Pencil sketch by E. E. Cummings,
drawn from Honoré Daumier’s painting “The Washer Woman.”
Houghton Library, Harvard University

VIII

___________

THE DIMENSIONS OF BEING HUMAN

VERY EARLY in his career, Cummings developed a personal philosophy of life that places him in the American Romantic tradition. He became a representative of the Transcendentalist school of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman. The earliest aspect of this position to emerge was aesthetic. From reading in art criticism and listening to the discourses of his mentor, Scofield Thayer, Cummings developed an impressionistic idea of beauty as dependent on the intensity of the viewer’s or reader’s response.

He carried this proposition over into all areas of life, placing primary emphasis on feeling rather than thinking: he maintained that to be “Alive” was to live at heightened emotional intensity and, conversely, that merely to exist was the equivalent of being “dead.” The state of being alive he acquainted with verbs; being dead, with nouns. Thus, he valued spontaneity, creativity, whole-hearted participation in life’s many tasks, and continual alertness to whatever was new and unusual but also to what was natural rather than artificial. In The Enormous Room, Chapter 9, he set down the first grammatical metaphor of his personal philosophy:

There are certain things in which one is unable to believe for the simple reason that he never ceases to feel them. Things of this sort—things which are always inside of us and in fact are us and which consequently will never be pushed off or away where we can begin thinking about them—are no longer things; they,and the us which they are,equals A Verb; an IS.

This is the foundation for Cummings’ Romantic view of life: his preference for emotion over reason, the natural life rather than the civilized life with all its complexities, the unspoiled innocence of children rather than the sophistication of adults, what can be sensed in place of what can be measured, mystery rather than certainty, poetry rather than science. He carried this further to hold that a man who lives according to these lights is guided by his inner self, which is unique to him, and he must resist conformity to the demands of society or the state or religious orthodoxy and avoid all groups, political parties, and associations lest he lose this individual uniqueness. “How I hated my father,” Cummings remembered, “for making me read Emerson’s ‘Self-Reliance.’ Now it is my Bible.”

The poems in this section present these views, which are well adapted to expressing the experience of love, the courage to face death (which is, after all, a condition of the unknown), and, in general, the grounds for living.

 

1

since feeling is first

who pays any attention

to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool

while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,

and kisses are a better fate

than wisdom

lady i swear by all flowers.   Don’t cry

—the best gesture of my brain is less than

your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other:then

laugh,leaning back in my arms

for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

2

all ignorance toboggans into know

and trudges up to ignorance again:

but winter’s not forever,even snow

melts;and if spring should spoil the game,what then?

all history’s a winter sport or three:

but were it five,i’d still insist that all

history is too small for even me;

for me and you, exceedingly too small.

Swoop(shrill collective myth)into thy grave

merely to toil the scale to shrillerness

per every madge and mabel dick and dave

—tomorrow is our permanent address

and there they’ll scarcely find us(if they do,

we’ll move away still further:into now

3

the trick of finding what you didn’t lose

(existing’s tricky:but to live’s a gift)

the teachable imposture of always

arriving at the place you never left

(and i refer to thinking)rests upon

a dismal misconception;namely that

some neither ape nor angel called a man

is measured by his quote eye cue unquote.

Much better than which,every woman who’s

(despite the ultramachinations of

some loveless infraworld)a woman knows;

and certain men quite possibly may have

shall we say guessed?”

                                 “we shall” quoth gifted she:

and played the hostess to my morethanme

4

there are so many tictoc

clocks everywhere telling people

what toctic time it is for

tictic instance five toc minutes toc

past six tic

Spring is not regulated and does

not get out of order nor do

its hands a little jerking move

over numbers slowly

 

                              we do not

wind it up it has no weights

springs wheels inside of

its slender self no indeed dear

nothing of the kind.

(So,when kiss Spring comes

we’ll kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss

lips because tic clocks toe don’t make

a toctic difference

to kisskiss you and to

kiss me)

5

what time is it?it is by every star

a different time,and each most falsely true;

or so subhuman superminds declare

—nor all their times encompass me and you:

when are we never,but forever now

(hosts of eternity;not guests of seem)

believe me,dear,clocks have enough to do

without confusing timelessness and time.

Time cannot children,poets,lovers tell—

measure imagine, mystery, a kiss

—not though mankind would rather know than feel;

mistrusting utterly that timelessness

whose absence would make your whole life and my

(and infinite our)merely to undie

6

wherelings whenlings

(daughters of ifbut offspring of hopefear

sons of unless and children of almost)

never shall guess the dimension of

him whose

each

foot likes the

here of this earth

whose both

eyes

love

this now of the sky

—endfings of isn’t

shall never

begin

to begin to

imagine how(only are shall be were

dawn dark rain snow rain

-bow&

a

moon

’s whis-

per

in sunset

or thrushes toward dusk among whippoorwills or

tree field rock hollyhock forest brook chickadee

mountain.   Mountain)

whycoloured worlds of because do

not stand against yes which is built by

forever & sunsmell

(sometimes a wonder

of wild roses

sometimes)

with north

over

the barn

7

conceive a man,should he have anything

would give a little more than it away

(his autumn’s winter being summer’s spring

who moved by standing in november’s may)

from whose(if loud most howish time derange

the silent whys of such a deathlessness)

remembrance might no patient mind unstrange

learn(nor could all earth’s rotting scholars guess

that life shall not for living find the rule)

and dark beginnings are his luminous ends

who far less lonely than a fire is cool

took bedfellows for moons mountains for friends

—open your thighs to fate and(if you can

withholding nothing)World, conceive a man

8

sonnet entitled how to run the world)

A always don’t there B being no such thing

for C can’t casts no shadow D drink and

E eat of her voice in whose silence the music of spring

lives F feel opens but shuts understand

G gladly forget little having less

with every least each most remembering

H highest fly only the flag that’s furled

(sestet entitled grass is flesh or swim

who can and bathe who must or any dream

means more than sleep as more than know means guess)

I item i immaculately owe

dying one life and will my rest to these

children building this rainman out of snow

9

dying is fine)but Death

?o

baby

i

wouldn’t like

Death if Death

were

good:for

when(instead of stopping to think)you

begin to feel of it,dying

’s miraculous

why?be

cause dying is

perfectly natural;perfectly

putting

it mildly lively(but

Death

is strictly

scientific

& artificial &

evil & legal)

we thank thee

god

almighty for dying

(forgive us,o lifelthe sin of Death