A Miscellany (Revised)

by e. e. cummings

  DANCE DU VENTRE. This form of the dance is most highly exploited and is, perhaps, the significant solo to the regular burlesque-goer.

  That the person who, in last month’s Vanity Fair, bewailed a lack of danse du ventre in present day burlesQUE has never given “Cleo” ’s quid pro quo an even superficial o.o. is as obvious to your humble servant as is the fact that he is not Einstein.

  From Vanity Fair, December 1925: line drawings by the author.

  “I CONFESS!”

  A reformed reformer’s sensational tribute to our American “Sex” magazines

  By John F. Rutter

  Editor’s Note: Are “Sex” magazines immoral? Literally scores of magazines of this sort are published in America. The basis of most of them is the sex complication. Do periodicals like these “pollute” the mind? Have they a “pernicious influence” on “the rising generation”? Should they be excluded from the mails or should they openly flourish on the newsstands? Read this “true confession” of an ex-reformer, specially written for Vanity Fair.

  Readers of Vanity Fair will recall that, only a few months ago, my name appeared on the front page of America’s leading dailies in connection with a truly unfortunate occurrence. My beloved spouse (who had shared for ten years, without so much as a murmur, the responsibilities and dangers attendant upon the career of a militant anti-vice crusader) suddenly, and for no apparent reason, eloped with a Chinese laundryman, Foo King by name, after emptying an automatic pistol in the general direction of my whereabouts. Despite the conspicuous position which I at that time occupied as a purity crusader in Boston, the matter would probably have escaped everybody’s notice—attempted assassination is so prevalent in America nowadays—but for the fact that the last of Mrs. Rutter’s shots took disastrous effect on a pet Pekinese belonging to Miss Eleanora Sears, which was enjoying an airing nearly a quarter of a mile away, in the Boston Public Gardens. This terrible accident, besides creating a lively stir in fashionable and artistic circles, was directly responsible for my being disharged from the presidency of that foremost Puritan institution: the Society for the Contraception of Vice.

  Bitterly as I bewailed this totally unexpected blow to my career (I was in the midst of an epoch-making work, entitled: “Lewd Literature—What Is It?” when the crash came) my agony at being summarily deprived of my wife was even greater. For, public opinion to the contrary, reformers are human beings. To have exercised the sacred prerogatives of a husband for an entire decade and suddenly to find oneself a bachelor of circumstance is, even to a reformer, painful. The popular cure—namely, to seek another mate—was naturally impossible to an individual of my refined and high-strung temperament. On the other hand, misfortune overtook me in the heyday of my, so to speak, natural resources. What should I do?

  To this burning question my tortured soul responded, with a dark and ominous pertinacity: “Suicide!” Of course, I recoiled in horror from the thought of taking my own life. But, as time went on and my sense of loss materially increased, the idea of death assumed a positively pleasant aspect in my overwrought imagination. I began to realize that what was unpleasant was, not suicide, but the horrid possibility that it might be incomplete—in other words, that I might hurt myself very badly instead of merely killing myself. All I needed was a plan which, by eliminating any possibility of living, would render dying absolutely certain. Accordingly, I tossed my cherished work on lewd literature to the winds and considered how to secure my own demise.

  Being an almost fanatically thorough person, as well as a lover of intellectual exercise, it took me only eight weeks to solve the puzzle. I then sold all my wordly possessions, including my magnificent Beacon Hill residence and my almost priceless collection of indecent, lewd, obscene and lascivious books, paintings, pamph­lets, drawings, etchings and sculptures. With the proceeds, I purchased a piece of stout rope, a gallon of kerosene, a revolver, a box of safety matches and a ticket to a particularly secluded nook in an almost inaccessible portion of the Adirondacks, where I rented a small bungalow for twenty-four hours.

  The porch of the exclusive and isolated dwelling which I had selected overhung a lake, above whose tranquil surface the eaves projected, at a height of several yards. Without losing any time, I made one end of my rope fast to these eaves and arranged a running-noose at the other end, in such a way that when I stood erect on the railing of the porch, facing the lake, the noose hung level with my chin. Next, I thoroughly soaked myself from top to toe with the kerosene and placed my box of matches on the railing. Finally, I loaded and cocked my revolver and laid it beside the matches, ready for action.

