E.E. Cummings’ attitude to dogma and formal religion may have remained skeptical, but true to his Unitarian roots, he retained respect for spirituality and a simple reverence towards the Almighty. Echoing the transcendentalism of Emerson, Whitman and Thoreau, Cummings bursts forth with simple, lyrical praise for God and nature.

What shall we make of Edward Estlin Cummings—the playful poet who abandoned capitalization and punctuation out of, one supposes, an anarchic disregard for conventionality… or was it a sentimental attempt at egalitarianism through syntax?

Does his innovation annoy? Is it essentially an adolescent pose? A party trick or a serious attempt to demolish the the form to unlock the content? It’s worth comparing Cummings and his work to two other modernist poets from Harvard: Wallace Stevens and T.S.Eliot—all three iconoclasts in their own way.

Stevens was a kind of poetic post impressionist, creating an interplay between fragments of imagery and philosophical musings. Eliot threw together dark and disparate images to evoke emotion, while Cummings deconstructed syntax, punctuation, and traditional forms to release subjective content.

All three were products of Harvard at the turn of the century. Stevens graduated in 1900, Eliot in 1909, and Cummings in 1915. At the time, Harvard was the intellectual and traditional powerhouse of America. The Puritan and transcendentalist legacy jousted with humanistic modernism. Under T.S. Eliot’s cousin, President Charles W. Eliot (1869–1909), Harvard was transformed into a modern research university. The elective system, introduced in the 1870s, allowed students flexibility in choosing courses. Intellectual curiosity was encouraged over rote learning, so that by the turn of the century, Harvard was a hub for emerging disciplines like psychology, sociology, and American literature. It was also ripe for the development of the sort of modernism in poetry produced by Stevens, Eliot, and Cummings.

While Stevens earned his living as an insurance executive, Eliot moved to England and paid the bills by working first as a bank clerk, then as an editor in the Faber and Faber publishing house. Eschewing such conventional livings, Cummings returned from the First World War to pursue a bohemian existence, living the exuberant life of a painter, poet, and lover in the attics of Greenwich Village.

Cummings’ playful, raw, and energetic poetry would seem a world away from Stevens’ and Eliot’s somber, intellectual analysis, but beneath the irreverent and anarchical surface lurks another e e cummings, for as usual with great men, their childhood influences echo down into their adult life and work, and it is in the similar childhood worlds of the three men that their unity lies buried.

As boys, Eliot and Cummings shared the Unitarian roots that was so much a part of the Harvard community at the time. Eliot’s family were committed Unitarians. His grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot, was a Unitarian Minister who founded Washington University in St Louis. Eliot’s mother Charlotte was a poet, social activist, and committed Unitarian. Similarly, Cummings’ father was a professor at Harvard and a Unitarian minister. His mother was also devoted to Unitarianism. Meanwhile, Wallace Stevens was brought up in a Lutheran home in Reading, Pennsylvania. Like Eliot and Cummings mother, Stevens’ mother was a strong religious influence, reading the Bible and forming his Christian values.

What exactly was this Protestant influence like at the turn of the century? Unitarianism was an offshoot of New England transcendentalism, which was itself a development of New England Puritanism. Upright and rational, Unitarians pride themselves on following a sensible form of Christianity—embracing Jesus Christ as a fine moral teacher and espousing Christian morality and respectable behavior while de-emphasizing the need for dogma, and specifically rejecting the doctrine of the Trinity. Turn-of-the-century Lutheranism in America, while not accepting the unorthodox, rationalistic, and humanistic tenets of Unitarianism, would have largely adopted its mood, emphasizing clean living, intellectual rigor, respectable behavior, and responsible relationships over both dogma and subjective emotionalism.

Cummings, Stevens, and Eliot reacted against this dull, respectable religion in their own ways. Stevens walked a path of intellectual skepticism mixed with curiosity and distanced, but genuine respect for Christianity. When dying from cancer, Stevens reportedly asked for instruction in the Catholic faith and, although Stevens’ daughter disputed the claim, the hospital chaplain affirmed that he had received baptism and the final sacraments of the church.

Disillusioned by the dull respectability of New England religion, Eliot escaped to Old England. Baptized into the Anglican Church in 1927, he found refuge in tradition and order, declaring himself the year after his baptism as, “classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion.”

Cummings reacted by escaping to Greenwich Village to play the bohemian clown—a kind of literary jester poking fun at dull respectability with insouciant satire and the romantic whimsy of an eternal child.

In may my heart always be open to little birds, Cummings expresses his preference for the robust, free spirit that embraces religious uncertainty instead of conventional religion and dogma:

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it’s sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

Cummings’ attitude to dogma and formal religion may have remained skeptical, but true to his Unitarian roots, he retained respect for spirituality and a simple reverence towards the Almighty. Echoing the transcendentalism of Emerson, Whitman and Thoreau, Cummings bursts forth with simple, lyrical praise for God and nature:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

Finally, in a simple affirmation of humility and reverence he reflects on a tiny country church:

i am a little church (no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying
– i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth’s own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope, and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
– i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring, i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

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The featured image is a photograph of E.E. Cummings. This work is from the New York World-Telegram and Sun collection at the Library of Congress. According to the library, there are no known copyright restrictions on the use of this work.courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.