Chapter 9: ZOO-LOO
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Ch 9: ZOO-LOO
- MaryLupin
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This is from: http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/ERoom.html
(168) Zoo-Loo —W. Todd Martin points out that Cummings may be punning on the word "Zoo" here: "In an essay entitled 'The Secret of the Zoo Exposed,' Cummings discusses the significance of the animals in the zoo, but he is careful to point out that most misinterpret the word zoo:"
Whoever takes the trouble to look it up in a dictionary will find that "zoo" comes from the Greek zoon, meaning "animal." The misapprehension that zoos have to do with animals would appear to be universal. Actually, however, the syllable "zoo" originates in that most beautiful of all verbs, zoo, "I am alive"—hence a zoo, by its derivation, is not a collection of animals but a number of ways of being alive. As Hamlet might have put it: "to zoo or not to zoo, that is the question." ("The Secret of the Zoo Exposed" 174)
(168) Zoo-Loo —W. Todd Martin points out that Cummings may be punning on the word "Zoo" here: "In an essay entitled 'The Secret of the Zoo Exposed,' Cummings discusses the significance of the animals in the zoo, but he is careful to point out that most misinterpret the word zoo:"
Whoever takes the trouble to look it up in a dictionary will find that "zoo" comes from the Greek zoon, meaning "animal." The misapprehension that zoos have to do with animals would appear to be universal. Actually, however, the syllable "zoo" originates in that most beautiful of all verbs, zoo, "I am alive"—hence a zoo, by its derivation, is not a collection of animals but a number of ways of being alive. As Hamlet might have put it: "to zoo or not to zoo, that is the question." ("The Secret of the Zoo Exposed" 174)
I've always found it rather exciting to remember that there is a difference between what we experience and what we think it means.
- MaryLupin
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Here in this chapter, I think, lays the core intent of the book. “And if I had one-third the command over the written word that he had over the unwritten and the unspoken—not merely that; over the unspeakable and the unwritable—God knows this history would rank with the deep art of all time. It may be supposed that he was master of an intricate and delicate system whereby ideas were conveyed through signs of various sorts. On the contrary. He employed signs more or less, but they were in every case extraordinarily simple. The secret to his means of complete and unutterable communication lay in the very essence which I have only defied as IS; ended and began with an innate and unlearnable control over all which one can only describe as the homogeneously tactile.”
A sort of grace, but one of the body and not of the “higher” functions.
A sort of grace, but one of the body and not of the “higher” functions.
I've always found it rather exciting to remember that there is a difference between what we experience and what we think it means.