The Development of Abstractionism in the Writings of Gertrude Stein [Reprint 2016 ed.] 9781512802429

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T h e D e v e l o p m e n t of A b s t r a c t i o n i s m in t h e W r i t i n g s of G e r t r u d e Stein

GERTRUDE STEIN ( P a i n t i n g b y P a b l o Picasso. T h e M e t r o p o l i t a n M u s e u m of Art, Bequest of G e r t r u d e Stein, 1946.)

The Development of Abstractionism in the Writings of Gertrude Stein MICHAEL J. HOFFMAN

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

1 9 6 5 by the T r u s t e e s of the U n i v e r s i t y of P e n n s y l v a n i a Published in G r e a t B r i t a i n , India, and Pakistan by the O x f o r d U n i v e r s i t y Press L o n d o n , B o m b a y , and K a r a c h i L i b r a r y of Congress C a t a l o g u e C a r d N u m b e r : 66-10494

7518 P r i n t e d in the U n i t e d States of A m e r i c a

For Cynthia and Matthew —my other children

Acknowledgments M y thanks are due the following for granting me permission to quote from copyrighted or unpublished materials: T h e Estate of Gertrude Stein, for Geography and Plays (Boston: F o u r Seas Press, 1 9 2 2 ) ; A Long Gay Book, in Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein ( P a r i s : Plain Edition, 1 9 3 2 ) ; The Making of Americans ( P a r i s : Contact Editions, 1 9 2 5 ) ; Picasso (London: B . T . Batsford, 1948); Things as They Are ( P a w l e t , V t . : Banyan Press, 1950). Permissions granted by Donald Gallup, Literary A g e n t for the Gertrude Stein Estate. A n d for permission to quote from the following unpublished manuscripts in the Y a l e Collection of American L i t e r a t u r e : "American Language and L i t e r a t u r e ; " Letter to A l f r e d Stieglitz, M a y 6, 1912; early d r a f t of The Making of Americans. Permissions granted by Donald Gallup. T h e Exposition Press, for Gertrude Stein: Form and Intelligibility, by Rosalind S. M i l l e r , copyright 1949 by Exposition Press. Permission granted by Exposition Press. Little, B r o w n and Co., for The Third Rose, by John M a l c o l m Brinnin, copyright, 1959, by John M a l c o l m Brinnin. Permission granted by Little, Brown, and Co. O x f o r d University Press, for James Joyce, by Richard Ellmann, copyright 1959 by Richard Ellmann. Permission granted by O x f o r d University Press. Random House, Inc., for Lectures in America, by Gertrude Stein, copyright 1935 by Random House, Inc.; Portraits and Prayers, by G e r t r u d e Stein, copyright 1934 by M o d e r n Library, Inc.; Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, by Gertrude Stein, copyright 1946 by Random House, Inc.; Three Lives, by Gertrude Stein, copyright 1936 by Gertrude Stein. Permissions granted by Random House, Inc. University of Oklahoma Press, for Art by Subtraction, by B . L . Reid, copyright 1958 by University of Oklahoma Press. Permission granted by University of Oklahoma Press. Y a l e University Press, for Four in America, by Gertrude Stein, copyright 1947 by Alice B. T o k l a s ; Two: Gertrude Stein and Her Brother and Other Writings, by Gertrude Stein, copyright 1951 by Alice B. T o k l a s ; Gertrude Stein: A Biography of Her Work, by Donald Sutherland, copyright 1951 by Y a l e University Press. P e r missions granted by Y a l e University Press. American Quarterly, for permission to reprint in substantially the same form an article of mine, " G e r t r u d e Stein in the Psychology Laboratory," that appeared in the issue of Spring, 1965. Permission granted by the editor.

Preface BECAUSE T H E PUBLICATION OF U N R I P E N E D DOCTORAL Dis-

sertations has become an obscenity in the academic world, many writers have taken to hiding behind such euphemisms as, " T h i s study was first begun . . . " and " I n an early stage I received the supervision of . . . " In deference to Gertrude Stein, who tried so hard to make people call things by their rightful names, I cannot justify disguising the origins of this book. So, for better or worse, I hereby admit that it was originally a thesis submitted to the English Department of the University of Pennsylvania as part of its requirements for the Ph.D. It has of course been rewritten and is, I hope, sufficiently ripe. I have been interested in Gertrude Stein for quite a while. Aside from the fascination of her life, it has always seemed incredible to me that someone so well known could be so little read. I became convinced by my own researches into the Stein " m y t h " that an understanding of her works had been made almost impossible by the partisanship pro and con of those who came to the altar both to worship and to ridicule and by the publicity-conscious manipulations of Miss Stein herself. A study was needed that consciously set out not to take an evaluative stand, but to

8

Preface

concentrate almost totally on what was going on in the writings themselves. Gertrude Stein was too important a figure not to deserve some understanding as an artist apart from the imposing figure she cast over the literary history of the twentieth century. At this point, it seemed obvious to me that a rigorous ordering of materials was in order. Together with Professor Robert E. Spiller I decided to limit my study to the first ten years of Miss Stein's works. The main reasons for this limitation were the large bulk of her writings and the fact that Tender Buttons seemed the logical culmination of a series of steadily more abstract works. T h e book as it now stands is largely a product of the above ideas. The notion of critical detachment is largely a pose, but it is, I think, a useful one. M y aim is not to justify the works of Gertrude Stein, but to discover what they are all about. T o do this, I feel it is necessary to stay away from arguing about whether she was a genuis or a phony. I am not interested in the ranking of authors and I do not propose any of her works as literary "touchstones." But it seems to me that we cannot get very far in understanding this strange literary period, the twentieth century, without coming at least partially to terms with Gertrude Stein's writings. If I have succeeded in making these works a bit more comprehensible, the reader will judge for himself. At this point it is customary to acknowledge the aid of friends, colleagues, and wife. This is a convention I feel no qualms about following because I have received much valuable help and advice. Thanks and acknowledgement must be given to the following: Donald C. Gallup, Gertrude Stein's literary executor and director of the Yale

Preface

9

Collection of A m e r i c a n L i t e r a t u r e , whose cooperation enabled my short stay at Y a l e to be quite profitable; the Y a l e University L i b r a r y f o r permission to quote f r o m an unpublished letter of G e r t r u d e Stein to A l f r e d Stieglitz; Ira Einhorn f o r his ideas and encouragement; P r o f e s s o r M o r s e P e c k h a m f o r discussing G e r t r u d e Stein with me and for impressing on me the usefulness of a construct to attack the writings; P r o f e s s o r s H e r b e r t H o w a r t h and Bruce Olsen f o r careful readings of the manuscript and for valuable suggestions; M r s . N a t s u e Kobayashi, able typist; and P r o f e s s o r N a t h a n Smith w h o suffered with me through most of the writing, w h o challenged some of my ideas, and whose sense of humor constantly reminded me that other things in the w o r l d were as important as Gertrude Stein's abstractionism. T h a n k s especially g o to P r o f e s s o r R o b e r t E . Spiller, who originally inspired me to do the book and helped me to organize the materials; whose advice w a s almost always to the point; and whose enthusiasm has been my m a j o r source of gratification. A n d to Dianna H o f f m a n , w h o watched this book g r o w as I grew, w h o typed t w o of its drafts, endured my fits of temperament and depression, and still managed to get dinner on the table in time. M a y , 1965 Philadelphia, P a .

Contents 1 . Introduction

15

2. Things as They Are

31

3. Three

62

Lives

4. The Making

of Americans

97

5. Portraits and the Abstract Style, 1 9 0 8 - 1 9 1 2

143

6. Tender

175

Buttons

Appendix A . Gertrude Stein in the Psychology Laboratory

199

B . Gertrude Stein and William J a m e s

207

Selected Bibliography

217

Index

225

T h e D e v e l o p m e n t of A b s t r a c t i o n i s m in t h e W r i t i n g s of G e r t r u d e Stein

1 Introduction

THIS BOOK IS N E I T H E R A N A P O L O G Y FOR NOR A D A M N A -

tion of Gertrude Stein. If it seems foolish to begin with such a profession, I can only say that almost every attempt to deal with the work of Gertrude Stein has fallen into one or the other of these traps. I am less concerned with taking sides than with examining a phenomenon. The one area of common agreement about Gertrude Stein's writings is that they are "abstract." It is the phenomenon of her abstractionism that I propose to examine, specifically the progressive development of this abstractionism in her early writings. Gertrude Stein was not born an abstractionist. She reached her so-called "mature style" only through long and conscious effort. Her earliest writings fall into that general mode of prose narrative usually termed realism. Things as They Are, the posthumously published first novel, and Three Lives can still claim a family relation-

16

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

ship with the l a t e r H e n r y J a m e s and the early J o y c e . But The Making of Americans, the early " p o r t r a i t s , " and Tender Buttons explore areas in which no other writer in the E n g l i s h l a n g u a g e had yet set f o o t . In what w a y s do G e r t r u d e Stein's earliest writings show abstractionist tendencies? W h a t stylistic shifts lead her writings down the path of abstractionism to non-representationalism? G e r t r u d e Stein's abstractionism was a part of the cultural milieu of the time. T h e first decade of the twentieth century saw p r o f o u n d revolutions in all the arts and sciences. In 1 9 0 5 Einstein first published his T h e o r y of R e l a tivity. A t the same time B e r g s o n was giving his lectures on C r e a t i v e E v o l u t i o n ; Russell and W h i t e h e a d were w r i t i n g Principia Mathematica; and W i l l i a m J a m e s had f o r the past decade and m o r e been expounding his doctrine of R a d i c a l E m p i r i c i s m and his theories of the stream of consciousness. It w a s also at this time that the F a u v e s b e g a n to exhibit their tradition-shattering paintings, only to be f o l l o w e d a f e w y e a r s later by the cubism of B r a q u e and Picasso. A n d in music Schonberg began to develop his serial technique in his e a r l y quartets and his Five Pieces for Orchestra. It w a s a decade in which all the arts and sciences developed new w a y s of looking at the w o r l d . T h e s e a r e f a c t o r s that w e must keep in mind throughout our consideration of the stylistic development of M i s s Stein's early writings. W e shall be discussing the influence of painting on M i s s Stein's writings in the later chapters, and in an appendix w e shall explore t w o of the m o s t important intellectual sources f o r her peculiar notions of personality, time, flux, and repetition. T h e scope of the study will be limited to the y e a r s , 1 9 0 3 - 1 9 1 3 . T h e r e are t w o g o o d reasons f o r this limita-

Introduction

17

tion. T h e first and obvious reason is a spatial one. Gertrude Stein's collected opera are so voluminous that one could not hope to cover them all adequately in the space of a book of modest length. T h e second and more important reason is that the decade chosen f o r m s somewhat of an organic unit in covering all the m a j o r stylistic changes that led Gertrude Stein to abstractionism. T h e only m a j o r change in the style of Gertrude Stein's creative writings a f t e r this decade was in the development of her idiosyncratic notions of drama, as in the well-known Four Saints in Three Acts. H o w e v e r , there are f e w concepts in her plays that she had not at least explored in her first decade of w r i t i n g ; and this first decade contains not only her most stylistically significant works, but her best-known ones as well (except f o r The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which, as a memoir, is of a totally different kind of subject matter as well as s t y l e ) . It should be made clear that I am concerned with dates of composition rather than publication. Because of the difficulties that Gertrude Stein encountered early in her career trying to find her w a y into print, most of her writing w a s not published until years a f t e r composition. Things as They Are was written in 1903 but not published until 1950, four years a f t e r G e r t r u d e Stein's death. Three Lives was composed in 1905-06 and published in 1909. The Making of Americans was written between 1906 and 1 9 1 1 , but did not see print until 1 9 2 5 . T h e only ones o f G e r t r u d e Stein's early writings published almost immediately a f t e r creation were The Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia, written and published in 1 9 1 2 , and Tender Buttons, finished in 1 9 1 3 and published the f o l l o w i n g y e a r . Some of the pieces, such as Two: Gertrude Stein

18

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

and Her Brother, did not see print until the Y a l e U n i v e r sity P r e s s began to issue G e r t r u d e Stein's unpublished manuscripts in 1 9 5 1 . T h e position that G e r t r u d e Stein occupies in the litera r y hierarchy is perhaps unique a m o n g the so-called " i m p o r t a n t " figures in modern literature, in that she has been the subject of almost no adequate l i t e r a r y criticism. A l though she is o f t e n linked off-handedly with J a m e s J o y c e as one of the t w o g r e a t stylistic i n n o v a t o r s of E n g l i s h in this century, nothing comparable to the " J o y c e i n d u s t r y " 1 has sprung up about her work. I t m a y be, as one critic has said recently, that there is ten times as much J o y c e criticism because J o y c e is ten times the better w r i t e r . 2 H o w e v e r , there is another reason that seems m o r e likely. G e r trude Stein's writings do not fit into the m a i n s t r e a m of twentieth-century criticism. T h e m o d e r n m a n of letters is l a r g e l y a product of the influences of analytic p s y c h o l o g y , both F r e u d i a n and J u n g i a n , and cultural a n t h r o p o l o g y , especially of F r a s e r and his f o l l o w e r s . H e is inclined to l o o k at literature primarily in terms of its symbolism, both analytic and archetypal, and its use of myth and ritual. T h e students of J o y c e have a seemingly inexhaustible well f r o m which to nourish their own p a r t i c u l a r orientation tow a r d literature, especially in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. B u t the student of G e r t r u d e Stein is o f f e r e d slim r e w a r d s in this direction, f o r in her conscious drive tow a r d abstraction M i s s Stein reduced the psychologic and mythic overtones of her writing to such an extent that their occasional appearance seems almost accidental. I f in J o y c e ' s writing subject matter is so enriched that almost 1

Vivian Merrier, "In Joyce's Wake, A Booming Industry," New York Times Book Rev., L X V I (July 30, 1 9 6 1 ) , 5, 20-1. 2 Ben Reid, Art by Subtraction: A Dissenting Opinion of Gertrude Stein (Norman, Okla., 1958), p. 3.

Introduction

19

any allusion m a y have innumerable possible referents, then in G e r t r u d e Stein the subject is ultimately reduced almost to non-existence and seemingly nothing is l e f t but pure sound and syntax. I t is ostensibly a task f o r the philologist, and the student of literature has continually thrown up his hands in despair at writing that he simply does not " u n d e r s t a n d . " W h a t e v e r the reason f o r the critical famine surrounding G e r t r u d e Stein, the truth is that there h a v e been only t w o full-length books of genuine w o r t h on the subject. T h e first is D o n a l d Sutherland's Biography of Her Work,3 a critical accompaniment to the Y a l e series of M i s s Stein's unpublished manuscripts. T h i s is an exasperating, though constantly stimulating, apologia f o r G e r t r u d e Stein and f o r modern art in general. It suffers seriously f r o m its polemical attitude and M r . Sutherland's obvious feeling that he is called upon to defend everything and anything Stein. H i s passionate involvement with his subject does not lead to consistently lucid exposition of the difficulties of the writing, but as a justification of the modern movements in writing and painting the book is one of the important documents of modern criticism. T h e challenge it presents will certainly have to be met by any future critical studies of G e r t r u d e Stein. T h e other book of value is John M a l c o l m Brinnin's biography, The Third Rose: Gertrude Stein and Her World.* A s i d e f r o m being a valuable " l i f e , " it contains hundreds of provocative comments on G e r t r u d e Stein's writing, twentieth-century painting, and modern intellectual and artistic movements in g e n e r a l ; and it does not suffer f r o m the over-enthusiastic cultism that infects M r . 3 4

Gertrude Stein: B o s t o n , 1959.

A Biography

of Her

Work

( N e w Haven,

1951).

20

Abstractionism,

in Gertrude

Stein

Sutherland. It should certainly be a source book of Gertrude Stein scholarship for years to come. After these two books there is very little of value, except for some shorter pieces. Thornton W i l d e r ' s introduction to Four in America5 is critically useful with regard to Gertrude Stein's aesthetic theories. An article by Allegra Stewart 6 is important for its insights into Miss Stein's intellectual relationships with the three great thinkers who influenced her most: Bergson, Whitehead, and W i l l i a m James. A recent article by Richard Bridgman 7 contains valuable insights into "Melanctha." And Frederick J . Hoffman's monograph, Gertrude Stein,8 provides the best short introduction to the subject, although it is too general for more than that. In addition to the above, one of the three unpublished doctoral dissertations 9 that have been completed on Gertrude Stein has some critical merit. H . R. Garvin has attempted to trace the relationship between M i s s Stein's critical writings and her actual creative output. T h e opening chapters on the cultural and intellectual background are valuable; the chapters on the writings themselves much less so. There are four other books on the subject which ought to be mentioned. W . G. Rogers' memoir, When This You 6 "Introduction," Four in America, by G e r t r u d e Stein ( N e w Haven, 1 9 4 7 ) . 6 "Quality of Gertrude Stein's Creativity," Am. Lit., XXVIII ( J a n . 1 9 5 7 ) , 488-506. 7 " M e l a n c t h a , " Am. Lit., X X X I I I ( N o v . 1 9 6 1 ) , 350-9. 8 U . of Minnesota Pamphlets, No. 1 0 (Minneapolis, 1 9 6 1 ) . 9 H . R . Garvin, " G e r t r u d e Stein: A Study of H e r T h e o r y and Practice" (Michigan, 1 9 5 0 ) ; W i l f o r d Leach, " G e r t r u d e Stein and the Modern T h e a t r e " (Illinois, 1956) ; Frederick W . L o w e , " G e r trude's W e b : A Study of Gertrude Stein's L i t e r a r y Relationships" (Columbia, 1 9 5 7 ) .

Introduction

21

See Remember Me,10 has only anecdotal interest concerning his friendship with Miss Stein, and is of no critical value. Gertrude Stein: Form and Intelligibility, by 11 Rosalind S. Miller, is a general introduction that is almost worthless except f o r the inclusion of Miss Stein's Radcliffe themes, which are reprinted at the end. Elizabeth Sprigge's biography 1 2 is interesting only as a life, making almost no effort at criticism. As a biography it is superseded in all respects by Brinnin's. T h e f o u r t h book is Ben Reid's Art by Subtraction: A Dissenting Opinion of Gertrude Stein, which attempts to be the bête noire of Gertrude Stein criticism. M r . Reid has decided once and f o r all to banish Miss Stein f r o m literature, and he spends an entire book attempting to justify his point of view. Because his thinking is symptomatic of so much that has been wrong in so many attempts to deal with Gertrude Stein, it will be worthwhile to quote a passage in full f r o m his book. It seems to me that M i s s Stein is a vulgar genius talking to herself, and if she is talking to herself, she is not an artist. It is because she does talk to herself that she offers insuperable difficulties to both reader and critic. I suggest, therefore, that she be defined out of existence as an artist. T o be an artist, she must talk to us, not to the dullest or the most tradition bound or the most unsympathetic of us, but to those of us w h o are flexible, those willing to be fruitfully led. T h e r e is not world enough or time enough for Gertrude Stein's kind of writing ; too much in literature is both excellent and knowable. 1 3

It is obvious f r o m the above passage that Gertrude Stein does not " t a l k " to M r . Reid. Like an old woman 10

N e w York, 1948. N e w York, 1949. Gertrude Stein: Her Life and Work ( N e w York, 1 9 5 7 ) . 13 Reid, op. cit., pp. 170-1. From Art by Subtraction by B. L . Reid. Copyright 1958 by the University of Oklahoma Press. 11

12

22

Abstractionism in Gertrude Stein

who cannot tolerate foreigners because they talk in a strange tongue, M r . Reid proposes to excommunicate Gertrude Stein to another realm than " a r t . " T h i s is the rhetoric of a frustrated man, who has elevated his inability to cope with the writings before him into a universal condemnation of them as art. T h e r e would be little point in quoting the above passage were it not so typical of reactions to the writing of Gertrude Stein. But the standard reaction, a f t e r an initial amused condescension, is like M r . Reid's. In the next stage the reader resorts to accusations such as " p h o n y " and "charlatan." M r . Reid is obviously familiar with the fable about the emperor's clothing and he eschews this kind of excoriation, although one always has the feeling that he would like to resort to some good old-fashioned name-calling. In addition, although M r . Reid proposes to discuss Gertrude Stein as a creative artist, he spends 75 per cent or more of his time with her critical or " s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d " works. M o s t attempts to criticize the writings of Gertrude Stein share this characteristic. Critics have, f o r the most part, not been able to find a language with which to discuss her fictional prose and poetry, and so they resort to taking issue with her pithy and often exasperating critical statements rather than make an honest confrontation of her more difficult writings. T h e task of the student of Gertrude Stein is always complicated by the fact of her overwhelming personality. T h e " m y t h " of Gertrude Stein has always overshadowed her writings. " I t always did bother me that the American public were more interested in me than in my w o r k , " 1 4 she 14 Gertrude Stein, Everybody's p. 50.

Autobiography

( N e w York,

1937),

Introduction

23

lamented late in her career, but she more than anyone else made herself into a "personality." She was the head of a salon in Paris, hobnobber with the fashionable painters and writers, leader of a literary cult, self-styled pontiff of modern letters, and symbol of the expatriation of the post W o r l d W a r I American artist. She was the object of either unbounded admiration or passionate resentment, almost exclusively through reaction to her as a person rather than to her writings. As a result, her critical reputation has been the victim of partisanship. A s we have seen, most of the writings on Gertrude Stein try to do one of two things: either prove that she is the greatest author of the century (Sutherland, Julian Sawyer, 1 5 R o g e r s ) or show her up as a charlatan (Reid, Richard Aldington, 1 6 H i l a r y Corke 1 7 ). Everyone who writes as much as a line on the subject feels called upon to take sides. A s a result, critics have spent most of their time judging and almost none of their time trying to develop a critical method equipped to handle the problems posed by M i s s Stein's writing. W h a t is going on in Gertrude Stein's w o r k ? This is the question that no one has yet seriously examined and that this writer now proposes to investigate. W h a t are the central qualities indigenous to her writing, and how do they develop chronologically through her early works? It seems to me that once we have established the nature of her achievement we will then be in a position for the first time to make normative judgments as to her value as an artist. 15 16

Gertrude Stein: A Bibliography ( N e w York, 1 9 4 1 ) . " T h e Disciples of Gertrude Stein," P o e t r y , X V I I (Oct. 1920),

35-40.

17 "Reflections on a Great Stone Face: T h e Achievement of G e r trude Stein," Kenyan Rev., X X I I I (Summer 1 9 6 1 ) , 367-389.

Abstractionism

24

in Gertrude

Stein

F o r the methodological purposes o f this examination I accept wholeheartedly the distinctions t h a t N o r t h r o p F r y e makes in Anatomy of Criticism concerning the critical and evaluative modes o f criticism. B y critical method M r . F r y e refers primarily to descriptive examination o f texts. Evaluative method is predominantly concerned with value judgments. Although M r . F r y e is well aware t h a t the two modes cannot in any pure sense be separated, he nonetheless calls for an awareness o f the distinction between the two and for statements on the part o f critics as to what their critical aims are in relation to the above modes. 1 8 In the light of the above description, I then propose to do a critical study o f the first decade o f G e r t r u d e Stein's writing, since the evaluative critics have obviously been unequal to the job. T h i s is not to say t h a t I have no opinions on the subject; to the contrary. B u t I feel that more is to be gained by suppressing value judgments and adopting a cool, analytic attitude. I much p r e f e r adopting an evaluative attitude toward the evaluative critics who have not bothered to examine carefully either their assumptions or the writings of Gertrude Stein. Keeping the above strictures carefully in mind, I shall now make my one totally evaluative statement o f this entire study, doing so only to justify going on with the project at all. I make the assumption f o r the purposes o f this studv that Gertrude Stein is a serious, important, and influential writer whose work has not received the correspondingly serious attention that it deserves. I make no assumptions as to whether she is either a " g o o d " or an " i n t e r e s t i n g " writer. Perhaps an understanding o f 18

F o r a full discussion of the above points see M r . F r y e ' s " P o l e m i cal Introduction," Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, 1 9 5 7 ) .

Introduction

25

the abstract nature of her writing will provide an implicit answer, one way or the other, to such value judgments. T h e analysis of Gertrude Stein's style will be predominantly concerned with f o r m a l and linguistic elements. It will not be an attempt to reduce the more difficult writings, such as Tender Buttons, to a kind of Basic English, but it will rather attempt to show, f o r one, how she violates basic syntax and to what purpose she does so. Another related problem it will attempt to explore, f o r example, will be her use of repetition, both in sentence structure and subject matter, as a mirroring of the psychic state of her characters (in Three Lives), as a reflection of the "continuous present" {The Making of Americans), and as a linguistic abstraction that reflects the abstraction in plot and character development. H o w ever, the approach will not be an exclusively "new critical" one. T o understand Gertrude Stein purely in terms of verbal elements is to have only a partial inkling of her significance to twentieth-century writing. She is, even more than most, the product of her time. T o make this cliché stand up, this book will endeavor to show that almost all the intellectual and artistic movements of the time find some reflection in the writing of Gertrude Stein. Even her personality reflects the militant emancipation of women characteristic of the "feminist" generation. At the psychology laboratories of H a r v a r d and Radcliffe she learned f r o m H u g o Miinsterberg and William James the then-emerging concepts of the human consciousness and unconscious, continuing her explorations of these areas in original work of her own on auto-

26

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

matic writing. 1 8 T h e effects of these influences are to be seen largely in her concept of personality, particularly as manifested in Three Lives and The Making of Americans. T h e scientific attitude which she exhibits in so much o f her writing certainly had a substantial part of its origin at H a r v a r d and in the four years she spent at the J o h n s Hopkins medical school, where she did research on the physiology of the brain. T h e affinities with modern painting that so many critics have pointed out in her writings have a substantial grounding in fact. Gertrude Stein and her brothers L e o and M i k e can claim, at least as much as anyone else, the " d i s c o v e r y " o f Matisse and Picasso in the first five years o f the new century. T h e s e "discoveries" turned into friendships with the artists, and an introduction into the artistic community of contemporary Paris. T h e relationship with Picasso turned into a close and intimate one (though platonic), in which two congenial minds influenced one another. T h e growing influence of modern painting can be seen in the early portraits and especially in Tender Buttons, in which Gertrude Stein attempted her own verbal collage. I t can also be seen in the approach M i s s Stein took to her art. Like the m a j o r painters, Picasso and Matisse, she set up a specific problem in each one o f her performances. On the successful solution o f the problem, she, like the painters, moved on to new 10 See t w o articles that G e r t r u d e Stein published summarizing research that she had done at H a r v a r d under the supervision of W i l l i a m J a m e s : G e r t r u d e Stein and Leon M . Solomons, " N o r m a l M o t o r A u t o m a t i s m , " Psychological Rev., I l l (Sept. 1 8 9 6 ) , 4 9 2 - 5 1 2 , and G e r t r u d e Stein, "Cultivated M o t o r A u t o m a t i s m , " Psychological Rev., V ( M a y 1 8 9 8 ) , 295-306. T h e s e are M i s s Stein's first published w r i t ings.

Introduction

27

areas of exploration and new problems. One sees this even in a contemporary composer such as Stravinsky. Once again in affinity with the painters, she considered herself freed from the previous tradition of her art. She thought of herself as breaking off completely from the previous practitioners of the belles lettres and creating, as it were, a new tradition with each new piece of writing, in much the same way as her good friend Picasso did in painting. And Gertrude Stein shared with her contemporaries Joyce and Proust the concern with time that Wyndham Lewis and others 20 have found so characteristic of the writers of the modern age. Eschewing Joyce's concern with myth and historical cycles and Proust's obsession with memory, Miss Stein is primarily concerned with the concept of the continuous and ongoing present to which she was first exposed at Harvard under William James, later at Bergson's lectures at the Collège de France, and still later as a personal friend of Alfred North Whitehead. The influences expecially of the first two are important to her early writings. This problem and the previous two will be discussed at greater length in the body of the study. I have gone through these sketchy outlines mainly to show that Gertrude Stein's experiments are not an isolated phenomenon and that the grounds of any study of her as an artist must have a broader base than just the writings themselves. One problem still remains before we can examine the specific questions at hand. The term "abstraction" (and 20

Wyndham Lewis, Time and Western Man (New York, 1 9 2 8 ) ; Hans Meyerhoff, Time in Literature (Berkeley and Los Angeles,

1955)-

28

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

its various f o r m s ) that we have been using r a t h e r f r e e l y in this opening chapter must be defined in the terms that we a r e going to be using it in the r e m a i n i n g body of the text. Actually, what I am going to propose is more in the nature of a construct than a dictionary definition. I am less concerned with its lexical " t r u t h " than I a m with its usefulness as an instrument in a t t a c k i n g the problems posed by Gertrude Stein. A m o n g the definitions of the noun " a b s t r a c t i o n " on p a g e eight of W e b s t e r ' s Third International Unabridged Dictionary appears the f o l l o w i n g : " t h e act or process of leaving out of consideration one or m o r e qualities of a complex object so as to attend to o t h e r s . " U n d e r this definition we can subsume, for all practical purposes, the characteristics of abstractionism t h a t a p p e a r in the e a r l y writings of Gertrude Stein. H e r writings, almost f r o m the v e r y beginning, are c h a r a c t e r i z e d in style and subject m a t t e r by a progressive " l e a v i n g - o u t " of elements norm a l l y appearing in the w o r k s of most of her A m e r i c a n contemporaries and immediate E u r o p e a n predecessors. In terms of the "complex object" of realistic verisimilitude, for instance, Gertrude Stein f r o m the beginning left out the small detail and c a r e f u l description of externals that the realists had long used to convey the illusion of reality. During the same decade in which T h e o d o r e Dreiser w a s finally displaying the triumph of n a t u r a l i s m in the American novel ( a victory that E u r o p e a n novelists had won over three decades e a r l i e r ) , his f e l l o w A m e r i can Gertrude Stein w a s writing, in P a r i s , the absolute antithesis of the naturalistic novel in her static character studies in which people a r e described in long circular sentences or in which they m e r e l y t a l k interminably

Introduction

29

about themselves and their problems. T h e first effect of this " a r t by subtraction," 2 1 then, is the loss of the traditional verisimilitude of the realistic novel. Carrying this f u r t h e r , one can see the effect of the loss of verisimilitude on the style of the writing. T h e easy flow of the transparent author is sacrificed to a style that constantly refers back to itself and f o r w a r d to events not to be known until much later, 2 2 or juxtaposes apparently unrelated elements. T h e destruction of realistic verisimilitude and the easy flowing style are progressive elements in Gertrude Stein's abstractionism and can be traced in a chronological fashion throughout her early work. T h e r e is also a steady subtraction of all elements that convey the idea of physical movement. In terms of the traditional plot, nothing "happens" in Gertrude Stein. People talk, they are described, we see them change subtly. But the closer she moved toward her descriptions of the "essences" of people and things, as in the portraits and Tender Buttons, the less she felt she had to make people and things " d o " ; they merely had to "be." Another element of Gertrude Stein's abstractionism is the abandonment of some of the conventional patterns of verbal communication. W o r d s are o f t e n wrenched f r o m 21 Kenneth Burke w a s the first to coin this expression (later perverted by M r . Reid) in connection with the writings of Gertrude Stein in his insightful review of Geography and Plays, "Engineering with W o r d s , " Dial, L X X I V (April 1 9 2 3 ) , 4 1 0 . M r . Burke's usage has a mildly pejorative connotation. I am retaining the phrase as a descriptive term without its previous pejorative baggage. 22 This "self-reflexive" style characteristic of so much twentiethcentury poetry and fiction has received its most perceptive treatment from Joseph Frank in a long essay on "Spatial F o r m in Modern Literature," Sewanee Review, L I I I (Summer and Autumn 1 9 4 5 ) , 221-40, 4 3 3 - 5 6 , 6 4 3 - 5 3 .

30

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

ordinary lexical meanings. T h e statements contained in consecutive sentences may have no ostensible relation to one another, to anything said in the previous paragraph, or to the supposed subject o f the writing. She is also perfectly willing to make statements to which only she has the key. I n writing portraits o f her friends she includes personal facts, idiosyncracies, or statements (without quotation m a r k s ) that the subject o f the portrait has made which no outside reader will ever be able to understand m o r e than partially. O t h e r elements of abstractionism include Gertrude Stein's idiosyncratic punctuation, that finally consists o f the almost t o t a l abandonment o f the comma and, very often, the dropping o f the capital letter b e f o r e proper nouns, among o t h e r things. I t is to these elements and others similar to them that I r e f e r when I use the term abstractionism in reference to Gertrude Stein's " a r t by subtraction." N o t all the above characteristics will be in play at once in any given piece by G e r t r u d e Stein. T h e varieties o f abstractionism are many in her writing, and they are constantly changing f r o m work to work. I t is to the specifically abstract qualities o f the individual works and the progressive march t o w a r d g r e a t e r abstraction throughout all the early works t h a t we will be devoting our attention throughout the following pages.

2 Th ings as They Are

GERTRUDE STEIN'S FIRST STOP ON T H E T R A I L OF A B S T R A C -

tionism was not, as is commonly believed, the stories in Three Lives, but a novelette that she entitled Quod Erat Demonstrandum (Q.E.D.). This short and little-known work was written in 1903, in New Y o r k and Paris, but was not published until 1950, four years after Gertrude Stein's death, when it was given the title Things as They Are,1 after a passage in the text. It is in this early attempt that we must first search for the beginnings of Miss Stein's abstractionism. Things as They Are is an unusual work, both f o r Miss Stein and for the period in which it was written, and it deserves attention for a number of reasons. First of all, it treats a taboo subject, lesbianism, with a disarming frankness that was certainly unusual for the time. There is never a hint of bad taste or the clinic, however, since 1

Pawlet, Vt., 1950.

32

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

lesbianism per se is not the main point of the book, but is rather only a means to a close and ruthless analysis of the shiftings of power within an emotional triangle. Also, the book is the most personal one that Miss Stein ever wrote. It was begun in the winter of 1 9 0 3 while she was living with three f r i e n d s — M a b e l Weeks, Estelle Rumbold, and H a r r i e t Clark—in Manhattan, and its three young women are " o f precisely the same educational background and social status as the friends with whom she lived." 2 T h e r e can be little doubt that Gertrude Stein modeled Adele, the central consciousness, a f t e r herself, and the emotional exposure that she permits herself was never again to be repeated in more than forty years of writing. T h i s in itself makes the work unique among the canon of Gertrude Stein, and should prove of vital interest to anyone concerned with a clinical analysis of the personality of its author. Miss Stein forgot the novel f o r almost thirty years, rediscovering it one evening in 1 9 3 2 , at which time she asked, " W a s it hidden with intention?" 3 A f t e r Things as They Are, Miss Stein retreated into the mask of personal reticence that she was not to violate, even in her autobiographies, f o r the rest of her life. Stylistically, as well, the book is unusual to those familiar with the more characteristic work of the author. First of all, the narrative is presented in a straightforward manner that poses no syntactic difficulties. T h e story proceeds in chronological order with no unusual temporal juxtapositions. Even Miss Stein's traditionally 2 John Malcolm Brinnin, The Third Rose: Gertrude World (Boston, 1959), p. 41. 3 Quoted in Brinnin, p. 45.

