Why did enormous room close

Over the last twenty years we have been given a much more exciting picture: a story of near-misses, might-have-beens, characters with much theological baggage to hide the early Jesuits prominent among them. Massimo Firpo and other historians have introduced us to an Italy that was much closer to turning Protestant than anyone thought, as well as to a wild Mediterranean proto-Protestantism which owed much to secret Spanish Judaism, fled persecution by the Spanish Inquisition, then fascinated some of the best minds in Catholic Italy Michelangelo included before taking refuge on the Protestant plains of eastern Europe.

It is the first time that English-speaking readers have had this privilege, for all other accounts of Trent have been either too short, or too long for non-specialists: the four-volume German account by Hubert Jedin in innumerable ways admirable proved too exhausting after two volumes for Anglophone publishers to translate the rest.

The difference the Council of Trent made to the history and ethos of the Catholic Church can be gauged by the successive and overlapping careers of three 16th-century Scottish clergymen called William Chisholm. All three in turn exercised episcopal jurisdiction in the diocese of Dunblane; no need to ask if they were by any chance related.

His nephew William in turn became his coadjutor, succeeding him as bishop in amid the maelstrom of the Scottish Reformation, which eventually in forced this younger William into exile, to become bishop in Vaison-la-Romaine, a sunny hilltop town in Provence. The second Bishop William Chisholm had hesitated in breaking totally with an established Scottish Church which was now firmly Reformed Protestant; he had a brief period of renewed recognition as bishop of Dunblane under the Protestant James VI, before ending his days as a Carthusian, the most austere variety of monk possible.

The third William, nephew to the second, and originally his coadjutor at Dunblane, spent time at one of the brand-new colleges set up in Rome to give proper Catholic theological training to high-flyers in the Church. As bishop of Vaison, he was a model exponent of the Counter-Reformation, enthusiastic about his duties and very generous to his French cathedral. He remembered another exiled Scottish priest there in his will, a century after the first William had succeeded to Dunblane.

It reminds us that not only Protestants were constructing new identities in the 16th century; it is the story of the Counter-Reformation. As individuals, Roman Catholics were transformed by what happened, and collectively their church, for all its claims of continuity with the medieval Western Church, changed almost as radically as the new European churches whose adherents had rejected papal obedience. Purely in terms of clerical structure and church discipline, the Tridentine Church was more reformed than the Reformed Protestant Church of England.

Granted, there was much more to the innovations in Counter-Reformation Catholicism than Trent ever got round to discussing: you would not know from its decrees, for instance, that it was in this age, thanks to its missionaries in America, Africa and Asia, that Christianity became the first world-encompassing religion, and in Roman Catholic form.

The council did little to regulate the orders of monks and friars, and its effort to enclose all female religious figures in nunneries away from the world was creatively frustrated by ingenious female founders of new societies and bishops sympathetic to them.

Trent did not seek to reform the confraternities or guilds, those associations of laypeople who were the backbone of activism in the Roman Catholic Church over the next centuries. What it eventually provided was a sense of renewed purpose and recovered morale, necessary to let the faithful flourish in ways which could be worked out to suit particular situations.

Edition First U. Cloth worn at spine ends, front cover tender Edition First edition, second state, with "Shit! Seller curtis paul books inc. Light wear at spine ends. Seller Booked Up, Inc. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem?

Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — The Enormous Room by E. The Enormous Room by E. A high-energy romp, the poet's prose memoir recounts his military service in World War I, when a comedy of errors led to his unjust arrest and imprisonment for treason.

Get A Copy. Paperback , pages. Published November 3rd by Hard Press first published More Details Original Title. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about The Enormous Room , please sign up.

Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of The Enormous Room. Authors who only wrote one single novel are a curious lot. Some came up with a masterpiece and then died Emily Bronte, Sylvia Plath. So that's a pretty good excuse. Ill-informed interviewer to Emily Bronte : "Why didn't you write a follow up to your fabulous novel Wuthering Heights? I did not know that. Some were playwrights who must have thought heck, this novel b Authors who only wrote one single novel are a curious lot.

E E Cummings turned out to be a very interesting but often irritating poet but aged 23 he over-wrote this page memoir about being wrongly imprisoned as a spy in World War 1 France and it was published as a novel. I was struggling to get to page 40 so I found an audiobook version on Youtube and tried that but that was even worse, like a vicar trying to balance a wedding cake on his head whilst dancing the tango at gunpoint.

