SOME LITERARY INFLUENCES IN THE SELECTED
POEMS OF EDWARD ESTLIN CUMMINGS


Anna Boniszewska

Thesis presented in part fulfilment of the requirements
for the degree of Master of Arts at the Jagiellonian
University of Cracow.

Written under the supervision of dr Graz.yna Branny.

Table of contents:

INTRODUCTION . . . . . Page 3

CHAPTER 1 :
E. E. Cummings as an Heir of the Romantic Tradition . . . . . Page 8

CHAPTER 2 :
The Elements of Realism in the Poetry of E. E. Cummings . . . . . Page 34

CHAPTER 3 :
The Avant-garde Roots in the Poetry of E. E. Cummings . . . . . Page 57

CONCLUSION . . . . . Page 84

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . Page 88

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INTRODUCTION


Edward Estlin Cummings1 remains virtually unknown to the Polish reader. Both his figure and oeuvre deserve more attention than the critics, as well as the editors and publishers, have devoted to them. Even the recent edition of his poetry translated by Stanisl/aw Baran'czak has not changed the situation2. This may be caused by the fact that the trails allegedly blazed by him are regarded by some as having been trodden a long time ago. Despite that, his poetry still finds many devoted admirers all over the world while the originality of his style enchants even, or maybe especially, a demanding reader.

1 There is disagreement among the critics as to the spelling of E. E. Cummings' name. One of the versions accepts lower case letters, and such spelling can be found in numerous critical sources. Norman Friedman, in the preface to his book entitled e. e. cummings. The Growth of a Writer provides readers with the information that Cummings "had his name put legally into lower case, and in his later books the titles and his name were always in lower case". Eve Triem in her study of E. E. Cummings published in Six American Poets quotes the following story, "While Cummings was in graduate school he helped to found the Harvard Poetry Society. He and some of his friends in the society put together Eight Harvard Poets (published in 1917). In it, by a printer's error, according to one story, Cummings' name and the "I's" as well were set in lowercase letters. He seized upon this as a device congenial to him and later had "e. e. cummings" legalised as the signature to his poems".

On the other hand, however, the Society of E. E. Cummings in the United States, rectifies this information as false. Recently, on one of the internet pages (*)devoted to E. E. Cummings in the text written by Norman Friedman the following information appears that seems to finally settle this question:

    As we may have mentioned, due to the kindness of D. Jon Grossman's son, Jerome, we have the complete file of Jon's correspondence with Cummings. On making a preliminary tour through these letters, we found Jon preparing a French edition of his translations of Cummings' poetry, and on 27th February 1951 he wrote to the poet: "are you E. E. Cummings, ee. cummings or what? (so far as the title page is concerned)wd u title page all in lower case ?" The poet replied on 1st March 1951:"E. E. Cummings, unless your printer prefers E. E. Cummings/ titlepage up to you;but may it not be tricksy svp[. ]" That seems definite to us: may it not be tricksy! For a poet who took such pains with typography as part of his poetic technique, the styling of his name cannot be an indifferent matter. It may not be that a poet can control his publisher's decision concerning title page and lettering on the binding - I know to my sorrow that I could not do so when my books on Cummings were published-but it is certainly the case that Cummings was just short of obsessive when it came to proofreading the galleys of his own writings inside of their covers and title pages. That the popular image has it that he is a `lowercase poet' certainly cannot be a reason, for he was also obsessive about not being reduced or stereotyped or sloganized by `mostpeople'". (On page 49 of my thesis in the footnotes the term "mostpeople" is explained).(*http://www.Gvsu.edu/english/Cummings/caps2.html)

Therefore, I have decided to use capital letters when spelling his name throughout my thesis. The exceptions to this rule are the quotations from the books whose authors chose the lower case option.

2 e. e.cummings, 150 wierszy (Wydawnictwo Literackie, Krako'w 1994).

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Edward Estlin Cummings was born in 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Although he is primarily known for his poetry, he was also a fine artist, playwright and novelist. He also wrote tales for children, art criticism, and even a libretto for a ballet.

His father was a Harvard professor and a respected Unitarian minister, so E. E. Cummings was brought up in a family where culture, religion and traditional values played an important role. E. E. Cummings himself graduated from Harvard and it was in the Harvard Monthly that in 1912 he published his first poems. Thorough education he received at the university defies the common, though unjustified opinion, that his poetry is a mere violation of the traditional poetic rules, resulting from his ignorance of such rules. The poet himself admits in Nonlecture Three: "Officially, Harvard presented me with a smattering of languages and sciences; with a glimpse of Homer, a more than a glimpse of Aeschylus Sophocles Euripides and Aristophanes, and a deep glance at Dante and Shakespeare"3. He also took a course in poetic composition. The Harvard years were important also due to the friendships E. E. Cummings formed at that time. The names of his friends include great writers, as well as the people who influenced his artistic development by introducing him to the fields and aspects of art unknown to him before. In this context, the name of S. Foster Damon seems to be of special import. Charles Norman mentions that he heard E. E. Cummings say: "Practically everything I know about painting and poetry came to me through Damon"4.

It is also noteworthy that he chose modern trends in art as the subject of his Commencement Address, the aim of which was "to sketch briefly the parallel developments of the New Art in the fields of painting and sculpture, music, and literature"5. This interest in the overlapping of various forms of art was to remain a characteristic feature of all his work.