Stein and Her

Things

as They Are

33

idiosyncratic punctuation is almost non-existent. In contrast to her later " a r t by subtraction," there appear passages of fully sensual, almost Pateresque description. T h e book is a good antidote to the comments of those who say that Gertrude Stein could not write standard English, and should serve the same function in this regard as does Joyce's Dubliners, Picasso's "Blue P e r i o d , " and Schönberg's Verklärte Nacht. But like these other works to which it bears this particular similarity, Things as They Are contains the seeds of the later abstractionism that was to become the hallmark of its creator. T h e term abstractionism implies a contrast. F o r one book to be called abstract, there must be another that is less so to which it may be compared. T h e term "concrete," which is the usual antithesis to abstract, would obviously be clumsy in this context. In the previous chapter I had chosen as the antithetical quality to abstract, in this particular context, the term "realistic verisimilitude." T h e pursuit of this quality had been the primary concern of the realists and naturalists who just preceded and were contemporary with Gertrude Stein. T o recapture "things as they a r e " was their aim, an aim which Gertrude Stein also professed to accept, but which she pursued with vastly differing methods and results. ( V i e w e d in this light, the choice of Things as They Are as a title by her posthumous editors is ironic indeed.) Anyone doubting the inherent abstractionism of Things as They Are need only compare it to a novel of the antithetic naturalist tradition, such as Sister Carrie, to realize the vast difference in aims and methods. D r e i s e r first published Sister Carrie in 1900, but since he h a d so much difficulty in having the novel released f o r

34

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

sale f o r the next d e c a d e , it is v i r t u a l l y c e r t a i n t h a t G e r t r u d e Stein h a d not r e a d it w h e n she w r o t e h e r first n o v e l . T h u s , w e can s a y t h a t she w a s n e i t h e r influenced by D r e i s e r , nor did she w r i t e in reaction to w h a t he w a s d o i n g . T h e y w e r e t w o a u t h o r s w r i t i n g out of the s a m e time, t h o u g h not n e c e s s a r i l y out of e x a c t l y the s a m e cult u r a l a m b i e n c e . A l t h o u g h thev a r e both d e t e r m i n i s t s to m o r e or less a d e g r e e , t h e y s h a r e v i r t u a l l y n o t h i n g in r e g a r d to t h e i r w a y s of p r e s e n t i n g t h e i r n a r r a t i v e . D r e i s e r ' s c a r e f u l l y d e t a i l e d d o c u m e n t a t i o n of s e t t i n g , c h a r a c t e r i z a t i o n , c o n v e r s a t i o n , a n d action find no reflection a t all in Things as They Are, in which d e t a i l is f o r e g o n e in f a v o r of b r o a d l y g e n e r a l i z e d a n d s h o r t h a n d d e s c r i p t i o n s of the c h a r a c t e r s and t h e i r s i t u a t i o n . If D r e i s e r ' s t v p e of n a t u r a l i s m is d o m i n a n t in this p e r i o d of E n g l i s h a n d A m e r i c a n l e t t e r s , then M i s s S t e i n ' s novel d i v e r g e s v e r y definitely f r o m the d o m i n a n t t r a d i t i o n , a d o m i n a n c e t h a t w a s to be c h a l l e n g e d i n c r e a s i n g l y by w r i t e r s such a s J a m e s Joyce, Dorothy Richardson, Virginia W o o l f , and o t h e r p r o g e n i t o r s of the s t r e a m of consciousness a n d the novel of p e r s o n a l sensibility. T h e m a i n p r e c u r s o r of the novel of sensibility in English a n d A m e r i c a n l e t t e r s w a s , of course, H e n r y J a m e s , w h o h a d c a r r i e d the novel of t r a d i t i o n a l f o r m to t h e f a r t h e s t l e v e l s of a b s t r a c t i o n i s m it could b e a r w i t h o u t using s t r e a m of consciousness or f r a g m e n t i n g the f o r m a s his f o l l o w e r s w e r e to do. T o J a m e s , w h a t h a p p e n e d to h i s c h a r a c t e r s w a s less i m p o r t a n t t h a n how t h e y r e a c t e d to w h a t h a p p e n e d , to t h e m s e l v e s , a n d to one a n o t h e r . T h e sensibility of the i n d i v i d u a l in contact w i t h o t h e r c h a r a c t e r s a n d the s h i f t i n g n a t u r e of social and i n t e r - p e r s o n a l r e l a t i o n s a m o n g i n d i v i d u a l s is the subject of the l a t e r

Things

as They Are

35

J a m e s novel. T h e rendering of action, movement, and small detail is secondary or absent altogether. Viewed in this light, Things as They Are is a Jamesian novel, moving against the tradition of Sister Carrie but within the tradition of The Wings of the Dove. It is concerned not so much with what the characters do, as with how they interact. It is concerned not with realistically portrayed external settings, but with portraying the workings of the minds and sensibilities of its characters. Gertrude Stein denied that she had read H e n r y J a m e s in her early years, 4 but she had obviously forgotten the evidence contained in her " l o s t " first novel. Mentioning Kate Croy by name, A d e l e makes a moral comparison between herself and the third member of the triangle of The Wings of the Dove.6 Gertrude Stein obviously knew H e n r y J a m e s ' w o r k well at the time she was writing Things as They Are. T h e many similarities between The Wings of the Dove and Things as They Are may perhaps be accidental, but that Gertrude Stein is following in the tradton of H e n r y J a m e s there can be no doubt. Things as They Are is basically a conventional novel, setting forth a carefully balanced, though not elaborate, plot with a style that on the surface seems to belong to the writing of its time. T o say that it contains the seeds 4 Gertrude Stein has Alice B. Toklas say in The Alice B. Toklas ( N e w Y o r k , 1 9 3 3 ) , p. 78:

Autobiography

of

. . . Gertrude Stein contends that Henry James was the first person in literature to find the way to the literary methods of the twentieth century. But oddly enough in all of her formative period she did not read him and was not interested in him. B Things as They Are, p. 75. Page numbers subsequently appearing in the text will refer to this edition. If no page number follows quotation, the page is the same as the last number listed in the text. This custom will be followed throughout the book.

36

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

of the later abstractionism of Gertrude Stein is not to say that it is basically an abstract novel. It is important to point out its abstract elements only to show the continuity between this earliest w o r k of Gertrude Stein and those that follow it. H a d Things as They Are not been succeeded by Three Lives and The Making of Americans, an analysis of its supposed abstractionism would be tenuous at best. Things as They Are is the story of three young American w o m e n — A d e l e (whose last name we do not know, but whose given name is the sub-title for Book O n e ) , H e l e n T h o m a s , and Sophie N e a t h e — w h o are sailing to Europe at the opening of the book. T h e y a r e well-to-do, highly educated, and Emancipated. Our introduction to A d e l e on the first p a g e of the n a r r a t i v e gives us a picture of world-weariness and mild snobbishness. " T h e last month of A d e l e ' s l i f e , " the book begins, " h a d been such a succession of w e a r i n g experiences that she rather regretted that she w a s not to have the steamer all to hers e l f . " ( 3 ) A n d a f e w lines l a t e r A d e l e thinks to herself, " H e i g h o it's an a w f u l g r i n d ; new countries, new people and new experiences all to see, to know and to unders t a n d . " A n effete and supercilious boredom sets the scene f o r the ensuing triangle. B e f o r e going directly into the n a r r a t i v e proper the third person n a r r a t o r gives a short individual description of the three women, stating that each of them, though "distinctively A m e r i c a n . . . bore definitely the stamp of one of the older civilisations." H e l e n T h o m a s is " t h e A m e r i c a n version of the English handsome g i r l " a n d Sophie N e a t h e possesses the "long a n g u l a r b o d y " which " b e t r a y e d her N e w E n g l a n d o r i g i n . " T h e s e capsule

Things

as They

Are

37

analyses prefigure Gertrude Stein's later overriding concern with types (both racial and personality) that appears most strongly in The Making of Americans. Miss Stein states a description of each of the characters. T h e arch-realist would have displayed these characteristics through the actions and speech of his people. Miss Stein is also quite willing to break the narrative off for commentary or description of her own. On the very first page of the book, she breaks in with an unsolicited comment: " A little knowledge is not a dangerous thing, on the cont r a r y it gives the most cheerful sense of completeness and content." T h i s breaking of the smooth narrative line is an instance of abstractionism that leads ultimately (in The Making of Americans) to the almost complete taking over of the narrative by the narrator (i.e.. Miss S t e i n ) . Gertrude Stein does not care to pretend that no one wrote her books, and she assumes different narrative guises in her various works. In Things as They Are the narrator is on fairly familiar terms with his audience, standing with no attempt to be transparent between the reader and the events and characters he describes. Although the tone is not uniformly consistent, the narrator always gives the impression of having certain information that he is more than willing to impart, along with judgments and general statements that show his superiority to the characters he is describing. T h e r e is no attempt here to involve the reader in the creative process, as in The Making of Americans, or to disappear into the "narrative t o n e " o f the story, as in " M e l a n c t h a . " T h e narrator assumes a place apart from the very fabric of the story, but not far enough apart as t o appear totally uninvolved.

38

Abstractionism,

in Gertrude

Stein

After the descriptive passages we first see the characters in a deck-side conversation. Adele, the talkative one, is defending "middle-class ideals" against the protests of the other two. Miss Stein has set the scene with a shorthand minimum of physical description, leaving out such things as the presence of other people on the deck, noises, the motion of the ship, and other physical details that more realistically oriented authors would have included. Sophie tires of the conversation and gets up to leave. Helen makes an overly polite offer to accompany her back to her steamer chair, whereupon Adele gives the first hint of the Lesbian subject as she says impatiently, " I always did thank God I wasn't born a woman." ( 7 ) It is obvious at this point that Sophie and Helen have already established a close relationship, but that there is a growing attraction between Adele and Helen. With Sophie gone, Helen and Adele are left alone on the deck, and we feel for the first time the bond that is heightening between them. After a few moments of talk Helen accuses Adele of being cold, of lacking passion, to which Adele proposes to become Helen's pupil in such matters. T h e triangle has been set up with almost geometrical precision, with Helen as the pivotal figure in the power struggle between the "slow-moving" Adele and the cool and efficient Sophie. T h e attachment between the two grows, with Sophie as a kind of spectator, but Adele's moral reservations prevent her deep emotional involvement. T h e day before they are to leave the ship Adele suddenly realizes the depth of her feelings for Helen, and the relationship thickens. Adele's moral resistance has broken down, and

Things

as They Are

39

Helen reciprocates the affection. In the privacy of the darkened deck she kisses her. The rest of the book is a working out of the three-way relationship, on which almost all of the narrative focuses. The only reality in the world of Things as They Are is that which is contained within the relationships among the three women. In terms of life external to them, the three women seem to live in vaccno. There is no description of physical detail to speak of, either of external reality or of the girls themselves. The three are not only almost completely abstracted from the life around them, but their peculiar interrelationships are abstracted from everything else that is of any consequence in their own personal lives. For the richness of the detailed social portrait is substituted the richness of the pure experience. The technique is that of the closelyknit short story rather than the novel. The close analysis of individual experience and motives now begins with Adele's mental ruminations over her moral reluctance to commit herself to the type of relationship she seems about to enter into, her concern about Helen's returning the affection it is so difficult for Adele to give, and her second thoughts about the strength of Sophie's control over Helen. Gertrude Stein's almost scientific interest in personality leads her into the most minute explorations of the motives, doubts, forebodings, and second thoughts with which a "slowmoving" person such as Adele must torture herself before making any serious emotional commitment. These mental tossings and turnings are more important to the book than any decision Adele might make in regard to Helen, because what is important to Gertrude Stein is

40

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

the consciousness o f Adele, what makes h e r tick, what g o e s through her mind. A d e l e is inflicting the same selft o r t u r e t h a t is s t a n d a r d in any normally h e t e r o s e x u a l lite r a r y love situation. T h e flux of the love relationships a m o n g the t h r e e women is handled in much the same way that H e n r y J a m e s handles the c o m p l e x emotional relationships o f The Wings of the Dove and The Ambassadors, and it prefigures the v a g a r i e s o f the relationship between Jeff C a m p b e l l and M e l a n c t h a in Three Lives. A f t e r the three girls split to go t h r o u g h E u r o p e — H e l e n and Sophie t o g e t h e r — A d e l e ' s t r a v e l s are constantly disturbed by the dialogue she continually conducts with h e r s e l f about her relationship with H e l e n . O c c a s i o n a l passages o f genuinely sensual physical description obtrude as a kind o f counterbalance to A d e l e ' s inwardness. Sitting

in t h e c o u r t

fly in and o u t air

filled

sun

herself

thus 'No

different.

the A l h a m b r a

with the f r a g r a n c e of m y r t l e

the hot again

of

burn

her

face

in s e n s u o u s it

watching

of t h e c r e v i c e s o f t h e w a l l s ,

isn't

I haven't

just

and

this,

reallv felt

of

she w o u l d it's

I

have

her

the

again

more, caught

soft

letting

hands,

murmur

something

it b u t

swallows

in

and o l e a n d e r a n d

the palms

delight

the

bathing

losing and

something a

glimpse.'

(17)

P a s s a g e s such as these are r a r e , and one o f t e n w o n d e r s w h e t h e r they are as much intentional c o u n t e r b a l a n c i n g as m e r e l y the effusive productions o f a still young w r i t e r very much in love with words. A t this point, B o o k O n e comes to an end. T h e sub-title o f B o o k T w o is " S o p h i e N e a t h e , " and it opens in Sophie's r o o m in B a l t i m o r e . A b o u t S o p h i e ' s b a c k g r o u n d we are told nothing, but this is also true o f

Things

as They

Are

41

Adele. T h e y obviously have the money to travel and to support homes or rooms of their own, but we must simply take these things for granted, as in the Henry J a m e s world. T h e problem of where money comes from is almost too coarse a matter to be permitted in the pages of a book. T h e background of only one of the characters, Helen T h o m a s , is discussed at all. In a conversation between Adele and Sophie we discover that Helen's relationship with her parents is unhappy, and her financial independence o f them is not complete. Once, as a girl, Helen had broken her arm, and her father refused to have it treated f o r a few days. But, just as stubborn as her father, Helen bore the pain stoically, refusing to admit that she was in any discomfort until her f a t h e r summoned a doctor. And so, Helen is not only anxious to be away f r o m her family, but she is also dependent financially, it is implied, on Sophie Neathe. In discussing Helen, Sophie displays " a n implication of ownership" that annoys Adele. Adele visits Helen in New Y o r k , where " f o r the first time in Adele's experience something happened in which she had no definite consciousness of beginnings. She found herself at the end of a passionate e m b r a c e . "

(28-9) Over the winter the three girls get together frequently. Sophie realizes now that there is something between the other two, and she tries never to leave them alone together. In subtle ways, she asserts her authority over Helen, and Adele begins to realize how much H e l e n is bound to Sophie. One evening, at Adele's insistence, Sophie explains exactly what kind o f relationship she and Helen are having. T h e reader is told that Sophie is

42

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

explaining things, but he never hears the details of the story, and the only way he has of knowing the significance of what Sophie is saying is by the revulsion that Adele feels as she listens: " T h e room grew large and portentous and to Sophie's eyes Adele's figure grew almost dreadful in its concentrated repulsion." ( 3 7 ) With what she has just heard f r o m Sophie, Adele feels her revulsion turn against Helen, and she is unable to write to her. T w o days before an expected visit f r o m Helen she receives a bitter letter f r o m her accusing her of being petty and complacent. Adele's first reaction is one of anger, but a f t e r a short time she relents and writes Helen a conciliatory but unapologetic letter professing once again her devotion. A f t e r a f e w days of self torture, Adele finally sees Helen once again at an evening performance of Carmen, at which Sophie sits between them. A long evening of avoidance heightens Adele's self-doubts as she waits f o r Helen's inevitable rejection of her. T h e y go to Sophie's apartment, both of them obviously depressed and on edge. T h e y leave together, and on the steps out of Sophie's sight they melt into an embrace. " ' W e will certainly have earned our friendship when it is finally accomplished,' Adele said at last." ( 4 1 ) T h e following day Sophie comes to see Adele, f r o m whom Helen had wanted the nature of her relationship with Sophie kept a secret. Sophie now informs Adele that she has told Helen that she divulged their secret. She says that Helen was angry at first, but that she has now forgiven Sophie. H o w e v e r , Sophie has lied. Helen is quite unaware of what Adele knows. On the eve of Adele's departure f o r E u r o p e she once

Things as They Are

43

again goes to Helen's room. Assuming that Sophie had indeed told Helen what she has admitted to Adele, Adele mentions to Helen the information that Sophie has given her. It is obvious from Helen's angry response that Sophie has not told Helen at all and that she is playing an underhanded game with Adele for Helen's affections. A long moment of brooding silence is broken once again by an embrace. That summer in Italy i^dele realizes how complex mentally and morally she has become in the past year. "In these long lazy Italian days she did not discuss these matters with herself," (44) but "she poured herself out fully and freely to Helen in their ardent correspondence." She wonders if she should be cautious in her letters, knowing that Helen and Sophie are to be together most of the summer. There then comes on the part of Helen a hiatus in the correspondence, and Adele feels that "Sophie has gotten hold of some of the letters and there has been trouble." ( 4 7 ) Her growing awareness of the complexity of the moral situation is intensified by her realization that Helen's financial position makes her very dependent on Sophie. She writes Helen a letter offering her the opportunity to break the relationship, since she feels that she will " 'inevitably cause [her] so much trouble.'" (48) Helen vehemently refuses the offer, promising that Sophie will no longer be jealous of Adele. Adele accepts Helen's decision, knowing, however, that Sophie's jealousy has in no way disappeared and lamenting that " 'how so proud a woman can permit such control is more than I can understand.' " (49) On this note Book T w o comes to an end. The relationships between Helen and Adele and among the three

44

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in Gertrude

Stein

have not become solidified, and none of the problems are at all near resolution or seem to hold any hope of being resolved. A n d yet, the emotional situation and the power struggle have become extremely complex almost without seeming to do so. T h e internal growth of Adele has been demonstrated not through the progressive development of standard plot elements, but through the analysis of the inner conflicts that she undergoes at every little twist and turn in her situation. This is the essence of the novel of personal sensibility, and Miss Stein demonstrates that she has learned her lessons well. Book T h r e e is subtitled " H e l e n " and begins with a passionate homily by the narrator on the subject of homesickness. " T h e r e is no passion more dominant and instinctive in the human spirit than the need of the country to which one belongs." ( 5 3 ) T h e little sermon turns in the following paragraph into a fully sensual, impressionistic rendering of London in winter, well worth quoting to show the g i f t f o r conventional description that Gertrude Stein almost from the very beginning chose to "subtract" f r o m her art. A n American in the winter fogs of London can realize this passionate need, this desperate longing in all its completeness. T h e dead weight of that fog and smoke laden air, the sky that never suggests for a moment the clean blue distance that has been the accustomed daily comrade, the dreary sun, moon and stars that look like painted imitations on the ceiling of a smoke-filled room, the soggy, damp, miserable streets, and the women with bedraggled, frayed-out skirts, their faces swollen and pimply with sordid dirt ground into them until it has become a natural part of their ugly surface all become day after day a more dreary weight of hopeless oppression.

Things as They Are

45

It is a passage whose lushness of physical detail would have satisfied an impassioned D. H . Lawrence, though its tone seems out of keeping with the rest of the book. Its effects are too calculated to contrast well with the more stark, analytic passages that predominate. From the morass of homesickness, Adele steps from the steamer on to the streets of New York. Her return is unexpected, and after six months' absence there is no one to meet her when she disembarks. As she explains to Helen, it is to America more than anything else that she has returned, rejoicing " 'in the New Y o r k streets, in the long spindling legs of the elevated, in the straight high undecorated houses, in the empty upper air and in the white surface of the snow.' " ( 5 4 ) At first, the relationship between Helen and Adele is a bit strained, but after a while the closeness returns and surpasses anything they have had before, and "they agreed between them that they were very near the state of perfect happiness." ( 5 5 ) " 'Yes I guess it's alright,' " Adele answers with her characteristic reticence. She is then aroused from her euphoria "by a kiss that seemed to scale the very walls of chastity." ( 5 6 ) Adele turns from Helen with revulsion and buries her face in her hands. Helen is of course stunned. Adele apologizes, but Helen is inconsolable. " 'Was it that you felt your old distrust of me again?' 'Yes,' replied Adele briefly. ' I am afraid I can't forgive this,' Helen said. 'I didn't suppose that you could,' Adele replied." They go on seeing one another, and they analyze what they feel to be Adele's problems in taking part in the relationship without inhibitions. Gradually, although their happy relations are once more resumed, a new

46

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

strain comes about within the relationship. Adele can not go at the same speed as Helen, and Helen demands responses of Adele before she is ready. Knowing Helen's inability to bear rejection, Adele "went farther than she could in honesty because she was unable to refuse anything to one who had given all." ( 5 8 ) T h e old openness is now impossible. A petty incident upsets Helen. She has been kept waiting in a restaurant and a man has approached her. Adele loses patience with Helen, but Helen, after a dream in which she thinks that Adele has left, capitulates completely and is put in the dependent position. Another quarrel follows in which Adele once again turns on Helen with the accusation: " 'You have no right to constantly use your pain as a weapon!' " ( 6 0 ) T h e y give in to one another once again,"but they both realised that neither of them had yielded." ( 6 1 ) T h e relationship takes another turn. Helen has thrown the burden of choice on Adele, and it is now up to Adele to request the next meeting between the two. "Helen's attitude became that of one anxious to give all but unfortunately prevented by time and circumstances." Adele feels that her own greater commitment to the relationship is being taken advantage of, and she rebels, accusing Helen once again of arrogance, facing Helen's familiar counter-accusation of emotional and instinctive coldness. A t the crucial moment Adele once again wavers at the door before returning to take Helen in her arms. A s usual, however, the reconciliation has no lasting and improving effect on the relationship. " H e l e n still pursued her method of granting in inverse ratio [note the mathematical language] to the strength of Adele's desire, and Adele's unhappiness and inward resistance

Things as They Are

47

grew steadily with the increase of her affection." (64) One day Helen announces that she is going abroad with Sophie the following summer. The spectre of Sophie once again rises to cloud the relationship, and Helen admits that if faced with a choice she would give up Adele, because Sophie would not be strong enough to bear it and Adele would. Adele realizes that it is Sophie's money that is taking Helen to Europe. In the last month before the departure for Europe the openness of the relationship almost disappears, and Adele and Helen are under an almost impossible strain, during which the roles change subtly. Helen is now "irritating and unsatisfying, Adele patient and forbearing." (66) The seemingly final rupture comes when Helen breaks a luncheon engagement with Adele. The bitter feelings rise to a head, and Adele writes Helen a letter breaking off the relationship, to which she receives no response. A few days go by, and Adele is happy that the pressure of the relationship is gone. Then one day she sees Helen walking in the street, and she is overcome with affection. She writes to her, professing affection and offering to receive Helen once again. Helen accepts and pays Adele a visit. The reconciliation is slow and painful, and it finally comes about with even less openness remaining than before. "Adele had learned to love and Helen to trust but still there was no real peace between them." (68) A f t e r a few more minor difficulties they leave f o r Europe (Helen once again with Sophie), and they arrange to meet later that summer in Italy. They meet in Rome, and Helen confides to Adele that things are not going well with her and Sophie. The three of them travel together with pretended friendliness and

48

Abstractionism,

in Gertrude

Stein

spontaneity. Sophie begins to perceive f r o m the actions and demeanor of H e l e n and A d e l e the extent of the affection between the two of them, and she begins f o r the v e r y first time actively to resent the presence of A d e l e . H e l e n tells A d e l e in a moment alone of Sophie's ever-increasing jealousy, not only of A d e l e but of anyone in w h o m Helen shows the slightest interest. I t f a l l s to A d e l e to soothe Sophie's feelings constantly, a job she resents. H e r still intense affection f o r H e l e n is counterbalanced by her g r o w i n g realization of H e l e n ' s penchant f o r using people and her selling herself to Sophie. " ' W h a t a condemned little prostitute it is,' " A d e l e comments on H e l e n to herself. " ' I know there is no use in asking f o r an explanation. L i k e K a t e C r o y she would tell me " I shall sacrifice nothing and n o b o d y " and that's just her situation she wants and will try f o r everything. . . .' " ( 7 5 ) She is willing to continue simply out of her affection f o r H e l e n , and she also p r o f e s s e s an analytical interest in the twistings and turnings of the situation. " ' I certainly get v e r y much interested in the mere w o r k i n g of the machinery.' " H e l e n and A d e l e are reduced to expressing their love in quiet and secret moments when Sophie is not around, but Sophie is getting more and more perceptive. One day she decrees that she and H e l e n will leave R o m e the f o l l o w i n g morning. B e f o r e they part, H e l e n and A d e l e repledge their affection in g u a r d e d w o r d s . A d e l e asks if she must give herself so much to Sophie, but H e l e n is unable to m a k e any reply. T h e v part on that note, with A d e l e alone in Rome. A f t e r a f e w weeks A d e l e writes to Sophie, f o r e w a r n i n g them of the exact times she plans to be in F l o r e n c e and

Things

as They Are

49

Siena so that they can avoid her if they choose to do so. She meets them almost by accident in a restaurant, and they resume the depressing triangle once again. Adele realizes now that she has lost almost all control over H e l e n and that Sophie is now the dominant force. Helen's will has been reduced to almost nothing. One night they kiss indiscreetly under a light, and Sophie sees them. T h i s adds another complication. Adele's sick depression over H e l e n ' s "prostitution" becomes more and more evident. T h e afternoon b e f o r e A d e l e ' s departure f r o m Florence, A d e l e and Helen have another final irresolute scene replete with self-doubts and recriminations. T h e relationship has reached its lowest ebb. A d e l e goes f o r a walking trip with a friend through the T u s c a n hills, happy and f r e e , but knowing that when the three of them meet once again in Siena the same unhappiness will begin all over again. T h e situation when they meet in Siena reflects Adele's forebodings. A d e l e finally feels that she must confront Helen directly with her feelings about the compromising position in which she has placed herself with Sophie. H e l e n ' s answers are completely evasive and inadequate, and A d e l e in anger avoids her f o r f o u r days. She realizes now that Sophie is uppermost in H e l e n ' s mind. Helen, however, seeks out A d e l e , and a partial reconciliation takes place. W i t h the strain between H e l e n and A d e l e so obvious, Sophie is now content to reduce her surveillance and permit them more time to be alone. A d e l e understands now that a f t e r Sophie had seen them kissing in Florence, she cxacted a promise f r o m Helen not to show any affection to A d e l e . A n d so, even their moments alone together are no longer satisfactory in any w a y , punctuated by

50

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

long periods of uncomfortable silence. Their final parting is as the others have been, strained and irresolute. For many weeks after that Adele receives no communication at all from Helen. A f t e r many battles with herself, she finally swallows her pride and writes Helen an impassioned, and yet pathetic, letter asking her never to deny that she cares f o r her and wishing that she had more influence over her. Helen answers by saying that such conditions as she has patiently endured all summer will certainly never arise again. Adele now understands that Helen is still, and obviously always will be, unable to admit that she is uncontrollably bound to Sophie, and that she has sacrificed her freedom by not facing things openly. " 'Can't she see things as they are and not as she would make them if she were strong enough as she plainly i s n ' t . ' " ( 8 7 ) She now realizes that the game is over and lost. " 'I am afraid it comes very near being a dead-lock,' she groaned dropping her head on her arms," (88) as the book closes. A deadlock it is indeed in a number of ways. First of all, from Adele's point of view her attempted relationship with Helen has reached an impasse that looks like a permanent stalemate. Secondly, the plot, which has consisted of a few trips to Europe, and a few get-togethers in New Y o r k and Baltimore over a period of about three years, has ended at about the same point at which it began—Sophie is dominant over Helen, and Adele is the outsider looking in. Not only has the plot-line been circular, but its development has not been at all steady in the artificial way common to the working out of the storyline in the average novel of the period. A t the moments when we think that the story is taking a rise in develop-

Things

as They Are

51

ment there is always a regression in the behavior of someone to set the development back. As a result, the complications are mainly interior; t h a t is, within the consciousness of the individual or within the relationship of two individuals, r a t h e r than complications of circumstance which control character. N e i t h e r Helen nor Adele regard their relationship as established at any time during the novel. I t is always in progress. T h e y speak as though it were still something out in f r o n t of them that they were trying to earn, and, f o r reasons of character that they have not yet been able to overcome, they have been unsuccessful in achieving. Things as They Are is the study of the process of individual growth and of the relationships between individuals, and basic to its assumptions about character is t h a t the individual is not a static mechanism and that the study of a relationship is not the comparison of similar and divergent qualities of a number of static mechanisms, but of the interaction of more than one human consciousness. Character to Gertrude Stein is determined almost exclusively by consiousness, and she is inclined to exclude the unconscious as a factor in the development of personality. T h i s makes her characters abstractions of a sort which represents types characterized almost purely by their verbalizations of themselves. Although the first translations of F r e u d were then appearing, Gertrude Stein seems not to have been influenced at all by him, and she adopted a kind of Jamesian psychology of consciousness which she kept basic to her writing throughout the rest of her life. T h i s kind of character definition by verbalization is not dependent on having educated characters like the young "emancipated" women in Things as They Are. Even the

52

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

semiliterate characters o f Three Lives characterize themselves almost exclusively by the tortuous verbalization of their conscious minds. Allied with her concepts of consciousness, Gertrude Stein exhibits a kind of determinism that furnishes an interesting comparison to the philosophical naturalistic determinism of T h e o d o r e Dreiser. Almost from the very beginning we are aware, in Things as They Are, that neither Helen nor Adele has a chance to break from whatever bonds are constraining them into the kind o f relationship that both of them seem to want. T h e deterministic shackles that bind them are as stiff and unbending as those that bind Dreiser's first heroine, but they spring from radically different sources. Carrie M e e b e r ' s ultimate unhappiness is the result of the circumstances o f her birth and her ascension through a society that permits the " t o u g h " individual to survive and rise, but permits him victory in only a circumstantial sense, and not in terms of individual self-fulfillment. T h e fatal forces are external to the individual, and all one can do to survive is to be one of the "fittest," and to plav the game demanded of him. But with the characters of Gertrude Stein the seeds of each individual's fate lie not without but within the individual consciousness. And this fate is not something one can escape. I t is a part o f the very bottom nature of the individual, and he can no more change it than he can exchange one o f his limbs for another. She was to say at the beginning of The Making of Americans, her most elaborate study of character, " I t is hard living down the tempers we are born with." 6 T h i s is basic to all her writings about people. Dreiser's 6

G e r t r u d e Stein, The

Making

of Americans

( P a r i s , 1 9 2 5 ) , p. 3.

Things

as They Are

53

socially-determined and inexorable hand of f a t e has almost no existence in her w o r k . T h e consciousness and character of the individual are all. 7 It is easy to see f r o m the long summary of Things as They Are w h a t Gertrude Stein's attitude is t o w a r d the portrayal of reality and realistic verisimilitude. F o r one thing, M i s s Stein's p o r t r a y a l of reality employs a different kind of selection f r o m that of most of the so-called "realists." H e r realist contemporaries were f o r the most part interested in telling the life story, or a substantial part of it, of the main character of the novel, replete with much detail and a more or less loose organization of incidents. T h e existence of an o r g a n i z i n g theme in the book becomes evident a f t e r the piling up of detail begins to show a trend in a certain direction. T h e traditional realist, of course, did not include everything in the fabric of the life of his character, f o r that would have been impossible; but the incidents and details that he selected ranged widely throughout his subjects, and were not limited to a necessarily direct connection with thematic material. Gertrude Stein's technique differs radically. F o r one thing, it is more that of the short story writer. She develops a single theme immediately and dwells on it to the exclusion of almost everything else. T h e detail, conversation, and incident that appear in Things as They Are 7 John M a l c o l m Brinnin also sees these attributes as all-important to M i s s Stein's development of character, The Third Rose, p. 59:

H e r situations are devised less for dramatic action and eventful continuity than for opportunities to observe character as a type of consciousness. T h e w o r l d Gertrude Stein's characters inhabit is strictly limited to the range of their personalities and their intellectual capacities.

54

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

a r e focused unremittingly on the development of the tria n g l e . W e know almost nothing about the girls that lies outside the context of their relationship to one another. B a c k g r o u n d deatil is scrupulously avoided. For all we know, none of the women has had a childhood with the exception of H e l e n , about whom we a r e told one incident f r o m her past as an illustration of a personality t r a i t that has a direct b e a r i n g on her relationship with both Sophie and A d e l e . M i s s Stein has abstracted from the complexities of her characters' lives the one theme of their interrelationship and has subordinated everything in the n a r r a t i v e to the illumination of this theme. W i t h i n this context, however, her selectivity does not have the same kind of concision. She throws in everything that r e l a t e s to her theme, tortuous arguments, lovers' quarrels, trips, and visits, over and over a g a i n to express the essentially repetitive quality of life as she sees it. L i f e to G e r t r u d e Stein is not a convenient p a c k a g e with a beginning, middle, and end as it w a s for the conventional novelists. It consists of all the tedious monotony of most e v e r y d a y existences and of repetition not only of boring habit, but also of events whose character is dictated by the basic nature of the individual. A n d yet, although the events of Things as They Are seem on the surface to h a v e a monotonous sameness, each of the events occurs at a more complex stage of the relationship and adds to its complexity. T h u s , within the surface sameness of the elements of the novel, each of the events has its own uniqueness within the context of the relationship. By abstracting f r o m the lives of three women only that part of their complex characters that relates them to one another and by subjecting their consciousness and the

Things as They Are

55

tedious repetitions of their lives that their consciousness determines to the ruthless analysis of her literary microscope, Gertrude Stein is able to express on the page her view of the complexity of life and of the individual consciousness. T h e microscopic world-view and analytic point of view remain basic to Gertrude Stein's methodology throughout her long career as a writer of English. The sense of realistic verisimilitude in Things as They Are is also very much affected by the analytic methodology of its author. Gertrude Stein is only rarely interested in "rendering" action. In her penchant for analysis she describes some events, tells about others, renders a few, and lets her characters discuss either within their own consciousness or with one another things that have happened, changes that have taken place. She spends little or no time setting the scene or showing the small movements of her characters to give the reader a sense of their genuine physical presence or movement. T h e characters of Things as They Are are objects of analysis rather than "real" people in the traditional realistic sense. Their problems engage sympathy, but it is a mind with which we are involved, a human consciousness rather than a "rounded" individual. This abstract sense of what composes people becomes even more prevalent in her later and more analytic works. The individual consciousness will disappear even further until it is lost completely in a general "type." It would seem from the above discussion, then, that Gertrude Stein was wiser in her choice of a title than were her posthumous editors. Quod Erat Demonstrandum (which, roughly translated, means "which was

56

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

t o be d e m o n s t r a t e d " ) gives a real sense of the g e o m e t r i c exactitude with which G e r t r u d e Stein has dissected h e r objects of study. I n m a n y ways, Things as They Are is t h e d e m o n s t r a t i o n of a p r o o f of certain t h e o r e m s on t h e subject of personality. It is m o r e t h a n t h a t , of course, b u t G e r t r u d e Stein's choice of Quod Erat Demonstrandum as a title gives s o m e w h a t of a clue as to the n a t u r e of h e r intentions, which seem adequately b o r n out by the w o r k itself. Things as They Are shows a c a r e f u l s t r u c t u r a l balance a r o u n d the t h e m e of the triangle. T h e r e a r e t h r e e b o o k s within the novelette, each b e a r i n g the n a m e of one of the sides of the triangle. T h e r e are t h r e e t r i p s t o E u r o p e . T h e r e is a balance a m o n g the t h r e e p e r s o n a l i t i e s p r e s e n t within the t r i a n g l e . T h e slow-moving a n d sensual A d e l e is played off against the p r u d i s h and calcul a t i n g Sophie. B o t h a r e striving to cement the affection of the passionate and h e a d s t r o n g H e l e n ( t h e h y p o t enuse, if you w i l l ) . T h r e e y e a r s is the length of time t h a t elapses in the story, with the second y e a r the high p o i n t of the relationship between Adele and H e l e n . A n d so on. I t is not w o r t h pushing the point, except to show t h a t G e r t r u d e Stein's obvious concern with the geom e t r i c balance of Things as They Are adds still a n o t h e r a b s t r a c t element to the ones e n u m e r a t e d b e f o r e . A s f o r m a t t e r s of g r a m m e r , vocabulary, and syntax, Things as They Are shows little t h a t is unconventional except f o r a tendency to run sentences t o g e t h e r w i t h o u t p u n c t u a t i o n or with only a comma s e p a r a t i n g t h e m . T h e t y r a n n y of the present participle does not come a b o u t in h e r w o r k until Three Lives. M i s s Stein is as yet content with the conventional use of nouns, and is n o t i n t e r e s t e d in replacing t h e m with participles or gerunds. H e r doct r i n e of the continuous present, as reflected in her use of

Things as They Are

57

present participles, does not achieve any systematic formal existence until "Melanctha." It is not prefigured in Things as They Are. In her mature style, Gertrude Stein is often in the habit of reflecting the kind of action or tension present in her story by repeating certain key words over and over again in the same context to give the emotion a stylized formalization. T h e same characteristic is present in Things as They Are, although not to the point of stylization. T h e story is told from the point of view of Adele's consciousness, and it is primarily concerned with her struggle to achieve the kind of friendship she desires with Helen Thomas. When the problems created by this attempt at friendship are uppermost in Adele's mind the characteristic words that appear are "struggle," "resentment," "pain," "reluctance," "protest," "quarrel," "submission," and "bitterness." This use of words has not been at this point stylized to the point of conscious abstractionism, but this is a trait of Gertrude Stein's later style that is evident even now. There is also not yet any consistent violation of syntax in Things as They Are. Miss Stein always stays within the generally standard sentence structure of subject-verbobject and its variants. She violates syntax later in her work by doing away with connectives, either in terms of related thoughts or in terms of correlative conjunctions, and by re-ordering sentences. None of this takes place here, however. H e r paragraphs are organic units for the most part, with an obvious relationship running throughout all the sentences from first to last. There is no indication here that there will be any change from this style in any of her later writings. The one element of style in which there is the most

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Stein

obvious use of an idiosyncratic characteristic that is to p l a y a m a j o r role in her later stylistic abstractionism is punctuation. F r o m the quotes included in the text of this chapter it is obvious that her punctuational patterns do not match those of traditional g r a m m a r . It is difficult, however, to determine how much of this is due to conscious abstractionism. M i s s Stein did not see Things as They Are through the press. A lot of the idiosyncratic punctuation m a y merely be the product of an unrevised first d r a f t . A lot of it m a y also be due to M i s s Stein's w e a k sense of the t r a d i t i o n a l punctuation. In M i s s Stein's l a t e r writing the absence of commas and certain connectives is the w o r k i n g out of a consciously articulated doctrine to e n g a g e the r e a d e r actively in the creative process by forcing him to understand and a n a l y z e the texture of the sentence he is reading. It is a disorientative process, similar to others we shall discuss in l a t e r chapters. A traditional punctuational pattern is promised and then violated. T h i s conscious use of idiosyncratic punctuation does not seem to be as obvious in the case of Things as They Are. T h e distinction between what is conscious and what is accidental on the part of an author is at best a tenuous process. In this instance, however, we a r e f o r t u n a t e in h a v i n g Gertrude Stein's Radcliffe themes as a document f o r comparison. In a context in which she w a s to be penalized f o r f a u l t y punctuation and g r a m m a r , Gertrude Stein would more than likely have attempted to conform as closely to the traditional forms as she w a s capable of doing. If her sense of s t a n d a r d g r a m m a r and punctuation w a s w e a k at this time, then we m a y p r o b a b l y assume t h a t it had not gotten stronger in the y e a r s she spent

Things as They Are

59

away from any kind of formal discipline in this direction. I have chosen two selections from among the many themes that Gertrude Stein wrote while taking English Composition 2 2 under William Vaughn M o o d y . In the second theme that Gertrude Stein wrote at Radcliffe (Nov. 7, 1 8 9 4 ) the following constitutes the first half of the opening paragraph: T w o girls strolled into the park one summer day and threw themselves on the grass: one full on her back, the other raised herself on her elbow and as if continuing a conversation said, "Yes I fully understand your feeling toward my father. He is moody bitter and often tyrannical at home; w e all recognize that but poor old dad we love him anyway. W a i t I'll tell you a little of his life, its only just that you should know it." 8

The differences between Gertrude Stein's punctuation here and the more standard variety are obvious. She has very little idea where to place commas, her phrasing is awkward, and her sense of the structure of the English sentence is weak. T h e instructor has marked the phrase following the colon after " g r a s s , " the absence of a comma after " m o o d y , " the semi-colon after " h o m e , " the absence of a comma after " W a i t , " and the missing apostrophe of " i t s . " Throughout all of the early compositions Miss Stein continually brings down the wrath of M r . Moody and her instructors for the awkwardness of her phrasing and her "disdain for the more necessary marks of punctuation," ( 1 2 6 ) although there is occasional grudging praise for her "vividness and imaginative 8 Rosalind S. Miller, Gertrude Stein: Form and Intelligibility (New York, 1949), p. H I . From now on, numbers in the text refer to this edition.

