|
EIMI Notes
Further reading:
|
Cover of the
2007 Liveright edition of EIMI
|
1 / 3: "ça
ne vous fait rien si je
me déshabille?" = "You won't be bothered
if I
undress?" [French]. The deuxième
coffin = second coffin, i.e., the second-class sleeping car. The
funeral
director = the conductor or a porter. a troisième
common grave = a third class car. cakes
& ale by mister mome = Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale: or,
the
Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930). "
5 / 6: Frank E. Campbell
= the conductor or
sleeping car porter. Cummings gives him the name of a "Funeral Chapel"
in
5 / 6: Unser Gott = "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" ["A mighty fortress is our God"] = inscription on German coins featuring the bust of Martin Luther, author of the hymn.
6 / 7: N = Negoreloe, the
border-town where
10 / 11: terrace of the maggots = terrace
of the Café
des Deux Magots,
11: un
heure de retard = one hour late [French]. Besetzt
= occupied, full, taken [German]. Pays magnifique,
n'est-ce pas? = Magnificent country, no? [French].
12 / 13: that prominent Russian writer = Vladimir Lidin, who is supposed to meet Cummings at the station. The prominent Russian-in-Paris novelist = Ilya Ehrenburg (see page 31). farfamed sister = "Mrs. Lili Brik, the sister of Elsa Triolet, Louis Aragon's wife" (Kennedy 311). Cummings names Lily Brik "the perfume girl" and "Mme. Potiphar." See pp. 53-54 and the "Friday 15" chapter (61-73 / 60-72).
13: a mystic word = most likely the Russian word for "taxi."
13 / 14: fiacre = horse-drawn taxi
[French]. wonderful one hoss shays
= EEC alludes to Oliver Wendell Holmes' poem "The
Deacon's
Masterpiece or, the Wonderful 'One-hoss Shay': A Logical Story"
(1858). The poem is about a "wonderful" one-horse carriage that lasts
exactly one hundred years. The last two lines are: "End of the
wonderful one-hoss shay. / Logic is logic. That's all I say."
14 / 15: this is the Hotel Metropole
= the Hotel Metropol,
an art nouveau structure opened in 1901. Official site: http://www.metropol-moscow.ru/en/.
"not in valyootah / valuta"
= "not in hard currency."
|
|
16 / 17: 1 ultrabenevolent
denizen of Cambridge Mass = "Virgil" or "mentor," later referred to
as "ex-mentor" or simply "ex-" = Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Harry)
Dana (1881-1950), "a . . . Professor studying Russian theater" (Kennedy
309) and Cummings' first guide. At left: Dana dressed in Russian
costume on the porch of the Longfellow house in 16-17 / 17: Volks = VOKS, "The All-Union Society for Cultural Relations Abroad," bureau in charge of cultural relations in general and organizing informational tours in particular. See pp. 119 / 117, 153 / 149. |
18: Gene Tunney = James Joseph "Gene" Tunney (1897-1978), heavyweight champion from 1926 to 1928. He defeated Jack Dempsey twice, in 1926 and 1927.
20: why can't I
remember to erase those 2 = when he crossed the border, Cummings
noted on
his passport "under 'Visas', the carefully pencilled forgot to erase
them
Russian equivalents for WC [toilet] and sonofabitch" (7/8). See also
page 42.
20 / 21: "Eheu fugaces . . ." = Horace, Odes, II, 14:
Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume,
labuntur anni nec pietas moram
rugis et instanti senectae
adferet indomitaeque morti:
"Ah, Postumus, Postumus, how fleeting / the swift years--prayer cannot delay / the furrows of imminent old-age / nor hold off unconquerable death." (Cf. page 220 / 213, as well as CP 234 and CP 492.)
24: Gay-Pay-Oo
= GPU,
acronym for "Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie," or "State Political Directorate,"
name of the secret police of the Soviet Union (1922-1934). See also
pages 49-50, 117/114, 197/192, 199/193, 202/197, 206/200,
293-294/284-285, and 303/294.
25:
Very Bad Childs' = a very bad cafeteria. Childs was a cafeteria
chain in
|
25: Something Fabulous = St. Basil's Cathedral. See pp.91 / 89, 106 / 104, 110 / 108.
26: the devil is sick,the devil a monk = "The DEVIL was sick, the Devil a saint would be; the Devil was well, the devil a saint was he! [Promises made in adversity may not be kept in prosperity. Cf. medieval L. aegrotavit daemon, monachus tunc esse volebat; daemon convaluit, daemon ut ante fuit, when the Devil was ill, he wished to be a monk; when the Devil recovered, he was the Devil just as before; 1586 J. Withals Dict. (rev. ed.).]" --The
Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs 26: Pope Watson = James Sibley
Watson (1894-1983),
|
|
30: when I was in Wien --Perhaps Cummings speaks of the aftermath of riots that occurred in Vienna on July 15, 1927. The New York Times reported the following day: "At least forty are dead and 200 have been wounded in fighting which followed a sudden revolutionary uprising of Vienna workers which began last night and continued all day today. The revolutionists are now in control of the centre of the city where street barricades are being erected. The demonstration, which rapidly developed revolutionary tendencies, began after a Vienna jury, despite their plea of guilty, had acquitted three Fascists who last January shot and killed a Socialist and his child."
30: president of Writer's Club =
still unidentified. Writer’s Club = Herzern
House, Tverskoy Boulevard 25, birthplace of nineteenth century
socialist Alexander
Ivanovich Herzen (1812-1870). This house was the headquarters of
quite a few literary organizations, among them The Russian Association
of Proletarian Writers (RAPP). It is now the Gorky Literature
Institute.
32: Proletcult
= "First Workers Theatre of Proletarian Culture" (Dana
24). Selah = Hebrew word
of uncertain
meaning that appears at the end of some psalms in the Bible. See
351/338.
32-34: The Necktie = 1930 play by Anatoly Glebov
(1899-1964). Dana says that it ridicules "an over-zealous Communist
who
objects to neckties as bourgeois" (Handbook 73).
33: settingupexercises = "Any
one of a series of gymnastic exercises used, as in drilling recruits,
for the purpose of giving an erect carriage, supple muscles, and an
easy control of the limbs." –Webster's
Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
35: give us two photographs? for Cummings' internal Russian passport Cf. 222 / 214-15 and 234-235 / 227-228.
36. East Maxman = Max Eastman (1883-1969), a good friend of Cummings who was early a champion of the Russian Revolution, editor of the journal The Masses from 1913-1918, founder of the left-wing journal The Liberator, translator of Trotsky, and after 1940, a fervent anti-communist. In "The Cult of Unintelligibility" (1929), an essay against modernist obscurity, Eastman wrote:
If you pick up a book by Hart Crane, E. E. Cummings, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Edith Sitwell, or any of the "modernists," and read a page innocently, I think the first feeling you will have is that the author isn't telling you anything. It may seem that he isn't telling you anything because he doesn't know anything. Or it may seem that he knows something all right, but he won't tell. In any case he is uncommunicative. He is unfriendly. He seems to be playing by himself and offering you somewhat incidentally the opportunity to look on (632).
36: Charybdis
and Scylla = the whirlpool and six-headed monster between which
Odysseus
must steer in book 12 of Homer's Odyssey.
37 / 36: the Torgsin
=
special shop that sold all manner of luxury goods and food, accepting
only valuta, foreign currency or
precious metal, in
payment. When Cummings was in
38: John Benet's Body--refers to Stephen Vincent Benét (1898-1943) and his epic poem of the Civil War, John Brown's Body (1928), winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1929.
39: O'Jean Euneil = Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953), American dramatist, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1920 and 1928 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936. Early in his career, O'Neill's plays were produced by the Provincetown Playhouse, the same group that produced Cummings' drama Him in 1928.
40: Maydan
ah-ghan? = μηδεν
άγαν / Mêdén
agan = "nothing too much" or "nothing in
excess," inscription on the temple of Apollo in Delphi [Greek].
42 / 41: ecco = behold" [Italian].
42: That word = the Russian word for "toilet," given by Virgil below.
41: Duranty =
Walter Duranty (1884-1957), journalist who
had lived in the
41: AngelPenguin . . . Homeless One = Charlie Chaplin.
44 / 43: Arise,thou Bloom! --refers to Leopold Bloom, the main character in James Joyce's Ulysses. Joyce famously describes Bloom's morning visit to the outhouse in chapter 4.
45: The West Is Nervous = 1931 drama by Vladimir Bill-Belotserkovski (1884-1970). Dana says it depicts "the fear in Germany of Russian Communism" (Handbook 69).
49 / 48: Rockyfeller's
Manship most likely refers to the bust of John
D.
Rockefeller by sculptor Paul Manship
(1885-1966),
now at the National Portrait Gallery. Manship also made the Prometheus
sculpture (1934) for
Rockefeller
Center.
49 / 48: Thih
Seauton = "you yourself" [Greek].
Cummings refers to the motto gnôthi
seauton [γνωθι σεαυτον], "Know
Thyself," carved on the
50 / 49: Krazy
Kat = comic strip cat beloved by Cummings. thy poet = George Herriman (1880-1944), cartoonist. In "The Krazy
Kat That Walks by Himself," an essay in his book The Seven Lively Arts (1924),
Cummings' friend Gilbert Seldes wrote:
51: Gorky
= Maxim Gorky
[Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov] (1868-1936), novelist and playwright.
Author of The Lower Depths
(1902) and Mother (1906-07),
he left Russia in 1921 for treatment for tuberculosis, returning
"amid
great public fanfare" in 1928. Cummings attends a "Gorky-festival" on
pages 181-183 / 176-178.
51: every coin has two sides:
EEC is probably referring to these lines from stanza 12 of Emerson's "The Sphinx":
Now follows, now flies;
And under pain, pleasure,--
Under pleasure, pain lies.
Love works at the centre.
See the coin metaphor in the second stanza of "hate blows a bubble of
despair into" (CP 531).
51-52: I'm quoting Emerson.
Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. (Emerson 524)
After resigning from the
52: Millikan = Robert Andrews Millikan (1868-1953), American physicist and winner of the 1923 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on the photoelectric effect and measuring the charge on electrons. Later, he worked on cosmic radiation and coined the term "cosmic rays."
53: the perfume girl = Lilya or Lily Brik
(1891-1978),
older sister of Elsa Triolet (1896-1970),
who is the
wife of French surrealist and communist Louis Aragon (1897-1982). Elsa
has given
Cummings some fashion magazines and perfume to take as a present to her
sister
in
54: her first husband. . .who killed
himself = Virgil refers to Lily Brik's former
lover
(not husband), the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky
(1893-1930), who killed himself on
"He that can live without food can die without
tobacco." Source unknown.
56: president of . . . Writer's Club =
still
unidentified.
57 / 56: Gods of the Lightning = Apparently Cummings is mistaken; Dana lists Maxwell Anderson's Gods of the Lightning (a play loosely based on the Sacco and Vanzetti case) among the foreign plays translated and presented in Russian (Handbook 52).
57 / 56: the
mysterious other being a "monosyllable"--probably Ezra
Pound. See page 84 /
83 for Pound's message to the Russians.
57 / 56: Clairsin
Islew = anagram for Sinclair Lewis
(1885-1951), author
of the novels
57: Something play =
59 / 58: Tverskaya
= the
main shopping street in
62 / 61: I'm
using a sleeping-dictionary: The "thickset . . . newspaperman"
refers to his Russian girlfriend, who sleeps with him and provides
translations. This "sleeping dictionary correspondent" shows Cummings
his room on page 111 / 109.
62 / 61: A great Godlike voice = perhaps the
voice of "god," i.e., Victor Eubanks, AP correspondent? See page 141 /
138.
65 / 64: Et où . . . est votre camarade? = "And where is your comrade?" [i.e., Virgil]. il n'est pas méchant du tout . . . même pas assez = "He's not at all mean . . . not even enough" [French].
|
|
65 / 64: 3
fisted = poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.
(See pp. 54, 69 / 68, 71 / 70.)
Eugene Lyons saw Mayakovsky as a
"romanticist" and aesthete who wore the façade of a hardboiled
communist. When the poet Sergei Esenin killed himself, Mayakovsky
"wept over his death, but castigated that futile gesture. 'In this life
it is easy to die,' he wrote, '--to build life is hard' " (
66 / 65: Non. Et je vous en prie,Madame, ne me demandez pas . . . = No. And I entreat you, Madame, do not ask me why I came to Russia; because I do not know myself" [French]. (See pages 15-16/16-17, 190/185, and 241/234.) "Voici" naming husband = "Here is" [Osip Brik] (1888-1945), alias "unhe." See note to page 53.
76 / 75: Crank Frowninshield
=
Frank Crowninshield (1872-1947), editor of
Vanity Fair, 1914-1936. The comic sketches that Cummings
published in Vanity Fair in the mid-'20s have been reprinted in
the Miscellany Revised.
|
78 / 77: Frankie and Johnny Were
= the first line of the popular African-American folk song "The Ballad
of Frankie and Johnny." Act II, scene v of Cummings' drama Him (1927) features a
choral jazz performance of
the song. In Cummings' version, the first stanza reads:
79 / 78: The slightly
sticky gent who fails to introduce his sleeping dictionary may or may not
be the same correspondent introduced on page 62/ 61. See also page 111
/ 109.
80 / 79: immortal Marianne! = Marianne
Moore. EEC refers to two lines from her poem "To a Steam Roller"
81 / 79: two copies of one book by Jack Reed = Ten Days that Shook the World (1919), a first-hand account of the Bolshevik Revolution written by American journalist John Reed (1887-1920), a must-have volume for would-be socialists in the 1930s. Shortly after finishing the book, Reed died of typhus and was buried at the Kremlin wall with other heroes of the October revolution.
83 / 81: Novelist Sir Dry = most likely
Theodore
Dreiser, American novelist, author of many big books, including Sister Carrie (1900) and An
American Tragedy
(1925). He visited the
83 / 82: "très gentil.
Nous avons tous beaucoup bu .
. ." = "Very
nice, amiable. We had all drunk a lot, and then he didn't want to go
home. So, my husband made him up a bed here."
 |
83 / 82: John Dos Passos (1896-1970), good friend of Cummings and the author of such novels as Three Soldiers (1921), Manhattan Transfer (1925), and the USA trilogy, The 42nd Parallel (1929), 1919 (1931), and The Big Money (1936). 83 / 82: "pour qu'elle peut respirer" = "so she can breathe." "Bis!" = "Twice!" or "Again!" "alors,l'enfant demandait . . ." = "so, the child asked: is he crazy mama?" |
84 / 83: my Persian friend = S. A. Jacobs,
Cummings'
personal typesetter.
88 / 86: the 5 day week = From the autumn of 1929 to the summer of 1931, the Soviet Union decided to overlay a five day week on top of the Gregorian calendar that it adopted in 1918. This system divided the year into 72 five day weeks (360 days), plus five national holidays. Each worker was assigned one day of the five as a day off. (This rotating schedule was indicated on calendars by the Roman numerals I-V and/or five colors.) The system was designed to ensure continuous production in the factories, but it was abandoned because family members and friends of workers seldom if ever had the same day off, and the machines in the factories broke down much more often without regular down-time and maintenance.
89 / 87: "Quand je suis venu
ici . . ." = "When I came here from
89 / 87: Stephen Dedalus = hero of James Joyce's novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). The scene in which Stephen refuses the call to the priesthood occurs in chapter IV.
89 / 88: the Verb is actually or imagining,which cannot ever be translated -- Cummings later gives the following definition of poetry: "whatever cannot be translated!" (140 / 137-38).
91 / 89: shaving à la russe,in the eau chaude of this diminutive teapot . . . = shaving in the Russian manner, in the hot water of the teapot that sits atop the samovar. Russians mangent beaucoup = "Russians eat a lot" [French].
a day which doesn't exist = Sunday. Though the names for the days of the week were still in use, under the five day week system, Sunday was no longer set aside as a day of rest, and it was effectively eliminated as a religious holiday. Since a worker's day off could come on any day of the week, no day was more important than any other. But Sunday is an important symbol of resurrection and rebirth in EIMI: the book begins and ends on a Sunday (May 10 and June 14), so the chapters follow a pattern of 1 - 6- 1 - 6 - 1 - 6 - 1 - 6 - 1 - 6 - 1. There are six Sundays with six days between each of them, making a total of five weeks and 36 days. Thus: May 10 + 6 + May 17 + 6 + May 24 + 6 + May 31 + 6 + June 7 + 6 + June 14 = 36. Since rebirth (and its symbol, moving into fresh air) occurs in non-Sunday chapters as well, the 1 - 6- 1 - 6 - 1 - 6 - 1 - 6 - 1 - 6 - 1 chapter pattern indicates that rebirth is cyclical, recurring throughout the book and throughout life.
91 / 89: a day which doesn't exist: Cummings mentions the non-existence of Sunday on each of the four Sundays he spends in Russia: May 17 (91/89), May 24 (180/175), May 31 (255/247), and June 7 (347/334). Cummings' insistence on the existence of Sunday (plus a six-day week) counters the Soviet arithmetic of the five-day week (88/86) and the five year plan achieved (supposedly) in four years (154/150).
92 / 90: a woman with a big baby = a Madonna with Christ as a young man.
92 / 90: "in which" sings "if they turn and twist . . ." = the last line of Marianne Moore's poem "A Grave."
93 / 91: Otto . . . Can't is
"a Romanian member of MORP, the Revolutionary Literature Bureau, which
was subordinate to the Comintern and run by mainly foreign communist
writers in Moscow at this stage" (Emily Lygo). Andrew Hemingway writes
that this bureau "acted as a kind of literary international for the
promotion of proletarian writing" (19). It is here that Otto gives
Cummings the text of Louis Aragon's poem "Le Front Rouge" (The Red
Front), which Cummings thinks about translating on pp. 100/97-98 and
actually translates on pages 140/137 and 145-46/142-143.
