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Lan Xiaomeng
A Brief
Analysis of gs’s Peculiar Language
in
His Poems
Lan Xiaomeng
(Foreign Language Department, Taiyuan
Normal University, Taiyuan 030012, Shanxi)
Abstract:
As
a
modernist
and
avant-garde
artist
and
poet,
gs
boldly
experimented
with
poetic
forms
and
language,
forming
a
unique
style
of
his
own.
To
understand
him,
the
analysis
of
his
language
techniques is very important.
Therefore, this paper gives focus on the analysis
of his language techniques in
terms of
morphology, word-class and punctuation. In respect
of morphology,
Cummings’
s
exploration of the
most potential
possibilities of the morphemic structures of words
is discussed, such as the unusual combination
of words, the split-up of one word into
several parts, or the free addition of
derivational affixes to create new
words. Cummings brought novelty to his
audience and gave some words nonce-meanings in
certain contexts
by deliberately
changing the established parts of speech. In
punctuation, his favourite parenthesis and the use
of
period
are
discussed.
Cummings
has
rendered
them
special
functions,
such
as
rhetorical,
rhythmical
and
psychological effects.
Key words
:
Cummings; peculiarity; morphology; word-class;
punctuation
浅析
E.
E.
肯明斯奇特的诗歌语言
兰晓萌
（山西省太原市
太原师范学院
外语系
030012
）
摘要
：作为现代主义先锋派画家与诗
人，
E.E.
肯明斯在诗歌形式及语言上进行了大胆的尝试，从
而形成
了自己独特的风格。
若要更好地理解这种独特的风格，对
其语言的分析必不可少。
因此，本文将从词语
的形态、
词类、
以及标点符号三个方面重点分析肯明斯在其诗歌中所运用的独特的
语言技巧。
就形态而
言，肯明斯将词语任意组合与拆分，
随意添加词缀以构成新词；在特定情况下，他又通过刻意违背词语
的常
规用法来赋予一些词汇以偶有语义，
给读者带来了耳目一新的感受；
标点符号，
尤其是圆括号与句
号的奇怪运用，也是肯明斯诗
中的独特之处。
关键词
：肯明斯；奇特；形态；词类；标点符号
Lan Xiaomeng
Introduction
gs
(1894-1962),
a
poet
and
painter,
was
born
in
Cambridge,
Massachusetts,
the
son
of
Edward
Cummings,
a
Unitarian
minister,
and
Rebecca
Haswell
Clarke.
He
had
an
inclination
for
arts
and
literature from an early age. While in
the Harvard, he became intensely interested in the
new movement in arts
and
began
to
experiment
with
free
verse
and
to
develop
as
a
self-taught
cubist
painter.
He
wrote
poems
to
celebrate nature, natural
spontaneous power, the individual, as well as
love. He was such a radical Modernist
artist
and
poet
that
conformity,
mass
psychology,
and
snobbery
were
frequent
targets
of
his
humorous
and
sometimes scathing
satires. His knowledge of the visual arts led him
to experiment with versification and by
1918,
he
had
created
a
poetic
style
of
his
own.
It
is
his
innovative
and
controversial
verse
that
places
him
among the most popular
and widely anthologized poets of the twentieth
century. His poetic style is noted for
its peculiar and playful techniques: a
unique employment of punctuation, idiomatic
speech, compressed words,
dislocated
syntax, and unusual typography, line division, and
capitalization in order to capture the particulars
of a single movement or moment in time.
Cummings
was
very
skillful
in
dealing
with
language.
To
make
his
poetic
forms
achieve
some
visual
effects,
he
boldly
experimented
with
unusual
morphemic
structures
of
words,
unconventional
punctuations,
and
deliberate
grammatical
tricks
on
word-
classes,
and
syntactic
collocation.
He
cast
off
the
restraints
of
grammatical
rules,
freely
played
with
capitalization
and
punctuation,
combined
or
separated
words,
created
new words by adding
derivational affixes, and applied odd collocations
of subjects and predicates, of subjects
and objectives, or of nouns and its
modifiers. These peculiarities of language broke
the established mode of
thinking of his
readers, and made his poems unique and
distinctive, thus establishing him as one of the
central
figures in that remarkable
generation of American poets, including Ezra
Pound, Gertrude Stein, , and
John Dos
Passos, who carried out a revolution in literary
expression in the twentieth century.
1. Analysis in Terms of
Morphology
Cummings’
s aesthetic
consciousness led him to the versification of both
emotional and visual effects. To
achieve this effect, he tried to
explore the most potential possibilities of the
morphemic structures of words,
such as
the unusual combination of words
—
to put several words
together to form one single word, to split up
one
word
into
several
parts,
or
to
freely
add
derivational
affixes
to
create
new
words.
These
peculiar
morphemic
structures
can
be
found
in
many
of
his
poems.
In
the
following
passage,
this
strange
language
phenomenon will be discussed in detail.
1.1 The Peculiar Word-
Combination
Cummings
often
combines
several
words
together
to
speed
up
the
tempo
of
his
poetic
lines
so
as
to
produce a
sense of urgency, emphasizing the continuity of
actions or creating a visual effect.
