So I’m at Caribou again, and after I finished the final proof of my massive (twenty pages of just text!) independent study paper, I decided to read some e.e. cummings. I am the proud owner of 100 Selected Poems, and I found poem 46 particuarly interesting to our discussions of both Portrait of Jennie and Vertigo. The downside to 100 Selected Poems is that it doesn’t tell you the year the poem was published in, so I can’t tell if this might have been an inspiration for Hitchcock or Nathan or if it was in any way inspired by them. In my knowledge of cummings, I’d say it probably served as an inspiration for one of the two, but I can’t say that conclusively.
love’s function is to fabricate unknownness
(known being wishless;but love,all of wishing)
though life’s lived wrongsideout,sameness chokes oneness
truth is confused with fact,fish boast of fishing
and men are caught by worms (love may not care
if time totters,light droops,allmeasures bend
nor marvel if a thought should weigh a star
–dreads dying least;and less,that death should end)
how lucky lovers are (whose selves abide
under whatever shall discovered be)
whose ignorant each breathing dares to hide
more than most fabulous wisdom fears to see
(who laugh and cry) who dream,create and kill
while the whole moves;and every part stands still: