Edward Estlin Cummings, Pity This Busy Monster, Manunkind (1944)
From Angl-Am
Text
pity this busy monster, manunkind,
not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)
plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
- A world of made
- A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh
and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical
ultraomnipotence. We doctors know
a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go
Critical Edition
e.e. cummings. "pity this busy monster, manunkind [1944]." Poems 1923-1954. First Complete Edition. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. 397.
Further Reading
- Yaron, Iris and Routledge, Michael (translator). "Hermetism in the Poetry of E. E. Cummings: An Analysis of Three Obscure Poems." Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society, 11 (2002 Oct), pp. 107-19.
- Eastwood, David R. "Poetry Hypotheses." Hypotheses: Neo-Aristotelian Analysis, 3 (1992 Fall), pp. 6-8.
- Slotkin, Alan R. "The Negative Aspect of Homo Faber: A Reading of E.E. Cummings' 'pity this busy monster, manunkind'." Language of Poems, 2:2 (1973), pp. 34-41.
