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EIMI Notes
Further reading:
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Cover of the 2007
Liveright edition of EIMI
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1 / 3: "ça ne vous fait rien si je me déshabille?" = "You won't be bothered if I undress?"
[French]. The deuxième coffin = second coffin, i.e., the second-class
sleeping car. The funeral
director = the conductor or a porter. a troisième common grave = a third class car. cakes & ale by mister mome = Somerset Maugham,
Cakes and Ale: or, the Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930).
"
5 / 6: I was chez the gentleman from
Vienna = I was at Freud's place = I was dreaming
5 / 6: Frank E. Campbell = the
conductor or sleeping car porter. Cummings gives him the name
of a "Funeral Chapel" in
5 / 6: Unser Gott = "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" ["A mighty fortress is our God"] = inscription on German coins featuring the bust of Martin Luther, author of the hymn.
6 / 7: N = Negoreloe,
the border-town where
10 / 11: terrace of the maggots = terrace of
the Café des Deux Magots,
11: un heure
de retard = one hour late [French]. Besetzt
= occupied, full, taken [German]. Pays magnifique,
n'est-ce pas? = Magnificent country, no? [French].
12 / 13: that prominent Russian writer = Vladimir Lidin, who is supposed to meet Cummings at the station. The prominent Russian-in-Paris novelist = Ilya Ehrenburg (see page 31). farfamed sister = "Mrs. Lili Brik, the sister of Elsa Triolet, Louis Aragon's wife" (Kennedy 311). Cummings names Lily Brik (Lilya Brik) "the perfume girl" and "Mme. Potiphar." See pp. 53-54 and the "Friday 15" chapter (61-73 / 60-72).
13: a mystic word = most likely the Russian word for "taxi."
13 / 14: fiacre = horse-drawn taxi [French].
wonderful one hoss shays = EEC alludes
to Oliver Wendell Holmes' poem "The Deacon's Masterpiece or, the Wonderful
'One-hoss Shay': A Logical Story" (1858). The poem is about
a "wonderful" one-horse carriage that lasts exactly one hundred
years. The last two lines are: "End of the wonderful one-hoss
shay. / Logic is logic. That's all I say."
14 / 15: this is the Hotel Metropole
= the Hotel Metropol, an art nouveau structure opened
in 1901. Official site: https://www.metropol-moscow.ru/en/.
"not in valyootah / valuta" =
"not in hard currency."
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16
/ 17: 1 ultrabenevolent
denizen of Cambridge Mass = "Virgil" or "mentor," later
referred to as "ex-mentor" or simply "ex-" = Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow (Harry) Dana (1881-1950), "a . . . Professor studying
Russian theater" (Kennedy 309) and Cummings' first guide. At left:
Dana dressed in Russian costume on the porch of the Longfellow house
in 16-17 / 17: Volks = VOKS, "The All-Union Society for Cultural Relations Abroad," bureau in charge of cultural relations in general and organizing informational tours in particular. See pp. 119 / 117, 153 / 149. |
18: Gene Tunney = James Joseph "Gene" Tunney (1897-1978), heavyweight champion from 1926 to 1928. He defeated Jack Dempsey twice, in 1926 and 1927.
20: why can't I remember to erase those
2 = when he crossed the border, Cummings noted on his passport "under
'Visas', the carefully pencilled forgot to erase them Russian equivalents
for WC [toilet] and sonofabitch" (7/8). See also page 42.
20 / 21: "Eheu fugaces . . ." = Horace, Odes, II, 14:
Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume,
labuntur anni nec pietas moram
rugis et instanti senectae
adferet indomitaeque morti:
"Ah, Postumus, Postumus, how fleeting / the swift years--prayer cannot delay / the furrows of imminent old-age / nor hold off unconquerable death." (Cf. page 220 / 213, as well as CP 234 and CP 492.)
24: Gay-Pay-Oo
= GPU, acronym for "Gosudarstvennoye
Politicheskoye Upravlenie," or "State Political
Directorate," name of the secret police of the Soviet Union (1922-1934). See
also pages 49-50, 117/114, 197/192, 199/193, 202/197, 206/200, 293-294/284-285,
and 303/294.
25: Very
Bad Childs' = a very bad cafeteria. Childs was a cafeteria
chain in
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25: Something Fabulous = Saint_Basil's Cathedral. See pp.91 / 89, 106 / 104, 110 / 108.
26: the devil is sick,the devil a monk = "The DEVIL was sick, the Devil a saint would be; the Devil was well, the devil a saint was he! [Promises made in adversity may not be kept in prosperity. Cf. medieval L. aegrotavit daemon, monachus tunc esse volebat; daemon convaluit, daemon ut ante fuit, when the Devil was ill, he wished to be a monk; when the Devil recovered, he was the Devil just as before; 1586 J. Withals Dict. (rev. ed.).]" --The
Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs
26: Pope Watson = John Broadus
Watson (1878-1958), American psychologist and founder
of behaviorism. Cummings' nonsensical comment may be reordered
to read: "you ring a bell and show your child a snake." Watson's
infamous "Little Albert" experiment conditioned an 11-month-old
boy to fear a white rat by “clanging an iron rod." For more on
responding to the ringing of bells, see pp. 185-186/180-81 and 191/186.)
[Thanks to Vladimir Feshchenko and Emily Wright for finding the
correct Watson.] |
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30: when I was in Wien --Perhaps Cummings speaks of the aftermath of riots that occurred in Vienna on July 15, 1927. The New York Times reported the following day: "At least forty are dead and 200 have been wounded in fighting which followed a sudden revolutionary uprising of Vienna workers which began last night and continued all day today. The revolutionists are now in control of the centre of the city where street barricades are being erected. The demonstration, which rapidly developed revolutionary tendencies, began after a Vienna jury, despite their plea of guilty, had acquitted three Fascists who last January shot and killed a Socialist and his child."
30: president of Writers' Club = Vladimir
Feshchenko and Emily Wright suggest that president of the
Writers' Club "might be Leopold Leonidovich Averbakh (1903–1937),
Soviet literary critic, head of proletarian writers, Secretary
General of RAPP in 1931." (See note to page 56.) Writers' Club = Herzern House, Tverskoy Boulevard 25,
birthplace of nineteenth century socialist Alexander
Ivanovich Herzen (1812-1870). This house was the headquarters
of quite a few literary organizations, among them The Russian Association
of Proletarian Writers (RAPP). It is now the Gorky Literature Institute.
31: John
Boyle = Irish-American poet John Boyle O'Reilly (1844-1890). EEC alludes
to O'Reilly's poem "Unspoken Words," which actually makes the
opposite point about speaking up: "Unspoken words, like treasures
in the mine, / Are valueless until we give them birth." [Thanks to
Vladimir Feshchenko and Emily Wright for this note.]
32: Proletcult
= "First Workers Theatre of Proletarian Culture" (Dana 24).
Selah = Hebrew word of uncertain
meaning that appears at the end of some psalms in the Bible.
See 351/338.
32-34: The Necktie = 1930 play by
Anatoly Glebov (1899-1964). Dana says that
it ridicules "an over-zealous Communist who objects to neckties as bourgeois"
(Handbook 73).
33: settingupexercises
= "Any one of a series of gymnastic exercises used, as in
drilling recruits, for the purpose of giving an erect carriage,
supple muscles, and an easy control of the limbs." –Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
(1913)
35: give us two photographs? for Cummings' internal Russian passport Cf. 222 / 214-15 and 234-235 / 227-228.
36. East Maxman = Max Eastman (1883-1969), a good friend of Cummings who was early a champion of the Russian Revolution, editor of the journal The Masses from 1913-1918, founder of the left-wing journal The Liberator, translator of Trotsky, and after 1940, a fervent anti-communist. In "The Cult of Unintelligibility" (1929), an essay against modernist obscurity, Eastman wrote:
If you pick up a book by Hart Crane, E. E. Cummings, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Edith Sitwell, or any of the "modernists," and read a page innocently, I think the first feeling you will have is that the author isn't telling you anything. It may seem that he isn't telling you anything because he doesn't know anything. Or it may seem that he knows something all right, but he won't tell. In any case he is uncommunicative. He is unfriendly. He seems to be playing by himself and offering you somewhat incidentally the opportunity to look on (632).
36: Charybdis
and Scylla = the whirlpool and six-headed monster between
which Odysseus must steer in book 12 of Homer's Odyssey.
37 / 36: the Torgsin
= special shop that sold all manner of luxury goods and food,
accepting only valuta, foreign
currency or precious metal, in payment. When Cummings was in
38: John Benet's Body--refers to Stephen Vincent Benét (1898-1943) and his epic poem of the Civil War, John Brown's Body (1928), winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1929.
39: O'Jean Euneil = Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953), American dramatist, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1920 and 1928 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936. Early in his career, O'Neill's plays were produced by the Provincetown Playhouse, the same group that produced Cummings' drama Him in 1928.
40: Maydan ah-ghan? = μηδέν ἄγαν / Mêdén
agan = "nothing too much" or "nothing
in excess," inscription on the temple of Apollo in Delphi [Greek].
42 / 41: ecco = behold" [Italian].
42: That word = the Russian word for "toilet," given by Virgil below.
41: Duranty = Walter
Duranty (1884-1957), journalist
who had lived in the
41: AngelPenguin . . . Homeless One = Charlie Chaplin.
44 / 43: Arise,thou Bloom! --refers to Leopold Bloom, the main character in James Joyce's Ulysses. Joyce famously describes Bloom's morning visit to the outhouse in chapter 4.
45: The West Is Nervous = 1931 drama by Vladimir Bill-Belotserkovski (1884-1970). Dana says it depicts "the fear in Germany of Russian Communism" (Handbook 69).
49 / 48: Rockyfeller's
Manship most likely refers
to the bust of John D. Rockefeller by sculptor Paul Manship (1885-1966), now at the National Portrait
Gallery. Manship also made the Prometheus sculpture (1934) for Rockefeller
Center.
