Kynde/Kind

Abstract

The force of e e cummings’s title lies in the way it summons up the history of kind from its earliest to its surviving uses. The modern word “mankind” is a fossilized trace from the Old English noun 3ecynde, “nature,” a noun closely linked literally or metaphorically to “kindred,” just as fre was linked to birth into a family. In Middle English the word is usually spelled kynde, and its associations as a noun are with nature in the sense of birth, progeny, or racial stock (3ecyndlimu or “kind-limbs” for the genitals in “Phoenix,” kynde for offspring in Piers Plowman, and semen in Mirk’s Festial). This close association of natural processes with birth and birthright impart a sort of anthropomorphic coloration to Middle English natural history, which phrased as “inborn” or “related” what would later be regarded as “systemic.” “Pity this Busy Monster” fuses the current sense of kind, “beneficent,” with the Middle English suggestion of human membership in a common lineage, playing up the anomalies embedded in the history of the word.

He never offer’d me the least kindness that way, after our marriage.

Moll, in Moll Flanders

Pity this Busy Monster Manunkind.

e e cummings