The shrinking light which my guide held had become suddenly minute; it was beating, senseless and futile, with shrill fists upon a thick enormous moisture of gloom. To the left and right through lean oblongs of stained glass burst dirty burglars of moonlight. Abandoned with relief. View all 17 comments. Nov 23, BlackOxford rated it liked it Shelves: biography-biographical , american , war. The protagonist is obnoxious and endearing in about equal measure.

The various French authorities and for that matter American, Cummings accommodates everyone , from the snobbish regional police chief to his medievally minded jailers are more or less treated with the disdain a clever 12 year old feels, but rarely shows War-time Japes The Enormous Room , the fictionalised account of Cummings's arrest and incarceration by the French on charges of sedition during WWI, reads like a Billy Bunter story.

The various French authorities and for that matter American, Cummings accommodates everyone , from the snobbish regional police chief to his medievally minded jailers are more or less treated with the disdain a clever 12 year old feels, but rarely shows, for his boarding school headmaster. But Cummings does show what he feels on every possible occasion. One finds it necessary to be more English than the English if sufficiently provoked, '"Very well, gentlemen," I said.

Cummings was nothing if not an all-appreciating aesthete: "The door was massively made, all of iron or steel I should think.

It delighted me. The can excited my curiosity. I looked over the edge of it. At the bottom reposefully lay a new human turd. He doesn't know why he has been arrested or where he is to be detained.

But even then the mystery is another opportunity for appreciative admiration, "everything seemed ridiculously suppressed, beautifully abnormal, deliciously insane. Cummings never loses his Bostonian noblesse oblige and sang froid : "I contemplate the bowl which contemplates me. A glaze of greenish grease seals the mystery of its content, I induce two fingers to penetrate the seal.

They bring me up a flat sliver of cabbage and a large, hard, thoughtful, solemn, uncooked bean. I did. To-morrow I will write the second. Day after to-morrow the third. Next day the refrain. After—oh, well. It is a practice piece in sustained irony that suggests much about where he is going and some of where he did not. An interesting, periodically entertaining, piece of dark humour. And probably excellent therapy for his PTSD. View all 9 comments.

Dec 30, Rachel rated it it was amazing. If I had the power to describe e. I can't understand why he spent so much time writing poetry instead. Who else speaks of "a spic, not to say span, gentleman"? Observes a man "buckle his personality" and "bang forward with bigger and bigger feet"? Explains that he "hoisted my suspicious utterances upon my shoulder, which recognized the renewal of hostilities with a neuralgic throb"? Says that "rain did, from time to time, not fall: fr If I had the power to describe e.

Says that "rain did, from time to time, not fall: from time to time a sort of unhealthy almost-light leaked from the large uncrisp corpse of the sky"? And introduces a character thus: "By some mistake he had three mustaches, two of them being eyebrows. In speaking to you his kind face is reduced to triangles. And his tie buttons on every morning with a Bang! And off he goes; led about by his celluloid collar, gently worried about himself, delicately worried about the world".

View 1 comment. Jun 09, K. Shelves: core , picaresque , french , prison-drama. Edward Estlin Cummings was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. He wrote poetry daily from the age of 8 to During World War I, when he was 23, he volunteered as ambulance driver in France. He went there with a friend and colleague, William Slater Brown who he referred to simply as B in this book.

Brown wrote and sent letters back home with anti-war sentiments. The French government opened all the outgoing letters so Brown was arrested. Cummings was invited for questioning. He defended his friend and stood pat for his innocence so he was also arrested and incarcerated. This book, The Enormous Room details his experience inside the jail that lasted for 4 months. What was this thing about young American artists who joined WWI as ambulance drivers?

Hemingway at 19 went to Italy to work as ambulance driver and he captured his experience in his beautiful novel Farewell to Arms. Then here came Cummings, who at 23, went to Paris also to work as ambulance driver and capture his experience in this semi-autobiographical novel The Enormous Room. Being more known as poet rather that a novelist, I was expecting to see many elements of poetry in this book.

I particularly enjoy reading his poems as they are brief but still create vivid imageries in my mind. I stood up. I was myself. The book was not able to satisfy my hunger for his beautiful poetic lines. I also had to read this twice. During my first reading, I ignored the many French phrases.

