The Enormous Room [1922] Notes and Links

The Enormous Room is E. E. Cummings' account of his detention in 1917 in a French prison camp in the town of La Ferté-Macé in Orne, Normandy. Two editions of The Enormous Room are available—we recommend the Liveright "typescript" edition of 1978 (pictured at right). The notes below are keyed to page numbers in the Liveright edition.  LINKS:  Headrick, Paul. "'Brilliant Obscurity': The Reception of The Enormous Room." Spring 1 (1992): 46-76.  ---. "The Enormous Room and the Uses of Parody." Spring 2 (1993): 48-56. Olsen, Taimi. "Language and Silence in the Enormous Room (1922)" Spring 1 (1992): 77-86.  "William Slater Brown and The Enormous Room." Spring 1 (1992): 87-91.   Mott, Christopher M. "The Cummings Line on Race." Spring 4 (1995): 71-75] Collier, James Lincoln. "'B' [William Slater Brown]." Spring 6 (1997): 128-151.  Gill, John M. "The Enormous Room and 'The Windows of Nowhere': Reflections on Visiting La Ferté Macé." Spring 7 (1998): 94-123. ---. “The Enormous Room Remembered.” Spring 11 (2002): 159-182. ---. “‘All These Fine People Were Arrested as Espions’: Detainees in The Enormous Room.” Spring 14-15 (2005-2006): 81-93. Martin, W. Todd. "The Enormous Room: Cummings’ Reinterpretation of John Bunyan’s Doubting Castle." Spring 5 (1996): 112-119. ---. "'The Mysteries of Noyon': Emblem and Meaning in The Enormous Room." Spring 9 (2000): 125-31.

(xxi) "FOR THIS MY SON . . ." Cummings' faher, the Unitarian minister, quotes a verse from the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:24). 

(3) poilus = "hairy ones" [French]. The (affectionate) slang word for ordinary French foot soldiers in World War I. Most French phrases are translated in a "Glossary of Foreign Terms" at the back of the book (243-268).  

(11) the rosette of the Legion = the Legion of Honor, highest French order of merit medal.

(13) l’Escadrille Lafayette = the Lafayette Escadrille, French aviation squadron manned by volunteer American pilots.

(17) a tall bearded horrified man = Robinson Crusoe, hero of Daniel Defoe's famous novel. Of course, C refers to the scene where Crusoe discovers that he is not alone on the island: "But now I come to a new scene of my life. It happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand. I stood like one thunder-struck, or as if I had seen an apparition" (Defoe 152). For a view of both Crusoe and The Enormous Room as spiritual autobiographies, see Boire, "'An Inconceivable Vastness'."

(18) Pétrouchka—a ballet in four scenes, with music by Igor Stravinsky. Originally staged in 1911, it was revived in 1917 by the Ballets Russes. According to Richard S. Kennedy, Cummings and Brown saw the ballet "more than once" (140) during their five weeks in Paris before going to the front.

(27) A Pilgrim's Progress: Cummings refers to The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), a Christian allegory written by the dissenting preacher John Bunyan. Throughout The Enormous Room, various aspects of C's journey  are compared to Bunyan's book.

(27) sang La Madelon—La Madelon—Song written in 1914 by Louis Bousquet (lyrics) and Camille Robert (music), it was very popular with French soldiers in WW I. The lyrics tell of a waitress named Madelon who works at a café named (in some versions) Au Vrai Poilu. She only laughs when the troops embrace her: "c'est tout le mal qu'elle sait faire" ["that's as bad as she can be"]. According to Stephen O'Shea, the tune was later adapted to new lyrics about the folly and stupidity of the Nivelle Offensive (April 16-19, 1917—also known as the Chemin des Dames offensive) in which  France lost "perhaps 40,000 men" on the first day of battle. J. M. Winter writes: 

