Cummings Talks On Recollections In First Lecture

"I am not lecturing," E. E. Cummings '15 told a packed Sanders Theatre audience last night in the first Charles Eliot Norton Lecture. "Lecturing means teaching, and I am learning."

The title of Cummings' dissertation was "I and my family." "I can't tell you what I don't know," he said, "so I'll tell you something about myself."

Cummings said he would not attempt to analyze poetry. He will, however, devote fifteen minutes of each lecture to reading poetry "I am in no way connected with. That will leave thirty-five minutes to ramble on about myself."

Last night Cummings read William Wordsworth's "Recollections of Childhood."

He spent the first part of the hour-long lecture justifying his subject. "You may ask," he said, "is the so-called poet a victim of galloping egocentricity or is he just plain simple-minded?"

"Egocentricity"

"Let's settle for egocentricity," he continued, "and who, may I ask, isn't egocentric?"

In his first lecture, Cummings spoke about his father and mother. In the future, he will discuss himself, when he ceased being dependent on his parents. He will talk about his "self-discovery" and, finally, his stance as a poet.

Cummings' father, Edward Cummings '83, was a Cambridge Unitarian minister.

By recalling his past, said Cummings, he was recreating a world of "long-lost personages: my parents and their sons." He will, in his next lecture, describe "the mysterious moment of self-discovery" after which he became the poetry he writes.

In his other lectures Cummings promised to "name Charles Eliot Norton's coachman and define sleep. . . . If you ask me," he said, "why talk about triviality, I shall answer: "What are they?"