49 / 48: Thih
Seauton = "you yourself" [Greek]. Cummings
refers to the motto gnôthi
seauton [γνῶθι σεαυτόν], "Know Thyself,"
carved on the
Carrie Nation = also known as Carry A.
Nation (1846-1911), she was an advocate of temperance who
in 1901 began smashing bars with a hatchet.
50 / 49: Krazy Kat =
comic strip cat beloved by Cummings. thy poet = George
Herriman (1880-1944), cartoonist. In "The Krazy Kat That Walks by Himself,"
an essay in his book The Seven Lively Arts (1924), Cummings'
friend Gilbert Seldes wrote:
See also
51: Gorky =
Maxim Gorky [Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov]
(1868-1936), novelist and playwright. Author of The Lower Depths (1902) and Mother (1906-07), he left Russia in
1921 for treatment for tuberculosis, returning "amid great public
fanfare" in 1928. Cummings attends a "Gorky-festival" on pages
181-183 / 176-178.
51: every
coin has two sides: EEC is probably referring to these
lines from stanza 12 of Emerson's "The Sphinx":
Now follows, now flies;
And under pain, pleasure,--
Under pleasure, pain lies.
Love works at the centre.
See the coin metaphor in the second stanza
of "hate blows a bubble of despair into" (CP 531).
51-52: I'm quoting Emerson.
Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. (Emerson 524)
After resigning from the
52: Millikan = Robert Andrews Millikan (1868-1953), American physicist and winner of the 1923 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on the photoelectric effect and measuring the charge on electrons. Later, he worked on cosmic radiation and coined the term "cosmic rays."
53: the perfume girl = Lilya or Lily Brik (1891-1978), older sister
of Elsa Triolet (1896-1970), who
is the wife of French surrealist and communist Louis Aragon (1897-1982).
Elsa has given Cummings some fashion magazines and perfume to take
as a present to her sister in
54: her
first husband. . .who killed himself = Virgil refers
to Lily Brik's former lover (not husband), the poet Vladimir
Mayakovsky (1893-1930), who killed himself
on
"He that can live without food can die without
tobacco." Source unknown.
56: president of . . . Writers' Club = Vladimir
Feshchenko and Emily Wright suggest that president of the
Writers' Club "might be Leopold Leonidovich Averbakh (1903–1937),
Soviet literary critic, head of proletarian writers, Secretary
General of RAPP in 1931." See note to page 30.
57 / 56: Gods of the Lightning = Apparently Cummings is mistaken; Dana lists Maxwell Anderson's Gods of the Lightning (a play loosely based on the Sacco and Vanzetti case) among the foreign plays translated and presented in Russian (Handbook 52).
57 / 56: the mysterious other being a "monosyllable"--probably
Ezra Pound. See page 84 / 83 for Pound's message
to the Russians.
57 / 56: Clairsin
Islew = anagram for Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), author of
the novels
57: Something play =
59 / 58: Tverskaya
= the main shopping street in
62 / 61: I'm using
a sleeping-dictionary: The "thickset . . . newspaperman"
refers to his Russian girlfriend, who sleeps with him and provides
translations. This "sleeping dictionary correspondent" shows
Cummings his room on page 111 / 109.
62 / 61: A great Godlike voice =
perhaps the voice of "god," i.e., Victor Eubanks, AP correspondent?
See page 141 / 138.
65 / 64: Et où . . . est votre camarade? = "And where is your comrade?" [i.e., Virgil]. il n'est pas méchant du tout . . . même pas assez = "He's not at all mean . . . not even enough" [French].
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65 / 64: 3 fisted
= poet Vladimir
Mayakovsky. (See pp. 54, 69
/ 68, 71 / 70.) Eugene Lyons saw Mayakovsky
as a "romanticist" and aesthete who wore the façade of a hardboiled
communist. When the poet Sergei
Esenin killed himself, Mayakovsky "wept over his death, but castigated
that futile gesture. 'In this life it is easy to die,' he wrote, '--to
build life is hard' " (
66 / 65: Non. Et je vous en prie,Madame, ne me demandez pas . . . = No. And I entreat you, Madame, do not ask me why I came to Russia; because I do not know myself" [French]. (See pages 15-16/16-17, 190/185, and 241/234.) "Voici" naming husband = "Here is" [Osip Brik] (1888-1945), alias "unhe." See note to page 53.
76 / 75: Crank Frowninshield
= Frank Crowninshield (1872-1947),
editor of Vanity Fair, 1914-1936. The comic sketches
that Cummings published in Vanity Fair in the mid-'20s
have been reprinted in the Miscellany Revised.
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78 / 77: Frankie and Johnny Were
= the first line of the popular African-American folk song "The Ballad of Frankie and Johnny." Act II, scene
v of Cummings' drama Him (1927) features a choral jazz performance
of the song. In Cummings' version, the first stanza reads:
79 / 78: The slightly
sticky gent who fails to introduce his sleeping dictionary may or may not be
the same correspondent introduced on page 62/ 61. See also
page 111 / 109.
80 / 79: immortal Marianne! = Marianne Moore. EEC refers to two lines from her poem
"To a Steam Roller"
81 / 79: two copies of one book by Jack Reed = Ten Days That Shook the World (1919), a first-hand account of the Bolshevik Revolution written by American journalist John Reed (1887-1920), a must-have volume for would-be socialists in the 1930s. Shortly after finishing the book, Reed died of typhus and was buried at the Kremlin wall with other heroes of the October revolution.
82 / 81: fat & cadaverous = Jill and Jack = Valeriya Anatolevna Gerasimova (1903-1978) and Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeyev (1901-1956). Cummings meets this couple while searching for a room (75/74) and is invited for dinner (76/75). Cummings' friend and fellow writer John Dos Passos (see below) stayed with the couple in October-November of 1928. In his memoir The Best Times, Dos Passos writes that Gerasimova "was high up in the Gay Pay U. They had a cheerful consomolska for a maid and lived simply but well. . . . Fadyeev's friends could speak freely about all sorts of topics. No danger of having what you said reported to the Gay Pay U. This was the Gay Pay U" (193-194). While Cummings does not mention that Gerasimova worked for the GPU, he does notice how Jill "directs . . . her Jack's every move;following our rickety train of thought a thought more closely than any ambulance-chasing lawyer pursues his accident" (84/83). For more on Fadeyev, see John Freedman's post "Alexander Fadeev Plaque, Moscow."
83 / 81: Novelist Sir Dry = most likely Theodore Dreiser, American novelist, author of many
big books, including Sister Carrie (1900)
and An American Tragedy (1925). He visited
the
83 / 82: "très gentil. Nous avons tous beaucoup bu . . ." = "Very nice, amiable. We had
all drunk a lot, and then he didn't want to go home. So,
my husband made him up a bed here."
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83 / 82: John Dos Passos (1896-1970), good friend of Cummings and the author of such novels as Three Soldiers (1921), Manhattan Transfer (1925), and the U.S.A. trilogy, The 42nd Parallel (1930), Nineteen Nineteen (1932), and The Big Money (1936). 83 / 82: "pour qu'elle peut respirer"
= "so she can breathe." "Bis!" = "Twice!"
or "Again!" "alors,l'enfant demandait . . ."
= "so, the child asked: is he crazy mama?" |
84 / 83: my Persian friend = S. A.
Jacobs, Cummings' personal typesetter.
88 / 86: the 5 day week = From the autumn of 1929 to the summer of 1931, the Soviet Union decided to overlay a five day week on top of the Gregorian calendar that it adopted in 1918. This system divided the year into 72 five day weeks (360 days), plus five national holidays. Each worker was assigned one day of the five as a day off. (This rotating schedule was indicated on calendars by the Roman numerals I-V and/or five colors.) The system was designed to ensure continuous production in the factories, but it was abandoned because family members and friends of workers seldom if ever had the same day off, and the machines in the factories broke down much more often without regular down-time and maintenance.
89 / 87: "Quand je suis venu ici . . ." = "When I came here from
89 / 87: Stephen Dedalus = hero of James Joyce's novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). The scene in which Stephen refuses the call to the priesthood occurs in chapter IV.
89 / 88: the Verb is actually or imagining,which cannot ever be translated -- Cummings later gives the following definition of poetry: "whatever cannot be translated!" (140 / 137-38).
91 / 89: shaving à la russe,in the eau chaude of this diminutive teapot . . . = shaving in the Russian manner, in the hot water of the teapot that sits atop the samovar. Russians mangent beaucoup = "Russians eat a lot" [French].
a day which doesn't exist = Sunday. Though the names for the days of the week were still in use, under the five day week system, Sunday was no longer set aside as a day of rest, and it was effectively eliminated as a religious holiday. Since a worker's day off could come on any day of the week, no day was more important than any other. But Sunday is an important symbol of resurrection and rebirth in EIMI: the book begins and ends on a Sunday (May 10 and June 14), so the chapters follow a pattern of 1 - 6- 1 - 6 - 1 - 6 - 1 - 6 - 1 - 6 - 1. There are six Sundays with six days between each of them, making a total of five weeks and 36 days. Thus: May 10 + 6 + May 17 + 6 + May 24 + 6 + May 31 + 6 + June 7 + 6 + June 14 = 36. Since rebirth (and its symbol, moving into fresh air) occurs in non-Sunday chapters as well, the 1 - 6- 1 - 6 - 1 - 6 - 1 - 6 - 1 - 6 - 1 chapter pattern indicates that rebirth is cyclical, recurring throughout the book and throughout life. For another example of Cummings organizing a book by weekdays plus Sundays, see Michael Webster's blog post, "An Old Door, Cummings’ Personal Printer, and W [ViVa]."