As on the Somme, the [artillery] barrage failed; the defenders held the initial French advance to a mere 500 m (1600 ft). Repeated French attacks were futile and their repetition, inhuman. The French Army lost over 270,000 men and the will to fight this kind of war. (94)

As Winter indicates, the Chemin des Dames offensive sparked widespread mutinies in the French army in 1917. The revised Madelon protests against the pointless loss of life before the village of Craonne: 

Adieu la vie, adieu l'amour
Adieu toutes les femmes
C'est bien fini, c'est pour toujours
De cette guerre infâme
C'est à Craonne, sur le plateau
Qu'on doit laisser sa peau,
Car nous sommes tous condamnés
Nous sommes les sacrifiés.                                         (quoted in O'Shea 127)

So long to life, so long to love
So long to all those women;
It's all over, it's done forever,
This shameful war.
At Craonne, on the plateau
That's where we'll leave our skins,
For we've all been sentenced—
We are the sacrificed.

(29) C'est d'la blague does mean something like "That's clap-trap" (247) or as we would say, "b.s."—however, the expression also implies "nonsense" or a "practical joke." The entire passage might be translated: "It's all a bad joke. Do you know, there are no more trains? —The conductor is dead, I know his sister. —I'm screwed, old buddy. —Tell me about it. We're all done for. —What time is it? —My friend, there is no more time, the French government has forbidden it." See also pages 33-34 and 82-83. 

(38) a little wooden man—This is a roadside cross, called a calvaire ("Calvary") in France. In The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), John Bunyan relates how Christian the pilgrim came to "a place somewhat ascending, and upon that place stood a cross, and a little below in the bottom, a sepulchre. So I saw in my dream that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do, till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre where it fell in, and I saw it no more" (41). The "burden" stands for Christian’s guilt and sin, which was lifted from him by the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. You might find it interesting to know that Bunyan wrote most of Pilgrim’s Progress in prison.

View of the Dépôt de Triage at La Ferté-Macé. The Enormous  Room was on the top floor of the building at the left.  The building on the right is the "chapel." More views of La Ferté.

(53) The London Sphere = The Sphere, illustrated British news magazine.

(53) R. A. = member of the British Royal Academy of Arts (founded 1768), a rather academic official institution for artists. A member would be very skilled in the techniques of drawing and painting. 

(57) "Les pommiers sont pleins de pommes —from a poem titled "Le Verger" ("The Orchard") by Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915). See Thierry Gillyboeuf, "About Two French Verses in The Enormous Room," Spring 8 (1999): 67-69. One stanza reads:

Simone, allons au verger
  Avec un panier d'osier.
Nous dirons à nos pommiers,
  En entrant dans le verger:
Voici la saison des pommes.
  Allons au verger, Simone,
     Allons au verger.

Simone, let's go to the orchard
  Carrying a wicker-basket.
We'll say to our apple-trees
  As we enter the orchard:
Apple season is here.
  Let's go to the orchard, Simone,
    Let's go to the orchard.

(76) Jacob Wirth's = a German restaurant in Boston. 

(78) Hagenbeck = Carl Hagenbeck, Jr. (1844–1913), founder of the Hamburg Zoo and supplier of animals to zoos and circuses. Hagenbeck also presented "people shows" of indigenous peoples to European and American audiences. 

(88) Wilhelm,Ober,Olles —see the note in the "Glossary of Foreign Terms" (268).

(90) Monsieur Malvy = Louis-Jean Malvy (1875-1949), French Minister of the Interior during World War I. He was forced to resign ("he got collected himself") on August 31, 1917 when he failed to suppress defeatist and pacifist agitators and publications.

(94) "Asbestos" = sign on theater curtains notifying the audience that the curtain was at least partially made of asbestos and thus fireproof.

(96) mEEt me tonIght in DREAmland, = Song written by Leo Friedman and Beth Slater Whitson for the 1904 opening of Dreamland Park on Coney Island, New York. 

