American correspondent, “the toughest cop” pushes Cummings to the beginning of
the line, “the entering beginning of endlessness” (EIMI 242). Cummings is wedged
between two comrades a “bearded” and a “beardless” that forms “a dumb me-sandwich”
(242).
Cummings then begins to move into
—stink ; warm poresbowels , millionary of man-the-unanimal putrescence.
Floods up from dark. Suffocatingly envelopes 3 now . . . comrades
. . . as when the man comes to a where tremulous with despair and a when
47
luminous with dissolution—into all fearfullness comes , out of
omnipotence—as when he enters a city(and solemnly his soul descends :
every wish covers its beauty in tomorrow)so I descended and so I disguise
myself ; so(toward death’s deification moving) I did not move
bearded’s cap slumps off. Mine. Beardless’s
. . .now, Stone ; polished(Now)darklyness. . .
—leftturning :
Down
(the old skull floating(the old ghost shuffling)just-in-front-of-me in-stinkand-glimmer &
from ) whom , now : forth creeps , som( ething , timi )dly . . . a Feeling
tentacle cau , tiously &,which , softly touchtry-ing fear,ful, ly how the
polished slippery black , the—is it real?—(da)amazedly & withdraws;
diminishes ; wilt
-ing(rightturn)
as we enter The Place , I look up : over(all)us a polished
slab reflecting upside(com(moveunmoving)rades)down. Now ; a. Pit :
here. . .yes—sh!
under a prismshaped transparency
lying ( tovarich-to-the-waist
forcelessly shut rightclaw
leftfin unshut limly
& a small-not-intense head & a face-without-wrinkles & a reddish beard).
(1 appearing quickly uniform shoves our singleness into 2s)yanks bearded
to the inside pushes to the outside me. . .& as un(around the(the
48
prism)pit)movingly comrades the move
(within a neckhigh wall
in a groove which surrounds the prism)
stands , at the prism’s neuter pole , a human being(alive , silent)with a real
rifle :
—comrades revolve. Wheel we. Now I am somehow(for a moment)on
the inside ; alone—
growls. Another soldier. Rightturning us. Who leave The Place (whose
walls irregularly are splotched with red frieze)leave the dumb saccharine
porebowel ripeness of stink . . . we climb & climbing we
‘re out. (EIMI 242-43)
Upon Cummings descending into the tomb, the god-like deification of Lenin is undercut by
the carnality of the experience. Cummings encounters “stink.” Following the previous
description of the unification of everyone into “the grave of Self,” (241) the origin of this
stink is unclear. The stink could belong to the “millionary of man-the-unanimal” entering
the tomb or it could belong to Lenin’s decaying carcass, a stench that “[f]loods up from the
dark” (242). Cummings’ description of his movement into this darkest crevice of the unworld is filled with allusions to Dante’s encounter with Lucifer. He begins this association
by comparing his movements to those of a man “as when he enters a city(and solemnly his
soul descends” (242). This descent of a soul into a city mirrors Dante entering Judecca, the
Fourth Ring of the Ninth Circle of the Inferno, where Traitors against their Benefactors are
frozen. Upon sight of Lucifer, who reigns over Judecca, Dante feels faint and lost
somewhere between life and death. Cummings differentiates between the physical
movement of the line and his lack of movement in ideology in the presence of Lenin:
“so(toward death’s deification moving) I did not move” (242). Cummings regards Lenin
as the deification of death, he equates the viewing of Lenin with devout followers
49
worshipping a preserved corpse-god, and he communicates his impressions of this rotting
un-god through the odiferous descriptions that permeate this section of the narrative. After
briefly remaining alone with Lenin, Cummings and the comrades before and after him
“leave the dumb saccharine porebowel ripeness of stink” (243) and climb out of the tomb.
The description of the action of “climb & climbing” (243) parallels Dante and Virgil having
to climb Lucifer in order to escape from the Inferno.
Cummings does not really have time to realize the experience of seeing Lenin until
after he has emerged from the tomb:
Certainly it was not made of flesh. And I have seen so many waxworks
which were actual (some ludicrous more horrible most both) so many
images whose very unaliveness could liberate Is , invent Being(or what
equally disdains life and unlife)—I have seen so very many better gods or
stranger, many mightier deeper puppets ; everywhere and elsewhere and
perhaps in America and(for instance)in Coney Island. . .
now(breathing air,Air,AIR)decide that this how silly unking of Un-,
this how trivial idol throned in stink , equals just another little moral lesson.
Probably this trivial does not liberate , does not invent , because this silly
teaches ; because probably this little must not thrill and must not lull and
merely must say—
I Am Mortal. So Are You. Hello
. . .another futile aspect of “materialistic dialectic” . . . merely
again(again false noun,another fake”reality”)the strict immeasurable Verb
neglected, the illimitable keen Dream denied (EIMI 243-44).
Ultimately, Cummings puts more value on a wax sculpture, a piece of art, than upon
Lenin, the “unking of Un-“ (244). Cummings does not find the lesson that Lenin
represents to be of much value to the individual artist. To Cummings, “I Am Mortal. So
50
Are You. Hello” (244) represents a denial of Self, the Artist, the Individual “I am,” and an
embrace of Death, Un-ness, Was, a denial of “the illimitable keen Dream” (244).
Cummings’ philosophy of individualism demands a focus upon the “Verb,” a focus upon
life and living rather than upon death and dying.
Cummings—after travelling to Odessa and Kiev, after being driven to paranoia by
the watchful eye of the Gay-Pay-Oo, the not-so-secret Soviet police force, and after finally
obtaining an exit visa after many days of delay by Intourist—begins to despair of ever
escaping from Russia. This fear is uncharacteristic of the Dante in the Inferno, who trusts
in God, Beatrice, and Virgil to protect and guide him through his journey. Cummings left
his Beatrice and Virgil in Moscow, and although he has a new guide/benefactor in the Noo
Inglundur, he feels lost and hopeless. While waiting for the Franz Mering, the boat that
was originally to carry him to Turkey but which now remains marooned in the water, to
begin moving and working again, Cummings contemplates his fate:
Voice!
Of The World of where we out of hell shall go if only something
happens if
only this
agony will not become eternal if only our unlives do not linger
forever under this(mir-ac-u-lous-ly ten-dril-ing into which now Is climbing
bravely Newly reaching is while all Our unlives listen breathless itself-frail
ly-sure ly-feel ingliv ingfeel ingbe ingfeel ingmoving a.l.i.v.e a Song!
Alive is singing of love . . . Voice is climbing toward love . . . & a
Song is feels . . . (Only is For and always Is and was And only shall be for
always Love!
Without whom nothing is everything does not exist ; or shadows.
Kingdom of hell , Un) (EIMI 356).
51
Cummings senses the possibility of escape through a “Voice . . . climbing toward love,”
but the “a.l.i.v.e” represented by this “Song” is punctuated and interrupted by the doubt
over the ability of the Franz Mering to move and the fear that he will be forced to remain
where “nothing is everything does not exist . . . Kingdom of hell, Un” (356).
