(no subject)
Notes on "since feeling is continuous"
First, with line numbers:
since feeling is continuous
who pays attention to the countability of sets
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to place foolishness
5 in correspondence with a finite Season.
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than monotony
lady i swear by untallied kisses. Don't cry
10 --the best advice of disapproving old men let us value
as one involuntary impulse which says
we are one-to-one and onto: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for death's one left square bracket
15 And life i think is space-filling
References:
e e cummings Catullus
But I think lines 2 and 3 of the Catullus should be translated:
and the gossip of disapproving old men
all together let us value as one penny (since that's the order of lines in the original).
The usual interpretation of the original is a warning against overanalyzing things, and various people have argued with this position (e.g., Geoffrey Pullum). I suspect, however, that Cummings really meant it as a warning against conformity; he was clearly not ignorant of grammar, but would rather violate it in quite specialized ways.
Notes:
1-3: Continuous, in set theory, refers to a set like the real numbers rather than the whole numbers, where (intuitively) there aren't any gaps in between the members of the set (formally, limits of bounded sequences are in the set). Such a set is uncountable, which is to say that, no matter how you order the elements, there is some element that's missing from your order; even if you were to go through the list forever, there are elements you wouldn't get to. Which is to say that even an infinite number of kisses would be insufficient to "wholly kiss you"; there's always more "kiss you" to do.
4-5: likewise, being a fool. The standard technique for comparing the sizes of sets A and B is to try to make a list of pairs "a: b", and see if you can give a rule for making this correspondence such that every "a" has a different "b". If so, A is no larger than B (lots of sets are the same size). There's more "to be a fool" than "Spring".
8: 85% of the time I spent working on this poem was trying to find a word for "the state of having nothing interesting to talk about at parties".
9: Now we have Catullus. As I was working on this, I kept finding Catullus 5 relevant. The second half of that poem is about exchanging so many kisses that you can't count them, even though you're trying, and nobody else can figure out how many kisses there were, either, to complain about it. "conturbabimus" is the image of overturning the table where the scribe has been putting stones into correspondence with kisses.
10: More Catullus, with the disapproving old men from my translation. Also, Cummings would be 112 now, and would, by the usual interpretation, be disapproving of this argument. The best gesture of his brain, therefore, gets this redescription.
11: I decided to use "one" in exactly the contexts that Catullus does. I also wanted to describe "your eyelids' flutter" in a way that was more technical, distinguishes this case from other, superficially cases (i.e., batting your eyes coquettishly), and where being able to make the distinction explicit helps to let the audience know what the poet is going on about. This is difficult to do with two words.
12: Mathematics has terms about functions. A function takes input from one set and gives output from another. If the function never gives the same output for different inputs, it is called "one-to-one". If, for every member of the output set, there is some input that the function gives that output for, it is called "onto". It is useful to know when both are true, because then the function has an inverse function that behaves properly.
13: (also elsewhere) I decided to keep directly-reported sensations from the original exactly the same. Even if you know enough to notice what's good about subtle things, you can still enjoy simple sensations. I also retained original punctuation and capitalization.
14: In mathematics, an interval which includes its boundary is written with a square bracket (as opposed to a parenthesis). Not punctuating the other end of the interval suggests eternity, and I have one bracket for the one eternal night from Catullus.
15: A space-filling curve is a fractal line with an infinite length contained in a finite area which occupies the entire area by virtue of how twisty it is.
First, with line numbers:
since feeling is continuous
who pays attention to the countability of sets
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to place foolishness
5 in correspondence with a finite Season.
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than monotony
lady i swear by untallied kisses. Don't cry
10 --the best advice of disapproving old men let us value
as one involuntary impulse which says
we are one-to-one and onto: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for death's one left square bracket
15 And life i think is space-filling
References:
e e cummings Catullus
But I think lines 2 and 3 of the Catullus should be translated:
and the gossip of disapproving old men
all together let us value as one penny (since that's the order of lines in the original).
The usual interpretation of the original is a warning against overanalyzing things, and various people have argued with this position (e.g., Geoffrey Pullum). I suspect, however, that Cummings really meant it as a warning against conformity; he was clearly not ignorant of grammar, but would rather violate it in quite specialized ways.
Notes:
1-3: Continuous, in set theory, refers to a set like the real numbers rather than the whole numbers, where (intuitively) there aren't any gaps in between the members of the set (formally, limits of bounded sequences are in the set). Such a set is uncountable, which is to say that, no matter how you order the elements, there is some element that's missing from your order; even if you were to go through the list forever, there are elements you wouldn't get to. Which is to say that even an infinite number of kisses would be insufficient to "wholly kiss you"; there's always more "kiss you" to do.
4-5: likewise, being a fool. The standard technique for comparing the sizes of sets A and B is to try to make a list of pairs "a: b", and see if you can give a rule for making this correspondence such that every "a" has a different "b". If so, A is no larger than B (lots of sets are the same size). There's more "to be a fool" than "Spring".
8: 85% of the time I spent working on this poem was trying to find a word for "the state of having nothing interesting to talk about at parties".
9: Now we have Catullus. As I was working on this, I kept finding Catullus 5 relevant. The second half of that poem is about exchanging so many kisses that you can't count them, even though you're trying, and nobody else can figure out how many kisses there were, either, to complain about it. "conturbabimus" is the image of overturning the table where the scribe has been putting stones into correspondence with kisses.
10: More Catullus, with the disapproving old men from my translation. Also, Cummings would be 112 now, and would, by the usual interpretation, be disapproving of this argument. The best gesture of his brain, therefore, gets this redescription.
11: I decided to use "one" in exactly the contexts that Catullus does. I also wanted to describe "your eyelids' flutter" in a way that was more technical, distinguishes this case from other, superficially cases (i.e., batting your eyes coquettishly), and where being able to make the distinction explicit helps to let the audience know what the poet is going on about. This is difficult to do with two words.
12: Mathematics has terms about functions. A function takes input from one set and gives output from another. If the function never gives the same output for different inputs, it is called "one-to-one". If, for every member of the output set, there is some input that the function gives that output for, it is called "onto". It is useful to know when both are true, because then the function has an inverse function that behaves properly.
13: (also elsewhere) I decided to keep directly-reported sensations from the original exactly the same. Even if you know enough to notice what's good about subtle things, you can still enjoy simple sensations. I also retained original punctuation and capitalization.
14: In mathematics, an interval which includes its boundary is written with a square bracket (as opposed to a parenthesis). Not punctuating the other end of the interval suggests eternity, and I have one bracket for the one eternal night from Catullus.
15: A space-filling curve is a fractal line with an infinite length contained in a finite area which occupies the entire area by virtue of how twisty it is.