Chapter 7 part 2
So the delectable mountains are the Wanderer, the Zulu, and Surplice.
The following is from
http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/Olsen1.html
The Wanderer (a gypsy) is an archetypal figure whose exterior presence communicates his spiritual qualities. C. focuses on his face as a mirror of his inner state, "finely formed and almost fluent," which "contained a beauty and dignity which, as I first saw it, annihilated the surrounding tumult without an effort" (73). The Wanderer, by his sheer existence, breaks down the barriers between self and the exterior.
The Zulu, already mentioned, also has "a face at once fluent and angular, expressionless and sensitive" (183). More than the Wanderer, the Zulu encompasses the dilemma of describing the unknowable. "He could not, of course, write any language whatever...the secret of his means of complete and unutterable communication lay in that very essence which I have only defined as an IS" (173-174). The Zulu imparts meaning through a silent emission, a passively active communication of human essence.
Surplice and Jean Le Negre express themselves through inarticulate sounds and represent the reverse of the Wanderer and the Zulu's passivity. They actively pursue dramatic roles as the [end page 84] fool and the clown respectively, in order to disguise their true natures. Instead of silent radiation, both characters emit their unknowable essence through pure sound.
The personality of Jean Le Negre, the epitome of this group of characters, is a necessary expression of his essential self, "the bright child of [his] mind" (214). Jean's dramatic dialogues (in French) demand all of Cummings' stylistic flexibility: "il est Fort! [strong] M'sieu Jean,c'est un GEANT" (210). Jean fills the entire space of the room (and the sentence) with his presence. Like his body, Jean's voice inspires C. through its physicality: "His use of language was sometimes exalted fibbing, sometimes the purely picturesque. He courted above all the sounds of words, more or less disdaining their meaning" (199). In Cummings' restructuring of reality, Jean represents complete freedom--pure sound as an expression of self not restricted by any social or linguistic system.
Jean forms the pinnacle of C.'s spiritual ascent, as he transcends the limitations of words as a restrictive system. In the same manner, Cummings rejects preconceived meanings, as present in the rules of grammar and punctuation, genre forms (autobiography, fiction, or documentary), given names, the definition of words--any form which encases human communication. Cummings reshapes the nature of his prose into a flexible tool for the artistic expression of human divinity. Cummings' conceptualization of linguistic concerns corresponds to Saussure's idea of difference. As Jameson writes, "content is everything, and it is the feeling of the native speaker which remains in the last resort the test of the presence or absence of distinctive features" (17). Although Jameson refers simply to distinctions between linguistic signs, Cummings points to the differences between nationalities and ideologies, and the need to express the evasive but primary spiritual component of humanity.