Once Cummings finally does manage to escape to Turkey, he realizes that he has
left behind his modern Inferno. Nevertheless, Cummings is still plagued by the worries of
that “world of Was”:
I only feel : here isn’t hell : hell isn’t anymore ; ought isn’t , and should and
hideous must aren’t(I feel that only that here everybody isn’t supposed to ,
isn’t expected to , know ; recognize : for each is what only himself is(does
what himself only does)loves unrecognizably suffers murders ignorantly
weeps laughs hates (building not known immeasurably how
doomlessness—building the fate of,weaker than every stronger than any,
Someone Who becauselessly toward light’s darkness tends : Whose will is
dream : Whose lives we only die : only Whose language is silence (EIMI
388)
Cummings’ escape to Turkey parallels Dante’s move from the Inferno to Purgatory.
Cummings, although free from “should and hideous must,” has not yet achieved the final
vision of his journey, the freedom of realization given to the artist to create, to Be.
Cummings remains trapped in a mundane world awaiting the insight and blessing of
Paradise.
On Sunday, June 14, Cummings achieves this insight and blessing on returning to
Paris. Cummings structures his journey not only on Dante’s Inferno, but also on a
sequence of days that calls attention to the Soviet calendar week. The Soviet week does not
contain Sunday, the day of the week on which Cummings begins his journey and the same
day of the week on which he finishes his journey: the “day I was born; also a day which
52
doesn’t exist . . .” (EIMI 430). Cummings often returns to this idea of the Soviet week,
“the 7thless 6thless,” (334) lacking the day of his birth. By drawing attention to this
feature of the Soviet week, Cummings accentuates once again the timelessness of his
journey, the status of Soviet hell outside of normal time and space. This excision of
Sunday from the calendar week serves also as another negation on the part of Cummings’
modern Inferno striving to prevent the individual artist from existing.
In the final pages of EIMI, Cummings begins his expression of the enlightenment
he receives upon re-entering Paris by recapitulating the progression of his journey through
Soviet hell:
. . . but life , life! Enlivened by si je me vous ne ça(lower of gent : Verb
The be to seems
seems
to be
shutun)through which
peering or(shut)myself
(ness)partially which through I
am that unfeeling eachotherishly multitude of impotent timidities of
numerable items of guilty particles which
are not dead are not alive are
in time in space are in
denying trying fearing of(which
itfully And hatingly How possibly undreaming are that not shining called
real picture monotonously moveunmoving
of seem)unseems to be
through not which(or
myselfless)beautifully into
53
everywhere and
always (EIMI 430-31)
Cummings begins his recapitulation by repeating the first line of EIMI, “SHUT seems to be
The Verb : gent of lower(‘ça ne vous fait rien si je me deshabille?’)” (3), but this time
everything is turned upside down:
. . . but life , life! Enlivened by si je me vous ne ça(lower of gent : Verb
The be to seems
seems
to be
shutun) . . . (430)
Life is re-entering the picture and disrupting the structure of the “seems to be” of the
emphatic “SHUT,” so that it has become an uncertain and weak “shutun” no longer capable
of keeping out life. Cummings then remembers and re-narrates his experiences with the
“shufflebudge” of the line approaching Lenin’s tomb: “partially which through I am that
unfeeling eachotherishly multitude of impotent timidities of numerable items of guilty
particles which . . .are not dead are not alive . . . monotonously moveunmoving”
(emphasis added; 430-31). However, as part of the enlightenment Cummings receives at
the end of his journey, he realizes that he has participated in that “monotonously
moveunmoving.” This realization frees him from that “multitude of impotent timidities”
and leads “beautifully into everywhere and always” (431), a unification of his experiences
that does not eliminate Self, as did the Lenin-ites, but which exalts the individual artist and
feeling and love above all.
With this realization, there is a pause, a blank space on the page which represents a
return from the negative lack of time Cummings had to embrace upon entering the Soviet
Inferno to the temporal existence Cummings had to abandon at the beginning of his
journey. Like a rubber band that has been pulled back, Cummings’ temporal elasticity is
54
released:
leaning I am this hurling inexhaustibly from june huge rushing
upon august until whirlingly with
harvest hunger happens bloodily prodigious october
(golden supremely hugest daemon glittering with abundance
with fulfilment gleaming creature magnificent complete brutal intense
miraculously and)
finally
(and what
stars)descendingly assuming
only shutting gradually this
perfection(and I am)becoming (EIMI 431)
Cummings experiences an increase in the pace of time. June rushes into August and whirls
into October, creating a “golden supremely hugest daemon glittering with abundance with
fulfilment gleaming creature magnificent complete brutal intense miraculously” (431).
Cummings attacks the timelessness and Un-ness that he is leaving behind by increasing
time’s speed and by creating a being who glitters “with abundance with fulfilment.” As a
result, Cummings sees “finally (and what stars).” The emergence of stars in this last
section of Cummings’ vision alludes to Dante ending the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso
all with the Italian word “stelle,” or stars. As the Dante of the Inferno emerges from the
depths of Hell to see once again the stars of the night sky, Cummings emerges from the
depths of Soviet Russia to see the stars and to realize “gradually this perfection(and I
am)becoming.” Cummings, while re-entering time, reclaiming the day on which he was
born, re-enters reality and exists as the individual artist “I am,” once again “becoming.”
Again, Cummings pauses, inserting a blank space on the physical page to allow
him and the reader time to absorb this act of “becoming.” This blank space also provides
55
Cummings with a moment to contemplate silence:
silently
made
of
silent.
&
silence is made of
(behind perfectly or
final rising
humbly
more dark
most luminously proudly
whereless fragrant whenlessly erect
a sudden the!entirely blossoming) (EIMI 431)
This silence allows a “blossoming” to suddenly occur and from this blossoming silence
emerges a
Voice
(Who :
Loves ;
Creates ,
Imagines)
OPENS (EIMI 432)
Cummings ends EIMI with “OPENS,” a verb that stands in direct antithesis to “SHUT,”
the opening word of the book. The “Voice” represents the creative song of the poet “Who :
Loves ; Creates , Imagines,” who acts and through acting affirms existence. The
56
culminating action of this “Voice” is that it “OPENS.” Cummings, emerging from his
Soviet Inferno, becomes this realized, actualized “Voice” who is prepared to write EIMI
and “open” the experiences of 1931 Soviet Russia to any reader perceptive and patient
enough to experience the book in its full 432 difficult pages.
In light of Cummings career as a writer, Metcalf notes that after Cummings’
journey to Russia “. . . his later years are marked by increasing development of his private
vision of heaven. From beginning to end, Dante makes appearances, as a guide for both
Cummings and the reader” (385). Cummings’ encounter with this “world of Was” (EIMI
8) allows him to fully visualize his philosophy of the individual artist, and to pursue the
paradise of imaginative creation that characterizes his later poetry. These experiences also
enabled Cummings to understand more clearly the collective mentality of both communism
and capitalism and to express more easily his own philosophy of the individual in such later
works as i: six nonlectures. While these topics have been touched upon already within this
discussion of EIMI, the remaining chapters will examine in more detail Cummings’
philosophy of the individual and his resultant individual style.