EEC's translation was published in Literature
of the World Revolution,
the journal of the Revolutionary Literature Bureau. Otto is probably
named Can't because he is
concerned with disseminating translations, and as Cummings notes,
"poetry equals: whatever cannot be translated!" (140/137).
| 93 / 91: daughter
of Lack Dungeon = Joan London
Malamuth
(1901-1971), daughter of Jack London, "alias BEATRICE (in relation to
VIRGIL) alias Turkess
or Harem" (Preface xvi / ii). her
husband = "the TURK, sometimes called
Assyrian or that bourgeois face or Charlie" = Charles Malamuth (1899-1965), Russian scholar and
newspaper correspondent (Kennedy 311-312). While Cummings was in At right: Charles Malamuth and his "bourgeois face." [Photo from Stasz,
Jack London's Women, between pages 210-211. This may be a
photo that Cummings took in 1931 in |
|
 |
93 / 91: the doctor whom you met = Chinesey = Dr. Armand Hammer, American entrepreneur and (at the time) Communist sympathizer, he was much involved in buying up Russian art from the Czarist period (including the famous Fabergé eggs--see pp. 55-56). According to Fabergé expert Géza von Habsburg, "Hammer arrived here in New York in 1931 with thousands of Russian works of art to be sold on behalf of the Soviets" ("…the fate of the eggs"). Hammer's autobiographies make it clear that he collected art for himself, securing assurances that he could take out of Russia his "collection of art treasures" (Quest 201, Hammer 189). See also pp. 198/192-93. |
(b)1 great Russian dramatist = "romp" = ?
(c)1 small American newspaperman = ?
(d)the best looking female = Joan London ("Harem").
95 / 93: "je savais que vous étiez écrivain . . ." = "I knew that you were a writer, but"(delicately)"everybody in that train station looked like a writer" [French].
96 / 93: "Madame, si vous voulez voir la pièce de votre père . . ." = "Madame, if you want to see the play [based on a short story] by your father, we need to leave immediately" [French].
97 / 94: Harvard Coop credentials = Virgil's notebook from the Harvard Cooperative Society (see page 33).
99 / 97: La belle au
bois dormant by Glossina palpalis = "Sleeping
Beauty by a tsetse fly." Glossina
palpalis is the scientific name for a species of tsetse fly: these
flies transmit
single-celled organisms called trypanosomes, causing trypanosomiasis,
commonly
known as "sleeping sickness."
106 / 104: nonmeeter
= "flowerbuyer" = novelist Vladimir Lidin,
who was supposed to meet Cummings at the station. (See page 12 / 13.)
109 / 107: companion of the way = a fellow traveler, which also can mean someone who is not a Communist party member.
110 / 108: Arabian Nights = St. Basil's
Cathedral.
Compare / contrast this story with the one on page 106 / 104.
111 / 109: stepping from elevator at pyaht / pyatch self = Cummings has moved to the fifth floor, but also perhaps to a fifth self.
aetat nil = "of no date" [Latin].
110 / 108: Il veut la révolution . . . vive la révolution mondiale! = "He is for the revolution . . . long live world revolution! All the same, he is not a mean sort of fellow. . . . Not even bad."
112 / 109: Vtoroi Mchat = the Second Moscow Arts Theatre. "Mchat refers to the Moscow Arts Theatre founded by Stanislavsky (Moskovskii Khudozhestvennyi Akademicheskii Teatr = MKhAT); vtoroi (second) refers to what is sometimes known as its second studio. The 'Second MKhat' was founded in 1912 as a new studio based on Stanislavsky's founding principles, but aiming to reinvigorate Russian theatre." [Note courtesy Emily Lygo]
116 / 114: argyrol = a silver-protein compound used as a local antiseptic.
117 / 114: Phi Beta Kappa = a GPU agent. See also pages 197/192 and 199/193.
123 / 121: Prince . . . Igor = Prince Igor, an opera in four acts composed in large part by Alexander Borodin (1833-1887) and completed after his death by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov.
|
|
125 / 123: Balieff
= Nikita Balieff (1877-1936), an
Armenian-Russian vaudevillian who emigrated to
|
130 / 127: a wolfboy. See page 113 / 111.
131 / 129: & so at twilight we 3 enter
this forest--This
dreamlike scene actually happened. Kennedy tells how in 1924 when
Elaine was
pressing Cummings for a divorce, Sibley Watson and his wife Hildegarde
invited
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
132 / 130: the only
2legged Englishspeaking correspondent who
can read a
Russian newspaper in the original -- The one-legged
correspondent who could read Russian was Walter Duranty.
(Virgil
tells
Cummings on page 40 about Duranty's
wooden leg. See also page 217 / 210.)
132 / 130: eye of 1 ½Russian comrade secretary
= "one
half-Russian" = "Nat" = Natalya (Nathalie)
Petrovna Shirokikh,
secretary
whom Charles Malamuth inherited from
United Press
reporter Eugene Lyons (Bassow 67).
133 / 131: --a certain ceremony =
taking/giving a
bath. "The bathtub, it is true, was tremendously large; but when the
heating
device, after hours of fussing, yielded only a few gallons of hot
water, the
size of the bathtub was less a blessing than a jeer" (Lyons 417).
135 / 133: Ça
sent l'espace = "This feels of space" [French].
136 / 133: Doomed? "Pourquoi?"
"Parce qu'il a l'âme russe" = "Why?" "Because he has a Russian
soul" [French].
136 / 134: pomum
Adami = Adam's apple [Latin].
141 / 138: 1 semimiddleaged
demifairy = "almighty" = "god" =
"Victor Eubank, the
bureau chief of the Associated Press" (Preface xxi / vii; Kennedy 312).
my 1st [book] = The Enormous Room (1922).
141 / 138: Greater Garbo = a pun on Greta Garbo (1905-1990), movie star known for her reclusive individuality.
145 / 142: Otto Can't's
giftless gift = Louis Aragon's poem in
praise of
communist
146 / 143: Pippa passes the buck:
a reference to the most often quoted verses from Robert Browning's
play,
The cuckoo is associated with an effigy or doll
because the Russian word for puppet (kukla)
resembles the word for the cuckoo and its call (Kukushka). After the women and
girls complete the rites with the cuckoo effigies, they sing a song
pledging to "Become gossips, love each other, make presents to each
other!" Then they kiss each other under an archway of birch branches.
W. R. S. Ralston says further: "This is called the 'Christening of the
Cuckoos' (kreshchenie kukusëk).
When two girls have kissed each other under the decorated arch, and
have exchanged crosses, they become 'Gossips' for life, as intimately
connected as if, at the christening of a child, they had become
attached to each other by the Spiritual ties of co-godmothership"
(215). Ralston adds that the girls also sometimes exchange eggs as
gifts, and in some provinces, "it is . . . customary for men also to
enter into the state of mutual cuckoo-gossipry" (216). Hence the
relevance of this custom to the Turk's previous remark that the Russian
sailors "wept and kissed" (147/143) after being saluted by an English
battleship.
147 / 144: et il pleut = and
it’s raining [French].
148 / 145: et j'ai faim! =
and I'm hungry! [French].
149 / 146: Something of Something
Theatre = Vsevolod
Meyerhold (1874-1940), Russian producer /
director. See note to pages 162-163 / 157-158. c'est . . . vous voulez faire sa
connaissance? = "It's . . . would you like to meet him?"
[French]; je ne sais s'il parle
français = "I don't know if he speaks French."
My friend the sculptor =
Ossip Zadkine
(1890-1967). (This friend is described on page 164/159
as "the man of the strayed face,the mind with the bravely cringing
eyes,the noble and droll little sculptor.")
il voudrait vous voir demain soir à
six heures! = he'd like to see you tomorrow evening at six! mangez maintenant = "you eat now." non non seulement trent kopecks
pourboire,ça suffit = "No, no, only thirty kopecks for a
tip--that's enough" [French]
152 / 148: "est-ce qu'elle est
vraie?" / "qui?" / "la lune" / l'âme russe,smiling / "oui" = "is
she real?" / "who?" / "the moon" / the Russian soul,smiling / "yes"
[French].
154 / 149: black marias =
police paddy wagons [pronounced
|
154 / 150: Poster:2
+ 2 = 5.
. . Cummings may have been startled by this slogan because he titled
his fifth
book is 5. As he explains in the Foreword to is 5:
"Ineluctable
preoccupation with The Verb gives a poet one priceless advantage:whereas nonmakers must
content themselves with the merely undeniable fact that two times two
is four,he [the poet] rejoices in a purely
irresistible
truth(to be found,in abbreviated costume,upon
the title page of the present volume" (CP 221). Lyons' chapter on the slogan in Assignment in Utopia is the probable source for George Orwell's use of it in 1984 as an example of totalitarian doublethink. Orwell wrote: "In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it." At right: 2 + 2 = 5, propaganda poster from 1931. The text reads: "The arithmetic of an industrial-financial counter-plan: 2 + 2 plus the enthusiasm of the workers = 5" [translation Steve Dodson]. Dodson explains that "the 'counter-plan' is the speeded-up plan the workers' collective of a factory allegedly came up with to counter the official plan: 'They say to do it in five years, but we, the socialist workers with our socialist enthusiasm, can do it in four!' Needless to say, this was not a voluntary 'plan'." The image is from a large page of Soviet posters titled "Galerie d'images: Affiches soviétiques (1920-1941)." This page forms part of the web site www.communisme-bolchevisme.net/. Link: Photo of a similar poster, "Fulfill the five-year plan not in five years, but in four" (1930). 155 / 151: Coxey's army = an 1894 protest march on Washington D.C. by unemployed workers, led by the populist Jacob Coxey. |
 |
155 / 151: now we all enter(lasciate
ogni =
157 / 152: hidden
fear = Lyons says that Natalia Shirokikh's father "died early in
the revolution" (295), but whether this is related to her hidden fear
is unknown. Cummings remembers the phrase "when they made us lie down"
from page 141/138: "but I was thinking of the time they put a revolver
to us and made us lie down for them." See also page 263/255.
