e. e. cummings

Name: The Enormous Room — I SAY GOODBYE TO LA MISERE
Author: e. e. cummings

The Enormous Room — I SAY GOODBYE TO LA MISERE (1922)

Summary

“The Enormous Room — I SAY GOODBYE TO LA MISERE”, published in 1922, is a work by e. e. cummings. It explores elements such as The Enormous Room, Oloron Sainte Marie and La Misère.

Quotes from The Enormous Room — I SAY GOODBYE TO LA MISERE (e. e. cummings)

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — I SAY GOODBYE TO LA MISERE (1922)

“ The Enormous Room is filled with a new and beautiful darkness, the darkness of the snow outside, falling and falling and falling with the silent and actual gesture which has touched the soundless country of my mind as a child touches a toy it loves.... ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — I SAY GOODBYE TO LA MISERE (1922)

“ 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. Perhaps myself has shaken hands with a little creature with a wizened arm, a little creature in whose eyes tears for some reason are; with a placid youth (Mexique?) ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — I SAY GOODBYE TO LA MISERE (1922)

“ For Oloron—I did not believe in it, and I did not particularly care. If I went away, good; if I stayed, so long as Jean and The Zulu and Mexique were with me, good. "M'en fou pas mal," pretty nearly summed up my philosophy.
At least the Surveillant let me alone on the Soi-Même topic. After my brief visit to Satan I wallowed in a perfect luxury of dirt. And no one objected. On the contrary everyone (realizing that the enjoyment of dirt may be made the basis of a fine art) beheld with something like admiration my more and more uncouth appearance. ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — I SAY GOODBYE TO LA MISERE (1922)

“ I addressed the Surveillant, ignoring Apollyon. "I should like, if I may, to go to Oloron Sainte Marie."
"What do you want to go there for?" the Directeur exploded threateningly.
I explained that I was by profession an artist, and had always wanted to view the Pyrenees. "The environment of Oloron would be most stimulating to an artist—"
"Do you know it's near Spain?" he snapped, looking straight at me.
I knew it was, and therefore replied with a carefully childish ignorance: "Spain? Indeed! Very interesting."
"You want to escape from France, that's it?" the Directeur snarled. ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — I SAY GOODBYE TO LA MISERE (1922)

“ The tall, impossibly tall, incomparably tall, city shoulderingly upward into hard sunlight leaned a little through the octaves of its parallel edges, leaningly strode upward into firm hard snowy sunlight; the noises of America nearingly throbbed with smokes and hurrying dots which are men and which are women and which are things new and curious and hard and strange and vibrant and immense, lifting with a great ondulous stride firmly into immortal sunlight.... ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — I SAY GOODBYE TO LA MISERE (1922)

“ The Directeur and the Surveillant were in consultation when I entered the latter's office. Apollyon, seated at a desk, surveyed me very fiercely. His subordinate swayed to and fro, clasping and unclasping his hands behind his back, and regarded me with an expression of almost benevolence. The Black Holster guarded the doorway.
Turning on me ferociously: "Your friend is wicked, very wicked, SAVEZ-VOUS?" Le Directeur shouted.
I answered quietly: "Oui? Je ne le savait pas."
"He is a bad fellow, a criminal, a traitor, an insult to civilization," Apollyon roared into my face. ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — I SAY GOODBYE TO LA MISERE (1922)

“ I should say that, as a painter, the Pyrenees particularly appealed to me. "Et qu'il fait beau, là-bas! The snow on the mountains! And it's not cold. And what mountains! You can live there very cheaply. As a suspect you will merely have to report once a month to the chief of police of Oloron Sainte Marie; he's an old friend of mine! He's a fine, fat, red-cheeked man, very kindly. He will make it easy for you, M'sieu' Jean, and will help you out in every way, when you tell him you are a friend of the little Belgian with the broken arm. ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — I SAY GOODBYE TO LA MISERE (1922)

“ Le Directeur va vous appeler tout de suite! You must get ready instantly! Wash and shave, eh? He's going to call you right away. And don't forget! Oloron! You will ask to go to Oloron Sainte Marie, where you can paint! Oloron Sainte Marie, Basse Pyrenées! N'oubliez pas, M'sieu' Jean! Et dépêchez-vous!"
"Merci bien, mon ami!"—I remember now. The little Machine-Fixer and I had talked. It seemed that la commission had decided that I was not a criminal, but only a suspect. As a suspect I would be sent to some place in France, any place I wanted to go, provided it was not on or near the sea coast. ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — I SAY GOODBYE TO LA MISERE (1922)

“ I SAY GOOD -BYE TO LA MISÈRE
To convince the reader that this history is mere fiction (and rather vulgarly violent fiction at that) nothing perhaps is needed save that ancient standby of sob-story writers and thrill-artists alike—the Happy Ending. As a matter of fact, it makes not the smallest difference to me whether anyone who has thus far participated in my travels does or does not believe that they and I are (as that mysterious animal, "the public" would say) "real." ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — I SAY GOODBYE TO LA MISERE (1922)

“ These gentlemen in my compartment do not seem to know that La Misère exists. They are talking politics. Thinking that I don't understand. By Jesus, that's a good one. "Pardon me, gentlemen, but does one change at the next station for Paris?" Surprised. I thought so. "Yes, Monsieur, the next station." By Hell I surprised somebody...
Who are a million, a trillion, a nonillion young men? All are standing. I am standing. We are wedged in and on and over and under each other. Sardines. Knew a man once who was arrested for stealing sardines. ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — I SAY GOODBYE TO LA MISERE (1922)

“ Why didn't I give Monsieur Auguste's little friend, the cordonnier, more than six francs for mending my shoes? He looked so injured. I am a fool, and I am going into the street, and I am going by myself with no planton into the little street of the little city of La Ferté Macé which is a little, a very little city in France, where once upon a time I used to catch water for an old man.... ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — I SAY GOODBYE TO LA MISERE (1922)

“ O yes of course. Poilus en permission. Very old some. Others mere kids. Once saw a planton who never saw a razor. Yet he was reformé. C'est la guerre. Several of us get off and stretch at a little tank-town-station. Engine thumping up front somewhere in the darkness. Wait. They get their bidons filled. Wish I had a bidon, a dis-donc bidon n'est-ce pas. Faut pas t'en faire, who sang or said that?
PEE-p....
We're off.
I am almost asleep. Or myself. What's the matter here? Sardines writhing about, cut it out, no room for that sort of thing. Jolt.
"Paris."
Morning. Morning in Paris. ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — I SAY GOODBYE TO LA MISERE (1922)

“ Clerk at Norton-Harjes seemed astonished to see me. O God it is cold in Paris. Everyone looks hard under lamplight, because it's winter I suppose. Everyone hurried. Everyone hard. Everyone cold. Everyone huddling. Everyone alive ”

[↩︎]

Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — I SAY GOODBYE TO LA MISERE (1922)

“ Paris?" somebody who certainly wasn't myself remarked in a kind of whisper.
"Parfaitement."--Pettish. Apollyon. But how changed. Who the devil is myself? Where in Hell am I? What is Paris--a place, a somewhere, a city, life; (to live: infinitive. Present first singular: I live. Thou livest) . The Directeur. The Surveillant. La Ferté Macé, Orne, France. "Edward E. Cummings will report immediately." Edward E. Cummings. The Surveillant. A piece of yellow paper. The Directeur. A necktie. Paris. Life. Liberté. La liberté. ”

e. e. cummings

Summary

Quotes from The Enormous Room — I SAY GOODBYE TO LA MISERE (e. e. cummings)

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