CHAPTER IV
MARX AND ART,
INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUN(ISM)ITY
In the beginning pages of EIMI, Cummings relates the comments of one of the
people he meets on the train travelling through Poland:
“I fought the bolsheviks twice and I’d fight ‘em again” (says mustachios,
the exterminator having departed)“once as a White Russian officer and once
in the Polish army.” And learning that my own visit is quite negligibly
pacific “why I think they ought to be more afraid of you than of me”
(chuckling horribly) “—I’m all through with ‘em;but writing’s . . .
dangerous.” (EIMI 4)
Cummings calmly reveals this comment to the reader leaving it unattached, wedged neatly
in-between two other sections of the early narrative. Cummings does this without any
form of commentary telling the reader whether he believes the words of “mustachios” to be
true. Yet he chooses to include this third party’s account of the danger of writing early
within his written work. Cummings, ostensibly on a peaceful sight-seeing journey through
Russia, seems to be somewhat conscious early on of the danger which he as a perceptive
writer/reporter poses for the Soviets and that they indeed might be watchful of his actions.
As the subsequent pages of EIMI evidence and as the initial leftist negative response to his
book attest, this slowly evolving paranoia on the part of Cummings is not unfounded.
In “The Poetry and Prose of E.E. Cummings,” John Peale Bishop discusses the
reasons behind Cummings’ trip to Russia and some of the conclusions Cummings made
57
58
from this journey:
What he wanted to know about the socialist experiment was whether it was
better prepared than the democracy he had left to assure to those under it the
rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The rights of man were
not inalienable in the America of 1931. Least of all, in the cities where were
most machines.
He found in Russia not liberty but a joyless experiment in force and
fear. He found not life, but in men and women a willingness not to live, if
only they were allowed not to die. Apathy made possible the Stalin régime.
. . . The Russians had long been unhappy; they were now, it might be,
somewhat less so; but their suffering, whatever it was, was suffering in
silence. Cummings understands that the despair of the individual may
become the enthusiasm of the masses. . . .
Stalin is an idea become action. It was Lenin who first converted the
idea into an act. (108)
Cummings initially entered Russia hoping to find the Utopia which many of his leftist
contemporaries had hailed upon returning from the Soviet Union. His encounter with the
Russian manifestation of Marxism, as recorded in EIMI, is not concerned with the political
or philosophical ideas lying behind communism. Rather, EIMI is concerned with the
treatment of the individual in light of “the enthusiasm of the masses.” Many readers and
critics have misinterpreted Cummings’ response to Russia as a naïve, conservative
American’s negative response to a political system which he did not understand and on
these grounds they have dismissed EIMI.
Most likely, this type of response is based on Cummings’ fervently explosive
tirades against communism that occur rather frequently in EIMI. In the “Wed. 13” section
of EIMI, Cummings responds to Virgil by saying:
59
“I’m saying : by God Christ and Ghost , by a prick in the rose , by three(by
cheers You Es Ay blind mice Gay-Pay-Oo and speeds forward)—never ,
never , never ,has that(immaculately goosed by a moonbeam)unmitigated
rectum The Socalled Human Mind conceived quite so centrifugally
superconstipated a calamity as poisons with what hyper-lugubrious(I Ask
You)logic the airless air we(quotes)breathe. I’m saying : by You Es Es Are
, by four(finite but unbounded)—if-and-unless I go loonier than any
sixfingered thimble,may god help it,I’ll beg borrow steal and convey—even
to innocently absolute immensity to wit a small sheet of paper—each speck
and each spot of sadistic non-substance which secretly is,or is
otherwise,harboured by ineradicably this distinctly unimpeachable system
of meretricious murderfully(Allow Me)masochism. Get it? Long live Is!
Up—in the holy name of uncommon NonSense! Viva!” (EIMI 47-48)
Cummings is not attacking communism on the basis of its approach to economics or for its
move away from religion and nuclear family values. Cummings is attacking communism
for being a proponent of “sadistic non-substance,” for masochistically destroying the
individual artist in favor of the herd-minded masses. Cummings attacks what he sees as
communism’s inability to feel, and therefore, its inability to exist as an “Is.” Because
Cummings favors feeling over thought, he champions “the holy name of uncommon
NonSense” and is often disregarded by critics as an anti-intellectual buffoon that they need
not take seriously.
However, Soviet Russia did take Cummings seriously. As a writer, they treated
him as a serious threat and it is not uncommon to find a member of the Russian secret
police, the G.P.U., shadowing Cummings within the pages of EIMI. In his June 29,
1931, front page interview appearing in the Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune,
Cummings mentions the lengths that the Soviets went to in order to keep tabs on him:
60
Try living a month without finding anyone that you can trust.
I went on to Odessa. It is a beautiful place. I was walking along
breathing free air and feeling good when I saw my G.P.U. friend, still
tagging along. In other words, the Soviet Government went to considerable
expense on my trip through Russia. (qtd. in Norman 262)
The same G.P.U. officer who followed Cummings through his explorations of Russia
continued to follow him in Odessa. The paranoia that this sort of attention created in
Cummings continues to appear as late as February 10, 1951, when he wrote to Hildegarde
Watson discussing the problems with traveling abroad:
It’s quite easy,of course,to enliven this dismal image with imaginary
duel(based on a real denunciation of Eimi’s progenitor by the Moscow
radio) between heroic EEC & ultrasatanic agents of KumradSteel. But the
trouble here is that Marion becomes a hostage — something not precisely
endurable. Tell me now,Hildegarde,what do you think:am I suffering from
what “the liberals” entitle “failure of nerve”,or from something else most
beautifully described by Quintus H as “nec pietas moram”;or may my
unending timidities harbour a diminutive amount of truth? (Selected Letters
of E.E. Cummings 211-12)
Cummings does not seriously entertain the idea of returning to Russia for fear that his third
wife, Marion, will be taken hostage by the Soviets. His fear is based both upon his
experiences in Russia and upon a Moscow radio “denunciation of Eimi’s progenitor.”
Even Cummings is unsure whether his fear is founded or merely empty paranoia.
But in overall philosophy, EIMI is not meant to be an attack waged solely on Soviet
Russia. In his biography of Cummings, Barry A. Marks notes:
. . . Communist Russia of the 1930’s was, for Cummings, merely an
extreme case of a sickness which pervaded modern civilization. Modern
61
man desperately needed artists to save him from his commitment to material
ease, a commitment so unanimous and so total that a whole society had
become, as it were, to look on the world with a single pair of eyes or, as
Cummings has frequently put it, everyone has become everyone else. (96)
As Dublin provides the scenery for Joyce’s Ulysses and London the scenery for T.S.
Eliot’s The Waste Land, Russia serves as the scenery for Cummings’ examination and
critique of the modern world. What makes Cummings’ EIMI objectionable to several of
his contemporaries is that he pulls Russia, a land that many leftist writers—like John Dos
Passos in 1919—exalted as a new model/Utopia, down into the modern waste with the rest
of the world.
Cummings espouses a particularly modern theme in EIMI, but this theme is often
clouded by what many mistake as a political attack against communism. In I Am: A Study
of E.E. Cummings’ Poems , Gary Lane discusses Cummings’ lack of a political stance:
Fiercely independent, Cummings brooked no system; almost alone among
the literary voices of the war years, he rejected both the paralyzing
selflessness of Communism—Eimi, his journal of a trip to Russia, is
prophetically clear on this point—and the bent to sloganizing mindlessness
of “democ/ra(caveat emptor)cy” (CP 549). Instead he stood solitary, a
latter-day Adam whose disciplined will lifted him above concern for
society’s dicta and freed him to realize the personal potential of imagination
and aspiration. (49)
Paul Rosenfeld in “The Enormous Cummings” elaborates upon this idea by pointing out
that “the ‘Essence of Evil’ of Eimi . . . [t]his metaphysical cacodemon is our ancient friend
the will-to-power, and communism only to the degree to which certain ‘communists’ have
exploited the dream of a commonwealth of his interest” (75). On several different
occasions in EIMI, Cummings admits that he knows practically nothing about the history
62
of Russia, about Marx, or about the underlying philosophies of communism. This allows
him to be unbiased politically for or against communism. His negative response to Soviet
Russia is not a negative response to the ideas/ideals behind communism, but instead a
negative response to the negation of being that the attempted implementation of these
ideas/ideals creates.
