The Book High

"But if he could describe it all
He would be an artist.
But if he were an artist there would he deeper wounds
Which he could not describe."
--from "Silence" by Edgar Lee Masters

I discovered that poem when I was younger, and those lines at the end of a stanza about a former solider who's unable to talk about what WWI was like for him have stuck with me. Every time I opened this book, I couldn't help them running through my head.

e.e. cummings is one of my favorite poets, but until earlier this year I'd had no idea that he'd spent nearly 5 months in a French prison camp during WWI, let alone that he'd written a book about it. What sets this book apart from other prison memoirs is the lightness and hope and humor with which it is told. Cummings is truly an artist, and he is able to describe everything (people, surroundings, circumstances, events) in the most amazing ways. What impressed me most about this book was the number of layers Cummings was able to create with his words. The events and circumstances he relates are truly horrific, but the way he describes them takes the horror out and frequently makes them almost humorous--until you stop and think about what he's really saying, and what he's not saying.

I'm not an artist, and therefore lack the words or the ability to convey just how much reading this book impacted me. What the blurb doesn't say is that Cummings CHOSE to go to prison with his friend (called simply B. throughout the book). I'm convinced that it's this inherent generosity of spirit, combined with spectacular artistry with words, that make this book so hopeful.

Since I don't have the words, I'll leave some of Cummings' to give an idea at least of the genius here.

About his purpose in writing this book:
"I do not purpose to inflict upon the reader a diary of my alternative aliveness and non-existence at La Ferte"

About walking through the night with his two guards to reach La Ferte Mace:
"Everything seemed ridiculously suppressed, beautifully abnormal, deliciously insane."

"the delicious silence of the night (in which our words rattled queerly like tin soldiers in a plush-lined box)"

"I banged forward with bigger and bigger feet."

About the yard (Cummings calls it the cour) where the prisoners are let out to walk:
"on my right, grey sameness of stone, the ennui of the regular and the perpendicular, the ponderous ferocity of silence...."

About people at La Ferte:
"Behind me the bedslippered rooster uhahingly shuffled."

"By some mistake he had three moustaches, two of them being eyebrows."

"Lessons hide in his wrinkles. Bells ding in the oldness of his eyes."

"The Bear.... A big, shaggy person, a farmer.... I hardly think he was a dangerous bear. Had I been the French Government I should have let him go berrying, as a bear must and should, to his heart's content."

"You did not know Afrique suddenly. You became cognizant of Afrique gradually."

"When the Fighting Sheeny grinned you felt that he desired to eat you, and was prevented from eating you only by a superior desire to eat everybody at once."

"neither of these things killed him--on the contrary, he merely turned into a ghost, thereby fooling the excellent French Government within an inch of its foolable life."

"As Bill the Hollander's thunder crescendoed steadily, cramming the utmost corners of The Enormous Room with Gottverdummers which echoingly telescoped one another, producing a dim huge shaggy mass of vocal anger"

"watch him scratching his back (exactly like a bear) on the wall ... or in the cour, speaking to no one, sunning his soul...."

"and laughed throughout his whole body"

"She struck me immediately as being not only intelligent but alive."

About politics:
"the [great] and [good] nations demanded of their respective peoples the exact antithesis to thinking; said antitheses being vulgarly called Belief."

"in finding us unworthy of helping to carry forward the banner of progress, alias the tricolour, the inimitable and excellent French government was conferring upon B. and myself--albeit with other intent--the ultimate compliment."

"it takes a good and great government perfectly to negate mercy."

Awesomesauce:
"There are certain things in which one is unable to believe for the simple reason that he never ceases to feel them. Things of this sort--things which are always inside of us and, in fact, are us and which consequently will not be pushed off or away where we can begin thinking about them--are no longer things; they, and the us which they are, equals A Verb; an IS."

"And I say Yes, feeling that Yes in my belly and in my head at the same instant"

"His eyes opened. I have never seen eyes since"

"my blood was bombarding the roots of my toes and the summits of my hair."

"I gave him a pleasant smile, which said, If I could see your intestines very slowly embracing a large wooden drum rotated by means of a small iron crank turned gently and softly by myself, I should be extraordinarily happy"

"in front of and on and within my eyes lived suddenly a violent and gentle and dark silence."

"I am standing in The Enormous Room for the last time. I am saying good-bye. No, it is not I who am saying good-bye. It is in fact somebody else, possibly myself."