Edward Estlin Cummings ( born Edward Estlin Cummings ; October 14, 1894 , Cambridge , Massachusetts - September 3, 1962 , North Conway , New Hampshire ) - American poet, writer, artist, playwright. It is generally accepted that Cummings preferred to write his surname and initials with a small letter (like eecummings ), but there is no documentary evidence of this fact.
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| Awards and prizes | Guggenheim Fellowship ( 1933 , 1951 ) [d] ( 1957 ) [d] ( 1944 ) |
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In his poetic work, Cummings conducted radical experiments with form, punctuation, syntax, and spelling. In some of his verses, capital letters are not used; lines, phrases and even single words are often interrupted in the most unexpected places; punctuation marks are either missing or in a strange way. In addition, Cummings often violated the English-language sequence of words in a sentence. Many of his works can be understood only when reading from a sheet, but not by ear.
Despite the penchant for formal experiments, a considerable part of Cummings’s poems is of a traditional nature (in particular, Cummings is the author of a large number of sonnets). In adulthood, Cummings was often criticized for self-repetition and commitment once and for all to the developed style. Despite this, his simple language, sense of humor and exploitation of topics such as sex and war gained him enormous popularity, especially among young people.
In total, Cummings has published over 900 poems, two novels, several plays, and essays. In addition, he is the author of a large number of drawings, sketches and paintings.
Content
- 1 Education and career start
- 2 Poetry by E.E. Cummings
- 3 Cummings as an artist
- 3.1 List of exhibitions
- 4 Prizes
- 5 Bibliography
- 6 Cummings in Russia
- 7 notes
- 8 References
Education and career start
From 1911 to 1916, Cummings studied at Harvard University, where he received a bachelor 's degree (BA) in 1915 and a master of arts (MA) in 1916. Beginning in 1912, Cummings' poems were regularly published in the Harvard Monthly University newspaper, and since 1915 , in Harvard Advocate.
In 1914, Cummings came under the strong influence of avant-garde authors such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound . In 1915, Cummings graduated from college with honors and delivered a highly controversial speech entitled New Art. This speech brought him notoriety: in his speech, Cummings called the work of the well-known avant-garde poetess “anomalous,” although he actually intended to “sing her praise.” Cummings has been criticized in the newspapers for his speech.
In 1917, several of Cummings' poems were published in the compilation Eight Harvard Poets . In the same year, Cummings volunteered for France , where he served in the medical forces . As a result of the confusion, the poet was not assigned to any of the medical crews for five weeks. He spent this time in Paris . The city was so fond of him that Cummings regularly visited Paris throughout his life.
On September 21, 1917, just five months after Cummings arrived in France, he was arrested on suspicion of espionage after he openly expressed his pacifist views. Cummings was sent to the concentration camp Dépôt de Triage in Normandy, where he spent three and a half months. Memories of these events formed the basis of the novel "Monstrous Space" ( Eng. The Enormous Room ).
Cummings was released on December 19, 1917 after interference from his father, who had extensive connections in political circles. He immediately returned to the United States. In 1918, the poet was drafted into the army, where he served until November 1918 .
In the years 1921-1923 Cummings lived in Paris. In the 1920s and 1930s he traveled extensively throughout Europe, and in 1931 he visited the Soviet Union , which struck him, as it seemed to him, by the lack of intellectual and artistic freedom. Cummings expressed his impressions of the trip in the book Az Esm ( Eng. Eimi ).
Poetry of E.E. Cummings
At the beginning of his career, Cummings was under the noticeable influence of avant-garde writers and poets (Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell and others). During his visits to Paris, he discovered Dada and Surrealism , which also influenced his work.
Despite the fascination with the poetry of modernism, Cummings wrote a lot of poems, similar in form to classical sonnets . Some of his works are distinguished by the use of unusual typography. In such verses, words, snippets, brackets and other punctuation marks are scattered throughout the sheet. While painting, Cummings was well aware that the reader’s impressions depended on the way the poem was visualized, and he used typography to “draw pictures” in some of his works.
Cummings' first collection of poems, Tulips and Chimneys (1923), first introduced the public to the poet’s “signature style,” which is characterized by deliberately distorted grammar and punctuation, as, for example, in the poem “a leaf falls loneliness” ( en : l (a ):
l (a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
Some of Cummings' most famous poems are not distinguished by unusual typography, but, despite this, bear the imprint of his unique style. Cummings very often arbitrarily changed the English word order in a sentence. As a result, such famous lines appeared as “why must itself up every of a park ...” or “they sowed their isn't”. In some verses, Cummings intentionally distorts the spelling of English words. In addition, he very ingeniously uses compound words, for example, “mud-luscious” (“dirty sweet”).