This anti-political stance can be found throughout EIMI. When asked by one
Russian why he is not with the tourist bureau, Cummings answers in ways that reveal his
care for the Russians and for the plight of the proletariat. The Russian begins the
conversation by protesting:
but you would be with Americans
please : I’d rather be with Russians
. . . you do not like Americans? . . .
I like people . . .
but not bourgeois people . . .
How(angry)on earth could I possibly like bourgeois people?
(surprised) why not?
I’m a painter and a writer (EIMI 233).
Here, Cummings aligns his sympathies with the proletariat, because the “bourgeois
people,” like the government officials of both America and Russia, represent a collective
mind and ideology that is destructive to the creativity of Cummings, who is “a painter and a
writer.”
In the interview appearing in the June 29, 1931, Paris edition of the Chicago
Tribune, Cummings states:
You can’t compare Russia with anything else. There is nothing sufficiently
like it. I wouldn’t dream of making any thesis. Nobody should shoot his
face off about Russia. They themselves admit the present state of affairs is
63
temporary. . . .
. . . Naïve bozos go roaring in there and see nude bathing carried on in
complete modesty and think it is due to the system. It’s not. It’s just the
character and temperament of the people. They are marvelous people.
These people are the third world. (qtd. in Norman 262)
Cummings, by looking past the political concerns that most people going to Russia interest
themselves with, sees the positive characteristics of Russia for what they are:
characteristics of the Russians themselves, not of the system. Cummings attacks any
system that he believes to be an assault upon the freedom of the individual and believes that
the wonders of the Russian people would be much more wonderful without the intrusive
tyranny of the power hungry government.
In “When We Were Very Young” Francis Fergusson praises Cummings for giving
“many varieties of Marxian rationalizing in the very words of the rationalizers. The effect
is like that of an old newsreel: quaintly alive in its old-fashioned clothes, but more
disturbing than contemporary life, because of the historic and symbolic significance which
the passage of time has quietly added” (81). One of the most notably lengthy of these
Marxian rationalizations—which I discuss in “Chapter I: Conclusion to a
Trilogy?”—occurs in the “Sat., 16 mai” section of EIMI when Potiphar acting as the Jesuit
father attempts to convert Cummings as Stephen Daedalus to the communist “faith.”
Another notable example of this sort of Marxian rationalization occurs on board the Franz
Mering, where an American Jewish couple, who did not manage to avoid the tourist bureau
as did Cummings, continually praise the wonders of Soviet Russia. For the most part,
Cummings presents these episodes without commentary, or if he does comment it is not an
interruption, but an addendum which occasionally explodes in protest to the episode.
Yet Cummings manages to give something close to equal time both to the
procommunist argumentation and to his own reaction against this collective ideology. In a
64
question and answer session with Virgil, in which Virgil is the inquisitor, Cummings
provides a rather lucid explanation of the difference between a politically-based opposition
to communism’s privileging of science and his own anticommunist stance:
Q: The whole trouble with you is that , like so many people who were
brought up on religion , you can’t bear the idea of anything doing away
with it. . . . Of science doing away with religion.
A: I see : we’re supposed to suppose that the new religion , science ,
does away with religion , the old religion—tahk.
Q(snorts) : How can you be so perverse! . . . As if religion and science
weren’t direct opposites!
A: Right you are , colonel : every coin has two sides. . . .
Q: . . . What you can’t seem to realise [sic] is this : religion imprisons
the human mind , whereas science makes people free.
A: What I can seem to realise is that I’d just as soon be imprisoned in
freedom as free in a jail—if that’s any help.
Q: You simply won’t be serious , will you.
A: For crying out loud , my dear professor!do you seriously believe
that a measurable universe made of electrons and lightyears is one electron
more serious or one lightyear less imprisoning than an unmeasurable
universe made of cherubim and seraphim? Are you—I am being
serious—really sold on the saleability of reality? . . .
Q: All right ; all right : did you ever stop to think what would happen if
everyone were as selfcentered as yourself?
A: Not to completely feel is thinking. May I be allowed to feel , if you
please? . . .
Q: Good heavens! If all people “felt” as you do , there wouldn’t be any
65
civilization!
A: Is there any?
Q: O don’t be completely idiotic!
A: And what(I pray)is idiocy? Falling for this that or the other brand of
propaganda. Am I falling? . . . Propaganda : canned wishes ; just add hot
conscience and serve.
Q: But is there anything in the whole world which isn’t, or which may
not become , propaganda? Answer me that!
A: Not in the world. Elsewhere. . . . Art. (EIMI 51-53)
Although many readers may jump on Cummings’ statement, “Not to completely feel is
thinking,” and thereby label him as an anti-intellectual determined to play games and treat
nothing seriously, the perceptive reader will realize that Cummings is taking a rather hard to
achieve, objective position outside of the concerns of Virgil. Cummings escapes the
struggle between religion and science and the entire capitalist/communist materialistic
dialectic by referring to something that he considers to exist outside of the world, an Other
that exists “Elsewhere. . . . Art.”
Fortunately for Cummings, he is not abandoned in this perspective, left alone by
those he meets in Russia. At one point in the narrative, the Turk tells Cummings:
I believe that the Russian revolution was founded , not upon any mere idea ,
but upon an instinctive need. I believe that the wish was the wish to be
free. So far, so good : and what resulted from that revolution? Tyranny.
Boss government. . . . Freedom is what matters, because the only freedom
is happiness. . . .
“the tragedy of life always hasn’t been and”(he added quietly)”isn’t that
some people are poor and others are rich , some hungry and others not
hungry, some weak and others strong. The tragedy is and always will be
66
that most people are unable to express themselves” (EIMI 251)
The Turk notes that he had to travel to Russia to learn this Emersonian truth. He also
points out that the truth is not one that is dependent upon the economic/political debate
between Russian communism and American capitalism, but that it is a universal truth that
“Freedom is what matters, because the only freedom is happiness.” The Turk locates the
tragedy of life in most people’s inability “to express themselves,” to create, to make Art.
Cummings would call this inability an inability to Be.
Later in EIMI, while in the presence of the Turk and Beatrice, Cummings suddenly
exclaims:
. . . that’s”comrade Kem-min-kz exploded “what’s lousy
here!Trying!everybody’s never feeling ; never for a moment relaxing,
laughing, wondering—everybody’s solemnly forever focusing upon some
laughless idiotic unwonderful materially non-existent impermanence ,which
everybody apparently has been rabotatically instructed tovarich to welcome.
God damn undream! May the handshaking hell of the Elks and morons
bugger to a bloody frazzle everybody who spends his nonlife trying to isn’t
(EIMI 197)
Rather than acting and feeling, Cummings sees everyone around him “trying,” working
towards the communist ideal laid out in the Five Year Plan. In the process of striving and
trying to reach this collective goal, they are denying all other actions that would make them
exist as individuals in Cummings’ eyes. They remain “trying to isn’t.” Cummings locates
the impetus for this inaction in fear inspired by the government attempting to control the
masses: “Tease ‘em and threaten ‘em and scare the living mud out of ‘em : that’s socialism
; make ‘em eat their own livers and like it , talk to ‘em with sudden death , atta Stalin!”