162-163 / 157-158: Something = Vsevolod
Meyerhold
(1874-1940), Russian producer /
director of
 Kostia, Zinaida Raikh, & Tania. Photo from McVay, Esenin: A Life, between pages 182-183. |
162 / 158: 1 fanée . . . enters = Zinaida Raikh (1894-1939), Meyerhold's wife and leading actress. Here are some performance photos of Raikh. fanée = "faded" [French]. 163 / 158: Piscator
= Erwin Piscator (1893-1966), German
theatrical
producer and
director. The biglegged boychild
is Kostia (Konstantin)
Esenin, son of Zinaida
Raikh and the poet Sergei Esenin. 164 / 159: "furchtbar"
= terrible, frightful [German]. "grosse Bühne"
= large stage or theatre [German]. a
very lovely little girl = Tania (Tatiana) Esenina.
According to the 165 / 160: 1 perfectly beaming negress. = Emma Harris. In the second installment of his autobiography, I Wonder as I Wander, Langston Hughes writes: "She was a 'character.' Everyone in |
172 / 167: chauffebain = a chauffe-bain, or water-heater for the bath.
177 / 172: Michael = London, Jack. Michael, Brother of Jerry. New York, Macmillan, 1917. Michael is a "sociable . . . merry dog" who is kidnapped by a ship's steward. The book is a sequel to Jerry of the Islands (1917).
178 / 172: "Durov was a celebrity": the celebrity Durov who toured Europe is most likely Vladimir's brother Anatoly (1864-1916) and/or his son (Vladimir's nephew), Anatoly Anatolyevich Durov (1894-1928).
181 / 176: the Art Theatre = the Moscow Art Theatre, founded in 1897 by Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863-1938) and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (1858-1943), espoused naturalist "method" acting and more realistic theatrical presentation. In the April 1926 Dial, Cummings reviewed several touring productions of the Moscow Art Theatre
181 / 176: mother earth's foremost
living proletarian writer: EEC catches a glimpse of Maxim Gorky.
182 / 177: the short story which
made Gorky famous = "Chelkash" or "Tchelkash"
(1893), "the story of a harbor thief" (SovLit.com).
183 / 178: The Lower Depths: 1902 play in
four acts by Maxim Gorky. "A penetrating study of different types
of down-and-outs in an underground nights' lodging" (Dana 74).
184/ 178: L's W
= Lenin's Wife. [Compare "L's M" (25, 187).]
185 / 180: il faut absolument
visiter! . . . c'est le meilleur du monde! = you must visit it!
. . . it's the best in the world!" [French].
185-186 / 180: no bells. They
don't ring. Eugene Lyons writes: "My first years in Moscow are
suffused with the soldiers' singing and the insistent church bells. The
bells would start sonorously somewhere in the city and wake answering
chimes on all sides in a thousand different keys and measures until the
world seemed brimful of living, cavorting notes, chattering, scolding,
exulting. Later the ringing was prohibited as a public nuisance and the
bells themselves were hauled down and melted for their metals. But
somewhere a few timid bells had been overlooked in the sweep, and
occasionally they tinkled forlornly in the twilight" (213). See page
191/186.
 Morozov house, Prechistenka, 21 |
189-191 / 184-185: enfin!
= "finally!" [French]. Cummings finally visits the State Museum of New
Western
Art, established in 1918. Steve
Dodson notes that the museum "was located in the former Ivan Morozov
mansion
at Prechistenka, 21 (southwest of the Kremlin)." The
|
190 / 185: Picasso!:
See the Picasso
page at the Pushkin State Museum (Moscow) and the Picasso
pages at the Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg).
190 / 185: Matisse!: See the Matisse
page at the Pushkin State Museum and the Matisse
pages at the Hermitage.
5 gradually distorted heres =
Matisse’s The Dance (1910), second
version, now at the Hermitage
Museum, St. Petersburg. See also Matisse’s Music (1910), also at the
Hermitage.
190 / 185: Van Goghs,especially the
billiardtable = The Night Café (1888), formerly
in the Morozov collection, sold by the Soviets sometime in the 1930s,
and now at Yale University.
190 / 185: I touched(for
luck)lightly 1 idol,this by Something’s friend:bonjour--EEC
touches a sculpture by his and Meyerhold’s friend Ossip Zadkine
(1890-1967). (See also pages 149/146 and 164/159.) Perhaps the
sculpture that EEC touched was Musicians (1927), now at the
Pushkin State Museum.
191 / 186: marche
pas = "won't go" [French].
191 / 186: Stanislavsky's . . . Boris
= the Stanislavsky Opera Theatre's production of Boris Godunov (1872), an opera
by Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881). Though Cummings says that the second
scene takes place "inside [the] church," it is usually set on "the
porch of the Cathedral of the Dormition" in Cathedral Square in the
Kremlin. Mussorgsky's orchestral introduction to the scene simulates
the church bells that are ringing for the coronation of the new (1598)
Czar, Boris Godunov. See page 186/180.
191 / 186: the dog is
loose = "Dr. Hammer's big untamed wolfhound was chained all day in
the
corridor leading to the kitchen, and at night was unchained to guard
the 'black,' or servants', entrance against intruders" (Lyons 417).
María
Teresa
Gonzalez Mínguez points out that by having Malamuth call the dog a
"Poor soviet
Cerberus!" Cummings alludes to "Cerberus, the beast that guards the
gluttonous
in the third circle of Dante's Inferno
[Canto VI]." On page 21 "a Herculean nonman" is described as more
fearsome than Cerberus.
192 / 187: Mr. Moscovitz
himself = "Another of their [
192 / 187: Ezra,the son of Homer = the poet Ezra Pound, whose father's name was Homer. See pages 15, 57 / 56, and 84 / 83.
195 / 190: Find = Cummings receives a
letter from his
wife Anne Barton Cummings.
196 / 190: c'est
ici le consulat turque? = the Turkish Consulate is here?
196 / 191: non . . . c'est par
là = no, it's over that way; je
crois = I believe [French].
197 / 192: the military tactician =
"livid."
198 / 192: "in the days of
the Czar,a
Russian's soul
was his
passport"--see pages 38-39.
 |
199 / 193: our
nash-un-al an-them .
. . the in-ter-nash-un-al = "The
International," song "written by a transport worker after the Paris
Commune was crushed by the French government" and adopted by the Soviet
Union as its first national anthem. The title of the play refers to the
song's refrain, which urges workers to stick together in "la lutte
finale" [the final struggle]. In Charles H. Kerr's English translation:
" 'Tis the final conflict / Let each stand in his place / The
International Union / Shall be the human race." 202 / 197: Trying! [See also 199/193: An audience painfully,not to mention strainfully,Trying] --Cummings may be remembering John Keats' letter of 17-27 September, 1819 to his brother George and his wife Georgiana: "Dilke [is] a Man who cannot feel he has a personal identity unless he has made up his Mind about everything. The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing -- to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts. Not a select party. The genus is not scarce in population. All the stubborn arguers you meet with are of the same brood--They never begin upon a subject they have not preresolved on. They want to hammer their nail into you, and if you turn the point, still they think you wrong. Dilke will never come at a truth as long as he lives, because he is always trying at it. He is a Godwin-methodist" (303). In addition, the letters "GPU" when written cursively in the Cyrillic alphabet bear an uncanny resemblance to the English word "try." [At left: a poster depicting the GPU (Г П У) striking a counterrevolutionary "wrecker" (circa 1930).] |
204 / 198: Old Man River = Song composed
by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, from the 1927 musical Show Boat. Everybody Loves My Baby = Song from 1924 by
Spencer Williams (music) and Jack Palmer (lyrics). Nearer My God [to Thee] = 19th
century Christian hymn with words by Sarah Flower Adams and many
different musical settings.
205 / 199:
206 / 200: Lack Dungeon's proles
= Jack London's child, i.e., Joan London. The Latin word proles means "offspring, progeny,
child." The lowest class in ancient Rome was called the proletarii because their only
possession was their children.
206 / 200: vandinefully
= "like Van Dine," a reference to the mystery writer S. S. Van Dine,
who, under
his real name, Willard Huntington Wright, had written Modern
Painting (1915), a book much-cherished and well-annotated by
the young Cummings. Cummings satirizes Van Dine's mystery novels in the
poem "murderfully in midmost o.c.an" (CP
335).
("the" . . . ("engineers have shaggy") . . . ("ears")misquote: Malamuth misquotes a soldier's song from WWI:
The engineers have hairy ears,
They piss without their britches,
They bang their cocks against the rocks,
Those hardy sons of bitches
This song is derived from an older tune called "The Mountaineers," whose first verse reads:
The mountaineers have hairy ears,
They piss through leather britches,
They knock their cocks on mountain rocks,
Those scraggy sons of bitches
Malamuth's song about the engineers surely refers to the different
problems that the two American engineers in this chapter have in
marrying foreign women, but he also may be referring to the GPU agents
in military uniforms (199/193), who carry real rather than figurative
"pis-" . . . "stolsintheirbreeches" (206/200). It is likely also
that discovering GPU agents is the object of Joan London's "detective
work."
207 / 201: 1 very husbandful
gentlemenprefer = "Darksmoothlyestishful" (203-206/197-200).
