Profil,es and Interaiews

GERTRUDE STEIN
I.
Some years ago I she had given me.

left Gertrude

Stein's

Villino in Fiesole with a manuscript

"Each one is one. Each one is being the one each one is being. Each one is one is being one. Each one is being the one that one is being. Each one is being one each one is one.
Each one is one. Each one is very well accustomed to be one. Each one is very well accustomed to be that one. Each one is one." (Galeries Lafayette). Com' oVanity.of vanity; vanity of vanities; all is vanity' of Ecclesiastes. pare with

This was when Bergson was in the air, and his beads of Time strung on the con' tinuous flux of Being, seemed to have found a literary conclusion in the austere verity of Gertrude Stein's them*'Being' as the absolute occupation.

For by the intervaried rhythm of this monotone mechanism she uses for in' ducing a continuity of awareness of her subject, I was connected op with the very pulse of duration.
The core of a

oBeing'was revealed to me

with uninterrupted

insistence.

The plastic static of the ultimate presence of an entity. And the innate tempo of a life poured in alert refreshment upon my mentality. Gertrude Stein was making a statement, a reiterate statement . . . basic and bare . . . & statement reiterate ad absurdum, were it not for the interposing finger of creation.

For Gertrude Stein obtains the belle matiire of her unsheathing of the fun' damental with a most dexterous discretion in the placement and replacement of her phrases, of inversion of the same phrase sequences that are so closely matched in level, as the fractional tones in primitive music or the imperceP tible modelling of early Egyptian sculpture.

The Last

Luur Baed,eker

Ihe flux of Being as the ultimate presentation of the individual, she endows with the rhythmic concretion of her art, until it becomes as a polished stone, a bit of the rock of lif*yet not of polished surface, of polished nucleus.
This method of conveyance through duration recurs in her later work. As she it becomes a-plified, she includes an increasing number of the attributes of continuity.
progresses

The most perfect example of this method is ltalia*s where not only are you pressed close to the insistence of their existence, but Gertrude Stein through her process of reiteration gradually, progressively rounds them out, decorates them with their biological insignia. -

Th"y revolve on the pivot of her verbal construction like animated sculpture, their life protracted into their entourage through their sprouting hair . . . fl Ionger finger nail; their sound, their fmeil.
"They have some_thing growing on them, some of them, and certainry many others would not be wanting .u.h things io b" growing out of them that is to say growing on them.
makes them these-having such things, make_s them elegant and charming, them ugly and disgusdng, *akL them clean Iookiffid sleek and rich and dark, makes them dirty-looling and fierce r"rtirr.,

t*:t

"It

H-ow simply she exposes the startling dissimilarity in the aesthetic d6nouement of our standardized biology.

,u.i"l consistency. by her-poised paragraphs into the omniprevalent plasm of life from which she evolves all her subjects and from which she never allows them to become detached' In Gertrude stein Iife is never detached
from Life; it spreads tenuous and vibrational between each of its human exteriorizations and the other.

Thty solidify in her words, in ones, in crowds, complete with racial impulses. Th"y are of one, infinitesimally varied in detail, packed

Profilcs and Interaiants

"They seem to be, and that is natural because what is in one is calried over to the other one by it being in the feeling of the one looking at the one and ften at
the other one.

"They are talking, often talking and they are doing things with pieces of them while th"y are talking and th"y are things sounding like something, they are then sounding in a way that is a natural way for them to be sounding, they are having noise come out of them in a natural way for them to have noise come out of them." may be impossible for our public inured to the unnecessary nuisances of journalism to understand this literature, but it is a 'literature reduced to a basic significance that could be conveyed to a man on Mars.

It

In her second phase . ... the impressionistic, Gertrude Stein entirely reverses this method of conveyance through duration. She ignores duration and telescopes time and space and the subjective and objective in a way that obviates interval and interposition. She stages strange triangles between the nominative and his verb and irruptive co-respondents.

It has become the custom to say of her that she has done in words what Picasso has done with form. There is certainly i, her work an interpenetration of dimensions analogous to Cubism.
One of her finest oimpressions' is Sweet

Tail. "Gypsiesr" it begins.

"Curved planes.

"Hold in the coat. Hold back ladders and a creation and nearly sudden extra coppery ages with colors and a clean gyp hoarse. Hold in that curl with the good man. Hold in cheese. . . ." A fracturing impact of the mind with the occupation, the complexion, the cry of the gypsies.