(EIMI 274). Cummings champions the proletarian, “the little guy,” and reacts with anger
and bitterness whenever he witnesses those in power attempting to control the individual.
67
Although remaining in Turkish Purgatory, upon escaping from the Soviet Inferno
through which he has traveled, Cummings feels a release from the watchful eyes of the
G.P.U. and the governmental forces that would attempt to silence the individual artist.
This newly recovered freedom explodes in a speech that sounds somewhat like a sermon:
. . . I Talk I’m TALKING saying whatever telling what arguing Declaiming
SHOOTING my face!for the 1st time in heaven knows!killing nears in
droves slaying almosts massacring myriads of notquites banging into
darkness all into eternal night all false timid all –Less all Un- . . .
. . . under me a month of hell!
Over me are stars (EIMI 402)
Again—as discussed in “Chapter III: Dante’s Russia and Cummings’ Hell”—“under me a
month of hell” and the emergence of stars overhead alludes to the ending of Dante’s
Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Additionally, Cummings describes his actions as
“SHOOTING” his face and as “slaying almosts massacring myriads of notquites.”
Cummings emerges from the Soviet Inferno prepared to write EIMI and thereby wage war
on “Isn’t” and “Un-.” However, this war that Cummings wages is not against merely
Soviet Russia, as many believe. Instead it is an attack upon:
—O all unyous , all whoever seem around me who me despise pity
cannot comprehend or who give to myself nothing , all you all fallacious
you futile all un , nothing–wishing anything-accepting something-missing
everything-rejecting , how the hell should I(not in hell anymore)care what
you thinkless who you areless why you dreamless when-where-whereforewhenever you do not live(destructibly you non-exist ; corruptibly you,very
And most unnaturally How, foreverneveringly strut )cringe. . .
—can’t(you Cannot)that’s your trouble(that’s your evil)that’s your hate(
your woe )your shame( that’s what gripes you )that’s what turns your
68
wouldbe into a hasbeen(and puts O just the least(a teentsyweentsy)bit of
merde on it)makes you eat it right all up with a nice and pretty(sweet
swallow it all down now smile)Cannot(that’s nonyou)that’s your
stuffless(your unfate)you impotents(all you pasteboard haters) O paper
lovers. . .
—what is alive , say : what are skies are trees to you?and moons worlds
smells stars suns flowers?they are nothing(and Love,what is Love to you?
nothing!you create nothing ; therefore you cannot Love , and because you
cannot Love you create nothing) —
O you all unyous around me now seeming , and elsewhere , and nowhere somewhere anywhere—O all youless nonalive ungivers—wherever
in hell , whenever not in hell , arelessly who Cannot ; dreamlessly who
Can’t
:I
(about
to
be)
alive
—salute (EIMI 402-03)
This salute represents Cummings war-cry to the unfeeling, un-acting masses who refuse to
Be. Cummings is soon to escape from Turkish Purgatory and enter Paris-Paradise, where
as part of the world again he is “about to be) alive” and capable of writing EIMI, the
perceptive view of the modern world that the Soviets feared he would report from the
beginning.
Twenty-seven years after the initial publication of EIMI, Francis Fergusson writes:
“The passage of time has confirmed and documented Cummings’ essential vision of the
69
‘unworld’ of Marxian totalitarianism, without dimming the brilliance of the people, cities,
railways, buildings that he perceived and recorded with unique immediacy in the shabby
grey expanse of Russia under the Revolution” (80). Unfortunately, the historical accuracy
of Cummings’ portrayal of 1931 Soviet Russia prevents many readers from noticing the
modern expression of dissatisfaction with the world and transcendence of that waste-like
world that is communicated within the pages of EIMI.
In a March 27, 1953, letter to his sister Elizabeth, Cummings, while discussing
McCarthyism, reveals that he maintains his ability to see beyond the struggle of the
materialist dialectic to the root of the problems of the modern world:
concerning all&any soidistant witchhunts,what-may-be-called-my-position
couldn’t be clearer. (1)With every serious anarchist who ever lived,I
assume that “all governments are founded on force”. (2)As a possibly not
quite unintelligent human being,I’m aware that so-called McCarthyism
didn’t drop unmotivated from the sky — that(on the contrary)it came as a
direct result of exactly what it decries:namely,pro-communist-&-howactivities throughout the USA,sponsored by Mrs FD Roosevelt & her
messianicallyminded partner plus a conglomeration of worthy
pals:furthermore,having kept my ears & eyes open,I am unaware that ‘tis
thanks to the indoctrinary efforts of this gruesome gang of dogooders that
Russia is a worldpower & the Korean War murders God knows how many
innocent Koreans — not to say guilty Americans — daily. (3)In 1931 I
went to Russia,& what I found may be refound by anybody capable of
reading a book called Eimi. Since . . . almost nobody can read practically
anything,let me add that I wouldn’t like “communism” if “communism”
were good. (4)My contempt for selfstyled Americans who don’t dare stand
up on their hind feet & thunder “sure,I was a communist — so were Frank
70
& Eleanor:what about that?” has been&(I trust)will remain unlimited.
O,“the”(as you were wont to remark)“strength of weakness”! (Selected
Letters of E.E. Cummings 223)
Cummings realizes that McCarthyism is the result of its opposite: communism. He also
takes a jab at those who have misinterpreted EIMI as a political attack upon Soviet Russia
by stating: “Since . . . almost nobody can read practically anything,let me add that I
wouldn’t like ‘communism’ if ‘communism’ were good” (223). For Cummings, the
problem with communism, capitalism, Marxism, and McCarthyism lies in that they are all
“-isms.” They are planned philosophies and structures that attempt to achieve freedom by
limiting and controlling life and experience. Cummings, the sometimes blatantly
egotistical, individual artist “I am,” cannot participate in the struggles of what in EIMI he
often labels: “Karl Santa Claus Marx.” This figure represents for Cummings the combined
problems of American capitalists (Santa Claus/materialism) and Russian communists (Karl
Marx/ideology). To worry about philosophical, ideological, political, and economic
systems would be a disavowal of feeling, an Isn’t, and Cummings as the author of EIMI is
called forth by a “Voice” (432) to love, create, and imagine: to be an Is.
CHAPTER V
UN-BEING: AN ANTI-NOVEL
In The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein writes:
In those early days Hemingway liked all his contemporaries except
Cummings. He accused Cummings of having copied everything, not from
anybody but from somebody. Gertrude Stein who had been much
impressed by The Enormous Room said that Cummings did not copy, he
was the natural heir of the New England tradition with its aridity and its
sterility, but also with its individuality. (205)
As “the natural heir of the New England tradition with its aridity and its sterility,” E.E.
Cummings stretches the boundaries of narrative language in such highly individual ways
that his branch of the American family tree of writers ends with him. Anyone studying
Cummings’ poetry will disagree with this statement, as many visual poets have been
influenced by Cummings. However, in examining EIMI, readers will encounter an
innovative form of the book that has been discontinued since Cummings. While The
Enormous Room, as the diary of Cummings’ experiences in the French war camp La FertéMacé, follows the traditional narrative format of a novel complete with chapters and easy to
read paragraphs, EIMI often slips past easy classification.
