Foreword by Gilbert Seldes: That poets, painters and novelists are beginning to feel their arts unworthy (and economics much more important), you can see any day by looking at pictures, reading books, or listening to literary cocktail talk. So I take special pleasure in offering a rebuttal by E. E. Cummings, who is poet and painter and prose writer, who has been to Russia (and is writing a book about it1), and isn’t scared. He isn’t even scared enough to change his extraordinary and brilliant style.
Did anyone wish to enjoy himself or her- or itself?
Probably not. Probably themselves are what people least wish to enjoy. People have different opinions, probably, or neckties; and people are probably alike in that they reserve enjoyment for whatever isn’t themselves.
Once upon a time (before a great big mean nasty horrid ugly ogre ate up all the cereal) there was a thing called “life,” which people enjoyed. And the reason why people enjoyed “life” may be mysterious; but this is clear—“life” was whatever people’s selves weren’t. If once upon a time people’s selves were waking up with a capitalist alarmclock, “life” was going by—by with a cannibal princess; if once upon a time people’s selves were bathing in the bathtub, “life” was continuing in the continuum; if once upon a time people’s selves were taking it on their communist chin, “life” was triumphantly waving the irrevocably righteous oriflame of unenslaved future generations of transcendentally omnipotent humanity. (The queen and the continuum and the humanity were probably all done with movies and talkies—although life may conceivably have involved opening a speakeasy or getting shot for non-collective farming or even reading a book on matter: it doesn’t matter: people enjoyed “life” once upon a time.)
And the only trouble, probably, with “life” was that meanwhile “life” wasn’t. “Life” wasn’t not only people’s selves—and therefore enjoyable to people; “life” wasn’t even its own self. Probably “life” was “economics” and “life” must have been “science”; and “sex” is a nice word, too; at all events, this thing called “life” wasn’t a and wasn’t r and wasn’t t.
Art, curiously, is the only thing which is.
It makes no difference whether people who enjoy “life” (when there’s “life” to enjoy; which there isn’t just now) disagree with the above statement, whether they consider myself idiotic, or whether they unjustly just (sort of kind of) don’t care—the very simple (the perfectly improbable, the extremely painful) truth being, that all said ladies and gents and scientists and tovariches are nonexisting. Nonexisting people, probably, are the only people who reserve enjoyment for whatever isn’t themselves. And whether nonexisting people nonexist according to Marx or according to Morgan or according to Santa Claus (or some other bigtime racketeer) doesn’t matter a damn.
Art—defined by an unknown playwright of the 20th century as “a question of being alive” (not “a matter of being born”)—is the one question which only matters.
And whether “civilization” tries to control art, or neglect art, doesn’t matter. And if probably fish will be taught to sing the international and volcanoes will probably learn esperanto and O’Gene Euneil will open a probably cherrybowling parlour for mute inglorious Agamemnons in every little pink schoolhouse—who cares? Certainly not the artist! “We,” very gaily if very sorrowingly remarked the greatest living sculptor, who inhabits New York and is called Lachaise, “you and I, we have all-ways know dis ting de-pression!” He might very well have added that the more nonexisters stick their heads in gasovens and slash their wrists with safetyrazorblades and quaff iodine and hop out of windows and hang and bang and drown and communize and socialize and telescope and microscope and spectroscope their “life”-enjoying selves, the better.
Why—in the sacred name of uncommon sense—worry because “life” really isn’t?
Feel something which actually is! E.g. (to begin softly) a doll, by Remo Bufano for Remo Bufano and of Remo Bufano. This doll may be a knight, may be a spirit, may be Mr. Soglow’s splendid “little king,” may be a horse, may be a lady; I hope it’s a dragon. This doll isn’t merely when or where Remo Bufano is; this doll is Remo Bufano himself. But—curiously—this doll is also the very selves of you and of me; anybody who doubts it is merely everybody who’s never had the more than pleasure of meeting himself or her- or itself, alias art.
Curiously (as nothing less incredibly alive than a Remo Bufano doll reveals) the extremely complex (the perfectly probable, the very joyous) truth is . . . whisper it . . . that you and I are incredibly alive. Curiously, attributing one’s “woes” or “blessings” to “humanity” is a trifle like consulting one’s shadow in order to find out the colour of one’s eyes; curiously, “electrons” or “lightyears” never have described or will describe our indescribable Is; curiously, “prosperity” or “revolution” may be “just around the corner” but human souls positively cannot be drycleaned.
We are a dragon and we are a knight who slays a dragon.
And we are art.
And we are a hand.
From Mr. Seldes’ column “True To Type” in the New York Evening Journal, July 15, 1932.
Une douceur pour mon chien
Un doigt de champagne Bien Madame
Nous sommes chez Maxim’s l’an mille
Neuf cent trente
On met des tapis sous les bouteilles
Pour que leur cul d’aristocrate
ne se heurte pas aux difficultés de la vie
des tapis pour cacher la terre
des tapis pour éteindre
le bruit de la semelle des chaussures des garçons
Les boissons se prennent avec des pailles
qu’on tire d’un petit habit de précaution
Délicatesse
Il y a des fume-cigarettes entre la cigarette et l’homme
des silencieux aux voitures
des escaliers de service pour ceux
qui portent les paquets
et du papier de soie autour des paquets
et du papier autour du papier de soie
du papier tant qu’on veut cela ne coûte
rien le papier ni le papier de soie ni les pailles
ni le champagne ou si peu
ni le cendrier réclame ni le buvard
réclame ni le calendrier
réclame ni les lumières
réclame ni les images sur les murs
réclame ni les fourrures sur Madame
réclame réclame les cure-dents
réclame l’éventail et réclame le vent
1. Eimi.