Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR YUGOSLAVIA 1960 Last summer a group of distinguished members of the British Labor party visited Yugoslavia aux frais de la princesse. The Yugoslav press played up that visit and the...
...Is there some limit he has in mind for Cummings...
...As for Yugoslav foreign policy, we have seen that the moderate Tito in the UN strictly folTHE NEW LEADER welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...Rutherford, N. J. BOCDAN RADITSA Professor, Modern European History, Fairleigh Dickinson University CUMMINGS I do not think everyone has to like my book, E. E. Cummings, The Art of His Poetry, and I was not going to say anything about Paul Lauter's review in your October 3 issue...
...Cummings seems for Lauter to be a poet one enjoys in youth but who is gently but firmly left on the toy-shelf when one grows up...
...I for one rejoice that I am not alone in the field...
...Traveling through Yugoslavia, particularly on the Adriatic coast, lends itself to appraising the general situation optimistically, even when visitors are ostentatiously puritanical and socialist...
...On the contrary', they complained of the high prices not only on consumer goods but of food, of the little variety and the long waiting lines...
...I don't think I can say what Cummings' political affiliation is, although readers of his poetry know that he is against Communism and Fascism as well as the New Deal...
...They were not satisfied that Yugoslavia, always a bread basket, was "now at last growing all her own grain" when even Italy, which always had to import grain, has had a surplus for several years...
...No one who reads my book, however, could conclude that I mean to identify them and Cummings...
...I saw their mouths water at the Trieste food market looking at the abundance and variety of food...
...Not one of them told me that he was living better...
...Storrs, Conn...
...In fact, Yeats is one of my favorite poets, but I don't expect to find in him what I get from Cummings, or vice versa...
...Until recently, Cummings was the only poet of his generation and stature who had not had a book published about him...
...Lauter has simply been unable to find his way out of the box in which the New Criticism and the Symbolist poets have placed him...
...but this is due mostly to the clumsiness of the West rather than to his own strength...
...Whenever I talked politics and culture with them, I felt an obscurantism which was never the case in my youth after World War I. The struggle for material existence during the last 15 years seems to have destroyed in them any desire for either philosophic truth or intellectual enjoyment...
...One final point...
...The Yugoslav press played up that visit and the Government outdid itself to make the visit as satisfactory and relaxing as possible...
...not only for themselves but to sell as a way to pay for their trips or to increase their resources...
...The implication is that political conservatism, with or without ironic quotes, is simply beneath contempt...
...The comparison was first suggested to me by Perry Miller at Harvard around 1947-48, and it has since struck me that in discussing a contemporary poet who stresses individualism, non-conformity, and anti-commercialism as Cummings does, it would be an impertinence not to mention Emerson and Thoreau...
...in fact, they were insulted when I remarked that at last the workers' councils had given them the long-awaited independence...
...I saw them buying whatever they could with the few liras alloted them, and looking eagerly at the Trieste shop windows...
...It is a love achieved only through the discipline of surrender...
...NORMAN FRIEDMAN Assistant Professor of English The University of Connecticut...
...Even the most orthodox Communist, when comparing Italy's economic situation to Yugoslavia's, has to admit that Italy has made astonishing advances and he finds it difficult to understand why Italy, with fewer raw materials and resources, is so much ahead of Yugoslavia...
...Perhaps it was that warm reception by Bak-aric and others that impressed Denis Healey and prompted him to write his "Yugoslavia 1960" (NL...
...This is simply not the case, and, although I think it's possible to criticize these poets, I should shudder to be identified with Karl Shapiro or Ivor Winters in this regard...
...When talking with the young people, I noticed a tremendous desire for travel, cars and TV sets—more than for politics...
...Last summer, I spent several weeks in Trieste where I met many Yugoslavs from different walks of life and talked to them about their daily life...
...Isn't it rather odd that a man who compiled the first bibliography of Cummings and who is himself an assistant professor should complain about the rough academic hands which are now either making a mountain out of a mole hill or tearing the veil away from a mystery...
...But I would ask Lauter, and his readers, to consult my index under "Language, conceptual" for the 10 or so references indicating where I define and discuss such terms as "Mind," "Heart" and "Soul...
...And what would it matter...
...Do we not still have a two-party system ? I am also chided for not defining Cummings' key terms, and for not asking such embarrassing questions as what "stern miraculous" love means...
...that there is more than one kind of poet and that therefore there ought to be more than one kind of critical approach...
...I personally do not think it's necessary, however, to choose between childhood and maturity, or between Cummings and Yeats, in this way...
...This does not mean, however, that he is a Republican, for he is also against big business and advertising...
...I spoke to some workers and they did not seem satisfied...
...But I could not put it out of my mind, and the more I thought about it the more unfair it seemed...
...This may not be a brilliant explanation, but it hardly can be said that I avoided making it...
...lowed the Soviet line in all major issues from disarmament to the Congo and even Cuba...
...In the vacuum left by the West, Tito's Yugoslavia is contributing its own share to the new Communist neo-colonial imperialism...
...They were shabbily dressed, for the most part, and bought all the textiles and leather goods they could...
...Does Lauter think Yeats and Pound and Eliot are not getting their fair share of academic attention...
...October 31...
...In the first place, Lauter misleads the reader into thinking that I boost Cummings by trampling on Eliot, Yeats and Auden...
...The whole point of my book is that Cummings is to be understood and judged on a different basis than the one we customarily use in reading such poets as Eliot, Yeats and Auden...
...But Lauter is just not thinking here, for the politics of Yeats and Eliot is, if anything, more conservative than Senator Gold water's...
...We work for the bureaucrats and the Army brass," they answered...
...Accordingly, in order to support my claim regarding the seriousness of Cummings' vision, I pointed to some other well-known and established literary figures whose view of life resembles that of Cummings in certain significant ways—Emerson and Thoreau, for exCONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE ample...
...and to turn to pp...
...It is true that Tito succeeded in rallying the sympathy of some new African and Middle East nations, and exported Yugoslav industry and manpower to their countries...
...Lauter takes a further crack at Cummings' view of the world by suggesting it resembles politically that of Senator Barry Goldwater...
...Now, 1 present Cummings as a poet of unmixed emotions, and we can either agree or disagree with his vision of life, but I think we must in any case regard it seriously...
...Here Lauter chides me with inflating Cummings by making artificial comparisons, and points out certain differences between these writers and Cummings...
...64-65 for an analysis of the poem in which the phrase "stern miraculous" appears— "such a love . . . is not easily achieved...
Vol. 43 • November 1960 • No. 44
