Autistic Traits of E. E. Cummings
Between “mostpeople” and “ourselves”
He isn’t an undream of anaesthetized impersons,or a cosmic comfortstation,or a transcendentally sterilized lookiesoundiefeelietastiesmellie. He is a healthily complex,a naturally homogeneous,citizen of immortality.
–Cummings on “ourselves”
This is a topic I’ve been wanting to discuss. Perhaps too controversial, but I grew increasingly restless about withholding my findings.
It is impossible to comprehend a complex condition like autism, and labeling someone as autistic is unproductive and potentially offensive. Nevertheless, it recently occured to me that delving into this subject could yield good insights and might also contribute to raising awareness.
What’s more, it is about Cummings — the person I admire and once revered as if a holy relic. To minimise the risk of misinterpretation, I will only note some major traits that I found indicative, and by that I hope to initiate further discussion among more well-versed people.
My resources are limited to two biographies of Cummings, a couple of papers about his personal life, his complete poems, and his autobiographical novel “The Enormous Room.” Each heading in this article represents what is thought to be a sign of autism, with the exception of the last one, which is more of a symptom than a sign.
- A quick bio about Cummings — Edward Estlin Cummings was an American poet and novelist, best known for his innovative use of syntax and punctuation. He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1894 and he studied literature at Harvard University. He first visited Paris during WW1 as an ambulance driver, participating in a joint mission between the American and French armies. One of his most renowned works is “i carry my heart with me(i carry it in,” a love poem often recited at weddings.
Emotional Sensitivity
Cummings could not stand disturbances. One of the most shocking things he underwent was his separation from his first wife Elaine, whom he had described as “a princess, something wonderful, unearthly, ethereal, the like of which I had never seen.”
Elaine was appaled by Cummings’s suggestion to have an abortion (Cummings wrote: “Art happens if-&-when you’re forgetting everything-&-everyone.) Just two weeks into the marriage, she wrote to Cummings and expressed her desire for a divorce. Cummings was devastated and decided to confront Elaine, but the manner in which he did so deviates from what people might expect.
Elaine was visiting Paris at that time. One day, she opened the door to find Cummings standing before her vacuously, with a gun in his hand. He then pointed it at her, then to his temple, threatning suicide. Moments later, he breaks down in tears, uttering apologies.
Over the course of this, Cummings also turned to violence, sexsually assaulting Elaine on one occasion. But nothing could change her mind, and the crumbling relationship led the couple to return to America on separate ships. During this heart-wrenching voyage, Cummings allegedly contemplated taking his own life by diving into the sea.
While this is a particularly dramatic moment in Cummings’s life, there are other episodes in which he acted erratically. Although he was calm at usual times, his response to distressing situations was often dramatic and impulsive, indicating a susceptibility to disturbances.
Devotion to Routine
There is no report of physical tics, but Cummings’s lifestyle was characterized by repetitiveness and inactivity. He did travel, but more for conformity rather than adventure. Even his traveling became scarce after his trip to Moscow in 1931 (Cummings was 37). From then onwards, he mainly traveled within America.
Instead, Cummings preferred to follow his routine from morning till night. He woke up around 11 am and went straight up into his atelier where he would write and paint incessantly. No interruption was permitted, as he would have gone ballistic.
One time, however, Cummings received an offer from Harvard, his alma marta, to give a series of lectures on poetry. He readily accepted it but later grew increasingly anxious and contemplated canceling the offer.
Giving lectures deviated from his usual pattern, and it was an ordeal Cummings had to endure. Three times he almost succumbed to this extreme anxiety, and each time his friends had to help him pull it together.
On another occasion, Cummings had the opportunity to write screenplays for Hollywood. It was a lucrative option and, in fact, the only way to save him from his financial crisis. But Cummings was reluctant, partly because it required a relocation. His other option was to rely on loans from his mother, as he had done for the majority of his lifetime.
It is also worth noting that Cummings never took up a regular job, except for a brief period as a book dealer, which he quit after a few months. This becomes less perplexing once his character is comprehended: Cummings understood that the only way he could maximise his potential was to gain perfect control over his circumstances.