EIMI is divided into days as if it is the actual diary of Cummings’ journey through
Russia. In a letter to the editors of Contempo, Cummings claims that this is exactly what
EIMI is:
Editors of Contempo
71
72
Sir and Madam
Learned publishers having allowed as how Eimi were a novel,
ignorant undersigned takes great pleasure in pleading not guilty: alleging
(under oath)
1—that Eimi’s source equals on-the-spot-scribbled hieroglyphics
2—that, through my subsequent deciphering of said hieroglyphics,
not one incident has been revalued; not one situation has been contracted or
expanded; not one significance has been warped; not one item has been
omitted or inserted.
“Pour l’artiste, voir c’est concevoir, et concevoir, c’est composer”
(Paul Cézanne)
if this be fiction, make the etc.
Yours
January 27, ’33
E.E. Cummings
(qtd. in Norman 264)
In E.E. Cummings : The Magic-Maker, Charles Norman takes this letter as evidence that
EIMI is an exact replication of Cummings’ diary during his Russian travels. Norman fails
to notice Cummings’ slyly inserted phrase: “through my subsequent deciphering of said
hieroglyphics” (qtd. in Norman 264). As is evidenced by the parallels found to Dante’s
Inferno within the pages of EIMI, Cummings’ act of “deciphering” is not without artistry
and “poetic license.” Cummings also ends this letter rather obscurely by first quoting Paul
Cézanne and then by stating “if this be fiction, make the etc.” It is unclear whether the
“this” of “if this be fiction” represents EIMI or the letter that Cummings has sent, and the
“etc.” at the end of the letter demands at least a raised eyebrow.
Upon its release, Covici, Friede announced EIMI as a novel, and Cummings
addresses the letter to Contempo to publicly rectify this “wrong.” Despite Cummings’
73
assertion that the book is by no means a piece of fiction or a novel, many critics have
speculated as to the genre of EIMI. In her August 1933, review “A Penguin in Moscow”
appearing in Poetry, Marianne Moore says that: “the book is a large poem. . . . Style is for
Mr. Cummings ‘translating’; it is a self-demonstrating aptitude for technique. . . . And the
typography . . . is not something superimposed on the meaning but the author’s mental
handwriting” (qtd. in Dendinger 160). Although EIMI is epic in size and scope, it seems to
defy easy classification as poetry. Much of the narrative is highly prosodic. Also,
arbitrary dismissal of EIMI’s style as “the author’s mental handwriting” seems to be too
easy an answer and one that discourages reading of the book.
In “When We Were Very Young,” Francis Fergusson claims that a “re-reading of
Eimi reminds one how auspicious a genre the travel-book may prove in our times. It
allows one to by-pass the more difficult problems of form and meaning, to make sketches”
(83). This description of EIMI as a travelogue robs the rich narrative of its layers of
structure and meaning, reducing it to a group of disjointed “sketches.” True, some sections
of EIMI are rather sketch-like, but there is a careful structure to EIMI. Classifying the
book as a travelogue prepares the reader for a lackadaisical, episodic reading-experience
that would fail to uncover several of the deeper meanings embedded within Cummings’
EIMI.
Paul Rosenfeld in “The Enormous Cummings” states that “Eimi and The Enormous
Room indeed initiate a new literary genre, the antithesis of the novel. The novel is a fiction
with the air of a true story. Cummings’ narratives on the contrary are true stories not only
as strange as fiction but full of the high fantastic color of the old romances . . .” (73).
Rosenfeld, while avoiding a mislabeling of EIMI by calling it an “antithesis of the novel,”
limits the scope of Cummings’ narration by categorizing his style as being “as strange as
fiction but full of the high fantastic romances.” Cummings’ style encompasses
characteristics of the romantic, the realistic, the impressionistic, and the transcendental.
74
EIMI, as a modern epic, combines and redefines previous methods of narration in much the
same way that its subject matter slips outside of the materialist dialectic of capitalist and
communist concerns with politics and economics.
In “Mr. Cummings, the Dante of Soviet Inferno” appearing in the Dayton Herald
on June 22, 1933, Herbert Gorman says that in EIMI:
. . . the author’s style is most obviously a pure expression of himself, that
Mr. Cummings is not smashing up the English grammar merely to be
unique; he is revising it to better express himself in the method of
expression which he believes . . . best and most fully conveys with the
greatest exactitude what he desires to express. (qtd. in Dendinger 155)
Ironically, for an artist opposed to anything that “Isn’t,” Cummings—in addition to his
manipulation of grammar, syntax, and punctuation—continually uses negation within his
writing. This negation manifests itself in several diverse ways. Blank spaces on the
physical pages of EIMI, although sometimes merely representing gaps in time or a physical
separation of different sections of the narrative, are used to represent nothingness or a
pause. In the last pages of EIMI, these blank spaces represent the silence from which the
“Voice” of the artist eventually emerges and “OPENS” (432). Possibly the most common
manifestation of this negation within EIMI occurs in Cummings’ etymological remaking of
words. The people Cummings encounters in the Soviet Inferno are described as “unmen”
and “nonmen.” The only females who qualify as “women” appeal to Cummings’ sense of
beauty. The remaining women are discussed as “unmen,” a physical negation of the male.
People and things are often described through a sense of deficiency, an “Unbeing” or “Unness.” Perhaps these negative neologisms represent the only way that Cummings, who
remains extremely positive in his own individual outlook towards life, can express his
dissatisfaction with the collective nature of the modern world.
In Reading Visual Poetry After Futurism, Michael Webster notes that “Cummings’
75
techniques strive to enact aliveness, movement, individuality and to deride collective
homogeneity” (115). Cummings’ use of negatives in opposition to the “aliveness,
movement, individuality” which he advocates in EIMI represents his derision of the
“collective homogeneity” of the “Un-Being” of both Soviet Russia and the suffering
modern world. John Peale Bishop in “The Poetry and Prose of E.E. Cummings” claims
that “The style which Cummings began in poetry reaches its most complete development in
the prose of Eimi” (107). This correctly asserts the landmark achievement that EIMI
stylistically represents for Cummings. In none of Cummings’ other works does he manage
to convey the real impressionistic immediacy of his experiences through such a diversity of
presentation as he does in EIMI. As a book that avoids easy classification and restructures
the traditional narrative, EIMI is Cummings’ stylistic masterpiece.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
A Small Scratch
In “When We Were Very Young,” Francis Fergusson stated upon the 1949
republication of EIMI that Cummings’ “success is clearer now than it was seventeen years
ago. We are ready, I think, or at least readier than we were, to think over, to try to grasp
imaginatively, the divided world or unworld which Eimi evokes, caught in its unacting act,
in many poignant flashes” (83). As evidenced by the subsequent neglect which EIMI has
received, remaining out of print since 1958 and receiving extremely sparse critical attention
since the 1950s, Fergusson was incorrect in believing that the world was ready “to think
over, to try to grasp imaginatively, the divided world or unworld which Eimi evokes” (83).
Upon its initial release, Cummings said that EIMI “may prove to be a true book . . . if
anybody puzzles it out after I have been dead a long time” (qtd. in Dendinger 145).