3 Charles Norman, E. E. Cummings. A Biography (E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York, 1967), 31.

4 Ibid. , 38.

5 Ibid. , 41.

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The time of his graduation coincided with the First World War and E. E. Cummings took part in it as a driver in the American Red Cross. This experience was to leave its stamp on the young poet, for it led to his imprisonment. The Enormous Room published in 1922 is an account of how it happened, and how it changed his worldview. The whole incident was crucial to his future development, not only as an artist. The main interest of the book revolves around the discovery and experience of freedom as opposed to life within society with its institutions, which serve to control man and make him subservient. He celebrates the victory of an individual in his clash with the society, which uses all its tools to manipulate him. E. E. Cummings concentrates on how the prison conditions led to his gradual discovery of the importance of an individual. This discovery remained of paramount importance to all his works. A special quality of the book lies in the fact that Cummings experiences freedom and happiness in prison, in spite of the tough conditions, and he finds the people there more respectable than those who are apparently free, which seems to defy the natural order and common expectations.

After the war he came back to France repeatedly and even lived there for some time. It was important inasmuch as Paris was the cradle of modern trends in world art, and E. E. Cummings' works show a strong link to the Avant-garde. Although he himself always denied having been influenced by the Avant-garde, in the sense that he had always insisted on all his poetic experiments being solely his own invention, in my opinion one does not contradict the other: E. E. Cummings could have created his own style independently yet at the same time simultaneously to other trends.

His artistic connections are much wider notwithstanding. His poems and drawings appeared in The Dial, the magazine reminiscent, in the origin and the content, of the 19th century periodical of the Transcendentalists, which is a very telling detail when considered in the context of E. E. Cummings' artistic credo.

The following years bring further publications of his works, poems as well as other genres, along with awards acknowledging his firm position among

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twentieth century American writers. At the moment of death in 1962 he was considered to be one of the head figures among American avant-garde artists.

His output includes numerous volumes of poetry: Tulips and Chimneys (1923), & (1925), is 5 (1926), ViVa (1931), No Thanks (1935), New Poems (1938), 50 Poems (1940), 1x1 (1944), Xaipe (1950), 95 Poems (1958). He also wrote four plays: Him (1927), Anthropos: The Future of Art (1930), No Title (1930) and Santa Claus (1946); two books of prose: Eimi (1933), The Enormous Room (1922), a libretto for a ballet entitled Tom (1935). Additionally, the lectures he delivered at Harvard University as a Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry were published under the title i: six nonlectures (1953). His other works include essays, fairytales, letters and an introduction to a collection of Krazy Kat comic strips, as well as an album showing his paintings, entitled CIOPW (1931). He also displayed his pictures at several exhibitions in various American cities.

In spite of the numerous accusations E. E. Cummings had to face throughout his life (the majority of which were unjustified), no one denies his merit of being one of the most innovative of all American artists of this century. However, as it has already been stated, his originality and novelty go hand in hand with his respect for tradition as well as its thorough knowledge. Only a well-educated reader is able to appreciate fully the poet's erudition. E. E. Cummings treated tradition as a foundation, the starting point and a point of reference rather than an antithesis of his own works, hence the experimental form of his poems results from rather than opposes literary conventions. E. E. Cummings tried not so much to fight tradition as to develop it, so that not only words but also the form would be meaningful. His innovative poetry constitutes protest against the language that no longer performs its primary function of rendering the reality, which, according to him, is the poet's task. Although his views are relatively uncomplicated, it does not mean that they are simplistic. He was often accused of lack of sophistication and naivety, but these accusations seem to be based merely on the general conviction that reliance on feelings and

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emotions, which E. E. Cummings advocates in his poetry, is simplistic.

As it has already been stated, E. E. Cummings' works show the traces of various influences. Both Stanisl/aw Baran'czak in his introduction to a collection of E. E. Cummings' poems 150 wierszy and Barry A. Marks in his book entitled E. E. Cummings take special note of the place that Realism and Formalism occupy in his poetry. Norman Friedman, on the other hand, discusses Romantic elements in his poems. At the same time, all the critics emphasise the influence modernism had on the form of his poems.

It is my aim in this thesis to trace down the above mentioned trends and discuss their employment in the poetry of E. E. Cummings. I would also like to demonstrate how their combined influence adds to the emergence of E. E. Cummings' distinctive style.

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E. E. CUMMINGS AS AN HEIR OF THE ROMANTIC TRADITION


Page 8

The presence of the Romantic traits in the poetry of E. E. Cummings has already been pointed out by Norman Friedman, one of E. E. Cummings' admirers and an authority on the poet, who concluded a book on him in the following way: "There can be no doubt, then, that the development of E. E. Cummings as a writer reveals him here, at the apex of his career, as one of our most serious and distinguished representatives of the Romantic tradition"6. Charles Norman, the author of E. E. Cummings' biography, points to the same influence in the following passage:

    Winfield Townley Scott, poet an onetime literary editor of the Providence Journal, introduced Cummings at Brown University. He told me that Cummings had liked his remarks, particularly a reference to Thoreau: "I said we New Englanders should claim Cummings as a regional poet," Scott wrote me. "Not in the accustomed sense, but in an intellectual sense. I quoted Emerson, `Give all to love', and Thoreau, `Institutions are like snowdrifts: they occur where there is a lull in the wind.' There, I said, if I understand Cummings' poetry at all, there are two sides of his coin: love and rebellion. He is a direct heir and descendant of the great New Englanders; and where we have fixed in our firmament the stars of Emerson, Thoreau, Dickinson, and Robinson, he too belongs and will remain there".7

Another critic, Eve Triem, in her study devoted to the poet, writes about E. E. Cummings in the following way:

    Obedient to the world spirit of change, in the early decades of the twentieth century a group of notable poets, by diverging from traditional practices, transformed American poetry. The most thorough `smasher of the logicalities' among them was a transcendentalist: one who views nature as a state of becoming rather


6Norman Friedman, E. E. Cummings. The Growth of a Writer (Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, 1964), 185.

7 Norman, 219.

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    than as a stasis and who believes that the imaginative faculty in man can perceive the natural world directly . . . He was rooted in the same soil as Thoreau, Emerson, and Emily Dickinson8.