Cummings refers to the title of Anita Loos' bestselling comic novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925).
207 / 201: "a
submarine . . . lost" = "The submarine minelayer RABOCHIY sank on
22 May
1931 in the Gulf of Finland after a collision with the submarine
KRASSNOARMEYETS. Two years later the RABOCHIY was raised by the rescue
ship
COMMUNA and sold for scrap" (Polmar 89-90). According to a May 27, 1931
article in the New York Times,
the sinking was reported in a brief dispatch only on May 26. The Times article states: "No detailed
official report of the catastrophe seems to have been made by the
Russian Government."
209 / 203: "il est fier"(and he
is)dit K = "he is proud"(and he is)said K. le citoyen russe vous salut! = the
Russian citizen salutes you! café! .
. . merveilleux! = coffee! . . . marvelous! Merci. C'est entendu = Thanks. It's
understood [French].
210 / 203: Bread = a play by Vladimir
Kirshon (1902-1938). Dana says that it is about "efforts to encourage
agriculture and to prevent kulaks
[prosperous landed peasants] from
hoarding wheat" (78).
213 / 206: returned during nep
= "the New Economic Policy of socialist-capitalist compromise
introduced by
Lenin in 1921" (
213 / 207: a powerful pair of eyes
= the character known as “eyes.” She is Lyubov Davydovna Faynberg (or
Feinberg) (1908-1983). See note to pages 262-263 / 254.
213 / 207: heat murdered perioolok
= "the magnificent Hammer place [was] at Petrovsky
Pereulok 8, across the street from the
squat, carrot-red Korsh theater" (
216 / 209-210: speaks
/ --in numbers!(for the numbers came. = parody of Alexander
Pope's lines about his poetic beginnings: "Why did I write? what sin to
me unknown / Dipped me in ink, my parents', or my own? / As yet a
child, nor yet a fool to fame, / I lisped in numbers, for the numbers
came" ("Epistle
to Dr. Arbuthnot," lines 125-28). The word "numbers" here refers to
the syllable counts and meters of lines of verse.
217 / 210: one-legged people = As Virgil
tells
Cummings on page 40, reporter Walter Duranty
had a
wooden leg. (See also page 132 / 130, where
217 / 211: favorite
yellow journal = The New York
Evening Journal, a Hearst paper that was Cummings' favorite
because it carried the comic
strip Krazy
Kat. See page 48/49.
220 / 213: "I had one
here" Chinesey/Hammer refers to his first wife, Olga, whom he met
when she
was a performer of gypsy songs.
…al-lo!monsieur Kem-min-kz?ahbonjour!dites: . . . "Hello! Monsieur Kem-min-kz? Ahbonjour! Say: would you like to come to our place tomorrow evening for dinner? Yes. Right, my husband has returned. What? Around seven o'clock. Yes. OK--till tomorrow . . ."
220 / 213: eheu
fu(labuntur anni(rugis et instanti
. . = Horace, Odes, II.14:
Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume,
labuntur anni nec pietas moram
rugis et instanti senectae
adferet indomitaeque morti:
"Ah, Postumus, Postumus, how fleeting / the swift years--prayer cannot delay / the furrows of imminent old-age / nor hold off unconquerable death." (Cf. page 21, as well as CP 234 and CP 492.)
221 / 214: Pickwick = perhaps conductor and violinist Emil Cooper, also known as Emil Kuper (1877-1960).
221 / 214: & he did it
at last.
. .with a)pistol = A letter from Anne tells Cummings that Ralph
Barton,
Anne's first husband and a talented commercial artist and caricaturist,
had
killed himself "in his penthouse apartment" in
221 / 214: us all jammed in his Voisin --In 1929 Cummings, Anne, her daughter Diana, Ralph Barton, and his fourth wife, the composer Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983), traveled to the south of France "in a chauffeur-driven Citroën . . . to Toulon, where Barton owned a villa, and then after a few days returning to Paris through Lyons. The whole trip was marked by too much drinking and punctuated by troubles and quarrels. Barton was teetering on the brink of divorce from Germaine, who split from him from time to time . . . . Barton was also so unstable in psyche that Cummings recommended that he seek help from Dr. Wittels" (Kennedy 304-305).
222 / 214-15: Itless hangs heavy and
limp = an old-fashioned box camera with a cloth hood. The
"Micro(before itless)scopic . . . tovarich" crouching in front is a
photographer and landscape painter. Seeing the camera reminds EEC that
he must have his internal passport photos taken in order to travel to
Odessa. However, he also realizes that he might not have enough money
to get photographed, so he notes the location for future reference.
This "microscopic landscape tovarich" (234/227) takes EEC's Russian
identity passport photographs on pages 234-235 / 227-228.
222 / 215: blowing my brains out--
228 / 221: the poet = Boris Pasternak
(1890-1960), who, having returned to Moscow the day before, departed
with three other writers on May 28, 1931 to visit the new industrial
sites of Chelyabinsk, Kuznetsk, and Magnitogorsk. However, Pasternak
did not complete what was to be a three-week tour. After giving three
poetry readings in Chelyabinsk, he returned to Moscow on June 7.
Christopher Barnes' biography records Pasternak's reactions to the
trip:
The Turk's hurrahboys to the right
of him echoes Tennyson's "The
Charge of the
Light Brigade": "Cannon to right of them, / Cannon to left of
them, / Cannon in front of them / Volley'd and thunder'd; / Storm'd at
with shot and shell, / Boldly they rode and well, / Into the jaws of
Death, / Into the mouth of Hell / Rode the six hundred."
[Thanks to Jacques Demarcq for the bulk of this note.]
233 / 225: Thurston
= Howard
Thurston (1869-1936), American magician, author of My Life of Magic (1929), famous for
his card tricks and elaborate props.
236 / 229: 1st beyond miracle 34 full =
The first #34
tram that appears is full. See page 208 / 202 and page 448 / 428.
|
238 / 230: a stranger = "a granddaughter of Tolstoy" (231) = Sofia Tolstaya (1900-1957). She comes to dinner on pages 263 / 254-255. 238 / 230: someone
. . . killed himself = poet Sergei
Esenin (1895-1925), who married
his fifth wife
Sofia Tolstaya early in 1925. On Link: more Esenin photos. 238 / 231: Soviet Russia's foremost prosewriter = Valentin Kataev (1897-1986). Charles Malamuth "miraculously is translating" Kataev's novel, Time, Forward! (1932). Malamuth also translated Kataev's novel A White Sail Gleam (1936) as Peace Is Where the Tempests Blow (Farrar & Rinehart, 1937). |
|
|
|
241 / 234: Rose Marie = 1924 operetta with music by Rudolf Friml and Herbert Stothart, libretto by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II. Filmed in 1928, 1936. 242
/ 235: pointing. To a
photograph = 248-251 / 240-243: Lenin's tomb is shaped like a squat pyramid: the spacing of
|
256 / 248: (& was that good enough?did it please
her? When Eugene Lyons and family
left
259 / 251: The tragedy is and always will be that most people are unable to express themselves: Malamuth again refers to Emerson, this time from the essay "The Poet." After asserting that "by truth and by his art" the poet "will draw all men sooner or later," Emerson writes: "For all men live by truth, and stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression. Notwithstanding this necessity to be published, adequate expression is rare" (327).
262-263 / 254: Softly unintrudes eyes-nonman =
"drôle homme . . . comme mon mari" = funny man . . . like my husband [French]. When "eyes" is introduced on pages 213-215 / 207-209, we learn that her husband translated
|
263 / 254-255: and tall = Sofia Tolstaya
comes to dinner. (See 238 / 230-231.)
263 / 255: Assyrian shoots Harem and departing. Charles Malamuth, Joan London, and Cummings take parting photos of each other. At right: the Assyrian's photo of Joan London and 271 / 263: Hotel Continental? on Karl Marx Street (cf. 276 / 268). Steve Dodson notes that "this street is now Arkhitektora Horodetskoho, and the site of the hotel is now occupied by the Kiev Conservatory." |
|
273 / 265: The churches are drowning with stars: Many churches in Kiev have golden stars painted on the outside of their blue domes. See, for example, the Cathedral of St. Volodymyr.
276 / 268: "Hier?" . . . "wirklich." = "Here?" . . . "really" [German].
277 / 269: a newslesspaper called Truth = Pravda, which means "truth." See http://english.pravda.ru/. Highme Wokker = Jaime Walker = Johnny Walker? Or Hymie Worker?
277 / 269 Später = later. Geld zahlen = counting money [German].
279 / 271: Tad's immortal words = "TAD" or Thomas A. Dorgan (1877-1929), a cartoonist who is credited with inventing or popularizing an incredible number of slang terms and popular expressions, including "dumbbell," "for crying out loud," and "hard-boiled."
280 / 272: gnädige =
gracious, kind. gnädige Frau
= Madam [German].
281 / 273: a certain monastery of
note = the Kiev-Pechersk
Lavra Monastery.
283 / 274: Cheehoo = Jehu =
"A fast or furious driver [In allusion to 2 Kings ix. 20 'the driving
is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi, for he driveth
furiously']" (OED). Note correctly spelled Jehu on page 283 / 275. [Note from
Steve Dodson]
285 / 276: "mon camarade--il dit:pas
de beelyet" = my comrade--he said: no ticket [French]. "Kommen Sie" = You come [German]. "wo" = where? [German]. Sie could have felled ich = You
could have felled I.
