LAST DITCH OF DEMOCRACY - Majority Rights

Now Mr. Cummings writes PROSE, whereof every word tells its story.
And I myself made an error first time I tried to read him. Tried to read
him too fast, got impatient. No use approachin’ him that way. Got to read
slow. More on one page than on two pages of most other authors, so you
get as much in three minutes readin’ him slow, as you do to readin’ Josh
Passos faster, or readin’ Wilder at ten pages a minute. You CAN skip in
some authors, you cannot in Cummings skip one word on page ten
without maybe losin’ the bearin’ of what he is saying elsewhere. Go at
him slowly.
Second point is his parenthesis, are his parentheses. Well old Henry
James worried his European readers to death by his parentheses. They
are an American habit, they mean something to us and for us as
Americans. They mean something more than the one track mind. But
they do NOT imply deviation or lack of direction. They are a desperate
attempt, no not an attempt, a DEVICE, to avoid leaving out something
NEEDED, some part of the statement needed to set down, to register the
direction, and meaning.
Well, Cummings said a whole mouthful; he said a bookful. Was out
above the glooms of Ulysses, and the factor of Lewis top hole in
London. There is in Cummings what the Chinese say with an ideogram.
Ideogram that I have translated as candid. I don’t much hold with Mr.
Legge’s translation of that sign, though it means what he says in the
context wherefrom he was translatin’ it. He translated it: devoid of
principles, passage in Confucius about lawyer making speeches in court
with NO reference to rights, fairness of justice, just spoutin’ their
rhetoric in the hope of a decision. The ideogram is worth more than is to
be said in that context. It is made up of two signs, + [and] negative; sign
for heart, sign for AZURE: meanin’ a man who has no open sky in his
heart. [In the positive] meanin’ azure hearted, or candid. Here comes in
Thoreau, here comes in Silver Lake in Mr. Cummings’ composition.
BUT herewith stays also Mr. Cummings’ text, like that German
statement about direct sight or perception. [FCC transcript: That sign