Also according to Horace Gregory and Marya Zaturenska: "What Cummings' verse presented as its center was a revitalised image of the `romantic traditionalists' of American poetry; and theoretically his verse not far removed from the kind of verse his predecessors wrote.9"

Upon deeper analysis of his poetry we cannot but agree with this opinion. To prove the validity of this statement I shall try to examine closely the elements of the Romantic tradition present in his poetry.

The Romantic tradition flourished in the United States in the 19th century. The trend was very diversified and ranged from New England Transcendental poetry through Edgar Allan Poe or Longfellow to writers such as Melville or Hawthorne. Although it is very difficult to delineate its boundaries rigorously, there are, nevertheless, certain of its characteristics that allow for such categorisation or classification. The most representative include a rebellion against authority, an apotheosis of individualism, a disapproval of social conventions imposed on man who is therefore in conflict with the society. The most obvious Romantic feature was a turn towards imagination, intuition and Nature, the renascence of wonder and supernaturalism. At the same time reason, placed on a pedestal during the Enlightenment, began to lose its prominent position. It did not suffice to know the world any more; irrational factors like the subconscious, imagination, feelings and inspiration were considered to be more suitable instruments of cognition of both the world and the man than the rational ones. People turned in the direction of the unknown, the mystical and the elusive, thus opposing rationalism. Man and his concerns became the centre of attention. The man of Romanticism saw his life as a

8Eve Triem, E. E. Cummings, in Six American Poets, ed. Allen Tate (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis), 159.

9 Horace Gregory and Marya Zaturenska, The Poet of Brattle Street, in E&TI: e e c: E. E. Cummings and the Critics, ed. S. V. Baum (Michigan State University Press, East Lansing Michigan, 1962), p. 125.

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constant progress towards the final unification with Nature and the Absolute implemented in it. It was the spiritual and the metaphysical in man, that determined his life. Art was given the title of the most perfect form of cognition, characterised by a spontaneous expression of feelings as well as the simplicity and naturalness of language. Moreover, it was a reflection of Nature and its transcendence. Art, as a free and creative expression of individualism, allowed for extreme subjectivity. Oriental and native elements were frequently found among the literary devices used by Romantic poets. In Europe Romantic tendencies were also connected with the political movements aiming at independence and freedom.

The Romantic tradition in the United States, however, differed slightly from the one in Europe such as different were the factors that shaped American and European history, society and culture. Stanley T. Williams claims that "In general, American romanticism reflected the level of the country's culture during these early decades: it was less sophisticated, less learned, less philosophic, less esoteric than the romanticism of Europe."10

First of all, the political movements which played such an important role in the history and culture of the European continent, were less important in America. National epics of Europe, on the other hand, were replaced by the native stories of the Wild West, the Indians, the pioneers and the wilderness, which provided abundance of topics and satisfied the Romantic interest in the yet uncivilised, fresh and natural primitivism. This, obviously, required appealing to the imagination of the readers rather than their intellect or reason.

The poetry of early Romanticism in America reveals yet another quality, which may be characterised as "moral" and which seems to reveal the traces of the Puritan thought. These philosophical, religious and ethical elements were to be partly preserved in the poetry of New England Transcendentalists.

10 Stanley T. Williams, The beginnings of American Poetry (1620-1855) (Cooper Square Publishers Inc, New York, 1970), 68-69.

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It was in the work of Transcendentalists that American Romantic poetry reached its apex, while its philosophical, religious and moral character offered ground for the emergence of the new way of thinking and the new personality. Although it did not last long, its individual quality exerted a strong influence on the American way of thinking as well as literature. It was not only the heyday of Romantic poetry but also one of the most significant and influential periods in American literature as a whole. Many writers and poets admit having been influenced by it. Various elements of the Romantic tradition are visible in the works of different authors, although their appearance varies in frequency and character.

E. E. Cummings is undeniably one of those twentieth century authors whose works include Romantic elements. Norman Friedman, who in his book entitled e. e. cummings. The Growth of a Writer examines the development of E. E. Cummings' poetry, notices the appearance of transcendental elements as early as the second volume of his poems. He also traces their maturation process throughout the poet's work, as from the moment they appear they never cease to be present.

How do Transcendentalism and Romanticism show in E. E. Cummings' poetry then? First, he manages to convey them through the ideas expressed in his poems and his choice of topics. The majority of his poems are devoted to describing love in its various aspects, most often transcendental or sentimental love; yet, it is indispensable to mention in this place his "sensual" poems devoted to the description of physical love. At the same time we cannot underestimate the fact that according to E. E. Cummings sex should be a reflection of a perfect relationship between a man and a woman, and not physical contact for its own sake. It is not surprising, therefore, that in his works he appears to be longing for `togetherness' coming from the reunion of souls. He sometimes despairs over unrequited love. His love lyrics are often written in the convention of traditional Romantic idealisation marked by overstatement. Many of them are impressionistic images taking various people

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or objects as their theme. Its bulk deals with the praise of an individual, Nature and its elements such as the Moon, spring, stars, sunset, dawn, flowers or trees. Among his poems are also such that deal with history, war in particular, politics and social life. On the whole, however, regardless of what he writes about, his topics always come from within himself and his poems are either a reflection of his own inner life, manifest his worldview or constitute a comment and a description of his keen observation of the world. This is one of the ways in which his unshaken trust in an individual and the conviction that any "self" is unique, is manifested. One of his most beautiful sonnets, beginning with the words "love's function is to fabricate unknowness"11, can serve as an exemplification of the above.

love's function is to fabricate unknowness

(known being wishless; but love, all of wishing)
though live's lived wrongsideout, sameness chokes oneness
truth is confused with fact, fish boast of fishing

and men are caught by worms (love may not care
if time totters, light droops, all measures bend
nor marvel if a thought should weigh a star
-dreads dying least; and less, that death should end)
 
how lucky lovers are ( whose selves abide
under whatever shall discovered be)
whose ignorant each breathing dares to hide
more than most fabulous wisdom fears to see


11 All poems quoted in my thesis are taken from the following collection of his poems: e. e. cummings, POEMS 1923 - 1954 (Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1954).

