Table Of ContentE. E. CUMMINGS: THE MEANING OF THE SONNETS
By
DAVID G. MEAD
A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE COUNCIL
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
1975
For my wife Joan
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Dr. Gordon Bigelow, the Chairman of my
dissertation committee, for his kindness and patience, and Dr. John
Nims and Dr. Ashby Hammond, the other members of the committee, for
their generous efforts on my "behalf.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments iii
Abstract v
Introduction 1
Chapter One - The Formal Dimension 6
Chapter Two - The Early Sonnets 30
Chapter Three - The Middle Sonnets 67
Chapter Four - The Later Sonnets 122
Conclusion 176
Bibliography of Works Consulted 182
Biographical Sketch 186
iv
Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate Council
of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
E. E. CUMMINGS: THE MEANING OF THE SONNETS
By
David G. Mead
August, 1975
Chairman: Gordon E. Bigelow
Major Department: English
E. E. Cummings, sonnets are studied as a representative sample of
the poet's work which provides a significant insight into the develop-
ment of his mature lebensphilosophie defines an aesthetic stance a-
,
gainst which his whole achievement can he measured, and reflects his
innovative poetic technique.
Cummings defined the sonnet minimally as "a poem of fourteen iam-
bic pentameters, none of them un^hymed.', Aware of the sonnet tradition
but unwilling to be restrained by it, he uses the form eclectically and
experimentally, and his sonnets reflect his innovative handling of syn-
tax, diction, punctuation, and typographical arrangement. His sonnet
technique indicates his basic belief that the artist must be true to his
own creative impulse without regard to the aesthetic dictates of tradi-
tion or form.
Beginning as a Platonic idealist, Cummings, in his early sonnets,
conceives of existence as divided into two dichotomous yet related
realms; a temporal world bounded by birth and death, and an infinitely
superior, timeless realm of the spirit. The phenomenal world is a cor-
rupt, fallen version of the "actual" world of transcendence. "Most-
people" live unhappily in the derived world, while the pure, perfect
transcendental realm is felt to be remote, unattainable, and infinitely
desirable. Cuanaings' early impulse is to satirize the corruption of
the phenomenal and to seek escape into the noumenon. As he matures, he
explores the problem of conducting his mortal life properly in order to
attain transcendental life, and he discovers that moments of transcend-
ental being may be gained through love, through the surrender of ego-
istic demands on others, and through the selfless acceptance of the re-
ality of the phenomenal world. Such moments convince him that the phe-
nomenal and noumenal are copresent, and that transcendence may be at-
tained only through life in the phenomenal. He accepts death, once
feared as the cessation of all being, as a necessity for transcendental
birth, and he discovers that love, once a private spiritual and emotion-
al state, is the binding force which unites all creation. The final
phase of Cummings1 philosophical growth is marked by his absolute ac-
ceptance of life in the temporal world. He accepts wholeheartedly the
unity of temporal and timeless which he has felt from the beginning,
and he learns that transcendence and living transcendentally in the phe-
nomenal are the same. He now submits himself entirely to the necessity
of embracing all aspects of life, including failure and death, in or-
der to achieve transcendence.
His final surrender to the reality of life in time and his
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abandonment of the will to power over things place Cummings in the
mainstream of modern literary thought and affirm his significance in
modern American poetry.
vii
s
INTRODUCTION
It is my intention in this study to make a critique of the sonnets
of E. E. Cummings, and it is my thesis that these poems reflect, as a
kind of microcosm of his whole work, his major themes as well as the
growth of his vision of the way a man ought to conduct his life in the
world. I believe that Cummings• sonnets provide a significant insight
into the development of his mature lebensphilosophie and define an aes-
thetic stance against which his whole achievement can be measured.
In his second "non-lecture" at Harvard University in 1952, entitled
ni and their son," Edward Estlin Cummings told his audience how he had
been introduced to the sonnets of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: his Cambridge
neighbor, the renowned Josiah Royce, having learned that the youth Cum-
mings liked and wrote poetry, had invited him into his study, where he
1
intoned "lovingly and beautifully, his favorite poems." Cummings ad-
mitted to the suspicion, although not to the certainty, that this ex-
perience was the reason he had written sonnets throughout his career.
He had, in fact, known about sonnets for some time before Royce'
invitation. Not only had his mother kept and read aloud from a common-
place book containing her favorite verse, but his Uncle George had given
E. E. Cummings, i: six non-lectures (New York: Atheneum, 1965),
p. 30.
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h-lm a copy of Tom Hood's The Rhymester, a handbook which discusses the
sonnet in some detail. Cummings told his Harvard listeners that it had
been the experience of reading this book, subtitled "The Rules of Rhyme,"
that first introduced to him the concept of poetic form.
That Cummings found the sonnet a congenial medium is attested to by
the frequency with which he wrote and published poems in this mode.
Every volume of his poetry, from Tulips and Chimneys (1923) to the post-
humously-published 73 Poems (1962), and including his contribution to
Eight Harvard Poets (1918), contains sonnets. Roughly a quarter of Cum-
mings' published verse consists of sonnets (208 of 770 in Complete Poems
1913 - 1962) - a surprising number if one recalls that Cummings is known
primarily for his antitraditional innovations of form, and especially
for his experiments in typographical arrangement, rather than for his
1
thought or traditionalism.
That is not to say, of course, that Cummings has been dismissed as
simply a clever technical innovator, nor that his sonneteering has gone
unnoticed. By and large, Cummings has been blessed with sympathetic and
perceptive critics who have done justice to his art. But most of the
analytical criticism of Cummings* poetry has been devoted either to gen-
eral studies, such as Norman Friedman's E. E. Cummings: The Art of his
Poetry or Robert Wegner s The Poetry and Prose of E. E. Cummings, or to
'
^1
quotations from Cummings' poetry are taken from E. E. Cum-
mings, Complete Poems 1913 - 1962 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1972) - hereafter cited as CP.
.
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limited studies of individual poems, such as Barry Marks' E. E. Cum-
mings The general studies are necessarily broad; the specific analyses
.
tend to focus either on typographically interesting poems or on partic-
ularly challenging instances of Cummings1 radical diction and syntax.
The sonnets in themselves have attracted very little attention, al-
though many of Cummings1 best-known and critically appreciated poems
are sonnets.
The criticism directed to the sonnets has been superficial or sum-
mary - a paragraph here and there. For example, Norman Friedman, per-
haps Cummings1 most comprehensive critic, discusses the poet's use of
1
the sonnet in three paragraphs in The Art of his Poetry And even here
.
the comments are based on only two examples. Haskell Springer, in his
article "The Poetics of E. E. Cummings," notes that the sonnets show Cum-
mings' "desire to make the formal appear deceptively free and irregular,"
that although his sonnets differ "in various degrees from the sonnet of
tradition, they can be recognized as containing the essence of sonnet,"
and that Cummings' sonnets reflect his "practice of poetry" - so much for
2
a quarter of the poet's published verse. Other critics are equally
taciturn
Yet a curious phenomenon exists in the criticism which is devoted
Norman Friedman, E. E. Cummings; The Art of his Poetry (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Press, I960), pp. 100-103 - hereafter cited as The Art.
TIaskell S. Springer, "The Poetics of E. E. Cummings," South Atlan-
tic Bulletin, xxxii (November, 1967), p. 8.
Description:tax, diction, punctuation, and typographical arrangement. His sonnet technique
indicates of E. E. Cummings, and it is my thesis that these poems reflect, as a.
