Princess Bea and her Beau Edo thought they’d pulled off the perfect-under-the-circumstances-wedding – small, discreet, a borrowed dress (but what a corker), under-styled but oh-so-effective hair, and that was just Edo. Even this poem by e. e. cummings (1894 – 1962), read by Fergie, couldn’t be beat:
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
© Trustees for the E.E. Cummings Trust
But Christopher Stevens for the Daily Mail (which should know better) had to be a party pooper when he wrote, “… if Beatrice and Edoardo had known the scandalous truth that lay behind the poem — not to mention the vile anti-Semitism that flowed alongside it — they might have chosen another piece of verse for their otherwise glorious wedding day.”
Cummings, apparently, was obsessed with prostitutes (scholars surmise that one in particular inspired I carry your heart), got drunk and felt girls up [sic], was married three times, wrote risqué verse, and held racist views. So someone you’d hesitate to take home to see your mother. But the fact is, despite his shortcomings (ahem), he wrote the most beautiful poetry that has enchanted, enriched and inspired many, and the world is a better place because of it. Was his beautiful poetry a God-given balance or a sub-conscious apology for his ugly views? If he’d lived an unblemished life, would he have written such loveliness? And if he hadn’t, wouldn’t our hearts be comparatively empty.
Does the fact that we know about his blemishes diminish his poetry or our appreciation of it? Is there an artistic version of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle at play here? (E.g. the act of measuring a particle’s velocity changes its velocity.)
We don’t know all the answers, so shouldn’t rush to judgement and proverbially cut off our noses. Enjoy his poetry out of context and let the academics – and attention-seekers – argue the toss.
I’d like to end with another example of beautiful art from an ‘ugly’ artist. Richard Wagner (1813 – 1883) is also castigated for his anti-Semitic views. But if we ban his Ride of the Valkyries because of his abhorrent ‘politics’ then we’d have to stop watching Apocalypse Now, or replace the music accompanying the helicopter assault with what? Lulu’s Boom Bang-a-Bang?
That thought makes me wanna shout!
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