  My miseries were about to cease. Thanks to the precautionary measures which I had adopted, death was absolutely sure. I merely had to mount the railing, adjust the noose around my neck, set fire to my clothes, shoot myself and leap into space. If the bullet missed my brain, no matter—I would be incinerated and hanged. If the kerosene failed to ignite, I would be hanged and shot. If the rope broke, I would be shot and incinerated. And even if everything went wrong—if the kerosene did not catch fire and the rope broke and the gun did not go off—I had no cause for alarm, since I could not swim a stroke and would consequently meet death by drowning in the lake below.

  With what a sense of triumph did I climb on the railing in my kerosene-drenched clothes, pick up my matches and my revolver, adjust the running-noose around my neck and take my last look at the world! It was indeed a moment never to be forgotten. One of those magnificent Adirondack sunsets, you know the sort, drenched the heavens in splendour.

  I heard a whippoorwill calling rhythmically to its mate in the woods just behind the little bungalow. About my ears, eyes, nose, and, in fact, everything else, several million mosquitoes, ignoring the odour of the kerosene, danced enthusiastically round about me. The whole scene was one of mingled exaltation and solemnity, which only the pen of a poet could possibly describe.

  In this lyric milieu, I balanced myself precariously on the railing, with my neck in the fatal noose, pointing the revolver at my head with one hand and with some difficulty striking a match with the other. I had but one thought: my faithless wife, the former darling of my bosom, probably at that very instant enjoying the perfidious embraces of her villainous Oriental paramour. “Come to me, death!” I exclaimed with all my soul—and touched the blazing match to my left trouser-leg.

  There was a roaring upward rush of flame—I pulled the trigger and jumped outward. The next thing I knew, I was sitting in approximately eighteen inches of icy water; thoroughly confused, minus my hair, whiskers, eyelids and eyebrows, but otherwise uninjured! After a few blessed seconds (during which I felt sure I was in Heaven) my intelligence informed me of what had actually happened. The flare-up of the kerosene had disconcerted my aim, the bullet—by some freak of chance—had cut the rope, the shallow water of the lake—whose depth I had completely omitted (in my excitement) to ascertain—had extinguished the fire: in brief, the whole intricately thought-out scheme had been a complete failure and—horrors!—I was alive after all.

  I was about to lie down on my back and try to swallow the whole infamous lake, when a sheriff (attracted by my shot) arrived at full speed in a birchbark canoe, accompanied by two deputies armed to the teeth, and arrested me for not having a hunting license. Despite my vigorous protestation, I—John F. Rutter—was ignominiously tossed into a primitive log hut which served in the capacity of a jail.

  It is probable that even Moses himself, as he glimpsed the Promised Land, experienced no more authentic thrill than did I—upon finding myself face to face with a half-dozen of those colourful little magazines which (as I remembered) I had spent the sum total of my misdirected energies in attempting to exclude from the mails.

  When, a few minutes later, my jailer entered and discovered me prone upon the floor and frankly—for the first time—consuming photograph after photograph, illustration after illustration, experience after experience, confession after confession, a large grin of understanding
bisected his bronze visage. He inspected me minutely for some moments; then delivered himself of the unforgettable dictum: “Reckon everything’s hunkey-dorey with you, ain’t it?” I started from my trance—and grasped his honest paw, in a silence that conveyed ineffable gratitude on my part and entire appreciation on his. “Have yer read ‘Roll Over On Your Own Side, Lucy’ yet?” he whispered, bending almost affectionately above me. “Not yet,” I murmured faintly, with my eyes glued once more to “What a Young Girl of Thirteen Learned in Paris.”

  Since then I have attained a completely normal outlook on life. I am a respected, not a detested, member of the little house-party1 here where I have been living pleasantly for some time since my adventure. I am almost foolishly happy, I laugh heartily whenever I recall my former morbid ideas and attribute my entire mental health and intellectual happiness to the one hundred and thirty-one (constantly issued, week by week, month by month) various and assorted “sex” magazines, of which I consume (on the average) twenty or thirty a day. In my estimation, they are one of the three greatest blessings which our civilization has produced, the other two being the player-piano and the radio.

  From Vanity Fair, January 1926.