Narrow Areas of interest and Fixation
Being a poet doesn’t make one autistic, but Cummings paid little attention to matters beyond writing and painting. He persisted in his distinct Cubist typography for over decades, despite his books selling extremely poorly.
One episode that further suggests fixation is the creation process of “nw”, a poem consisting of just 18 letters. Cummings spent an unimaginable amount of time experimenting with word arrangements, meticulously noting down all possible combinations of letters in different cases on a single sheet of paper. Not to mention, this extremely laborious work was carried out using a typewriter.
“nw”
n w
O
h
S
LoW
h
myGODye
s s
Linguistic Oddities
This is a more obvious one — a small note is that although many autistic people struggle with conversation especially at early ages, many of them are more eloquant and creative in the use of language.
While Cummings spoke wildly differently, he also spoke humously at all times as if he could not stand serious conversation. His unique humour and lightheartedness are well reflected in his verse and can also be interpreted as a sign of autism.
Sound Sensitivity
Crucially, Cummings complained that his sleep was frequently disrupted by city noises, despite residing in a relatively quiet neighborhood of Patchin Place. It was reported that he immediately got better once he returned to Joy Farm, which was his lifetime summer retreat.
Moreover, Cummings’s most well-received painting “Noise Number 13” features what appears to be multiple ear cochlea with eyeballs on them. As the title suggests, Cummings had created 13 pieces in the same “noise” series by the time “Number 13” brought him moderate success as an artist.
There is also “sound” — another oil painting which features an abstract representation of the human ear. These paintings not only reveal Cummings’s focus on sounds but also indicate his auditory experience to be oddly discomforting. Along with the aforementioned account, it is likely that Cummings constantly suffered from his acute sense of hearing.
Empathy, Honesty and Loyalty
Cummings is sometimes called “poet of love” due to his love for nature and humanity. When he was interregated by French officers on suspiscion of espionage, he refused to say “I hate Germans”, which was all that was needed to avoid being imprisoned.
Despite facing sheer injustice, his response to the wrongful conviction was, “I did not mind his (the prosecutor’s) triumph in the least….I breathed freely once more. All my nervousness was gone.” which evinces a stong sense of social justice and morality often exhibited by autistic people.
Those who know Cummings describe him as a calm, soft-spoken and extremely amicable person. However, he did not have an extensive social circle, as he preferred to be around with familiar people. His focus on self also prevented him from maintaining a long friendship.
But Cummings remained extremely loyal to those he befriended. One such friend was Ezra Pound, whose poetry Cummings named as his inspiration. When Ezra was sent to prison for his anti-Semitic activities, despite his other friends abandoning him out of fear of backlash, Cummings kept corresponding with him for over decades.
In fact, he was the only one from Ezra’s inner circle — including T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Allen Tate, Joseph Cornell and others — who still corresponded with him when Ezra was finally released from prison 13 years later. Cummings also kept quiet about Ezra’s anti-Semitic opinions, even though he found them absurd and could not sympathise with Ezra’s perspective.
Alienation
Despite his bluntness taking a toll on him, Cummings never learned to be diplomatic nor did he care about how his actions were perceived by others. His controvercies — ranging from anti-Semitism ro racism against black people and homophobia — resulted from his crude expressions that disregarded public sentiment.
Being strangely adamant, Cummings refused his publisher’s request to remove certain problematic poems, failing to foresee the conroversy they would arouse. His sturbornness as well as detachment from public perception suggests a sense of alienation, which is acknowledged by Cummings himself in the preface to his Collected Poems:
it’s no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike….Take the matter of being born. What does being born mean to mostpeople?
Cummings recognised that he and “mostpeople” are irreconcilable. The fact that he mentioned “the matter of being born” is significant because it implies a congenial aspect, framing his statement as an act of acceptance rather than protest.
If what Cummings says is true, if there is really an inherent difference between “ourselves”, Cummings included, and “mostpeople”, his poetry would have a significance that might have escaped examination, but that is exactly the realm I am not yet ready to explore.
