{"id":123,"date":"2015-06-29T03:19:47","date_gmt":"2015-06-29T03:19:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eecsocietyblog.org\/?p=123"},"modified":"2018-01-28T20:18:18","modified_gmt":"2018-01-29T01:18:18","slug":"and-old-door-cummings-personal-printer-and-w-viva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eecsocietyblog.org\/?p=123","title":{"rendered":"An Old Door, Cummings’ Personal Printer, and W [ViVa]"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Title<\/a>

Title Page<\/p><\/div>\n

An online exhibit at the Harry Ransom Center Library in Austin, Texas, catalogues the signatures on a door that used to be in the Greenwich Village Bookshop, circa 1920-1924. The signature page of S. A. Jacobs<\/a>, Cummings\u2019 personal typesetter, reproduces a July 16, 1931 letter from Jacobs to Cummings about printing the title page of ViVa<\/em>. Those patient enough to figure out how the slide show on this page works will be rewarded with a photo of the letter from Jacobs to Cummings and with the photo of the title page of W<\/em> [ViVa<\/em>] reproduced here (click on either image to view more closely). Jacobs\u2019 letter complains bitterly of the difficulty in getting this title page to look right: \u201cthe photo engraver has failed me utterly: for three times in succession he made the reversed plate of VV wrong–not as ordered by you or me or [with] any sign of intelligence in himself. . . . I am rejecting the work as not<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0satisfactory<\/span>.\u201d (The writing in pencil at the top of the letter is Cummings\u2019 draft of a telegram responding to Jacobs.)<\/p>\n

\"Letter\"<\/a>

Letter<\/p><\/div>\n

The curious title of this collection of poems, W<\/em>, represents two overlapping V\u2019s, which refer to \u201ca graffito commonly found on southern European walls, meaning \u2018long live,\u2019 as in \u2018Viva Napoli\u2019 or \u2018Viva Presidente Wilson\u2019 \u201c (Kennedy, Revisited<\/em> 76). In critical and in ordinary discourse, the title is pronounced \u201cViva\u201d and is written as \u201cViVa<\/em>\u201d–with two capital V\u2019s. When both titles are used, the pronounceable title is written in brackets: [ViVa<\/em>]. In her article \u201cThe Modernist Sonnet and the Pre-Postmodern Consciousness<\/a>,\u201d Gillian Huang-Tiller notes that the VV slogan \u201cprobably stems from \u2018Viva V.E.R.D.I.<\/a>\u2018 or Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D\u2019Italia, [Long live Victor Emanuel, King of Italy], slogan for patriotic Italians of the nineteenth century\u201d (170).<\/p>\n

In Dreams in the Mirror<\/em>, Richard S. Kennedy says that ViVa<\/em> \u201ccontains seventy poems; every seventh poem is a sonnet, except that the last seven poems are all sonnets\u201d (319). This description is in general quite correct, but, as Huang-Tiller points out, Kennedy then makes an interesting and perhaps productive error. He writes: \u201cThat makes a total of fourteen sonnets, corresponding to the fourteen-line stanza of the sonnet\u201d (Dreams<\/em> 319). Actually, as Huang-Tiller astutely notes, \u201cthe\u00a0 structure\u00a0 of\u00a0 the\u00a0 collection\u00a0 is\u00a0 not\u00a0 a\u00a0 neat 7 + 7\u2014there are nine embedded\u00a0 sonnets,\u00a0not\u00a0 seven.\u201d She further comments: \u201cKennedy apparently follows what his experience of the sonnet tells him should<\/em> be in the text, rather than what is really in the text\u201d (164). So the order of the poems in the text follows this mathematical pattern: 6 – 1 – 6 – 1 – 6 – 1 – 6 – 1 – 6 -1 – 6 – 1 – 6 – 1 – 6 – 1 – 6 – 1 – 7 = 70 poems. Or: 7 x 9 = 63 + 7 = 70.<\/p>\n

