Point(s) d’écart chez E. E. Cummings

Abstract

This article poses the problem of ‘écart’ or deviation as a relative one, in other words as intrinsic to the creative act. The argument then concerns degrees and levels of what it considers, paradoxically, to be the norm. Focusing on the most original part of E. E. Cummings’s work, his poempictures, it shows that the liberties he takes with language stem as much from a thorough working knowledge of its grammar as from a formal research into art form dynamics. While remaining within the convention of the readable, the poet’s idiolect leads to a unique form of creation, one of a Heideggerian order : nature trembles on the page in tune with the poet’s sensibility.

Keywords

• norm
• space as signifier
• interval
• interstice
• punctuation
• typographical variation