286 / 277: husteron prot = hysteron proteron = "the latter
[put as] the former" [Greek]. A rhetorical term meaning "syntax or
sense out of normal logical or temporal order" (Lanham 58), a stylistic
device frequently employed by Cummings in EIMI and elsewhere.
288 / 280: "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" = "Do you speak German?" "Wenig,sehr wenig. Sprechen Sie vielleicht . . ." = Little, very little. Do you perhaps speak French or English?" [German]
289 / 281: "Puppschen"
= dolls, puppets [German]. See pages 231-232 / 224.
290 / 281: Muriel
Draper = "wife of Paul Draper the pianist,
and mother of Paul Draper, Jr., who was to become a popular American
dancer in
the 1930's" (Kennedy 273). Muriel Draper and Cummings were lovers for a
brief
time after his break-up with Elaine. They remained friends until EIMI
appeared, when Muriel, along with other left-leaning friends, broke
with
Cummings (Kennedy 360-361).
291 / 282: "Frühstuck"
= Breakfast [German].
292 / 283: "ich glaube" = I
believe [German]. "aber ich bin amerikanisch"
= however I am American [German].
293 / 284: shtoh?qu'est-ce
que?--"Was?" = "What?" in Russian, French, and German. "Schnell!" = Quickly! "nein" = no [German].
294 / 284: "bleiben Sie ruhig" = remain
calm
[German].
297 / 288: "und . . . es ist Blau!" = and . . . it is blue! [German]. C notes that the Black Sea is . . . blue.
298 / 288-89: Ritzy . . . Hotel
London = the Londonskaya
Hotel.
298 / 289: "endtendu?"
= understood? [French].
298 / 289: dooble-vay-say
mangifique and salle
de bains . . . = "magnificent WC
["water-closet", i.e, toilet] and a
supreme bathroom--also a bidet.
What an idea: a bidet in hell." [Cummings combines French and English
in this
passage.]
299 / 290: "malade"
= sick [French]. 1st
glimpse of hole-in-forehead = Cummings
first sees this character, also called "censor," on page 24.
300 / 291:
301 / 292: "US WUN YANG
303 / 294: Bleiben) = "remaining" [German] = An "unmoving" GPU agent. See pages 293-294 / 284-285.
[June 3, 1931]
EDWARD CUMMINGS CARE
INTOURIST
SAILING
(No
doubt Anne wrote "DON'T WORRY," but the French telegram operator
probably
misread her penmanship.)
305 / 295: 1 horrorimage = one of the Russian identity passport photographs taken on pages 234-235 / 227-228.
306 / 296: salle à manger =
dining room [French].
307 / 296-97: "perdu"
= lost, done for. "pour me
donner du courage, monsieur" = to give me courage, sir. "ce soir" = this evening [French].
308 / 298: "J'étais fou:c'est tout" = I
was crazy:
that's all. "et c'est
seulement Ça que
je demande--Travailler!"
= and that's all I ask--to Work!' "et
je
313 / 302: Booth Tarkington (1869-1946), American novelist, author of The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and Alice Adams (1921).
316 / 305: "est-ce que Monsieur parle français?" = Does the gentleman speak French? "non:s'il vous plait;ici" = no: please; here. ohree vawmuh dum = Au revoir, madame [French].
317 / 306: "c'est ça qu'il faut"(she:"Mais c'est tout détruit!détruit!") = "that's what is necessary"(she:"But it's all destroyed!destoyed!") [French].
318 / 307: Morhyeh / Moryeh = "sea" [Russian]. (See page 347 / 334.)
321 /310: merci . . . déjeuner = thanks . . . lunch. soi-disant jardin = so-called garden. "ob,so,loo,mon,NAW" = absolument NON = absolutely NOT [French].
322 / 311: ell nuh foe paw shooshay . . . = Il ne faut pas cherchez l'âme russe par cette musique--chez les orchestres militaires jouer par example seule des sons rien [?] sans education. Prenez le musique ici dans le shawdan c'est bon, pas triste, gai. = It's not correct to look for the Russian soul in this music--in these military bands play for example only nothing sounds [?], without education. Take the music here in the garden--it's good, not sad, gay.
(shrugging)"sais pas. . . = "I don't know. I don't understand the system here. Sad!"
poor quaw voo deet . . . = Pourquoi vous dites triste? Tout est triste. Oui, mais c'est pas le faut de l'âme russe--russe l'âme n'est pas triste. = Why do you say "sad"? Everything is sad. Yes, but it's not the fault of the Russian soul. The Russian soul is not sad.
poo-tet = Peut être.
Et en tout cas il
est un grand plaisir de rencontrer deux hommes intelligents =
Perhaps.
And in
any case, it is a great pleasure to meet two intelligent men [French].
322 / 311: the shawdan = the "jardin," or the "summer garden"
of the
Londonskaya Hotel.
undolce styl nuovo = not-sweet new style [Italian and English]. Cummings refers to the Italian term dolce stil novo, name given for the new poetic style pioneered by Dante and his contemporaries. See Dante's Purgatorio, Canto 24.
La luxe = Luxury. "excusez-moi,mon ami . . . = "Excuse me, friend. I need to return to our hotel: I have a very important response to write . . . good night. See you tomorrow!" [French].
323 / 312: Don't Operate . . . Unless . . . Reason = text of Cummings' telegram to Anne Barton, asking her not to have an abortion unless medically necessary. See Kennedy 308-309, 313. See pages 445-447 / 425-427.
e for someone's name . . . e for someone's
other name --No doubt the two names are "Edward Estlin."
a for a name = Anne [Barton Cummings].
323 / 312: t for two and two for tea
= lyrics from "Tea for Two,"
a song from the 1925 musical No, No,
Nanette with music by Vincent
Youmans and lyrics by Irving Caesar. Most of the song concerns the two
lovers: "Just me for you / And you for me – alone." However, at the end
the lovers contemplate starting a family: "Day will break and I'll wake
/ And start to bake a sugar cake / For you to take for all the boys to
see / We'll raise a family / A boy for you / And a girl for me / Can't
you see how happy we would be."
perhaps perfection--Cummings
may be remembering his father’s sermon on childhood, in which the
Reverend Cummings preaches that every child should be treated as a
potential savior of humanity and hopes that "Every father and every
mother may be inspired with the lofty purpose of giving to this new
life the opportunities for development which shall make the divinity
within the child grow to perfection" (6).
O for O civilization may also
refer to his father's sermon, which asserts that "all civilization may
properly be called child civilization" (3) because "it is to the babes
and sucklings that humanity is indebted for almost everything that
makes life worth living. It is to infancy—prolonged and helpless
infancy—that humanity is most indebted for all the institutions and all
the ideals that distinguish human beings from brutes, and civilized men
and women from brutal savages" (4).
|
Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque, et quantumst hominum venustiorum! passer mortuus est meae puellae, passer, deliciae meae puellae, |
O Venus and you, Cupids, shed A tear, and all in man that's moved By beauty, mourn. Her sparrow's dead, My darling's darling, whom she loved (trans. James Michie) |
Mourn, ye Graces and Loves,
and all you whom the Graces love. My lady's sparrow is dead, the sparrow my lady's pet, (trans. Harry Walker) |
(For another translation, see “Carmen 3”
at Rudy Negenborn’s Gaius Valerius Catullus site.
Cummings refers again to this poem on page 447 / 426. He also quotes
the first two lines of the poem in the six nonlectures, page 50.)
326 / 315: "meaning which?" as Joe
Gould says--Cummings refers to Joe Gould, noted Greenwich
Village street person and the subject of EEC's poem, "little joe gould has lost his teeth and doesn't
know where" (CP 410).
328 / 317: Arcadia = a beach
south of Odessa.
329 / 318: Julia
Sanderson (1888-1975) = American actress from Springfield,
Massachusetts, who first became famous playing Eileen Cavanaugh in the
1910 Broadway production of the hit musical The Arcadians. Cummings quotes
verses from three separate songs (with words by Arthur Wimperis and
music by Lionel Monckton) in quick succession:
b) harkthe pipesof Panare calling = verse from the song "The Pipes of Pan Are Calling" (1909), sung at the beginning of the play by the Arcadian nymph Sombra.
c) a Short-life and a G-A-Y;one = from a refrain sung by Peter Doody, a jockey who has never won a race. He sings of how he always looks on the bright side: his motto is: “Cheer up, Cully, you’ll soon be dead! / A short life and a gay one!” Jacques Demarcq points out that this song also contains several verses in Franglais like “My accent is / A tout à fait Français one,” which is quite in keeping with Cummings’ rendering of accents as well as his mixing of French and English in the Odessa scenes of the book. [Thanks to Jacques Demarcq for much of the information in this note.]
330 / 319: flowers-in-the-crannied
lassies: a reference to Alfred, Lord Tennyson's short poem:
"Flower in the crannied wall, / I pluck you out of the crannies, / I
hold you here, root and all, in my hand, / Little flower—but if I could understand / What you
are, root and all, and all in all, / I should know what God and man is"
(1869).
331 / 319: Streichholz!yah! =
match! I! [German; Russian]. danke
= thanks [German].
331 / 320: Down. dowN.