What might this not-quite-sonnet pattern of sonnets tell us about Cummings\u2019 intentions? Huang-Tiller speculates that perhaps \u201cCummings has another design in mind, as the nine embedded sonnets (each the seventh poem) along with the final set of seven sonnets could signal a perfect ten: 9 sonnets + 1 set = 10\u201d (164). In the afterword to his translation of No Thanks<\/em>, Jacques Demarcq sees ViVa<\/em> as having a structure of ten weeks, \u201csix po\u00e8mes et le dimanche un sonnet\u201d [six poems and the Sunday of a sonnet] (\u201cUn tournant\u201d 112). This would make the final seven sonnets of ViVa<\/em> a week of Sundays. In EIMI<\/em><\/a> (published two years after ViVa<\/em>), Cummings tells us that he was born on a Sunday (91\/89), and several commentators have noticed that EIMI<\/em> begins and ends on a Sunday (May 10 and June 14). Each chapter narrates one day, so the chapters follow a pattern similar to the one in ViVa<\/em>, except that the implied days of the week metaphor is made explicit. EIMI<\/em> has six Sundays with six days between each of them, making a total of five weeks and 36 days. [See EIMI<\/em><\/a> note 91 \/ 89.]<\/p>\n

Jacobs\u2019 letter to Cummings and the mathematical patterning of poems and chapters in ViVa<\/em> and EIMI<\/em> show the immense care Cummings took with his work, both on the macro- (book) and micro- (individual poem and letter) levels. The macro-level patterns of ViVa<\/em> and EIMI<\/em> show something else, I think: a concern to give every part of his work significance. For example, the sonnets in ViVa<\/em> are mostly love poems. Love and Sunday, then, represent birth and rebirth. The connection to rebirth is made clear in EIMI<\/em> when Cummings mentions the Russian word for Sunday, \u201cvoskresaynyeh\u201d (91\/89), which means \u201cresurrection.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For more on Jacobs and Cummings, see Walker Rumble\u2019s short piece \u201cReclaiming S. A. Jacobs: Polytype, Golden Eagle, and Typographic Modernism<\/a>\u201d as well as Rumble\u2019s recent article from Spring<\/em> \u201cThe Persian Typesetter: S. A. Jacobs, E. E. Cummings, and the Golden Eagle Press<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

________________________________________<\/p>\n

Michael Webster
\nGrand Valley State University
\n________________________________________<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/p>\n

Cummings, E. E. EIMI<\/em>. New York: Covici, Friede, 1933. Reprinted. New York: William Sloane, 1949. Reprinted with an introduction by EEC, New York: Grove Press, 1958.<\/p>\n

—. EIMI: A Journey Through Soviet Russia<\/em>. 1933. Ed. George James Firmage. New York: Liveright, 2007.<\/p>\n

Demarcq, Jacques. \u201cUn tournant\u201d [Afterword]. No Thanks<\/em>. By E. E. Cummings. Trans. Jacques Demarcq. Caen, France: Nous, 2011. 97-137.<\/p>\n

Huang-Tiller, Gillian. \u201cThe Modernist Sonnet and the Pre-Postmodern Consciousness: The Question of Meta-Genre in E. E. Cummings\u2019 W<\/em> [ViVa<\/em>] (1931).\u201d Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society<\/em> 14-15 (2006): 156-177.<\/p>\n

Kennedy, Richard S. Dreams in the Mirror: A Biography of E. E. Cummings<\/em>. New York: Liveright, 1980.<\/p>\n

—. E. E. Cummings Revisited<\/em>. New York: Twayne, 1994. [Twayne\u2019s United States Authors Series No. 637.]<\/p>\n

Webster, Michael. \u201cEIMI<\/em> Notes.\u201d SPRING: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society<\/em>. Web.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An online exhibit at the Harry Ransom Center Library in Austin, Texas, catalogues the signatures on a door that used to be in the Greenwich Village Bookshop, circa 1920-1924. The signature page of S. A. Jacobs, Cummings\u2019 personal typesetter, reproduces a July 16, 1931 letter from Jacobs to Cummings about printing the title page of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,60,84,81,85,86,82,83],"class_list":["post-123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-e-e-cummings","tag-e-e-cummings-society","tag-eimi","tag-jacobs","tag-sonnets","tag-typesetting","tag-viva","tag-w","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eecsocietyblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eecsocietyblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eecsocietyblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eecsocietyblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eecsocietyblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.eecsocietyblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136,"href":"https:\/\/www.eecsocietyblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions\/136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eecsocietyblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eecsocietyblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eecsocietyblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}