So I just went on and on reading the pages until I came to the Appendix and saw the Glossary and found the phrases there. The letter struck me as very poignant and I was able to relate to it as a father myself. I thought I missed the whole point of the story because there was no mention of his father looking for him during the whole 4 years that he was in jail. I thought that I missed the emotional aspect of the story because if you read this book only on the contextual aspect, it is so plain and simple: just as case of injustice and insensitivity done to an American youth by some people of the French government.

A government that was supposed to be an ally rather than an enemy. So, I decided to read the book the second time. It was an arduous and slow read because I had to refer to the Glossary almost every paragraph.

Cummings put a lot of French words and phrases to give that foreign authenticity to his story. I have no background on French language but I learned so many words, although prison words, from this book. Which artist-volunteered-as-ambulance-driver book is better? I still prefer Farewell to Arms because it was a love story. Cummings did not have any love interest here. The women and men have separate facilities. This was just like reading a straightforward jail drama like Borstal Boy the semi-autobiographical novel by Brendan Behan.

As I lay on my back, a little silhouette came along the sill and ate that piece of a piece, taking something like four minutes to do so. He then looked at me, I then smiled at him, and we parted, each happier than before. A mouldily mouldering molish voice, suggesting putrefying tracts and orifices, answers with a cob-webbish patience so far beyond despair as to be indescribable: 'La soupe. My money is chez le directeur. Please take my money which is chez le directeur and give me anything else.

Always asks for things. When supposest thou will he realize that he's never going to get anything? The faces stood in the doorway, looking me down. The expression of the face's identically turnkeyish, i. Look who's here, who let that in.

They did not smile and said: 'Naturally. I want to pass the time. I contemplate the bowl, which contemplates me. A glaze of greenish grease seals the mystery of its contents. I induce two fingers to penetrate the seal. They bring me up a flat sliver of choux and a large, hard, thoughtful, solemn, uncooked bean.

I did. Suddenly I realize the indisputable grip of nature's humorous hand. Having finished, panting with stink, I stumble on the bed and consider my next move. Turnkeyish and turnkeyish. Identical expression. One body collapses sufficiently to deposit a hunk of bread and a piece of water. So I took matches, burnt, and with just 60 of them wrote the first stanza of a ballad.

To-morrow I will write the second. Day after to-morrow the third. Next day the refrain. After--oh, well.

I sang a song the 'dirty Frenchmen' taught us, mon ami et moi. The song says Bon soir, Madame de la Lune I did not sing out loud, simply because the moon was like a mademoiselle, and I did not want to offend the moon. Then I lay down, and heard, but could not see the silhouette eat something or somebody The next day.

Get ready. As I came out, toting bed and bed-roll, I remarked: 'I'm sorry to leave you,' which made T-c furiously to masticate his unsignificant moustache. Himself stooped puffingly to pick up the segregated sack. And I placed my bed, bed-roll, blankets, and ample pelisse under one arm, my odd lb. Then I said, 'Where's my cane? A foule of gendarmes gathered. One didn't take a cane with one to prison I was glad to know where I was bound, and thanked this communicative gentleman ; or criminals weren't allowed canes; or where exactly did I think I was, in the Tuileries?

This haughty inaccuracy produced an astonishing effect, namely, the prestidigitatorial vanishment of the v-f-g. I sat on the curb and began to fill a paper with something which I found in my pockets, certainly not tobacco. Splutter-splutter-fizz-poop-the v-f-g is back, with my great oak-branch in his raised hand, slithering opprobria and mostly crying: 'Is that huge piece of wood what you call a cane?

Is it? It is, is it? What the ' so on. I beamed upon him and thanked him, and explained that a 'dirty Frenchman' had given it to me as a souvenir, and that I would now proceed.

Twisting the handle in the loop of my sack, and hoisting the vast parcel under my arm, I essayed twice to boost it on my back. The third time I sweated and staggered to my feet, completely accoutred. Down the road. Into the ville. Curious looks from a few pedestrians. A driver stops his wagon to watch the spider and his outlandish fly. I chuckled to think how long since I had washed and shaved.

Then I nearly fell, staggered on a few steps and set down the two loads. Perhaps it was the fault of the strictly vegetarian diet. At any rate I couldn't move a step farther with my bundles.