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(who laugh and cry) who dream, create and kill
while the whole moves; and every part stands still:

The poem takes love as its subject and conveys the idea of the growth and acquisition of wisdom through love, i. e. of self-transcendence through love. The construction of the poem is based on opposition between love and knowledge. The initial line seems puzzling, because we would rather expect that "love" should equal or at least lead to "knowing". The word "unknowness", coined by E. E. Cummings, has been granted by the poet its own special meaning or it has been created to denominate the multiplicity of phenomena which refer to and at the same time explicate his vision of the world. "Unknowness" in this context does not mean ignorance in its common meaning but rather designates reliance on intuition and emotions. The lines that follow clarify the meaning of "(known being wishless;" and "love, all of wishing)". Therefore, the idea of love as something desirable as well as leading to a constant quest for answers is established. "Love" which is "all of wishing)" should guide the lovers in the direction of constant growth while "known" identified with "wishlessness" symbolises the state of comfortable security, on the one hand, but inertia, passivity and stagnation, on the other hand.

Although ignorance usually has pejorative connotations, here it is presented as something beneficial, which sustains love. It does not stand for lack of knowledge in general, but rather designates the factor that drives us in the direction of constant development. "ignorant each breathing" contains more in itself than wisdom coming from the mind. The power to grasp the nature of things and thus the meaning of life cannot be attained by futile reasoning but by experiencing life in all its aspects. As Eve Triem points out:

    in his war against formal "thinking" he was not against study or ideas; it was an opposition to the conformity which the accumulation of "knowledge" is inclined to impose. To discover the true nature of the world - to know it; to act in it; for the artist, to


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    depict it - is the Cummings metaphysic, his politics, and his aesthetic.12

In one of his plays entitled Santa Claus E. E. Cummings puts it straightforwardly: "Knowledge has taken love out of the world/ and all the world is empty empty ... joyless joyless joyless."13 Only those, who "laugh and cry) who dream, create and kill", that is those who follow emotions, are capable of love. On the other hand, the poem defines love as a phenomenon which cannot be comprehended, as something that thrives on mystery, and that strives to sustain itself by replacing mental knowledge with intuitive knowledge. By referring to "lucky lovers...whose selves abide /under whatever shall discovered be)/whose ignorant each breathing dares to hide/more than most fabulous wisdom fears to see" E. E. Cummings advocates the primacy of feeling over intellect. Love seems to be self-subsisting, transcendental, and independent of external circumstances as well as of principles, it "hasn't a why or because or although: it exists for no reason, and for that reason it cannot be doubted. It is self-creating, and altogether apart from cause and effect"14. As such, it is presented as a remedy for the life lived "wrongsideout". The chaos and absurdity of the world are rendered by the image of fish that boast of fishing. Life, as E. E. Cummings views it, is full of superficiality and lies. Man cannot tell good from evil and cherishes values of passing validity: "truth is confused with fact", because "facts" are only a barren reflection of the Reality conceived intellectually. According to the poet, the world cannot be perceived only by intellect, because deprived of the emotional sphere it would be impoverished, hence not true. The Truth, which for E. E. Cummings equals Love, is, conversely transcendental; it simply exists.

12 Triem, 192.

Friedman quotes one of E. E. Cummings' epigrams from "Jottings", published in Wake magazine in1951: "knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination". (Friedman, The Growth, 183).

13 Ibid., 181.

14 Norman Friedman, (Re)Valuing Cummings: further essays on the poet, 1962-1993 (University Press of Florida, Gainsville, 1996), 5.

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"Lucky lovers" may evoke associations with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, before they have tasted the fruit from the tree of the knowledge, when they are still in the state of Innocence. Their "unknowness" gives them happiness and power since it is Love not knowledge that "dreads dying least;" and that does not care "if time totters, light droops, all measures bend". It also gives them happiness because questions are more meaningful than answers since they lead us ceaselessly through the process of self-discovery infinitely more important than any dogmas we may think we have discovered, as well as to the reciprocal discovery between lovers.

Transcendence in E. E. Cummings suggests not so much comprehension as a process leading to the state of self-awareness as described above. "Know thyself" - an inscription on the temple of Apollo at Delphi - seems to be E. E. Cummings' motto15. He himself expressed it even in a more pithy way in his introduction to New Poems:

    Never the murdered finalities of wherewhen and yesno, impotent nongames of wrongright and rightwrong; never to gain or pause, never the soft adventure of undoom, greedy anguishes and crying ecstasies of inexistence; never to rest and never to have: only to grow. Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question16.

Norman Friedman thus comments on the above passage:

    This is the transcendental world of becoming, as opposed to the habitual world of routine; categories of space and time, as well as moral and legal categories, falsify the true nature of reality with an overlay - like the cellophane covering a wedding cake - of abstractions. In the world of becoming, all is fluid and dynamic, it is


15 Cummings' insistence on the gravity of the gradual process of self-discovery evokes associations with Emersonian appeal "Trust thyself" expressed in his most famous essay "Self-Reliance".

16 E. E. Cummings, POEMS 1923-1954 (Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1954), 332.

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    a world of questions; in the world of habit, all is static and fixed, it is a world of answers17.