91 / 89: a day which doesn't exist: Cummings mentions the non-existence of Sunday on each of the four Sundays he spends in Russia: May 17 (91/89), May 24 (180/175), May 31 (255/247), and June 7 (347/334). Cummings' insistence on the existence of Sunday (plus a six-day week) counters the Soviet arithmetic of the five-day week (88/86) and the five year plan achieved (supposedly) in four years (154/150).
92 / 90: a woman with a big baby = a Madonna with Christ as a young man.
92 / 90: "in which" sings "if they turn and twist . . ." = the last line of Marianne Moore's poem "A Grave."
93 / 91: Otto . . . Can't is "a
Romanian member of MORP, the Revolutionary Literature Bureau, which
was subordinate to the Comintern and run by mainly foreign communist
writers in Moscow at this stage" (Emily Lygo). Andrew Hemingway
writes that this bureau "acted as a kind of literary international
for the promotion of proletarian writing" (19). It is here that
Otto gives Cummings the text of Louis Aragon's poem "Le Front Rouge"
(The Red Front), which Cummings thinks about translating on pp.
100/97-98 and actually translates on pages 140/137 and 145-46/142-143.
EEC's translation was published in Literature
of the World Revolution, the journal of the Revolutionary
Literature Bureau. Otto is probably named Can't because he is concerned
with disseminating translations, and as Cummings notes, "poetry equals:
whatever cannot be translated!" (140/137).
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/ 91: daughter
of Lack Dungeon = Joan
London Malamuth (1901-1971), daughter
of Jack London, "alias BEATRICE (in relation to VIRGIL) alias Turkess or Harem" (Preface xvi / ii). her husband = "the TURK, sometimes
called Assyrian or that bourgeois face or Charlie" = Charles Malamuth (1899-1965), Russian scholar and newspaper
correspondent (Kennedy 311-312). While Cummings was in At right: Charles Malamuth and his "bourgeois face." [Photo from Stasz,
Jack London's Women, between pages 210-211. This
may be a photo that Cummings took in 1931 in |
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93 / 91: the doctor whom you met = Chinesey = Dr. Armand Hammer, American entrepreneur and (at the time) Communist sympathizer, he was much involved in buying up Russian art from the Czarist period (including the famous Fabergé eggs--see pp. 55-56). According to Fabergé expert Géza von Habsburg, "Hammer arrived here in New York in 1931 with thousands of Russian works of art to be sold on behalf of the Soviets" ("…the fate of the eggs"). Hammer's autobiographies make it clear that he collected art for himself, securing assurances that he could take out of Russia his "collection of art treasures" (Quest 201, Hammer 189). See also pp. 198/192-93. |
(b)1 great Russian dramatist = "romp" = ?
(c)1 small American newspaperman = ?
(d)the best looking female = Joan London ("Harem").
95 / 93: "je savais que vous étiez écrivain . . ." = "I knew that you were a writer, but"(delicately)"everybody in that train station looked like a writer" [French].
96 / 93: "Madame, si vous voulez voir la pièce de votre père . . ." = "Madame, if you want to see the play [based on a short story] by your father, we need to leave immediately" [French].
97 / 94: Harvard Coop credentials = Virgil's notebook from the Harvard Cooperative Society (see page 33).
99 / 97: La belle au bois dormant by Glossina
palpalis = "Sleeping Beauty by a tsetse
fly." Glossina palpalis is the scientific name for
a species of tsetse fly: these flies transmit single-celled organisms
called trypanosomes, causing trypanosomiasis, commonly known
as "sleeping sickness."
100 / 98: (5) S.O.L.s = those who are "shit
out of luck."
he 1 day refused to volunteer = unidentified non-volunteering
Russian scientist, who is probably a botanist (174/169). Later, Joan
London and EEC will visit the scientist and his wife to "ask if we may
all dine with them," leaving the proud couple a large box of food (173-174/168-169).
The dinner is described on pages 184-186.
106 / 104: nonmeeter
= "flowerbuyer" = novelist Vladimir
Lidin, who was supposed to meet Cummings at the
station. (See page 12 / 13.)
109 / 107: companion of the way = a fellow traveler, which also can mean someone who is not a Communist party member.
110 / 108: Arabian Nights = St. Basil's Cathedral.
Compare / contrast this story with the one on page 106 / 104.
111 / 109: stepping from elevator at pyaht / pyatch self = Cummings has moved to the fifth floor, but also perhaps to a fifth self.
aetat nil = "of no date" [Latin].
110 / 108: Il veut la révolution . . . vive la révolution mondiale! = "He is for the revolution . . . long live world revolution! All the same, he is not a mean sort of fellow. . . . Not even bad."
112 / 109: Vtoroi Mchat = the Second Moscow Arts Theatre. "Mchat refers to the Moscow Arts Theatre founded by Stanislavsky (Moskovskii Khudozhestvennyi Akademicheskii Teatr = MKhAT); vtoroi (second) refers to what is sometimes known as its second studio. The 'Second MKhat' was founded in 1912 as a new studio based on Stanislavsky's founding principles, but aiming to reinvigorate Russian theatre." [Note courtesy Emily Lygo]
116 / 114: argyrol = a silver-protein compound used as a local antiseptic.
117 / 114: Phi Beta Kappa = a GPU agent. See also pages 197/192 and 199/193.
123 / 121: Prince . . . Igor = Prince Igor, an opera in four acts composed in large part by Alexander Borodin (1833-1887) and completed after his death by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov.
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125 / 123: Balieff
= Nikita Balieff (1877-1936),
an Armenian-Russian vaudevillian
who emigrated to
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130 / 127: a wolfboy. See page 113 / 111.
131 / 129: & so at twilight we 3 enter this forest--This
dreamlike scene actually happened. Kennedy tells how in 1924
when Elaine was pressing Cummings for a divorce, Sibley Watson
and his wife Hildegarde invited
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
132 / 130: the only 2legged Englishspeaking correspondent who can read a Russian newspaper
in the original -- The one-legged correspondent who could
read Russian was Walter Duranty. (Virgil
tells Cummings on page 40 about Duranty's
wooden leg. See also page 217 / 210.)
132 / 130: eye of 1 ½Russian comrade
secretary = "one half-Russian" = "Nat" = Natalya (Nathalie) Petrovna
Shirokikh, secretary whom Charles
Malamuth inherited from United Press
reporter Eugene Lyons (Bassow 67).
133 / 131: --a certain ceremony =
taking/giving a bath. "The bathtub, it is true, was tremendously
large; but when the heating device, after hours of fussing,
yielded only a few gallons of hot water, the size of the bathtub
was less a blessing than a jeer" (Lyons 417).
135 / 133: Ça sent
l'espace = "This feels of space" [French].
136 / 133: Doomed? "Pourquoi?" "Parce qu'il
a l'âme russe" = "Why?" "Because he has a Russian soul"
[French].
136 / 134: pomum
Adami = Adam's apple [Latin].
141 / 138: 1 semimiddleaged
demifairy = "almighty" = "god"
= "Victor Eubank, the bureau chief of the Associated Press" (Preface
xxi / vii; Kennedy 312). my
1st [book] = The Enormous
Room (1922).
141 / 138: Greater Garbo = a pun on Greta Garbo (1905-1990), movie star known for her reclusive individuality.
145 / 142: Otto Can't's
giftless gift = Louis Aragon's
poem in praise of communist
The cuckoo is associated with an effigy
or doll because the Russian word for puppet (kukla) resembles the word for
the cuckoo and its call (Kukushka).
After the women and girls complete the rites with the cuckoo
effigies, they sing a song pledging to "Become gossips, love
each other, make presents to each other!" Then they kiss each other
under an archway of birch branches. W. R. S. Ralston says further:
"This is called the 'Christening of the Cuckoos' (kreshchenie kukusëk). When two girls
have kissed each other under the decorated arch, and have exchanged
crosses, they become 'Gossips' for life, as intimately connected as
if, at the christening of a child, they had become attached to
each other by the Spiritual ties of co-godmothership" (215). Ralston
adds that the girls also sometimes exchange eggs as gifts, and in
some provinces, "it is . . . customary for men also to enter into
the state of mutual cuckoo-gossipry" (216). Hence the relevance of
this custom to the Turk's previous remark that the Russian sailors "wept
and kissed" (147/143) after being saluted by an English battleship.
147 / 144: et il pleut = and it's raining
[French].
148 / 145: et j'ai faim! = and I'm
hungry! [French].
149 / 146: Something of Something Theatre
= Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940), Russian
producer / director. See note to pages 162-163 / 157-158. c'est . . . vous voulez faire sa connaissance?
= "It's . . . would you like to meet him?" [French]; je ne sais s'il parle français =
"I don't know if he speaks French."
My friend
the sculptor = Ossip Zadkine
(1890-1967). (This friend is described on page 164/159 as "the
man of the strayed face,the mind with the bravely cringing eyes,the
noble and droll little sculptor.")
il voudrait
vous voir demain soir à six heures! = he'd like to see
you tomorrow evening at six! mangez
maintenant = "you eat now." non non seulement trent kopecks pourboire,ça
suffit = "No, no, only thirty kopecks for a tip--that's
enough" [French]
152 / 148: "est-ce qu'elle est vraie?" / "qui?"
/ "la lune" / l'âme russe,smiling / "oui" = "is she real?"
/ "who?" / "the moon" / the Russian soul,smiling / "yes" [French].