332 / 321: fascism
equals no "class struggle":cooperation of "worker" and
"capitalist"; "Mussolini certainly is a great politician"
"nous" = "we" the Italians "need a strong man because" whisper "there were disturbances"
dwarfish "comme" . . . "ça" = like that.
"je comprend[s]" = I understand.
"rien,eh?" = "nothing, eh?" "yes" he shrugs "they are used to it."
334 / 322: besser als ich =
better than I. Zimmer = room.
zehn Minuten = ten minutes. a "Herr" = a gentleman [German].
337 / 324: the Polish general
= Lucjan
Żeligowski (1865-1947) commander of the 4th Polish Rifle Division
who, with the help of Greek and French troops, secured Odessa against
the Red Army from December 1918 to May 1919.
338 / 326: buzzjoo
mushyoo = Bonjour, Monsieur [French].
Munchausen =
Karl Friedrich
von Münchhausen (1720-1797), a German
baron who
served in the Russian military. After returning to
339 / 327: to
death rededicated = Noo has gone back to reading his detective
novels after telling Cummings the "bad noos!"
340 / 328: Voo
zate moan ami .
. . = "Vous êtes
mon
ami. . . . Je fais tout pour vous"
= You are my
friend. . . I do everything for you."
341 / 328: well,mushyoo--com
on saw vaw? = Well, Monsieur, comment ça va?" = Well,
Monsieur, how's
it going? maymush yoo!ellnuh foepaw . . . = Mais,
Monsieur! il ne
faut pas être
comme ça; tout
va bien, comprennez?
= But Monsieur, don't be like that; everything's fine, understand? Maw
shuh Say!
= Moi,
je
342 / 329: "baw poor luh sontay" = Bon pour le santé = Good for health.
343 / 330: "mushyoo!voo voolay nawjay . . ." = Monsieur, vous voulez nagez? Bon, bon pour le santé! Très bon pour vous! Non? c'est dommage Monsieur. Alors, vous gardez nos habits, n'est-ce pas? Oui?--merci, merci beaucoup" = Monsieur, do you want to swim? Good, good for health! Very good for you! Well, you can guard our clothes, no? Thanks, thanks a lot.
343 / 331: MONJAY! = Mangez! = Eat!
344 / 331: "salute!" =
cheers! [Italian]. "Monjay!--seel
voo
Play MonJay!" = Mangez!--s'il vous plait, Mangez!" = Eat!--if
you
please Eat!" "merci" =
thank you.
344 / 332: "ma maison serait la
votre" = my house would be yours. "eh bien:permettez moi--" = good:
then allow me--. "écoutez, monsieur"
= listen, sir.
345 / 332-333: "Entrez" =
Enter! "Un brave homme" = An
honest, worthy man. "maintenant je
vais à ma chambre,entendre la musique" = now I'm going to my
room, to listen to music.
348 / 335: Et"je suis au" . . . "bout de mes" = And"I am at the" . . . "end of my" MONJAY! = "Mangez!" = Eat! BOOVAY! = "Buvez!" = Drink! "ONGKORE!" = Encore! = Again!
349 / 335: REEAY = Riez
= Laugh.
350 / 337: it's français as well as russe = it's French as well as Russian. mais([re]'garder moi ça) = but(I see that). (allons vite) = let's go quickly. demoiselles = young ladies. moi j'ai no mallet = me I have no mallet. réponse de Moscou = response from Moscow. paraît qu'aujourdui's a national holiday = it appears that today's a national holiday.
351 / 338: Selah
= Hebrew word of uncertain
meaning that appears at the end of some psalms in the Bible.
Small's
355 / 341: the Last? = Is this my last day in Russia? a certain Florentine's enormous dream = Dante's Inferno.
358 / 343: "non" . . . "mais je
crois que tout va bien enfin" = "no" . . . "but I believe that
everything will work out well in the end"
358 / 344: "je Vais
--TRAVAILLER!" = i am Going to
364 / 350: shwoddy veev = joie de vivre = joy of
life
[French].
370 / 355: FrANZ
MERing = Franz Mehring
(1846-1919), "who was associated with Rosa Luxembourg and who wrote a
biography
of Karl Marx" (Farley 101).
 |
372 / 357: "pourquoi?" je demande .
. . "c'est comme ça,eh?" . . . "nous sommes cinq" = "why?" I ask
. . . "so that’s how it is, eh?" . . . "there are five of us [in our
cabin]" [French]. 378 / 363: Mormugão = In March 1921, Cummings and John Dos Passos sailed from 379 / 364: concessionaire de crayons = one with a pencil concession = Chinesey = Armand Hammer, who, among his other businesses, ran a pencil factory in Russia. [Photo of poster from EnglishRussia.com]
383 / 368: ore-dove = hors d'oeuvres.
|
392 / 375: pour ainsi dire = so to speak [French].
395 / 378: Eddie(bouncing eyefully)Cantoirsh--the dude's friend looks like Eddie Cantor (1892-1964), a comedian, actor, singer, and dancer who debuted on Broadway with the Ziegfeld Follies in 1917. In the 1930s much of his career was in radio and movies. He was known for his comically exaggerated eye rolling.
396 / 379: par ici,Ici,ICI! = this way, Here, HERE! nous trois! = we three! ViEnS!i-c-i-- = CoMe h-e-r-e-- Arrêtez! = Stop! [French].
398 / 381: vous savez,on VOLE ici! = you know, they STEAL here! oui,ils sont des sales types ici = yes, there are some unsavory types here [French].
402 / 385: Ilah! = Allah! See page 299/290: "ilah preserve our spirit!"
406 / 388: a street called Payrah = Grande Rue de Pera (now Istiklal Caddesi), at that time the major street in the European section. "Pera" is also a name for the district of Istanbul where Cummings' hotel is, across the
407 / 389:
407 / 389: TOSCA = the brand name of Cummings' new watch.
410 / 391: Harry Greb = middleweight boxer (1894-1926).
413-414 / 395: hugE /ness = Hagia Sophia. Cummings gives his reactions to the interior of the vast structure before he tells of arriving and entering it.
415 / 396: . . . & else =
Cummings'
description of the Blue
Mosque.
415 / 396: Enter (city:a.Dollcity.
EEC visits the Grand
Bazaar, a very large market enclosed in arcades. Compare
this scene with the markets in
418 / 399: taxim = Taksim, a nightclub district. poules = "hens," French slang for prostitutes. See page 15.
423 / 404: l'Enclave de Karaghadge
= the Turkish enclave within Thrace; "Karaghadge" or Karagatch is
Karaağaç, a suburb of Edirne (Adrianople) at the border with Greece.
[Cf. 430 / 411 as well: the
enclosedness of Karaghadge.] Thanks to Steve Dodson for this
note.
427 / 408: subito! = quickly! [Italian]. je me rase maintenant. . . = I will shave now. There are books.
428 / 409: paraît
there's pas d'argent for lunch = it
appears
there's no money for lunch. a trifle the Mille
Et Un?
= a trifle Thousand and One [Nights].
|
429 / 410: Captain Bonavita
= Jack Bonavita (1866-1917), animal
trainer who appeared with Frank Bostock's
animal show headquartered at the Dreamland amusement park on Coney
Island
from 1904-11. Bonavita worked in films
from 1913 to 1917, when he died from injuries suffered in a polar bear
attack. Bostock:Frank,"The Animal / King" = Frank C. Bostock (d. 1912), the author (with Ellen Velvin) of The Training of Wild Animals (New York, 1903). Bostock's "Great Animal Arena" toured America before finding a more permanent headquarters at the Dreamland amusement park. At right: Bostock's building at Dreamland (note the elephants). As Cummings indicates, one or another Diavolo performer was likely also billed as "Porthos Leaps the Gap over Nine Elephants" (429/410). While there is a newspaper drawing of Porthos leaping the gap, alas, there are no elephants that I can see. Perhaps Diavolo/Porthos also performed as "Mlle D'Zizi." According to P. M. McClintock, " |
|
430 / 410: Forepaugh . . . The Only Living = this circus advertised "THE ONLY HERD OF 7 PERFORMING ELEPHANTS OWNED BY ANY
430 / 410-411: for / -sitan et haec / olim = "forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit" (Virgil, Aeneid, I, 203) = "Some day, perhaps, remembering even this / Will be a pleasure" (Fitzgerald 10). Cummings' father quoted this line in a letter he wrote to his son in 1917 when
430 / 411:
430 / 411: mai and the chevaux de bois & death: Cummings refers to his daughter Nancy riding the wooden horses on a merry-go-round in Paris. The word death most probably alludes to the anguish occasioned by the break-up of his marriage to Elaine in 1924. See notes to pages 131 / 129 and 443 / 423.
430 / 411: You es es are . . .
= USSR RSVP
430 / 411 the enclosedness of
Karaghadge
432 / 412: pavots = poppies [French].
432 / 413: esti = εστι = "it is" [Greek]. This is another form of the verb είμί, "eimi" ("I am"), the title of the book.
433 / 414: "c'est
la vie,et non point la mort,qui
divise l'âme du corps" = "It is life, and not death, that
divides the soul from the body" (Tel
quel 55). The line is from a collection of aphorisms and apercus
called Choses tues (1928,
1932). This volume was translated as Asides
and later collected in Tel quel
(1941). In the standard English translation, the quote may be found in
Valéry’s Analects (41).
434 / 415: clefs = keys. bien = good [French].
435 / 416: der-Zug =
the-train [German]. pink(cochons!
