Essay Stages of love as overexpressed in E. E. Cummings \' poetry - rating: TBA PDF

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Voor het vak \'Engels: literatuur van het vakgebied\' krijgen de leerlingen de opdracht om over een bepaald thema te schrijven in een bepaald boek of door een bepaalde auteur. Dit essay bespreekt het thema liefde zoals het in de poëzie van E.E. Cummings te lezen is....

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Stages of love as expressed in E.E. Cummings’ poetry Among the series of modernist poets, there is one writer in particular that stands out because of his extraordinary use of visual imagery: Edward Estlin Cummings, or in short, E.E. Cummings. His unique style of writing contains odd punctuation and lowercase letter use, because of which he was often referred to as ‘ee cummings’. Idiosyncratic syntax is also usually present in his work in order to represent the meaning of the poem, which can be perceived in the majority of his work. On the whole, Cummings wrote about 2,900 poems, four plays, two autobiographical novels and several essays, the themes varying from war to love, nature and death. This essay centres on the recurring theme love, expressed in such a way that it combines both the romantic tradition and the modernist characteristic ‘imagism’. As Lehman says: “Beneath the veneer of his modernity, there beats a romantic heart” (2006, 393). Cummings wrote about all kinds of love: love towards his mother and father, love towards his own country, love towards life, but most of all, he wrote about true and profound love between two people. Here, the focus will be on four different stages of love that can be distinguished in Cummings’ work. First of all the ecstatic feeling that being in love can bring to a person will be discussed, a feeling which mostly results into the second stage: actually loving another person. The third stage is the feeling one can get when the two previous phases have passed, and the love feels ordinary or even non-interesting. The last stage deals with the death or loss of a love partner. When trying to describe the feeling of being in love, Cummings frequently falls back on the words ‘spring’ and ‘April’, two words he associated with love and the birth of life. An example of this is the poem ‘anyone lived in a pretty how town’, which contains the following lines: […] noone and anyone earth by april wish by spirit and if by yes. Women and men (both dong and ding) summer autumn winter spring […] (Cummings, 73) The poem describes the love life of two people called ‘anyone’ and ‘noone’ throughout the cycle of seasons. They complete each other as a spirit motivates a wish, and as ‘yes’ is the answer to ‘if’. The strength of Cummings’ writing lies exactly in the fact that he uses basic words (e.g. rain, moon, stars, summer) in a passionate and intense manner that brings out new possibilities of meaning. The poem ‘she being Brand’ deals with another aspect of the first love stage: intercourse between two lovers. Cummings’ work actually contains a lot of erotic poetry, most of which was written during his first marriage. This exact poem is also a good example to represent the way Cummings used punctuation and capital letters:

[…] internalexpanding & externalcontracting brakes Bothatonce and brought allof her tremB -ling to a:dead. stand;Still) (Cummings, 24) There is no care for the use of capitals, different words are written as if they were one and special punctuation signs such as -, : and ; are placed whenever and wherever Cummings thinks is appropriate. However, all of these factors in his poetry are used with an intention. He “makes punctuation and typography active instruments for literary expression” (Munson, 1923, 10). He felt small letters “could intensify the theme of the poem, and capital letters could work visually and thematically. Irregular syntax could be used to balance two or more thoughts, to suspend the conclusion of the poem, or to provide a surprising and original flow to the poem” (Shucard, Moramarco & Sullivan, 1989, 201). Since he also was a painter and very much interested in modern arts, he thought the visual representation was as important – if not even more important – as the poem itself. The placement of words is considered well in every poem, for example, in ‘i have found what you are like’: […] the air in utterable coolness deeds of green thrilling light with thinned newfragile yellows lurch and.press —in the woods which stutter and sing And the coolness of your smile is stirringofbirds between my arms;but i should rather than anything have(almost when hugeness will shut quietly)almost, your kiss (Cummings, 11)