154 / 149: black marias = police paddy
wagons [pronounced
|
154 / 150: Poster:2
+ 2 = 5. . . Cummings may have been startled by this slogan
because he titled his fifth book is 5. As he explains
in the Foreword to is 5: "Ineluctable preoccupation
with The Verb gives a poet one priceless advantage:whereas
nonmakers must content themselves
with the merely undeniable fact that two times two is four,he [the poet] rejoices in a purely irresistible
truth(to be found,in abbreviated
costume,upon the title page of the
present volume" (CP 221). Lyons' chapter on the slogan in Assignment in Utopia is the probable source for George Orwell's use of it in 1984 as an example of totalitarian doublethink. Orwell wrote: "In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it." At right: 2 + 2 = 5, propaganda poster from 1931. The text reads: "The arithmetic of an industrial-financial counter-plan: 2 + 2 plus the enthusiasm of the workers = 5" [translation Steve Dodson]. Dodson explains that "the 'counter-plan' is the speeded-up plan that the workers' collective of a factory allegedly came up with to counter the official plan: 'They say to do it in five years, but we, the socialist workers with our socialist enthusiasm, can do it in four!' Needless to say, this was not a voluntary 'plan'." The image is from a large page of Soviet posters titled "Galerie d'images: Affiches soviétiques (1920-1941)." Link: Photo of a similar poster, "Fulfill the five-year plan not in five years, but in four" (1930). 155 / 151: Coxey's army = an 1894 protest march on Washington D.C. by unemployed workers, led by the populist Jacob Coxey. |
|
155 / 151: now we all enter(lasciate ogni
=
157 / 152: hidden fear = Lyons says
that Natalia Shirokikh's father "died early in the revolution"
(295), but whether this is related to her hidden fear is unknown.
Cummings remembers the phrase "when they made us lie down" from
page 141/138: "but I was thinking of the time they put a revolver
to us and made us lie down for them." See also page 263/255.
162-163 / 157-158: Something = Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940), Russian
producer / director of
162 / 157: Cyrano nez = Cyrano nose.
Cummings notes that Meyerhold's nose is similar in shape and size
to that of Cyrano de Bergerac.
Kostia, Zinaida Raikh, & Tania. Photo from McVay, Esenin: A Life, between pages 182-183. |
162 / 158: 1 fanée
. . . enters = Zinaida Raikh (1894-1939), Meyerhold's
wife and leading actress. Here are some performance
photos of Raikh. Also: a photo of Meyerhold
and Raikh in Berlin (1930). 163 / 158: Piscator
= Erwin Piscator (1893-1966),
German theatrical producer and director. The biglegged boychild is Kostia (Konstantin) Esenin,
son of Zinaida Raikh and the poet Sergei
Esenin. 164 / 159: "furchtbar" = terrible, frightful [German]. "grosse Bühne" = large stage or theatre [German].
a very lovely little girl = Tania
(Tatiana) Esenina. A now-defunct page on
Meyerhold 165 / 160: 1 perfectly beaming negress. = Emma Harris (1875-1937). [The Wikipedia page on Emma Harris claims that she may have lived into the 1940s.] In the second installment of his autobiography, I Wonder as I Wander, Langston Hughes writes: "She was a 'character.' Everyone in See also this typescript (1937?) by Theodore Poston, "Emma Harris--She Was There When" (Schomburg Center, NYPL). For Langston Hughes' visit to Russia, see Jennifer Wilson, "When the Harlem Renaissance Went to Communist Moscow" New York Times (21 Aug. 2017). Web. |
172 / 167: chauffebain = a chauffe-bain, or water-heater for the bath.
175 / 169: The phrase capitalist pensivities while donning a nexttolast shirt begins a new scene.
177 / 172: Michael = London, Jack. Michael, Brother of Jerry. New York, Macmillan, 1917. Michael is a "sociable . . . merry dog" who is kidnapped by a ship's steward. The book is a sequel to Jerry of the Islands (1917). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1730
178 / 172: "Durov was a celebrity": the celebrity Durov who toured Europe is most likely Vladimir's brother Anatoly (1864-1916) and/or his son (Vladimir's nephew), Anatoly Anatolyevich Durov (1894-1928).
181 / 176: the Art Theatre = the Moscow Art Theatre, founded in 1897 by Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863-1938) and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (1858-1943), espoused naturalist "method" acting and more realistic theatrical presentation. In the April 1926 Dial, Cummings reviewed several touring productions of the Moscow Art Theatre
181 / 176: mother earth's foremost living
proletarian writer: EEC catches a glimpse of Maxim Gorky.
182 / 177: the short story which made Gorky
famous = "Chelkash" or "Tchelkash" (1893), "the story of a harbor
thief" (SovLit.com).
183 / 178: The Lower Depths:
1902 play in four acts by Maxim Gorky. "A penetrating study
of different types of down-and-outs in an underground nights'
lodging" (Dana 74).
184/ 178: L's W
= Lenin's Wife. [Compare "L's M" (25, 187).]
185 / 180: il faut absolument visiter! . .
. c'est le meilleur du monde! = you must visit it! . . .
it's the best in the world!" [French].
185-186 / 180: no bells. They don't ring.
Eugene Lyons writes: "My first years in Moscow are suffused with
the soldiers' singing and the insistent church bells. The bells
would start sonorously somewhere in the city and wake answering
chimes on all sides in a thousand different keys and measures until
the world seemed brimful of living, cavorting notes, chattering,
scolding, exulting. Later the ringing was prohibited as a public
nuisance and the bells themselves were hauled down and melted for
their metals. But somewhere a few timid bells had been overlooked
in the sweep, and occasionally they tinkled forlornly in the twilight"
(213). See page 191/186.
Morozov house, Prechistenka, 21 |
189-191
/ 184-185: enfin! = "finally!" [French]. Cummings
finally visits the State Museum of New Western Art, established
in 1918. Steve Dodson
notes that the museum "was located in the former Ivan Morozov
mansion at Prechistenka, 21 (southwest of the Kremlin)." The Pushkin State Museum for the Fine Arts
site states: "After |
190 / 185: Picasso!:
See the Picasso
page at the Pushkin State Museum (Moscow) and the Picasso
page and/or the Picasso index
at the Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg).
190 / 185: Matisse!: See the Matisse
page at the Pushkin State Museum and the Matisse
page and/or the Matisse index
at the Hermitage.
5 gradually
distorted heres = Matisse’s The Dance (1910), second version,
now at the Hermitage
Museum,
St. Petersburg. See also Matisse’s Music (1910), also at the Hermitage.
190 / 185: Van Goghs,especially the billiardtable
= The Night Café (1888), formerly in
the Morozov collection, sold by the Soviets sometime in the
1930s, and now at the Yale University
Art Gallery.
190 / 185: I touched(for luck)lightly 1 idol,this
by Something’s friend:bonjour--EEC touches a sculpture
by his and Meyerhold’s friend Ossip Zadkine (1890-1967).
(See also pages 149/146 and 164/159.) Perhaps the sculpture
that EEC touched was Musicians (1927), now at the Pushkin
State Museum.
191 / 186: marche pas = "won't go"
[French].
191 / 186: Stanislavsky's . . . Boris
= the Stanislavsky Opera Theatre's production of Boris Godunov (1872), an opera by
Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881). Though Cummings says that
the second scene takes place "inside [the] church," it is usually
set on "the porch of the Cathedral of the Dormition" in Cathedral
Square in the Kremlin. Mussorgsky's orchestral introduction to
the scene simulates the church bells that are ringing for the coronation
of the new (1598) Czar, Boris Godunov. Note that towards the end of
the previous chapter, Cummings discussed the bell prohibition with the
non-volunteering scientist, pointing out that while ringing for bellboys
is forbidden in the name of equality and church bells are forbidden in
the name of rational secularism, the scientist Pavlov
is allowed "to stimulate the salivary glands of his young dogfriends"
(186/180). Note also that the section following the short description
of Boris Godunov begins, ". . . something about dogs?" -- pointing
the reader back to passages about Pavlov and his behavior-inducing bells
(see pages 26, 185-186 / 180).
191 / 186: the dog is loose
= "Dr. Hammer's big untamed wolfhound was chained all day
in the corridor leading to the kitchen, and at night was unchained
to guard the 'black,' or servants', entrance against intruders"
(Lyons 417). María Teresa Gonzalez Mínguez points out that by having
Malamuth call the dog a "Poor soviet Cerberus!" Cummings alludes to
"Cerberus, the beast that guards the gluttonous in the third circle
of Dante's Inferno [Canto VI]." On page 21 "a Herculean
nonman" is described as more fearsome than Cerberus.
192 / 187: Mr. Moscovitz
himself = "Another of their [
192 / 187: Ezra,the son of Homer = the poet Ezra Pound, whose father's name was Homer. See pages 15, 57 / 56, and 84 / 83.
195 / 190: Find = Cummings receives
a letter from his wife Anne Barton Cummings.
196 / 190: c'est ici
le consulat turque? = the Turkish Consulate is here?
196 / 191: non . . . c'est par là =
no, it's over that way; je crois
= I believe [French].
197 / 192: the military tactician
= "livid."
198 / 192: "in the days of the Czar,a Russian's soul was his passport"--see
pages 38-39.
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199 / 193: our
nash-un-al an-them . . . the in-ter-nash-un-al = "The
International," song "written by a transport worker after
the Paris Commune was crushed by the French government" and adopted
by the Soviet Union as its first national anthem. The title of the
play refers to the song's refrain, which urges workers to stick together
in "la lutte finale" [the final struggle]. In Charles H. Kerr's English
translation: " 'Tis the final conflict / Let each stand in his place
/ The International Union / Shall be the human race." 202 / 197: Trying! [See also 199/193: An audience painfully,not to mention strainfully,Trying] --Cummings may be remembering John Keats' letter of 17-27 September, 1819 to his brother George and his wife Georgiana: "Dilke [is] a Man who cannot feel he has a personal identity unless he has made up his Mind about everything. The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing -- to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts. Not a select party. The genus is not scarce in population. All the stubborn arguers you meet with are of the same brood--They never begin upon a subject they have not preresolved on. They want to hammer their nail into you, and if you turn the point, still they think you wrong. Dilke will never come at a truth as long as he lives, because he is always trying at it. He is a Godwin-methodist" (303). In addition, the letters "GPU" when written cursively in the Cyrillic alphabet bear an uncanny resemblance to the English word "try." [At left: a poster depicting the GPU (Г П У) striking a counter-revolutionary (circa 1930). At the end of his history guide, "Political Violence and Stalin’s Vision of Socialism 1918-1938," Nicholas Richardson notes that this poster denounces a "counter-revolutionary saboteur (Контрреволюцонер вредитель)" who attacks the state with "predatory eyes that sparkle (Сверкает хищный глаз)." ] 202-203/ 197: nonexistent impermanence,which everybody apparently has been rabotatically instructed tovarich to welcome -- Elucidating the word "rabotatically," Norman Friedman points out that " 'rabota' means 'work' " (Growth 118). However, EEC may also be referring to Karel Čapek's 1921 play R.U.R., which introduced the word "robot" into the world's vocabulary. (The title of the play stands for "Rossum's Universal Robots.") |
204 / 198: Old Man River = Song composed by
Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, from the 1927 musical Show Boat. Everybody Loves My Baby = Song from 1924 by Spencer
Williams (music) and Jack Palmer (lyrics). Nearer My God [to Thee] = 19th century
Christian hymn with words by Sarah Flower Adams and many
different musical settings.