Therefore, a desire to get to know the truth intellectually is an attempt at stripping the world of its reality. Rational truth is an utterance, while Reality is an experience, in which the one who experiences becomes one with the substance of his experience. The Truth has its "existence". The Reality has its "life" because it is fluid, not static or unchangeable. That is why Reality is different from what we call "truth" or "fact", and that is why intellect, which exploits facts, falsifies the reception of the world.

These ideas bear a striking resemblance to the beliefs of Emerson, who wrote, "The true meaning of spiritual is-Real"18, as well as to the beliefs of Brownson, who defined Transcendentalism in the following way: "Transcendentalism . . . builds upon an order of facts proceeding from an origin which transcends the senses and the operations of the understanding"19.

The form of "love's function is to fabricate unknowness" is that of a sonnet, although compared to its classical version, it has been considerably modified. It has fourteen lines, yet their arrangement differs from the typical grouping of two quatrains followed by two terzinas. In the traditional sonnet, the quatrains are either descriptive or narrative in character, while the terzinas (especially the second one) conclude the poem and contain a general formulation of the main message of the piece. Instead of concluding the poem in the last six lines the poet does it in the first single line separated from the rest, while the terzina, the two quatrains and a distich that follow are its expatiation. The rhyme pattern a bab cdcd efef gg differs considerably from the one in the traditional Italian sonnet, which is abba abba cdc dcd or abba abba cde cde.

Another vital element of the Romantic vision of the world, Nature, has been paid tribute to in a beautiful poem, which begins with the words "O sweet spontaneous/ earth".

17 Friedman, E. E. Cummings. The Growth of a Writer, 89-90.

18 Darrel Abel, American Literature (Barron's Educational Series, Inc., New York, 1963), 3.

19 Ibid. , 4.

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O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
he 
doting

          fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

    beauty            . how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
       (but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover


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        thou answerest
them only with

                        spring)

As in many of his poems, also in this one sexual intercourse appears as the main element, the fact for which E. E. Cummings has often been criticised. The Earth is personified and appears in the poem as a woman. As Barry Marks writes: "Cummings presents philosophy, science and theology as dirty old men disgustingly attempting to recapture their lost youth"20. It would be unfair though not to mention that sexual overtones serve as a symbol here rather than appear for their own sake. Their metaphorical and symbolic character has often been either misunderstood or ignored by the critics who reproached Cummings for their appearance. The meaning of sex seems to be that of "elan vital", of the primal and spontaneous force of life, of life in its most immaculate form, free from the influence of civilisation.

According to Barry Marks:

    Cummings here used sex as a symbol of uninhibited spontaneity, of natural vitality in contrast to sterile human conventionality... however... Cummings left undefined the relationship between sex and death. The poem says that the true vitality results from a relationship with death, which is, somehow, like the cycle of the seasons. The nature of the relationship, however, is by no means clear.21

It seems to me though that this relationship has been clarified by the author although not in a straightforward way. Death is an essential element of

20 Barry A Marks, E. E. Cummings (College and University Press, New Heaven, Conn., 1964), 70.

21 Ibid., 70-71.

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sex understood as a symbol of life. The word "rhythmic" implies Nature's cyclic character, i. e. the natural succession of life and death. The choice of the Earth as a symbol is a reference to Nature of which death is part and parcel. Death understood as such is not the end of life but its integral part followed by a revival. It is also noteworthy that such a concept is characteristic of many philosophical or religious systems, for instance Taoism and its conception of Yin and Yang. (Incidentally, Romanticism derived many elements from the Orient).

Death as lack of life, on the other hand, is embodied in the figures of "prurient philosophers, science and religions", the last-mentioned understood as the dogmatic systems imposing rules conceived by men. It is also important that for E. E. Cummings lack of life was equals inability to love. True vitality results from accepting the regularity of cycles and the natural rules of life, that is rules coming from nature as opposed to those invented by men. The attempts at creating a new life in the form of science, religion or philosophy have come to nought, because the created systems do not respect the natural principles. Therefore, it is obvious that for E. E. Cummings natural laws are supreme to human laws and according to him, those who do not realise that do not comprehend life. Nature remains outside of the area of human manipulation, i. e. man can break its rules or make it subservient, yet with disastrous results for himself.

As in the other poems, also in this one its form plays an important role in conveying the ideas presented in it. Triem observes that: "A poet's function is to embody in a poem the dynamics of nature . . . which is primarily a mystery. Heightened awareness leads to a new dimension that leads into transcendentalism supported by specific detail"22. Through the usage of old forms of address, which can be found, for instance, in the Bible like "thou, thee, mightest" E. E. Cummings emphasises the ritual and the divine element in Nature, thus accentuating its timelessness. Moreover, according to Barry Marks:

22 Triem, 192.

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    The arrangement of the poem on the page is E. E. Cummings' experimental effort to represent his theme. Negatively, it is a rebuff to literary conventions (which parallel the conventions of philosophy, science, and theology). Positively, it forces us to a dramatic sense of the poem's meaning.23

For instance, the enjambment in the second line produces a dramatic pause before the word "earth", which serves to emphasise its significance. The words "thee" and "thy" are isolated from the surrounding words by being placed in separate lines. This produces the effect of the words becoming more important, and together with the stylisation makes them stand out. "(but" separates the lines that follow from the preceding line, which emphasises the contrast between the images of the earth presented in the two parts: the "scientific" and the "transcendental" ones. The placement of the word "spring)", also separated from the rest and closed by the parenthesis completes the whole poem and strengthens the impression of the spring being the integral and ultimate answer. Moreover, it is noteworthy that spring is most often associated with feelings and life, while winter with intellect and death. The examples of alliteration used by E. E. Cummings, such as "thee, that, thou" and "prurient philosophers pinched/ and/ poked") add to creating a unique rhythm and accentuation. Moreover, as Barry Marks notices:

    The comma at the beginning of the line `, has the naughty thumb,' forces us to hold the previous clause in mind an instant longer than we expected to . . . Dramatically, the effect is a sense of a prurient philosopher's poke. The comma may even be a visual image of such a poke24.

