O Sweet Spontaneous - E. E. Cummings

March 17, 2010



This following blog post is result of my busy schedule.  I wrote this over an incredibly long time, and so some thoughts may not be complete, and others may be out of place, so please understand that this is not my best writing, and that from here, it should only get better.  (More examples from other text, more ideology, thicker deconstruction, and longer prose)  But, until I have more time, enjoy a quick deconstruction of ee Cummings poem, O Sweet Spontaneous.


O sweet spontaneous
Earth how often have
the doting



fingers of
prurient philosophies pinched
and poked



thee
has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy



beauty how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy
knees squeezing and



buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true


to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover


thou answerest

them only with

spring)
 
 
I don't know why, but I absolutely love this poem.  It is one of my favorites because I love the format in which it is written, and I also love its deep, yet easily understandable message.  We will, in this blog, slowly dissect this poem and probe it with our prurient minds to discover its surface meaning, and maybe, if lucky, stumble upon hidden meanings.  When I close-read a text I love to use analogy, and the best analogy that describes close, deconstructive reading that I have heard is: to look at the woven text and pull on its threads until it completely unravels from itself.  As I have already lectured, language and written text can be a very complicated beast, one which fights you and your understanding every step of the way.  This poem, though on the surface looks quite harmless, is subject to the complexities associated with its textual composition.  Each word, each stanza, each literal meaning, and each metaphorical supposition comes from the human intellect, the very intellect that can supposedly discern between even simple differences of a words context and meaning.  This poem is a very critical examination of the human intellect, the metaphysical prowess of religious leaders, and a deconstruction of form itself.  So we shall begin the examination:
 
O sweet spontaneous/Earth how often have/the/doting/fingers of/prurient philosophers pinched/and/poked/thee... 
 
This stanza from the literal sense is a statement of supposed fact by the narrator.  Now the narrators use of poke and prodded gives the reader a feeling.  He compares the philosopher's study of the earth and its natural and supernatural phenomena to a doctor examining a patient, or a layman examining a piece of fruit. The narrator is stating that philosophers try to answer hypotheses about the workings of the world as easily as a man finds a bruise under the skin of an apple.
 
Has the naughty thumb/of science prodded/thy/beauty
 
This stanza somewhat mirrors the first, as the philosopher pokes and pinches and investigates the household which contains the mysteries of our existence, science tries to use a battering ram to force itself in.  The narrator distinguishes the differences between philosophy and science; philosophy only merely pinches, and uses Socratic methodology to ask open ended questions which only speculate, but because science prods forcefully its thumb it tries to determine concrete, empirical explanations for phenomena.  Science creates theory (not always proven in itself) that it claims can only be disputed by real, solid evidence.

.how/often have religions taken/thee upon their scraggy knees/squeezing and/buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive/gods

So far, we have philosophy gently poking the Earth's mysteries by asking gentle and unrestricted questions; while science forces its theories and assumed empirical evidence as answers to metaphysical questions.  As if these two categories aren't enough, religion has to bend its knee and try to squeeze answers from these questions. Squeezing the earth so hard, in fact, that it (thou) mights't conceive gods.  The answers to questions through the eyes of religion can always be answered by deity.  It is the convenience of gods as an answer that has been to blame the laziness of a race, yet at the same time through direct contradiction, it is religion and deity that has brought devotion and dedication of equality and the betterment of the human race.  This is a very tricky supposition, one that assumes that dichotomy is rampant within these first three themes of the text, and will make its appearance again in my writing, after we have dissimulated this poem fully.

(but/true/to the incomparable/couch of death thy/rhythmic/lover/thou answerest/them only with/spring)

This last section of the poem is the narrator's way of concluding that all of these questions are useless.  They lack utility, that is, what use is a question which cannot be answered?  We pry, force, and ponder the workings of complexities we cannot comprehend, yet the Earth in all of its simplicity answers these questions with a rather elemetary concept: that the earth has cyclical seasons, though not consistent, and not at all permanent; and that everything dies, everything that was once animate will become stationary.  Death in this instance, is a wild beast, hidden within its couch, no matter how obscure the hiding place, we always find death. 

