e. e. cummings

Name: The Enormous Room — SURPLICE
Author: e. e. cummings

The Enormous Room — SURPLICE (1922)

Summary

“The Enormous Room — SURPLICE”, published in 1922, is a work by e. e. cummings. It explores elements such as Surplice, The Enormous Room and Butcher.

Quotes from The Enormous Room — SURPLICE (e. e. cummings)

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — SURPLICE (1922)

“ And he is intensely religious, religious with a terrible and exceedingly beautiful and absurd intensity ... every Friday he will be found sitting on a little kind of stool by his paillasse reading his prayer-book upside down; turning with enormous delicacy the thin difficult leaves, smiling to himself as he sees and does not read. Surplice is actually religious, and so are Garibaldi and I think The Woodchuck (a little dark sad man who spits blood with regularity) ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — SURPLICE (1922)

“ I will admit, in the beginning, that I never knew Surplice. This for the simple reason that I am unwilling to know except as a last resource. And it is by contrast with Harree The Hollander, whom I knew, and Judas, whom I knew, that I shall be able to give you (perhaps) a little of Surplice, whom I did not know. For that matter, I think Monsieur Auguste was the only person who might possibly have known him; and I doubt whether Monsieur Auguste was capable of descending to such depths in the case of so fine a person as Surplice.
Take a sheer animal of a man. ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — SURPLICE (1922)

“ The inhabitants of The Enormous Room had given to Surplice a small but essential part in the drama of La Misère: he would play that part to the utmost of his ability; the cap-and-bells should not grace a head unworthy of their high significance. He would be a great fool, since that was his function; a supreme entertainer, since his duty was to amuse. After all, men in La Misère as well as anywhere else rightly demand a certain amount of amusement; amusement is, indeed, peculiarly essential to suffering; in proportion as we are able to be amused we are able to suffer ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — SURPLICE (1922)

“ Précigne, feeling weirdly depressed, and Surplice is standing to my left, contemplating the departure of the incorrigibles with interested disappointment—Surplice of whom no man takes any notice when that man leaves, be it for Hell or Paradise.... ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — SURPLICE (1922)

“ He is perhaps most curious of this pleasantly sounding thing which everyone around him, everyone who curses and spits upon and bullies him, desires with a terrible desire—Liberté. Whenever anyone departs Surplice is in an ecstasy of quiet excitement. ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — SURPLICE (1922)

“ His filthy rather proudly noble face radiates the pleasure he receives upon being informed that people are killing people for nobody knows what reason, that boats go under water and fire six-foot long bullets at ships, that America is not really outside this window close to which we are talking, that America is, in fact, over the sea. ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — SURPLICE (1922)

“ The case of Surplice is a very exquisite example: everyone, of course, is afraid of les maladies venérinnes—accordingly all pick an individual (of whose inner life they know and desire to know nothing, whose external appearance satisfies the requirements of the mind à propos what is foul and disgusting) and, having tacitly agreed upon this individual as a Symbol of all that is evil, proceed to heap insults upon him and enjoy his very natural discomfiture ... ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — SURPLICE (1922)

“ On the contrary, I merely state what interested me peculiarly in the course of my sojourn at La Ferté: I mention that I was extremely moved to find that, however busy sixty men may be kept suffering in common, there is always one man or two or three men who can always find time to make certain that their comrades enjoy a little extra suffering. In the case of Surplice, to be the butt of everyone's ridicule could not be called precisely suffering ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — SURPLICE (1922)

“ No one can beat German people; if Kaiser tell man to kill his father and mother he do it quick!"—the tall, strong, coarse, vital youth who remarked:
"I sleep with black girl who smoke a pipe in the night."
Take this animal. You hear him, you are afraid of him, you smell and you see him and you know him—but you do not touch him.
Or a man who makes us thank God for animals, Judas, as we called him: who keeps his moustaches in press during the night (by means of a kind of transparent frame which is held in place by a band over his head) ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — SURPLICE (1922)

“ And Surplice goes in order to be surprised, surprised by the amazing gentleness and delicacy of God—Who put him, Surplice, upon his knees in La Ferté Macé, knowing that Surplice would appreciate His so doing.
He is utterly ignorant. He thinks America is out a particular window on your left as you enter The Enormous Room. ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — SURPLICE (1922)

“ When there is labour to do he works like a dog ... the day we had nettoyage de chambre, for instance, and Surplice and The Hat did most of the work; and B. and I were caught by the planton trying to stroll out into the cour ... every morning he takes the pail of solid excrement down, without anyone's suggesting that he take it; takes it as if it were his, empties it in the sewer just beyond the cour des femmes or pours a little (just a little) very delicately on the garden where Monsieur le Directeur is growing a flower for his daughter—he has, in fact, an unobstreperous affinity for excrement ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — SURPLICE (1922)

“ It struck me at the time as intensely interesting that, in the case of a certain type of human being, the more cruel are the miseries inflicted upon him the more cruel does he become toward anyone who is so unfortunate as to be weaker or more miserable than himself. ”

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Source: Wikisource

e. e. cummings, The Enormous Room — SURPLICE (1922)

“ Norway sailors German girls Sweedisher matches Holland candles" ... had been to Philadelphia; worked on a yacht for a millionaire; knew and had worked in the Krupp factories; was on two boats torpedoed and one which struck a mine when in sight of shore through the "looking-glass": "Holland almost no soldier—India" (the Dutch Indies) "nice place, always warm there, I was in cavalry; if you kill a man or steal one hundred franc or anything, in prison twenty-four hours ”

e. e. cummings

Summary

Quotes from The Enormous Room — SURPLICE (e. e. cummings)

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