Many of Cummings’s poems are sharply socialized and ridicule the shortcomings of the social structure, but the poet was not a stranger to romanticism: very often love, friendship, and other forms of human relations are sung in his poems.
Cummings was often accused of having developed a unique style, he stopped in his creative development. Nevertheless, critics note that, despite the stagnation in technical terms, the content of Cummings' verses has become increasingly significant over time.
Cummings as an artist
Cummings himself considered himself an artist no less than a poet and writer - especially in the last years of his life spent in New Hampshire , when he often painted in the daytime and wrote poetry at night.
In the 1920s and later, Cummings consistently identified himself as a follower of Cubism , Dada, and Surrealism. He especially liked the work of Pablo Picasso .
For the first time, Cummings was recognized as an artist thanks to the drawings and cartoons that were published in the literary magazine Dial in the 20s. Later he became known as a painter. Cummings also published a collection of works made by charcoal, ink, oil, pastel and watercolor in 1931.
List of Exhibitions
Throughout his life, Cummings has participated in many art exhibitions, including:
- Two paintings on display at the New York Society of Independent Artists (1919, 1920)
- Painting Exhibition at the New York Gallery of Painters and Sculptors (1931)
- Exhibition at the Kokoon Club, Cleveland , Ohio (1931)
- An exhibition of paintings and watercolors at the American British Art Gallery, New York (1944)
- Exhibition of paintings, watercolors and studies in Rochester , New York (1945)
- An exhibition of paintings and watercolors at the American British Art Gallery, New York (1948)
Prizes
Throughout his life, E.E. Cummings has been awarded numerous literary prizes and awards. Among them:
- 1925 - Dial Magazine Award
- 1933 - Guggenheim Scholarship [5]
- 1944 - Percy Bysshe Shelley Prize for Contribution to the Development of Poetry
- 1950 - Harriet Monroe Award from Poetry Magazine
- 1950 - Honorary Membership at the American Academy of Poets
- 1951 - Guggenheim Scholarship
- 1952-1953 - Honorary Professor of Harvard
- 1957 - Award of the Boston Arts Festival
- 1958 - Bollingen Poetry Award
- 1959 - Ford Foundation Biennial Grant
Bibliography
- The Enormous Room (1922)
- Tulips and Chimneys (1923)
- & (1925) (samizdat)
- XLI Poems (1925)
- is 5 (1926)
- HIM (1927) (play)
- ViVa (1931)
- Eimi (1933)
- No Thanks (1935)
- Collected Poems (1938)
- 50 Poems (1940)
- 1 × 1 (1944)
- Xaipe: Seventy-One Poems (1950)
- i: six nonlectures (1953)
- Poems, 1923-1954 (1954)
- 95 Poems (1958)
- 73 Poems (1963) (posthumous)
- Fairy Tales (1965) (posthumous)
Cummings in Russia
Cummings is little known to a wide audience of Russian-speaking readers, since translations into Russian of most of his works have not yet been published.
Several published translations of Cummings' poems into Russian belong to Vladimir Britanishsky . These translations, which have been published a little since 1975 , were published in a separate volume in 2004 : E. Cummings. Selected Poems in the Translations of Vladimir Britanishsky. - M .: Ithaca magazine; The journal "Comments", 2004. ISBN 5-85677-003-X (with parallel texts in Russian and English).
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 BNF identifier : Open Data Platform 2011.
- ↑ 1 2 Encyclopædia Britannica
- ↑ 1 2 SNAC - 2010.
- ↑ German National Library , Berlin State Library , Bavarian State Library , etc. Record # 119008378 // General regulatory control (GND) - 2012—2016.
- ↑ John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Ee cummings
Links
- The Adventures of Kemminks' Non-Comrade in the Land of Soviets: E. E. Cummings and Russia / comp., Will enter. Art. from English. V.V. Feshchenko and E. Wright; [scientific ed. A. A. Rossomakhin]. - SPb. : Publishing House of the European University in St. Petersburg, 2013.
- E. E. Cummings in translations of N. Semoniff (Russian)