205 / 199:
206 / 200: Lack Dungeon's proles =
Jack London's child, i.e., Joan London. The Latin word proles means "offspring, progeny,
child." The lowest class in ancient Rome was called the proletarii because their only possession
was their children.
206 / 200: vandinefully = "like Van
Dine," a reference to the mystery writer S. S. Van Dine, who, under his real
name, Willard Huntington Wright, had written Modern Painting
(1915), a book much-cherished and well-annotated by the young Cummings. Cummings
satirizes Van Dine's mystery novels in the poem "murderfully
in midmost o.c.an" (CP 335).
206 / 200: ("the" . . . ("engineers have
shaggy") . . . ("ears")misquote: Malamuth misquotes a soldier's
song from WWI:
The engineers have hairy ears,
They piss without their britches,
They bang their cocks against the rocks,
Those hardy sons of bitches
This song is derived from an older tune called "The Mountaineers," whose first verse reads:
The mountaineers have hairy ears,
They piss through leather britches,
They knock their cocks on mountain rocks,
Those scraggy sons of bitches
Malamuth's song about the engineers surely
refers to the different problems that the two American engineers
in this chapter have in marrying foreign women, but he also may
be referring to the GPU agents in military uniforms (199/193),
who carry real rather than figurative "pis-" . . . "stolsintheirbreeches"
(206/200). It is likely also that discovering GPU agents is the
object of Joan London's "detective work."
207 / 201: 1 very husbandful gentlemenprefer
= "Darksmoothlyestishful" (203-206/197-200). Cummings refers
to the title of Anita Loos' bestselling comic novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925).
207 / 201: "a submarine . . . lost"
= "The submarine minelayer RABOCHIY sank on 22 May 1931 in the Gulf of Finland
after a collision with the submarine KRASSNOARMEYETS. Two
years later the RABOCHIY was raised by the rescue ship COMMUNA
and sold for scrap" (Polmar 89-90). According to a May 27, 1931
article in the New York Times,
the sinking was reported in a brief dispatch only on May 26.
The Times article states: "No detailed
official report of the catastrophe seems to have been made
by the Russian Government."
207 / 201: "you" busily "New Englanders are a very
curious" sopping "folk. Folk you" he,beaming,said. Steve Dodson
discusses the engineers song along with Malamuth's obscene pun in
his blog entry "Pistols
and Folk."
209 / 203: "il est fier"(and he is)dit K
= "he is proud"(and he is)said K. le citoyen
russe vous salut! = the Russian citizen salutes you!
café! . . . merveilleux!
= coffee! . . . marvelous! Merci.
C'est entendu = Thanks. It's understood [French].
210 / 203: Bread = a play by Vladimir Kirshon
(1902-1938). Dana says that it is about "efforts to encourage
agriculture and to prevent kulaks
[prosperous landed peasants] from hoarding wheat" (78).
213 / 206: returned during nep = "the New Economic Policy of socialist-capitalist
compromise introduced by Lenin in 1921" (
213 / 207: a powerful pair of eyes =
the character known as “eyes.” She is Lyubov Davydovna Faynberg
(or Feinberg) (1908-1983). Her husband is Valentin O.
213 / 207: heat murdered perioolok
= "the magnificent Hammer place [was] at Petrovsky Pereulok 8, across the street from the squat,
carrot-red
Korsh theater" (
216 / 209-210: speaks
/ --in numbers!(for the numbers came. = parody of Alexander
Pope's lines about his poetic beginnings: "Why did I write?
what sin to me unknown / Dipped me in ink, my parents', or my
own? / As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, / I lisped in numbers,
for the numbers came" ("Epistle
to Dr. Arbuthnot," lines 125-28). The word "numbers" here
refers to the syllable counts and meters of lines of verse.
217 / 210: one-legged people = As
Virgil tells Cummings on page 40, reporter Walter Duranty had a wooden leg. (See also page 132
/ 130, where
217 / 211: favorite
yellow journal = The New York Evening Journal, a Hearst
paper that was Cummings' favorite because it carried the
comic strip Krazy
Kat. See page 48/49.
220 / 213: "I had one here"
Chinesey/Hammer refers to his first wife, Olga, whom he met
when she was a performer of gypsy songs.
…al-lo!monsieur Kem-min-kz?ahbonjour!dites: . . . "Hello! Monsieur Kem-min-kz? Ahbonjour! Say: would you like to come to our place tomorrow evening for dinner? Yes. Right, my husband has returned. What? Around seven o'clock. Yes. OK--till tomorrow . . ."
220 / 213: eheu
fu(labuntur
anni(rugis et instanti . . = Horace, Odes, II.14:
Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume,
labuntur anni nec pietas moram
rugis et instanti senectae
adferet indomitaeque morti:
"Ah, Postumus, Postumus, how fleeting / the swift years--prayer cannot delay / the furrows of imminent old-age / nor hold off unconquerable death." (Cf. page 21, as well as CP 234 and CP 492.)
221 / 214: Pickwick = perhaps conductor and violinist Emil Cooper, also known as Emil Kuper (1877-1960).
221 / 214: & he did it at last. . .with a)pistol = A letter from Anne tells
Cummings that Ralph Barton,
Anne's first husband and a talented commercial artist and caricaturist,
had killed himself "in his penthouse apartment" in
221 / 214: us all jammed in his Voisin --In 1929 Cummings, Anne, her daughter Diana, Ralph Barton, and his fourth wife, the composer Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983), traveled to the south of France "in a chauffeur-driven Citroën . . . to Toulon, where Barton owned a villa, and then after a few days returning to Paris through Lyons. The whole trip was marked by too much drinking and punctuated by troubles and quarrels. Barton was teetering on the brink of divorce from Germaine, who split from him from time to time . . . . Barton was also so unstable in psyche that Cummings recommended that he seek help from Dr. Wittels" (Kennedy 304-305).
222 / 214-15: Itless hangs heavy and limp
= an old-fashioned box camera with a cloth hood. The "Micro(before
itless)scopic . . . tovarich" crouching in front is a photographer
and landscape painter. Seeing the camera reminds EEC that he must
have his internal passport photos taken in order to travel to Odessa.
However, he also realizes that he might not have enough money to get photographed,
so he notes the location for future reference. This "microscopic landscape-tovarich"
(234/226) takes EEC's Russian identity passport photographs on pages
234-235 / 226-228.
222 / 215: blowing my brains out--
228 / 221: the poet = Boris Pasternak
(1890-1960), who, having returned to Moscow the day before, departed
with three other writers on May 28, 1931 to visit the new industrial
sites of Chelyabinsk, Kuznetsk, and Magnitogorsk. However, Pasternak
did not complete what was to be a three-week tour. After giving
three poetry readings in Chelyabinsk, he returned to Moscow on June
7. Christopher Barnes' biography records Pasternak's reactions to
the trip:
The Turk's hurrahboys to the right of him
echoes Tennyson's "The Charge
of the Light Brigade": "Cannon to right of them, / Cannon
to left of them, / Cannon in front of them / Volley'd and thunder'd;
/ Storm'd at with shot and shell, / Boldly they rode and well,
/ Into the jaws of Death, / Into the mouth of Hell / Rode the six
hundred." [Thanks to Jacques Demarcq for the bulk of this note.]
233 / 225: Thurston
= Howard
Thurston (1869-1936), American magician, author of My Life of Magic (1929), famous for his
card tricks and elaborate props.
234-235 / 226-228: vier Stück. Drei roubles =
"four prints. Three rubles." fortfahren
= "depart" or "continue, go on." vier . . . Minuten,oder fünf
= "four minutes,or five." I shall spaziergehen
. . . and hierkommen . . . "bitte" = "I shall go for
a walk . . . and come back . . . 'please'." fertig! = "ready!" gut für Passeport. Nicht gut für Fräulein
= "good for a passport. Not good for women" [German].
236 / 229: 1st beyond miracle 34 full = The first
#34 tram that appears is full. See page 208 / 202 and page
448 / 428.
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238 / 230: a stranger = "a granddaughter of Tolstoy" (238/231) = Sofia Tolstaya (1900-1957). She comes to dinner on pages 263 / 254-255. 238 / 230: someone . .
. killed himself = poet Sergei Esenin
(1895-1925), who married his fifth wife Sofia Tolstaya early in 1925. On Link: more Esenin photos. 238 / 231: the spouse of Soviet Russia's foremost prosewriter has been identified by Ronald LeBlanc as "Olga Sergeyevna Shcherbinovskaia, [an] actress at the Maly Theatre" and wife of writer Boris Pilnyak (LeBlanc XVI). LeBlanc and Steve Dodson suggest that the“intricately cinematographic portrait of socialism” that Charles Malamuth "miraculously is translating" is most likely Pilnyak's The Volga Flows to the Caspian Sea (1930). An alternate candidate for the book the Malamuth is translating is Valentin Kataev's novel, Time, Forward! (1932). [Malamuth also translated Kataev's novel A White Sail Gleam (1936) as Peace Is Where the Tempests Blow (Farrar & Rinehart, 1937).] |
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241 / 234: Rose Marie = 1924 operetta with music by Rudolf Friml and Herbert Stothart, libretto by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II. Filmed in 1928, 1936. 242 / 235: pointing. To a photograph = 248-251 / 240-243: Lenin's tomb is shaped like a squat pyramid: the spacing of
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256 / 248: (& was that good enough?did it please her?