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Stein

f o r c e . " ( 1 0 9 ) H e r sense of style and grace is still in obvious need of training. B y the end of her f r e s h m a n y e a r she is capable in her final

theme

( M a y 22,

1895)

of sentences such as the

following : S h e seemed to h e r s e l f , to be g r o w i n g f o r c e herself she

grew

apathetic. She tried

to

to m o v e but she could not. S h e upbraided herself,

more

violent

in

her

thoughts

and

yet

she

did

not

move. ( 1 5 5 )

A s i d e f r o m the obvious balance of the sentences, there is p o w e r f u l use of repetition of the w o r d " s h e " to make emphatic the violent state of mind of her character. T h e r e still remains, h o w e v e r , the disinclination or inability to use c o m m a s p r o p e r l y enough to s a t i s f y traditional g r a m m a r . T h e reappearance of the characteristics of repetition and idiosyncratic punctuation eight y e a r s later in Things as They Are shows that they w e r e a p a r t of G e r t r u d e Stein's characteristic writing f r o m the v e r y beginning and became a highly conscious part of her later abstractionism. T o j u d g e f r o m the above that M i s s Stein has merely elevated her inability to use the traditional f o r m s of E n glish punctuation into a doctrine of writing is to speak e v a l u a t i v e l y , which I h a v e earlier d i s a v o w e d . It is my p u r p o s e mainly to point out that these elements a p p e a r in her w r i t i n g f r o m the v e r y beginning. I f indeed she capitalized on her weaknesses and turned them into a later i m p o r t a n t characteristic of her style, it is no m o r e o r less than m a n y other artists have done. T h a t the supposedly " f a u l t y " use of g r a m m a r later becomes a v e r y conscious p a r t of her abstract style is amply documented

Things

as They Are

61

by the essay " P o e t r y and G r a m m a r " in Lectures in America,9 as well as by her creative writings themselves. I have endeavored in this chapter to show that although Things as They Are is not a genuinely abstract piece of writing, it nonetheless prefigures many of the abstract elements that are to appear in her more characteristic performances. It is now time to turn f r o m the mere hints of abstractionism to its more full-bodied appearance in Miss Stein's next work, Three Lives.

9

Boston, 1957.

3 Three Lives

Things as They Are, GERTRUDE STEIN turned to the translation of one of Gustave Flaubert's final works, Trois Contes. Sitting in her study beneath Cézanne's " L a Femme au Chapeau," she began to render into English the mots justes of the great French master of style. T h e juxtaposition of Cézanne and Flaubert when viewed in retrospect must surely appear symbolic, because from each M i s s Stein seems to have learned a lesson that profoundly influenced her art. From Flaubert she learned that the carefully molded style was the most important instrument in the art of the writer of fiction, a lesson also learned well by her contemporary, J a m e s Joyce. From Cezanne she seems to have learned that the depiction of external reality does not depend on the amount of detail included, but can be accomplished by abstracting from the welter of detail that appears to the senses the repetitive properties that constitute the AFTER FINISHING

Three

Lives

63

sine qua non of the external object. F o r C e z a n n e this sine qua non consisted of the basic geometric pattern underlying each physical object. F o r Gertrude Stein the configuration is composed of the basic attributes that she feels make up the personality whose portrait she is creating, mainly through the conscious manifestations of personality traits. W e have seen the original tendencies in this direction in Things as They Are. In Three Lives, especially in " M e l a n c t h a , " Gertrude Stein uses the carefully and consciously w r o u g h t style to create her abstract conceptions of personality types. T h i s is the real beginning of her abstract style. Three Lives f o l l o w e d immediately upon the translation of Flaubert. 1 It would seem that Gertrude Stein w a s influenced significantly by only one of the Trois Contes,2 " U n C o e u r Simple," the story o f " a simple h e a r t " w h o throughout her entire life w a s the devoted servant of a moderately w e a l t h y woman of the upper middle class. T h e story proceeds in episodic fashion to present the reader with the events of Felicité's life and the characteristics of her personality. Flaubert does not delve into the unconscious of his character, as he does with E m m a Bovary, but rather presents the reader with descriptions of her personality traits and selected occurrences chosen from the course of her entire life. N o incident is developed in elaborate detail or given m a j o r significance except as a part of the total picture of Felicité. I f there are 1 Unfortunately, no traces of this translation exist among the papers of the G e r t r u d e Stein Collection at the Y a l e Collection of American Literature. 2 A good translation of this w o r k by A r t h u r M c D o w a l l w a s published by N e w Directions ( N e w Y o r k , 1947), with an introduction by Harry Levin.

64

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

implications to be drawn as to what lies beneath the conscious exterior of Flaubert's character, it is up to the reader to draw them. T h e technique of " T h e Good A n n a " and " T h e Gentle L e n a " is very similar in the above respects to that of Flaubert. In addition, the subject matter of each parallels to a marked degree the story of " U n Coeur Simple." T h e main figure in each story is a servant girl who works for a wealthy middle class woman. None of the individual events of their lives is more important than any other. Neither of the women has aspirations that rise above those appropriate to her class in society. T h e r e is no " s t o r y , " as in Flaubert's tale, only an attempt at a total picture of a human consciousness. T h e relationship of Gertrude Stein to Flaubert is the subject for another study. I t is important here to notice it merely as a germinal stage in the development of Gertrude Stein's first genuine step into abstractionism. Some of the nascent elements of Gertrude Stein's abstract style are evident on the first page of " T h e Good Anna." A n n a managed the whole little house for M i s s M a t h i l d a . It was a funny little house . . . T h e y were funny little houses, two stories high, with red brick fronts and long white steps. T h i s one little house was always very f u l l with M i s s M a thilda, an under servant, stray dogs and cats and A n n a ' s voice that scolded, managed, grumbled all day long. 3 (Italics mine)

T h e first four italicized phrases are examples of one of Miss Stein's earliest uses o f repetition. H e r e the effect is 3 Three Lives ( N e w York, 1936), p. 1 1 . All page references in the text refer to this edition. W e shall follow the same procedure as in the previous chapter throughout the book.

Three Lives

65

little more than an emphasizing of the phrase little house with a few variations on the preceding modifier. T h e technique is picked up and then dropped immediately, giving the impression of being almost unconsciously used by the author. It is not yet a conscious part of Miss Stein's style, but as Three Lives progresses it is used with more and more frequency, especially in description of people. On page 17 there is a description of the servant K a t y who comes with Anna to work f o r Miss Mathilda. T h e narrator refers to her "peasant english [ i i c ] " and her "servile humor" and states that "old Katy was too coarsely made from natural earth f o r that." T h e narrator finally refers to Katy as a "rough old creature." In the following paragraph Miss Stein repeats these various characteristics in a sentence that sums up Katy f o r us as seen through the eyes of A n n a : " A n earthy, uncouth, servile peasant creature old Katy surely w a s . " T h e last italicized phrase of the paragraphs quoted above is another example of the summing-up sentence, a device that Gertrude Stein employs throughout Three Lives. H e r e it is used to sum up the typical day in the servant life of the G o o d Anna, a day in which she "scolded, managed, grumbled." In the preceding example the summing-up sentence was used to repeat the characteristics of one of the characters and to establish her personality f o r all time. Still another use of the summing-up sentence is to introduce one of the characters into the story: Mrs. plump and

Lehntman well

crisp

was

rounded

a

body,

black c u r l i n g

good

looking

clear

olive

hair.

She

was

woman.

skin,

bright

pleasant,

She

had

a

dark

eyes

magnetic,

effi-

66

Abstractionism

cient

and

good.

She

was

in Gertrude very

Stein

attractive,

very

generous

and

v e r y amiable. ( 3 0 )

Such descriptions add to the a b s t r a c t i o n i s m o f the s t o r y by s t a t i n g r a t h e r than r e n d e r i n g (in the J a m e s i a n s e n s e ) . G e r t r u d e Stein feels no need t o a t t e m p t t h e illusion

of

verisimilitude t h r o u g h a p r e s e n t a t i o n o f M r s . L e h n t m a n in v a r i o u s situations t h a t d e m o n s t r a t e h e r

pleasantness,

a t t r a c t i v e n e s s , g e n e r o s i t y , and a m i a b i l i t y . H a v i n g

made

these s t a t e m e n t s about M r s . L e h n t m a n , G e r t r u d e

Stein

then assumes t h a t the r e a d e r h a s accepted these

quali-

ties as a p a r t o f h e r c h a r a c t e r ' s p e r s o n a l i t y . T h e a b s t r a c t ing o f these c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s r e n d e r s the p o r t r a i t o f

Mrs.

L e h n t m a n an a b s t r a c t i o n . M r s . L e h n t m a n is a solid figure

composed

much

of

the s a m e

permanent

as the

figures

and

enduring

qualities,

in a C e z a n n e

portrait.

T h e r e is no a t t e m p t on the p a r t o f G e r t r u d e Stein to give this c h a r a c t e r o r any o f the c h a r a c t e r s in " T h e Anna"

the illusion o f m o v e m e n t

in a specific

Good

physical

environment. T h e r e a r e a n u m b e r o f uses o f r e p e t i t i o n in " T h e G o o d A n n a " and " T h e G e n t l e L e n a " o t h e r than the types we h a v e just discussed. In the l a t t e r s t o r y a single w o r d is occasionally used repetitively t o e m p h a s i z e a p a r t i c u l a r characteristic

in the

physical

description

of

a

charac-

ter. L e n a w a s a b r o w n and pleasant creature, b r o w n as blonde races o f t e n have them b r o w n , b r o w n , not w i t h the y e l l o w or the red or the chocolate b r o w n of sun burned countries, but b r o w n w i t h the clear color laid flat on the light toned skin beneath, the plain, spare b r o w n that makes it right to h a v e been made w i t h hazel eyes, and not too a b u n d a n t s t r a i g h t , b r o w n hair, hair that only later deepens itself into b r o w n f r o m the s t r a w y e l l o w of a g e r m a n childhood. ( 2 4 0 )

Three Lives

67

" B r o w n , " when used as above, becomes a solid and recurrent quality rather than merely a color, and as a quality it is an element of abstraction. Also, however, we must never overlook the simple characteristic of word play, a characteristic that will become more and more dominant in the writing of Gertrude Stein. Another use of repetition is in the description of inner physical condition: L e n a w a s v e r y sick on the voyage. She thought, surely it w a s over that she w o u l d even

wish

that

she

had

before

die. She w a s so sick she could

not

started.

She

could

not

eat,

could not moan, she w a s just blank and scared, and sure every minute she w o u l d die. She could not hold herself help herself put,

pale,

scared,

and

weak,

and

sick,

and

sure

she that

in, nor

in her trouble. She j u s t staid w h e r e she had

and

not

that

been she

w a s going to die. ( 2 4 6 )

T h r o u g h repetition, the sense of Lena's sickness is emphatically presented, even though we do not suffer along with her as we would have in a "realistic" novel, where with detailed immediacy her discomfort would have been rendered. Another type of repetition is the use of the same opening clause in neighboring sentences. On page 264 the following two sentences open the first and third paragraphs : Herman's had

always

married tried

to

sister liked help

him,

her brother when

there

Herman, was

and

she

anything

she

k n e w he w a n t e d . Herman's

married

sister liked her brother

Herman,

and

she

did not w a n t him not to like to be w i t h w o m e n .

T h i s is the type of repetition f o r which Gertrude Stein has achieved a special kind of notoriety, especially in her

68

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

early portraits of M a t i s s e and Picasso, and which she elevated into an almost philosophical doctrine in The Making of Americans. E a c h character at all times keeps certain characteristics permanent and unchanging. W i t h i n this permanence of quality, there are possibilities f o r a variety of actions and responses consistent with the permanent qualities. H e r m a n ' s m a r r i e d sister a l w a y s liked H e r m a n , but within this there is room f o r a v a r i e t y of other actions and responses. W e see here G e r t r u d e Stein's characteristic repetition at its primitive inception. T h e emphasis on personality, class, and racial types, a concern that is to be most important to The Making of Americans, makes its appearance in " T h e G o o d A n n a " and " T h e Gentle L e n a , " and is evident in many of the descriptions. L e n a had the flat chest, straight back and f o r w a r d f a l l i n g shoulders of the patient and e n d u r i n g w o r k i n g w o m a n , t h o u g h her body w a s n o w still in its m i l d e r girlhood and w o r k had not yet m a d e these lines too clear. ( 2 4 0 )

L e n a is the working-class type. T h e G o o d A n n a is always conscious of her station in l i f e , and particularly of the peculiar kind of " u g l i n e s s " a p p r o p r i a t e to the dress of each of the classes. She " a l w a y s f o u n d new people to b e f r i e n d , people who, in the kindly fashion of the poor, used up her savings and then g a v e promises in place of p a y m e n t s . " ( 6 5 , italics m i n e ) F o r G e r t r u d e Stein there are typical physical developments o r actions that have a direct relation to the class structure. It is another instance of her attempt to abstract permanent qualities she feels are inherent in p a r ticular conceptual groups.

Three

Lives

69

In the same vein w e see the emphasis on a kind of racial or national t y p e : T h e r e was no fever in this friendship, it was just the interchange of two hard working, worrying women, the one large and motherly, with the pleasant, patient, soft, worn, tolerant face that comes with a german husband to obey . . . (45-6) T h e old Kreders were to an Irish nature, a stingy, dirty couple. T h e y had not the free-hearted, thoughtless, fighting, mud bespattered, ragged, peat-smoked cabin dirt that Irish M a r y knew and could forgive and love. Theirs was the german dirt of saving, of being dowdy and loose and foul in your clothes so as to save them and yourself in washing . . . ( 2 6 8 ) There

are

obviously

types

of

behavior

indigenous

to

each nationality. F i n a l l y , there are types of personality that simply exist w i t h no necessary

psychologically

determined

patterns

of b e h a v i o r : Herman Kreder was cleaner than the old people, just because it was his nature to keep cleaner, but he was used to his mother and his father, and he never thought that they should keep things cleaner. ( 2 6 9 ) M r s . Drehten was a mild, worn, unaggressive nature never cared to influence or to lead. ( 6 9 ) T h e s e personality types are to take o v e r in The of Americans,

that

Making

as " a t t a c k i n g " a n d " r e s i s t i n g " and " y i e l d -

i n g " types w o r k their wills on one another. T h e type is m o r e real in m a n y instances to G e r t r u d e Stein than the individual,

because

the nature

of

the

individual's

be-

h a v i o r , thought, and emotions is a l w a y s determined by the class of personality, national, o r social types to which he belongs. G e r t r u d e Stein's psychological

determinism

g o e s first f r o m the class to the individual, r a t h e r than the

70

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

other way. T h e abstracting of various types of character is still another example of the growing abstractionism that we are witnessing in Three Lives. T h e narrative structure of both " T h e G o o d A n n a " and " T h e Gentle L e n a " is episodic in the same way as Flaubert's " U n Coeur Simple." W e are presented with a character, told something about her present, told something about her past, meet a f e w of her relatives and acquaintances, see her p e r f o r m in a few quickly developed situations, and follow her to the grave. T h e internal development of the characters is not dynamic. A s in Things as They Aret we are given a proposition about a particular type of personality and then a series of demonstrations of the proposition. " T h e Gentle L e n a " opens with the following p a r a g r a p h : " L e n a was patient, gentle, sweet and german. She had been a servant f o r four years and had liked it very well." ( 2 3 9 ) Except f o r the fact of her simplemindedness (which is at least implied in the opening statement), there is almost nothing else about Lena's personality that we learn throughout the rest of the narrative. T h e following statements sum up just about all there is to know about the essential personality of the Good Anna : " A n n a was a medium sized, thin, hard working, worrying w o m a n " ( 3 1 ) ; " o u r good Anna with her spinster body, her firm jaw, her humorous, light, clean eyes and her lined, worn, thin, pale yellow f a c e . " ( 4 6 ) It is the essential attributes of her characters as she sees them that are of interest to Gertrude Stein. T h e lives of Lena and Anna are merely concrete demonstrations of the abstract qualities that make up each of their personalities. T h e unconscious forces or yearnings that lie

Three

Lives

71

within A n n a or L e n a are never articulated by either Gertrude Stein or the characters themselves. T h e actions of the characters tell us nothing significant about them t h a t G e r t r u d e Stein does not tell us at some time herself. If the characters h a p p e n to live in our memories, they are more rock-like examples of qualities in the h u m a n consciousness of v a r i o u s types t h a n flesh-and-blood people who suffer, yearn, a n d love. One of the problems is that Gertrude Stein is attempting to give expression to almost totally inarticulate people. Indeed, Lena is so inarticulate that she is incapable of expressing even her likes and dislikes. H o w ever, we have seen previously that the almost monstrously verbal figures in Things as They Are emerged more as examples of mental consciousness than as living human beings. It is not the education or intelligence quotient of her characters that determine their abstractness, but rather Gertrude Stein's attitude toward them. With the eye of the psychological experimenter Gertrude Stein views her fictional characters as the subjects of a grand experiment in the discovery of the various types of people that exist in the world, as demonstrated through the conscious articulation or manifestation of personality in action or thought. T h e role of the narrator changes in Three Lives from what it was in Things as They Are. Instead of the urbane and sophisticated observer who stood above the events of his characters, this narrator envelops himself in a narrative tone that reflects the very dialects of the characters themselves. H e not only reflects the dialect of the characters, but he expresses the inarticulate thoughts of the characters in the very language that they would use

72

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

were they able to express their thoughts for themselves. The narrator thus becomes as important as any character in the story, not merely as the functional agent who relates the events of the narrative, but as the consciousness that expresses the inarticulate thoughts of the simple figures that people the tale. On the stylistic level the narrator accomplishes this by affecting a simplicity of diction and an occasional stilting of the syntax to sound like the speech of immigrants. This is most evident when the narrator is expressing ideas close to the consciousness of Anna or Lena rather than when he is describing something not directly related to either. She watched and scolded hard these days J u l i a do the way she should. Not that J u l i a pleasant in the good Anna's sight, but it must young girl growing up should have no one to to do things right. ( 3 9 )

to make young Lehntman was never be that a make her learn

And so when any day one might need life and help from others of the working poor, there was no way a woman who had a little saved could say them no. ( 6 5 )

This, too, is a narrator who, like his counterpart in Things as They Are, is perfectly willing to inject his own comments into the story. But, alas this world of ours is after all much what it should be and cheerful Miss Mathilda had her troubles too with Anna. ( 2 2 )

The tone of the narrator even in the comment is consistent with the narrator's tone throughout. The seemingly faulty grammar and punctuation which were noticeable in Things as They Are are almost totally unobtrusive, even though they are still present. In Three

Three

Lives

73

Lives, however, they seem v e r y much in keeping with the narrative tone that projects the immigrant English onto the page. It is here also f o r the first time that we see Gertrude Stein's life-long habit of dropping the capital letters at the beginning of the adjective f o r m s of the names of nationalities. B o t h of these characteristics are an aid to the narrative tone as a reflection through the narrator of the educational level of the characters. W e see also f o r the first time the earliest beginnings of Gertrude Stein's use of the present participle as a substantive : " W h y you stand there so stupid, w h y don't you answer, Lena," said M r s . Haydon one Sunday, at the end of a long talking that she w a s giving Lena about Herman Kreder . . . (252, italics mine) " . . . but that was no good that marrying Lena, M r s . A l d r i c h . " (274, italics mine)

for that poor

T h e f e w instances of this use of the present participle in " T h e G o o d A n n a " and " T h e Gentle L e n a " are a small prefiguring o f the sudden explosion of substantive present participles that takes place in " M e l a n c t h a " and remains an integral part of G e r t r u d e Stein's abstract style throughout the rest of her w o r k . T h e three stories of Three Lives are perhaps more important f o r their differences than their similarities, but it will be valuable first to take a quick l o o k at the latter. T h e y are all set in the town of Bridgepoint, almost totally unlocalized in " T h e G o o d A n n a " and " T h e Gentle L e n a " except by being placed in the South, which Gertrude Stein chooses to capitalize. A l l the subjects of the tales are f r o m the servant class. T h e stories f o l l o w their main characters throughout their lives to the g r a v e . T h e

Abstractionism

74

in Gertrude

Stein

d e a t h s a r e in no w a y climactic, but r a t h e r

occur in a

m i n o r key t h a t serves to put a simple p e r i o d t o t h e s t o r y . T h e tales show the same a t t e m p t on the p a r t o f the n a r r a t o r to s i m u l a t e the dialect o f the various c h a r a c t e r s in a k i n d o f primitive s t r e a m o f consciousness. A l l t h r e e a r e t o l d in the same kind o f episodic p a t t e r n t h a t avoids t h e artificial continuity o f events lying at the h e a r t o f e v e r y "realistic"

novel. T h e

central characters are

"inarticu-

l a t e " to a m o r e o r less m a r k e d d e g r e e . I t is possible t o go on m a k i n g this kind o f c o m p a r i s o n . H o w e v e r , it is m o r e i m p o r t a n t t o turn to the differences b e t w e e n

"Melanc-

t h a " and the o t h e r t w o tales to show how b i g a

step

G e r t r u d e Stein t a k e s into a b s t r a c t i o n i s m . " M e l a n c t h a " goes farther toward abstractionism than its sister stories in a n u m b e r o f ways. T h e first e x t e n s i o n is in its scope. A s we h a v e discussed b e f o r e , " T h e A n n a " and " T h e G e n t l e L e n a " tions

of

propositions

about

are l a r g e l y

various

Good

demonstra-

personality

T h e i r scope goes v e r y little beyond this. T h e

types.

demonstra-

tions are w o r k e d out with exceeding care, but

relations

b e t w e e n c h a r a c t e r s are n o t developed beyond the

mere

s t a t e m e n t t h a t a r e l a t i o n s h i p exists. T h e s e c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s have been p o i n t e d

out b e f o r e

by

Donald

Sutherland:

" W h e r e ' T h e G o o d A n n a ' and ' T h e G e n t l e L e n a '

are

c o m p o s e d as the p r e s e n t a t i o n o f a single type in i l l u s t r a tive incidents, ' M e l a n c t h a ' is c o m p o s e d on t h e

dramatic

t r a j e c t o r y o f a p a s s i o n . " A n d f u r t h e r , " T h e e v e n t s conside r e d in ' M e l a n c t h a '

are m o s t l y the m o v e m e n t s

of

the

passion, how J e f f and M e l a n c t h a feel differently t o w a r d each o t h e r f r o m m o m e n t t o m o m e n t . " 4 T h i s , o f c o u r s e , is 4

Gertrude

p. 44.

Stein:

A Biography

of Her

Work

( N e w Haven, 1 9 5 1 ) ,

Three Lives

75

true as f a r as it goes. But it fails to take into account a few things. T h e first is that it is not the "passion" that is all important, but how this passion effects any changes on the characters involved. Also, the moment-to-moment changes in the feelings of Jeff Campbell and Melanctha Herbert toward one another are not important in themselves. It is rather that through the seemingly endless repetitions of similar discussions, internal mental ruminations, arguments, and events (which occur r a r e l y ) , these changes in feelings occur in subtle, almost imperceptible ways through the cataloguing of effects. T h e change in attitude of a character is an accomplished state of mind almost before we can notice it. T h e technique is almost exactly the same as in Things as They Are. E v e r y up and down in the relationship of Jeff Campbell and Melanctha is carefully charted, mostly through the thoughts and speeches of each of the characters, and we are able to follow the dynamics of the process of the relationship, which is more dynamic in its development than either of the characters. " M e l a n c t h a " begins in a fashion similar to the other stories in Three Lives. T h e narrative opens with incidents in the present time. A f t e r a few pages of episodes in present time Miss Stein shifts us into Melanctha's childhood, in which we see her as a little girl and meet her parents. T h e union of Melanctha's "big black virile n e g r o " father, " a common, decent enough, colored workm a n , " ( 9 0 ) and her "wandering and mysterious and uncertain" mother sow the psychologically deterministic seeds that create ultimately the "graceful, pale yellow, intelligent, attractive negress" ( 8 6 ) who "wandered, always seeking but never more than very dimly seeing

76

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

wisdom." ( 9 7 ) W e follow her f r o m childhood through adolescence into young womanhood, watching the effects of heredity and the brutalizing presence of her father becoming manifest in the human consciousness known as Melanctha. T h e structure of " M e l a n c t h a " is almost exactly the same as that of " T h e Good A n n a " and " T h e Gentle L e n a . " A short opening section introduces us to the main character in present time, after which we shift into the past to learn what events in the background of the character have led to the determination of the present personality. T h e elaboration of the past life leads us through carefully chosen incidents rather than a continuous narrative into the present once again where a f e w more incidents are observed, a crisis takes place, and the story trails off to its end. Gertrude Stein is manipulating time, always keeping in mind that the present moment (whether in past, present, or future time) is an accumulation of the moments that have preceded it. Since the traditional temporal sense of narrative fiction is lacking here, there is no climactic note on which any of the stories end. T h e short final section of each of the tales deals with the summary demise of the heroine. T h e key is decidedly a minor one, as none of the deaths is the tragic outcome of inevitable circumstances growing out of the character of the heroine, but is simply M i s s Stein's way of putting an ending to a story that is basically undramatic in its impact. Gertrude Stein repeating certain book and toward the present. T h e ments :

reinforces her conceptions of time by key passages at the beginning of the the end, when we revert once again to tale opens with the following state-

Three

Lives

77

Rose Johnson made it very hard to bring her baby to its birth. Melanctha Herbert w h o was Rose Johnson's friend, did everything that any woman could. T h e child though it was healthy after it was born, did not live long. Rose Johnson was careless and negligent and selfish, and when Melanctha had to leave for a f e w days, the baby died. ( 8 5 )

One hundred f o r t y pages later, a f t e r w e have returned f r o m the Jeff Campbell episode into the present time of the narrative, the f o l l o w i n g passages a p p e a r : Rose had a hard time to bring her baby to its birth and Melanctha did everything that any woman could. T h e baby though it was healthy after it was born did not live long. Rose Johnson w a s careless and negligent and selfish and when Melanctha had to leave for a few days the baby died. (224-5)

W i t h a f e w negligible changes the same w o r d s are repeated almost verbatim. T h e undefined present is y o k e d over the past to the present that has been developed by the past. B y tampering in this w a y with the standard time continuum of the s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d , "realistic" narrative, G e r t r u d e Stein has rendered time abstract by turning it into an almost plastic element that can be manipulated at her will. In this sense, the stories of Three Lives look f o r w a r d to other manipulations of time such as The Waves, Remembrance of Things Past, and The Alexandria Quartet. T h e emphasis on the importance of present time is brought home most strongly by the first calculated use of the present participle. A s w e discussed in connection with Things as They Are, Gertrude Stein is most inter-

78

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

ested in the process of relationships. A l t h o u g h her characters usually do not e v o l v e , relationships are a l w a y s dynamic. One of the startling characteristics of " M e l a n c t h a " is the sudden a p p e a r a n c e of the present participle as an aid in the sense of process. T h e v e r y nature of the ing ending contains within it the idea of process. T o say that something " w a s b e g i n n i n g " is first of all to place the action in past time. B u t the action is not m e r e l y something that has a l r e a d y taken place. It is an action that during time past is a continuously occurring process. F u r t h e r m o r e , the present participle, even when used as a substantive, retains the idea of process. Jeff and M e lanctha r a r e l y talk about their " l o v e " ; it is a l w a y s their " l o v i n g . " Jeff says that M e l a n c t h a is " s w e e t and thinki n g , " r a t h e r than " t h o u g h t f u l . " T h e effect of the present participle can be seen well in a comparison of almost identical p a s s a g e s f r o m " M e l a n c t h a " and Things as They Are. E a r l y in the latter book, A d e l e asks H e l e n , " T e l l me how much do you care f o r m e . " H e l e n ' s a n s w e r is, " C a r e f o r vou my d e a r , m o r e than you k n o w and less than you t h i n k . " 3 In " M e l a n c t h a , " Jeff demands, " T e l l me just straight out h o w much do you care about me, M i s s M e l a n c t h a . " H e r a n s w e r : " I ccrtainly do care f o r you Jeff C a m p b e l l less than you are a l w a y s thinking and much more than you are k n o w i n g . " ( 1 3 2 ) T h e use of present participles changes the meaning of her a n s w e r subtly. She is not saying, as H e l e n did to A d e l e in the earlier book, that at the present moment she cares f o r Jeff m o r e than he k n o w s and less than he thinks. W h a t she is saying in this stylized a n s w e r is that in the process of the relationship the sum of the thoughts and k n o w l e d g e that 5

Things as They Are

( P a w l e t , V t . , 1 9 5 0 ) , p. 15.

Three Lives

79

are continuously present to Jeff are at variance with the actual state of Melanctha's feelings. It is the continuous present of the process of the relationship that Gertrude Stein is emphasizing in this use of the present participle. T h e analysis of a long passage of descriptive narration will shed further light on Gertrude Stein's use of the present participle: Jeff sat there this evening in his chair and was silent a long time, warming himself with the pleasant fire. He did not look at Melanctha who was watching. He sat there and just looked into the fire. A t first his dark, open face was smiling, and he was rubbing the back of his black-brown hand over his mouth to help him in his smiling. Then he was thinking, and he frowned and rubbed his head hard, to help him in his thinking. Then he smiled again, but now his smiling was not very pleasant. His smile was now wavering on the edge of scorning. His smile changed more and more, and then he had a look as if he were deeply down, all disgusted. N o w his face was darker, and he was bitter in his smiling, and he began, without looking from the fire, to talk to Melanctha, who was now very tense with her watching. ( 1 3 7 , italics mine)

T h e appearance of this passage occurs at a point when Melanctha has yet to win over the recalcitrantly puritanical Jeff to her way of life. Jeff is constantly wavering between his old middle-class morality and the more casual way of living that is characteristic of Melanctha's habits. When he is with Melanctha he accepts her. A w a y from her his feelings of guilt torment him. " J e f f always loved now to be with Melanctha and yet he always hated to go to h e r . " ( 1 3 6 ) T h e torment is a constant thing with Jeff, so much so that f r o m moment to moment he vacillates between the poles that seem open to him. When he is near Melanctha the torment doubles in intensity, so

8o

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

that almost in successive instants his mood changes. In this p a s s a g e G e r t r u d e Stein has abstracted a moment of time during which we a r e able to watch Jeff going t h r o u g h the process of m e n t a l anguish that is typical behavior for him in the context of this relationship. W e see him sitting by the fire, watched by M e l a n c t h a . H e looks in the fire and smiles. T h e n he thinks and f r o w n s and rubs his h e a d with his hand. T h e n he smiles again, but not p l e a s a n t l y . H i s smile changes slowly to an expression of disgust, a smile of bitterness, and without looking a w a y f r o m the fire at any time, he begins to talk to M e l a n c t h a , " w h o w a s now v e r y tense with her watchA l l of this t a k e s place in a few moments of time, and yet so much t a k e s place of importance. H o w is Gertrude Stein able to capture the feeling of process? T h e mere listing of the changes in Jeff Campbell's mood would not h a v e been enough. T h e r e is something more, and this extra element is the use of the present participle in a unique w a y . T h e key verbs in the p a r a g r a p h almost all end in ing; smiling, thinking, w a v e r i n g , scorning, looking, w a t c h i n g . A l l the w o r d s that most significantly denote the conceptual steps in the process of Jeff Campbell's state of mind end in the g r a m m a t i c a l f o r m that linguistically denotes process. T h i s m a r r i a g e of style and content enables the p a r a g r a p h to capture not only a present moment of time, but to capture it in the process of its being. 6 On the s u r f a c e the p a s s a g e would seem to outdo the realists at their own g a m e . M i s s Stein has succeeded in 6 A f u r t h e r note of interest is that this moment occurs in past time in the context of the story.

Three

Lives

81

capturing on paper the illusion of two characters in a tense moment of interaction. And yet, the paragraph must ultimately be seen as abstract in the context of our definition for at least two reasons. First, and least important, the stylistic idiosyncracy of the present participle has the partial effect of slowing down or distorting the ordinary syntactical rhythm we usually associate with standard English. Secondly, Gertrude Stein has abstracted her passage from the larger flow of time of the narrative. She has succeeded in capturing the verisimilitude of a moment, but there is movement of a sort only within the moment. Outside the moment of time itself this incident is simply another accretion in the series of effects that go into the making up of the life of Melanctha Herbert. Within the moment there is a transition from one state of mind to the next. However, this incident in the light of the whole story provides no logical transition, but simply another demonstration of the potentialities of the relationship between personalities. It is a "still point" within which there is movement. T h e use of language as an almost plastic element plays an increasing role in "Melanctha," as Gertrude Stein manipulates the word order to change the "tone" of the narrative or to render the general sense of Negro dialect more convincingly. Her main agent for the manipulation of language is her narrator, whose function varies in "Melanctha" even from what it was in the other stories of the book. In this tale the narrator is even more submerged into the narrative tone. His voice rises in pitch and falls according to the character whose actions he is describing or whose thoughts he is recording. H e sometimes speaks through the consciousness of a particular

82

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

character, sometimes in the voice one character would use in describing another, still at other times in a "collective Bridgepoint N e g r o 'chorus.' " 7 There are times when the narrator speaks an almost ordinary "straightforward" prose: Boys had never meant much to Melanctha. T h e y had always been too young to content her. Melanctha had a strong respect for any kind of successful power. ( 9 6 )

And there are still other times that the narrator intrudes with rhetorical questions almost in the manner of a soap opera: W h a t w a s it that now really happened to them? W h a t was it that Melanctha did, that made everything get all ugly for them? W h a t w a s it that Melanctha felt then . . .? ( 1 5 5 )

This narrator is also quite capable of using almost King James rhythms in describing the anxieties of his characters: A n d now the pain came hard and harder in Jeff Campbell, and he groaned, and it hurt him so, he could not bear it. A n d the tears came, and his heart beat, and he w a s hot and worn and bitter in him. ( 2 0 4 )

A s we can see, one of the characteristics of Gertrude Stein's work beginning to emerge in " M e l a n c t h a " is the ability or the propensity to write in a number of different styles even within the same work, a trait she shares with another twentieth-century abstractionist, James Joyce. T h e style bends to conform with the situation, to control its tone or rhythm. This is another step away from the traditional concept of realistic verisimilitude in which the tone or rhythm of a situation is to be rendered by the 7 H . R. Garvin, "Gertrude Stein: A Study of Her Theory and Practice," unpublished doctoral dissertation (Michigan, 1950), p. 124.

