czwartek, 14 października 2010

E. E. Cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings (October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962), popularly known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as ee cummings (in the style of some of his poems), was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. His body of work encompasses approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays and several essays, as well as numerous drawings and paintings. He is remembered as a preeminent voice of 20th century poetry, as well as one of the most popular.




Early years

Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 1894, elder of two children to Edward Cummings and Rebecca Haswell Clarke.His younger sister, Elizabeth, was born in 1901.
He was named after his father but his family called him by his middle name, Estlin.His father was a professor of sociology and political science at Harvard University and later a Unitarian minister.Cummings described his father as a person who could accomplish anything that he wanted to. Edward was well skilled and was always working on repairing things.e and his son were close, and Edward was one of Estlin's most ardent supporters.
His mother never partook in stereotypically "feminine" things, and enjoyed reading poetry to her children. Raised in a well-educated family, Cummings was a precocious boy and his mother encouraged Estlin to write poetry every day. He wrote his first poem when he was only three: "Oh,the pretty birdie,O;/with his little toe,toe,toe!"
His boyhood home, the E. E. Cummings House, is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Education

Cummings enrolled at Harvard University in September 1911, from which he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1915, graduating magna cum laude, and in the next year completed his Master's degree in English and Classical Studies also at Harvard.While at Harvard, he befriended John Dos Passos, at one time rooming in Thayer Hall, named after the family of one of his Harvard acquaintances, Scofield Thayer, and not yet a freshman-only dormitory.Several of Cummings' poems were published in the Harvard Monthly as early as his sophomore year. Cummings himself labored on the school newspaper alongside fellow Harvard Aesthetes John Dos Passos and S. Foster Damon. In 1915, his poems were published in the Harvard Advocate.
In his final year at Harvard, Cummings was influenced by writers such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound. He delivered a controversial commencement address to his graduating class entitled "The New Art". This speech gave him his first taste of notoriety, as he managed to give the false impression that the well-liked imagist poet, Amy Lowell, whom he himself admired, was "abnormal". For this, Cummings was chastised in the newspapers. In 1917, Cummings' first published poems appeared in a collection of poetry entitled Eight Harvard Poets.

Career

In 1917 Cummings enlisted in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, along with his college friend John Dos Passos. Due to an administrative mix-up, Cummings was not assigned to an ambulance unit for five weeks, during which time he stayed in Paris. He fell in love with the city, to which he would return throughout his life.
During their service in the ambulance corp, they had sent letters home that drew the attention of the military censors and preferred the company of French soldiers over fellow ambulance drivers. The two openly expressed anti-war views; Cummings spoke of his lack of hatred for the Germans On September 21, 1917, just five months after his belated assignment, he and a friend, William Slater Brown were arrested by the French military on suspicion of espionage and undesirable activities. They were held for 3½ months in a concentration camp at the Dépôt de Triage, in La Ferté-Macé, Orne, Normandy.
They were imprisoned with other detainees in a large room. Cummings' father failed to obtain his son's release through diplomatic channels and in December 1917 finally wrote a letter to President Wilson. Cummings was released on December 19, 1917, and Brown was released two months later. Cummings used his prison experience as the basis for his novel, The Enormous Room about which F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "Of all the work by young men who have sprung up since 1920 one book survives—The Enormous Room by e e cummings....Those few who cause books to live have not been able to endure the thought of its mortality."
Cummings returned to the United States on New Year's Day 1918. Later in 1918 he was drafted into the army. He served in the 12th Division at Camp Devens, Massachusetts, until November 1918.
Cummings returned to Paris in 1921 and remained there for two years before returning to New York. During the rest of the 1920s and 1930s he returned to Paris a number of times, and traveled throughout Europe, meeting, among others, Pablo Picasso. In 1931 Cummings traveled to the Soviet Union and recounted his experiences in Eimi, published two years later. During these years Cummings also traveled to Northern Africa and Mexico and worked as an essayist and portrait artist for Vanity Fair magazine (1924 to 1927).
Cummings' papers are held at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

