Cummings Scans Self-Development

Continuing his "egocentric exploration of myself." E. E. Cummings '15 read excerpts from his prose writing last night in the fourth of this year's Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Sanders Theatre.

In this "exploration of his stance as a writer," Cummings' object was to "see how a particular human being will stand for 30 years."

Cummings described his poetic technique as the "eternal answer to the immortal question of burlesque: 'Would you hit a woman with a club? No, I'd hit her with a brick.'" He is striving for "precision, which creates movement."

"Complex people who feel things are very ignorant, and really don't know anything: but nothing for simple people is more dangerous than ignorance." Cummings' thesis is that to feel is to be alive: "art is the something immeasurable of every man, woman and child."