Three

Lives

83

presentation of the situation itself and not to be imposed on the situation through the impact of the style. W h e r e a s Gertrude Stein uses her narrator to approximate the rhythm of N e g r o speech, she also uses the dialogue o f her characters in much the same w a y . It must be obvious that M i s s Stein is not interested in reproducing dialogue with the exactness of a tape recorder. T h e penchant f o r giving literal, almost phonetic transcriptions of dialect is something that Gertrude Stein decidedly does not share with the realists. Since the entire story is an attempt at an approximation of reality rather than a reproduction of it, Gertrude Stein feels the freedom is hers to control the dialogue so that it aids in the sense of the continuous present she is attempting to give in her manipulation of the time continuum. A s an abstractionist, M i s s Stein accepts all the elements of the work of fiction as plastic entities subject to her needs. One can choose almost any long passage of dialogue at random f r o m " M e l a n c t h a " to see that it is not at all M i s s Stein's concern to reproduce with verbal exactitude the inflections in the speech o f Jeff and M e l a n c t h a . " I know Miss M e l a n c t h a " he began, " I t ain't very easy for you to understand w h a t I was meaning by what I was just saying to you, and perhaps some of the good people I like so wouldn't think very much, any more than you do, M i s s Melanctha, about the ways I have to be good. But that's no matter M i s s Melanctha. W h a t I mean Miss Melanctha by w h a t I was just saying to you is, that I don't, no, never, believe in doing things just to get excited. Y o u see Miss Melanctha I mean the way so many of the colored people do it." ( 1 2 1 )

This particular passage goes on f o r another full, uninterrupted page. First of all, dialogue that goes on so long at such a relaxed pace without an interruption by one of

84

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

the partners violates one o f the conventions o f realistic literary dialogue as well as ordinary conversation. I f this were the only instance of a protracted speech in " M e lanctha," w e could legitimately call it an exception, but it is only one of many such speeches. Secondly, Jeff adopts one o f the conventions of the narrative in the use of the present participle in his opening sentence. T h i r d l y , the speeches here and elsewhere in " M e l a n c t h a " take on a syntactic and ideational complexity on their o w n level that is the equal of the most analytic H e n r y James speech. T h i s complexity is surely not justified "realistically" in the context of the primitive level of behavior we see exhibited by the characters of the story. W h a t then is G e r t r u d e Stein trying to do h e r e ? It seems to this reader, at any rate, that the dialogue of a G e r t r u d e Stein story attempts to suggest the tone or syntax o f N e g r o speech while preserving the analytic point o f view she takes t o w a r d her characters. Gertrude Stein wants us to see the primitive consciousness o f her characters' minds at w o r k , while at the same time suggesting the ethnic qualities of their speech patterns. In order to do this, M i s s Stein feels she must abandon the contemporary conventions of realistic dialogue and establish conventions of her own. E v e n the letters that Jeff and M e l a n c t h a exchange are more approximations of the mentalities of the writers than they are " r e a l " letters. N o literate individual (which Jeff demonstrably i s ) , no matter h o w he spoke the English language, would write a serious letter to his lover that began like this : D e a r Melanctha, I certainly do know you ain't been any w a y sick this last week when you never met me right the way

Three Lives

85

you promised, and never sent me any word to say w h y you acted a w a y you certainly never could think was the right w a y you should do it to me. ( 1 9 1 )

In many w a y s the above is almost a parody of lowerclass, illiterate N e g r o speech. G r a n t e d that being a physician does not require Jeff Campbell to speak like a member of the M o d e r n L a n g u a g e Association; but if such a passage were to emanate f r o m the mouth o f a doctor even in a D r e i s e r novel it would be ludicrous. I f we are able to accept this in " M e l a n c t h a , " however, if w e are able here to "suspend our disbelief," it is almost certainly due to the f a c t that Gertrude Stein has forced us to accept her conventions as outlined above, and w e subject a passage such as this to the same kind o f scrutiny we would extend to a passage o f dialogue spoken by the same character. If her characters show an analytic turn of mind in their speeches and thoughts, they are also quite ruminative. Existing on a primitive ideational level, they repeat themselves constantly as they torturously analyze the problems that obsess them. But whereas this renders the movement of the novel almost static, there is nonetheless a rationale f o r this seemingly annoying trait. F o r instance, Jeff's repetitive ruminations are simply the reflection of a mind that is slow-moving, anxious, and indecisive. Jeff is constantly trying to j u s t i f y his own actions and rationalize his motives. H e constantly regurgitates the same problems to discuss them over and over again either with M e l a n c t h a or in his own mind. But his mind is not incisive enough to see to the heart o f his problem, and so he is f o r c e d into an endless cycle of repetition. This abstract (in the sense o f our definition of the t e r m )

86

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

r e p e t i t i v e n e s s is t h e n a reflection o f the very nature

of

t h e c h a r a c t e r s as G e r t r u d e S t e i n establishes t h e m . T h e " t a l k y " quality o f so much o f " M e l a n c t h a " is another

reflection

of

Gertrude

Stein's

abstract

concerns.

E v e n t s in " M e l a n c t h a " h a v e a l m o s t no d r a m a t i c i m p o r tance

whatsoever.

Miss

Stein

emphasizes

the

actual

e v e n t j u s t as little as she e m p h a s i z e s the actual physical o b j e c t . T h e i m p o r t a n c e o f t h e event lies not in its p l a c e in t h e n a r r a t i v e chain, b u t in its effect on the life e s p e c i a l l y t h e consciousness o f the c h a r a c t e r s .

and

Whatever

h a p p e n s t o J e f f and M e l a n c t h a they discuss o r mull o v e r endlessly. T h e

event i t s e l f assumes its significance

only

t h r o u g h w h a t we l e a r n a b o u t it t h r o u g h the expression of

either

o f the

characters

or

through

the

narrator's

s p e a k i n g in t h e accents o f t h e c h a r a c t e r s . Since

almost

e v e r y t h i n g in the s t o r y is an o u t g r o w t h o f the consciousness o f J e f f o r M e l a n c t h a , the l a n g u a g e is infused with an o b v i o u s t a l k i n e s s . A n d y e t ,

it is only t h r o u g h

this

t a l k i n e s s t h a t we can f o l l o w the actual t r a i n o f the n a r r a tive. W e

see n a r r a t i v e

d e v e l o p m e n t only in the

subtle

c h a n g e s and g r a d a t i o n s in t h e i n t e r p e r s o n a l r e l a t i o n s h i p s o f t h e b o o k t h a t s h o w t h e m s e l v e s in the c h a r a c t e r s ' discussions o f t h e i r own lives. O n c e again we see t h a t language, structure, and content work inextricably together in " M e l a n c t h a . " O n e o f t h e m o s t discussed c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s o f G e r t r u d e Stein's pointed

abstract out

style is h e r

characteristics

o u r discussion o f " T h e

use o f of

repetition.

repetition

I

have

previously

G o o d A n n a " and " T h e

in

Gentle

L e n a . " W e h a v e seen in t h e p a r a g r a p h j u s t previous to this o n e the r e p e t i t i o u s quality o f the c o n v e r s a t i o n s and t h o u g h t s o f J e f f a n d M e l a n c t h a . M i s s Stein seems t o view

Three

Lives

87

life as a succession of moments, each one of which repeats all the characteristics of the previous one with a very slight addition of some sort. All her writings exemplify this notion to some degree, structuring themselves by a long series of accretions of miniscule change. Repetition becomes basic to Miss Stein's aesthetic in Three Lives, and to those characteristics of repetition we have considered in the two shorter tales of Three Lives we shall add a few in "Melanctha." First of all, Miss Stein develops certain motifs either of single words or phrases which she repeats at significant intervals in her story. One is "the wide abandoned laughter that makes the warm broad glow of negro sunshine." Gertrude Stein uses this phrase to describe the various Negroes that she introduces into the narrative. Where the particular character stands with regard to this characteristic usually defines the nature of his personality. Rose

[Johnson]

laughed when

she was happy but she had

not the wide, abandoned laughter that makes the w a r m

broad

glow of negro sunshine. ( 8 6 ) In the days when

he

[Melanctha's

father]

had been

young and free and open, he had never had the wide doned laughter

that gives the broad

glow

to negro

most aban-

sunshine.

(92) H e [ J e f f Campbell] sang when he w a s happy and he laughed, and his w a s the free abandoned laughter that gives the w a r m broad glow to negro sunshine,

(ill)

There are also certain variations on the same phrase: He

[Jeff

Campbell]

southern sunshine. ( 1 3 7 )

always had a w a r m

broad

glow,

like

88 These

Abstractionism were

pleasant

in Gertrude

days

then,

in

the

Stein hot

southern

negro

sunshine . . . ( 2 0 9 ) " Y e s , M e l a n c t h a , d a r l i n g , " m u r m u r e d J e f f , and he w a s

very

happy in it, and so the t w o of them n o w in the w a r m air of the sultry, southern, negro sunshine, lay there f o r a long time

just

resting. ( 1 6 1 )

Certain key words are used again and again in the text as leitmotifs of a sort. F o r instance, M e l a n c t h a ' s journey through life in search of experience is in Three Lives called " w a n d e r i n g " in search of " w i s d o m . " T h e s e t e r m s assume a special meaning in M i s s Stein's usage. T h e kind of " w i s d o m " M e l a n c t h a desires most particularly is sexual. T h i s v a r i e t y of knowledge is obtainable only through " w a n d e r i n g " f r o m one sexual experience to another. E a r l y in the story M e l a n c t h a is not p r e p a r e d to do the proper w a n d e r i n g requisite for wisdom. She receives her first training f r o m J a n e H a r d e n , who is well versed in these areas. A l t h o u g h there a r e homosexual implications in the relationship of J a n e H a r d e n and M e l a n c t h a , especially in the w a y J a n e turns on M e l a n c t h a later on, this kind of " w a n d e r i n g " is simply another w a y of attaining the nebulous " w i s d o m . " Once the meanings of these terms are established, M i s s Stein is then able to v a r y the usage. In much the same w a y as with the quotation previously considered, these two terms are used as descriptive evaluations against which to measure the various characters we meet in the book. " M i s " H e r b e r t had a l w a y s been a little w a n d e r i n g and terious and uncertain in her w a y s . ( 9 0 ) J e m Richards wisdom. ( 2 1 7 )

always

had k n o w n

what

it w a s

to have

mysreal

Three Lives

89

A n d so M e l a n c t h a wandered on the edge of wisdom.

(101)

T o heighten the special meaning of these motif-words Miss Stein occasionally uses the terms with their conventional meanings. A f t e r one of their reconciliations Jeff and Melanctha pack food and go out to walk in the country. Their "wandering" on this day is quite innocent. T h e y were very happy all that day in their wandering. T h e y had taken things along to eat together. T h e y sat in the bright fields and they were happy, they wandered in the woods they were

happy. J e f f

always

loved

in

this w a y

to

and

wander.

(149)

In the usage which Miss Stein creates f o r these words in "Melanctha," we can see f o r the first time evidence of a later major characteristic of her writing: the creation of new meanings f o r old words. Aside from the use of repetition as leitmotif, we see in "Melanctha" isolated instances of repetition f o r sheer emphasis, allied with a spirit of play. On page 1 4 3 , the last long paragraph on the page shows every sentence beginning with either the words " J a n e H a r d e n " or the word " J a n e . " On page 1 6 5 , to mention another instance, the words " a l w a y s " or "always now" appear in nearly every sentence. It would be impossible to justify this merely as repetition f o r the purposes of emphasis. This kind of emphasis has all the subtlety of a pounding hammer. It is Miss Stein's spirit of play that is at work here, an element to which she gives ever f r e e r rein throughout her career. W e would do well to come to terms with this clownish side of Gertrude Stein as early as possible. An element of Gertrude Stein's use of " w a n d e r " and "wisdom" leads to a further facet of her abstract style,

go

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

the use of euphemisms. Aside f r o m her lack of specificity in descriptive fact and setting, M i s s Stein shows a decided reticence t o w a r d subjects such as sexual matters that she seems to find distasteful. R a t h e r than more pointed terminology f o r sexual behavior and object she uses such general terms as " w a n d e r " and " w i s d o m . " W h e n Jeff begins to feel a growing attraction f o r M e lanctha, Gertrude Stein describes it in the f o l l o w i n g fashion : W h e n a n y t h i n g amused him in them [the n e w s p a p e r s ] he read it out to M e l a n c t h a . M e l a n c t h a w a s n o w p r e t t y silent, w i t h him. D r . C a m p b e l l began to feel a little, about h o w she responded to him. D r . C a m p b e l l began to see a little that perhaps M e l a n c t h a had a good mind. D r . C a m p b e l l w a s not sure yet that she had a good mind, but he began to think a little that perhaps she might h a v e one. ( 1 1 6 )

I t is surely not Melanctha's mind that is attracting Jeff Campbell, whatever else it may be. Indeed, it is almost humorous how Gertrude Stein avoids being explicit about sexual matters. Richard B r i d g m a n has pointed out how Gertrude Stein describes Melanctha's early " w a n derings" in almost symbolic terms, placing them in the setting of a railroad y a r d amid "the full rush of the pounding train, that bursts out f r o m the tunnel where it lost i t s e l f , " ( 9 8 ) among train men who ask her, " ' H u l l o sis, do you want to sit on my engine?' " W h e n dared to climb onto a high place by one of the workmen, she fell and broke her arm, an act to which "it is difficult not to assign some hymeneal meaning." 8 It is easy to become impatient with Gertrude Stein f o r this kind of ambiguity 8 Richard 1 9 6 1 ) , 354.

Bridgman,

"Melanctha,"

Am.

Lit.,

XXXIII

(Nov.

Three Lives

91

and obfuscation, but let us remember first that Henry James takes us completely through The Wings of the Dove without telling us the nature of Milly Theale's illness and through The Ambassadors without telling what it is that the Newsomes manufacture. One other point that must be explored before we leave "Melanctha" is Gertrude Stein's continuing and strengthening notions of personality. The concern with the racial type is still very much present. Rose Johnson was careless and was lazy, but she had been brought up by white folks and she needed decent comfort. Her white training had only made for habits, not for nature. Rose had the simple, promiscuous unmorality of the black people.

(86)

The social class type : Rose now in the easy fashion of the poor lived with one woman in her house, and then for no reason went and lived with some other woman in her house. (88, italics mine)

In these she goes no farther than with similar passages in "The Good Anna" or " T h e Gentle Lena." In her discussion of personality types, however, she does at one point set off in a new direction. On page 186 there are two paragraphs that carry on at some length about "tender hearted natures" and "passionate natures," prefiguring the much longer discussion of various types of human personality that Gertrude Stein undertakes in The Making of Americans. The first paragraph begins: In tender hearted natures, those that mostly never feel strong passion, suffering often comes to make them harder. ( 1 8 6 )

The paragraph continues for another eleven lines in the same vein, containing some of the thoughts of the nar-

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r a t o r and some o f J e f f Campbell. T h e second p a r a g r a p h begins: Passionate suffer, come

that to

natures is all

them

tender-hearted

who

the

kind

as sharp when

as

have of a

always

people

made

who

sensation,

themselves,

have

they

emotions

always

they suffer, and it a l w a y s

get

does them

to that

more good

to suffer.

B e f o r e it is over, this p a r a g r a p h goes on to include a small discussion o f " c o m f o r t a b l e n a t u r e s . " G e r t r u d e Stein's next book will be focused entirely on personality types. W h a t effect does this concern have on her treatment o f the characters in " M e l a n c t h a ? " L e t us look f o r our evidence in the main c h a r a c t e r herself. A s we have discussed at length earlier, G e r t r u d e Stein is a psychological determinist. T h o s e psychological characteristics that make up a personality, those traits t h a t a character shares with a certain " t y p e , " determine the actions and the entire behavior patterns connected with the individual in question. O n e o f the first determinants o f personality f o r G e r t r u d e Stein is heredity. W e have already discussed heredity in connection with M e l a n c t h a in our opening r e m a r k s about the tale. G e r t r u d e Stein sets forth this problem explicitly early in the s t o r y : M e l a n c t h a w a s pale y e l l o w and mysterious and a little pleasant like her mother, b u t the real p o w e r in M e l a n c t h a ' s n a t u r e

came

t h r o u g h her robust and

black

father. She

and v e r y

unendurable

(90) [Melanctha]

f o l k s but

(86)

unpleasant

had

then she had

not

been

been half

raised

like

made with

by

white

real w h i t e

Rose

blood.

Three Lives

93

The mixed racial heritage and the inherited personality traits of her parents seem to Gertrude Stein to be the major factors determining the composition of the personality known as Melanctha. Just where Melanctha would fit into the type-structure Miss Stein erects in The Making of Americans we will not venture to guess. What she does have in common with the rest of Gertrude Stein's fictional characters is the fixed, repetitive nature of the actions that grow inevitably out of her personality. Melanctha is one whose contours cannot be seen out of the context of her relationships with other characters, and her actions follow the same pattern throughout the story. Melanctha can find no middle ground with another person. She is either dominant or dominated. Her relationships always begin with her being submissive to the other partner. This is the pattern she establishes with Jane Harden and Jeff Campbell. A f t e r she has gotten what she wants with each, however, she suddenly takes the upper hand and with almost cruel disdain excises the other person from her life. With Jem Richards she begins the same way, but as the relationship progresses we become aware that Melanctha has more than met her match. And yet, this seems to be what she has wanted all along, perhaps in a Freudian way through the influence of her cruelly dominant father. Gertrude Stein gives the clue to this quite early: He was a reckless man was Jem Richards. He knew how to win out, and always all her life, Melanctha Herbert loved successful power. ( 2 1 7 )

Melanctha always "loved successful power," but it is her particular cross that those who wield the successful

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power will a l w a y s do her in, just as she left Jeff and J a n e H a r d e n when she w a s finished with them. A s soon as things get too hot in Bridgepoint for J e m Richards, he leaves town and M e l a n c t h a . A s soon as Rose Johnson feels M e l a n c t h a threatening her husband, she tells her to go a w a y . Once again M e l a n c t h a is turned away by someone who is dominant over her. A f t e r this final rejection M e l a n c t h a ' s life begins to trail off to its end. A very strong impression that one gets f r o m a reading of " M e l a n c t h a " is that there has been no equivocation possible of the pattern of her life. M e l a n c t h a could go through a thousand reincarnations, and in not one would her life be very different. F o r a while she could perhaps dominate the weak, but ultimately she would be beaten down by someone stronger than she. And since she is one to whom living means experiencing at its highest pitch, her d e f e a t s would ultimately mean her destruction. T h e r e is something monolithic and abstract about such a static conception of personality. Though critics have been concerned with the similarities between " M e l a n c t h a " and Things as They Arc,9 it seems to me that the most profound similarity between the two tales lies in the conception of the personality of the central figure in each of the stories. Both A d e l e and Melanctha are "slowm o v i n g " people who are dependent on others in relationships. N o m a t t e r how many relationships they enter into or how m a n y times they t r y to make the present one 9 Bridgman, op. cit., and S u t h e r l a n d , op. cit. Leo Stein made the claim in Journey into the Self that " M e l a n c t h a " w a s simply a rew o r k i n g of the m a t e r i a l s of Things as They Are. In its most literal sense, this statement is a gross oversimplification. H o w e v e r , there are a number of similarities between the t w o w o r k s , some of which are discussed above. T h e best documentation of these similarities occurs in the opening pages of Richard Bridgman's article on "Melanctha."

Three Lives

95

succeed, they are always doomed to the same outcome. They are victimized by stronger characters. Their personalities are fixed. There are other minor similarities between the two early books. Jeff accuses Melanctha: " Y o u certainly ain't got no right to be always holding your pain out to me." ( 1 7 2 ) This is reminiscent of a similar accusation that Adele makes of Helen in Things as They Are}0 Melanctha as a child suffers stoically with a broken arm that her father refuses to have tended by a doctor. The almost exact situation is described in the earlier book in connection with Helen. Throughout "Melanctha," crucial situations between Jeff and Melanctha are always saved at the last minute by Jeff's taking her emotionally into his arms. The same pattern occurs repeatedly in Things as They Are. Other similarities could be listed. However, from our point of view the two books are more interesting for their differences than merely for what they have in common, most of which we have already discussed. Perhaps the main difference still to be considered is that the focus in "Melanctha" is reduced from the relationship of three characters to that of two. For almost one hundred pages in the center of the story Gertrude Stein allows nothing to intrude on Jeff and Melanctha. Other backgrounds and characters sink almost into nonexistence. W e shall see the focus reduced even further in the works that follow. The Making of Americans will focus on the individual character, although in the general con10 " ' Y o u have no right to constantly use your pain as a w e a p o n ! ' Adele flashed out angrily." Things as They Are ( P a w l e t , V t . , 1 9 5 0 ) » p. 60.

g6

Abstractionism

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Stein

t e x t of t h e o t h e r c h a r a c t e r s . T h e " p o r t r a i t s " will f o c u s a l m o s t p u r e l y o n t h e o n e c h a r a c t e r , w i t h o n l y t h e h i n t of a n o b s e r v e r . Tender Buttons will f o c u s o n s i m p l e physical o b j e c t s . Three Lives, especially " M e l a n c t h a , " is t h e n a g e n u i n e s t e p into t h e a b s t r a c t style. W h i l e it d o e s n o t g o as f a r as l a t e r w o r k s t o w a r d t h e a b o l i t i o n of all n a r r a t i v e m o v e m e n t a n d v e r i s i m i l i t u d e , it e s t a b l i s h e s all t h e s t r a i n s t h a t G e r t r u d e Stein is t o d e v e l o p in h e r first m a j o r stvle, as r e p r e s e n t e d b y The Making of Americans, a n d in t h e l a t e r styles of h e r " p o r t r a i t s " a n d Tender Buttons.

4 T h e M a k i n g of Americans

BY T H E TIME SHE HAD FINISHED Three

Lives,

GERTRUDE

Stein was already looking ahead to the major work she was to write next. T h e many unpublished charts and notebooks that lie in the Y a l e Collection of American Literature are testimony to the intense amount of preparation Miss Stein did before sitting down to begin The Making of Americans. W h e n she finally began the writing she worked at the book on and off for the next five years. Donald Gallup, Miss Stein's literary executor, has carefully dated the composition of the book. Begun at Fiesole in the summer of 1906, shortly after the completion of the stories later published as Three Lives, it seems to have been worked at more or less continuously until the end of 1908. T h e n other works, notably " A Long G a y Book," " T w o , " " M a n y M a n y W o m e n " and a great number of the portraits, were begun and carried along while The Mak-

98

Abstractionism

ing

of Americans

in Gertrude

Stein

w a s still in progress, and the final section of

the novel w a s not completed until October

1911.1

A f t e r working on the book f o r two years Miss Stein's restless mind went out in search of a new style in new works. She tells us about this throughout The Making of Americans, and she demonstrates some of her new techniques late in the book. M o s t readers know The Making of Americans only in the abridged version published by Harcourt, Brace in 1 9 3 4 to coincide with Gertrude Stein's triumphant return to the United States. T h i s version reprints the sections of the original version that Bernard F a y chose f o r his French translation of the book, and received the approval of the author. Indeed, M i s s Stein quotes f r o m this edition in her lecture on " T h e G r a d u a l M a k i n g of T h e M a k i n g of Americans [¿¿c]." 2 N o w h e r e in this book do the publishers tell the reader that he is reading an abridgment. A s a result, many readers do not know that the original version of The Making of Americans was published in 1 9 2 5 3 and ran to 925 closely printed pages, as against 4 1 6 of the more liberally spaced abridgment. Although the original version has assumed today the status of a very rare book, I shall be referring to it rather than the merely scarce abridged version, since the f o r m e r is M i s s Stein's own conception of what the book should be. T h e full-length Making of Americans is one of the major " u n r e a d " modern books. Its overwhelming length and the difficulties posed by its style have presented ob1

III

2

3

" T h e Making of The Making of Americans," New ( 1 9 5 0 ) , 54Lectures in America (Boston, 1 9 5 7 ) , pp. 1 3 5 - 1 6 1 . Contact Editions.

Colophon,

The Making

of Americans

99

stacles that have p r o v e d insurmountable to most critics. Edmund W i l s o n , w h o g a v e G e r t r u d e Stein the critical status of a modern classic in Axel's Castle, admits in the same book that " I confess that I have not read this b o o k all through, and I do not k n o w whether it is possible to do so." 4 Ben Reid is even more assertive : T h e complete Making of Americans is, I readable f o r a n o r m a l mind. I have read shortened version ( I think I h a v e — i t ' s hard am not proud of the accomplishment, and I of people could be f o u n d w h o have done even

a m convinced, unevery w o r d of the to be s u r e ) , b u t I doubt that a score that. 5

It is obvious that we h a v e entered the realm of those of Gertrude Stein's w o r k s that have posed enigmas to almost all of her readers. A l t h o u g h D o n a l d Sutherland has said that " t h e w o r k itself, the sequence of statements and ideas, makes the stream of thought perfectly objective and available to anyone w h o can read E n g l i s h , " 6 it is obvious to any reader of The Making of Americans that its difficulties g o well beyond the fact that all the sentences and p a r a g r a p h s make individual sense and that there is a certain connection between p a r a g r a p h s and the larger units of the book. The Making of Americans takes a number of bold strides into the kingdom of the abstract, and any reader w h o brings with him only the equipment needed to approach a novel of traditional realism will react in much the same w a y as M r . W i l s o n or M r . Reid. The Making of Americans w a s first published almost N e w Y o r k , 1931, p. 239. Art by Subtraction: A Dissenting Opinion of Gertrude Stein (Norman, Okla., 1958), p. 18. 6 Gertrude Stein: A Biography of Her Work ( N e w Haven, 1 9 5 1 ) , P- 554

6

ioo

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

twenty years after it was begun. Alice B. Toklas tells us how Gertrude Stein had no luck at all finding a publisher, and how the original manuscript languished for many years in their apartment, unread except by the closest devotees of her circle.7 Finally, in 1923, Ernest Hemingway offered to help get the book published in installments in Ford Madox Ford's Transatlantic Review. A t this point Miss Stein picked up the manuscript once again and with the help of Miss Toklas and Hemingway began to get it ready for publication. Complications surrounding the printing of installments in Ford's magazine led eventually to a falling out with Ford, but the public notice accorded the work brought about the publication of the complete book by Robert McAlmon's Contact Press in 1925, and to the Boni and Liveright edition of the following year. In addition to a quite substantial body of notes, outlines and charts, and a complete typescript, there are two complete autograph manuscript versions of The Making of Americans in the Yale Collection of American Literature. 8 There is also a small ledger with a draft of what Gertrude Stein originally numbered the first five chapters that is previous to either of the complete versions. Miss Stein copied her own work endlessly and often made extensive revisions, interpolations, and excisions. Faced with material of this sort, one of the problems of this study becomes the determination of which 7 Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toilas (New York, 1 9 3 3 ) , p. 2 1 5 . 8 I must here express my thanks to M r . Donald Gallup, curator of the Yale Collection of American Literature, for making my examination of Gertrude Stein's letters and manuscripts both free from difficulty and profitable.

The Making

of Americans

101

stylistic revisions were made when Gertrude Stein prepared the text for publication in the 1920's. Since the manuscript of The Making of Americans, not including the typescript, fills five boxes, a line-by-line comparison of manuscript and published text is not practicable for this study. (The final autograph manuscript fills twentyseven large composition-size notebooks on both sides of the page.) However, a careful study of a number of random selections from The Making of Americans shows that even in her later revisions Gertrude Stein remained essentially faithful to the spirit of her earlier abstract style. The revisions consist mainly of changing certain words that Miss Stein presumably found ungraceful and of exchanging certain phrases for others that were perhaps more satisfactory to her ear; but in no significant way do they tamper with the spirit of the early style. There is one change in the later manuscript that is worth noting as a minor revision of some significance. Throughout the entire earlier manuscript version Gertrude Stein kept one autobiographical element constantly at work. She referred to the Hersland family as "german." This descriptive adjective we find lined through in all the later manuscript versions and omitted altogether in the published book. In the manuscript, f o r instance, there appears the sentence, "This \_sic~\ german men and women, our grandfathers and grandmothers, with their children born and unborn with them . . ." In the book this appears as "These certain men and women . . ." 9 This constant excision throughout the book reduces Gertrude Stein's autobiographical role for one 9 Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans Page numbers in text refer to this edition.

(Paris, 1925), p. 3.

I02

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

thing, but m o r e important, it renders the descriptions of the H e r s l a n d s less specific, and thus they become even m o r e solidly p o r t r a y e d general types. 1 0 A m o r e profitable contrast can be made between the earliest extant version of The Making of Americans and the d r a f t s t h a t f o l l o w . M a n y of the passages t h a t a p p e a r in this e a r l y manuscript version disappear altogether l a t e r on. T h e reason f o r this is f a i r l y clear. M o s t of the passages t h a t disappear a r e the equal of m a n y of the m o s t a w k w a r d passages of Things as They Are. T h e kind o f apprentice w o r k t h a t these excised passages seem to be leads one to believe t h a t this opening w a s w r i t t e n a long time previous to the rest of the book. P e r h a p s it antedates Three Lives, although there seems to be no w a y to p r o v e this. 1 1 T h e opening passage of the book begins: Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. "Stop!" cried the groaning old man at last, "Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree." 1 0 It has been suggested by Drs. Roland Gibson and Herbert Howarth that Gertrude Stein excised the word "german" because of the anti-German climate in Europe following the World W a r . 1 1 One of the difficulties in dealing with Gertrude Stein's manuscript notebooks is that they may contain excerpts from a number of works begun at different times. And since she was in the habit of beginning occasionally toward the end of the notebook, we cannot merely suppose that the portions of the manuscript were written in the order that they appear. An example should make my point. There is a notebook among the notes to The Making of Americans that begins quite expectedly with a passage that in slightly revised form appears later in the published version of the book. It concerns the ancestry and general qualities of men and women from The Making of Americans. Then there appear five or six pages of an unpublished fable about a man who had three sons and did not know which was the true one. Following that is a section from The Making of Americans on "thinking ourselves always to be young men and women." Then there is a short fragment from The Making of Americans

The Making of Americans

103

This did not appear at all in the earliest draft, but makes its first appearance in the second draft as follows: T h e r e is an old story that tells of a man who, merciless in his anger, dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. " J o h n stop," cried the groaning old man . . .

It is instructive to consider the changes made here by Miss Stein for the final version. One could feel that the original passage was more abstract (by our definition) because its anecdotal tone prevents the establishment of a feeling of verisimilitude, whereas the way the lines now stand they plunge us directly into the narrative. There are a number of reasons, however, why this is not so. First of all, the general nature of the narrative gives it an almost fable-like quality. Time is designated merely as "once." T h e characters are identified no more closely about "one of these 4 german [sic] women." A f t e r this is a section about the young Dehnings. Then facing the section on the Dehnings, and running concurrently for three or four pages, we see a passage from "Melanctha" about Melanctha and Rose Johnson that appears with revisions late in the published version of that story. These fragments vary between pen and pencil, between sloppy and careful penmanship. (When Miss Stein uses careful penmanship it almost certainly means that she is making a copy of an earlier draft.) There is no very good way of determining when any of them were written, except to suppose that it was no later than 1906, the terminus ad quern of Three Lives. Since "Melanctha" was the last written of Three Lives, it is altogether possible that it was written concurrently with the early notes to The Making of Americans. Or if Miss Stein followed her common practice of beginning a notebook toward the end, perhaps she merely picked a scarcely used notebook from Three Lives and began to use it for the notes for her next work. But then how do we explain the appearance of the unpublished fable? When was it written, and what work was it to be a part of, if any? These questions are perhaps unanswerable. A t any rate, the problems of establishing an absolute order for the earliest of the Stein canon should be clear.

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Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

than "an angry man" and "his father." The setting is merely "the ground" in the father's "own orchard." Since we do not even know who the father is, the information hardly places us in a specific locale. In fact, almost nothing is localized. We are in a timeless world anywhere. Even the name " J o h n " that appeared in the earlier draft has been excised by Gertrude Stein. The central fictional character of this piece of narrative is nameless. The passage as it now stands is from this point of view still quite abstract. However, another even more important reason for its abstractionist superiority over its earlier version is seen in its juxtaposition with the general statement that follows, which begins: " I t is hard living down the tempers we are born with." Each passage is made more meaningful by the juxtaposition's forcing us to make a difficult connection between the two paragraphs. H a d the opening paragraph been left as a piece of semi-abstract narrative the contrast between the two passages would not have been nearly as striking. T w o major sources of abstractionism in The Making of Americans are the increased use of repetition in sentence structure and the further extension of the kind of syntactic discontinuity we found in Three Lives. Stylistic concerns for Gertrude Stein now begin to override plot, movement, setting, and character development. The Making of Americans is almost completely a novel of description, 925 pages of pure "telling." Gertrude Stein is obviously the narrator from the very first word, and she constantly places her own ideas before the reader. There is no attempt to make the narrative move, to give the illusion of life passing before your eyes. What Gertrude

The Making of Americans

105

Stein attempts to do in this mammoth chronicle is give a sense of the slow, evergoing passage of time f r o m moment to moment and f r o m generation to generation, and her various uses of repetition are her major means to this end. W e see the continuous cycle of time moving in endless repetitions as the continuous present unfolds itself. I f there is movement, it is contained not in the intercourse between human beings, but within each present moment and its movement to its successor. In addition to the use of repetition, Gertrude Stein employs another set of devices to give her sentences the variety that lends her style much of whatever else it may have of individuality and distinction. W h a t Miss Stein sets up f o r us in the style of this book is the traditional straightforward English syntax of sentence-verb-object and its variations. Since we come to all writings in English with this expectancy, M i s s Stein merely reinforces our expectations with her opening sentences. T h i s is exactly what almost all the books within the reading experience of all of us do. Of course, what gives all writing whatever we call its unique style arises f r o m the variations that the individual author imposes on the standard patterns of the language. Writing that lacks such variations as figurative language, imagery, metaphor, and all the many well-known figures would have the stylistic interest of a telephone book, or, charitably, of a very dull newspaper. Gertrude Stein does not use to a great extent many of the standard figures that authors have used to vary their prose patterns. Aside f r o m repetition, she uses disorienting devices to wrench her sentence structure from the standard syntax. Some of these devices include: the completion of phrases normally left "understood" by

io6

Abstractionism

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Stein

most speakers and writers of English; the use of certain words in functions normally foreign to words of their particular morphology; the dislocation of standard word order in places that the traditional user of the English language would normally avoid. It is through variations such as these, however, that the qualities of Gertrude Stein's writing that we have dubbed abstractionism increasingly manifest themselves. In many of her later writings these qualities of style are almost the only thing that Gertrude Stein has left us to talk about. Despite its great length, The Making of Americans is centrally concerned with only a handful of characters from the Hersland family, Julia Dehning who marries Alfred Hersland, and a few seamstresses, governesses, and friends who wander in and out of the lives of the main figures in the book. John Malcolm Brinnin has made the following mathematical calculations: T w o hundred and eighty-eight pages are devoted to heredity and "the old people in the new world." One hundred and ninety-eight pages are devoted to Martha Hersland who is of "the new people made out of the old" . . . T w o hundred and forty-four pages are given to Alfred Hersland and Julia Dehning . . . One hundred and eighty-four pages are devoted to David Hersland . . . 1 2

In each of these sections we discover the life story of one of the various central characters, although we certainly do not follow them from the cradle to the grave in that order. W e follow the older generation from Europe to the United States. W e see them settle in Bridgepoint and then in Gossols, without our knowing where either 12

The

Third

I 9 5 9 ) > P. 95-

Rose:

Gertrude

Stein and Her

World

(Boston,

The Making

of Americans

107

of these places is. W e see the children develop, marry, have a few friends, governesses, and seamstresses, and die. The actual events of the book could probably be counted on fingers and toes, and most of them are not events that we witness, but that we are told about. It is almost impossible to retell the plot coherently because there is genuinely no such thing. What Gertrude Stein presents us is simply a series of character studies, and the emphasis is decidedly on character. Events come into focus not when they supposedly happened but when they suddenly become relevant to illustrate a point that the author wishes to make. Gertrude Stein has succeeded almost completely in getting away from the notion of "story." This in itself is a very large step away from "Melanctha" in the direction of total abstractionism. If there is no time sequence, almost no events, and no story, then The Making of Americans is recognizable as a novel only in the loosest contemporary definition of the term. W h a t then is it? Rather than get ourselves mired in the sticky mud of rigid definition, let us examine what Gertrude Stein herself had to say about it. The subtitle of the book is "The History of a Family's Progress." Is The Making of Americans a history? ( T h r e e Lives was originally titled Three Histories.) If history is the chronological reporting of events in time, then we must give only the most guarded yes as answer to the question. Gertrude Stein does not care about the ordering of events in time. One of the demands she makes on the reader in this book is that he reorder the history for himself if he wants to follow a time continuum. However, there is enough else in Gertrude Stein's method that reminds us of historical writing to allow us to go on

io8

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

with the analogy. In a history one tells what happened, or at least attempts to do so. Most of the time one does not try to render or reproduce the events of the past just as they supposedly occurred to create the illusion of verisimilitude. One tells what the events were and perhaps analyzes the possible reasons for their occurrence, or presents the possible causes of the event and then presents the event as growing out of the causes. In many respects, these are at least a partial explanation for Gertrude Stein's literary method in The Making of Americans. She tells and she analyzes, or she does the reverse. She is not interested in presenting a realistic reproduction of the event, only its implications. She is perhaps what one could call an interpretive historian, with the emphasis on interpretive. In fact, the emphasis is so much on the interpretive that her documentation is weak. I am, however, not attempting to pass judgment on Miss Stein as an historian, but merely to characterize her as such. Most of the time one must accept what she says in her explanations of various characters. She does not like to waste time exemplifying her statements by having her fictional people perform in various situations. T h a t Gertrude Stein looked on herself as a kind of historian is evident from statements that she makes during the course of the book: Sometime there is a history of each one. T h e r e must be such a history of each one for the repeating in them makes a history of them. T h e repeating of the kinds of them makes a history of the kinds of them, the repeating of the different parts and w a y s of being makes a history in many w a y s of every one. T h i s is n o w a history of some. T h i s w i l l be sometime a history of many kinds of them. A n y one w h o looks at each one w i l l see coming out from them the bottom nature of them and

The Making

of Americans

the mixing of other nature or natures with the bottom of them. ( 1 9 0 - 9 1 )

