Norton Prof. Cummings Will Not Teach Course

E. E. Cummings '15, this year's Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry, will be in Cambridge sometime next week, but unlike the majority of his 18 predecessors in this post, he will not teach a course in the University.

John H. Finley '25, Eliot Professor of Greek Literature, said yesterday that Cummings, eminent American poet and painter, will be in town well before the first of six Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, scheduled for October 28. According to Finley, Cummings was in Cambridge last week to rent an apartment, but then returned to New Hampshire.

Maximum Salary

The main function of the Norton Professor is to deliver the lecture series. Although not required to teach a course, most of the previous lecturers have done so. Men in this post draw a salary equal to the maximum stipend given, to full professors on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

For example, in 1949-50, Paul Hindemith taught Music 275--The History of Theory. Thornton Wilder gave the second half of Humanities 2 in 1950-51, and last year Aaron Copland taught Music 121--Music in the Twenties.

Wilder also participated in many student activities and gave lectures and talks before a wide variety of audiences.

Explaining Cummings' failure to teach a course, Professor Finley said yesterday, "I don't think that he is interested in the academic process. He is a poet, not a scholar, and he does not intend to make a pretense at being one."

"A poet by definition is not scholar," Finley said, "with the exception of a few, such at T. S. Eliot."

May Meet Groups

Describing Cummings as a "personal man-to-man fellow," Finley said that he is sure that the poet will "make himself available" from time to time to small groups of students interested in creative writing.

The Norton chair was established in 1925 by a gift from C. C. Stillman '98, in the memory of Charles Eliot Norton '87, a former professor of the History of Art.

The men chosen for the chair represent in alternate years the literatures on one hand and fine arts and music on the other.

Other particularly eminent men who have appeared here as Norton Professors are T. S. Eliot '10, Gilbert Murray, Robert Frost '01, Igor Stravinsky and Sigfried Giedion.

Born in Cambridge in 1894, Cummings received his A.B. here in 1915. He served in World War I and from his experiences in a French prison camp came his first book, "The Enormous Room," published in 1922.

More famous for his poetry, he has published nine volumes since 1923. Since 1920 he has lived in New York, writing and painting.