= pink(pigs! [French]. spelled à la
russe Sophia = Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, spelled in the
Cyrillic script ("hell's / alphabet"). . . . a piece
of string Hohda Nyet = see page 92/90.
436 / 417: und Zeit = and
time. in Zeit-[ungen] = in
maga-[zines] [German]. It is these maga-[zines] that "flaunt / nudegals
all over the plat(And How) / form" (437).
437 / 417-18:
438 / 419: he who knoweth
the
eternal is comprehensive = the indented words in quotes are from
section 16
of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. On
lice--see pp. 414 / 395 and 426 / 407. Cummings may be remembering or referring to the following passage in chapter V of James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: "The life of his body, illclad, illfed, louseeaten, made him close his eyelids in a sudden spasm of despair: and in the darkness he saw the brittle bright bodies of lice falling from the air and turning often as they fell. Yes; and it was not darkness that fell from the air. It was brightness:
Brightness falls from the air
He had not even remembered rightly Nash's line." (254)
--χαίρετε-- = chairété [kai-ray-tay] = "rejoice, greetings, welcome" [Greek].
439 / 420: "OW rfathuz nmothus . . ." = "Our fathers and mothers didn't have them and you have."
441 / 421: chorneeyeh(nicht
Blau)moryeh = black(not blue)sea [Russian, German, Russian]. (See pages 297/288,
318/307, and 347/334.)
442 / 422: ecco! = Behold!" [Italian].
Lachaise =
sculptor Gaston Lachaise (1882-1935),
known for large bronze female nudes.
Cummings and Lachaise were good friends.
See
Cummings' essay, "Gaston Lachaise" (Miscellany
13-24) See also "The
Vigorous Venus: An Examination of Gaston Lachaise."
man-à-la-chaise = "man as a chair" = Rodin's Thinker.
442 / 422: "excusez!" . . . ". . . j'
443 / 423: et les bat . . . eaux
= "and the [sail]boats" [French].
443 / 423: “Créateur du ciel et
terre, . . . comment aurait-il des enfants, . . . lui qui n’a pas de
compagne?" = "Creator of the sky and earth, how could he have
children, he who has no companion?" [French]. Though Cummings' Preface
(xxxi / xvii) implies that this is a quote from Paul Valéry, it is
actually from the Koran, Sura 6, verse 101. The quote appears in the
context of debunking the notion that God could have children. For a
similar French translation, see: http://islamfrance.free.fr/doc/coran/sourate/6.html.
See also an English version that presents three translations
side-by-side: http://majalla.org/books/quran/6.htm.
gui . . . gnols = puppet shows [French].
443 / 423: ago week A = these
three words are repeated five times to indicate the five weeks in EIMI. See the note to page 91/89.
443 / 423: oga = "ago"
spelled backwards. Five sections in this last chapter (each beginning
with "oga" or "ago" and each representing one week) comprise what
Cummings called a
445 / 425: alias
demain SVP / for oggi:alias
caldo;equals Italia = "alias tomorrow s'il vous plait [if
you please] /
for today:alias hot;equals
dolce . . . fa[r] niente = "it is sweet to do nothing" [Italian].
445 / 425: (enter white;by
child pridefully--see
page 209 / 203.
445 / 425: (or am I dead)--see page 315/304.
446 / 426: if only something happens if only--see page 371/356.
446 / 426: (Rain making alive) --see pages 316 / 305-306.
446 / 426: nyet / imposs / can't --see page 355/341, 392/375.
446 / 426: spelling it = spelling out the word "Operate" as he does on page 323 / 312. See the notes to pages 323 / 312 and 447 / 426 (Lugete,).
446 / 426: I like everything = EEC's parting words when leaving his Russian teacher's mother in Odessa to go back to his hotel in the rain (317/307). Compare with his statement that he likes "shining things" (
& I supposed that I had known . . . of a than any universe older faceless;and such eyes,flowers of complete . . . --One word is left off the end of each quotation: "& I supposed that I had known agony" and "flowers of complete pain" (391/375).
|
Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque, et quantumst hominum venustiorum! passer mortuus est meae puellae, passer, deliciae meae puellae, |
Mourn, ye Graces
and Loves, |
Venus and you, Cupids, shed
A tear, and all in man that's moved By beauty, mourn. Her sparrow's dead, My darling's darling, whom she loved (trans. James Michie) |
(For another translation, see “Carmen 3” at Rudy Negenborn’s Gaius Valerius Catullus site.) The reference to Catullus, as well as the imagery of rain and the words god damned on this and the previous page(s), point the reader back to the end of the "Thurs. June 4" chapter, where Cummings discovers in his pocket "a sketch for a telegram--sent?today,sent; this / : mourning" (323 / 312). The telegram [Don't Operate . . . Unless . . . Reason] asks his wife Anne Barton not to have an abortion unless medically necessary. Cummings is still mourning the lost, doomed child. See the notes to pages 323/312 and 305/295. See also Kennedy, Dreams 308-309, 313.
447 / 427: no,more Sunday = literally, this particular Sunday will end. Cummings repeats the word "Sunday" five times with various capitalizations to indicate the five previous Sundays in EIMI. See the notes on Sunday for pages 61/60 and
450 / 429: "ils ont dévalisé ma malle / !" = "they have ransacked my trunk!"
"ils m'embêtent!" = "they're bothering me!"
450 / 430: "!J'ai Payé Deux Cent Cinquante FRANCS!" = "I've paid 250 Francs!"
Works Cited
Ahearn,
Barry,
ed. Pound / Cummings: The Correspondence of Ezra Pound and E. E.
Cummings.
Anderson, Maxwell and Harold Hickerson.
Gods of the Lightning, [and] Outside Looking In.
Barnes, Christopher. Boris Pasternak: A Literary Biography: Volume 2, 1928-1960. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.
Bassow, Whitman. The
Cohen, Milton A. "The Dial's 'White-Haired Boy': E. E. Cummings as Dial Artist, Poet, and Essayist," Spring 1 (1992): 8-27.
Cummings, Edward. Childhood: A Sermon. Boston: Geo. H. Ellis, n.d.
Cummings, E. E. Complete Poems, 1904-1962. Ed George J. Firmage.
---.
"Gaston Lachaise." The Dial
February 1920. Rpt. E. E.
Cummings: A Miscellany Revised. Ed. George J. Firmage.
---. Him. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1927. Reprinted. New York: Liveright, 1955, 1970.
---. EIMI.---. i: six nonlectures. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1953.
---.
Selected Letters of E. E.
Cummings. Ed. F.W. Dupee and George Stade.
Dana,
Henry
Eastman,
Max. "The Cult of Unintelligibility." Harper's
(April,
1929): 632-639. Rpt. in The Literary Mind: Its
Place in an Age of Science. 1931.
---.
"The Tendency Toward Pure Poetry." Harper's
(July,
1929): 222-230. Rpt. in The Literary Mind: Its
Place in an Age of Science. 1931.
---.
"Poets Talking to Themselves." Harper's
(October, 1931):
563-574. Rpt. in The Literary Mind: Its
Place in an
Age of Science. 1931.
Eliot,
T. S. Collected Poems: 1909-1962.
New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963.
Emerson,
Ralph
Waldo. Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
2nd. ed. Ed. William H. Gilman.
"Esenin, S. A." Encyclopedia
of Soviet
Writers. SovLit.Net.
Accessed
Farley, David. "E. E. Cummings: Intourist in the Unworld." Spring 12 (2003): 86-106.
Fitzgerald, Robert, trans. The
Aeneid of Virgil.
Friedman,
Hemingway,
Andrew. Artists on the Left:
American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926-1956. New
Haven: Yale UP, 2002.
Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Jung, Carl
Gustav. Psychological Types, or The
Psychology of
Individuation. Trans. H. Godwin Baynes.
Kataev, Valentin. Time, Forward!. Trans. Charles Malamuth. Ed. Edward J. Brown.
Keats, John. Selected
Letters. 1970. Rev. ed. Ed. Robert Gittings and John Mee. Oxford
/ New York: Oxford UP, 2002.
Kennedy, Richard S. Dreams in the Mirror: A Biography of E. E. Cummings. New York: Liveright, 1980.
Lanham, Richard A. A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms. Berkeley: U of California P, 1968.
Lyons,
McClintock. P. M. "The Cole Circus 'Curse' and the Erie Lithograph Co." Bandwagon 10.4 (July-Aug, 1966): 8-10. Circus Historical Society. Web.
McVay, Gordon. Esenin:
A Life.
Patty,
Polmar, Norman and Noot, Jurrien. Submarines of the Russian and Soviet Navies, 1718-1990. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute P, 1991.
Ralston, W. R. S. Songs of the Russian People. 2nd ed. London: Ellis & Green, 1872.
Randolph, Vance. Roll Me in Your Arms: "Unprintable" Ozark Folksongs and Folklore. Vol. 1. U of Arkansas P, 1992.
"Robert Vandervoort." Circus Biographies, Obituaries S – Z. Circus Historical Society. Web.
Seldes, Gilbert. The Seven Lively Arts. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1924. Rpt. with an
introduction by Michael Kammen. Mineola, New York: Dover, 2001.
Updike, John. "A Case of Melancholia." Just Looking: Essays on Art. 1989.
Back to:
People, Places, and Publications page
Bibliography / Works Cited page