109 nature

We must, however, look on Gertrude Stein as a historian of the individual consciousness rather than as one of the more conventional types of historians. Gertrude Stein treats her characters more as potentially historical figures than as fictional ones: "Sometime there will be a complete history of Madeleine Wyman's married living, it will be very interesting." ( 2 6 5 ) It would seem safe to say that Gertrude Stein's attitude and method place The Making of Americans in a genre somewhere between the loosely defined modern novel and the narrowly defined history of personal consciousness. Whatever name one gives it, however, it seems obvious that The Making of Americans makes a genuine break away from the tradition of the novel as Gertrude Stein found it. The structure of The Making of Americans is in many ways a logical extension of the method Gertrude Stein was exploring in Three Lives. For one thing, it lacks even more the specific description of the realistic novel. There is no sense of time setting, for all its similarity to history. The fable-like tone noted in the opening lines of the novel extends to the sense of time in the book as a whole. Gertrude Stein is at great pains to let us know that this family could be any family anywhere in America at any time, and the same characteristics would be true of its individual members. And so, she does not bother to give any indication as to when the events of the novel take place or when the characters lived. The same thing is true of the attention that Gertrude Stein lavishes on the physical setting. She is careful to tell us what class of people live in particular sections of

no

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

the town, but we have next to no idea what the houses look like and only an inkling of where the towns are located. (Oakland and Baltimore are presumably the real-life counterparts of Gossols and Bridgepoint, but of this we cannot be absolutely certain.) Of course, Bridgepoint is the same town that served as the setting for Three Lives, only we have moved up many notches in the social scale in the characters that demand our attention. The one sense of description that continues almost intact from Miss Stein's previous works is the sense of social milieu. Although she avoids many specific descriptions here, Gertrude Stein gives us a very strong sense of the social circles in which her characters live. Another logical extension of the methodology of Three Lives is the fracturing of time that Gertrude Stein carries to f a r greater lengths than in "Melanctha." In the former book, Miss Stein began the narrative with the action in the present, moved back to the past, and then continued through the past back into the present time once again. W e were required to keep in our minds the information we got in the beginning of the story until the end when the events took place all over again. However, what was required there was nothing when compared to the extent to which Miss Stein breaks up the time sequence in The Making of Americans. If we are required to wait 125 pages for the return of Rose Johnson and the birth of her baby in the earlier book, Miss Stein now asks us to wait 600 pages for some events to recur and some characters to reappear. In the earliest part of the book we witness the wedding preparations and marriage of Julia Dehning and A l f r e d Hersland. A f t e r this the subject is dropped until page 647, when

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we are suddenly presented once again with the event, which we are of course expected to remember. But there is something that further complicates this kind of difficulty. In "Melanctha" the time sequence which Gertrude Stein proceeds to violate is quite obvious; it is defined by the length of Melanctha's life. But The Making of Americans deals with generations of individuals whose lives cross so much in a temporally and spatially undefined universe that we find it almost impossible to reconstruct any line of continuity. As in "Melanctha," we have here the same presentness of time, even with events that are supposedly occurring in the distant past. The moment in which the events happen is always a present moment. Miss Stein wreaks such havoc with the traditional continuum of time that the only time we can see with any surety is the present moment in which a particular passage was created—or perhaps is being read. Of course, if all time is continually present, then all time can never be either past or future. That is perhaps why in Gertrude Stein there is ultimately no looking backward or forward in time. There is only the now. An even further violation of time is brought about by one of Gertrude Stein's major devices for violating the continuity of the structure of the story line. I refer now to her use of the generalized digression. W e have noticed the digression as an element that appeared almost gratuitously tacked on to the story in Things as They Are. In Three Lives we found that the digression by the narrator usually served to describe the particular type, be it social, psychological, or racial, that the narrator felt himself called upon to define. However, what we have

H2

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

nominally been recognizing as a disgression becomes in The Making of Americans a most integral part of the narrative method. In this book Miss Stein is so concerned with her characters as examples of various psychological types that she is as much or more concerned with the description of the type as with the description of the person. One of her standard methods for presenting her characters is to introduce them and tell about a few of their characteristics in a single rounded paragraph. In the following paragraph she leaves the specific world of her character and begins to list in her peculiar repetitive style the characteristics of the type which by its juxtaposition we take to be related to the character of the preceding paragraph. This manner of presenting the material Gertrude Stein generally follows throughout the course of her book, alternating her paragraphs between those of description and those of generalized digression. T h i s is now a history of M a r t h a Hersland. T h i s is now a history of M a r t h a and of everyone w h o came to be of her living. T h e r e w i l l then be soon much description of every w a y one can think of men and women, in their beginning, in their middle living, and their ending. E v e r y one then is an individual being. E v e r y one then is like many others always living, there are many w a y s of thinking of every one, this is now a description of all of them. T h e r e must then be a whole history of each one of them. T h e r e must then now be a description of all repeating. N o w I will tell all the meaning to me in repeating, the loving there is in me for repeating. ( 2 9 0 )

The character is presented in the opening sentence, and we are told that this will be her history. Then Miss

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Stein digresses immediately to a consideration of the meaning of the individual and then to how the individual expresses himself through repetition. In the paragraphs that follow, the generalized disquisitions on the nature of personality types and how they reveal their bottom natures continues, along with a description of Gertrude Stein's own learning processes. Martha Hersland does not reappear for almost twenty pages. T h i s is now then some description of my learning. T h e n there will be a beginning again of M a r t h a Hersland and her being and her living. T h i s is now then first a little studying and then later M a r t h a Hersland will begin living. N o w then to do this little studying. ( 3 0 8 )

She then disappears until page 3 7 7 , during which time Miss Stein gives her description of the various types of dependent independent, independent dependent, attacking and resisting personalities. N o w then to begin again the history of M a r t h a Hersland and of every one she ever knew in living. A l w a y s there w i l l be here writing a description of all the kinds of w a y s there can be seen to be kinds of men and women. T h e r e w i l l be here then written the complete history of every one M a r t h a Hersland ever came to know in her living, the fundamental character of every one, the bottom natures in them, the other natures in them, the mixtures in them, the strength and weakness of everything they have inside them. ( 3 7 7 )

Martha Hersland then begins to appear more frequently in her section of the book. Although she is by no means present on every page, she nonetheless rarely disappears for more than a page or two. It is quite obvious then that the narrative structure of the book is severely stretched. Those who have been

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Abstractionism

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Stein

trained on prose fiction that presents a story or at least a narrative that can be followed both spatially and temporally (and this really includes all of us) find their attention taxed almost beyond endurance on their first encounter with this book. Never before had a book purporting to be prose narrative fiction played such havoc with the traditional schemes of presentation. Gertrude Stein places us in an abstract world in which the continuity of time almost completely disappears, and all we see are consciousnesses moving perhaps within themselves or in places that have no locality. If, as Gertrude Stein probably would claim, our notions of time and place are conventionalized and have nothing to do with real time or space, we can only answer that we are prisoners of these conventions both in our everyday lives and in the books we have read. To read Gertrude Stein's books from The Making of Americans on, we must retrain ourselves in our ways of looking at the world. W e can neither condemn nor approve her achievement until we have at least made this attempt. The narrative method of The Making of Americans proceeds directly from the nature of the narrator. In the previous two books, we differentiated between the narrator and Gertrude Stein herself. In each of the books it seemed that Miss Stein was accepting the conventionalized notion that an author keep at least some distance from her book. As a result, in each book she adopted the tone that would seem appropriate to the particular social world she was describing, and she emerged from this tone only occasionally. In this book, too, she adopts a particular stylized form of speaking which she maintains with even more consistency than she did previously.

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H o w e v e r , she makes no attempt whatever to remain on the sidelines of her book. She takes part in every bit of the telling f r o m the v e r y first pages. In discussing The Making of Americans, then, w e shall make no distinction between the narrator and M i s s Stein. In fact, the most fruitful w a y o f discussing the n a r r a t o r ' s technique is to view it as Gertrude Stein's taking us f o r a tour through her own creative processes. Perhaps no b o o k since Tristram Shandy and until The Alexandria Quartet lays bare so much of the w a y the author went about composing the book. T h i s aspect of G e r t r u d e Stein's narrative technique has been attributed by at least one critic to her experiences in scientific w o r k at H a r v a r d and Johns Hopkins. Even in The Making of Americans, however, M i s s Stein, like a scientist, let the reader understand what it was she was doing. A scientist doesn't merely report the conclusions he has reached; he tells also how he reached them. T h e scientist is at all times a part of the picture. A n d the novelist, Miss Stein, was a part of the picture of her book all the time. 1 3

It will be valuable to keep this astute observation in mind. I t is not only G e r t r u d e Stein's constant explanation o f her methods that relates her technique to the scientific, but other things such as her use of definition, hypothesis, and demonstration, to which w e shall return later in this chapter. G e r t r u d e Stein's function as n a r r a t o r constantly has her telling us w h a t she is doing. She tells us her definition of history, as I quoted earlier. She also tells us her method of characterization. In a section of the b o o k con1 3 George Haines, IV, "Gertrude Stein and Composition," Sewanee Rev., L V I I (Summer 1949), 413.

II6

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

cerned with A l f r e d Hersland, she has been spending a great deal of time with her generalized digressions. In the middle of a paragraph discussing A l f r e d Hersland's heredity, she suddenly tells us how she feels about creating him, in terms suggestive of gestation: Alfred Hersland then, to be certain of the being in him, was of the resisting kind of them in men and women and now then I will wait again and soon then I will be full up with him, I am now then not completely full up with him. Now I am again beginning waiting to be full up completely full up with him. I am very considerably full up now with the kind of being in him, I will be waiting and then I will be full up with all the being in him, that is certain, and so then now a little again once more then I am waiting waiting to be filled up full completely with him with all the being ever in him. ( 5 1 2 - 3 )

This method may account f o r the many false stops and starts we noticed in the sections quoted from the life of Martha Hersland. Perhaps the digressions cease when Gertrude Stein is filled up enough with her subject to begin writing about it. In other instances Gertrude Stein stops the narrative or the particular digression on which she is presently working when she wants to tell us about something she would like to do or k n o w : I want to know sometime all about sentimental feeling. I want to know sometime all the different kinds of ways people have it in them to be certain of anything. These and virtuous feeling in each one, of themselves to themselves having virtue inside them, is to me very interesting. Always more and more I want to know it of each one what certainty means to them and how they come to be certain of anything, what certainty means to them and how contradiction does not worry them and how it does worry them and how much they have in them of re-

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117

membering and how much they have in them of forgetting, and how different any one is from any other one and what any one and every one means by anything they are saying. A l l these things are to me very interesting. (480-81) She tells us of books she wants to write or is perhaps in the process

of

writing.

We

must

remember

that,

as

Donald Gallup has shown, M i s s Stein w a s working on many other things between 1 9 0 8 and 1 9 1 1 when she w a s finishing

The Making of Americans.

Sometime then I will give a history of all of them and that will be a long book and when I am finished with this one then I will begin that one. I have already begun that one but now I am still writing on this one and now I am beginning this portion of this one which is the complete history of Alfred Hersland and of every one he ever came to know in living and of many other ones I will be describing now in this beginning. (479) T h e book she r e f e r s to in this passage is A Long Book,

Gay

which she had obviously already begun.

M i s s Stein even makes a series of personal comments about her state of mind during the writing. I am all unhappy in this writing. I know very much of the meaning of the being in men and women. I know it and feel it and I am always learning more of it and now I am telling it and I am nervous and driving and unhappy in it. Sometimes I will be all happy in it. ( 3 4 8 ) In every sense of the idea w e are with the author as she creates her book. She conceals nothing f r o m us. A s

a

genuine primitive she does not depend on tricks f o r her effects but

rather

keeps

everything

out

in the

open

where w e can see w h a t she is doing. T h e book is completely dependent on the author f o r everything.

Most

118

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

authors try to give us a sense of the inner urgency of what they are writing, and claim that the movement of the book is often out of their hands. This is a sense that Gertrude Stein as her own narrator is at great pains not to give us. The Making of Americans is totally a product of Gertrude Stein and depends on her completely for its pace, which she speeds up or slows down at will. The narrative method of this book contains other peculiarities than digressions and authorial comment that give it its abstract character. One characteristic is the withholding of information. Of the three governesses of the Hersland children, Miss Stein tells us the name of only the third, Madeleine Wyman. W e know that M r . Hersland was a butcher in the old country and we know that he becomes a rich man in the United States. But Miss Stein does not tell us how he makes his fortune. She intimates in the beginning of the book and again at the end that A l f r e d Hersland is a dishonest man. But she never tells us any of the dishonest things that he did. We have noted her earlier reticence about sexual matters in "Melanctha," but here we are dealing with more than reticence. The withholding of information is a definite part of the narrative style of The Making of Americans. Related to this are her repeated promises throughout the book to tell us the story of some one. She constantly prepares us for what she proposes to do next. "This is now a history of Martha Hersland. This is now a history of Martha and of everyone who came to be of her living." (290) Whereupon we are made to wait for about 100 pages before the story of Martha Hersland actually begins. Whenever she promises us a "history" she always gives us one, but she does it when she is ready and she

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119

will make us wade through digression a f t e r digression until such time. T h e r e are times, however, when Gertrude Stein's lack of concern f o r the traditional storytelling methods leads her to do something almost the reverse of the withholding of information. She will tell us how something will turn out even before she begins telling us the story. A l f r e d Hersland married J u l i a Dehning. T h e y were not successful together in their married living, this is to be now a complete history of them and of every one connected with either of them. ( 6 0 2 )

One of the traditional methods of maintaining a reader's interest in a story is to keep him guessing as to how things will end. But Miss Stein denies us even this in most instances. N o t only that, but she rarely gives us the reasons why things happen. A f t e r preparing us f o r the imminent break-up of the marriage of A l f r e d and Julia she then gives an accounting of their personalities and tells us a f e w of the events of their married l i f e ; but nowhere does she give the clues to the reasons f o r their incompatibility. N o r does she analyze the reasons f o r the unsuccessful marriage of M a r t h a Hersland and Philip Redfern. She gives us the personalities of each of her people and lets us draw our own conclusions. I t is the individual consciousness and personality that is important, not the relationship. Another part of Miss Stein's narrative technique that adds to the scientific character of the book is her use of definition. She first defines her terms, and then, once having done so, she uses them throughout the rest of the book without repeating the definition.

120

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

T h e r e are then t w o kinds of women, those w h o have dependent independence in them, those w h o have in them independent dependence inside them; the ones of the first of them always somehow own the ones they need to love them, the second kind of them have it in them to love only those w h o need them, such of them have it in them to have power in them over others only when these others have begun already a little to love them, others loving them give to such of them strength in domination. ( 1 6 5 ) M a n y women have at some time resisting in them. Some have resisting in them as a feeling of themselves inside them. In some kinds of women resisting is not a feeling of themselves to themselves inside them. In some kinds of women resisting can only come from such a feeling. T h i s makes two different kinds of women and mostly all women can be divided so between them. ( 1 6 6 )

H a v i n g made her definitions, Miss Stein feels free to use them throughout the rest of the book. F o r instance: Quarrelling is not letting those having attacking be winning by attacking, those having resisting being be winning by resisting, those having dependent being be winning by dependent being, those having engulfing being be winning by engulfing being. T h i s is quarrelling in living, not letting each one by some one be winning by the being in them. T h i s is certainly quarrelling in living. T h e r e is a great deal of quarrelling in living, that is reasonably certain and that is a very natural thing as certainly very many are not winning with the being in them. (666)

In addition, Miss Stein uses these terms in connection with most of the characters in the book. Themes and terms are defined and then are always available to the author, and they may rise to the surface of the narrative at any time. Perhaps the most celebrated aspect of the narrative

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121

method of The Making of Americans is Gertrude Stein's use of repetition. This manifests itself in a number of ways, among them repetition of syntactical patterns, themes, and characterization. One of the most obvious forms of repetition that Gertrude Stein uses is her habit of redefining the nature of her book. Periodically she will stop what she is doing and make a statement that always begins, "This then is a history of . . . " This form of repetition arises from Gertrude Stein's narrative method, which allows her to digress as long as she likes. As a result, she constantly feels the need to reiterate or perhaps even to rediscover f o r herself the nature of her book whenever she comes back from the midst of digression. Another form of repetition related to the above is her constant "beginning again." Most often she returns from a digression with the phrase, "as I was saying." With this she begins again where she left off before her digressing. Perhaps the constant stops and starts, pausing and beginning again, mirror the struggle of the bottom nature of the individual consciousness to express itself. Her repetitions of themes take two forms. The first is the fastening on and repeating of a theme again and again in a short space of pages: There have been always many millions made just like the mother and the fatter sister Sophie Shilling. T h a t is, there have been always many millions made just like them if they really have nothing queer inside them. Perhaps they have something queer inside them that makes them different from the many millions who have been made just like them. ( 8 1 )

Then on the following three and a half pages she talks about everything in terms of "queerness." A f t e r this, she drops the term.

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Abstractionism

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Stein

T h e second f o r m of thematic repetition is similar to the repetition of defined terms that we discussed earlier. It is more like the repetition of a motif that runs throughout the lives of her characters. T h e enigmatic, older M r . H e r s l a n d takes his family to Gossols and buys a house and land in a section in which no one of his means or social class lives. Gertrude Stein refers to this as " t h e ten acre place in the part o f Gossols where no other rich people were living." T h i s motif is repeated again and again, especially in relation to the Hersland children w h o develop a genuine sense of alienation f r o m h a v i n g to live so f a r out of the sphere of their social class. In addition, the Stein style becomes increasingly molded around syntactical repetition. H e r use of repetition with variation is her attempt to capture the effort of the bottom nature of the individual consciousness to make itself known. In one of her Lectures in America she tells us of this attempt. I then began again to think about the bottom nature in people, I began to get enormously interested in hearing how everybody said the same thing over and over again with infinite variations but over and over again until finally if you listened with great intensity you could hear it rise and fall and tell all that that there was inside them, not so much by the actual words they said or the thoughts they had but the movement of their thoughts and words endlessly the same and endlessly different. 1 4

R a t h e r than discuss this in general terms, let us turn to a passage of her prose in the repetitive manner and analyze the components of the style. 14

P. 138.

The Making of Americans Some one having some one w h o w a s with dead one could

be saying, when

123 them become

some one w a s saying

a

some-

thing, that one does not know he is a dead one, he w i l l never know that thing. H e does not know he is a dead one, some one said of

some one w h o w a s

a dead one.

Some

one could

be

certain that some one w h o is a dead one would not know he was a dead one, some one could not know that some other one who w a s a dead

one would

not know

that

that one was

a

dead one. Some one then has been quite certain that some one who w a s with know

then

that

them when that

that one w a s a dead one did

one w a s

a

dead

one.

Some

have

not been

certain that every one w h o is a dead one does not then know that that one is a dead one. ( 7 2 4 )

T h e immediate reaction to a passage such as this one is that it is merely a series of sentences talking about the same thing. T h e statement is partially true. A l l of the sentences are about the same thing; they even have a series of phrases in common. H o w e v e r , within the set pattern of what each of the sentences has to say is a syntactic variety that gives the paragraph its unique character. T h e first sentence presents quite a bit of information. There are two people in the scene, and a third person has died ("become a dead o n e " ) . When one of the two living ones is talking, the other living one could say that when one is dead he (the dead one) can never know it. T h e thought seems self-evident. In the next sentence Gertrude Stein presents the same thought stripped of all the other descriptive baggage of the preceding sentence. Some one is talking of another person who is dead. T h e speaker says that the dead person does not know that he is dead. M i s s Stein then examines the same thought f r o m still another angle. One can be certain that someone

124

Abstractionism

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Stein

who was dead would not know that he was dead; but one could not know that another dead person would not know that the first dead person was dead. (I am not concerned with either the truth or logical consistency of her statements.) The fourth sentence tells us that in the past some one has been certain that a dead person who was with him did not know that he (the dead person) was dead. And from the fifth and final perspective: people have been certain that a person who is dead does not know that he is dead. It should be obvious that although the thought content of the paragraph is quite simple, there is a great deal of variety within the patterns of the repetition. In five different ways Gertrude Stein insinuates substantially the same thought into our minds until, if we concentrate on what she is doing, we can hardly forget what she has to say. Whether or not what she has to say justifies all of her effort (and ours) is not relevant to our present considerations. Although each of the sentences is a repetition substantially of the one previous, Miss Stein has each of the sentences do something just a bit different from that of its predecessor. Therefore, the thought, though the same, is different each time. This basic pattern can be followed in almost all of Gertrude Stein's characteristically repetitive paragraphs in The Making of Americans and in the books that follow (as we shall see), whether the paragraph contains three sentences or thirty. There is an interlocking progression in thought from the first sentence to the last, from the particular statement to the general conclusion, weaving its way through the pattern of repetition. Although the paragraph is usually her major unit of

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125

structure, quite often the repetitive pattern extends across paragraphs. Limitations of space prevent our examining more than one large paragraph at a time, but there are whole sections of The Making of Americans, especially toward the end, in which the repetitions run along f o r pages on the same topic. Miss Stein's way of making units as large as these seem coherent is to introduce into the pattern of repetition a new phrase which seems like excess baggage for a sentence or two, until it assumes a more important part of each succeeding sentence and the important preceding thought is slowly excised. Repetition is also Miss Stein's main method of characterization. She tells us this herself in many paragraphs of

The Making

of

Americans.

M a n y things then come out in the repeating that make a history of each one for any one w h o always listens to them. M a n y things come out of each one and as one listens to them listens to all the repeating in them, always this comes to be clear about them, the history of them of the bottom nature in them, the nature or natures mixed up in them to make the whole of them in a n y w a y it mixes up in them. Sometime then there will be a history of every one. ( 1 8 3 )

The key words here are "repeating" and "bottom nature." Life is presented with the implied metaphor of struggle, and the repetition is the embodiment of the struggle of the individual consciousness to make its bottom nature clear to the world. There is also the implication in this paragraph, in the phrase "natures mixed up in them," of the deterministic role of heredity, which we shall discuss shortly. The characters of The Making of Americans differ

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Abstractionism

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Stein

from those of the previous two works in that they are even further emancipated from the social context. Although the sub-title of the book is " T h e History of a Family's Progress," the characters of the book are not a family in an organic sense, but rather the individual members of a family. Where the abstracted interiority of Melanctha was seen in dramatic relation to the interiority of Jeff Campbell, the people in The Making of Americans are seen as an enormous collection of separate units with almost no active relation to each other. They are fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters well enough, but this is, to themselves inside, them and to the presentation, a fairly adventitious situation or quality to their separate interior existences.15

Although we see the characters in the company of other people, the relationships they form are not important. Miss Stein is interested only in the "bottom nature" of each individual as it expresses itself in repetition. The group that the individual belongs to is much larger than the family: it is the type. Once again, Gertrude Stein takes a characteristic that she first explores in her article, "Cultivated Motor Automatism," mentions in Things as They Are, and develops in Three Lives, and takes it much farther than she did in any of the previous writings. All of her characters exemplify certain types of humanity that Gertrude Stein seems to have formulated quite carefully. The older Herslands belong to the old world types that they can never escape even after years in America. "Julia Dehning was now just eighteen and she showed in all its vigor, the self-satisfied crude domineering American girlhood that was strong inside her." ( 1 3 ) 15

Sutherland, op. cit., p. 53.

The Making

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127

There is obviously a national type to which the younger generation of both families belong. The poorer people from the Gossols neighborhood in which the Herslands live can never rise from their type to socialize with the Herslands. People can never shed the characteristics of the class of people to which they supposedly belong. Miss Stein presents her notion of psychological determinism on the very first page: It is hard living down the tempers we are born with. W e all begin well, for in our youth there is nothing we are more intolerant of than our own sins writ large in others and we fight them fiercely in ourselves; but we grow old and we see that these our sins are of all sins the really harmless ones to own, nay that they give a charm to any character, and so our struggle with them dies away.

We all, as young people, want to change ourselves and others, but as we grow older we realize that not only can the leopard not change his spots, but that the flaws in our personality are those things that give us our character. In other words, we accept our own personalities because there is nothing we can do to change them, and we should not look on this fact with regret. The notions of heredity with which we became familiar in our study of "Melanctha" appear throughout The Making of Americans. Here is a description of Alfred Hersland: There was then M r . Hissen and Mrs. Hissen and Alfred Hersland had it in him to have a good deal in him M r . Hissen being but it was a very different thing in him this being in him than it was in M r . Hissen. Alfred never had in him at any time in him religion, he was a mixture then of old M r . Hissen and old M r . Hersland who was a butcher when he was a young

128

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

man working and who was a man who had important feeling in him from having been a little important then in religion. (512)

Whatever there is to the "bottom nature" of Alfred Hersland is then a product of the combination of father and maternal grandfather. This is something that Alfred Hersland can never hope to escape. There are other similarities to the abstractionism in "Melanctha" that we might point out. The speeches of the characters are attempts once again at capturing the rhythm of speech rather than an exact transcription. 16 Of course, the instances of dialogue in The Making of Americans are extremely rare. Gertrude Stein tells us about moments of dialogue that may have occurred in the past, but she rarely lets us hear two people having a conversation. Another characteristic that this book shares with its predecessor is the casual way the deaths of the characters are introduced. Here is the death of the oldest Dehning: He had been left out of all life while he was still living. It was all too new for his feeling and his wife was no longer there to stay beside him. He felt it always in him and he sighed and at last he just slowly left off living. ( 6 )

The Hersland grandmother expires in the following manner: She was then very old, and always well, and always working, 1 6 To those who feel that Gertrude Stein simply had no ear for realistic dialogue, I suggest that they read Brewsie and Willie, a series of fictional conversations of American G.I.'s of the Second World War. In this book Miss Stein demonstrates that she indeed had a remarkable sense of the way people sound when they talk.

The Making and

then

she

had

a

stroke,

of and

Americans then

129

another,

died and that w a s the end of that generation.

and

then

she

(42)

T h e casual attitude toward death is, of course, in keeping with the abstract notions of plot we have already noted throughout The Making of Americans. Since even the notion of story is almost done away with, the idea of death as a climax to everything can hardly play a role in such a book. As in the passage from Ecclesiastes, "One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever" ( 1 : 4 ) . T h e generations of Herslands and Dehnings may pass on, but there will always be people around, and these people will have the bottom natures that their heredity and the type to which they belong have determined. Gertrude Stein presents her characters as propositions of her notions of human psychology. Usually the proposition comes first as a kind of theorem, and then the character follows as its demonstration. . . . some have it that they feel themselves inside them as

big

as

are

all

the

world

around

them,

some

have

it

that

they

themselves the only important existing in the w o r l d then and in some

of

them

for

complete

thing

of

forever being

in

them—these

important

to

have

themselves

in

them

inside

the

them.

(153) This is the theorem. Gertrude Stein has described the type, the essence that precedes existence. A short paragraph about "middle living" follows. T h e n : David

Hersland

in his daily living had m a n y things in

H e had his o w n w a y of loving. T h e w a y a man has of his w a y

of

beginning

millions

of

every

kind

and of

his w a y men

of

comes

ending more

in most

from

the

him.

thinking of

the

bottom

nature in him f r o m the w a y of l o v i n g he has in him and

that

130

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

makes his kind of man, other natures are mixed up in him, but mostly his w a y of loving goes with his w a y of thinking goes with the kind of practical nature he has in him, goes with his w a y of working, comes from the bottom nature in him. ( 1 5 4 )

Here is the demonstration of the theorem, followed immediately by another digression on the subjcet of psychological types. All the characters are introduced in a similar fashion. There is nothing specifically said to connect the theorem with the demonstration. The relationship is made by the juxtaposition of the two. Occasionally, the demonstration will precede the theorem; however, the quod erat demonstrandum, of her character portrayal continues. Even governesses and seamstresses are handled with the same style, and they are often given as much space as the supposedly major characters of the chronicle. They are, after all, illustrative of the poorer social class types. All the characters of The Making of Americans fit into a giant abstract, almost geometric, scheme. Miss Stein's is one of the last attempts to reduce all of humanity to a few workable principles, which in her system take their form as psychological types. Sometime then there will be a complete history of all repeating to completed understanding. Some time then there w i l l be a complete history of every one w h o ever was or is or w i l l be living. ( 2 9 4 )

This was a possibility she really believed in at the time. H e r supposed attempt to do this in A Long Gay Book was suspended after less than two hundred pages. Miss Stein's abstractionist concerns extend, as we have seen previously, to her use of vocabulary. In The Making of Americans her private use of the English language is

The Making

of Americans

131

carried even further than before, although not nearly as f a r as it was to be carried a few years later. H e r awarding of private meanings to words we examined in " M e lanctha." In The Making of Americans, often connected with her increased use of the present participle, she substitutes for the standard forms of words or phrases new ones of her own. For "middle age," she uses "middle living." She constantly differentiates between "living" and "being," "being" and "existing." Successively, as I have listed them, each of the words implies a decreasingly active role on the part of the individual in the flow of life. When Miss Stein uses a term such as "human being," she does not use it as the name for a certain kind of living creature, but as the name for a process (that of "being") with which the quality of humanity is associated. The word "human" has the same function in this phrase as the other modifiers in phrases such as "stupid being," "impatient being," and "anxious being" that Gertrude Stein uses to describe her characters throughout The Making of Americans. The term "being" here refers to the process of the individual bottom nature in expressing itself. Occasionally Miss Stein will begin using a word in a peculiar fashion without defining its meaning in any way. Such a word is "important," and the phrase in which it is used is "important feeling" that a person has inside him with regard to something. She begins using this in connecton with the older M r . Hersland early in the book (page 5 5 ) . The term and phrase are used continuously until they are finally explained over one hundred pages later.

132

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

Being important to one's self inside one. Being lonesome inside one. M a k i n g the world small to one to lose from one the lonesome feeling a big world feeling can make inside any one w h o has not it in them to feel themselves as big as any world can be around them. Being important inside one in religion can help one loose from one the lonesome feeling a big world can give to one. . . . T h e important feeling of one's self to one inside one in one's living is to have in one then not anything of such a lonesome feeling. ( 1 6 0 )

H e r e , as b e f o r e in her withholding of information, Gertrude Stein insists that the reader be prepared to w a i t until she is ready to divulge her secrets. In order that he have a complete command of her book f r o m page to page, Gertrude Stein demands that the reader have read it a f e w times. G e r t r u d e Stein continues to employ the euphemism, although its importance in The Making of Americans is only minor. T w o o f the euphemisms that she carries over f r o m Three Lives are " w i s d o m " and " r e a l experience," which in most instances have the same suggestion that they had in " M e l a n c t h a . " W h a t is most obviously abstract about The Making of Americans, however, is its style. T h e liberties that Gertrude Stein takes with the traditional g r a m m a r , syntax, and punctuation are probably the greatest that any writer of English had done up to that time. In addition, her language is approaching a point now where it is so stylized that it has a system of patterns that appear in almost every p a r a g r a p h . A full exploration o f the linguistic patterns in the writing of G e r t r u d e Stein and particularly in The Making of Americans would require

The Making

of Americans

133

almost book-length documentation. However, an exploration here of a few characteristic patterns and the analysis of a characteristic passage of prose will serve to demonstrate the lengths which Gertrude Stein has traveled on the path to a truly abstract style which she will finally discover in her next works. For one thing, Gertrude Stein develops into a major feature of her style the use of the present participle that we noticed in a few passages in "Melanctha." Miss Stein's concerns are now so exclusively directed on the process of the individual consciousness in expressing its essence that she speaks of everything in terms of process. Probably more than half her verb forms use some form of the progressive ending. She constantly elevates participles into substantives, and she reduces substantives with participial endings back to participial functions. There is little point to quoting a passage to illustrate this. Almost any passage from the book will serve this purpose, as the already quoted passages show. The paragraph is the major unit of her prose, as has already been noted by Donald Sutherland, who says that in The Making of Americans "each paragraph is made to be a complete interior event." 1 7 As we have seen in our analysis of the paragraph that illustrated repetition, the sentences had no life of their own. They were important only as rhythmic units in the building up of the effect of the paragraph. One of the difficulties that readers have had with The Making of Americans is undoubtedly the fact that while the paragraphs are complete units in themselves, the relationships between them are not nearly as strong as those between her sentences. Often 17

Sutherland, op. cit., p. 6 1 .

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Abstractionism

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Stein

the reader feels himself victimized by w h a t seem to him arbitrary juxtapositions, whose logic is not apparent at first. H o w e v e r , the reader w h o comes to The Making of Americans f r o m the poetry of Pound and E l i o t should h a v e little problem in acclimating himself to such difficulties. A s in so many modern works, the logic behind the continuity is that of free association or perhaps the stream of consciousness. Since Gertrude Stein is at such g r e a t pains to give us the impression that she created her book as she went along, perhaps the metaphor of The Making of Americans as a stylized stream of the Stein consciousness is not f a r off the mark. A l t h o u g h the sentences in The Making of Americans are merely the building blocks of the Stein p a r a g r a p h , they have within them quite a bit of variety. Indeed, it is within the sentence that M i s s Stein does most of her stylistic experimentation. A n d most of her experiments are designed to cut down the movement of the prose to render it more abstract. A n example of this is her use of the parenthetical statement that she habitually installs in the middle of a sentence. T h o s e men who began beginning with him and then left him to do their own ending, being afraid of the way of going on with, a beginning in him, wanting to be doing their own ending, these could not be certain in his middle living whether he would be ending his beginning in success or in failing. (472, italics mine)

I have italicized the parenthetical statements that break up the sentence. T h e sentence is so broken up that M i s s Stein gives the main verb of the first clause ( " c o u l d b e " ) an unnecessary subject ( " t h e s e " ) . H o w e v e r , it has been so l o n g since the original subject appeared that M i s s Stein feels it necessary to put in another one. T h e paren-

The Making

of Americans

135

thetical statement breaking up the middle of the sentence is one of the recurring patterns in the syntax of

The Making of

Americans.