  1. Editor’s Note: Mr. Rutter is at present an inmate of the State Insane Asylum. The phrase “house-party,” used by the author, refers, of course, to his incarceration in the asylum.

  “I TAKE GREAT PLEASURE IN PRESENTING”

  A distinguished foreign visitor to New York who has two distinct personalities

  In contrast to some Americans, the readers of this journal have a reputation for being concerned with such neglected aspects of life as merit the adjectives “distinguished,” “refined” and even “aristocratic.” Unlike “the divine average” of our era (that two-fisted go-getting he or she whose spiritual nutriment, derived principally from the daily press, is confined to hand-picked manifestations of incredible unwisdom and superfluous mayhem) the readers of this periodical are said to demand nuances—and well-served. In this twentieth-century chaos, where idiocies mutilate ideas, débutantes massacre policemen and bootleggers inherit the earth, these same readers flash their sabres (we are told) for the “finer” values of existence. Assuming this to be true I take great pleasure in presenting, to all such courageous and distinguished ladies and gentlemen, an unutterably distinguished visitor from a distant clime; a mysterious and magnetic personage who, although considerably more noble, as I believe, than any king or prince who has yet sojourned among us, at present occupies far from sumptuous quarters at the New York Aquarium.

  It would be difficult to imagine a more unconventional domicile of nobility than the Aquarium. Situated at the southwest extremity of Manhattan, it consists of a small roundish ancient structure which served first as a fort and later as a cage for P.T. Barnum’s “Swedish Nightingale” (otherwise known as Miss Jenny Lind). Then somebody had the brilliant idea that there ought to be a lot of fish in it; whereupon tanks, embracing many pleasing and hideous varieties of aquatic phenomena, were installed, also several small roundish ancient attendants—and a photograph of an octopus. Such is that hovel of hydraulic wonders, the New York Aquarium, wherein the extraordinary visiting nobleman above-mentioned has taken up his residence.

  I suspect that most of my valiant readers associate great foreign celebrities with the Ritz and will consequently be shocked, upon learning that nobility can tolerate the extremely un-Ritzy environment which has just been described. But these readers must understand that the celebrity in question is by temperament amazingly democratic. Instead of selecting the Aquitania or the Olympic to convey him to our shores, he embarked at his native Galapagos Islands upon a by-no-means luxurious craft known as the S. S. Arcturus.

  At the Aquarium we find him attended, not by a suite of valets, private secretaries, newspaper reporters and plainclothesmen, but by a solitary gull of the species known as “Booby.” Toward those hordes of curious onlookers which hang upon his every gesture—uttering such typical American profundities as, “Ain’t he sweet?” “Just like a puppydog,” “Looka de lidl ole man” and “Whudduhyuh mean dat fish ain’t a boid?”—he maintains an attitude of perfect friendliness, without ever, for so much as an instant, relinquishing that poise which bespeaks generations of wellbred ancestors. Even the nickname “Charlie” (which has reference to his terrestrial emanation) cannot ruffle that cheerful and exquisite dignity which is perhaps his most striking characteristic.

  When I say “his terrestrial emanation” I mean to imply a very significant fact. The Penguin, as this wholly unprecedented individual is entitled, possesses a double existence. Strictly speaking, he is two individuals. The first individual struts and dances upon a tiny wooden platform. The second individual glides and swoops through the negligible quantity of water which surrounds the platform. Only by considering separately these two remarkably distinct individuals, selves, or emanations—one terrestrial, the other aquatic—may we possibly hope to appreciate The Penguin. And The Penguin, as we shall see, is infinitely worthy of our appreciation!

  First, as to The Penguin’s terrestrial self. Advanced persons who go in for antarctic movies, Anatole France, or natural history, invariably conceive of “penguins” as awkward, ludicrous, ungainly, ridiculous birds which cannot fly and, instead, walk about imitating humanity in general and Charles Spencer Chaplin in particular. Having observed The Penguin Himself almost every day over a period of some months, I beg to inform the readers of Vanity Fair, concering The Penguin’s terrestrial emanation—which, by the way, is as far from “awkward” as “humble” is from “servile”—that he “imitates” nobody. “Breathes there a man with soul so dead, who,” having glanced at our [drawings] of The Penguin’s terrestrial self, can still doubt the originality of that self? If so he had better pay a visit to the Kraushaar Galleries and there study a bronze portrait, by the sculptor Gaston Lachaise, of The Penguin’s terrestrial personality—after which he may inspect the original.