Cubistically she first sees the planes of the scene. Then she bre"ks them up into their detail. Gypsies of various ages bring ladders for the construction of . . . something. "A clean gyp hoarse." Hear it, see it, attribute it, that voice?

Tlrc Last Lunar Baed,eker

The occurrences of "HoId in" impress me as a registration of her mind dic. tating the control of the plan", of the pictul:, is so rapidly and unerringly it putting together; no, crtoosing togeth"r. ..A rittle p"n *irt*;;rrr;'ilT;rrtraction of "The clean gyp hoarser" accelerated, in he, chase of sounds among solids by telescopios th" 'ilittle pan" with th" of the gypsy holding it. "ri*ation Percontra in "Wheel is not on a donkey and never neverr, her reason disen. ta8es the donkey and cart from her primary telescopic visualization.

It is the variety of her mental processes that gives such fresh significance to her words' as if she had got them out of bed early in the morning and washed them in the sun.
They make a new appeal to us after the friction of an uncompromised intellect has scrubbed the meshed messes of traditional associations ofi them. As in the little phrase ..A wheel is not on a donk"yr,, . . . I few words she has Iifted out of the ridiculous, to replace them in the sanctuary of pure expression. excursion, a really handsome Iog' a regulation t9 exchange oars." An association of nomadic recreation and rest through the idea .wood, oak, log,
oars.

"A green' a green coloured oak, a handsome

curve'course that

Again how admirably the essences of romance are collected in the following for beauty of expression courd hardry be
exeeiled.

in the eyes which make strange the less sighed hole which is nodded and leaves the bentiender . . . it makes medium and egg-Iight and not nearly so much.,,
To obtain movement she has shaped her words to the pattern of a mobile emoand egg-light and not the form, the semi-honesty of the oval eye.

"The least license is

tion' she has actually bent the tender and with -"diu* really so much, reconstructed the signal luminous,

Pro filc s

an d,

I nteraiews

But in 'osimple cake, simple cake, relike a gentle coat, . . . seal

it blessing

and that means gracious, not gracious suddenly with spoons and flavour but all the same active. Neglect a pink white neglect it for blooming on a thin piece

of

steady slim poplars." Round the cake, the sociable center, the tempo of the gypsy feast changes . . . "seal it blessingr" do gypsies say grace or is blessing again the bowing pattern of feeding merging with spoons and flavour?

The'ogentle coating"

icing? . .. of thecakeconfuseswiththegreaterwhiteness of the sky wedged between poplars that are depicted with the declivity of line of Van Gogh. 'oNeglect it . . . ." Again a direction for the mind to keep the plates of the picture relatively adjusted.

...

"And really all the chance is in deridi.,S cocoanuts real cocoanuts with strawberry tunes and little ice cakes with feeding feathers and peculiar relations of nothing which is more blessed than replies."
feathers" the omission of the woman berween her feeding and her feathers results in an unaccustomed juxtaposition of words by associating a subject with a verb which does not in fact belong to it, but which visually, is
instantaneously connected.

In

o'feeding

This process of disintegration and reintegration, this intercepted cinema of suggestion urges the reactions of the reader until the theme assumes an unparallelled clarity of aspect. Compare it with George Borrow's gypsy classic and consider the gain in time and spontaneity that such abridged associations as derision and cocoanuts, strawberry tints dissolving into tune and above all the snatched beauty of the bizarrerie feeding afiords us. And these eyes, these feathers are continuously held in place by the progressive introduction of further relationships, "And nearly all heights hats which are so whiled . . ." And no one comes to realize how Gertrude Stein has builded up her gypsies, accent upon accent, colour on colour, bit by bit.
Perhaps for this reason it is not easy for the average reader to "get" C,ertmde Stein, because for the casual audience entity seems to be eclipsedbyexcresence.

The Last Lunar Baed,eker

ness.

Truly with this method of Gertrude Stein's a goodly amount of incoherent de_ bris gets littered around the radium that she crushes out of phrased conscious'olike
message cowpowder and sashes sashes,

and pedal cause

kills surgeon in six safest six, pedal

like pedal causes and so sashes,

sashes.,,

that's just like Gertrude Stein! Even as I type this suspect excerpt it clarifies as the subconscious code message of an accident. The sending for the surgeon. The first aid with gfpsy sashes.