The sun sent the sweat along my nose in tickling waves. My eyes were blind. Hereupon I suggested that the v-f-g carry part of one of my bundles with me, and received the answer: "I am doing too much for yoo as it is. No gendarme is supposed to carry a prisoner's baggage. He responded: 'You can leave here anything you don't care to carry further; I'll take care of it. I looked at the gendarme. I looked several blocks through him.

My lip did something like a sneer. My hands did something like fists. At this crisis, along comes a little boy. May God bless all males between seven and ten years of age in France. The gendarme offered a suggestion, in these words: 'Have you any change about you? The gendarme's eyes were fine. They reminded me of But herein the v-f-g had bust his milk-jug. There is a slit of a pocket made in the uniform of his criminal on the right side, and completely covered by the belt which his criminal always wears.

His criminal had thus outwitted the gumshoe fraternity. The gosse could scarcely balance my smaller parcel, but managed after three rests to get it to the station platform; here I tipped him something like two cents all I had which, with dollar-big eyes he took, and ran. A strongly-built, groomed apache smelling of cologne and onions greeted my v-f-g with that affection which is peculiar to gendarmes. On me he stared cynically, then sneered frankly.

With a little tooty shriek, the funny train tottered in. Now they encouraged me to HurryHurryHurry. I managed to get under the load and tottered the length of the train to a car especially reserved. There was one other criminal, a beautifully-smiling, shortish man, with a very fine blanket wrapped in a waterproof oilskin cover. The engine got under way after several feints; which pleased the Germans so that they sent seven scout planes right over the station, train, us et tout.

All the French anticraft guns went off together for the sake of sympathy; the guardians of the peace squinted cautiously. He is a Belgian. Volunteered at beginning of war. Permission at Paris, overstayed by one day. When he reported to his officer, the latter announced that he was a deserter'I said to him, "It is funny.

It is funny I should have come back, of my own free will, to my company. I should have thought that being a deserter I would have preferred to remain in Paris.

They had given me a chunk of war-bread in place of blessing when I left Noyon. I bit into it with renewed might. But the divine man across from me immediately produced a sausage, half of which he laid simply upon my knee. The halving was done with a large keen poilu's couteau. The pigs on my either hand had by this time overcome their respective inertias and were chomping cheek-murdering chunks. They had quite a lay-out, a regular picnic-lunch elaborate enough for kings or even presidents.

The v-f-g in particular annoyed me by uttering alternate chompings and belchings. All the time be ate he kept his eyes half-shut; and a mist overspread the sensual meadows of his coarse face. His two reddish eyes rolled devouringly toward the blanket in its waterproof roll. They are going to take everything away from you when you get there, you know. I could use it nicely. Do you see? Here I had an inspiration. I would save the blanket-cover by drawing these brigands' attention to myself.

At the same time I would satisfy my inborn taste for the ridiculous. He gave me a pencil. I don't remember where the paper came from. I posed him in a pig-like position, and the picture made him chew his moustache. The apache thought it very droll. I should do his picture too, at once.

I did my best; though protesting that he was too beautiful for my pencil, which remark he countered by murmuring as he screwed his moustache another notch , 'Never mind, you will try. He objected, I recall, to the nose. By this time the divine 'deserter' was writhing with joy. He handled his picture sacredly, criticized it with precision and care, finally bestowed it in his inner pocket. Then we drank. It happened that the train stopped and the apache was persuaded to go out and get his prisoner's bidon filled.

Then we drank again. He smiled as he told me he was getting ten years. Three years at solitary confinement was it, and seven working in a gang on the road? That would not be so bad. He wishes he was not married, had not a little child. Now the gendarmes began cleaning their beards, brushing their stomachs, spreading their legs, collecting their baggage.

The reddish eyes, little and cruel, woke from the trance of digestion and settled with positive ferocity on their prey. Silently the sensitive, gentle hands of the divine prisoner undid the blanket-cover. Silently the long, tired, well-shaped arms passed it across to the brigand at my left side.

With a grunt of satisfaction the brigand stuffed it in a large pouch, taking pains that it should not show. Silently the divine eyes said to mine: 'What can we do, we criminals? A station. The apache descends. I follow with my numerous affaires. The divine man follows methe v-f-g him.