When Eugene Lyons and family left
259 / 251: The tragedy is and always will be that most people are unable to express themselves: Malamuth again refers to Emerson, this time from the essay "The Poet." After asserting that "by truth and by his art" the poet "will draw all men sooner or later," Emerson writes: "For all men live by truth, and stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression. Notwithstanding this necessity to be published, adequate expression is rare" (327).
262-263 / 254: Softly unintrudes eyes-nonman =
"drôle homme . . . comme mon mari" = funny man . . . like my husband [French]. When "eyes" is introduced on pages 213-215 / 207-209, we learn that her husband translated
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263 / 254-255: and tall = Sofia Tolstaya comes to dinner. (See 238 / 230-231.)
263 / 255: Assyrian shoots Harem and departing. Charles Malamuth, Joan London, and Cummings take parting photos of each other. At right: the Assyrian's photo of Joan London and 264-265 / 256: The Other Side of the River . . . a very gentle Jew: In the introduction to his new translation of Boris Pilnyak's O'Kei: An American Novel, Ronald LeBlanc identifies the "very gentle Jew" as Peretz Hirschbein (1880-1948). LeBlanc writes: “ 'Gentle,' as Cummings nicknames this passenger, had come to Moscow to collect the two thousand rubles he had earned as royalties for a 'well-known opus,' a three-act Yiddish play of his, titled On the Other Side of the River (1906), that had been staged in the capital" (XXVI). (Thanks to Steve Dodson for this note.) 271 / 263: Hotel Continental? on Karl Marx Street (cf. 276 / 268). Steve Dodson notes that "this street is now Arkhitektora Horodetskoho, and the site of the hotel is now occupied by the Kiev Conservatory." |
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273 / 265: The churches are drowning with stars: Many churches in Kyiv have golden stars painted on the outside of their blue domes. See, for example, the Cathedral of St. Volodymyr.
276 / 268: "Hier?" . . . "wirklich." = "Here?" . . . "really" [German].
277 / 269: a newslesspaper called Truth = Pravda, which means "truth." See https://english.pravda.ru/. Highme Wokker = Jaime Walker = Johnny Walker? Or Hymie Worker?
277 / 269 Später = later. Geld zahlen = counting money [German].
279 / 271: Tad's immortal words = "TAD" or Thomas A. Dorgan (1877-1929), a cartoonist who is credited with inventing or popularizing an incredible number of slang terms and popular expressions, including "dumbbell," "for crying out loud," and "hard-boiled."
280 / 272: gnädige = gracious, kind.
gnädige Frau = Madam [German].
281 / 273: a certain monastery of note
= the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra Monastery.
283 / 274: Cheehoo = Jehu = "A fast
or furious driver [In allusion to 2 Kings ix. 20 'the driving is
like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi, for he driveth furiously']"
(OED). Note correctly spelled Jehu
on page 283 / 275. [Note from Steve Dodson]
285 / 276: "mon camarade--il dit:pas de beelyet"
= my comrade--he said: no ticket [French]. "Kommen Sie" = You come [German].
"wo" = where? [German]. Sie could have felled ich = You could
have felled I.
286 / 277: husteron prot = hysteron proteron = "the latter
[put as] the former" [Greek]. A rhetorical term meaning "syntax
or sense out of normal logical or temporal order" (Lanham 58), a
stylistic device frequently employed by Cummings in EIMI and elsewhere.
288 / 280: "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" = "Do you speak German?" "Wenig,sehr wenig. Sprechen Sie vielleicht . . ." = Little, very little. Do you perhaps speak French or English?" [German]
289 / 281: "Puppschen"
= dolls, puppets [German]. See pages 231-232 / 224.
290 / 281: Muriel Draper
= "wife of Paul Draper the pianist, and mother of Paul Draper,
Jr., who was to become a popular American dancer in the 1930's"
(Kennedy 273). Muriel Draper and Cummings were lovers for a brief
time after his break-up with Elaine. They remained friends until
EIMI appeared, when Muriel, along with other left-leaning
friends, broke with Cummings (Kennedy 360-361).
291 / 282: "Frühstuck"
= Breakfast [German].
292 / 283: "ich glaube" = I believe
[German]. "aber ich bin amerikanisch"
= however I am American [German].
293 / 284: shtoh?qu'est-ce que?--"Was?"
= "What?" in Russian, French, and German. "Schnell!" = Quickly! "nein" = no [German].
294 / 284: "bleiben Sie ruhig" =
remain calm [German].
297 / 288: "und . . . es ist Blau!" = and . . . it is blue! [German]. C notes that the Black Sea is . . . blue.
298 / 288-89: Ritzy . . . Hotel London =
the Londonskaya
Hotel
298 / 289: "endtendu?"
= understood? [French].
298 / 289: dooble-vay-say mangifique and salle de bains . . . = "magnificent WC ["water-closet",
i.e, toilet] and a supreme bathroom--also
a bidet. What an idea: a bidet in hell." [Cummings combines
French and English in this passage.]
299 / 290: "malade"
= sick [French]. 1st glimpse
of hole-in-forehead = Cummings first sees this character,
also called "censor," on page 24.
proud-erect
= the headwaiter. Note that Joan London's term for the non-volunteering
Russian scientist is "proud-erect" (173 / 168). See also the
note to page 442/422.
300 / 291:
301 / 292: "US WUN YANG
303 / 294: Bleiben) = "remaining" [German] = An "unmoving" GPU agent. See pages 293-294 / 284-285.
[June 3, 1931]
EDWARD CUMMINGS CARE
INTOURIST
SAILING
(No doubt Anne wrote "DON'T WORRY," but
the French telegram operator probably misread her penmanship.)
305 / 295: 1 horrorimage = one of the Russian identity passport photographs taken on pages 234-235 / 227-228.
306 / 296: salle à manger = dining
room [French].
307 / 296-97: "perdu"
= lost, done for. "pour
me donner du courage, monsieur" = to give me courage, sir.
"ce soir" = this evening [French].
308 / 298: "J'étais fou:c'est tout" = I was crazy: that's all. "et c'est
seulement Ça que je demande--Travailler!"
= and that's all I ask--to Work!' "et je
313 / 302: Booth Tarkington (1869-1946), American novelist, author of The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and Alice Adams (1921).
314-317 / 304-307: This passage, beginning "soon rain" and ending "smile)--I like everything," appeared in Ezra Pound's Active Anthology (173-178). See Selected Letters (138) and Pound/Cummings (69).
316 / 305: "est-ce que Monsieur parle français?" = Does the gentleman speak French? "non:s'il vous plait;ici" = no: please; here. ohree vawmuh dum = Au revoir, madame [French].
317 / 306: "c'est ça qu'il faut"(she:"Mais c'est tout détruit!détruit!") = "that's what is necessary"(she:"But it's all destroyed!destoyed!") [French].
318 / 307: Morhyeh / Moryeh = "sea" [Russian]. (See page 347 / 334.)
321 /310: merci . . . déjeuner = thanks . . . lunch. soi-disant jardin = so-called garden. "ob,so,loo,mon,NAW" = absolument NON = absolutely NOT [French].
322 / 311: ell nuh foe paw shooshay . . . = Il ne faut pas cherchez l'âme russe par cette musique--chez les orchestres militaires jouer par example seule des sons rien [?] sans education. Prenez le musique ici dans le shawdan c'est bon, pas triste, gai. = It's not correct to look for the Russian soul in this music--in these military bands play for example only nothing sounds [?], without education. Take the music here in the garden--it's good, not sad, gay.
(shrugging)"sais pas. . . = "I don't know. I don't understand the system here. Sad!"
poor quaw voo deet . . . = Pourquoi vous dites triste? Tout est triste. Oui, mais c'est pas le faut de l'âme russe--russe l'âme n'est pas triste. = Why do you say "sad"? Everything is sad. Yes, but it's not the fault of the Russian soul. The Russian soul is not sad.
poo-tet = Peut être.
Et en tout cas il est un
grand plaisir de rencontrer deux hommes intelligents =
Perhaps. And in any case, it is a great pleasure to meet two intelligent
men [French].
322 / 311: the shawdan = the "jardin," or the "summer garden"
of the Londonskaya Hotel.
undolce styl nuovo = not-sweet new style [Italian and English]. Cummings refers to the Italian term dolce stil novo, name given for the new poetic style pioneered by Dante and his contemporaries. See Dante's Purgatorio, Canto 24.
La luxe = Luxury. "excusez-moi,mon ami . . . = "Excuse me, friend. I need to return to our hotel: I have a very important response to write . . . good night. See you tomorrow!" [French].
323 / 312: Don't Operate . . . Unless . . . Reason = text of Cummings' telegram to Anne Barton, asking her not to have an abortion unless medically necessary. See Kennedy 308-309, 313. See pages 445-447 / 425-427.
e for someone's name . . . e for someone's other
name --No doubt the two names are "Edward Estlin."
a for a name = Anne [Barton Cummings].
323 / 312: t for two and two for tea
= lyrics from "Tea for Two,"
a song from the 1925 musical No, No, Nanette with music by
Vincent Youmans and lyrics by Irving Caesar. Most of the song
concerns the two lovers: "Just me for you / And you for me – alone."
