Saffron and Mary:

Thank you both: Spic and Span is in common usage here.

Which is why I thought Cummings was being criptic. I do too many crossword puzzles, obviously!

You are both so clever. This is going to be a good discussion and I am going to follow it closely.....but I expect I will only post now and again to ask a question....

I'm still going to check my Brewers - Origins of phrases just to make sure that the word 'spic' wasn't in circulation then.

So I've read the first chapter and I noticed a few things. The title "Begin a Pilgrimage" gives some guidance on how to read what happens. If this is to be a pilgrimage then the pilgrim (e e) is heading out to cleanse his "soul," to reconnect with his sense of identity, perhaps to expiate some "sins."

He is in a high humour, not taking anything seriously. He has been battling with A and so is glad to get away from him. Yet the reader soon gets the sense that where he is heading is probably going to be far worse. So far it reminds me of a slightly skewed Christian in The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. I mean Christian is freaked out and the character Cummings is joking around so things are different. Also it is a secular world that Cummings has drawn so is this a secular salvation being offered?

I mean the deus ex machina "liberates" him from the banal and does it dressed in a "grey-blue uniform". The unwarranted plot device and a god from a machine. Both senses resonate here.

If Cummings had The Pilgrim's Progress in mind then his "sin" (which knowledge for Christian has come from reading the Bible), then the character Cummings is weighted down by his sense of the worthlessness of his current world. That makes his hometown (Christian's City of Destruction) the battlefields of WWI. It also makes the deus in the grey-blue uniform the Evangelist. Cool.

Not that I think this is a strict retelling. But it might be that the general destination of the character Cummings might be illuminated by the idea of the city of light, the Celestial City.

I still think that cummings was being criptic and very clever with those words, and using the word spic as a slur from the word hispanic.

In American literature, the word has been dated to around 1916, when its first known written usage was by Ernest Peixotto in Our Hispanic Southwest, page 102.[1] One of the first recorded usages of the word was in Ladies' Home Journal, on September 17, 1919, when it wrote: "The Marines had been [...] silencing the elusive 'spick' bandit in Santo Domingo". Its history before that time, however, is less certain. It was also used by William Faulkner in Knight's Gambit (1946), page 137, when he said: "I don't intend that a fortune-hunting Spick shall marry my mother." It was earlier used by F. Scott Fitzgerald in Tender Is the Night (1934), page 275, although in dialog: "'He's a spic!' he said. He was frantic with jealousy."

Penelope wrote:In American literature, the word has been dated to around 1916...

The book was published in 1922 and, of course, written sometime before that. So while it is technically possible that he used the word in that way (given the earliest date you cite), what in the text makes you think a Hispanic racial slur works to explicate the text?

I don't think he liked uniforms. I don't like uniforms either, so I am probably biased.

But the man in question was wearing a very tidy French uniform and I just got the feeling, from the phrase, that the man might have been of 'Latin' appearance. I thought cummings was being a trifle scathing, of people wearing 'spick and span' uniforms whilst not having very 'spick and span' ethics.

giselle wrote:
I copied this ee cummings poem from the “poem of the moment” thread because I wanted to connect his use of scattered language in poetry with his prose writing. In particular, I think the meaning of cummings writing, both in poetry and prose may be found in this unusual writing style. The lack of coherent sentences, the broken phrases, the splintered and fractured, the odd and unexpected or unnecessary twists of language force us to read each word and then go back at times to review what we have read and try to decipher his meaning.

Nice parallel, Giselle. I do think that understanding or at least having a sense of Cummings' poetry helps in reading The Enormous Room.

... but a tentative that is about the human condition, that in an age of rapid change (early to mid 20C) that humanity is moving forward in a tentative, unsure way, both individually and en masse.

I think Cummings style of writing conveys the confusion, misunderstanding and uncertainty of the chaotic situation he found himself in. I also think that he captures the gap between thinking/internal thought processes and actual spoken words.

Cummings frequent, scattered use of French, creates not only a sense of authenticity but a sense of broken-ness and lack of direction, as if the language itself doesn’t know where it is going.

Yes! I think the inclusion of French intensifies the sense of confusion and vulnerability Cummings & B at this point in the story.

It is interesting to me that this book is a fiction and yet Cummings uses his own person as the main character.

MaryLupin wrote: ...He (Cummings) is breaking the bonds between symbols and their traditional meaning. He is trying to shatter language so that experience can once again shine through.

I fits with what I know about the time too. Cultural icons, words, symbols of order no longer carried meaning after WWI. There were all those writers fighting the same kind of battle with tradition and the loss of meaning. '

Thanks, Mary, for posting the actual SUMMARY OF GROUNDS FOR ARREST. I have been thinking about your post. It made me think of the Dada Art movement.

From Wikipedia:

Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zürich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922.[1] The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works.

Saffron wrote:It made me think of the Dada Art movement.

I think you're right about the connection. Not that he was into Dada but that the same things that motivated Cummings to reject his civilization also motivated the Dadaists. That war had some pretty profound effects on western notions of self, of culture, art and religion as well. The horror of it, the extremity of the violence broke our surety. When that happened we began a pretty wide-ranging effort to make some sense of it. Dada was one way of speaking about the absurdity that WWI made evident. Surrealism was another. One big difference, I think between Cummings and Dada and Surrealists was Cummings' belief in religion. While he thought that we had gone away from the truth of his religion (Christianity), he didn't think we should ditch it but move ahead into being "truly" faithful and "actual" practitioners. In that way he reminds me of T.S. Eliot.

Here is a copy of Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress." I find it very helpful in understanding Cummings' intent.

http://www.classicallibrary.org/bunyan/ ... /index.htm

Thanks for the link, Mary. I was thinking of going to the library to check it out, figuring it would be helpful.