The blanket-roll containing my large fur-coat got more and more unrolled; finally I could not possibly hold it. Then comes a voice, 'Allow me, if you please, monsieur' and the sack has disappeared. Blindly and dumbly I stumbled on with the roll; and so at length we come into the yard of a little prison; and the divine man bowed under my great sack I never thanked him.

When I turned, they'd taken him away, and the sack stood accusingly at my feet. Through the complete disorder of my numbed mind flicker jabbings of strange tongues. Some high boy's voice is appealing to me in Belgian, Italian, Polish, Spanish, andbeautiful English. I lift my eyes. I am standing in a tiny oblong space. A sort of court. All around, two-story wooden barracks. Little crude staircases lead up to doors heavily chained and immensely padlocked.

More like ladders than stairs. Curious hewn windows, smaller in proportion than the slits in a doll's house. Are these faces behind the slits? The doors bulge incessantly under the shock of bodies hurled against them from within. The whole dirty nouveau business about to crumble. Glance two: directly before me. A wall with many bars fixed across one minute opening. At the opening a dozen, fifteen, grins.

Upon the bars hands, scraggy and bluishly white. Through the bars stretchings of lean arms, incessant stretchings. The grins leap at the window, hands belonging to them catch hold, arms belonging to the hands stretch in my direction In the huge potpourri of misery a central figure clung, shaken but undislodged. Clung like a monkey to central bars. Clung like an angel to a harp.

Calling pleasantly in a high boyish voice: 'O Jack, give me a cigarette. I waded suddenly through a group of gendarmes they stood around me watching with a disagreeable curiosity my reaction to this.

Strode fiercely to the window. The angel-monkey received the package of cigarettes politely, disappearing with it into howling darkness. I heard his high boy's voice distributing cigarettes. Then he leapt into sight, poised gracefully against two central bars, saying, 'Thank you, Jack, good boy'.

Evidently the head of the house speaking. I obeyed. A corpulent soldier importantly led me to my cell. My cell is two doors away from the monkey-angel, on the same side. The high boy-voice, centralized in a torrent-like halo of stretchings, followed my back. The head himself unlocked a lock. I marched coldly in.

The fat soldier locked and chained my door. Four feet went away. I felt in my pocket, finding four cigarettes. I am sorry I did not give these also to the monkeyto the angel. Lifted my eyes, and saw my own harp. THROUGH the bars I looked into that little and dirty lane whereby I had entered; in which a sentinel, gun on shoulder, and with a huge revolver strapped at his hip, monotonously moved.

On my right was an old wall overwhelmed with moss. A few growths stemmed from its crevices. Their leaves are of a refreshing colour. I felt singularly happy, and carefully throwing myself on the bare planks sang one after another all the French songs which I had picked up in my stay at the ambulance; sang La Madelon, sang AVec avEC DU, and Les Galiots sont Lourds dans l'Sac concluding with an inspired rendering of La Marseillaise, at which the guard who had several times stopped his round in what I choose to interpret as astonishment grounded arms and swore appreciatively.

Various officials of the jail passed by me and my lusty songs; I cared no whit. Two or three conferred, pointing in my direction, and I sang a little louder for the benefit of their perplexity. Finally out of voice I stopped. As I lay on my back luxuriously I saw through the bars of my twice padlocked door a boy and a girl about ten years old. I saw them climb on the wall and play together, obliviously and exquisitely, in the darkening air.

I watched them for many minutes; till the last moment of light failed; till they and the wall itself dissolved in a common mystery, leaving only the bored silhouette of the soldier moving imperceptibly and wearily against a still more gloomy piece of autumn sky. At last I knew that I was very thirsty; and leaping up began to clamour at my bars.

One of these gentry watched the water and me, while the other wrestled with the padlock. The door being minutely opened, one guard and the water painfully entered.

The other guard remained at the door, gun in readiness. The water was set down, and the enterer assumed a perpendicular position which I thought merited recognition; accordingly I said 'Merci' politely, without getting up from the planks. Immediately he began to deliver a sharp lecture on the probability of my using the tin cup to saw my way out; and commended haste in no doubtful terms. I smiled, asked pardon for my inherent stupidity which speech seemed to anger him and guzzled the so called water without looking at it, having learned something from Noyon.

With a long and dangerous look at their prisoner, the gentlemen of the guard withdrew , using inconceivable caution in the re-locking of the door.