Personal life

In 1926, Cummings' father was killed in a car accident. Though severely injured, Cummings' mother survived. Cummings detailed the accident in the following passage from his i: six nonlectures series given at Harvard (as part of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) in 1952–1953:
... a locomotive cut the car in half, killing my father instantly. When two brakemen jumped from the halted train, they saw a woman standing – dazed but erect – beside a mangled machine; with blood spouting (as the older said to me) out of her head. One of her hands (the younger added) kept feeling her dress, as if trying to discover why it was wet. These men took my sixty-six year old mother by the arms and tried to lead her toward a nearby farmhouse; but she threw them off, strode straight to my father's body, and directed a group of scared spectators to cover him. When this had been done (and only then) she let them lead her away.
His father's death had a profound impact on Cummings, who entered a new period in his artistic life. Cummings began to focus on more important aspects of life in his poetry. He began this new period by paying homage to his father's memory in the poem "my father moved through dooms of love"
Born into a Unitarian family, Cummings exhibited transcendental leanings his entire life. As he grew in maturity and age, Cummings moved more toward an "I, Thou" relationship with God. His journals are replete with references to “le bon Dieu” as well as prayers for inspiration in his poetry and artwork (such as “Bon Dieu! may I some day do something truly great. amen.”). Cummings "also prayed for strength to be his essential self ('may I be I is the only prayer--not may I be great or good or beautiful or wise or strong'), and for relief of spirit in times of depression ('almighty God! I thank thee for my soul; & may I never die spiritually into a mere mind through disease of loneliness')."
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

Marriages

Cummings was married briefly twice. Cummings' first marriage, to Elaine Orr, began as a love affair in 1918 while she was married to Scofield Thayer, one of Cummings' friends from Harvard. The affair produced a daughter, Nancy, born on December 20, 1919. Nancy was Cummings' only child. After divorcing Thayer, Elaine married Cummings on March 19, 1924. However, the marriage ended after two months and they were divorced less than nine months later. Elaine left Cummings for a wealthy Irish banker, moved to Ireland, and took Nancy with her. Under the terms of the divorce Cummings was granted custody of Nancy for three months each year, but Elaine refused to abide by the agreement. Cummings did not see his daughter again until 1946.
He married his second wife Anne Minnerly Barton on May 1, 1929, and they separated three years later in 1932. That same year, Anne obtained a Mexican divorce that was not officially recognized in the United States until August 1934.
The year Cummings and Anne separated, he met Marion Morehouse, a fashion model and photographer. Although it is not clear whether the two were ever legally married, Morehouse lived with Cummings in a common-law marriage until his death in 1962. Morehouse died on May 18, 1969,while living at 4 Patchin Place, Greenwich Village, New York City, where Cummings had resided since September 8, 1924.

Political views

A liberal in his early youth, Cummings' disillusion upon his trip to the Soviet Union in 1931, documented in Eimi, led him to shift rightward on many political and social issues.Despite his radical and bohemian public image, he was a Republican and, later, an ardent supporter of Joseph McCarthy. 

Final years and death


In 1952, his alma mater, Harvard, awarded Cummings an honorary seat as a guest professor. The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures he gave in 1952 and 1955 were later collected as i: six nonlectures.
Cummings spent the last decade of his life traveling, fulfilling speaking engagements, and spending time at his summer home, Joy Farm, in Silver Lake, New Hampshire.
He died of a stroke on September 3, 1962, at the age of 67 in North Conway, New Hampshire at the Memorial Hospital.His cremated remains were buried in Lot 748 Althaeas Path, in Section 6, Forest Hills Cemetery and Crematory in Boston. In 1969, his third wife, Marion Morehouse Cummings, died and was buried in an adjoining plot.

Awards

During his lifetime, Cummings received numerous awards in recognition of his work, including:

Works




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