Cummings died on September 3, 1962. Although only thirty-six years have passed since
then, it is the hope of this writer that Egotist EIMI: Cummings’ Russian Experience proves
EIMI “to be a true book” and has begun the process of “puzzling out” EIMI. This thesis
has only scratched the surface of EIMI, but I hope that this small scratch may act as a:
Voice
(Who :
Loves ;
Creates ,
Imagines)
OPENS (EIMI 432).
76
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ahearn, Barry, ed. Pound/Cummings: The Correspondence of Ezra Pound and E.E.
Cummings. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1996.
Alighieri, Dante. Inferno. Trans. Allen Mandelbaum. New York: Bantam, 1988.
Babey, Anna M. Americans in Russia 1776-1917: A Study of the American Travelers in
Russia from the American Revolution to the Russian Revolution. New York:
Comet, 1938.
Barthes, Roland. The Semiotic Challenge. Trans. Richard Howard. Berkeley: U of
California P, 1988.
Bishop, John Peale. “The Poems and Prose of E.E. Cummings.” E∑TI: e e c E.E.
Cummings and the Critics. Ed. S.V. Baum. East Lansing: Michigan State UP,
1962. 99-109.
Bloom, Harold. “The Breaking of Form.” Deconstruction and Criticism. New York:
Continuum, 1995.
Cohen, Milton A. Poet and Painter: The Aesthetics of E. E. Cummings’s Early Work.
Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1987.
Cummings, E. E. A Miscellany Revised . Ed. George J. Firmage. New York: October
House, 1965.
—-. Complete Poems 1904-1962. Ed. George J. Firmage. New York: Liveright, 1994.
—-. EIMI. 2nd Corrected Printing. New York: Covici, Friede, 1933.
—-. “Sketch for a Preface to the Fourth Edition of EIMI.” EIMI. New York: Grove P,
1958. i-xix.
77
78
—-. i: six nonlectures. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1972.
—-. The Enormous Room. New York: Liveright, 1978.
—-. Selected Letters of E.E. Cummings. Ed. F.W. Dupee and George Stade. New
York: Harcourt, Brace, 1969.
Custine, Astolphe, marquis de. Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia.
Ed. Daniel J. Boorstin. New York: Anchor, 1989.
Dendinger, Lloyd N., ed. E.E. Cummings : The Critical Reception. New York: Burt
Franklin, 1981.
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins UP, 1976.
Dos Passos, John. The Fourteenth Chronicle: Letters and Diaries of John Dos Passos .
Ed. Townsend Ludington. Boston: Gambit, 1973.
Dumas, Bethany K. E.E. Cummings : A Remembrance of Miracles. London: Vision,
1974.
Eagleton, Terry. Ideology: An Introduction. New York: Verso, 1991.
Edwards, Paul. Afterword. The Apes of God. Wyndham Lewis. Santa Rosa: Black
Sparrow P, 1997. 629-39.
Fairley, Irene R. E.E. Cummings and Ungrammar: A Study of Syntactic Deviance in his
Poems. New York: Watermill, 1975.
Fergusson, Francis. “When We Were Very Young.” E∑TI: e e c E.E. Cummings and the
Critics. Ed. S.V. Baum. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 1962. 80-83.
Firmage, George J. E.E. Cummings: A Bibliography. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP,
1960.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan.
New York: Vintage, 1978.
Friedman, Norman, ed. E.E. Cummings : A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood
79
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972.
—-. E.E. Cummings : The Growth of a Writer. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1964.
—-. (Re) Valuing Cummings: Further Essays on the Poet, 1962-1993. Gainesville: UP
of Florida, 1996.
Greenblatt, Stephen, and Giles Gunn, eds. Redrawing the Boundaries: The
Transformation of English and American Literary Studies. New York: MLA,
1992.
Hemingway, Ernest. Selected Letters: 1917-1961. Ed. Carlos Baker. New York:
Scribner’s, 1981.
Joyce, James. Ulysses . The Gabler edition. New York: Vintage, 1993.
Kennedy, Richard S. Dreams in the Mirror: A Biography of E.E. Cummings. New York:
Liveright, 1980.
—-. E.E. Cummings Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1994.
Lane, Gary. I Am: A Study of E.E. Cummings’ Poems. Wichita: UP of Kansas, 1976.
Ludington, Townsend. John Dos Passos : A Twentieth Century Odyssey. New York:
E.P. Dutton, 1980.
Marks, Barry A. E.E. Cummings . New Haven, CT: College and University P, 1964.
McBride, Katharine Winters, ed. A Concordance to the Complete Poems of E.E.
Cummings. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1989.
Metcalf, Allan A. “Dante and E.E. Cummings.” Comparative Literature Studies 7.3
(Sept. 1970): 374- 86.
Norman, Charles. E.E. Cummings : The Magic Maker. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972.
Patty, Austin. “Cummings’ Impressions of Communist Russia.” Rendezvous 2.1 (1967):
15-22.
Rotella, Guy, ed. Critical Essays on E.E. Cummings. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1984.
—-. E.E. Cummings : A Reference Guide. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1979.
80
Stein, Gertrude. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Selected Writings of Gertrude
Stein. Ed. Carl Van Vechten. New York: Vintage, 1990. 1-237.
Troy, William. “Cummings’s Non-Land of Un-.” E∑TI: e e c E.E. Cummings and the
Critics. Ed. S.V. Baum. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 1962. 71-72.
Webster, Michael. Reading Visual Poetry After Futurism: Marinetti, Apollinaire,
Schwitters, Cummings. New York: Peter Lang, 1995.
Wegner, Robert E. The Poetry and Prose of E.E. Cummings. New York: Harcourt,
Brace, 1965.
APPENDIX A
A ROUGH GUIDE TO EIMI
The following guide is based largely on Cummings’ “Sketch for a Preface to the
Fourth Edition of EIMI.” Since that work is written largely in Cummings’ sometimes
confusing style, this guide provides a “translated” and, I hope, clear description of
incidents within EIMI along with helpful information as to where these incidents can be
found. All page references are keyed to the first edition.
TITLE: EIMI, pronounced “ah-ME” in ancient Greek and “ee-ME” in modern
Greek, is the Greek aorist first person singular verb for “am.” This verb is used by Jesus
in the New Testament to identify himself with God’s holy name, the tetragrammaton:
Yahweh, “I AM THAT I AM.” In his “Sketch for a Preface to the Fourth Edition of EIMI,”
Cummings makes this association with the first appearance of the tetragrammaton in
Exodus 3:14, indicating that in some way he is equating the individual artist “I am” with a
god that he places in opposition to the god of Un- which Marx and Lenin represent within
the book.
STRUCTURE: Cummings’ journey is divided into nine parts:
1. A train journey from Paris to Warsaw to Negoreloe to Moscow occupies
pages 3-12.
2. Cummings’ experiences in Moscow are related in pages 13-256.
A. Moscow under the guidance of Virgil: pages 13-127.
81
82
B. Moscow under the guidance of Beatrice: pages 128-256.
3. Cummings’ journey from Moscow to Kiev by train begins on page 256
and ends on page 262.
4. Pages 263-79 relate Cummings’ experiences in Kiev.
5. The journey via train from Kiev to Odessa occurs in pages 279-88.
6. Cummings’ life in Odessa occupies pages 289-360.
7. The trip on board a steamer from Odessa to Istanbul comprises pages
348-79.