  But to proceed with our analysis: The Penguin’s second self is as different from his first as his first is different from most people’s idea of it. For whereas, terrestrially, The Penguin is angular, restricted and sudden, aquatically he is comparably fluent, completely uninhibited and (when he makes a dart downward through the water, in pursuit of his prey) irrevocable. No one who has failed to partake of The Penguin’s aquatic emanation can form the faintest idea of the quite impossible smoothness and absolutely dreamlike velocity with which it is endowed. I shall content myself with the observation that The Penguin’s second, unphotographable self does not merely swim in the water—quite the opposite. This astonishing self flies through the water, by virtue of those very wings which “most people” consider so pathetically inadequate!

  And now, my distinguished readers, having studied separately The Penguin’s two different emanations, we arrive at the crux of the subject—who is The Penguin?

  Of thousands upon thousands of adult human beings who have flocked to view this mysterious personage and to mock or marvel at what he does, the present writer honestly believes that he alone realizes who The Penguin is. How should this be so?

  Only one explanation suggests itself: these thousands upon thousands are totally unaware of—even—their own true selves; they do not realize who they are. I am certain that not a single member of these throngs of onlookers knows that she (or he), like The Penguin, is TWO selves, TWO individuals, TWO emanations. Of all the spectators who pity and ridicule The Penguin’s terrestrial personality, not a human soul realises that the very part of her (or him) which is doing the mocking and the sympathizing (the “awkward,” “ludicrous,” “ungainly,” “ridiculous” part of anyone which psychologists call “consciousness” or “the Conscious”) is, in and of itself, but a stumbling and thwarted emanation—a silly strutting and dancing upon a tiny platform labelled “life”—whereas, the function which determines or fulfils each human being’s destiny and which contains the essence or meaning of all destiny is each hum
an being’s second, inner, or “unconscious” self. Such, however, is the truth; whereof The Penguin, in his two different emanations, is a living symbol!

  After observing The Penguin’s second self, I put the question: “Does anyone imagine, just because his or her Unconscious cannot be photographed, that it does not exist?”—Alas for human ignorance! Not only does the Unconscious exist—it is existence: and moreover, the best part of existence—an illimitable realm in which the human mind flies, as contrasted with a microscopic domain in which the mind’s wings are next to useless.

  Such, I think, is The Penguin’s meaning.

  From Vanity Fair, February 1926: line drawing by the author.

  THE THEATRE: I

  Among the minor amusements of a nation so wealthy that it can afford to ignore things priceless, a country so large that it cannot become aware either of its greatest living painter, Marin, or of its only living sculptor, Lachaise, we observe a highly systematized smuggling in of various brands of aesthetic “kick”—some authentic, more diluted, most neither, but each and all enticingly labeled. Whatever may be the cause of this dishonourable predicament, the fact remains that every American, whom bootleg Art confronts, is at liberty to make one of precisely three moves. First, he may refuse to partake of the proffered intoxicant, on the ground that such indulgence were unconstitutional (not to mention expensive); second, he may discerningly partake thereof, scorning neither his own wits nor those of his stomach; third, he may knowingly glance at the label, shut tightly both eyes, and gulperdown. The inhabitants of New York City, U.S.A., who are justly famous for their thirst, made the abovementioned choice only recently, when Messrs. Comstock & Gest (Art bootleggers of the première water) let it be known that they had “the Great Honour of Presenting For the First Time in America” a peculiarly hyperfine brand of “Synthetic Theatre,” which not only had arrived direct from the former home of vodka, but wore the super-alluring label: NEMIROVITCH-DANTCHENKO. Whereupon the present writer, remembering that bootleg Art (like the “little girl who had a little curl”) is very very good when it’s good but when it’s bad it’s horrid, put wits, dollars, et cetera suddenly together and sampled this latest miracle gradually. Having done so, he takes great pleasure in announcing, not merely that he is undead, but that he is considerably more alive than before—a situation so perfectly remarkable as to merit analysis.