Questions, chapters I-V
1. Why do you think Cummings answers as does to the question "Est-ce que vous détestez les boches?" [Do you hate the Germans?] (14)? (See p. 61.) 

2. In what ways could Cummings’ journey be characterized as a spiritual one? (Some parts of the book are modeled on or parodies of parts of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.) Why do you think he is so happy to be arrested and imprisoned (6-7, 9, 17)? In what ways is C like / unlike Robinson Crusoe (17)?

3. Why do you think C. makes so many references to dirt, filth, and excrement? (For example, how do you account for his change in attitude towards "Ça Pue" [17-21]?) As you read, try to figure out what Cummings values in filth, ignorance, and child-like behavior. Can you find any time when dirt is NOT seen as positive?

4. What do you think is C.’s attitude towards the war? Towards the French government? Towards any government or authority? Why do you suppose Cummings includes very little about the five weeks that he and Slater Brown spent in Paris, and their nearly three months at the front in the ambulance corps? Why do you think Cummings never directly refers to the French mutinies of 1917? (See note to page 27.) Brown later said that their knowledge of the mutinies was the real reason they were arrested: 

. . . it was not those dumb, jejune letters of mine that got us into trouble. It was the fact that C. and I knew all about the violent mutinies in the French Army a few months before Cummings and I reached the front. We learned all about them from the poilus. The French did everything, naturally, to suppress the news. We two were loaded with dynamite ("William Slater Brown" 90). 

5. What do you think are some of the meanings of C.’s encounter with "a little wooden man" (38)? (Aesthetic? Spiritual? Compare / contrast with pages 42, 125-128.)

6. Notice how C. introduces us to his first hours in the Enormous Room (44-59). How would you characterize his technique and why do you think he tells this portion of the story in this way?

7. Compare / contrast Count Bragard's attitudes towards filth, his fellow prisoners, and art (52-54) with C.'s attitudes towards these same topics. Why do you think Cummings makes these contrasts?

8. Why do you think C. stresses the "timelessness" (83) of his stay in prison? 

9. Why do you think B. and C. are so happy to be in the Enormous Room? (See pp. 46-47, 80.) In what ways are they "lucky" (86-87)? 

10. Why are the prisoners in this jail? Why do you think Cummings "draws" portraits of his fellow-prisoners instead of telling the story from beginning to end? (See p. 82.)

11. As you read, notice who among the inhabitants of the Enormous Room does NOT become "one of three animals" (100). Why?

Enormous Room notes and questions, chapters VI-XIII

(129) Delectable Mountains = Christian comes upon them after escaping from "Doubting Castle, the owner whereof was Giant Despair" (105). From their tops, the pilgrim can see those who have fallen in error, those who wander forever in error, and the hypocrites burning in hell. He can also see the Celestial City, goal of his pilgrimage. Shepherds named "Knowledge, Experience, Watchful, and Sincere" (111) live in these mountains.

(129) "Sunday(says Mr. Pound —Cummings mis-remembers an Ezra Pound poem. On August 7, 1954, EEC wrote to his German translators:

I supposed "Sunday is a dreadful day" . . . to be lifted from Ezra Pound's immortal parody of the English poet [A. E.] Houseman;but,finding that the original runs

"London is a woeful place,
Shropshire is much pleasanter
Then let us smile a little space
Upon fond nature's morbid grace.
                 Oh,Woe,woe,woe,etcetera . . ."

realize that I parodied my old friend the parodist  (Letters 234)

(131) Carranza = Venustiano Carranza Garza (1859–1920) was one of the leaders of the Mexican Revolution.<>

<>(141, 170) La Santé = Paris prison built in 1867 and still in use. A January 28, 2000 New York Times article reported on a doctor’s exposé of the deplorable conditions in the prison.

