#поэтическая_среда Эдвард Эстлин Каммингс — американский поэт, писатель,...

# poetic environment

Edward Astlin Cummings - American poet, writer, artist, playwright. In total, over the course of his life he has published more than 900 poems, two novels, several plays and essays. Cummings had a “corporate identity,” characterized by deliberately distorted grammar and punctuation. He often arbitrarily changed the English word order in a sentence and rather ingeniously used compound words, for example, “mud-luscious” (“dirty sweet”). In addition, he is the author of a large number of drawings, sketches and paintings. Cummings himself considered himself an artist no less than a poet and writer - especially in the last years of his life spent in New Hampshire, when he often painted in the daytime and wrote poetry at night. In the 1920s, Cummings identified himself as a follower of Cubism, later Dadaism and Surrealism. He especially liked the work of Pablo Picasso. For the first time, Cummings was recognized as an artist thanks to the drawings and cartoons published in the literary magazine Dial in the 1920s. Later he became known as a painter. Cummings also published a collection of works made by charcoal, ink, oil, pastel and watercolor in 1931. Cummings is little known in Russia, and his pun is hard to translate. Several published translations of Cummings' poems into Russian belong to Vladimir Britanishsky.

one day a nigger
caught in his hand
a little star no bigger
than not to understand
"i'll never let you go
until you've made me white "
so she did and now
stars shine at night

E e cummings

once a black man
hand grab
star with millimeter
what reason to embrace
"I will not let go, star, you
until you whiten me "
she executed the order
and the stars are shining at night now

translation by N.Semoniff

Pity this busy monster, manunkind ...
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
is not a world of born -pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagital

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if-listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go

E e cummings
 
Do not sympathize with a sick business monster ..
do not sympathize with a sick business monster,

inhumanity. Progress is a disease
pleasant: indulging in insanity

giant dwarf imagines himself all his life
- a swarm of electrons honors like a mountain ridge,
razor blade; lenses will increase

non-power of non-thought and bent into an arc
where-and-when, returning fiction to impersonality.
The world “made” is not the world “born” -

pity the living thing, any except
this one, imagining that she is above all

dominates. We doctors have long been

waved a hand - listen: around the corner
damn glorious world to her; let's go

Translation by V. Britanishsky

who are you, little I

who are you, little i
(five or six years old)
peering from some high
window; at the gold

of november sunset
(and feeling: that if day
has to become night
this is a beautiful way)

E e cummings

who are you little me

(five, six years old)
down from the window
staring; at sunset
november gold

(and sensed: if day
must go into darkness

let it go beautifully: like that)

translation Igor Satanovsky

P.s. Special Thanks to Kir Underdinner