However, at the end the lovers contemplate starting a family: "Day
will break and I'll wake / And start to bake a sugar cake / For you
to take for all the boys to see / We'll raise a family / A boy for
you / And a girl for me / Can't you see how happy we would be."
perhaps
perfection--Cummings may be remembering his father’s
sermon on childhood, in which the Reverend Cummings preaches
that every child should be treated as a potential savior of humanity
and hopes that "Every father and every mother may be inspired
with the lofty purpose of giving to this new life the opportunities
for development which shall make the divinity within the child grow
to perfection" (6).
O for
O civilization may also refer to his father's sermon,
which asserts that "all civilization may properly be called
child civilization" (3) because "it is to the babes and sucklings
that humanity is indebted for almost everything that makes life
worth living. It is to infancy—prolonged and helpless infancy—that
humanity is most indebted for all the institutions and all the
ideals that distinguish human beings from brutes, and civilized
men and women from brutal savages" (4).
|
Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque, et quantumst hominum venustiorum! passer mortuus est meae puellae, passer, deliciae meae puellae, |
O Venus and you, Cupids, shed A tear, and all in man that's moved By beauty, mourn. Her sparrow's dead, My darling's darling, whom she loved (trans. James Michie) |
Mourn, ye Graces and Loves,
and all you whom the Graces love. My lady's sparrow is dead, the sparrow my lady's pet, (trans. Harry Walker) |
(For another translation, see “Carmen 3” at
Rudy Negenborn’s Gaius Valerius Catullus site. Cummings
refers again to this poem on page 447 / 426. He also quotes
the first two lines of the poem in the six nonlectures, page 50.)
326 / 315: "meaning which?" as Joe Gould says--Cummings
refers to Joe Gould, noted Greenwich Village street person
and the subject of EEC's poem, "little joe
gould has lost his teeth and doesn't know where" (CP 410).
328 / 317: Arcadia = a beach south
of Odessa.
329 / 318: Julia Sanderson
(1888-1975) = American actress from Springfield, Massachusetts,
who first became famous playing Eileen Cavanaugh in the 1910
Broadway production of the hit musical The Arcadians. Cummings quotes verses
from three separate songs (with words by Arthur Wimperis
and music by Lionel Monckton) in quick succession:
b) harkthe pipesof Panare calling = verse from the song "The Pipes of Pan Are Calling" (1909), sung at the beginning of the play by the Arcadian nymph Sombra.
c) a Short-life and a G-A-Y;one = from a refrain sung by Peter Doody, a jockey who has never won a race. He sings of how he always looks on the bright side: his motto is: “Cheer up, Cully, you’ll soon be dead! / A short life and a gay one!” Jacques Demarcq points out that this song also contains several verses in Franglais like “My accent is / A tout à fait Français one,” which is quite in keeping with Cummings’ rendering of accents as well as his mixing of French and English in the Odessa scenes of the book. [Thanks to Jacques Demarcq for much of the information in this note.]
330 / 319: flowers-in-the-crannied lassies:
a reference to Alfred, Lord Tennyson's short poem: "Flower in
the crannied wall, / I pluck you out of the crannies, / I hold you
here, root and all, in my hand, / Little flower—but if I could understand / What you are,
root and all, and all in all, / I should know what God and
man is" (1869).
331 / 319: Streichholz!yah! = match!
I! [German; Russian]. danke
= thanks [German].
331 / 320: Down. dowN.
332 / 321: fascism equals no
"class struggle":cooperation of "worker" and "capitalist";
"Mussolini certainly is a great politician"
"nous" = "we" the Italians "need a strong man because" whisper "there were disturbances"
dwarfish "comme" . . . "ça" = like that.
"je comprend[s]" = I understand.
"rien,eh?" = "nothing, eh?" "yes" he shrugs "they are used to it."
334 / 322: besser als ich = better
than I. Zimmer = room. zehn Minuten = ten minutes. a "Herr" = a gentleman [German].
337 / 324: the Polish general = Lucjan Żeligowski
(1865-1947) commander of the 4th Polish Rifle Division who,
with the help of Greek and French troops, secured Odessa against
the Red Army from December 1918 to May 1919.
338 / 326: buzzjoo
mushyoo = Bonjour, Monsieur [French].
Munchausen = Karl
Friedrich von Münchhausen (1720-1797),
a German baron who served in the Russian military. After returning
to
339 / 327: to death
rededicated = Noo has gone back to reading his detective
novels after telling Cummings the "bad noos!"
340 / 328: Voo
zate moan ami
. . . = "Vous êtes
mon ami. . .
. Je fais tout pour
vous" = You are my friend. . . I do everything
for you."
341 / 328: well,mushyoo--com on saw vaw? = Well, Monsieur, comment ça va?" = Well, Monsieur,
how's it going? maymush
yoo!ellnuh foepaw . . . = Mais,
Monsieur! il ne faut pas être comme ça; tout va bien, comprennez? = But
Monsieur, don't be like that; everything's fine, understand?
Maw shuh Say! = Moi,
je
342 / 329: "baw poor luh sontay" = Bon pour le santé = Good for health.
343 / 330: "mushyoo!voo voolay nawjay . . ." = Monsieur, vous voulez nagez? Bon, bon pour le santé! Très bon pour vous! Non? c'est dommage Monsieur. Alors, vous gardez nos habits, n'est-ce pas? Oui?--merci, merci beaucoup" = Monsieur, do you want to swim? Good, good for health! Very good for you! Well, you can guard our clothes, no? Thanks, thanks a lot.
343 / 331: MONJAY! = Mangez! = Eat!
344 / 331: "salute!" = cheers! [Italian].
"Monjay!--seel voo Play MonJay!"
= Mangez!--s'il vous plait, Mangez!" = Eat!--if you please Eat!" "merci" = thank you.
344 / 332: "ma maison serait la votre"
= my house would be yours. "eh bien:permettez
moi--" = good: then allow me--. "écoutez, monsieur" = listen,
sir.
345 / 332-333: "Entrez" = Enter! "Un brave homme" = An honest,
worthy man. "maintenant je vais
à ma chambre,entendre la musique" = now I'm going to my room,
to listen to music.
348 / 335: Et"je suis au" . . . "bout de mes" = And"I am at the" . . . "end of my" MONJAY! = "Mangez!" = Eat! BOOVAY! = "Buvez!" = Drink! "ONGKORE!" = Encore! = Again!
349 / 335: REEAY = Riez
= Laugh.
350 / 337: it's français as well as russe = it's French as well as Russian. mais([re]'garder moi ça) = but(I see that). (allons vite) = let's go quickly. demoiselles = young ladies. moi j'ai no mallet = me I have no mallet. réponse de Moscou = response from Moscow. paraît qu'aujourdui's a national holiday = it appears that today's a national holiday.
351 / 338: Selah
= Hebrew word of uncertain meaning that appears at the end
of some psalms in the Bible.
Small's
355 / 341: the Last? = Is this my last day in Russia? a certain Florentine's enormous dream = Dante's Inferno.
358 / 343: "non" . . . "mais je crois que
tout va bien enfin" = "no" . . . "but I believe that everything
will work out well in the end"
358 / 344: "je Vais --TRAVAILLER!"
= i am Going to
364 / 350: shwoddy
veev = joie de vivre = joy of life
[French].
370 / 355: FrANZ
MERing = Franz Mehring (1846-1919), "who was associated with
Rosa Luxembourg and who wrote a biography of Karl Marx" (Farley
101).
|
372
/ 357: "pourquoi?" je demande
. . . "c'est comme ça,eh?" . . . "nous sommes cinq" =
"why?" I ask . . . "so that’s how it is, eh?" . . . "there are five
of us [in our cabin]" [French]. 378 / 363: Mormugão = In March 1921, Cummings and John Dos Passos sailed from 379 / 364: concessionaire de crayons = one with a pencil concession = Chinesey = Armand Hammer, who, among his other businesses, ran a pencil factory in Russia. [Photo of poster from EnglishRussia.com]
383 / 368: ore-dove = hors d'oeuvres.
|
392 / 375: pour ainsi dire = so to speak [French].
395 / 378: Eddie(bouncing eyefully)Cantoirsh--the dude's friend looks like Eddie Cantor (1892-1964), a comedian, actor, singer, and dancer who debuted on Broadway with the Ziegfeld Follies in 1917. In the 1930s much of his career was in radio and movies. He was known for his comically exaggerated eye rolling.
396 / 379: par ici,Ici,ICI! = this way, Here, HERE! nous trois! = we three! ViEnS!i-c-i-- = CoMe h-e-r-e-- Arrêtez! = Stop! [French].
398 / 381: vous savez,on VOLE ici! = you know, they STEAL here! oui,ils sont des sales types ici = yes, there are some unsavory types here [French].
402 / 385: Ilah! = Allah! See page 299/290: "ilah preserve our spirit!"
406 / 388: a street called Payrah = Grande Rue de Pera (now Istiklal Caddesi), at that time the major street in the European section. "Pera" is also a name for the district of Istanbul where Cummings' hotel is, across the
407 / 389:
407 / 389: TOSCA = the brand name of Cummings' new watch.
410 / 391: Harry Greb = middleweight boxer (1894-1926).
413-414 / 395: hugE /ness = Hagia_Sophia. Cummings gives his reactions to the interior of the vast structure before he tells of arriving and entering it.
415 / 396: . . . & else = Cummings' description
of the Blue
Mosque.
415 / 396: Enter (city:a.Dollcity.
EEC visits the Grand Bazaar,
a very large market enclosed in arcades. Compare this scene with
the markets in
418 / 399: taxim = Taksim, a nightclub district. poules = "hens," French slang for prostitutes. See page 15.
423 / 404: l'Enclave de Karaghadge
= the Turkish enclave within Thrace; "Karaghadge" or Karagatch is
Karaağaç, a suburb of Edirne (Adrianople) at the border with Greece.
[Cf. 430 / 411 as well: the enclosedness
of Karaghadge.] Thanks to Steve Dodson for this note.
427 / 408: subito! = quickly! [Italian]. je me rase maintenant. . . = I will shave now. There are books.
