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EIMI Notes
Further reading:
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Cover of the
2007 Liveright edition of EIMI
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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,
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: "not in valyootah / valuta"
= "not in hard currency."
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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.)
25:
Very Bad Childs' = a very bad cafeteria. Childs was a cafeteria
chain in
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25: Something Fabulous = St. Basil's Cathedral. See pp.91 / 89, 106 / 104, 110 / 108.
26: Pope Watson = James Sibley
Watson (1894-1983),
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30: president of Writer's Club =
perhaps Alexander Voronsky (1884-1943).
32-34: The Necktie = 1930 play by Anatoly Glebov
(1899- ). Dana says that it ridicules "an over-zealous Communist who
objects to neckties as bourgeois" (Handbook 73).
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 New 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? = 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, "Know Thyself," carved on the
48 / 49: Krazy
Kat = comic strip cat beloved by Cummings. "thy poet" = George Herriman (1880-1944), cartoonist.
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 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 471)
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 = perhaps Alexander Voronsky (1884-1943).
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
Resurrection: Virgil is worn
out because he has been up all night reading Leo Tolstoy's novel Resurrection (1899).
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.
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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' " (
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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."
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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.
comrade Vaillant-Couturier = Paul Vaillant-Couturier (1892-1937) French writer, one of the founders of the French communist party, and an editor-in-chief of the party newspaper, L'Humanité.
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].
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' 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 |
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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.)
108 / 106: unreal boxlike structure = Lenin's mausoleum.
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].
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]
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125 / 123: Balieff
= Nikita Balieff (1877-1936), an
Armenian-Russian vaudevillian who emigrated to
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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
131 / 129: clumsy wooden authentic best maid
in
132 / 129: 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).
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
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).
Eugene Lyons wrote of this slogan: "The formula 2 + 2 = 5 instantly riveted my attention. It seemed to me at once bold and preposterous--the daring and the paradox and the tragic absurdity of the Soviet scene, its mystical simplicity, its defiance of logic, all reduced to nose-thumbing arithmetic. . . . 2 + 2 = 5: in electric lights on Moscow housefronts, in foot-high letters on billboards, spelled planned error, hyperbole, perverse optimism; something childishly headstrong and stirringly imaginative. . . . 2 + 2 = 5: a slogan born in premature success, tobogganing toward horror and destined to end up, lamely, as 2 + 2¼ = 5" (240).
155 / 151: now we all enter(lasciate
ogni =
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. Photo: http://libweb.princeton.edu/libraries/music/boris/detail.php?id=22. Here are some performance photos of Raikh. fanée = "faded" [French]. 162 / 158: Piscator
= Erwin Piscator (1893-1966), German
theatrical
producer and
director. The biglegged boychild
is Kostia (Konstantin)
Eseniny, 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) Eseniny.
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 |
enter Durov = Vladimir Grigorievich Durov (1909-1972), circus impresario known as an animal trainer who supposedly used humane methods.
178 / 172: "Durov was a celebrity": the celebrity Durov who toured Europe was Vladimir's uncle, Anatoly Anatolyevich Durov (1887-1928).
181 / 176: the Art Theatre = the Moscow Art Theatre, founded in 1897 by Konstantin Stanislavski (1863-1938) and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (1858-1943), espoused naturalist "method" acting and more realistic theatrical presentation.
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).
189-191 / 184-185: enfin!
= "finally!" [French]. Cummings finally visits the State Museum of New
Western
Art, established in 1918. The
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]."
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.
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.
205 / 199:
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
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).
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: heat murdered perioolok
= "the magnificent Hammer place [was] at Petrovsky
Pereulok 8, across the street from the
squat, carrot-red Korsh theater" (
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
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--
236 / 229: 1st beyond miracle 34 full =
The first #34
tram that appears is full. See page 208 / 202 and page 448 / 428.
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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). |
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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
"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
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263 / 254-255: and tall = Sofia Tolstaya
comes to dinner. (See 238 / 230-231.)
[Photo courtesy of Clarice Stasz and The Jack London Online Collection.] 277 / 269: a newspaper called Truth = Pravda, which means "truth." See http://english.pravda.ru/. |
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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]
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).
294 / 284: "bleiben Sie ruhig" = remain calm [German].
