Tragicomic relief

You know, with all those years he wrote poems on that old Underwood, you'd have thought Cummings would have taken the time to get that shift key fixed...

Mr. Owens has referred very beautifully to E. E. Cummings' old Underwood, thereby picking up the theme adumbrated in a posting under another item (Warnings to Christian Missionaries), which mentions -- not the first time -- the role in spreading the gospel of the Reverend Horace Underwood, Presbyterian missionary and founder of Chosen Christian College, now -- under a different name -- one of South Korea's leading universities.

Perhaps future occasions will permit the appearance of Ben Jonson's "Underwood" or Mandelstam's line "gde-to shchelknul Undervud" ("somewhere a typewriter clickclacked" -- for in Russia in that period, the brand "Underwood" generically stood for "typewriter"), or the actual, tiny, modest Underwood of Venustiano Carranza, that Kerensky of Mexico's first post-revolutionary government, that sits in the museum dedicated to V.C., with all of his artifacts, in sunny Veracruz. An Underwood makes the whole world kin.

E. E. Cummings' own Underwood may well have click-clacked, with or without the CAPS key, in the house he was born in, on the corner of Irving and Scott Streets, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and from which he would have been able to see, from his own upper-floor window, just across Irving, the house of a certain Professor William James, whose "Varieties of Religious Experience" would, I think, have accomodated the belief-system of Islam only with great difficulty.

Hugh, my friend,

This is interesting. I would have thought Mandelstam used a Woodstock, like Alger Hiss.

Cordially,
Robert

sir)it took
an islamicized bit of
the old twin

tower;in the top of his head:to tell

him

confussed ?

Helped a little Hugh

Part of the American Tribe
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and All who Fight with her give them Strength and Courage to stay the course to Victory Amen

Robert--we could both be right.

Mandelstam did not reveal the brand of typewriter he used -- just that in his poem, "somewhere an Undervud (i.e. a typewriter known in Russia by that famous brandname, on the model of xerox for all copiers) clickclacked." I'm sure you didn't mean to imply that Mandelstam was, like Alger Hiss (I think his wife Priscilla did the typing), a Russian spy. Russian yes, spy no. It is conceivable, as you suggest, that Mandelstam himself, though he referred to an "Undervud" (Underwood) might have chosen it because the scansion demanded three syllables, and he himself, if the poem was written after 1915, when the first Woodstock went on the market, might have used one. So, as I say, we might both be right. Or all three of us, because Mr. Owens started the associational ball rolling and coming to rest only -- now.

But what if Mr. Owens just plucked "Underwood" out of the air? Cummings was born in 1894; the first Underwood was on the market in 1895; other models followed in 1912 and 1922. It was very popular. The first Woodstock appeared in 1915. By that time Cummings had graduated from Harvard, and would spend only one more year in Cambridge getting his M.A. before becoming an ambulance driver.

If Cummings was typing on that typewriter while looking out the window at the house of his neighbor William James, it would have to have been before 1910, the year William James died. Mr. Owens suggested the Underwood and it is plausible indeed; that company had much of the market, which is why, in distant Russia, it had become generic for "typewriter."

If Mr.Owens had suggested that Cummings should have gotten the Caps key on his "Woodstock" fixed, that might have set another associational train of thought, or at least a determined I-think-I-can-I-think-I-can choo-choo, right out of the roundhouse and onto the mental tracks. Instead of "Underwood" by Ben Jonson, that little train would have recalled another of his works, "Timber, or Discoveries." The "Woodstock" brand could have also evoked Queen Elizabeth I's poem "Written With a Diamond on a Window at Woodstock" and Bob Dylan, with his flight-from-Woodstock concerts on the Isle of Wight, and the Isle of Wight would have led to the vectensian verse of Keats, including the line "A thing of beauty is a joy forever" and the mention of both Keats and Bob Dylan would lead have evoked Christopher Ricks (who at times uses the "too-clever-by-half" method of criticism that is being imitated, just for fun, in this note), and then the part played by the Isle of Wight in the famous decapitation of Charls I, in January 1649 would come up, and then...

Well, don't blame me. Blame Mr. Owens. He started it.

In any case, one hopes that what began all this, the perfect reworking, through rewording, of e.e. cummings by Mrs. Obelix into a poem that appositely expresses the crazy will-to-not-believe of many, will be printed out by jihadwath visitors, for handy distribution to all those who continue to deny that for which the evidence is far more overwhelming, even, than the evidence supplied by those Pumpkin Papers, typed by Priscilla Hiss in 1938, on that Underw --- ooops, I mean Woodstock.

Amazing, simply amazing...

While it may be slightly disappointing, I was, in fact, using Underwood in the more generic typewriter sense, as Southerners often call any carbonated soft drink a "Coke," even when the drink in question is in fact a Pepsi.

I bow to your intellect, Hugh.

Amazing.

the Isle of Wight

Has great boat racing but terrable food?

Still lost?

Part of the American Tribe
God Bless the USA and her Figting Forces and All who Fight with her give them Strength and Courage to stay the course to Victory Amen

Are you'al saying I was right Spook?

Wow?

still confussed?

Glad is on our side if so?

Part of the American Tribe
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and All who Fight with her give them Strength and Courage to stay the course to Victory Amen

Hugh: Of course I wasn't suggesting that Mandelstam was a spy. I of all people should know that he was part of the Vast Majority of MODERATES!!

(Please be assured, I am just kidding around. I know how he suffered at the hands of Stalin.)

Cheers!
Robert

Who gives a damn about typewriters? Would some-one kindly explain the last part of the poem? Specifically:

bit of
the old sixth

avenue
el;

According to the OED, 'el' is either a diminutive suffix or an obsolete form of 'awl'. I don't suppose that is what is meant here.

The stanza seems to be culture bound. It may be deep and meaningful in the USA, but this is one bit of your culture that has not been mass-marketed and I haven't a clue.

Ian,

The "el" is the elevated train, i.e., part of the New York City subway system that was above ground. Parts of it are still above ground, but cummings is referring to an entirely above ground line that once ran up 6th Avenue. It was torn down when a subterranean link was completed that made it redundant -- but this poem assumes that some of the scrap metal from it made its way to Japan before World War II.

Best regards
Robert Spencer

Thanks Robert,

The Japanese do have a habit of buying up good steel from railway bridges and the like. They bought one near my home town, happily after the war.

Ian,
The typewriters are nostaligic names to my aging ears.
And for anyone else who is interested, the other American reference is to General Sherman famous for burning Atlanta in his march through Georgia in the US Civil War and for his comment, "War is hell."

And in "the crazy will-to-not-believe" vein, remember this comment by Alger Hiss: "To my dying day I shall wonder how Whittaker Chambers got in my house and used my typewriter."

Mr. Spencer and Hugh

I want to thank you both! This is why we buy your books the mind has not been wasted with you two!

Looks are great but ah Brains!

Part of the American Tribe
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and All who Fight with her give them Strength and Courage and Wisdom to stay the course to Victory Amen

PS guess you can tell which one I got?

Love my short skirts!!