In the poem “Buffalo Bill’s
defunct”
(see Appendix, the same below),
for example, Cummings combines
several
words to present us the heroic bearing of a
memorable western American folk
hero
－
Buffalo Bill. The
words “water”, “smooth”, and “silver”
are
telescoped together to
modify the word “stallion”, suggesting not
only
the
smooth
fur
or
the speed
of
the
horse,
but
also
the
smooth-riding
virtuosity
of
Buffalo
Bill.
Again,
Lan Xiaomeng
Cummings
combines th
e words “one”, “two”,
“three”, “four”, “five”, “pigeons”, “just”,
“like”, “that” together
to show Buffalo
Bill’s quick
-shooting and the dynamic
sequence of the successively falling pigeons shot
by
him.
In
another
poem
“in
Just
-
”,
the
names
of
two
boys
and
two
girls
go
together
as
“edddieandbill”
and
“bettyandisbel”, suggesting that
“little” boys and girls are running hand in hand
to the balloon peddler after
hearing
his whistling. Words so compressed sound
impressive, and look live and vivid, stimulating
re
aders’
memory to call back
their childhood, especially their friends at that
time.
1.2 The Peculiar
Split-up of Words
Contrary to the word-
combination, Cummings breaks up words into pieces
to create certain poetic images
and to
display his skilfully “drawn” poetic pictures. He
c
an play with the letters in such a
fashion as a painter
with their light
and colours. A careful reader will not only
appreciate a letter-drawn picture, but also wonder
at
the multi-connotations of separated
letters. The two famou
s poems “l(a” and
“r
-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-
a-g-
r”
are
typical
examples of this technique.
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
Obviously,
this
is
a
“visual
poem”
which
cannot
be
read
aloud
and
have
to
be
seen.
There
i
s
not
any
complete word. All the
words are broken up and presented as a design
suggesting a falling leaf. Both the poet
in writing the poem and the reader in
reading the poem share one experience and focus on
one image, that is,
following the trace
of a falling leaf.
Furthermore, the
pieces such as “l” (which is easily associated
with the
Arabic numeral “1”), “l(a”
(which can be seen as the article “a” in French),
and “one”, all evoke the feeling of
“loneliness”,
the
theme.
Therefore,
by
skilfully
splitting
up
words
Cummings
successfully
reaches
a
correspondence between the
external form and a state of mind.
The poem “r
-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-
a-g-
r”
can
exemplify the visual effect created by the
dislocated words as well.
r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r
who
a)s w(e loo)k
upnowgath
PPEGORHRASS
Eringint(o-
Lan Xiaomeng
aThe):l
eA
!p:
S
a
(r
rIvInG
.gRrEaPsPhOs)
to
rea(be)rrann(com)gi(e)ngly
,grasshopper;
In
this poem, Cummings creates a pictorially kinetic
effect by ingenious separation and rearrangement
of
several
words.
The
word
“grasshopper”
i
s
rewritten
as
“r
-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-
a-g-
r”,
“PPEGORHRASS”,
and
“.gRrEaPsPhOs”,
each
of
whi
ch
seems
to
be
a
strange
spelling.
Moreover,
some
words
are
inserted
by
parentheses and other pieces of words,
such as “a)s w(e loo)k”,
“rea(be)rrann(com)gi(e)ngly”. All these tricks
just unfold a poetic scene: a
grasshopper keeps jumping in the grass. Again,
Cummings unifies the form of
poem with
its images.
1.3 The
Peculiar Use of Derivational Affixes
Cummings is good at creating words by
adding affixes on the basis of the principles of
word-formation
and the productivity of
English derivational affixes.
Words like
“
unmir
acle
”
,
“
perhapsless
”
in the poem
of
“
from spiralling
ecstatically this
”
,
“manunkind”
,
“
of hypermagical
ultraomniprotence
”
,
< br>“
unwish
”
,
“
unself
”
in the poem of
“
pity this
busy monster, manunkind
”
,
“
unanimal
mankind
”
in
“
when
serpents
bargain
”
,
and
so
on,
are
all
of
extremely
suggestive
power.
These
words
achieve
an
impact
on
the
readers
’
consciousness;
the
poet
’
s
negative
attitudes
toward
the
rapid
development
of
human
science,
technology,
and
the
so-called
sophisticated
western
culture
can
be
sensed.
Besides, the poet
also displays to the reader the productivity of
language and its magical power.
2. Analysis in
Terms of Word-Class
According
to
English
traditional
grammatical
rules,
every
word
belongs
to
a
certain
word
class.
Some
words
have more than one part of speech, but they are
conventionally accepted. In
Cummings
’
s poems, many
words
are
used
against
the
normal
grammatical
rules
and
ideas.
For
example,
verbs
function
as
nouns,
and
other
locutions
are
as
new
linguistic
creations.
That
is
to
say,
Cummings
has
refreshed
the
meaning
of
worn-
out words and enriched them with further meanings.
It is said that modern language is a tired
language
so overused by propaganda,
publicity, cheap novels, and songs that words have
lost much of their strength and
freshness. As an avant-garde artist and
writer, Cummings keeps bringing novelty to his
audience and tries to
endow some words
with nonce-meanings in certain contexts, making
them revive in his poems. Therefore, his
poems are clear and noticeable in their
deliberately faulty grammar.
2.1 The Peculiar Use of Pronouns
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