297 / 288: "es ist Blau!" = It is blue! [German].
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: 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)ness = remaining-ness = A GPU agent. See pages 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.
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
316 / 305: ohree vawmuh dum = Au revoir, madame [French].
318 / 307: Morhyeh / Moryeh = "sea" [Russian]. (See page 347 / 334.)
322 / 311: ell nuh foe paw shooshay . . . = Il ne faut pas cherchez l'âme russe par cette musique--chez les orchestres militaires jouer pas simple 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 do not play simply 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.
baw nes paw = Bon, n'est-ce pas? -- Good, no? 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!"
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 445-446 / 425-426.
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: et quantumst hominum Venustiorum = "And how much is in humans of Venus (beauty)"--line two of Catullus' poem lamenting the death of his mistress' sparrow:
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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) |
326 / 315: a distinguished young woman = Sofia Tolstaya. See pages 263 / 254-255.
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."
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
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!
= Mais,
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: 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
363 / 348: "(8). Via recently not unglimpsed--this obscure passage seems to
mean that Noo's spree will be financed by
the proceeds from selling
Cummings' broken watch ("timetoy") for some
exorbitant sum to one of the ship's officers.
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).
378 / 363: Mormugão
= In
March 1921, Cummings and John Dos Passos
sailed from
383 / 368: ore-dove = hors d'oeuvres.
406 / 388: a street called Payrah
= "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.
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].
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429 / 410: Captain Bonavita = Jack Bonavita (1866-1917), animal trainer who appeared with Frank Bostock's Circus, 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. At right: Bostock's building at Dreamland (note the elephants). 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: |
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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
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"--from a collection of aphorisms and apercus called Asides, later collected in the volume Tel quel (1941). "It is life, and not death, that divides the soul from the body." In the standard English translation, the quote may be found in Valéry's Analects (41).
437 / 417:
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."
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.
443 / 423: et les bat . . . eaux
= "and the [sail]boats" [French].
Cummings' Preface (xxxi / xvii) tells us that "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?"] is a quote from Paul Valéry.
443 / 423: oga = "ago" spelled backwards. See pp. 447, 450 / 427, 430. Three sections in this last chapter are a "recapitulation" (a kind of collage of scenes, memories, and phrases), starting from the present and working back to the beginning of the book. Cummings' mind goes backwards.
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].
445-446 / 425-426: that next god damned--see page 323 / 312.
445 / 425: (enter white;by child pridefully--see page 209 / 203.
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.
Arthur, Anthony. Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair. New
York: Random House, 2006.
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,
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.
---.
Selected Letters of E. E. Cummings. Ed. F.W. Dupee and George Stade.
Dana,
Henry
Eastman,
Max. "The Cult of Unintelligibility." Harper's
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---.
"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
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563-574. Rpt. in The Literary Mind: Its
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Age of Science. 1931.
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T. S. Collected Poems: 1909-1962.
New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963.
Emerson,
Ralph
Waldo. Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Ed. William H. Gilman.
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of Soviet
Writers. SovLit.Com. Accessed
Farley, David. "E. E. Cummings: Intourist in the Unworld." Spring 12 (2003): 86-106.
Fitzgerald, Robert, trans. The
Aeneid of Virgil.
Friedman,
Hemingway,
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Jung, Carl
Gustav. Psychological Types, or The
Psychology of
Individuation. Trans. H. Godwin Baynes.
Kataev, Valentin. Time,
Forward!.
Trans. Charles Malamuth.
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Kellner, Bruce. The Last Dandy, Ralph Barton:
American Artist, 1891-1931.
Kennedy,
Richard S. Dreams in the Mirror: A Biography of E. E. Cummings.
Lyons,
McVay, Gordon. Esenin:
A Life.
Moore, Marianne. The Poems of Marianne Moore. Ed.
Grace Schulman. New York: Viking, 2003.
Patty,
Polmar, Norman and Noot, Jurrien. Submarines of the Russian and Soviet Navies, 1718-1990. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute P, 1991.
Randolph, Vance. Roll Me in Your Arms: "Unprintable" Ozark Folksongs and Folklore. Vol. 1. U of Arkansas P, 1992.
Stasz, Clarice. Jack
London's Women.
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