On "i sing of Olaf glad and
big"
Richard S. Kennedy (1994)
...Part of [the poem’s] icy irony is brought about by Cummings’ having used an irregularly rhymed tetrameter doggeral for such a terrible story. To heighten the irony he chose a formal diction such as one might find in a Victorian moralistic tale about a naughty boy who mistreats a kitten....
The pose of a medievel balladeer...is maintained right up to the end with the summarizing prayer....
from Richard S. Kennedy, E. E. Cummings Revisited (New York: Twayne, 1994): 76 and 77.
Gary Lane (1976)
From
the outset, the poem's force resides primarily in its play upon heroic tradition. We learn
not "the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus/ and its destruction" ...but the
gentleness of Olaf, "whose warmest heart recoiled at war"; big and blond, our
hero may be the physical image of the Germanic warrior, but his temperament is otherwise.
The form does not undercut heroism--we do not deal here with mock epic--it instead offers
alternative heroic values. In the Iliad, Achilles is a hero of physical strength,
sulking like a child when Briseis is taken from him, but at last achieving immortality by
slaughtering Trojans. Olaf's strength is moral. Scarcely annoyed as his self-righteous and
sadistic torturers attempt to strip him of human dignity, he achieves epic stature by refusing
to kill.
The
shift has important implications. Heroic epic... is based on communal values; a hero's
greatness is a measure of the degree to which he exemplifies the qualities his society
most prizes. With Olaf it is different. He must give up not merely his life but also the
good name that valiance customarily wins, the hero's renown and reputation.... He can do
so lightly, however, defying both the military force of his nation and its massively
conformed opinions, because he answers to an individual rather than a collective truth, to
personal vision rather than social regard.
Cummings'
instrument of truth here is irony.... As the irony gathers, Cummings unmasks the modern
bankruptcy of collective values. In a society so perverted that torture has become
socially correct--it is administered by the "wellbeloved colonel(trig/ westpointer
most succinctly bred) "--sometimes only profanity can express the sacred heart.
Refusing to "kiss your fucking flag,"' Olaf avoids the polite Latin that in our
century has time and again been used to justify atrocity. His taut Anglo-Saxon, direct as
his behavior, is comment enough on his suave persecutors.