e e cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings (October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962), commonly known as e e cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright.

In his seminar on Foucault, Deleuze refers to e. e. cummings’ ungrammatical forms, such as the phrase “he danced his did” (from the poem “anyone lived in a pretty how town”), citing it as an instance in which a language system is stretched to its limit (seminar of 18 March 1986).

Deleuze may have encountered cummings’ work while reading Michel Foucault’s essay “Pierre Boulez, Passing Through the Screen” (in Essential Works of Foucault, vol. 2: Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, ed. James D. Faubion, trans. Robert Hurley, New York: The New Press, 1998, 241-44), from which Deleuze cites the line: “Boulez only needed a straight line, without any detour or mediation, to go to Stéphane Mallarme, to Paul Klee, to Rene Char, to Henri Michaux, and later to e. e. cummings” (242) (seminar of 7 May 1986).