Io*

The cow that''' like gunpowder. . . may be a cause for being killed . . . but if in in six minutes the surgeon arrives . . . tt. probability of safety. The simultaneity of velocity-binding, sashes-pedalling ;f bicycle.

-"rr"ng"r,s

2.

fhere is no particular advantage in groping for subject matter in a literature that is sufficiently satisfying as verbul d"riin, bo, thl point irrr", for those who are confident of their ability to write GJrtrude Stein with"t their minds shut, is that her design could not attain the organic consistency that it does, were there no intention back of it.
Kenneth Burke deducts from her efiectiveness the satisfying climax of subject. For it is rather the debris, always significant with that rhythm he analyses that has attracted his attention, than the sudden potential, and, to a mind attuned protracted illuminations of her subject which form ,h" ,;t essence of Gertrude Stein's art. Nevertheless it is disconcerting to follow with great elation certain passages I have quoted when unexpectedly time and space crash into a chaos of dislocate ideas, while conversation wouid seem to i.oceed from the radiophonic exchange of the universe. Yet you come up fo, alwith the impression that you have experienced something more extensively than you ever have before . . . but what? The everything, the everywher", thl simurianeity

of function.

Profilcs and, Interaiews

But these concussions become less frequent as again and again one reads her, and each time her subject shows still more coherence. One must in fact go into training to get Gertrude Stein.
Often one is liable to overlook her subject because her art gives such tremen' dous proportions to the negligible that one can not see it all at once. As for inooHanding lizard to anyone is a green thing receiving a curtain. a stance in The shape is not present and the sensible way to have agony is not precautious. Then the skirting is extreme and there is a lilac smell and no ginger. Halt and suggest a leaf which has no circle and no singular center, this has that show and does judge that there is a need of moving toward the equal height of a hot sinking surface."

To interpret her description of the lizard you have to place yourself in the position of both Gertrude Stein and the lizard at once, so intimate is the liai' son of her observation with the sheer existence of her objective, that she in' vites you into the concentric vortex of consciousness involved in the most tri' fling transactions of incident. Her action is inverted in the single sentence "Handling a lizard . . etc." Where the act of the subject transforms into the possibility of the obiect.

is not present . . . ." She has taken on the consciousness or rath' er the unconsciousness of the lizard in the inexplicable predicament of its
'oThe change

transportation.

And in "The sensible way to have agony is not precautiousr" it's struggle to retrieve its habitude.
How much beauty she can make out of so little. After the "green thing receiving the curtainr" this comparison of a lizard to a leaf.

'"Ihis has that show and does judge f' again the inversion. She is turning the lizard outside in, its specular aspect fuses with its motor impulses and now she represents the palm of the hand to you as a land surveyor might a proe
pect.

The Last Lunar Baed,eker

To the advocates of Stein prohibition I must confess that the line "then the skirting is extreme and there is a lilac smell and no ginger" is not clear to me; the immediate impression I receive is that the puffing of the frightened reptile's belly is being likened to a billo*irg skirt that the lilac shadow on the flesh of the hand shunts into the smell of the lizard . . . . But why the ginger? Something suggested ginger to the author and escaped her, so she denies the ginger. 1he greatest incertitude experienced while reading Gertrude Stein is the indecision as to whether you are psychoanalysing her, or she, you. There is a good deal of ginger floating around in this book of. Geography and. Plnys, as are also pins stuck about. The ginger so far escapes me, the pins I accept as an acute materialization of the concentric.
Compare this lizard episode with an example of a dream animated by the projection of the intellect into the intimacy of the inanimate.

"The season gliding and the torn hangings receiving mending, all this shows an example, it shows the force of sacrifice and likeness and disaster and a reason." Tend,er Buttons.
Gertrude Stein possesses a power of evocation that gives the same lasting substance to her work that is found in the Book ol lob. Take the colossal verse

"He spreadeth the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth
upon nothing." Iob

Which has the same mechanism as the eye-egg light episode and the lizard. curtain episode, and the analogy to Gertrude Stein is obvious in such passages as the following: ooAmlaseaorawhale
Darkness itself Who can stay the bottles of heaven The chambers of heaven." lob