(166) a golliwog = blackface dolls who appear in the children's books of Florence K. Upton (1873-1922), seen by many as racist stereotypes. These books were popular at the turn of the 19th century: novelist Vladimir Nabokov remembered them as some of his favorite childhood reading.

(167) Monsieur Malvy = Louis-Jean Malvy (1875-1949), French Minister of the Interior during World War I. See note to page 90.

(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:"

(185) Surplice = "A loose-fitting white gown, having full flowing sleeves, worn over a cassock by some clergymen." The French spelling of the word is "surplis."

(217) Eats uh lonje wae to Tee-pear-raar-ee = "It's a Long Way to Tipperary," popular song on the Western Front. Kennedy reports that Cummings and Brown would improvise bawdy verses when singing the song for their French comrades (146).

(219) "L'automne humide et monotone" —like the verse on p. 57, this one is also from a poem by Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915), titled "Chanson de l'automne." (Thanks to Thierry Gillyboeuf for finding this reference.) Here is the first stanza:

Viens, mon amie, viens, c'est l'automne.
L'automne humide et monotone,
Mais les feuilles des cerisiers
Et les fruits mûrs des églantiers
Sont rouges comme des baisers,
Viens, mon amie, viens, c'est l'automne.

Come my love, come, it's autumn.
Monotonous, humid autumn,
But the leaves of the cherry trees
And the ripe berries of the sweet-briar
Are as red as kisses,
Come my love, come, it's autumn.

Viens, mon amie, viens, c'est l'automne,
Tout nus les peupliers frissonnent,
Mais leur feuillage n'est pas mort;
Gonflant sa robe couleur d'or,
Il danse, il danse, il danse encor,
Viens, mon amie, viens, c'est l'automne.

Come my love, come, it's autumn.
Quite naked, the poplars tremble,
But their leaves are not dead yet;
Filling his garment with gold,
He dances, dances, dances still,
Come my love, come, it's autumn.

(224) The Great Mister Harold Bell Wright = Harold Bell Wright (1872-1944), whose novels sold more copies than any other American writer in the first quarter of the twentieth century (Chudleigh). He is best known for The  Shepherd of the Hills (1907) and The Winning of Barbara Worth (1911). Wright's New York Times obituary noted that even though he was scorned by critics "as a purveyor of sweetness and light, . . . he insisted that he was essentially not a novelist but a preacher, and his proudest boast was that all his books were wholesome and clean, the kind that anybody's sister could read."

(224) Pollyanna = children's novel by Eleanor H. Porter (1868-1920), published in 1913.

Questions, chapters VI-XIII

1. In what ways can you relate the Directeur’s instruments of power, "Fear, Women, and Sunday" (107) to the traditional infernal trilogy of the world, the flesh, and the devil? (See p. 88.) In what ways is Sunday a weapon? (See pp. 38, 42, 83, 101, 128, 168.)

2. In what ways might Sunday represent the devil? In what ways might the Mass on Sundays be a parody of real spirituality (symbolized by Surplice?)? What do you think is the difference between feeling and belief (101, 168)? (See Foreword xi-xii.). Name some possible ironic meanings in the Curé’s little sermon (128; cf. pp. 167, 194). (See also pp. 38, 42, 83, 101.)

3. What similarities and differences do you see between Bunyan’s episode of Apollyon (described in the notes above) and Cummings’ description of the Directeur? 

4. What do you think Cummings means when he says (a) that "Renée was in fact dead" (119) and (b) that watching Lena’s punishment taught him "the meaning of civilization" (122)? Why do you think the Machine-Fixer revises his view of the putains? (See pages 102, 122-23.)  

5. In what ways can you relate Celina's cry at the le Directeur to "CHIEZ,SI VOUS VOULEZ CHIEZ" (124) to the other mentions of excrement and filth in the book? (See pages 20-21, 30, 54-56, 101-102, 115, 122-123, 155-156, 188, 190-191, 236.)

