Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin

By: E. E. Cummings, Samuel Hynes (Introduction by)

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Paperback | 1 May 1999

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304 Pages

Age
18+

Dimensions(cm)
20.32 x 13.97 x 1.91

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Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1894, Edward Estlin Cummings rebelled against the prevailing values of his Harvard and Unitarianism-steeped milieu. His relentless search for personal freedom led him to Greenwich Village in early 1917, where he established himself as a Modernist, composing his sui generis poems and abstract paintings. Later that year, he impulsively joined the war, serving in a Red Cross ambulance unit on the Western Front. His free-spirited, combative ways, however, soon got him tagged as a possible enemy of La Patrie, and he was summarily tossed into a French concentration camp at La Ferte-Mace in Normandy.

Unexpectedly, under the vilest conditions, Cummings found fulfillment of his ever-elusive quest for freedom. The Enormous Room (1922), the fictional account of his four-month confinement, reads like a Pilgrim's Progress of the spirit, a journey into dispossession, to a place among the most debased and deprived of human creatures. Yet Cummings's hopeful tone reflects the essential paradox of his experience: to lose everything -- all comforts, all possessions, all rights and privileges -- is to become free, and so to be saved. Drawing on the diverse voices of his colorful prisonmates -- Emile the Bum, the Fighting Sheeney, One-Eyed Dah-veed -- Cummings weaves a "crazy-quilt" of language, which makes The Enormous Room one of the most evocative instances of the Modernist spirit and technique, as well as "one of the very best of the war-books" (T. E. Lawrence).

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Introduction
Suggestions for Further Reading
A Note on the Text
I Begin a Pilgrimage	p. 3
En Route	p. 18
A Pilgrim's Progress	p. 29
Le Nouveau	p. 47
A Group of Portraits	p. 86
Apollyon	p. 112
An Approach to the Delectable Mountains	p. 134
The Wanderer	p. 164
Zoo-Loo	p. 175
Surplice	p. 192
Jean Le Negre	p. 204
Three Wise Men	p. 223
I Say Good-bye to La Misere	p. 238
Glossary	p. 253
App: Introduction	p. 273
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin

At a Glance

Paperback

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

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