The words ‘which, stutter, and, sing’ are written underneath and detached from each other, by which the tone of the poem becomes bittersweet. The meaning of that is to make the reader realise that certain ‘negative’ elements are needed in life to appreciate everything good (‘your kiss’). Whereas poems about the first love stage cover especially the physical and sexual aspect of a relationship and contain more modernist characteristics, the second stage – truly loving another person – is mostly described from a romantic point of view. The best known poem to illustrate this is ‘i carry your heart with me’: […] here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) (Cummings, 10) The unity of two people is very clear here. Their love is meaningful and profound, but is still one of the greatest mysteries (‘the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart’). It is being compared by means of metaphors to elements of nature, a characteristic of Romanticism. The parenthesis in the last sentence, often used in other poems as well, represent the one heart that is carried within the other. Their meaning is to join the two people involved. Another point to remark is the non-capitalization of the personal pronoun ‘I’: Cummings refused to capitalize it as a sign of humbleness. It is also noticeable that poems of this stage are written in a calmer way compared to the active and erotic poems about the ‘being in love’-phase. Here, the feeling transcends everything else and ‘keeps the stars apart’. However, on the long term, the strong feelings of being in love slowly but surely fade away, and will ultimately be perceived as something ordinary. This is when the third stage of love comes in: love is felt like something normal or, even more, uninteresting, and one can start to doubt whether or not it is actually still love. That is what ‘it really must’ deals with: […] it Must be nice never to have no doubts about why you put the ring on(and watching her face grow old and tired to which you’re married and hands get red washing things and dishes) […] (Cummings, 62)

Though it seems written very pessimistically and appears to be very dark, the idea of love is still actively present: the protagonist cares about his family and wants to care of it, a token of love. “He realises that the virtue of love as well as the value of life are revealed in the ability to love someone in both his or her beauty and ugliness, in both happy moments and the moments of grief” (Boniszewska, n.d., 39 ). Ultimately, as a last stage of love, Cummings also writes about the death of a loved one, more particularly, the loss of a lover. Despite the finality and mortality in life, he thinks that we should enjoy every small detail and every moment spent with a loved one. This is exemplified by ‘in spite of everything’: […] – before leaving my room i turn, and( stooping through the morning) kiss this pillow, dear where our heads lived and were. (Cummings, 34) The image of an empty bed is associated with mortality, whereas the title signals continuity in spite of our mortal state (Chan, 2014). Cummings strongly believed in transcendence, and rather celebrated the human body and the circle of life instead of death and mortality by writing love poems. He believed that “to become lovers is to enter and become part of the eternal, the divine” (Shucard, Moramarco & Sullivan, 194), and such a love transcends everything else. Although the place of Cummings as a modernist poet still causes quite some controversy, it cannot be denied that he was one of the most innovative poets of the twentieth century.

Bibliography Boniszeska, A. The elements of realism in the poetry of E.E. Cummings. Cracow, University of Cracow, n.d. Chan, D. E3LI English Literatures Course Syllabus 2013/14. Universiteit Gent , Veto, 2010. Cummings, E.E. 100 Selected poems. New York City, Grove Press, 1959. Cummings, E.E. Selected poems 1923 - 1958. London, Faber and Faber Limited, 1969. Lehman, D. The Oxford Book of American Poetry. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006. Munson, B. EETI: eec: E.E. Cummings and the Critics. Ed. S.V. Baum. East Lansing, Michigan State UP, 1923. Shucard, A.; Moramarco, F. & Sullivan, W. Modern American poetry, 1865 – 1950. Massachusetts, University of Massachusetts Press, 1989. Wikipedia, E. E. Cummings. n.d. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._E._Cummings [30.04.2014] http://books.google.be/books?id=gO0AK7qCvmoC&pg=PA393&dq=Beneath+the+veneer+of +his+modernity,+there+beats+a+romantic+heart&hl=nl&sa=X&ei=OVdOU4yxCIa8OZO4gcg L&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Beneath%20the%20veneer%20of%20his%20mode rnity%2C%20there%20beats%20a%20romantic%20heart&f=false http://eecummingspoetry.tumblr.com/page/10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._E._Cummings#Marriages http://www.cstone.net/~romie/cummings/ http://zacharyrhill.wordpress.com/critical-writing/e-e-cummings-rejection-of-prudery/ http://www.shmoop.com/if-everything-happens-that-cant-be-done/ http://www.style.niu.edu/ojs/index.php/style/article/viewFile/18/15 http://www.shmoop.com/i-carry-your-heart/stanza-2-summary.html http://dwipf.tripod.com/ab-3.html...