6. Why do you think the three men called "the Delectable Mountains" and Jean le Nègre are so important to Cummings? Why do you think the articulate C. is so drawn to these inarticulate and child-like men? (See pp. 87-88, 165, 173-176, 188-196, 199.)

7. Do you find Cummings’ description of Jean le Nègre stereotypical, sentimental, or even racist? How do you think Cummings would respond to such a charge? (For a discussion of these issues, see Mott's "The Cummings Line on Race.")  

8. Compare / contrast the Delectable Mountains with another group of “primitives,” the pimps (140-147). Notice when the inhabitants of La Ferté are compared to animals (143-145, 65-66, 72, 76, 100, 115, 118, 185-186). When is this animal state positive, negative, or neutral, and why? What causes the change in attitude towards Count Bragard (147-152)?

9. In his 1934 introduction to the book, Cummings said "Thanks to . . . my art I am able to become myself." In what ways could characters like M. Auguste (84-85), Bear #2 (91), the Machine-Fixer (100-103), Lena, Celina (118-125), the Zulu (168, 173-176), Surplice (194-195), and Jean le Nègre (199, 205, 213-214) be described as artists?

10. What do you think Cummings learns about art in the Enormous Room? (See p. 224.) What are some of the functions of the "primitive" in the books and movements we have studied this semester?

11. What do you think C. discovers about himself on this journey? (See pp. 237-238.)

• Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim’s Progress. 1678-1684. New York: Signet / NAL, 1964. 
• Chudleigh, Gerry. Harold Bell Wright: The Best Selling Author of the Early 20th Century. 16 July 2003. http://www.hbw.addr.com/index.htm.
  
• Cummings, E. E. Selected Letters of E. E. Cummings. Ed. F. W. Dupee and George Stade. New York: HBW, 1969.
• ---. The Enormous Room: A typescript edition with drawings by the author. Ed. George James Firmage. New York: Liveright, 1978.
• ---. "The Secret of the Zoo Exposed." E. E. Cummings: A Miscellany Revised. Ed. George J. Firmage. New York: October House, 1965. 174-178.
• Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. 1719. New York: Signet / NAL, 1961.
• Kennedy, Richard S. Dreams in the Mirror: A Biography of E. E. Cummings. New York: Liveright, 1980.
• Martin, W. Todd. "'The Mysteries of Noyon': Emblem and Meaning in The Enormous Room." Spring 9 (2000): 125-31. 
• O'Shea, Stephen. Back to the Front: An Accidental Historian Walks the Trenches of World War I. New York: Walker, 1997. 
• Pound, Ezra. Personae: The Shorter Poems. Rev. ed. Ed. Lea Baechler and A. Walton Litz. New York: New Directions, 1990. 
• "William Slater Brown and The Enormous Room." Spring 1 (1992): 87-91. 
• Winter, J. M. The Experience of World War I. 1988. New York: Oxford UP, 1995.
  