Still another seeming v a g a r y of the style of The ing of Americans Stein

connects

semicolon,

and

Mak-

is the idiosyncratic punctuation. M i s s sentences uses

with

commas

commas, within

a

never uses sentence

a

only

when absolutely necessary or perhaps when she remembers to do so. She treats the subject in Lectures

in

Amer-

ica: And what does a comma do, a comma does nothing but make easy a thing that if you like it enough is easy enough without the comma. A long complicated sentence should force itself upon you, make you know yourself knowing it and the comma, well at the most a comma is a poor period that it lets you stop and take a breath but if you want to take a breath you ought to know yourself that you want to take a breath. It is not like stopping altogether which is what a period does stopping altogether has something to do with going on, but taking a breath well you are always taking a breath and why emphasize one breath rather than another breath. 18 I f this sounds like the later Stein trying to justify her earlier ignorance, here is an excerpt f r o m an unpublished letter she wrote to A l f r e d Steiglitz on M a r c h 6, 1 9 1 2 , concerning his imminent publication of her portraits of Picasso and Matisse in Camera Work: Y o u will be very careful, will you not, that no punctuation is introduced into the things in printing. It is very necessary as I have put in all of it that I want and any that is introduced will make everything wrong. 1 9 18

P. 22. Unpublished T L S in Gertrude Stein Collection, Yale Collection of American Literature. 19

136

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

E v e n less than a y e a r a f t e r she finished The Making of Americans, G e r t r u d e Stein insisted that her idiosyncratic punctuation had a rational basis. J u s t how well G e r t r u d e Stein could have f o l l o w e d the traditional rules of punctuation is a matter that we can never really determine; h o w e v e r , what we can assess is the effect of her use of punctuation on the style of this book. W e find once again that the punctuation is another element that slows down the movement of the sentence. W h a t M i s s Stein forces the reader to do is involve himself in the v e r y act of supplying his own punctuation. C e r t a i n passages whose meaning would be made much clearer were they punctuated in the traditional manner require one to supply mentally his own commas, semicolons, periods, and question marks. T h e reader is f o r c e d to do nothing less than become a part of the creative process himself. Still another of G e r t r u d e ' s Stein's variation patterns within her sentences is her use of syntactical discontinuity. She jolts the reader by reversing the usual w o r d order. " N o , thetn we never can f e e l as young g r o w n men and w o m e n . " (6-7, italics mine) G e r t r u d e Stein's w a y of capturing our attention and emphasizing her point is to place the object of the verb b e f o r e even the subject and to change the traditional sentence o r d e r f r o m subjectverb-object to object-subject-verb. T h i s also has the effect of halting, if even momentarily, the n a r r a t i v e flow. " S h e loved it in a w a y the struggle he m a d e each day a new one f o r h e r . " ( 2 6 ) H a d she written this sentence in the kind of Basic E n g l i s h against which w e must measure its discontinuity, it might have read something like this: " I n a w a y she loved the new struggle that he made f o r her each d a y . " M i s s Stein disrupts this o r d e r by adding the

The Making

of Americans

137

word " i t " after the main verb, changing the modifier "new" into a substantive ( " a new one") and moving the substantive five words and a clause beyond the place where the traditional modifier would have gone. The simple sound of Gertrude Stein's discontinuous sentences is linguistically quite complex. There are many other qualities of the style of The Making of Americans that we could discuss, such as the use of indefinite words, but the best way to demonstrate what is going on in a given passage of this book is to analyze one. The following is one of the better known sections of The Making of Americans: I am writing for myself and strangers. T h i s is only w a y that I can do it. Everybody is a real one to me, everybody is like some one else too to me. N o one of them that I know can w a n t to know it and so I w r i t e for myself and strangers. E v e r y one is always busy with it, no one of them then ever w a n t to know it that every one looks like some one else and they see it. M o s t l y every one dislikes to hear it. It is very important to me to always know it, to always see it which one looks like others and to tell it. I write for myself and strangers. I do this for my own sake and for the sake of those w h o know I know it that they look like other ones, that they are separate and yet always repeated. T h e r e are some w h o like it that I know they are like many others and repeat it, there are many who never can really like it. ( 2 8 9 )

The only thing that is perhaps unusual about the opening sentence is the progressive form of the verb. It would ordinarily go unnoticed. I mention it only because Gertrude Stein expresses the same thought a few sentences later in the standard present-tense form. In the first sentence we may assume that Miss Stein means the process of her present writing. In the second sentence

138

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

M i s s Stein begins her dislocation of traditional English syntax. T h e r e a r e two potential ambiguities in the sentence, " t h i s " and " i t . " W h a t is the referent of the first w o r d of the sentence? Does it r e f e r to what is said in the opening sentence? If so, then w h a t does the final word, " i t , " r e f e r t o ? If both words r e f e r to the same thing, then the sentence goes in a complete circle. If only one of these indefinite pronouns r e f e r s to the m a t e r i a l contained in the first sentence, then we simply do not have the i n f o r m a t i o n to lift the other one out of its ambiguity. W h a t " t h i s " r e a l l y r e f e r s to is " w r i t i n g f o r myself and s t r a n g e r s , " while " i t " r e f e r s simply to " w r i t i n g . " M i s s Stein could have avoided the ambiguity by writing, " T h i s is the only w a y that I can w r i t e . " But she has substituted the v a g u e verb, " d o , " for the specific one. Also, she has completed a thought that most writers have been trained to leave "understood" by adding " i t " to the end of the sentence. T h e third sentence presents us with another m a j o r characteristic of the style of The Making of Americans, the changing of an adjective into a substantive quality. R a t h e r than saying, " E v e r y b o d y is r e a l , " M i s s Stein changes " r e a l " into "a real one." T h e abstract quality becomes even solider. T h e second part of the sentence following the comma, which is really another sentence, shows only one m o d e r a t e l y unusual usage, "too to," which has almost the quality of a pun. T h e ordinary w r i t e r of s t a n d a r d English would have avoided such a repetition of sounds so close together by substituting " a l s o " for " t o o . " Perhaps, too, he would have placed "also" after "is." "Of them" in the last sentence of the first p a r a g r a p h is

The Making

of Americans

139

usually left out of similarly constructed sentences. A t any rate, it is redundant and unnecessary to the meaning of the sentence. T h e word " i t " later on has no referent, and shall remain without one until well into the next paragraph. It should normally be followed by a comma. T h e words "and s o " that introduce the last clause imply that what is to follow proceeds logically from what has been said before. However, in this instance the logic behind the statement must remain ambiguous until we discover a few sentences later the meaning of that ambiguous " i t . " T h e first sentence of the next paragraph begins with the vague substantive "every one," and it is written as two words rather than one. There is also a shift in emphasis from the " I " to the general "they." T h e use of the vague substantive is characteristic of the writing, as we have already seen. In the previous paragraph, "everybody" appeared twice, "some one" and "no one" once each. W e shall see more of the same throughout the rest of this second paragraph. In the first clause of the sentence we see once again our ambiguous " i t . " T h e second contains the redundant and vague "of them," vague because its plural number would not normally agree with "every one," as Miss Stein wants it to do here. A few words further we find our ambiguous " i t " once again, followed finally by an explanation of what it means, "every one looks like some one else," an elaborate way of saying that there are types to which everyone belongs. A comma should appear before the final " a n d . " T h e following sentence contains nothing of an unusual syntactical nature. It introduces a new way in which "every one dislikes i t ; " this time they dislike to " h e a r " it.

140

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

T h e third sentence s h i f t s us back to the " I . " I t contains a couple of split infinitives. Also, the first " i t " of the second clause is unnecessary to the m e a n i n g of the sentence and serves merely to slow down the pace once again. T h e next sentence r e i t e r a t e s the opening motif of the first p a r a g r a p h , and it is followed by a sentence t h a t justifies the repetition of the exact w o r d i n g of the first sentence and r e p e a t s a c o m m o n motif of the book, t h a t of being " s e p a r a t e and yet always r e p e a t e d . " T h e final sentence adds n o t h i n g to o u r k n o w l e d g e of G e r t r u d e Stein's snytax t h a t we h a v e not discovered in previous sentences. I t is really t w o sentences s e p a r a t e d by a comma. I have chosen this p a s s a g e mainly because it is conceptually n o t a difficult one. Since it is one of the " e a s y " passages of the book, it should m a k e doubly clear the linguistic complexity t h a t is p r e s e n t in G e r t r u d e Stein's writing, a complexity t h a t shows itself to be discontinous with t h a t of t r a d i t i o n a l s t a n d a r d English. I t is not the complexity of sentences with i n t e r r e l a t e d compound and complex clauses, or of L a t i n a t e w o r d s , or of e l a b o r a t e figures of speech. M i s s Stein is beginning to do everything she can to r e n d e r a semantically thin and syntactically simple style discontinuous with any English writing t h a t has gone b e f o r e it, static and abstract. E v e r y o t h e r p h r a s e , it seems, has some kind of a p r o s e caesura t h a t makes the r e a d e r p a u s e or stop a l t o g e t h e r until he can put enough of the pieces t o g e t h e r to go on to the next set of w o r d s . A n d the style of The Making of Americans is only a p r e p a r a t i o n f o r w h a t is to follow. Actually G e r t r u d e Stein t a k e s g r e a t pains to p r e p a r e us f o r the w o r k s t h a t are to follow. T h e final section of

The Making

of Americans

141

the book, that with David Hersland as its central figure, becomes increasingly abstract in a number of ways. There occur in this long section almost no events to speak of. W e are given nothing other than a series of considerations of the nature of D a v i d Hersland and of his type. These are more general and abstract than anything that have gone before because there are no passages of a concrete nature to balance the generalizations. There are only a few characters other than D a v i d Hersland who appear at all in this section, and they are merely mentioned. It is almost impossible to see the central figure of this section within a context other than the generalizations on his bottom nature. W e learn next to nothing specific about him. M a n y of the characters in this section go unnamed, and the reader is expected to have enough control over the entire book to know to whom Miss Stein is referring. There is an increased use of indefinite and general words, such as " o n e " and some. In addition, the writing becomes linguistically more abstract. One feels an increasing sense of playing with words. Gertrude Stein is becoming less interested in the sense of what she is sometimes saying. W h e n he was not at all a very young one sometimes he was with one. Sometimes he was with more than one. Sometimes he w a s with t w o sometimes he was with more than two. Sometimes he w a s with three. Sometimes he was with more than three. Sometimes he w a s with four. Sometimes he was with more than four. Sometimes he was with five. Sometimes he was with more than five. ( 8 5 4 - 5 5 )

This is repetition almost f o r its own sake, and one gets the feeling that what is said no longer matters. It is the

142

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

words themselves and the sounds they make that are allimportant. In many ways, then, this final section of her largest book looks f o r w a r d to w h a t Gertrude Stein is to do immediately a f t e r it. She has been preparing us for A Long Gay Book by her r e m a r k s throughout The Making of Americans. One or t w o of the passages in this final section p r e p a r e us for Two. It is no wonder that these resemblances exist, because if Donald Gallup is correct, she w a s probably w o r k i n g on both of these books while she completed the end of The Making of Americans. A s individual as The Making of Americans is, then, we must nonetheless conclude in much the same w a y as we have in the p a s t : as with its two predecessors, it looks ahead to w o r k s that are even more abstract. W i t h o u t the w o r k s that follow it, we would still conclude that this " H i s t o r y of a F a m i l y ' s P r o g r e s s " is a genuinely abstract work. H a v i n g these works as a context, however, we are forccd to say that, even with all its abstract qualities, The Making of Americans lights the w a y for the next works that finally cross the line.

5 Portraits and the Abstract Style,

T H E YEARS BETWEEN

1908

AND

1912

W E R E T H E MOST

prolific of Gertrude Stein's career. She was working on and off on The Making of Americans, which she finally finished in 1 9 1 1 , and at the same time she began a series of works that were ultimately to take her the final step from the repetitive style of The Making of Americans to the abstractionism of Tender Buttons. All of the writing of these fecund years has finally been published. The first was Portrait of Mable Dodge at the Villa Curonia, in 1 9 1 2 , printed privately by Mabel Dodge. Just after that, two of her portraits saw print in Camera Work.1 Some of the early portraits appeared in 1 9 2 2 in Geography and Plays.2 Still others were pub1 Short portraits of Matisse and Picasso, since published in Portraits and Prayers ( N e w York, 1 9 3 4 ) , and in Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein ( N e w York, 1962). 2 Four Seas Press (Boston, 1922).

144

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

lished in Portraits and Prayers, which Random House brought out in 1 9 3 4 to capitalize on M i s s Stein's triumphant return visit to America. Just before this, Alice Toklas had published three of the longer works of this period in Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein.3 T h i s volume includes A hong Gay Book, Many Many Women, and G.M.P. Finally, after Miss Stein's death, the Y a l e University Press published Two and Other Early Portraits,4 a volume that includes the longer works Two: Gertrude Stein and Her Brother and Jenny, Helen, Hannah, Paul and Peter, as well as eighteen other shorter portraits f r o m this early period. Except f o r the first two items mentioned, the rest of the published early portraits exhibit the traditional Stein pattern of being published well after they were written. With such a mass of material before us we cannot deal with each work in as much detail as we have with the works of the earlier and less prolific years. W h a t we shall do is select two of the longer works to look at in some detail and examine thoroughly half a dozen of the shorter portraits. M o s t of the works of this period repeat the same techniques, and since we are searching f o r a pattern and not attempting to treat everything Miss Stein ever wrote, selectivity will serve our purposes best. T h e two longer works I have chosen are A Long Gay Book and Two: Gertrude Stein and Her Brother, because they each exemplify two things: they begin by continuing the style of The Making of Americans and end in a new style that exemplifies one of the two major 3

In her Plain Edition of the W r i t i n g s of G e r t r u d e Stein

I932)4

N e w Haven, 1 9 5 1 .

(Paris,

Portraits

and

the

Abstract

Style,

directions the writing of Gertrude

1908-IQ12

145

Stein w a s to take

dur-

ing and a f t e r 1 9 0 8 - 1 9 1 2 . A l m o s t all the p o r t r a i t s t a k e d i r e c t i o n o f e i t h e r Tzvo

o r A Long

Gay

A LONG G A Y BOOK,

Miss

The

S t e i n t e l l s u s in

the

Book.

1909-1912

Making

of

Americans

that

s h e is w o r k i n g o n a b o o k t h a t w i l l b e " a h i s t o r y o f a l l them."5

The

book

she

refers

to

is A

Long

Gay

which she w o r k e d on concurrently with the latter part The

Making

of

A s I say I b e g a n A only

kind

threes a n d

Long Gay

Making

every

possible

of

Americans.

longer than T h e not

of

Book,

possible

of

kind

pairs

fours and

B o o k a n d it w a s to be

of A m e r i c a n s

of

of

a

human

fives

of

a n d it w a s

human beings

to

being, and

even

describe

but

every

every possible

h u m a n beings and e v e r y

possible

k i n d of c r o w d s of h u m a n beings. 8 I

began

to

wonder

every

possible k i n d

with

any

other

if

of

kind

of

could

be d o n e it w o u l d

rally

gayer

relation

describing

to any

other

it

was

human

human make

what

possible

to

b e i n g acted A

the

f e l t in

being

and

I

Long

Gay

Book.

one

feels

any

one than

describe

and

thought

acts

t o describe w h a t

way

relation if

It

is

and

this natu-

does

they just

in are

w h a t t h e y are inside t h e m . 7 A s it t u r n e d o u t , A t h e t i m e it r e a c h e d predecessor. knowing It begins

One

Long

coming

it is i n c o m p l e t e in t h e

Gay

a small

same

Book

was abandoned

fraction of

to A would

style we

Long

the length

Gay

not think noticed

Book it a

of

by its

without fragment.

throughout

most

Paris, 1925, p. 479. G e r t r u d e Stein, " T h e G r a d u a l M a k i n g of the M a k i n g of A m e r i cans," Lectures in America ( B o s t o n , 1 9 5 7 ) , p. 148. 7 Ibid., p. 150. 6

6

146

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

of The Making of Americans. W h a t makes it an important document in the career of G e r t r u d e Stein, however, is that it progressively becomes more and more abstract until in the final pages it becomes almost completely nonrepresentational. T h e final transition to the abstract style happens b e f o r e our v e r y eyes. It is no wonder that Gertrude Stein could not go on with A Long Gay Book. It is at the end no longer the same book that it was when she began it. T h e v e r y intent of A Long Gay Book is more abstract than that of The Making of Americans. W h e r e a s The Making of Americans ostensibly examines the characteristics of types only in relation to the characters that people her book, A Long Gay Book sets out to examine all the types possible among human beings and all the various possible combinations of those types. T h e social context is almost completely done a w a y with. T h e r e is no attempt made at any n a r r a t i v e continuity; there is no " s t o r y . " W h a t we have f o r 75 per cent of A Long Gay Book is a long list of types and their characteristics, names given to certain of the exemplars of the types, and t w o or more of these names placed together occasionally in a context made almost exclusively of the interaction of their personalities. T h e characters live nowhere, have no homes, do no w o r k . T h e r e is not even any dialogue. It is a w o r l d of pure existence, a w o r l d of the interaction of consciousnesses. T o take passages f r o m the first pages of A Long Gay Book and place them side by side with passages f r o m The Making of Americans would show us almost no stylistic difference between the two books. T h e interlocking repetitive style is still v e r y much in evidence. T h e focus

Portraits

and the Abstract

Style,

igo8-igi2

147

is still on the core of each consciousness that gives the character his personality. Miss Stein states her aims early in the book: E v e r } ' one has in them a f u n d a m e n t a l n a t u r e to them w i t h a kind of w a y of thinking that goes w i t h this n a t u r e in them in all the m a n y millions made of that kind of them. E v e r y one then has it in them to be one of the m a n y kinds of men o r m a n y kinds of w o m e n . T h e r e are m a n y kinds of men a n d m a n y kinds of w o m e n and of each kind of them there a r e a l w a y s m a n y millions in the w o r l d and any one can k n o w by w a t c h i n g the m a n y kinds there are of them and this is to be a history of all the kinds of them. 8

A s stated, the aims are almost exactly the same as those expressed in many passages of The Making of Americans. T h e r e is a change in vocabulary, however. Instead of the "bottom nature" of the individual, we are now to focus on the "fundamental nature," obviously the same conceptual entity. T h e personal nature of the book is just as strong as in the previous one, where all the characters are supposedly based on people whom Miss Stein knew or with whom she grew up. H e r e she goes even further. She gives her "characters" the names of her acquaintances, including her brother Michael, Paul Claudel, Fernande Olivier and others. T h e book is hardly a roman a clef, however. T h e nature of the narrator is largely the same as it was in The Making of Americans. Miss Stein gives instructions to her readers: " I n this book there will be discussion of pairs of people and their relation, short sketches of innumerable ones . . . " ( 1 7 ) She then lists the pairs, 8 A Long Gay Book, in Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein ( P a r i s , 1 9 3 2 ) , p. 16. Page numbers in the text in this section of the chapter r e f e r to this edition.

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most of which do not get dealt with in the book, as it t u r n s out. She also gives directions to h e r s e l f : T h e n going completely in to the flavor question how persons have the flavor they do there can be given short sketches of Farmert, Alden, of Henderson and any other man one can get having very much flavor and describing the complications in them one can branch off into women . . . then describe Pauline and from Pauline go on to all kinds of women that come out of her . . . T h e n start afresh with Grace's group, practical, pseudo masculine. T h e n start afresh with Fanny and Helen and business women, earthy type, and kind of intellect. Enlarge on this and then go back to flavor, to pseudo flavor, Mildred's group, and then to the concentrated groups. ( 1 8 )

W e are still t o u r i n g the creative process with the a u t h o r . M i s s Stein has dispensed completely by this time with c r e a t i n g any illusion of external reality. Reality consists f o r h e r only in the conceptual types of personality and their interactions on one a n o t h e r . If the n a r r a t o r ( M i s s Stein) gives herself or the r e a d e r instructions, she is no longer t a m p e r i n g with the n a r r a t i v e flow. T h e only flow r e m a i n i n g h e r e is t h a t of the ideas and theories of the a u t h o r . Exclusive of style, A Long Gay Book takes on the c h a r a c t e r of a textbook on psychology, not a novel, and the n a r r a t o r has as much r i g h t to interpose herself as the a u t h o r of a textbook. A l t h o u g h f o r most of the early p a r t of A Long Gay Book we a r e struck by its similarities to The Making of Americans, such as the use of the a b s t r a c t generalization, the p r e s e n t participle, and repetition, we see early evidences of M i s s Stein's straining at the bounds of this ( f o r h e r ) old style. W e see, f o r instance, m a n y examples of the kind of repetition we saw hints of at the end of the

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previous book, in which the sense of progressive change and the looking at the same situation f r o m various perspectives are gone. N o w we have repetition on a much more simplistic, uncomplex level. W o r d s begin to be repeated almost as carriers of mere sound. Coming

to

be

anything

is

something.

Not

coming

to

be

anything is something. L o v i n g is something. N o t l o v i n g is something.

Loving

something.

is loving.

Something

is

something.

Anything

is

(11)

A long stretch of the story continues with capitulations of the v a r i o u s types, all described in the v e r y generalized participial style to which we h a v e become accustomed. A f t e r a time M i s s Stein begins including names in her descriptions. T h e names are just that. T h e y do not attach themselves to real people in the context of the action or even the description of events. B u t they do take somewhat of the abstract edge off the generalized typological descriptions by giving them a peg in the w o r l d outside of M i s s Stein's conceptualized generalizations. W h e n names are not being used, G e r t r u d e Stein is f o r c e d to use w o r d s such as " a n y o n e , " " e v e r y o n e , " and " s o m e o n e " to r e f e r to people. H e r e is an example of a name being attached to a t y p e : Boncinelli in being one w a s the one explaining that he k n e w w h a t he w a s saying. H e did k n o w w h a t he w a s saying. H e know

that

knowing

what

one

is saying

is

something

did

having

meaning. ( 5 3 )

In terms of meaning in the context in which this p a s s a g e a p p e a r s , " B o n c i n e l l i " could just h a v e easily been " a n y o n e . " E v e n names at this point can do v e r y little to l i f t A Long Gay Book out of the abstract.

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Occasionally in the midst of the generalizing in the e a r l y part of the book, M i s s Stein gives in to the spirit of w o r d play that is to overtake her later. In the following instance we see the w o r d " d a y " repeated insistently f o r no ideational reason. Interspersed with it is the phrase " t h a t is to s a y , " whose function, aside from disrupting slightly the syntax of the sentence, is to rhyme with "day." E a c h day is every day, that is to say, any day is that dav. Anyday is that d a y that is to say if any day has been a day there w i l l be another day and that day w i l l be that day. ( 3 6 )

H e r e is another p a s s a g e in which the rhyme plays among the participial endings and the words " t h i n g " and "something." A t h i n g being a thing that is that thing, a thing being a thing, a thing h a v i n g been put d o w n a thing being something: and putting d o w n a t h i n g is a thing that is happening and then the thing put d o w n being then that thing, a thing being that thing, a thing is something and a thing being something, a thing being that thing is then that thing and being then that thing it is a thing and being a thing it is that thing and it is then that thing, it is then that thing. ( 4 8 - 9 )

T h r o u g h o u t all of this, the charting of types continues, and on every page new names are allied with the generalizations, names such as Vrais, Clellan, M a y m a n , W a t t s , and Donger. T h e only name that crops up continually is that of Clellan, and yet our picture of him never becomes any more concrete than that of any of the other names. T o w a r d the end of A Long Gay Book the p a r a g r a p h s begin to get much shorter. T h r o u g h o u t the book they have been much shorter on the a v e r a g e than those of The Making of Americans, but now they are r a r e l y

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longer than three sentences. By page 8 1 , sense is beginning to disappear f r o m the sentences. In the following example, the logical connections among " f a l l i n g , " " r i v e r , " the size of the river, "hearing enough sounds," "little things" which are " s c a t t e r e d " and which "come t o g e t h e r " are almost nonexistent. Falling

is not easy and it is not easy w h e n

there is a

river

that is bigger than it is w h e r e it is smaller and it is not easy when the

there are w a y s of

little

things

come

hearing

together

w e r e called. F a l l i n g is not easy.

enough who

were

sounds

that

scattered

make until

all they

(81)

Color and rhythm begin to enter the meaningless sentence and p a r a g r a p h : A thing

tiny violent noise is a y e l l o w happy thing. A is a gentle

everything

to say.

little It

tinkle that

is not w h a t

goes in all

yellow

the w a y

there w a s w h e n

happy it

has

it w a s

not

w h e r e it is. I t is all that it is w h e n it is all that there is. ( 8 2 )

W h a t M i s s Stein does in sentences and p a r a g r a p h s such as the above looks f o r w a r d to what she is to do in much of her work f r o m now on. T h e sentence retains the traditional structure of English syntax, but within that framew o r k the semantic structure breaks down. T h e sentence does communicate what we expect, but the logical connections that we await are never made. W e are presented with a structure that we have come through many years of habit to expect to give us a certain pattern of meaning. A n d then within this structure we are presented with words that make no logical connection at all. T h e following sentence is structured in such a f a s h i o n — " I f . . . , then . . . " — t h a t we expect the supposition made in the first clause to be followed by a logical conclusion f r o m the supposition in the second clause: " I f stumbling

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Abstractionism

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is continuing then a side-walk is r e s t o r i n g . " H o w e v e r t h e logical

connection

between

the

clauses

does n o t

exist.

W e l o o k t o t h e f o l l o w i n g sentences in the p a r a g r a p h t o c l e a r up the m y s t e r y . I f a side-walk is restoring then eating is s a t i s f y i n g . I f eating is s a t i s f y i n g then u n d e r t a k i n g is beguiling. If u n d e r t a k i n g is beg u i l i n g then shooing concentrating. If shooing is c o n c e n t r a t i n g then resounding is destroying. T h a t is the w a y to sleep. ( 8 5 )

O n the s u r f a c e , these sentences p r o m i s e to solve t h e ambiguity. E a c h one uses t h e m a i n v e r b o f t h e final clause o f the p r e c e d i n g sentence in its own opening clause. T h i s implies a l o g i c a l connectiveness between

the

sentences.

B u t the only things t h a t a r e logical a b o u t this p a r a g r a p h are

its i m p l i c a t i o n s .

Every

suggestion

in each

of

the

clauses m a y be quite possible, but the possibilities do not extend f r o m clause to sentence o r f r o m sentence t o sentence. T h e r e is no r e a s o n f o r all the d i s p a r a t e ideas in the paragraph

except t h a t G e r t r u d e Stein put t h e m

there.

A n d the conclusion, " T h a t is the w a y to s l e e p , " has nothing t o do with t h e rest o f the p a r a g r a p h , except t h a t it a p p e a r s in the same unit with the rest o f its sentences. A n d on top o f all this, t h e p a r a g r a p h has no logical relationship t o the o t h e r p a r a g r a p h s t h a t a p p e a r b o t h b e f o r e and a f t e r it on the same p a g e . M i s s Stein has

finally

succeeded in r e n d e r i n g n o t only the content o f h e r writing, but also the style a b s t r a c t . The

book

proceeds,

and

the

paragraphs

become

s h o r t e r and even m o r e t e r s e : P a l e pet, red pet, pink pet, blue pet, w h i t e pet, d a r k pet, real pet, fresh pet, all the tingling is the w e e d i n g , the close pressing is the tasting. ( 9 7 )

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Even in the structure of the sentence there is less suggestion of meaning. W e have here merely the repetition of " p e t " with modifiers t o w a r d a non sequitur conclusion. T h i s example, if anything, is even more abstract than the previous one. A t this point, where meaning has so utterly been abolished, Gertrude Stein now turns to the sounds of words for her effects. H e r e is what amounts to a short prose poem: Pardon

the

fretful autocrat

who

voices

discontent.

Pardon

the colored water-color which is burnt. Pardon the intoning of the heavy way. Pardon the aristocrat w h o has not come to stay. Pardon

the abuse which

was

begun.

Pardon

the yellow

egg

which has run. Pardon nothing yet, pardon what is wet, forget the opening now, and close the door again. ( 1 0 0 )

T h e poetic effects include rhyme, rhythm, assonance, dissonance, and repetition. M i s s Stein is beginning to use w o r d s as plastic elements in creations that have no iconic relationship to anything conceptually recognizable in the external world. T h e p a r a g r a p h is discontinuous with the other related structures in the book, and the units within the p a r a g r a p h are related by nothing more than a common community of repetitious sounds. T h e Stein style that has given and still gives r e a d e r s more trouble than any other style conceived by a w r i t e r of English has finally been reached. T h e poetic effects continue with this little play on offrhymes : A lovely night to stay awake and small the cake and masticate. A lovely night and no need of surprises, that is w h a t makes it so free of noises. ( 1 0 7 )

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One could choose quotations such as the last few at random from the final pages of A Long Gay Book without much variance in kind and quality. Miss Stein has long since given up her original notion of the book as a history of "every possible kind of human being" ( 3 ) and is now lost in the world of words that becomes the source of materials for the creation of her abstract world. 9 T h e last three pages of the book are full of discontinuous paragraphs of one or two sentences. All of the associations and continuity are formed by sounds. Notes.

Notes

change

hay,

change

hey

day.

Notes

change

least a p t apple, apt hill, all hill, a screen table, sofa, sophia.

a

(115)

Sounds dictate the puns and the rhymes which people this paragraph. T h e shiftings in sound from word to slighty different word have something of the quality of a children's game played while bouncing a ball, a game in which the sense of the words is utterly subordinate to the sounds. I f primitivism in writing includes the return to the mentality and perceptions of a child, then this paragraph is an example of a primitive style in writing. T h e book ends in a seven-line series of non sequiturs full of poetic devices and plays on sounds and words. F r a n k , f r a n k quay. 9 Here is a statement made by G e r t r u d e Stein in ''American L a n g u a g e and L i t e r a t u r e , " a manuscript in the Y a l e Collection of A m e r i c a n L i t e r a t u r e that has yet to be published in English. She is speaking of her feeling at the beginning of the twentieth century of liberation from the tired language of the previous a g e :

I found myself plunged into a v o r t e x of words, burning words, cleansing words, liberating words, feeling words, and the words w e r e all ours and it w a s enough that we held them in our hands to play with t h e m ; w h a t e v e r you can play with is yours, and this w a s the beginning of knowing; of all A m e r i c a n s knowing, that it could play and play with words and the words w e r e all ours all ours.

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Set of keys w a s , w a s Lead

kind in soap, lead kind in soap sew up. L e a d

kind

in

so up. L e a d kind in so up. L e a v e s a mass, so m e a n . N o shows. L e a v e s a mass cool w i l l . L e a v e s a mass puddle. E t c h i n g . E t c h i n g a chief, none plush.

(116)

In the first line appears the pun on " f r a n k l y . " In the second line the word " k e y s " picks up the rhyme with " q u a y . " T h e r e is also the repetitious use of final consonance. T h e third and fourth lines use the opening repetition of "lead kind" three times and play on the sound of " s o a p " : "sew up," "so up." T h e following two lines use alliteration (repetition of " m " sound) and off rhyme ("cool will" and " p u d d l e " ) . T h e final line uses more repetitive devices in repeating the " t c h " sound and softening it at the end to " s h . " A number of the portraits use this very technique. A Long Gay Book, then, sets the scene f o r a number of different techniques that we shall examine in the portraits of the same period. A s with every work of Gertrude Stein's early career, it combines both its qualities as an individual work and its importance as a transitional bridge f r o m an earlier to a more abstract stage. H o w ever, the transitions f r o m here on become much less dramatic. There will be few traits in the portraits that will advance us much technically over what has already been done in A Long Gay Book. T h e other two long stories that appear in the same volume with A Long Gay Book add little to the abstract style of Gertrude Stein, but they deserve some mention as examples of works of this period. Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein (or G.M.P.) was written in 1 9 1 1 - 1 9 1 2 ,

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just a f t e r the completion of The Making of Americans, and it begins in the style of the earlier book. One immediate advance that it makes in the direction of abstractionism is the elimination of names. T h e heroes of the book are r e f e r r e d to only by pronouns. A f t e r a very short time the style moves to that of the later A Long Gay Book. T h e styles of The Making of Americans and the latter part of A Long Gay Book alternate a f t e r this throughout the rest of the book. T h e r e is more iconicity in G.M.P. E v e n without the names of the painters we are able to recognize some of the problems of color and f o r m that M i s s Stein attempts to render. H o w e v e r , in terms of the abstract style, G.M.P. does not go nearly as f a r as A Long Gay Book, and it presents nothing new that we must look f o r in the portraits. Many Many Women ( 1 9 1 0 ) , like G.M.P., has no names at all in it. T h e heroines of the book are called " s h e . " It is similar in style to Two, The Making of Americans, and the first two-thirds of A Lung Gay Book, descending into abstractionism only to the point of giving up the interlocking repetitive style f o r a repetition that repeats f o r the sake of the sound of the words. A t no time, however, does M i s s Stein in this book give up meaning. T h e following passage is as abstract a paragraph as appears in Many Many Women: A n y one liking is intending is not intending. A n y one not liking is intending is not intending. A n y one liking, any one not liking is not intending, is intending. ( 1 9 7 )

TWO: GERTRUDE STEIN AND H E R

BROTHER

Two: Gertrude Stein and Her Brother, written in 1 9 x 0 - 1 9 1 2 , does not go as f a r toward the abstractionism

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of Tender Buttons as does A Long Gay Book. There are few passages that forsake the sense of meaning in the language. The repetitions almost never fail to advance the story conceptually, and there is something of a "story." Although no names appear in the text, we are constantly aware that the book is about someone. It has considerable iconicity when compared to A Long Gay Book. The value of Two for us lies primarily in the fact that it prepares us for the style of the early portraits. The story that Two tells is of the relationship of Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo, and all the passages of the tale focus directly on the story. There are no sections of generalization about the psychological types to be demonstrated. I f Gertrude and Leo Stein exemplify the characteristics of particular psychological types, the author never tells us directly. It is a fact we must divine by implication. The book is very personal, and to follow what is going on one would do well first to read a biography of its subjects. Even with the biographical knowledge at hand, one is able to recognize the events to which Miss Stein alludes in only the most general terms. T h e biography is not followed through events that demonstrate the development of the relationship; rather, the action is completely internal. W e are witness to shifting states of mind. There is no social context whatsoever. W e never see the famous Rue de Fleurus apartment, any of the Renaissance furniture, or modern paintings on the walls. The crowds of artists and friends never make their appearance, and in their occasional effect on the lives and mental states of the principals we see them referred to as "they." W e recognize the advent of Alice B. Toklas by the appearance of another "she."

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Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

T h e central concept of personality in this book is the " s o u n d " that comes out of the individual. T h i s is analogous to the " b o t t o m n a t u r e " of The Making of Americans and the " f u n d a m e n t a l n a t u r e " of A Long Gay Book. T h i s motif is presented in the first line of the book, " T h e sound there is in them comes out f r o m t h e m , " and appears in e v e r y p a r a g r a p h f r o m there through page 64, whereupon w e begin to h a v e some passages without this f o r m . " S o u n d " periodically returns f r o m there to the end of the book. T h e structure of Two is quite simple. Sections in which each character is the central figure alternate, although M i s s Stein seems to get a bit more attention than her brother. H o w e v e r , her treatment of a situation that w a s relatively bitter in actuality is c o m p a r a t i v e l y f r e e f r o m partisanship. She begins the book by attempting to show both the similarities and contrasts of the two of them. T h e y are v e r y much alike. T h e y both h a v e sounds coming out of them. T h e y are alike. T h e y both of them have sounds coming out of them that h a v e too m u c h meaning f o r the ending that is sounding out f r o m them. T h e y are alike. T h e y both of them are not k n o w i n g the beginning and ending in sound coming out of them. T h e y are alike. T h e y certainly are v e r y much alike. T h e y certainly are not at all alike. O n e of them is hearing himself and is having then sound come out of h i m . O n e of them is hearing some one and is then h a v i n g sound come out of h e r . 1 0

L e o is developed as the cool thinker and G e r t r u d e as the 10 G e r t r u d e Stein, Two: Gertrude Stein and Her Brother (New Haven, 1 9 5 1 ) , pp. 2-3. In this section of the chapter page numbers in the text r e f e r to this edition.

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expressive one. In the beginning he seems to dominate, but slowly she begins to take over control. T h e coming of Alice T o k l a s seals the ending of the relationship. She said that she knew that she had what she did have when she had had come the one who came and was sorry she came. She said that she knew that the one who had come would feel what she would feel when she was where she was. She said that she would change what she saw would not be changed when she would need what she could see could not be needed.

(99) B y the end of the book L e o Stein has been dispossessed, " H e could stay and he did stay, he did stay a w a y , " ( 1 4 1 ) and his sister has emerged the s t r o n g e r : " S h e was not waiting. A l l she won was that v i c t o r y . " ( 1 4 2 ) F r o m the quoted passages it is obvious that the style of Two derives f r o m The Making of Americans, minus the passages of abstract generalization. T h e participles and the closely knit repetitions that slowly advance the " s o u n d " or the "bottom n a t u r e " in the process of its struggle f o r expression are in the same style as the first 7 0 0 pages and more of Two's long predecessor. E v e n some of the same terms are used, such as " a t t a c k i n g " and " r e s i s t i n g . " H o w e v e r , unlike in The Making of Americans, M i s s Stein is not interested in the definition of her terms. T h i s characteristic is allied with her abandoning the usage of the interpolated generalization. T h e emphasis in Two is more on the story and less on the textbook quality of the psychological demonstration. In this way, Two is less abstract than The Making of Americans. H o w e v e r , in its total abolition of setting and social context, Two goes f a r t h e r than its predecessor. In language and the meaning of its smaller syntactical

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Abstractionism

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units, Two goes into completely abstract verbiage only a few times. H e had the alteration of the remaining wagon and he did not then feel that he had the skin that was burning w h e n there was there w h a t came to be there as he went in and out in swimming. H e was not analogous. ( 1 2 8 )

T h i s is as close as any passage in the book comes to dispensing with sense. Occasionally, M i s s Stein plays with the rhymes of different words, but never do these rhymes interfere with the meaning o f the passage. H e was there tame and he had not any piece of name, he had that repetition. T h a t was not the text of that description.

(138) Two looks ahead to the portraits in a number of ways. First o f all, many o f the early portraits are personal in the same way as Two and presuppose knowledge of the subject. T h e y are understandable oniv with the biographical information which in their general way they suggest. Secondly, they, like Two, use the interweaving repetitive technique over much shorter lengths. W e shall call this the "cinema technique" because like the moving picture frames they resemble, each o f the sentences repeats most o f what has been stated in the previous sentence and adds a very small additional piece o f information. And so, as in the moving pictures, we see the changing picture only a f t e r a number o f the frames flash on the screen in sequence. T h i r d , the early portraits retain the participial style and the general terms used without definition or referent in the text. T h e early portraits are miniatures of the full-

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length style of Two, while the later ones adapt the style of the later A Long Gay Book. T H E PORTRAITS

Analogies between the arts are one of the sure paths to critical difficulties. T h a t such analogies must be attempted can hardly be avoided, however, when one is confronted with the "portraits," "landscapes," and "still lifes" of this period of Gertrude Stein's writing. In most previous associations of poets and painters, and in all previous comparisons of their works, identifications and congruencies had for the most part hinged upon similarities in subject matter and attitude. Such comparisons are, perforce, wholly "literary." T h e subjects and images of paintings, and the philosophies of painters, are discussed in relation to the subjects and images of poems and the philosophies of poets. W h e n the cubists jettisoned subject matter, liaisons between poetry and painting on the old basis were no longer possible. T h e only course open to literature that would emulate painting w a s that of contemplating its own structure and image. W h e n the literary content of painting was omitted in favor of the freely conceived mathematical or intuitive exercise of purely plastic values, Gertrude Stein also attempted to drop subject matter in order to concentrate freely upon the "plastic" potentialities of language itself. 1 1

In this astute comment, John Malcolm Brinnin has managed to set forth coherently Miss Stein's emulation of painting and what forms it took. Having dropped subject matter, Miss Stein tried to use language plastically in the same way that painters use paint and sculptors use their materials. This analogy will work as long as we 1 1 John Malcolm Brinnin, The Third Rose: Gertrude Stein and Her World (Boston, 1959), p. 129.