Now that we have fully explored this poem and its literal translation, let us begin to see what we can find.  Though the poem seems to be made of four distinctly different points, it is not.  It is after all, one poem, not four.  Yes we can say that the narrator speaks of (1) philosophy (2) science (3) religion, and (4) Earth's bittersweet answer; but philosophy, science, and religion are all the same thing, yet not.  Depending upon your individual vantage point, one might view religion and science through the eyes of philosophy (philosophy is, after all, the study of life, and the word's meaning in partial is the way one lives), or philosophy and religion through a scientific scope and so on.......   These three distinct studies are in fact, one study, and cannot survive with the absence of the other.  To be religious (in the Christian sense) is to live a life full of self-sacrifice and worship, and if self-sacrifice and worship are a way of life, they are your philosophy.  Religious people cannot doubt the effects of modern day science, modern physics, pharmacology, alchemy, etc.  Though some religions will all but ban the idea of science in their communities, science still has an effect on their community.  Science cannot survive without philosophy or religion as well; metaphysical enigmas have been known to plague the minds of even great scientists such as Stephen Hawking.  Even he does not know how the Earth came to be (after he denounced most of his own theories).  Charles Dawkins, the renowned atheist, would not have a job if it were not for his opposition within the religious communities.  Jacques Derrida's explanation for this is that we live in a world of difference.  We can decode information, express ideas, and understand concepts because of difference and likeness.  (We know what blue is because it is not red).   It is the beginning of this poem where we begin to find problems, the idea that there are three distinct studies, yet they are all one in the same: the study of life.  However, the study of life seems to be mostly pointless, ineffectual questions without answers; and these questions is where we will begin to examine the purpose of this poem.


Let us look deeply now at these first three themes, these questions that beg answers.  Cummings here is addressing that we as a race of "intellect" require answers to the questions that are unanswerable.  (If they were, what fun would life be?)  It is through this series of inquiries that we get a sense of how hopeless our intellectual predicament is, because not only are we looking in three distinctly different directions, we are at the same time looking down the same path.  We all see the world and perceive it through our own empirical experiences, through interactions with the environment, and dialogue with others, and monologue to the self.  We constantly criticize and judge, interpret and misinterpret, perceive and omit, through our own selves.  One's self is (obviously) a creation of nature and nurture, and what one has been fed as knowledge. (The knowledge one understands and believes, that is).  All of these sensory applications have been, and are constantly-consistently being changed and manipulated by the means of change to one's self, the outside world, and the three schema's mentioned above: philosophy, science. religion.  Now, remember that philosophy, science, and religion are studying the same subject: life, and coming up with different answers not only based on their own private evidence but also on each other's discoveries.  These three studies are what make up the trivium.  The trivium is the study of: liberal arts, comprising grammar, rhetoric, and logic. This poem sums up the trivium's quest-- the meaning of life-- as being inane, because the earth only answers with natural events and death. However, the trivium does not ask the Earth questions, instead science theorizes, religion states, and philosophy asks questions and later uses rhetoric to expand on these questions a la Socratic Method.  Philosophy questions the question, science does indeed prod its naughty thumb, and religion does try to conceive gods; but the Earth does not answer with only Spring, nor does it only conclude with death.


Without the questions the trivium proposes, we are left with nothing else to explore.  This poem is obviously over simplistic, with the only answers in life being natural occurences and the inescapable trap of death.  Emotions for example are very complex, modern science cannot fully explain the ideals of love, hate, conscience, etc.  Yes, we can observe how these things work, we can understand the triggers, but we cannot fully explain what the feeling is. (Yes, I know, we can explain the effects of the brain and synapses, but truly the feeling and the lasting effects are truly beyond any other creature.)  This is comparable to metaphysical questions, though scientific in nature we are still learning.  A crude, rudimentary answer would not only anger those who study emotions and the psyche, but would also limit the potential of the human understanding of emotions.  This crude answer by the narrator limits our understanding of the metaphysical, of the Earth, and of our existence.  Without these ponderings we wouldn't have great literary classics, many of which are based in the questionings of science, philosophy, and religion in life.  These questions are what keep us interested as humans, these questions which seem to be unanswerable should be pursued.  The most relevant literary piece I can think of at this moment is Shakespeare's Hamlet. 

Hamlet questions life and death, science, religion, and philosophy.  To be or not to be is more than just a soliloquy in which Hamlet questions the idea of suicide, but it is Shakespeare's deconstruction of life and death.  (The whole play is, actually).  He questions what happens after death, if anything at all?   His insanity/sanity (what have you) is the perfect tool to adopt a wild philosophy to question metaphysics from all angles.  He simultaneously questions life through religious (what dreams may come after we have shuffled off this mortal coil?) , atheist(There's the respect that makes clamity of so long life) , scientific (I knew this man... allusions to decomposition of human remains after death), and rhetorical (sane but yet not sane, but yet sane) perspectives.  Questions like these show the flaws within the poem, that there are not simple answers, and if these questions are answered so simply, and worse, accepted by a majority, then the work of millions for so long a period is abandoned.  It is impossible to separate the study of the earth into three groups because they are all one in the same, yet distinctly different.  Each category is present in a questioner, yet each is absent at the same time, depending on who's listening and who is interpreting.  Let us hope that nothing is ever this simple, but rather that the questions of life only be answered when we are called, by the hidden death, to accept our fate and shuffle off this mortal coil.