Such a vision of Nature (which may be treated as a representation of the whole Universe) is very close to the Romantic view, where Cosmos is seen as a live and dynamic organism undergoing the process of constant becoming and

23 Marks, 70.

24 Ibid. , 70.

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development. In E. E. Cummings' poem, it is reflected in the very fact that Earth has been personified. Man and Nature are in a spiritual communion with each other, which serves to highlight their common roots. Nature, being a diverse, but nonetheless, integral and complete entity also forms a part of a bigger entirety.

Transcendentalists accorded Nature a similar place in their doctrine. It is enough to mention that the book written by Emerson, which immediately after its publication became "the bible of American Transcendentalism", was entitled "Nature". It viewed Nature as a manifestation of the spiritual world, and instinct as the proper tool of perceiving affinity between the two. In Emerson's "American Scholar" Nature is listed as one of the three things that can teach man. Amos Bronson Alcott wrote about Nature: "Yet nature is not separate from me; she is mine alike with my body; and in moments of true life, I feel my identity with her; I breath, pulsate, feel, think, will through her members, and know of no duality of being."25

There is, yet, another essential characteristic of the Romantic attitude, which is granted by E. E. Cummings a special, if not the highest, position in his hierarchy of values, i. e. individualism as well as widely understood freedom. In his book entitled The Enormous Room, which is a record of his stay in prison during the First World War, E. E. Cummings not only defines the meaning of freedom and stresses the importance of the individual but also touches upon the philosophical question of the sense of human life. The mystery of individualism is a recurrent topic of both this book and his other works. It is no coincidence then that it appeared in his first published volume, for it was, paradoxically, in the French prison that E. E. Cummings unravelled the mystery, and The Enormous Room is devoted to the description of "the experience through which he first became confirmed in his transcendental vision"26. In each of his works that follow, the direction he chose is affirmed. As Eve Triem observes: "Beginning with The Enormous Room and Tulips and Chimneys, Cummings

25 Abel, 75.

26 Friedman, E. E. Cummings. The Growth of a Writer, 28.

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celebrated individuals, perceiving the transcendental under the ephemeral disguise"27. An individual, a person able to love and live truly, has remained the ideal he propagated.

To illustrate the point I have chosen a famous poem that conveys this message:

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men (both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed (but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then) they


27 Triem, 180.

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said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream they sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes

Women and men (both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stairs rain

Unlike the poems discussed earlier, this one is narrative in character but the narration consists of events which are symbolic in themselves. At first sight the poem may seem incomprehensible, but it becomes understandable as soon as we realise, that the pronouns anyone and noone are used here as the proper names of people whose story constitutes the plot of the poem. The account of their life is set against and contrasted with the description of the life of the "busy folk". anyone and noone are a couple who lives a different life than those around them. First, it is their personalities and the love they give each other that

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distinguish them and at the same time isolate from the society they live in. When anyone "sang his didn't he danced his did", the other people "sowed their isn't" and "reaped their same". Thus anyone reacts in a similar way both to good and bad things that life brings him. In other words, he is happy regardless of external circumstances, because the source of his happiness, i. e. his love for noone, lies within him. Therefore, he can accept life as it is. His antagonists, on the other hand, experience neither happiness nor despair, because they are spiritually numb and cannot sense anything. Significantly enough they also "cared for anyone not at all". The intended ambiguity of this line suggests that they are unable to love at all.

Similarly, when noone loved anyone "more and more . . . laughed his joy . . . cried his grief", "someones married their everyones/ laughed their cryings and did their dance". Hence, noone and anyone share the same feelings, because they form a unity, they care for each other, which everyones, and someones are incapable of. The latter lack not only the ability to love and its spiritual dimension, but also creativity and, as has already been mentioned, the acceptance of all aspects of life. As Marks observes in his discussion of the poem:

    The townsfolk . . . make judgements . . . about who is a somebody and who is a nobody. Each of them wants very much to make something of himself and to be somebody. They are concerned about what `everyone' is saying, doing and thinking. They tend to be empty conformists because, in their preoccupation with conventional measures of behaviour and human worth, they have lost their souls.28

They only "said their nevers they slept their dream"; when anyone "danced his did" they "did their dance". Thus, anyone's spontaneous joy of life is opposed to their world of routine and spiritual death.

Finally, anyone dies and "noone stooped to kiss his face". Again, the double meaning adds a new meaning to the poem: noone is the only person who

28 Marks, 40.

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mourns anyone's death, while the rest of the inhabitants of the town are too busy with their own affairs to pay attention to someone else than their own selves. Their spiritual meanness is emphasised by the words "Women and men (both little and small)", which suggests there are no magnanimous and warm-hearted people among them. When noone dies too, she is buried by her lover's side. According to Marks: "because anyone and noone glide with the current, even death is a creative event . . . They have lived fully when alive; in death they become `was by was', and the ultimate sleep is, for them, ultimate fulfilment."29 This is demonstrated by a sudden switch to the present tense when referring to anyone and noone after their death, while the past tense is used throughout the whole poem. Their love makes them transcend death and time, the passage of which is marked in the poem by the enumeration of the seasons of the year (spring, summer, autumn, winter) or by references to the sun, the moon, stars and rain, which mark the passing days and nights. Unlike the townsfolk, who do not die only because they are already spiritually dead, anyone and noone are buried in body but stay alive in spirit. As Eve Triem has it: "True lovers will be reborn into perfect love"30.