8. Cummings’ impressions of Istanbul (Constantinople) are provided in
pages 380-410.
9. Cummings’ final return to Paris from Istanbul via train is described in
pages 411-32.
TIMELINE: Cummings treats EIMI as a diary or travelogue by dividing its
sections or chapters into individual days. The following is a summary of the different
experiences Cummings relates within each of these separate sections.
“Sun. 10”: pages 3-5
Cummings describes the two-berth second class compartment he occupies on the
train from Paris to Negoreloe and introduces a few minor characters who question him
about his journey and warn him about Russia.
“Monday, 11 May”: pages 6-11
Cummings’ train crosses the Polish-Russian border and he passes through customs
to enter “a world of Was” (8). Back on board a train, Cummings discusses America with a
Russian compartment-mate predominantly through gestures and pictures.
“Tues.”: pages 12-34
Cummings arrives in Moscow and is not met by “that prominent Russian writer”
83
(13), Vladimir Lidin. He falls into the hands of Intourist, who place him in the expensive
Hotel Metropole, where Cummings runs into Virgil, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana.
Virgil offers to be his guide in Moscow and begins by taking him to a bank and then to
lunch. The food is bad and “just to make up for this” (25) Dana takes Cummings to see
Lenin’s mausoleum. Virgil’s stomach is upset by lunch and the two must retreat before
exploring the depths of the tomb. After Virgil recovers, he takes Cummings to meet Mary,
a Cambridge, Massachusetts, convert to communism, the president of the Writer’s Club
(30), and Virgil’s interpreter, whom they later escort to a propaganda play.
“Wed. 13”: pages 35-50
Cummings and Virgil wander around Moscow. They watch another propaganda
play entitled The West is Nervous. In a nightclub with Dana, Cummings explodes in a
tirade against collective communism, which draws the attention of some G.P.U.’s.
“Thursday 14”: pages 51-59
Virgil (Q) and Cummings (A) argue about religion and science. They witness a
passing parade of G.P.U. They see Roar China, another propaganda show. Cummings
visits St. Basil, a former church remade into an anti-religious museum by the Soviets.
“Friday 15”: pages 60-72
Cummings visits Madame and Monsieur Potiphar. The latter delivers a long
sermon (68-70) attempting to indoctrinate Cummings with communism. Virgil mentions
dinner on the seventeenth with Joan and Charles Malamuth, alias Beatrice and Turk.
“Sat., 16 mai”: pages 73-88
Cummings meets some more Americans who attempt to find him a cheaper place to
stay. He receives another 3 hour speech of indoctrination (83-87) and responds with a
discussion of “The Verb” (88).
“Sunday mai 17th”: pages 89-102
Cummings returns to St. Basil and explores the museum inside. Cummings meets
84
Beatrice and Turk. After dinner, Virgil becomes angry with Beatrice who insults a play
based on one of her father Lack Dungeon’s short stories.
“Mon. 18 mai”: pages 103-15
Cummings wakes up with a hangover. He receives tickets to the art theatre from
the Writer’s Club President. After a propaganda play, Virgil and Cummings go out on the
town, listen to some jazz, and manage to get rid of a G.P.U.
“Tues. 19 mai”: pages 116-28
Cummings looks without success for an art museum. Turk, Turkess, and
Cummings got to an opera at the Bolshoy theatre where they invite him to stay at their
house.
“WED. 20 MAI”: pages 129-41
Nobody is at the Writer’s Club and there is still no mail for Cummings at Intourist.
Cummings settles his account at the Hotel Metropole and taxi back to Chinesey’s.
Cummings translates Louis Aragon’s “Red Front.”
“Thurs. 21 mai”: pages 142-48
Turkess talks about her father. Cummings analyzes Aragon’s “Red Front.”
“Friday 22 mai”: pages 149-64
Cummings visits a socialist jail (151-56).
“Sat. 23rd mai”: pages 165-74
There are several routine actions before Cummings visits a Soviet circus.
“Sun. 24 mai”: pages 175-84
Cummings visits the Revolutionary Literature Bureau and hands his translation of
Aragon’s “Red Front” to Clara Bow. He watches three Gorky dramas at the theatre with
Turk, Turkess, and ex-Virgil. Turk and Cummings visit the Lenin institute. Later, they
have a discussion over the difference between an idea and its application.
“Mon. 25 mai”: pages 184-88
85
Cummings visits the Museum of Western Art complete with Picasso and Matisse.
“Tues. 26 mai”: pages 189-200
Tour of Kremlin cancelled. Cummings receives his first letter. Another
propaganda play, The Last Decisive. Cummings hears a girl singing. Turk, Beatrice, and
Cummings attend a party.
“Wed 27”: pages 201-12
This day of small occurrences includes a discussion with Beatrice about war.
“Thurs. 28 mai”: pages 213-20
Cummings goes to a musical burlesque.
“Fri. 29 mai”: pages 221-31
Turk discusses the definition of “poet” in light of socialism. Cummings learns that
Lenin’s tomb is open daily at 7p.m. Cummings meets Leo Tolstoy’s granddaughter.
“Sat. 30th mai”: pages 232-46
Cummings descends into Lenin’s tomb.
“Sun. May 31”: pages 247-58
Cummings finally gets his exit visa and boards a train to Kiev.
“Mon. 1er juin”: pages 259-66
Train is boarded by two G.P.U.’s who manage to frighten everyone during their
inspection. Cummings arrives in Kiev and finds a hotel.
“Tues. 2nd June”: pages 267-85
Cummings has difficulty making arrangements to travel to Odessa but ultimately
boards train. A G.P.U. officer wakes him.
“Wednesday , June 3”: pages 286-94
Cummings is booked in another expensive hotel by Intourist, who tell him to go
back to Kiev. He meets Noo Inglundur who acquires a cheaper room for Cummings and
criticizes Intourist.
86
“Thurs. June 4”: pages 295-312
Noo Inglundur arranges for Cummings to depart from Odessa by boat. Noo
Inglundur rants about communism and other subjects.
“Fri. June 5”: pages 313-23
Cummings visits a nude beach.
“SAT June 6”: pages 324-33
Cummings visits the mud baths.
“Sunday , June 7”: pages 334-40
Cummings visits another beach and goes to see a film.
“Monday June 8”: pages 341-57
Cummings boards the Franz Mering. The engine fails to work.
“Tues. June 9”: pages 358-68
Cummings wakes to find that the Franz Mering has not moved. When it does move
it merely goes in a circle for a while before returning to Odessa. The ship finally departs
again.
“WED : June 10”: pages 369-86
Cummings arrives in Turkey and almost has his baggage stolen until he boards a
small boat and threatens to kill everyone if they do not row him and his bags back to the
port. After arriving at his hotel, Cummings leans out a window feeling free of the land of
Un-.
“Thursday , June 11”: pages 387-403
Cummings goes sail-boating. Cummings drinks too much and notes that for the
first time in a month he is laughing and talking and “SHOOTING” (402) his face.
“Friday , June 12”: pages 404-13
Cummings boards the Orient Express bound for Paris.
“Saturday, June 13”: pages 414-22
87
While en route to Paris, Cummings reminisces over his time in Soviet Russia.
“SUNDAY, June 14”: pages 423-32
Cummings passes through Italy to France, where in Paris again he recapitulates his
journey from hellish “SHUT” (3) to heavenly “OPENS” (432).