E. E. Cummings experimented and redefined the rules of grammar in his poetry, and this endeared his writings to many who seek to be language rebels themselves. To fully appreciate this single comma lacking any spacing, the reader needs to examine the first two lines due to the enjambment at the end of line 1:
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence:
The speaker opens the poem by noting that he has "never travelled" to a certain place. The modifier "gladly beyond / any experience . . ." is squished up beside travelled, using only a comma with no space to separate the words. Visually, this indicates a connection between the ideas, an intimate joining of the emotions. Reading further allows the reader to understand where this journey takes the speaker: into his beloved's eyes.
Putting all this together, looking into his beloved's eyes allows the reader to gladly travel beyond anything he has ever experienced and into a place he has never seen—likely the depths of her soul. And all of these emotions run over each other through the tight space visually between travelled,gladly.
Friday, September 7, 2018
Why are the words "travelled" and "gladly" placed next to each other without a space, separated only by a comma in "somewhere i have never traveled,gladly beyond"?
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