The poem is divided into three parts, each consisting of three stanzas. In the first two parts, one stanza is devoted to anyone and noone, one to the townsfolk and one to children. In the last part two stanzas deal with anyone and noone, while the final stanza describes children, who in the meantime grew up and became like their parents. It is for a good reason that the children appear in the poem. At the very beginning, before they grow up they are like anyone and noone, they are able to feel, they "guessed . . . that noone loved" anyone "more and more". However, as they gradually begin to resemble their parents they too become spiritually dead: "and down they forgot as up they grew". What happened to them is the opposite of what happens to anyone and noone. When the children lose their chance, the couple wins. Although the former lose their

29 Ibid. , 41.

30 Triem, 192.

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sensitivity, the message of the poem seems to be that the capacity to live a full life, to love, to develop is characteristic of each of us, i. e. anybody can be like anyone and noone.

The abundance of the Romantic elements in the poem gives it a distinctive character. The poem, as Barry A. Marks remarks, "presents Cummings' whole metaphysics" 31. In the first place, it praises individualism. Anyone, and noone are distinct personalities; the contrast between the indefiniteness of their names and their exceptionality serves to emphasise the latter as compared to the anonymity and indifference of the crowd. The stylistic device employed by E. E. Cummings to emphasise the above statement is the use of the plural whenever the Women and men are mentioned and the usage of anyone and noone only in the singular. anyone and noone are different from the other inhabitants of the how town; they live by different principles, and, as in the case of typical Romantic heroes, their stance meets with incomprehension or at best with indifference. Let me refer to Barry A. Marks once again:

    the townsfolk are the indefinite ones, indistinguishable from one another. The differences among them range only from `little' to `small'. Paradoxically, they are the ones who really deserve to be called `anyones'; `anyone', on the other hand, is not only a particular person but a very particular person. He is indeed the complete individualist32.

The heroes are also different, because love, another indispensable element of the Romantic attitude, is the essence of their lives ("anyone's any was all to her"). This is the factor which allows them to stay alive, hence to transcend time, and which makes their lives fruitful. Alys Rho Jablon in her discussion of this aspect of E. E. Cummings' poetry suggests that,

    . . . for cummings the self "is only whole if it can love, and through love relate to all love mysteries: the natural world, the created


31 Marks, 38.

32 Ibid. , 40.

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    world of art, and the world of other loving human beings"33. Love is thus transcendental because it goes beyond humanity to form an organic coexistence with the universe at large, an immortal and eternal present, and it is "within this moment of relationship that time dies and growth occurs"34.

Therefore, a life can be characterised as profound and spiritually rich, when we not only try to become individuals and perfect ourselves, but when we share these experiences with another person as well. Paradoxically, it is only in forming a unity with someone we love that our uniqueness can be manifested; at the same time, a meaningful relationship with another person is a condition sine qua non of attaining happiness. The ability to love shows one's humanity. This is an instance of what has been called "algebra of the heart"35. Namely, in E. E. Cummings' poems one plus one equals one.36 This transcendental mathematics finds application when two separate entities, each of whom is a fully developed individual, form a unity which is as exceptional, as the persons who form it with love at the core of that unity.

Moreover, those who win owe their triumph to the feelings rather than intellect. It is affection, not reason that saves them. It is love that allows them to attain the goal of their lives, which is spiritual development and the discovery of the identity of their selves and souls. Reliance on feelings makes them respond spontaneously and freely to what life brings them. Theirs is the world of constant joy, tenderness and inner growth. In contrast to the townsfolk, they enjoy life truly. Thus, E. E. Cummings' poem is an affirmation of life in all its various aspects.

33 Patricia Buchanan Tal-Mason Cline, The Whole E. E. Cummings, in E. E. Cummings: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Norman Friedman (Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NY, 1972) 60-70.

34 Alys Rho Jablon, myself is sculptor of/ your body's idiom:", e. e. cummings and Modernist Representation of Women, unpublished undergraduate honours essay, (McGill University, 1997)

35 Lloyd Frankenberg, Cummings times one, in E&TI: e e c: E. E. Cummings and the Critics, ed. S. V. Baum (Michigan State University Press, East Lansing, Michigan, 1962)

36 Compare the title of a volume of his poetry "1x1 (One Times One)" and the last line of the last poem in it:
"alive we're alive)
we're wonderful one times one"
and another quotation, "one's not half two. It's two are halves of one."


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E. E. Cummings' affinity with Transcendentalists is confirmed in another aspect i. e., in the position they allowed God in their doctrine. They believed that God reveals himself everywhere and at all times, here and now and that Nature is the revelation of God. They maintained that material reality was just a reflection of a deeper actuality, the origin of which is spiritual and divine. In Orphic Sayings Amos Bronson Alcott wrote: "The sensible world is spirit in magnitude, outspread before the senses for their analysis, but whose synthesis is the soul herself, whose prothesis is God. Matter is but the confine of spirit limning her to sense ... God, man, nature, are a divine synthesis, whose parts it is impiety to sunder"37.

E. E. Cummings rarely took up religious topics; one of his poems, however, testifies to the fundamental correspondence of his poetry to the equivalent question in Transcendentalism (even if it was seldom expressed in his poems).

i thank You God for most this amazing 
day : for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today, 
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?


37Abel, 74, 75.