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r e m e m b e r t h a t it is a m e t a p h o r . A f t e r all, the m a t e r i a l s o f the truly plastic a r t s can be m o d e l e d in such a way as is impossible f o r the artist to do with w o r d s . W h e r e a s the m a t e r i a l s of painting a n d sculpture h a v e physical properties o f texture, weight, a n d color, w o r d s a r e conceptual entities requiring an act of the mind to o r d e r them into the r e p r e s e n t a t i o n of s o m e kind of idea. E v e n letters, like w o r d s , are by definition symbolic r e p r e s e n t a t i o n s of s o u n d s . T h e simplest uses o f pigment, f o r instance, such a s d a b s and lines, d o not carry the intrinsic symbolic b a g g a g e that the simplest f o r m s of written l a n g u a g e b e a r . W e must r e a l i z e this b e f o r e we m a k e o u r a n a l o g y . T o s a y that G e r t r u d e Stein uses l a n g u a g e plastically m e a n s that she a t t e m p t s to divest it of its t r a d i t i o n a l structure of m e a n i n g s by a variety o f devices. W h a t she w a n t e d to do in her emulation o f the cubist p a i n t e r s w a s to d e v e l o p , exclusive of the inherent symbolic nature of w o r d s , a written a r t f o r m without a mimetic relationship to the external w o r l d except t h r o u g h certain s u g g e s t i v e devices. She w a n t e d to r e o r d e r reality in the s a m e w a y that P i c a s s o a n d B r a q u e f r a g m e n t e d the f o r m s o f external objects a n d p a i n t e d the f r a g m e n t s on the c a n v a s in a completely unique relationship to one a n o t h e r . In other w o r d s , she w a n t e d the p a i n t e r ' s f r e e d o m to create her own reality, so t h a t her creation would be subject to no conventions o t h e r than those she i m p o s e d or that it imp o s e d upon itself. 1 2 W h e t h e r this is in any ultimate 12 The following quotation G e r t r u d e S t e i n e q u a t e d her painters:

s h o u l d m a k e e v i d e n t j u s t h o w closely w r i t i n g p r a c t i c e s w i t h t h o s e of the

I b e g a n to m a k e p o r t r a i t s o f t h i n g s and e n c l o s u r e s t h a t is r o o m s a n d p l a c e s b e c a u s e I n e e d e d t o c o m p l e t e l y f a c e the difficulty of h o w to include w h a t is seen w i t h h e a r i n g and l i s t e n i n g a n d a t first if I

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sense possible cannot be answered yet, but it is important that we approach the portraits f r o m the context of what Gertrude Stein was attempting to do. T h e r e are four distinct varieties of portraits f r o m the period before Tender Buttons, which I shall treat in the following o r d e r : ( 1 ) T h o s e that use the interlocking repetition of Two—the cinema technique; ( 2 ) T h o s e that exemplify the transition we saw in A Long Gay Book; ( 3 ) Series of non sequiturs in which the sentences carry very little sense, and which gain effects mainly by suggestion; ( 4 ) Poems using non sequiturs and depending predominantly on word play and poetic effects. Certain of the most famous portraits, such as the one of Cezanne and " M i s s F u r r and M i s s Skeene," were written later than this period and cannot be included in our discussion. T h e earliest portraits that Gertrude Stein wrote follow the pattern of Two. Indeed, all of the shorter portraits published in the same volume with Two f o l l o w this pattern of interlocking repetition. T h e s e early portraits can still be termed representational. T h o u g h told in the typical participial style full of unspecific generalization, they tell a story or present a recognizable personality. Of course, the nature of the portraits is extremely personal, and the extent of our understanding of them corresponds in great measure to our knowledge of the subject. Knowledge about a number of the subjects is accessible w e r e to include a complicated listening and talking it would be too difficult to do. T h a t is why painters paint still lives. Y o u do see why they do. p.

" P o r t r a i t s and Repetition," Lectures

189.

in America

(Boston,

1957),

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to any reader of a biography of the author. In these early portraits we may still assume a strong relationship between the title of the portrait and the subject of the actual writing. One of the most well-known early portraits is the first one of Picasso. T h e r e are three repetitive motifs that weave throughout the repetitions. T h e first is stated immediately: "One whom some were certainly following was one who was completely charming." 1 3 T h e next two motifs, "one working" and "bringing out of himself something," are introduced in the first sentence of the second paragraph: "Some were certainly following and were certain that the one they were then following was one working and was one bringing out of himself then something." These motifs are weaved in and out of sentences and paragraphs, dropping on the way bits of information. W h a t he was bringing out of him "was coming to be a heavy thing, a solid thing and a complete thing." H e is later seen to be "not one completely working." T h e thing that he is bringing out is described as solid, charming, lovely, perplexing, disconcerting, simple, clear, complicated, interesting, disturbing, repellent, and very pretty. However, all this information repeated in a number of different contexts does not tell us anything we can measure in the external world purely on the information given in the portrait. W e do not know who it was that was following Picasso. W h a t does Gertrude Stein mean when she says he was charming? W h a t was he bringing out of himself? How can he be working and yet "not ever completely working?" Although the syntax of the por13 Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, Vechten ( N e w Y o r k , 1 9 6 2 ) , p. 333.

ed. and introd. C a r l Van

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trait does not in itself become abstract to the point of losing meaning, we must obviously depend on our external knowledge of the subject to make sense out of the writing. W e would not even know from the portrait that Picasso was a painter. Miss Stein has abstracted all specific references that would connect the subject to life in the world of things, places, events, and people. What she has retained are the general and conceptualized descriptions of the meanings of actions. The actions and other specific items are not there, but-there is still quite a bit that is recognizable mimetically; and the language other then its stylization poses no problems of meaning. Another example of the first type of portrait was published originally in Portraits and. Prayers and entitled "Storyette H . M . " The initials probably refer to Henri Matisse. One w a s married to some one. T h a t one w a s going away to have a good time. T h e one that w a s married to that one did not like it very well that the one to w h o m that one w a s married then w a s going off alone to have a good time and was leaving that one to stay at home then. T h e one that was going came in all glowing. T h e one that was going had everything he w a s needing to have the good time he was wanting to be having then. H e came in all glowing. T h e one he was leaving at home to take care of the family living w a s not glowing. T h e one that w a s going w a s saying, the one that w a s glowing, the one that w a s going w a s saying then, I am content, you are not content, I am content you are not content, I am content, you are not content, you are content, I am content. 1 4

The story line is much more accessible than in the previous portrait. W e know a number of quite specific things about the characters. They are married and one of 14

N e w York, 1934, p. 40.

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them (the male, as we discover after a few sentences) is "going a w a y to have a good time." T h e other party obviously does not like it. T h e r e are relatively few repetitions ( " m a r r i e d , " "glowing," " l e a v i n g " ) , and the structure of the sentences is comparatively free from syntactic stylization. Even in this little slice of life, however, we have a relatively abstract portrait. There are no names; there is no setting. W e do not know the sex of either of the characters until more than half the story is over. W e do not know the meaning of the term "glowing." W h y does M i s s Stein have her character go through the series of repetitions on the word "content" at the end? T h e basic situation is an abstract one without the development that would be necessary for our more complete understanding of why the characters act the way they do. Even so, these early portraits are less abstract than those that are to follow. T h e second type of portrait follows the pattern of A Long Gay Book, in that it begins in the style of The Making of Americans, Two, and the first type of portrait, and changes by the end to the kind of linguistic abstractionism we shall rediscover in Tender Buttons. T h e example I shall use for this type of portrait is the " P o r t r a i t of Constance Fletcher," which appears in Geography and Plays. T h e portrait begins in a manner to which we have become accustomed. W h e n she w a s quite a young one she knew she had been in a f a m i l y living and that that family living was one that any one could be one not have been having if they w e r e to be one being one not thinking about being one having been having f a m i l y living. She w a s one then w h e n she w a s a young one thinking about having, about having been having family liv-

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ing. She was one thinking about this thinking, she was one feeling thinking about this thing, she w a s one feeling being one who could completely have feeling in thinking about being one who had had, who was having family l i v i n g . 1 5

It continues in this fashion f o r a page and a half until a new repetitive strain begins, this one to the effect that "She could be then one being completely loving." A f t e r a f e w paragraphs this motif gives way to her "being one being a completely filled one," and then to her being "completely f u l l . " ( 1 5 8 ) Finally, " S h e was feeling in thinking in being a full one." T h e very next lines of the portrait are : If they move in the shoe there is everything to do. T h e y do not move in the shoe. ( 1 5 9 )

These lines have no semantic relation to either the preceding or the following lines. F o r the next seven pages the portrait becomes a full-scale improvisation, in which full license is given to word and sound play, rhyme, and rhythmic effects. Come in and that expression is not that one of waiting. T o use a name is not the time that seeing has not been. T h i s is discussion. T h i s obligation. T h i s is the composition. ( 1 6 0 ) T o face the w a y that each one does say that they have any day which is clearly not away is to say that the time is not there when the color is not lighter and the hair is not redder. T h i s does not make all there is of any invitation. T h e r e is not anything of any such suggestion. ( 1 6 4 )

T h e portrait ends on the following note: A l l houses are open that is to say a door and a w i n d o w 15

and

Boston, 1922, p. 157. T h e next page numbers to appear in the text refer to this edition.

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a table and the waiter make the shadow shadow which is larger is not flickering. ( 1 6 5 )

Stein smaller

and

the

T h e pattern is, of course, one with which we are familiar. T h e opening is the same as in the repetitive early portraits and the other longer works of this period, but a f t e r a time Gertrude Stein dissolves the subject matter that she has established and begins to use words "plastically." T h e third type of portrait uses throughout its entire body the non sequitur style that arises at the end of the " P o r t r a i t of Constance Fletcher." T h e most famous of all the portraits in this style is the " P o r t r a i t of M a b e l D o d g e at the Villa Curonia." T h e days are w o n d e r f u l and the nights are wonderful and the life is pleasant. 1 6

T h i s is its celebrated opening line. From there Miss Stein takes the reader through a series of juxtapositions that have only the logic that their internal linquistic structures create f o r them. A t best, we can see a series of suggestions that may be Miss Stein's attempt to evoke the atmosphere of the Villa Curonia. "Blankets are warmer in the summer and the winter is not lonely." " I t is not darker and the present time is the best time to agree. 1 ' ( 5 2 8 ) " I f the spread that is not a piece removed f r o m the bed is likely to be whiter then certainly the sprinkling is not drying." "Abandon a garden and the house is bigger. This is not smiling. T h i s is comfortable." ( 5 2 9 ) " A walk that is not stepped where the floor is covered is not in the place where the room is entered."

(530) 16 Selected Writings of Gertrude text refer now to this edition.

Stein, p. 527. Page numbers in

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These suggestions, if that is what they are, appear as juxtaposed noti sequiturs, however, rather than as a series of statements strung together with traditional linquistic logic. T h e portrait is full of the kinds of rhyming, punning, and word play that we have seen on more than one occasion. It can perhaps best be compared to a cubist painting, in which the title is not to be taken as anything more than suggestive. W e are no longer to look for isomorphic relationships between the title and the subject of the portrait, assuming we admit that the portrait has a definable subject. Since the "Portrait of M a b e l D o d g e " is rather long, we will be able to have a better idea of the nature of this particular kind of portrait by quoting in full one of the shorter portraits of this variety that was published in Portraits and Prayers. T h e title of this one is " M r s . Edwardes." A little grass. P e a l it first it shows clothes that means night gowns hours, loaves, feathers, hours, hours, loaves, feathers, feel hours, some more in, little thing, anything pale letters, principal, principal w o r k show f u l l coal hide, f u l l coal hide in, in last angling that is. T h e most neat couple of stitches are in opposite coils. T h i s makes me ashamed, in. L e a v e off more to let anybody be ashamed to have best spread out in t w e l v e w h e n perfectly cool ice. T h i s is most needful. A little thing w a t e r melon w i l l i n g , a little thing to that. 1 7

First of all, assuming that M r s . Edwardes is indeed the subject of the portrait, we must once again look for suggestive implications as to what her presence really is in the writing. If M r s . Edwardes is a housewife, then the homely implications of many of the words in the portrait 17 Portraits edition.

and Prayers,

p. 97. Page numbers now refer to this

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might make more sense; i.e., "grass," "night gowns," "loaves," " f e a t h e r s " ( f e a t h e r d u s t e r ? ) , "coal," "best spread," "water melon," and the sentence, " T h e most neat couple of stitches are in opposite coils." P e r h a p s the sentence, " T h i s makes me ashamed, in," is supposed to be suggestive of the speech of M r s . Edwardes. W h y the word "in" is set off by commas is unclear. H o w e v e r , all of these implications are by no means ascertainable. Thus, the portrait is conceptually definable only through the possibilities of suggestions that seem to be in the associations connected with some of the words. T h e painters of the period were constantly doing portraits that depended f o r whatever iconicity they had on suggestions that seemed to emanate f r o m the associations connected with fragments scattered throughout the canvas, much the same as the fragments of M r s . Edwardes seem to be scattered throughout the p o r t r a i t that Gertrude Stein has written. In his Girl Before a Mirror, f o r instance, Picasso presents us with two figures t h a t are quite distorted but are still recognizable as female. T h e face of the girl looking into the m i r r o r is presented in both profile and half a full-face. T h e two sets of round globes on her body seem to be breasts, and yet which set are they? T h e girl's arm seems to extend across her mirror image; but is it really her arm or her image's? T h e f o r m is fragmented, though not so much as paintings like Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, and yet the fragments still suggest very definitely the titled subject, and the suggestive use of color gives us an opportunity to interpert the significance of the subject. Both Gertrude Stein and Picasso minimize or f r a g m e n t their subject matter so that the thread connecting the actual portrait with the supposed subject is tenuous at best. How-

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ever, w h a t makes G e r t r u d e Stein even m o r e abstract t h a n Picasso is t h a t even if a Picasso p o r t r a i t carries no suggestion of a subject to the viewer of the picture, it can at least convey a meaningful p a t t e r n of colors, forms, and a balanced structure within the painting, which we can f o r our purposes call texture. T h e painting can be taken in at a glance, and the absence of subject m a t t e r no l o n g e r presents a serious disability to the viewer of m o d e r n painting. In writing, however, without a subject m a t t e r the corresponding textural attributes, such as linguistic and auditory structures, are much less accessible u n d e r n o r m a l circumstances. P e r h a p s it is due to the difference between the two media, p e r h a p s merely to the fact t h a t we are trained to appreciate colors and f o r m in a painting and not the corresponding values in subjectless w r i t i n g ; p e r h a p s the difficulty is t e m p o r a l in t h a t we can take in a painting all at once and must spend time to take in a seemingly subjectless w o r d p o r t r a i t . T h e h u m a n mind may be less capable of functioning on "subjectless" writing t h a n on "subjectless" painting. W h a t ever the reasons, G e r t r u d e Stein, when she divorces subject m a t t e r f r o m her writing as she does in the f o u r t h set of p o r t r a i t types, forces the r e a d e r w h o approaches them with an open mind to concentrate his attention almost exclusively on those verbal attributes t h a t we have noticed occasionally in the past, such as punning, rhymes, metrical r h y t h m , repetition, and idiosyncratic punctuation. Some of these p o r t r a i t s take almost the f o r m of poems. "Irma" Land side. Irma. Irma cake, Irma.

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L a n d side bucket, bucket in stuff. Irma. I r m a is as estel estelable is estelable in it. Irma. ( 9 6 )

T h e effects here are relatively uncomplex. T h e w o r d " I r m a " is used as a kind of r e f r a i n at the end of each of the lines. I t is set off once by commas, the other times by p e r i o d s , perhaps simply to show that in reciting the lines the punctuation makes no difference. " L a n d s i d e " app e a r s in the first line as a substantive phrase. In the third line it is used as the modifier of " b u c k e t , " which a p p e a r s as the last w o r d of the first phrase of the line and the first w o r d o f the second phrase. In the final line G e r t r u d e Stein introduces a w o r d of her own creation, " e s t e l , " foll o w i n g which she varies the f o r m of the w o r d and repeats the variation. T h e r e is use of both rhyme and repetition. Initial rhyme connects lines one and three with the r e p e a t e d " l a n d s i d e , " while the other lines rhyme initially with the repeated " I r m a . " I n t e r n a l rhyme connects " b u c k e t " and " i t . " T h e r e is little of suggestion that one could get f r o m the w o r d s . P e r h a p s " l a n d s i d e " is a pun on " l a n d s l i d e , " but there is no application that we can m a k e of this. T h e title is reflected in the content of the p o r t r a i t only through the constant repetition of it. W e are f a c e d here with a piece of writing in which, to all practical purposes, meaning has been excised and which can be app r o a c h e d only through the linguistic texture. H e r e is a p o r t r a i t of Guillaume A p o l l i n a i r e : G i v e known or pin ware. F a n c y teeth, gas strips. E l b o w elect, sour stout pore, pore caesar, pour state at.

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Leave eye lessons I. Leave I. Lessons. I. Leave I lessons, I. (26)

Once again, even though Apollinaire is a well-known figure, as poet, art critic, and pornographer, there is little that we recognize as relating to the subject even by the suggestion of a fragment. T h e texture of this portrait, however, is much richer than the previous one in rhymes, puns, and repetition of sounds. T h e first two lines contain a series of repeated vowels and consonants, the m's in "known," "pin," "fancy," the g's in " g i v e " and " g a s , " the j sound in "fancy," " g a s , " "strips," the short i in "give," "pin," and "strips," the a sound in " w a r e , " "fancy," and " g a s . " There is a possible pun on " w a r e " ( " w h e r e " ) in the first line. In the second line we see the logic of the structure dictated by the sounds, as the sound of one word dictates what the next one will be. T h e " e l " in " e l b o w " leads to "elect." T h e " o u " in "sour" leads to "stout." T h e combination of the " o u " in "stout" and the resemblance to "spout" gives rise to the following word "pore," which is a possible pun on "pour." T h e same word, "pore," is repeated after the comma, this time modifying "caesar." In this instance it is rather a gross pun on " p o o r . " " P o u r " appears after the next comma, obviously arising from "pore," and modifying "state," which is the same word as "stout," except for the change in the middle vowel sound. T h e juxtaposition of "caesar" and "state" is, of course, no accident. T h e last line uses repetition of the words "leave," "lessons," and " I , " with the word " e y e " used as a pun on the first person singular pronoun. T h e idiosyncratic punctuation is another means of disrupting the continuity of the

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traditional English sentence unit. Played against the discontinuity in the sentence structure is the repetition of the I, s, v, n, short o, and long i sounds. In her portraits, then, we see Gertrude Stein going through a progressive march toward greater abstractionism. In the final portraits we discover that the entire unit bears no relation to its supposed subject, creates no continuity of subject of its own, juxtaposes totally unrelated words such as " g a s " and "strip," and depends for whatever effects it may have on the textural elements of language itself. One could perhaps read suggestive elements into the portraits of " I r m a " and of "Guillaume Apollinaire" that would relate them to their supposed subjects, but this kind of ingenuity would represent as much of a creation on the reader's part as the original portrait was on Gertrude Stein's. It seems to me that the only possible way of approaching these last portraits is as language devoid of meaning in the traditional sense, used "plastically" to gain the kind of effects outlined in the above analyses. If Gertrude Stein has finally abolished from her writing story, setting, movement, subject matter, analyses, and meaning, it would seem that there is only one thing further that she can do in the way of abstractionism other than ceasing to put letters together into words, words into an order, or merely leaving the page blank. She must shift her gaze away from the world of people completely to focus on things. T h i s is what she does in her next creation, Tender Buttons, a series of "still lifes" that are the focus of our attention in the next chapter.

ó

Tender Buttons

GERTRUDE STEIN WROTE Tender

Buttons

IN 1913, ON

one of the trips she and Alice T o k l a s took to Spain. It was published the following year by the poet Donald Evans, 1 created a minor stir, 2 and disappeared from the C l a i r e - M a r i e Press, N e w Y o r k , 1914. A typical example of the critical reception accorded Tender tons appeared in June, 1914, in the Chicago Tribune: 1

2

But-

Tender Buttons is the most recent product of M i s s Gertrude Stein, the literary cubist. Miss Stein, an affluent American resident in Paris, has been for years the high Priestess of the N e w Artists, the Cubists and Futurists. H e r own gyrations with words have been printed before, but Privately. Tender Buttons is the first volume to be vouchsafed the Public. It is a nightmare journey in unknown and uncharted seas. M i s s Stein's followers believe she has added a new dimension to literature. Scoffers call her writings a mad jumble of words, and some of them suspect that she is having a sardonic joke at the expense of those who profess to believe in her. . . . It is not clear whether 'Tender' of the title means a row boat, a fuel car attached to a locomotive or is an expression of human emotion . . . Quoted from Elizabeth Sprigge, Gertrude Work ( N e w Y o r k , 1957), p. 102.

Stein: Her

Life

and

Her

IJ6

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stalls. T o d a y this is perhaps the most valuable edition of G e r t r u d e Stein's writing. M i s s Stein a l w a y s considered Tender Buttons one of her most important w o r k s , and w h e n the a v a n t - g a r d e m a g a z i n e transition began to app e a r in P a r i s , she convinced E u g e n e J o l a s and E l l i o t P a u l to reprint it in an issue of the m a g a z i n e . 3 T h i s issue of transition is now a collector's item. Tender Buttons received its first wide circulation in 1 9 4 6 , when it was reprinted by R a n d o m H o u s e in Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, which was later released by the M o d e r n L i b r a r y in 1 9 6 2 . T h e development of the abstract style throughout the first ten y e a r s of G e r t r u d e Stein's career culminates in a set of "still l i f e s " in which she finally produces a w o r k of a l m o s t sustained abstractionism. T h e emulation of the techniques of painting leads M i s s Stein to dispense with people as the subjects of her p o r t r a i t u r e and to turn to objects. Picasso at the time w a s turning to collage as a m e a n s of p o r t r a y i n g the f r a g m e n t e d w o r l d of things. In Tender Buttons M i s s Stein attempts her own collage. H e r writing now becomes so abstract that it is difficult to talk about it in the context of other w o r k s of literature, and we are f o r c e d to use the metaphors of painting to describe many of her abstract effects. B e f o r e we plunge into Tender Buttons, h o w e v e r , we should make one thing clear. A b s t r a c t art, by the definition we h a v e been using, is an impossibility, especially in writing. T h e complex object that is external reality can n e v e r be completely excised in any artistic production. A painter w h o does a w a y with all f o r m and line in his w o r k must nonetheless use color of some shade between white 3

transition, I I (Fall 1 9 2 8 ) , 13-55.

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and black. T h i s color is part of the world of our experience and is the potential source of associations in the mind of anyone who approaches the painting as viewer or critic. T h e sculptor uses materials derived from the world of external reality, and no matter how much or how little stylized form he gives to his object, it must still retain associations of some sort f o r the viewer. In music, even the silent melodies of John Cage are structured around the expectation of a system of sounds that we associate with the world outside ourselves. Cage has perhaps given us the closest approximation of abstract art, f o r to be truly abstract a work of art must not exist. It must be silence or a v o i d — a n d not the illusions of either of these. T h e materials of the writer hinder the course of abstractionism even further than those of the sister arts. None of the materials used in the other arts are inherently created for the purposes of communication, but rather are there to serve the expressive purposes of the artist. But written language, which exists independent of performance, as written musical notations do not, is the symbolic representation of speech and is a specific creation intended for verbal communication. T o reduce the language to mere syntax without meaning still retains the individual word, whose associations are beyond the control of the artist. T o make up new words is still to retain the same letters that went into the makeup of the old words, and the human mind will find in these new words resemblances to old ones. If one abandons letters for mere doodles, then one still runs the risk of having the shapes he creates on the page resemble shapes that are in the experience of the viewer. There is no way to

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escape into the world of complete abstractionism other than to sit silently like a Buddha contemplating. N o w , what Gertrude Stein wanted to do was develop an art that created its own reality and did not depend on resemblances to the outer w o r l d f o r its recognition as art by the reader. T h a t she felt painting had achieved somewhat the ability to create its own reality is evident f r o m this statement f r o m Lectures in America: .

.

.

any

something like

oil

and

something

difference,

the

painting

whether

it

is

looks like it or w h e t h e r and

does

fact

remains

not

look that

like for

intended

to

look

like

to

look

it is intended it

it

really

me

it

has

makes

no

achieved

an

existence in and for itself, it exists on as being an oil

painting

on a flat s u r f a c e and it has its o w n life and like it or not there it is and I can look at it and it does hold m y attention. has its o w n

existence

this is a thing that can of course be said of anything.

That

the oil painting once it is m a d e

Anything

once it is m a d e has its o w n existence and it is because of that a n y t h i n g

holds somebody's

is about

anything,

that

how

attention.

much

vitality

The

question

has it and

that

always do

you

happen to like to look at it. 4

T h a t M i s s Stein wants the same relative f r e e d o m in her writing as the abstract painters have had f o r their art is strongly implied by the middle sentence of the second p a r a g r a p h . Without getting ourselves into the thorny problems of the mode of existence of the w o r k of art, let us say that Gertrude Stein's desire to give a piece of writing "its own existence" is important to us mainly as an indication of what she held as her objective f o r works such as Tender Buttons, and not as what we must consider a possibility of her achieving. Tender Buttons is not 4 Gertrude Stein, " P i c t u r e s , " p. 6 1 .

Lectures

in America

(Boston,

1957),

Tender

Buttons

179

abstract in the absolute sense that we h a v e outlined, but it is a genuinely abstract w o r k within the limitations of the medium, and it gives the illusion of being even more abstract than it is capable of being. P e r h a p s if we want to draw an analogy with painting, w e could call Tender Buttons an example of verbal collage, in that it is an attempted juxtaposition of verbal fragments representing f r a g m e n t s f r o m the w o r l d of external reality. A n o t h e r example f r o m the critical writings of Gertrude Stein will give us more of an idea of w h a t she was attempting to do in her series of still lifes. R e a l l y most of the time one sees only a feature of a person w i t h w h o m one is, the other features are covered by a hat, by the light, by clothes f o r sport and everybody is accustomed to complete the w h o l e entirely f r o m their k n o w l e d g e , but Picasso w h e n he s a w an eye, the other one did not exist f o r him and as a painter, and p a r t i c u l a r l y as a Spanish painter, he w a s right, one sees w h a t one sees, the rest is a reconstruction f r o m memo r y and painters have n o t h i n g to do w i t h reconstruction, nothing to do w i t h m e m o r y , they concern themselves only w i t h visible things and so the cubism of Picasso w a s an e f f o r t to m a k e a picture of these visible things . . . 5

T h i s is a useful explanation of the cubists' fragmentation o f f o r m , and it will w o r k as an explanation of M i s s Stein's method in most of Tender Buttons, if we accept the analogy she makes between her writing and painting (and indeed we must, or Tender Buttons will remain nothing but a series of unrelated p h r a s e s ) . In a strong reversal f r o m the highly conceptualized vocabulary and stylized perceptions o f The Making of Americans, Miss Stein attempts to p o r t r a y a structured reality of seemingly unstructured perceptions o f the external w o r l d . 6

G e r t r u d e Stein, Picasso

(London, 1948), p. 15.

180

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

T h e perceptions she attempts to record are those that the mind registers b e f o r e memory and perceptual conditioning reorder the elements of perception into the structure we know as reality. T h i s method extends even to her use of words in a manner that often bears no resemblance to how the w o r d was ever before used. In other words, even her use of the language rejects the kind of memory that would force her to order her vocabulary into an organized structure of traditional meanings. A l l the arts of the period seem to have revolted at once against the traditional ways of structuring reality. In music the old harmonic system gives way to the twelvetone scale. T h e painters abandon perspective f o r the flat two-dimensionalism of M a t i s s e or the fragmented form of the cubists. A n d the writers try to inject new life into the w o r d by using it in fresh contexts or by forsaking traditional meanings. T h e very title of Tender Buttons should prepare us f o r this new artistic universe in which words are wrenched f r o m their old meanings. W e are inclined to gloss over words that may be given totally unusual meanings when they are used in familiar contexts. Tender Buttons may sound like a reasonable enough title, but who has ever before created such a metaphor? H o w can a button be tender? N o one eats a button, and yet Miss Stein imports the term " t e n d e r , " usually associated with food, and uses it to m o d i f y a button, a hard inedible object usually associated with clothing. 6 W e can normally conceive of a s o f t button or even one that bends, but not a " t e n d e r " 6 M y discussion of metaphor derives largely from an excellent article by Morse Peckham, entitled "Metaphor: A Little Plain Speaking on a W e a r y Subject," Connotation, I (Winter 1962), 29-46.

Tender

Buttons

181

one. A n d yet, M i s s Stein has given the w o r d a fresh meaning by disregarding the old w a y s in which the w o r d was used; in other words, by f o r s a k i n g m e m o r y . " N o n e of the words M i s s Stein uses have ever had any experience. T h e y are no older than her use o f them . . . " 7 Behind the hyperbole of this statement lies a useful metaphor, f o r Gertrude Stein wanted nothing more than to preside over the rebirth of the l a n g u a g e . T h e sub-title of Tender Buttons is " O b j e c t s F o o d R o o m s , " which corresponds to the three sections o f the w o r k . T h e three subjects o f Tender Buttons, o f course, are the subjects of still lifes traditional to painters, including the cubists, and M i s s Stein chooses such homely subjects f o r much the same reasons as the painters. T h e subject of Tender Buttons must be as unobtrusive as possible so that the emphasis may be placed almost completely on matters of technique. A s the created reality everything in the cubist as simple and familiar visual interest and even possible by tradition. 8

and not the original reality had to be picture, the original reality had to be as possible, to contain nothing but a that visual interest as unprejudiced as

M i s s Stein, as with most o f the m o d e r n painters at this point, rejected anything that smacked o f the l i t e r a r y in her still lifes. T h e r e is no w a y to pin d o w n the style of Tender Buttons. In its many f r a g m e n t s it uses almost all the techniques we have previously noted, and it adds a f e w elements o f its own. B y and l a r g e , h o w e v e r , it uses the style 7 Laura Riding, "The N e w Barbarian and Gertrude Stein," transition, I (June 1927), 160. 8 Donald Sutherland, Gertrude Stein: A Biography of Her Work ( N e w Haven, 1951), pp. 85-6.

182

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

o f the tton sequitur. T h e textural elements noted in the previous chapter are less in evidence, except for those passages t h a t use poetic effects. T h e r e is on the other hand m o r e o f a relationship between the title o f a fragment and the content o f the writing that follows it. T h i s is not to say t h a t in these still lifes Gertrude Stein is giving verbal descriptions o f potential paintings. W h e n M i s s Stein includes objects, colors, and shapes in her fragments, she does this so that they will merely suggest the presence o f a physical object o f a certain weight, texture, and color. A s the cubist painter includes the f r a g m e n t o f an o b j e c t along with other discontinuous fragments, so G e r t r u d e Stein uses her sentences and phrases, and sometimes even simple words, to build up through repetition ( a s the painter does by repeating certain similar f r a g m e n t s in his cubist still l i f e ) a suggestion or implication o f a physical object or set o f objects. P e r h a p s the main stylistic innovation is the one sentence structure, which ultimately takes on the character of a definition, as in SALAD: It is a winning cake.9 H e r e there is no chance to build effect by repetition, which has been M i s s Stein's chief technical resource. N o r is there an opportunity to use the poetic effects o f rhyme and rhythm to enrich the texture. A l l we have is the simple juxtaposition o f the title and the short sentence. W h a t e v e r fresh way we may have o f looking at the subject is l e f t almost purely to what we can get out o f the juxtaposition M i s s Stein makes. 9 Gertrude Stein, Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, ed. and introd. C a r l V a n Vechten ( N e w Y o r k , 1 9 6 2 ) , p. 495. A l l page numbers in the text of this chapter r e f e r to this edition.

Tender

Buttons

183

T h e first of the " O b j e c t s " is A C A R A F E , T H A T IS A BLIND GLASS. A

kind

in

glass

and

a

cousin,

a

spectacle

s t r a n g e a single h u r t c o l o r a n d an a r r a n g e m e n t pointing.

All

this

and

not

ordinary,

not

and

nothing

in a system

unordered

in

to not

resembling. T h e d i f f e r e n c e is s p r e a d i n g . ( 4 6 0 )

First of all, although the meaning of the statements is enigmatic, M i s s Stein gives her still life some representational qualities by the inclusion o f a f e w w o r d s that r e f e r back to the title. T h e w o r d s here are " g l a s s " and "spectacle." " G l a s s , " of course, derives directly f r o m the title. " S p e c t a c l e " in one of its meanings at least implies the use of " g l a s s . " T h e s e representational resemblances to the supposed subject matter supplied by the title, slight though they may be, are enough to set us looking f o r other resemblances. H o w e v e r , M i s s Stein fills her still life with a series of undefined and seemingly unrelated terms that dissipate most o f the potential resemblances between subject and content and l e a v e us w i t h only the suggestion of a c a r a f e . W h a t , f o r instance, does " k i n d " r e f e r t o ? Is it there only because of the rhyme with " b l i n d ? " W h a t about " c o u s i n ? " D o e s it, perhaps like " k i n d , " simply r e f e r to a v a g u e category to which a c a r a f e either belongs o r is r e l a t e d ? O r , since a c a r a f e is an object connected w i t h f o o d , is "cousin" really a pun on " c u i s i n e ? " W h i c h meaning of "spectacle" are we to a p p l y ? D o e s the "single hurt c o l o r " r e f e r to blindness, and does this r e f e r to "spectac l e " or " g l a s s ? " I f none o f these problems h a v e been placed here intentionally by M i s s Stein, then this is even f u r t h e r p r o o f of the suggestive p o w e r o f w o r d s and o f

184

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

the inability o f e v e n t h e m o s t self-conscious a u t h o r

to

d i v e s t t h e m c o m p l e t e l y o f their a s s o c i a t i v e p o w e r s . T h e next of the o b j e c t s , GLAZED GLITTER, is the subject of

a longer "poem."10 T h e

first w o r d o f

this is

" n i c k e l , " w h i c h sets up i m m e d i a t e l y the s u g g e s t i o n o f a t a r n i s h e d coin to c o r r e s p o n d to " g l a z e d

glitter."

The

w o r d " c h a n g e " a p p e a r s in the next line, w h i c h r e i n f o r c e s o u r notion o f the t a r n i s h e d coin. A f t e r this, i n t e r s p e r s e d w i t h p h r a s e s such as There

is no g r a t i t u d e

in m e r c y

and

in medicine.

be b r e a k a g e s in J a p a n e s e . T h a t is no p r o g r a m m e .

appear

words

that

seem

to

have

a

There

can

(460)

connection

with

" g l a z e d " : "cleansing," "glittering," " w a s h i n g , " and "poli s h i n g . " T h e s a m e m e t h o d is used here as in the first still l i f e , a n d indeed this is the m e t h o d t h a t G e r t r u d e m a i n t a i n s t h r o u g h o u t m o s t of Tender

Stein

Buttons.

O c c a s i o n a l l y , t h o u g h n o t so o f t e n as in s o m e o f p r e v i o u s p o r t r a i t s , M i s s Stein will m a k e use o f

the

rhyme,

a d d i n g a spirit o f p l a y t o h e r picture, as in DIRT AND NOT COPPER: 10 T h a t M i s s Stein thought of Tender Buttons as poetry is evidenced by the following statement f r o m " P o e t r y and G r a m m a r , " one of the Lectures in America, op. cit., p. 235.

A n d then, something happened and I began to discover the names of things, that is not discover the names but discover the things the things to see the things to look at and in so doing I had of course to name them not to give them new names but to see that I could find out how to k n o w that they w e r e there by their names or by replacing their names. A n d h o w w a s I to do so. T h e y had their names and naturally I called them by the names they had and in doing so having begun looking at them I called them by their names w i t h passion and that made poetry, I did not mean it to make poetry but it did, it made the T e n d e r Buttons, and the T e n d e r Buttons w a s very good poetry it made a l o t more poetry, and I will n o w more and more tell about that and h o w it happened.

Tender

Buttons

185

D i r t and not copper makes a color darker. I t makes the shape so heavy and makes no melody harder. It makes mercy and relaxation and even a strength to spread a table fuller. T h e r e are more places not empty. T h e y see cover. ( 4 6 4 )

T h e rhyme here is the repeated er ending: " c o p p e r , " " d a r k e r , " " h a r d e r , " " f u l l e r , " " c o v e r . " In addition, the first line gives the hint of a strong rhythm that M i s s Stein then discontinues. In A BOX we see the use in miniature o f the technique o f A Long Gay Book. T h e still life begins with the repetition of a series o f quite accessible statements about boxes: A large box is handily made of w h a t is necessary to replace any substance. Suppose an example is necessary the plainer it is made the more reason there is for some outward recognition that there is a result. A box is made sometimes and them to see to see to it neatly and to have the holes stopped up makes it necessary to use paper. ( 4 6 5 )

A f t e r this, the writing becomes progressively m o r e abstract and suggestive, until the final p a r a g r a p h reads A n increase w h y is an increase idle, w h y is silver cloister, w h y is the spark brighter, if it is brighter is there any result, hardly more than ever. ( 4 6 5 - 4 6 )

A t this point there is no longer even a suggestion o f the supposed subject. A LONG DRESS shows the structure of the still life obeying a different kind of logic. T h e opening sentence is in the f o r m o f a question. T h e r e is then a series of questions that simply f o l l o w the lead of the first question. H e r e w e find that the structural logic of the entire still l i f e is

i86

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

f o r m e d by following repetitively the structure of opening sentence. What crackle,

is

the

what

is

current the

necessary w a i s t . W h a t

that

current

makes that

machinery,

presents

a

that

long

the

makes

line

it

and

a

a d a r k place

is

is this c u r r e n t .

W h a t is the w i n d , w h a t is it. Where

is the serene length,

it is there

and

not a d a r k place, o n l y a w h i t e and red are black, only a y e l l o w and

green

are blue, a pink

is scarlet, a b o w is every

color.