Profilcs and, Interaiew s

Like all modern art, this art of Gertrude Stein makes a demand for a creative a com' audience, by providing a stimulus, which although it proceeds from organiration, leaves us unlimited latitude for personal response. plete "ertheiic For each individual with his particular experience she must induce varying for in' interpretations, for the togician she must afford generous opportunity her writings' ferences entirely remote fror11 those of the artist approaching Alice There is a schoi"rly manipulation of the inversion of ideas, parallel to of logic with its In the Looking Glass; one is nonplussed by the refutation Plays myriad insinuations that surpass 1ogic, which Gertrude stein in her achieves through sYncoPation.
these things out in passing, to draw attention to the class of material she brirrg, to the maiufactrr" of her new literature- If you can come to think of a

I point

philosophy, apart from the intrication of your reason' leaving on your mem' ory u., uUrtrr"t impress of its particularity as a perfume or a voice might do, you can begin to sort out the vital elements in Gertrude Stein's achievement.

in its She has tackled an aesthetic analysis of the habits of consciousness prior to the traditionalization of its evolution'

lair,

perhaps the ideal enigma that the modernwould desire to solve is, if we didn't know anything about it? ' ' to track inwe know about "rythirrg, "' tellection back to the embrYo.

o'whatwould

For the spiritual record of the race is this nostalga for the crystallization of declared the irreducible surplus of the abstract. The bankruptcy of mysticism burden of its debt itself in an inability to locate this divine irritation, and the to the evolution of consciousness has devolved upon the abstract art.

of the The pragmatic value of modernism lies in its tremendous recognition is a prophet crying .o*f"r,r"tion due to the spirit of democracy. Modernism

in the wilderness of stabilized nature that humanity is wasting its aesthetic time. For there is a considerable extension of time between the visits to the picture gallery, the museum, the library. It asks'owhat is happening to your aes' thetic consciousness during the long long intervals?"

The Last Lwwr Baed,eker

life is pouring its aesthetic aspect into your eyes, your ears-and you ignore it because you are looking for your canons of beauty in some sort of frame or glass case or tradition. Modernism says: Why not each one of us, scholar or bricklayer' pleasurably realize all tfrat is impressing itself upon our subconscious, the thousand odds and ends which -"k" up your sensory every day life?
The flux of

Modenrism has democratized the subject matter and, la betle rnatiire of art; through cubism the newspaper has assumed an aesthetic quality, through Cezilnns a plate has become more than something to put an apple ,porr-Br"rcusi has given an evangelistic import to eggs, and Gertrude Si.i" has given us the Word, in and for itself.

Would not life be lovelier you were constantly overjoyed by the sublimely _if pure concavity of your wash bowls? The tubular dynamics of your
cigarette?

fn reading Gertrude Stein one is assaulted by

her associations and your own.

"

dual army of associated ideas,

sociated memories.

"This is the sun in. This is the lamb of lantern of chalk." Because of the jerk of beauty it contains shoots the imagination for a fraction of a second through
as-

!f sun worship. Lamb worship. Lamb of, light of, the world. (Identical in christian symbolism.) shepherd carries lanie.n. The lantefrl : lamb,s eyes. Chalk white of lamb. Lantern sunshine in chalk pit : absolution of whiteness - pascal lamb : chalk easter toy for peasants.
All this is personal, but something of the kind may happen to anyone when Gertrude Stein leaves Grammatical lacunae among her depictions and the mind trips up and falls through into the subconscious sou.ce of
associated

ideas.

The uncustomary impetus of her style accelerates and extends the thought wave until it can vibrate a cosmos from a ray of light on a baa lamb.

Pro filcs and, Intnroiew s

This word picture which at first glance would seem to be a lamb being led past a chalk piiby lantern at sun in (down) is revised when on reading further I must conclude that it is still day light and I discover the lamb that carries it' self is itself the lantern of chalk.
And here let me profier my apologies to Gertrude Stein who may have inteuded the description fo, . . . a daisy. The sun as the center, chalk as petal white, and the lamb an indication of the season of the year' Let us leave the ultimate elucidation of Gertrude Stein to infinity.

Apart from all analysis, the nahrral, the dEbonaire way to appreciate Gertrude Stein, is as one would saunter along a country wayside on a fine day and pluck, for its beauty, an occasional flower. So one sees suddenly:

"He does not look dead at all. The wind might have blown him."