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(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
This sonnet is indeed a thankful and laudatory prayer. "You", used whenever the poet addresses God directly (a very rare thing in his poetry) is the only words in the whole poem, apart from the word "God", which is capitalised38. In this context the pronoun "i" spelt with a small letter, stands for his recognition of his own insignificance in relation to God and his divinity. He perceives God as spiritus movens of the whole universe. The poet writes about the "spirits of trees", which emphasises the fact that all retained its divine character, because the spirit of God has been inherent to his creation; also "the spirits of trees" are leaping as if they had hearts. Thus, nature is presented as a living creature and is personified. The poet perceives the touch of divine infinity in the whole natural world created by God. The mystery of divine presence sanctifies the world's existence and gives it spiritual dimension. Nature reflects God and as Docherty observes: "(it) is taken as proof of the existence of God"39, that is why everything can be characterised as "natural" and "infinite". The lines "i who have died am alive again today/ and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth/ day of life and of love", and especially the intended ambiguity of the word "sun" which is a homophone of "son", evoke associations with the resurrection of Christ. The death and the sacrifice of Christ, His death and resurrection allowed for the rebirth of life and love, and saved the Earth and the people. This is why the Earth is "happening illimitably", that is reviving with each new moment day and year, and so are the people.

Docherty even suggests that the imagery of the poem "alludes to the death and rebirth myth of Osiris, of which the Christ story is a version in

38 Although in English the word God is always spelt with a capital letter, in this poem it should be discussed within the context of Cummings' idiosyncratic typography. He often rejects capital letters in places where we would commonly expect them, as is the case with the pronoun "I", which allows him to dispose stresses according to his artistic vision.

39Brian Docherty, e. e. cummings, in American Poetry: The Modernist Ideal, 127.


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anthropological terms"40. Guy Rachet in his Dictionary of the Egyptian Civilisation remarks that the figure of Osiris was especially close to the mentality of peoples whose religions secured salvation, and were founded by a man-god who was tortured to death by people and not by Gods. According to the myth, Osiris, who ruled together with his wife Isis and his sister, was attacked by his brother Seth and killed. His sister and Isis set out to find his body and when they found it, Osiris was brought back to life by gods. He was considered the king of the whole of Egypt, and was associated with agriculture, religious practices and the kingdom of the dead, as well as with the waters of the river Nile. His body gave it fertility and progenitive power41. He was a god of vegetation, who died with all the plants during the flow of the Nile only to revive in spring after his stay underground. In this context, the reference to Osiris may be related to the natural cycle of day and night or the cycle of the seasons of the year.

The poet expresses his surprise that there are people who doubt God's existence in spite of the fact that all human senses provide the proofs of not only His existence but also power. Everything we can experience by "tasting, touching, hearing, seeing" was brought into being by God, and as such bears a divine seal, and testifies to his preeminence. It is in nature that God manifests His presence most completely.

In his attempt to demonstrate the contrast between human insignificance and God's authority the poet writes about "lifted from the no of all nothing human merely beings" and about "unimaginable" God. Yet, in spite of the fact that he alludes to human meaninglessness, we do not get the impression that people are inferior or worthless. They are a part of nature which mirrors God's

40 Ibid., 127.

41 In another version of the myth Seth (jealous of his brother's successful reign) seized Osiris and closed him in a wooden box which he then threw into the Nile. The box with his body was carried by the waves into the banks of Phoenician Byblos, where heather grew on it. The local ruler ordered to cut out a column from the heather. When Isis arrived in Byblos she demanded both the box and the column. She took the box into Chemnis near Buto. Having learned about that, in her absence, Seth captured the box and cut Osiris' body into fourteen pieces which he scattered all over Egypt. Isis found the pieces and buried them. In another version she collected the pieces and made Osiris immortal by mummifying him. Yet another story has it that his corpse was thrown into the river directly (and not placed in the box).

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essential qualities. The impression one gets from the first stanza is that of joy beauty and happiness. The accent is on the human potential rather than sinfulness. It stems from the fact that God's spark is present in every individual.

The final distich seems to be a reference to the Bible. In the Book of Isaiah we read: "(God) will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped"42. In the eyes of the poet, the divine quality of the natural world can be fully perceived only when a man opens himself to its abundance and splendour. Such an opening leads to spiritual growth and harmony, and consequently to spiritual salvation. At the same time, his humble attitude contributes to his deliverance. Paradoxically, such humbleness allows availing oneself fully of this plenitude.

E. E. Cummings' transcendental vision presented in the poems discussed above is very coherent and complete. The world of spirit transcends the world of matter, which is only a reflection of the deeper reality. The organising principle behind this inner reality is God, whose fundamental qualities have been preserved in his creation. The poet never renounces the conviction that the world of feelings, in which love occupies the central position, is supreme to the world of intellect that can neither grasp the depths of life's mysteries nor help man in their comprehension. Only intuition, imagination and, first of all, love are proper tools to complete this task. Love is additionally a factor which determines the value of human life. The deeper one's self-awareness, the more complete the experience of one's self as well as the world around him; the fuller the discovery of the essence of one's own nature, the closer the attainment of the ideal and the goal of one's existence. This is also why love is the major subject area covered by E. E. Cummings in his output.

Although his individualism is so precious, it remains the source of inevitable conflict of man and the society he lives in. An individual, in order to remain oneself, i. e. to preserve his uniqueness, must rebel against the fossilised

42The Holy Bible, Oxford University Press. (Isaiah 35.5)

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social rules which are the tools used by the society to destroy him. He must, at the same time, be able to share his love with others.

What determines man's maturity is also the extent to which he realises that nature is not separate from him, and that it is a living, feeling unity, while man is rooted in the Cosmos as its part. They both undergo a continuous dynamic process of becoming and developing, in which death must be accepted on the same terms as life. It is not viewed as the final destructive element but rather as something that, like time, can be transcended through love.

Let me conclude this chapter by quoting Brian Docherty:

    cummings's love for the natural world and those free individuals who are able to love and to be loved, makes him a true heir of Emerson, and he represents the end of the New England Transcendentalists tradition. cummings was a radical in his metaphysics and his attitudes to society, like Emerson, but he is also radical in his use of poetic language in ways not available to Emerson.43


43Docherty, 129.

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Continue to Chapter 2 :
The Elements of Realism in the Poetry of E. E. Cummings