        Don’t be afraid.
        —But I’ve never seen a picture you painted or read a word you wrote—
        So what?
        So you’re thirty-eight?
        Correct.
        And have only just finished your second novel?
        Socalled.
        Entitled ee-eye-em-eye? [Eimi]
        Right.
        And pronounced?
        "A" as in a, "me" as in me; accent on the "me".
        Signifying?
        Am.
        How does Am compare with The Enormous Room?
        Favorably.
        They’re not at all similar, are they?
        When The Enormous Room was published, some people wanted a war book; they were disappointed. When Eimi was published, some people wanted another Enormous Room; they were disappointed.
        Doesn’t The Enormous Room really concern war?
        It actually uses war: to explore an inconceivable vastness which is so unbelievably far away that it appears microscopic.
        When you wrote this book, you were looking through war at something very big and very far away? [end p. vii]
        When this book wrote itself, I was observing a negligible portion of something incredibly more distant than any sun; something more unimaginably huge than the most prodigious of all universes—
        Namely?
        The individual.
        Well! And what about Am?
        Some people had decided that The Enormous Room wasn’t a just-war book and was a class-war book, when along came Eimi—aha! said some people; here’s another dirty dig at capitalism.
        And they were disappointed.
        Sic.
        Do you think these disappointed people really hated capitalism?
        I feel these disappointed people unreally hated themselves—
        And you really hated Russia.
        Russia, I felt, was more deadly than war; when nationalists hate, they hate by merely killing and maiming human beings; when Internationalists hate, they hate by categorying and pigeonholing human beings.
        So both your novels were what people didn’t expect.
        Eimi is the individual again; a more complex individual, a more enormous room.
        By a —what do you call yourself? painter? poet? playwright? satirist? essayist? novelist?
        Artist.
        But not a successful artist, in the popular sense?
        Don’t be silly.
        Yet you probably consider your art of vital consequence—
        Improbably.
        —To the world? [end p. viii]
        To myself.
        What about the world, Mr. Cummings?
        I live in so many: which one do you mean?
        I mean the everyday humdrum world, which includes me and you and millions upon millions of men and women.
        So?
        Did it ever occur to you that people in this socalled world of ours are not interested in art?
        Da da.
        Isn’t that too bad!
        How?
        If people were interested in art, you as an artist would receive wider recognition— Wider?
        Of course.
        Not deeper.
        Deeper?
        Love, for example, is deeper than flattery.
        Ah—but (now that you mention it) isn’t love just a trifle oldfashioned?
        I dare say.
        And aren’t you supposed to be ultramodernistic?
        I dare say.
        But I dare say you don’t dare say precisely why you consider your art of vital consequence—
        Thanks to I dare say my art I am able to become myself.
        Well well! Doesn’t that sound as if people who weren't artists couldn’t become themselves?
        Does it?
        What do you think happens to people who aren’t artists? What do you think people who aren’t artists become?
            [end p. ix]
        I feel they don’t become: I feel nothing happens to them; I feel negation becomes of them.
        Negation?
        You paraphrased it a few moments ago.
        How?
        "This socalled world of ours."
        Labouring under the childish delusion that economic forces don’t exist, eh?
        I am labouring.
        Answer one question: do economic forces exist or do they not?
        Do you believe in ghosts?
        I said economic forces.
        So what?
        Well well well! ‘Where ignorance is bliss. .. Listen, Mr. Lowercase Highbrow—
        Shoot.
        —I’m afraid you’ve never been hungry.
        Don’t be afraid.

NEW YORK 1933                                                                                                  E. E. CUMMINGS

[end p. x]

While it may be a good thing to have The Enormous Room more widely available through the Penguin 1999 edition, it is a shame that Samuel Hynes used the Modern Library 1934 text. His "Note on the Text" is a bit sly. He begins: "Three principal editions of The Enormous Room were published during Cummings’s lifetime" and then goes on to indicate that of these three, "the Modern Library edition is clearly preferable." It may well be the best of the three but this particular game is rigged. If one limits the choice to those published in Cummings’s lifetime, one must ignore the latter magnificent work of George Firmage and the far superior Liveright edition. I realize that Penguin couldn’t publish the Firmage text of a competing publisher; I suppose it is unrealistic to ask Hynes to mention this other, competing text. Hynes certainly could not make an argument that the Modern Library text is better. Firmage’s "Afterword" in the Liveright edition clearly supports the superiority of his text over the other three including the Modern Library edition. So Hynes does have a major problem. I don’t think his introduction or glossary compensate at all for the inferior text he uses. The Firmage / Liveright edition is simply more "Cummingsesque." While I am pleased that the Penguin people think there are enough readers out there to make it worth their while again to publish The Enormous Room, still I would like to put a little sticker on all copies of their edition saying, "Buy the best; buy Liveright!"

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More views of La Ferté

Literary Ambulance Drivers in WW I

E. E. Cummings and Paris

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