428 / 409: paraît
there's pas d'argent for lunch
= it appears there's no money for lunch. a trifle the Mille Et Un? = a trifle
Thousand and One [Nights].
|
429 / 410: Captain Bonavita
= Jack Bonavita (1866-1917), animal
trainer who appeared with Frank Bostock's
animal show headquartered at the Dreamland amusement park on Coney
Island from 1904-11. Bonavita
worked in films from 1913 to 1917, when he died from injuries suffered
in a polar bear attack. Bostock:Frank,"The Animal / King" = Frank C. Bostock (d. 1912), the author (with Ellen Velvin) of The Training of Wild Animals (New York, 1903). Bostock's "Great Animal Arena" toured America before finding a more permanent headquarters at the Dreamland amusement park. At right: Bostock's building at Dreamland (note the elephants). As Cummings indicates, one or another Diavolo performer was likely also billed as "Porthos Leaps the Gap over Nine Elephants" (429/410). |
|
430 / 410: Forepaugh . . . The Only Living = this circus advertised "THE ONLY HERD OF 7 PERFORMING ELEPHANTS OWNED BY ANY
430 / 410-411: for / -sitan et haec / olim = "forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit" (Virgil, Aeneid, I, 203) = "Some day, perhaps, remembering even this / Will be a pleasure" (Fitzgerald 10). Cummings' father quoted this line in a letter he wrote to his son in 1917 when
430 / 411:
430 / 411: mai and the chevaux de bois & death: Cummings refers to his daughter Nancy riding the wooden horses on a merry-go-round in Paris. The word death most probably alludes to the anguish occasioned by the break-up of his marriage to Elaine in 1924. See notes to pages 131 / 129 and 443 / 423.
430 / 411: You es es are . . .
= USSR RSVP
430 / 411 the enclosedness of Karaghadge
432 / 412: pavots = poppies [French].
432 / 413: esti = εστι = "it is" [Greek]. This is another form of the verb είμί, "eimi" ("I am"), the title of the book.
433 / 414: "c'est la
vie,et non point la mort,qui divise l'âme du corps" = "It is life,
and not death, that divides the soul from the body" (Tel quel 55). The line is from a collection
of aphorisms and apercus called Choses tues (1928, 1932). This
volume was translated as Asides
and later collected in Tel quel
(1941). In the standard English translation, the quote may
be found in Valéry’s Analects
(41).
434 / 415: clefs = keys. bien = good [French].
435 / 416: der-Zug = the-train [German].
pink(cochons! = pink(pigs!
[French]. spelled à la russe
Sophia = Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, spelled in the
Cyrillic script ("hell's / alphabet"). . . . a piece of string Hohda Nyet = see
page 92/90.
436 / 417: und Zeit = and time. in Zeit-[ungen] = in maga-[zines]
[German]. It is these maga-[zines] that "flaunt / nudegals all
over the plat(And How) / form" (437).
437 / 417-18:
437 / 418: NOWTHE nowTHENthenNOWing it… HERET
HERETH HERETHE HERETHER…--Vladimir Feshchenko suggests
that "Cummings may be anagramming the Cyrillic spelling of the Russian
word “НЕТ” [nyet] meaning
NO, which is a key word of the Soviet unworld
438 / 419: he who knoweth the eternal is comprehensive
= the indented words in quotes are from section 16 of Lao Tzu's
Tao Te Ching. On
lice--see pp. 414 / 395 and 426 / 407. Cummings may be remembering or referring to the following passage in chapter V of James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: "The life of his body, illclad, illfed, louseeaten, made him close his eyelids in a sudden spasm of despair: and in the darkness he saw the brittle bright bodies of lice falling from the air and turning often as they fell. Yes; and it was not darkness that fell from the air. It was brightness:
Brightness falls from the air
He had not even remembered rightly Nash's line." (254)
--χαίρετε-- = chairété [kai-ray-tay] = "rejoice, greetings, welcome" [Greek].
439 / 420: "OW rfathuz nmothus . . ." = "Our fathers and mothers didn't have them and you have."
441 / 421: chorneeyeh(nicht Blau)moryeh
= black(not blue)sea [Russian, German, Russian]. (See
pages 297/288, 318/307, and 347/334.)
442 / 422: ecco! = Behold!" [Italian].
Lachaise = sculptor
Gaston Lachaise (1882-1935), known for large bronze
female nudes. Cummings and Lachaise were good
friends. See Cummings' essay, "Gaston Lachaise" (Miscellany 13-24). See also
"The
Vigorous Venus: An Examination of Gaston Lachaise."
makes
manprouderect = Malamuth says that the non-volunteering
Russian scientist is "proud-erect" (as opposed to "proud-narrow")
(173 / 168). (See note for page 100/98.) Cummings uses the same term
to describe the headwaiter at the Londonskaya Hotel (299 / 290).
man-à-la-chaise = "man as a chair" = Rodin's Thinker.
442 / 422: "excusez!" . . . ". . . j'
443 / 423: et les bat . . . eaux
= "and the [sail]boats" [French].
443 / 423: “Créateur du ciel et terre, . .
. comment aurait-il des enfants, . . . lui qui n’a pas de compagne?"
= "Creator of the sky and earth, how could he have children,
he who has no companion?" [French]. Though Cummings' Preface
(xxxi / xvii) implies that this is a quote from Paul Valéry, it
is actually from the Koran, Sura 6, verse 101. The quote appears
in the context of debunking the notion that God could have children.
gui . . . gnols = puppet shows [French].
443 / 423: ago week A = these three
words are repeated five times to indicate the five weeks in EIMI. See the note to page 91/89.
443 / 423: oga = "ago" spelled backwards.
Five sections in this last chapter (each beginning with "oga"
or "ago" and each representing one week) comprise what Cummings
called a
445 / 425: alias demain SVP / for oggi:alias
caldo;equals Italia = "alias
tomorrow s'il vous plait [if you please] / for today:alias hot;equals
dolce . . . fa[r] niente = "it is sweet to do nothing" [Italian].
445 / 425: (enter white;by child pridefully--see page 209 / 203.
445 / 425: (or am I dead)--see page 315/304.
446 / 426: if only something happens if only--see page 371/356.
446 / 426: (Rain making alive) --see pages 316 / 305-306.
446 / 426: nyet / imposs / can't --see page 355/341, 392/375.
446 / 426: spelling it = spelling out the word "Operate" as he does on page 323 / 312. See the notes to pages 323 / 312 and 447 / 426 (Lugete,).
446 / 426: I like everything = EEC's parting words when leaving his Russian teacher's mother in Odessa to go back to his hotel in the rain (317/307). Compare with his statement that he likes "shining things" (
& I supposed that I had known . . . of a than any universe older faceless;and such eyes,flowers of complete . . . --One word is left off the end of each quotation: "& I supposed that I had known agony" and "flowers of complete pain" (391/375).
|
Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque, et quantumst hominum venustiorum! passer mortuus est meae puellae, passer, deliciae meae puellae, |
Mourn, ye Graces and
Loves, |
Venus and you, Cupids, shed
A tear, and all in man that's moved By beauty, mourn. Her sparrow's dead, My darling's darling, whom she loved (trans. James Michie) |
(For another translation, see “Carmen 3” at Rudy Negenborn’s Gaius Valerius Catullus site.) The reference to Catullus, as well as the imagery of rain and the words god damned on this and the previous page(s), point the reader back to the end of the "Thurs. June 4" chapter, where Cummings discovers in his pocket "a sketch for a telegram--sent?today,sent; this / : mourning" (323 / 312). The telegram [Don't Operate . . . Unless . . . Reason] asks his wife Anne Barton not to have an abortion unless medically necessary. Cummings is still mourning the lost, doomed child. See the notes to pages 323/312 and 305/295. See also Kennedy, Dreams 308-309, 313.
447 / 427: no,more Sunday = literally, this particular Sunday will end. Cummings repeats the word "Sunday" five times with various capitalizations to indicate the five previous Sundays in EIMI. See the notes on Sunday for pages 61/60 and
450 / 429: "ils ont dévalisé ma malle / !" = "they have ransacked my trunk!"
"ils m'embêtent!" = "they're bothering me!"
450 / 430: "!J'ai Payé Deux Cent Cinquante FRANCS!" = "I've paid 250 Francs!"
Works Cited
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The Correspondence of Ezra Pound and E. E. Cummings.
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Hickerson. Gods of the Lightning,
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- Arthur, Anthony. Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair. New York: Random House, 2006.
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- Bassow, Whitman.
The
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- Cummings, Edward. Childhood: A Sermon. Boston: Geo. H. Ellis, n.d.
- Cummings, E. E. Complete Poems,
1904-1962. Ed George J. Firmage.
- ---. "Gaston Lachaise." The Dial February 1920. Rpt.
E. E. Cummings: A Miscellany Revised.
Ed. George J. Firmage.
- —. "The Adult, the Artist
and the Circus." Vanity Fair
(October 1925). Rpt. E. E. Cummings:
A Miscellany Revised. Ed. George J. Firmage.
New York: October House, 1965. 109-114.
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- ---. EIMI.
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- ---. Selected Letters of E. E. Cummings.
Ed. F.W. Dupee
and George Stade.
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Ed. Thomas P. Riggio and James L.W. West III. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania
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Eastman, Max. "The Cult of Unintelligibility." Harper's (April, 1929): 632-639. Rpt. in The Literary Mind: Its Place in an Age of Science. 1931. - ---. "The Tendency
Toward Pure Poetry." Harper's (July, 1929):
222-230. Rpt. in The Literary Mind: Its
Place in an Age of Science. 1931.
- ---. "Poets Talking
to Themselves." Harper's (October, 1931):
563-574. Rpt. in The Literary Mind: Its
Place in an Age of Science. 1931.
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New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963.
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2nd. ed. Ed. William H. Gilman.
- "Esenin, S. A."
Encyclopedia of Soviet Writers.
SovLit.Net. Accessed
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