I have just
finished The Enormous Room by E. E. Cummings. Cummings was many things: playwright, artist and novelist, but is most
famous for being a poet in the first half of the Twentieth Century. The
Enormous Room is a memoir of the time he spent in a French prison during
World War I.
With America
not yet in the war, he and a friend volunteered for ambulance duty. Letters
home intercepted by censors caused the French to think these two Americans were
undesirables, possibly even German spies because they dared to state that they
did not hate Germans. They were sent to a holding prison until their fates
could be determined. All the men in the prison were housed in one ‘enormous
room’ with minimal comforts and sanitation. Meals were sparse (when his friend
was finally released, he was found to have scurvy). Some of the fellow
prisoners probably (like Cummings and his friend) were no threat to France or
anybody. But some of the prisoners were bad seeds. The good and the bad were all
housed together in the same room. It seems so ludicrous that these two men who
volunteered to drive ambulances for the Allies, should be treated so shabbily
by the French bureaucracy. Yet, Cummings gives us a portrayal of life in the
prison that was often carefree and even joyful.
I guess life is what you make of it.
Not
surprisingly, Cummings style is poetic and metaphoric. He uses so many
euphemisms and cryptic names for his fellow prisoners that it is sometimes hard
to keep track of who he is talking about. Yet he paints a picture of prison
life much the way an impressionist artist would paint a scene, giving us the
feel of life and character. And when he is reporting something one of his
French companions (or guards) is saying, he writes it in French, usually with
no translation. If you are someone like me who doesn’t know French, you have to
puzzle out the meaning from the context in which it was said. This was not as
big a barrier as I might have thought, as I was usually able to figure it out
(or anyway, I assigned some meaning to it that worked for me, whether it was
right or wrong).
This bureaucratic
nightmare, despite moments of pain, was not a depressing tale. There was
something uplifting about it. His spirit, and the spirit of his friend remained
strong. It gives one hope.
(My science
fiction novel Star Liner, is now available in paperback or as an e-book
through Amazon and other online sources).
Link to Star Liner
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