A

line distinguishes it. A line j u s t distinguishes it. ( 4 6 7 )

T h e last two sentences are in the f o r m of answers to the preceding questions. But, of course, they are very murky answers indeed, if at all. A f t e r a time the still lifes begin to get shorter, depending less on the relationship, or lack thereof, between sentences and more on the suggestiveness or juxtapositions o f w o r d s , as in A PETTICOAT : A light w h i t e , a disgrace, an ink spot, a rosy c h a r m .

(471)

A l l four items in this short catalogue could possibly be associated in some way with a petticoat, but the associations must be made by the reader. Some of the " p o e m s " are even shorter and more terse. F o r example, PEELED PENCIL,

CHOKE:

R u b her coke. ( 4 7 6 )

In this instance Gertrude Stein is punning on the word " r u b b e r , " which we may associate with the rubber eraser on the "peeled pencil." In addition, we have the play on the rhyme of " c h o k e " and " c o k e . " M e r e l y by the dropping of the letter " h " she produces another word of such a different meaning, although both are perhaps associated with the gullet. I f the punning implication Is

Tender

Buttons

187

correct, then we are faced in " r u b b e r c o k e " with a metaphor just as startling as the m e t a p h o r of tender buttons. But if M a t i s s e can paint a w o m a n with a green nose, w h y then can't Gertrude Stein write about a rubber c o k e ? T h e final " O b j e c t , " THIS IS THIS DRESS, AIDER, presents us with something relatively rare in the writings of Gertrude Stein, the creation of neologisms. Aider, why

aider w h y w h o w , w h o w stop t o u c h , aider

aider stop the m u n c h e r , m u n c h e r

whow,

munchers.

A j a c k in kill her, a j a c k in, m a k e s a m e a d o w e d k i n g ,

makes

a to let.

T h e words " a i d e r " and " m u n c h e r , " although used completely out of their ordinary contexts are nonetheless still w o r d s that appear in the E n g l i s h language. B u t the w o r d " w h o w " is a creation of her own. M i s s Stein's abstractionism rarely led her to take this step. In addition, we can see another g r o w i n g attribute of her abstract style in the changing of the traditional function o f E n g l i s h w o r d s according to their position in the syntax of the sentence. T h e verb " k i l l " appears in the sentence a f t e r the preposition " i n . " Ordinarily, we expect substantives to be the objects of prepositions. H o w e v e r , in using l a n g u a g e " p l a s t i c a l l y " M i s s Stein exercises her privilege of using a v e r b in a different function. T h e infinitive " t o l e t , " which ends this section of Tender Buttons, appears as the object of a verb and is modified by the article " a . " O n l y substantives are ordinarily modified by articles, but once again M i s s Stein puts the w o r d s into the o r d e r she desires, not that dictated by the traditional usage of lang u a g e as an instrument o f v e r b a l communication. T h e second section of Tender Buttons, " F o o d , " is constructed in much the same w a y , with a title in capital

188

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

letters followed by a fragment ranging f r o m one sentence to a f e w paragraphs, except f o r a f e w longer specimens which open the section. T h e first of the f o o d still lifes, ROASTBEEF, covers five pages and is by f a r the longest of all the Tender Buttons fragments, except f o r the final " R o o m s . " It begins much like a passage f r o m Two, but before the paragraph is complete the style is already the suggestive obscurity we have come to associate with Tender Buttons. In the inside there is sleeping, in the outside there is reddening, in the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling. I n the evening there is feeling. I n feeling anything is resting, in feeling anything is mounting, in feeling there is resignation, in feeling there is recognition, in feeling there is recurrence and entirely mistaken there is pinching. A l l the standards have steamers and all the curtains have bed linen and all the y e l l o w has discrimination and all the circle has circling. T h i s makes sand. ( 4 7 7 )

Only "reddening," in the second line, has anything possibly to do with roast beef, and we usually associate "reddening" with the inside rather than the outside of a roast. T h e first of our really strong suggestions appears two paragraphs later: T h e change the dirt, not to change dirt means that there is no beefsteak and not to have that is no obstruction, it is so easy to exchange meaning, it is so easy to see the difference. ( 4 7 7 - 7 8 , italics m i n e )

From there on are numerous references to f o o d such as " t o a s t , " "chickens," and " t e a , " but our next reference to beef comes two pages l a t e r : " W h y should ancient lambs be goats and young colts and never beef . . . " ( 4 8 0 ) And finally, half a page later we see:

Tender Please

be

the

beef,

Buttons

please

Please beef, please be c a r v e d

beef, clear,

189

pleasure

is

not

wailing.

please be a case of

consid-

eration.

H e r e is the first substantial mentioning of beef and the first time one of the functions connected with roast beef, " c a r v i n g , " appears. A f t e r this the references to beef disappear f o r the rest of the still life. In the next long still life, MUTTON, we see no mention of mutton until the very last passage. A

meal

cheaper

in

because

instruction.

mutton, so little

mutton, is more.

why

is

lamb

Lecture,

cheaper,

lecture

and

it

is

repeat

(483)

A f t e r the f o o d fragments begin to get smaller, we become more and more aware of distortions in the functions of individual words. In CUPS we see the following sentence: " W h y is a cup a stir and a behave." ( 4 8 9 ) A cup can be stirred, but can it be a " s t i r ? " A n d yet how can we argue with the logic of the juxtaposition, since stirring is something we associate with cups? T h e verb " b e h a v e " follows the article " a , " a position in which we would ordinarily find another f o r m of that word, "beh a v i o r . " Miss Stein is still using language plastically. T h e later still lifes of " F o o d " become, like those of "Objects," shorter and terser. H e r e is POTATOES: " R e a l potatoes cut in between." ( 4 9 0 ) A suggestion of French f r i e d potatoes? In the case of CELERY the description seems even more descriptive than suggestive: " C e l e r y tastes tastes where in curled lashes and little bits and mostly in remains." ( 4 9 1 ) T h e iconicity here is surprising in comparison with what we have become accustomed to in the rest of

190

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

Tender Buttons. T h e "curled lashes" are the strings one peels away from celery in cleaning it. T h e "little bits" are perhaps the slices into which the celery is cut. T h e "remains" are probably the leaves at the end of the stalk that one throws away. In her treatment of the language Gertrude Stein tries to pretend that it did not exist before she began to write. But she does not pretend that there is not a world outside of her. It is very much there and it relates to what she is writing. But she forces the reader to recreate this external world for himself. She does not want to tell him what to see. Nevertheless, she does attempt to use words in ways that they have never been used before. As Tender Buttons continues, the uses of words become even more wrenched out of their usual contexts. Here is a passage from EATING: Is it so a noise to be is it a least remain to rest, is it a so old say to be is it a leading are been. ( 4 9 4 )

T h e verb "remain" appears in the function of a noun modified by an article and an adjective. Gertrude Stein is ignoring traditional morphology here ( W e would ordinarily add the ending der to "remain.") and in the next construction " a so old say," where we would normally add ing to "say." Also, the construction "a so old" would normally be written "such an old." T h e final construction is the most distorted of all. "Leading are been," because it is preceded by the article " a , " must function in the sentence as a substantive, even though it is composed of three verb forms: the present participle, the simple present, and the past participle. In addition, neither the number or the tense of the verbs agree. " A r e " should be

Tender Buttons

191

in the past tense to agree with "been." However, it should be in the singular " i s " form to agree with leading, which is rendered singular by being preceded by the article " a . " All of the traditional functions of words and grammar mean nothing once language is used as a plastic material rather than as a communicative symbol. The final section is entitled " R o o m s , " and, unlike the previous two parts of Tender Buttons, it is not divided into small subdivisions by a series of titles in capital letters. It is twelve pages of ostensibly unrelated paragraphs. However, other than these minor and obvious technical differences there is little to distinguish the writing in " R o o m s " from that of either "Objects" or " F o o d . " T h e individual paragraphs are constructed much the same as the previous still lifes, with just as much variety in their patterns as we saw before. It is ironic that before Tender Buttons, and especially before this section on " R o o m s , " Miss Stein progressively excised in each succeeding book the use of setting, until at last in the portraits we have only a description of the character in no setting or social context whatever. And now in the final section of Tender Buttons we see a complete reversal of the previous trend in the abolition of people altogether, and a total emphasis, at least insofar as subject matter, on the physical surroundings. Of course, one direction is ultimately just as abstract as the other. The connections in " R o o m s " are made in much the same way that they were throughout the earlier parts of "Objects" and " F o o d . " Between passages of seeming irrelevance we come on references to different parts of a room or on different objects that could be contained in a

192

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

room. T h i s section opens with the sentence, " A c t so that there is no use in a centre." ( 4 9 8 ) W e must assume the "centre" referred to as the center of the room. T h e first sentence of the next paragraph repeats this word and probably describes a curtain: " A whole centre and a border make hanging a way of dressing." A n d the last sentence of the same paragraph brings in another aspect of a room: " T h e r e was no rental." Other references continue to build the picture of the room. " A n y force which is bestowed on a floor shows rubbing." ( 4 9 9 ) And this piece of alliteration: " A little lingering lion and a Chinese chair . . . " T h e r e is even a picture of the author herself at work in her little room in her apartment on the rue de Fleurus: " T h e author of all that is in there behind the door and that is entering in the morning." T h e r e are continual references to " d r a w e r s , " " d o o r s , " " f l o o r s , " " t a b l e , " " g l a s s e s , " "table linen," "six little spoons," " w i n d o w s , " " m i r r o r s , " " b e d s , " "springs," and many similar objects. T h e same kinds of poetic devices as before are used in " R o o m s . " W e have already seen an example of alliteration. T h e r e is also much use of rhyme, provided here by the repetition of er endings : A

cape is a cover, a cape is not a cover in s u m m e r , a cape is a

c o v e r and

the

regulation

is that

there

is no such w e a t h e r .

A

cape is not a l w a y s a cover, a cape is not a cover w h e n there is another . . . ( 5 0 2 )

H e r e is a full-scale poem in prose, with rhymes and a fairly strong rhythm: A gion,

religion, almost a religion, any religion, a relying

creature

and

a

and

a surface

question

and

and a

service

syllable

in in

a quintal

in

indecision answer

and

reli-

and

a

more

Tender

Buttons

193

counting and no quarrel and a single scientific statement and no darkness and no question and an earned administration and a single set of sister and an outline and no blisters.

(505) Occasional examples of striking metaphors still occur, as in "elastic tumbler," although there is no example of the dislocation of words from their traditional functions as we saw in "Objects" and " F o o d . " There are no real stylistic innovations that are original with " R o o m s . " Miss Stein merely maintains here the same general level of abstractionism that she has already established. Before we leave Tender Buttons, however, there is one more problem to explore. W h a t are the sources of the "seemingly irrelevant" passages that appear among the realistic suggestions referring to the supposed subject of the writing? It seems to me that Gertrude Stein allows "irrelevancies" to creep into her writing in much the same way that a number of modern artists have brought things into their works that have no conceivable relation to what they are doing. I refer here to the admission of accident, matters of purely personal interest, or stray thoughts that may have wandered into the mind at the moment. Richard Ellmann tells an anecdote along these lines in his biography of James Joyce. T h i s incident occurred during the writing of Finnegans Wake when Samuel Beckett was Joyce's amanuensis: O n c e or twice he dictated a bit of Finnegans Wake to Beckett, though dictation did not w o r k very w e l l for him; in the middle of one such session there was a knock at the door which Beckett didn't hear. Joyce said, 'Come in,' and Beckett wrote it down. A f t e r w a r d s he read back w h a t he had written and Joyce said ' W h a t ' s that " C o m e in" ?' 'Yes, you said that,' said Beckett. Joyce

194

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

thought for a moment, then said, ' L e t it stand.' H e was quite willing to accept coincidence as his collaborator. Beckett was fascinated and thwarted by Joyce's singular method. 1 1

Thornton Wilder has similar information to give about Gertrude Stein's methods of composition. She introduces w h a t I like to call "the irruption of the daily life." If her t w o dogs are playing at her feet while she is writing she puts them into the text. She may suddenly introduce some phrases she has just heard over the garden wall. T h i s resembles a practice that her friends the Post-impressionist painters occasionally resorted to. T h e y pasted a subway ticket to the surface of their painting. T h e reality of a w o r k of art is one reality; the reality of a " t h i n g " is another reality; the juxtaposition of the two kinds of reality gives a bracing shock. I t also insults the reader; but the reader is not present, nor even imagined. I t refreshes in the writer the sense that the writer is all alone, alone w i t h his thoughts and his struggle and even with his relation to the outside world that lies about him. 1 2

A number of Wilder's statements seem relevant to the method of Tender Buttons. First of all, Gertrude Stein is willing to introduce anything into the context of her writing. A t one point, as we noted, in " R o o m s " she introduces herself behind the door, presumably writing. Also, Wilder's statement that "the juxtaposition of the two kinds of reality gives a bracing shock" seems to me to be the main rationale for what Gertrude Stein is doing in Tender Buttons. It is the startling juxtaposition, the strange metaphor, the emergence of reality occasionally from the midst of unintelligibility, the exotic uses of words, the syntactic discontinuities that give to Tender Buttons whatever it has that is striking and original. 11 12

James Joyce ( N e w York, 1959), p. 662. "Introduction," Four in America ( N e w Haven, 1947), p. xv.

Tender Buttons

195

Gertrude Stein says as much herself near the end of Tender Buttons: Surprise, the only surprise has no occasion. I t is an ingredient and the section the w h o l e section is one season. ( 5 0 9 )

In addition to the elements of surprise and the admission of external reality into the created object, Miss Stein was constantly including in her writing what James and Bergson call "the immediate data of consciousness." 13 H e r immediate perceptions, her thoughts about certain nagging problems, her questions about certain objects or themes that appear in her writing, the associations that a word or sound might set off in her conscious mind, all of these are for Gertrude Stein legitimate materials f o r her writing. H e r method of composition seems to go something like this. She focuses directly on a particular subject for as long as it may stick in her mind. T h e n she may depart from the subject to follow an association or report something that has entered her consciousness. T h e subject at hand returns again and again, but the importance of this whole retrospective process is to express the continuous present on-going of her consciousness. T h i s is, after all, the only pure knowledge according to her theory. If data other than that relating directly to the supposed subject intrude into her consciousness, then they must be recorded as a manifestation of Gertrude Stein's process of thought. T h i s would explain the peculiar structure of the writing known as Tender Buttons, its continual digressions and sudden intrusions of reality. T h i s is the method and result to which all the previous 1 3 Bergson wrote an entire book on the subject in Time and Free Will, first published in French in 1889.

196

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

w r i t i n g s o f G e r t r u d e Stein h a v e led. T h e p a t h o f abstractionism, as w e h a v e seen, w a s a s l o w and c a r e f u l develo p m e n t , on w h i c h each piece of w r i t i n g s e r v e d as a n e w o b s t a c l e to be o v e r c o m e , until the genuine step into the a b s t r a c t style w a s possible. I t is the prolific e f f o r t o f a n u m b e r o f y e a r s t h a t finally leads t o the c r e a t i o n o f the first

piece o f w r i t i n g e v e r to c r e a t e c o m p l e t e l y its o w n

w o r l d and its o w n set o f

c o n v e n t i o n s b y w h i c h it de-

m a n d s to be a p p r o a c h e d and j u d g e d . In this sense, G e r t r u d e Stein is a p r o f o u n d l y o r i g i n a l w r i t e r , and w e h a v e watched her move

through

progressive

stages

to

this

t o t a l l y unique result. However,

uniqueness is n o t a n e c e s s a r y m e a s u r e

of

aesthetic v a l u e . T h e r e f o r e , the r e a d e r w h o decides ult i m a t e l y t h a t the w r i t i n g s o f G e r t r u d e Stein do n o t sati s f y his criteria of w h a t g r e a t l i t e r a t u r e s h o u l d be is perh a p s entitled to put m o s t o f t h e m d o w n as e x p e r i m e n t s t h a t f a i l t o p l e a s e . B u t n o serious student o f

contempo-

r a r y l i t e r a t u r e s h o u l d a l l o w h i m s e l f to dismiss their aut h o r as an eccentric w h o s h o u l d be " d e f i n e d o u t o f existence as an a r t i s t . " 1 4 I t is incumbent on all o f us t o at least u n d e r s t a n d w h a t G e r t r u d e Stein w a s d o i n g , f o r in h e r w r i t i n g s she w e n t a l o n g w a y t o w a r d defining the limits o f l a n g u a g e . Y o u n g w r i t e r s , especially, can l e a r n as much f r o m h e r in this direction as t h e y can f r o m the more popular James Joyce. I t is f r u i t l e s s to l a m e n t the existence o f G e r t r u d e Stein o r to ridicule h e r as b o t h a p e r s o n a n d w r i t e r . W h a t e v e r place p o s t e r i t y assigns h e r in the l i t e r a r y chain of being, one cannot escape the f a c t o f the v e r y l a r g e shelf 14

Stein

B e n Reid, Art by Subtraction: A Dissenting ( N o r m a n , O k l a . , 1 9 5 8 ) , p. 170.

Opinion

of

of

Gertrude

Tender Buttons

197

books she produced and which still have the power to excite such extremes of rapture and indignation. Miss Stein is an historical fact and we cannot wish her away. As John Malcolm Brinnin has said, If Gertrude Stein had never lived, sooner or later works very much like those she produced would have been written by someone else. Once a particular set of conditions was present, her arrival was inevitable—like an event in chemistry. 15

If Gertrude Stein was an inevitability for the twentieth century, then as products of the same age we can probably learn much about ourselves in her enigmatic works. The supposed irrationality of her writing may be no more than a reflection of the irrationality of our world. T o understand the enigma of Gertrude Stein, however, we must first try to determine what there is in her writing, free from all the cant surrounding her personality. The present study, it is hoped, is a first step in this attempt.

15 The Third Rose: Gertrude Stein and Her World (Boston, 1959), p. xiv.

Appendix

A . GERTRUDE S T E I N I N T H E P S Y C H O L O G Y LABORATORY R E A D E R S OF The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas know that Gertrude Stein worked in experimental psychology under William James. She was at the time a Radcliffe undergraduate, and her previous mentor in psychology, H u g o Münsterberg, had found her "the model of what a young scholar should be." 1 With another young student, Leon Solomons, the precocious Miss Stein worked on such projects as " T h e Place of Repetition in M e m o r y , " "Fluctuations of the Attention," and " T h e Saturation of Colors," including herself among the subjects. 2 In September 1896, they published some results of their experiments as " N o r m a l M o t o r Automatism," in the Psychological Review.8 T w o years later Gertrude Stein alone wrote another article based on the same experiments. 4 These first publications prefigure 1 John Malcolm Brinnin, The Third Rose: Gertrude Stein and Her World (Boston, 1959), p. 29. 2 Ibid. 8 III (1896), 492-512. Solomons died in 1900 from an infection contracted in the laboratory. 4 "Cultivated Motor Automatism," Psychological Review, V (1898), 295-3O6.

200

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

some of the controlling ideas in her earliest fiction, and they are worth examining f o r the light they can shed on Things as They Are, Three Lives, The Making of Americans, and Tender Buttons. Gertrude Stein and Leon Solomons were mainly interested in testing the limits of their subjects' attention. T h e y asked them to write repeatedly the same letter while reading a story aloud. In another experiment, the subject read a story aloud while attempting to record words that M i s s Stein or M r . Solomons read to him. In another, the subject tried to read aloud a dull story while listening to an interesting one. T h e experimenters wanted to discover the limits of conscious attention, by seeing how long a person could concentrate before fatigue would allow his unconscious reactions to disturb his attentiveness. W h a t they discovered was that the average person's attention began to waver almost immediately. Especially when asked to write the same letter repeatedly, the subjects began involuntarily to write words f r o m the story. E v e n when conscious of repeating the same involuntary action, they were still unable to prevent it. M o r e o v e r , the subject wrote with seemingly no break in his attention to what was being read. T h i s indicated that in most instances unconscious reactions could not be completely overridden by conscious attention. One exception to the rule, however, was Gertrude Stein herself, who, as she later directs Alice B . T o k l a s to say, "never had subconscious reactions, nor was she a successful subject f o r automatic writing." 5 A s it turned out, the most notorious experiment was 5

The

Autobiography

of Alice

B.

Toklas,

p. 79.

Appendix

201

ultimately "automatic writing." A planchette with a pencil was hung f r o m the ceiling, and the subject was instructed to hold the pencil over a piece of paper while one of the experimenters read a story to him. If the subject began to write even while concentrating on the story, the assumption would be that his hand was being unconsciously directed. T h i s particular experiment met with only moderate success, many of the subjects producing nothing but scribbles and gibberish. H o w e v e r , enough students responded "automatically" to allow Miss Stein and M r . Solomons to make the following generalization: automatic writing reveals "a marked tendency to repetition [their i t a l i c s ] — A phrase would seem to get into the head and keep repeating itself at every opportunity, and hang over from day to day even." 6 A n example they used, " 'When he could not be the longest and thus to be, and thus to be, the strongest,' " 7 reads suspiciously like a line f r o m Gertrude Stein's later writingS " In 1 9 3 4 the H a r v a r d behaviorist, B. F . Skinner, rediscovered this early article and wrote about it in the Atlantic Monthly. In " N o r m a l M o t o r Automatism," P r o f e s s o r Skinner claimed to have found the key to the ambiguities of Tender Buttons, in lines such as the one in the previous p a r a g r a p h : the writings in Tender Buttons are examples of automatic writing. H o w e v e r , they are less the writings of a second or unconscious personality than of Gertrude Stein's arm. . . . a l t h o u g h it is quite plausible that the w o r k is d u e to a second p e r s o n a l i t y s u c c e s s f u l l y split off f r o m M i s s S t e i n ' s con0

7

" N o r m a l M o t o r A u t o m a t i s m , " 506.

Ibid.

202

Abstractionism

scious self, it is a very intellectually

in Gertrude

flimsy

unopinionated,

is

sort of

Stein

personality

emotionally

indeed.

cold,

past. I t is unread and unlearned beyond g r a m m a r as easily influenced as a child; a heard into w h a t e v e r

sentence may

ment, or it m a y diably.

word

is no is

force itself

be under construction

materials are the sensory

It

has

school. I t

may

break the sentence up altogether

Its literary

and

at the and

things

mo-

irreme-

nearest

at

hand—objects, sounds, tastes, smells, and so on. 8

Although written in a debunking spirit, P r o f e s s o r Skinner's remarks are a more than adequate description o f some o f the m a j o r characteristics o f Gertrude Stein's writing. W h a t he has described is M i s s Stein's conception o f the "human m i n d , " which she contrasts t o " h u m a n n a t u r e . " T o M i s s Stein, human nature is t h a t p a r t o f man's consciousness that makes relationships a m o n g objects, that has memory, that self-consciously r e f e r s back to its own identity, that has emotions, that is burdened with knowledge outside its immediate perceptions. T h e human mind has no emotions, memory, identity, or past. I t is simply that part o f the human consciousness that does nothing but perceive whatever data is immediately available to the senses. T h e process o f writing transfers the knowledge o f the human mind to paper as quickly as it is perceived. I t has nothing to do with any past knowledge because " t h e human mind knows what it knows and knowing what it knows it has nothing to do with seeing what it remembers. . . T h o u g h P r o f e s s o r Skinner's description o f the consciousness that wrote Tender Buttons may be accurate, 8

" H a s Gertrude Stein a Secret?" Atlantic,

CLIII

(January 1934),

53-

9

Gertrude Stein, The Geographical History of America (New Y o r k , ! 9 3 6 ) , p. 27. T h i s work contains M i s s Stein's fullest discussion of "human nature" and "human mind."

Appendix

203

his accusation that Miss Stein wrote automatically is not. Quite aware of the characteristics of "automatic writing," Gertrude Stein developed some of its surface attributes into a conscious aesthetic. Only by writing consciously could Gertrude Stein consistently maintain a style that excluded so many elements of "human nature." The surrealists used automatic writing to delve into the fantasies of the unconscious. But the unconscious, as any reader of Freud knows, has everything to do with the past, with identity, and with emotions, all of which Gertrude Stein consciously attempts to outlaw from her writing. T o contend that she sat in her studio waiting for impulses to direct her hand over the page, and in this way managed to produce forty books or more, stretches credibility. If the consciousness that created Tender Buttons strikes Professor Skinner as "unread and unlearned beyond grammar school," perhaps Laura Riding had answered that contention already: Gertrude Stein, by combining the functions of critic and poet and taking everything around her very literally and many things for granted which others have not been naive enough to take so, has done what everyone else has been ashamed to do. No one but she has been willing to be as ordinary, as simple, as primitive, as stupid, as barbaric as successful barbarism demands. 10

W e can learn even more of relevance to Miss Stein's creative writings from her second article. Leon Solomons wrote most of the first article himself, although Gertrude Stein may have had a hand in the revisions. Indeed, she disagreed with many of the conclusions favorable to automatic writing. In the article she wrote under her 10

"The New Barbarian and Gertrude Stein," transition,

1927). 157-

I (June

204

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

own name in 1 8 9 8 , she g a v e m o r e attention to things that p a r t i c u l a r l y interested her. She described this m a n y years l a t e r : Then one

of

as

I

the

say

I

things

became I

did

more

was

c o l l e g e s t u d e n t in a s t a t e of fatigue

induced

interested but

in

instead

their

by

their that

characters

their

I

was

bottom

nature

h a l f of

the r e p o r t of

of

psychology, of

the

and

average

n o r m a l a c t i v i t y a n d in t h e s t a t e of but

soon

enormously

is w h a t

them,

in

reactions

examinations.

reactions

that

interested

testing

and

I

was

found

interested

even

when

I I

in

these e x p e r i m e n t s

then

supposed that in

I

the

thought

May

1898

I expressed

be not

types

of

as

the

wrote

my

of

I

to

was

these

results

that

habits

as f o l l o w s : In of

these

attention

descriptions are

it w i l l

r e f l e x e s of

be

readily

the c o m p l e t e

observed character

of

the

indi-

vidual.11

T h e k e y w o r d in this p a r a g r a p h is " t y p e . " M o r e o v e r , it is not a w o r d G e r t r u d e Stein decided to use f o r t y y e a r s l a t e r to discuss the r a t i o n a l e behind her own writing, but one that a p p e a r s o v e r and o v e r in the 1 8 9 8 article. G e r trude Stein asks in the beginning of her article how the different " t y p e s of c h a r a c t e r " react to automatic writi n g . 1 2 She w a s m a i n l y interested in the people involved in her experiments and not the data they p r o v i d e d ; not their reactions to w h a t they w e r e doing but how they seemed to her to m a n i f e s t themselves as p r o t o t y p e s . T h i s p r e f i g u r e s her e a r l y fictional m e t h o d in which the action of the individual is less i m p o r t a n t than h o w his actions f o l l o w f r o m a t y p o l o g i c a l l y determined personality. T h e experiments h a d d e r i v e d their subjects p r i m a r i l y 11 " T h e G r a d u a l M a k i n g of T h e M a k i n g of A m e r i c a n s , " in America ( B o s t o n , 1 9 5 7 ) , pp. 1 3 7 - 3 8 . 12 "Cultivated M o t o r Automatism," 295.

Lectures

Appendix

205

from Radcliffe and H a r v a r d students, some of whom Miss Stein describes as follows: A large number of my subjects were N e w Englanders, and the habit of self-repression, the intense self-consciousness, the morbid fear of "letting one's self go," that is so prominent an element in the N e w England character, was a constant stumblingblock. 13

The article is full of her personal and undocumented (indeed, undocumentable) observations, and it would almost certainly not be accepted by a scientific journal today; but we can be thankful for the relaxed standards of a young science, for the article affords valuable evidence of Miss Stein's continuing notions of the innate personality of different types and the characteristics that make up the "bottom natures" of people. Five years later, in Things as They Are, Miss Stein used almost the exact attributes ascribed above to her New England type in the characterization of Sophie Neathe. Once could probably take the typological descriptions from this article and find corresponding fictional characters in Miss Stein's writing. However, that kind of detective work seems less important than discovering in the article the earliest published evidence of Miss Stein's theory of psychological types. Gertrude Stein divided her subjects into a number of categories: Type I. This consists mostly of girls who are found naturally in literature courses and men who are going in for law. T h e type is nervous, high strung, very imaginative, has the capacity to be easily roused and intensely interested. Their attention is strongly and easily held by something that inter13

Ibid., 299.

206

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

ests them, even to the extent quite commonly expressed of being oblivious to everything else. But, on the other hand, they find it hard to concentrate on anything that does not catch the attention and hold the interest. 1 4

T h e personal judgments and generalizations of this passage would make a contemporary psychologist smile; but Gertrude Stein is only warming up. T y p e I I is very different from T y p e I, is more varied, and gives more interesting results. In general, the individuals, often blonde and pale, are distinctly phlegmatic. If emotional, decidedly of a weakish sentimental order. T h e y may be either large, healthy, rather heavy and lacking in vigor, or they may be what w e call anaemic and phlegmatic. T h e i r power of concentrated attention is very small. T h e y describe themselves as never being held by their w o r k ; they say that their minds wander easily; that they work on after they are tired and just keep pegging away. 1 5

These are the kinds of assumptions G e r t r u d e Stein was willing to m a k e ; but I do not propose to judge her as a scientist. H a d she been a good scientist r a t h e r than one merely scientifically inclined, she might never have turned to writing fiction. W h a t we can learn f r o m this article is t h a t five years before Miss Stein began to write her first fictional work her conception of personality was already f o r m e d around the notion of the controlling type. I n her long descriptions she lists not only physical characteristics, but mental, emotional, and other behavioral traits. She subsumed all facets of the individual as a behavioral organism under the characteristics of the type. T h i s becomes apparent in writings such as Three 14 16

Ibid., 297. Ibid., 297-98.

Appendix

207

Lives and The Making of Americans, in which the characters function almost solely as demonstrations of a proposition made by the author about a personality type. T h e type arises f r o m racial, national, or parental heritage, and it is something no one can escape. Miss Stein says in the opening lines of The Making of Americans, "It is hard living down the tempers we are born with." 1 6 Personality arises directly from the type into which we are born, and all the characteristics of the individual are determined thereby. These notions are expressed quite clearly in "Cultivated M o t o r Automatism," and we must turn to it to understand the origins of Miss Stein's static fictional portraits. Gertrude Stein's deterministic theories of personality had, if not their beginnings, then certanly a great part of their development in William James' laboratory. H e r concepts of consciousness and the deterministic type, the two pillars of her theory of personality, were developed long before she began to publish fictional constructs of her ideas. B. GERTRUDE S T E I N AND W I L L I A M J A M E S

" T h e important person in Gertrude Stein's Radcliffe life was W i l l i a m J a m e s . " Thus speaks Alice B. T o k l a s in her Autobiography. " W i l l i a m J a m e s delighted her. H i s personality and his teaching and his way of amusing himself with himself and his students all pleased her." 1 T h e ties of Gertrude Stein and W i l l i a m J a m e s were more 16

The Making of Americans (Paris, 1925), p. 3. Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas York, 1933), P- 78. 1

(New

208

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

than those of student and m e n t o r ; they transcended roles and became those o f the closest mutual

the

friendship

a n d r e g a r d l a s t i n g until t h e d e a t h o f J a m e s . A n u m b e r o f a p o c r y p h a l s t o r i e s , m o r e o r less b e l i e v a b l e , h a v e

grown

around the student-teacher relationship. H o w e v e r , trude

Stein in a s t u d e n t

theme

has

stated

her

Ger-

esteem

better than anyone else: Is life w o r t h living? Y e s , a thousand times yes when the w o r l d still holds such spirits as Professor James. H e is truly a man among m e n ; a scientist of force and originality embodying all that is strongest and worthiest in the scientific spirit; a metaphysician skilled in abstract thought, clear and vigorous and yet too great to worship logic as his G o d , and narrow himself to a belief merely in the reason of man. A man he is w h o has lived sympathetically not alone all thought but all life. H e stands firmly, nobly for the dignity of man. His faith is not that of a cringing coward before an allp o w e r f u l master, but of a strong man w i l l i n g to fight, to suffer and endure. H e has not accepted faith because it is easy and pleasing. H e has thought and lived many years and at last says w i t h a voice of authority, if life does not mean this, I don't k n o w w h a t it means. W h a t can one say more? H i s is a strong sane noble personality reacting truly on all experience that life has given him. H e is a man take him for all in all. 2

Gertrude

Stein's

admiration

was

obviously

profound,

a n d she d i d n o t r e n o u n c e this e a r l y a f f e c t i o n w h e n

she

c a m e t o w r i t e a b o u t it t h i r t y - f i v e y e a r s l a t e r , a t a t i m e t h a t she d e n i e d the o b v i o u s influence o f H e n r y J a m e s . Affection between t w o individuals does not mean that one

will

dence

of

necessarily Gertrude

influence Stein's

the

regard

other, for

but

this

William

should at least d e m o n s t r a t e the potentially open 2 Rosalind S. Miller, Gertrude Stein: Form and Intelligibility Y o r k , 1949), pp. .146-7.

evi-

James frame (New

Appendix

209

of mind with which she received James' ideas. Others have already discussed ways in which the ideas of both Stein and James seem to correspond significantly; 3 it is those areas in which William James, both as psychologist and philosopher, can illuminate the abstract style of Gertrude Stein that I now wish to explore. W i l l i a m James' earliest conception of consciousness, as expounded in The Principles of Psychology, was of an entity containing "a teeming multiplicity of objects and relations . . . " ; and further, "what we call simple sensations are results of discriminative attention, pushed often to a very high degree." 4 It was during the years immediately following publication of his major book that Gertrude Stein worked under James in the H a r v a r d psychology laboratory. Assuming the Jamesian conception of consciousness as an entity expressing itself most strongly in habits and powers of attention, she and Leon Solomons conducted a series of experiments exploring their subjects' attributes of attention. W e have seen how Miss Stein's somewhat rigid concept of consciousness arose out of these experiments. She came to feel that people can be differentiated into types according to how their consciousness manifests itself through their patterns of attention. This concept of the type arising out of the entity of consciousness and controlling the habits of attention dominates Miss Stein's character portrayals until a f t e r The Making of Americans. By the time James came to write Essays in Radical 3 Ronald Bartlett Levinson, "Gertrude Stein, William James and Grammar," Am. Journal of Psych., L I V (Jan. 1 9 4 1 ) ; Allegra Stewart, "Quality of Gertrude Stein's Creativity," Am. Lit., X X V I I I (Jan. 1957), 488-506; Donald Sutherland, " T h e Elements," Gertrude Stein: A Biography of Her Work ( N e w Haven, 1 9 5 1 ) , pp. I-2I. 4 ( N e w York, 1890), v. I, p. 224.

2io

Abstractionism,

in Gertrude

Stein

h o w e v e r , he h a d l o n g since b e g u n to d o u b t

Empiricism,

his intellectualist f o r m u l a t i o n o f the entity o f consciousness. For

twenty

years

past I have mistrusted

"consciousness"

as

an e n t i t y ; f o r seven or eight years past I have suggested its nonexistence to m y students, and tried to g i v e t h e m equivalent

in realities of

experience.

It

its

pragmatic

seems to me

that

the

h o u r is ripe for it to be openly and u n i v e r s a l l y discarded. Let

me

then

immediately

explain

that

I

mean

only

t h a t the w o r d stands for an entity, but to insist most

to

deny

emphati-

c a l l y that it does stand f o r a function. 5

T h i s conception o f

consciousness as a f u n c t i o n

rather

t h a n an entity h a d at least been a d u m b r a t e d in

Princi-

ples

of Psychology

in J a m e s ' c h a p t e r on the " S t r e a m o f

Thought." Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such w o r d s as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. I t is n o t h i n g j o i n t e d : it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by w h i c h it is most n a t u r a l l y described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life.6 (Italics J a m e s ' )

H e r e we see the stream of t h o u g h t contained within the entity o f consciousness. L a t e r , h o w e v e r , consciousness w i l l become the stream itself. N o w , there is a difference b e t w e e n t h o u g h t and consciousness, as D o n a l d Sutherl a n d has pointed out. 7 Consciousness is the flow o f ideas, thoughts, sensations, and perceptions t h r o u g h the mind. B u t t h o u g h t implies s o m e t h i n g d e l i b e r a t e l y chosen, s o m e t h i n g on which attention is f o c u s e d . J a m e s ' p r e f e r B

( N e w Y o r k , 1912), p. 3. i , p. 239. Sutherland, op. cit., p. 4.

6v. 7

Appendix

2 11

ence f o r " t h o u g h t " r a t h e r than "consciousness" in this early book is consistent with his emphasis on habits of attention as the prime m a n i f e s t a t i o n of consciousness. In G e r t r u d e Stein's earliest writings she maintains J a m e s ' original conceptions. H e r characters are not only types, but they are also defined mainly by the kind of t h o u g h t t h a t inhabits their consciousness—thoughts almost never irrelevant to a demonstration of their " b o t t o m n a t u r e s . " W e never see any of the stray bits of irrelevance t h a t t r a v e l t h r o u g h the average consciousness. M i s s Stein presents her characters only when they a r e focusing their a t t e n t i o n on something, and we never see them d u r i n g their inattentive moments. As we saw in the discussion of her experiments, she thought herself incapable of inattentiveness. If this is so, then her presentation of fictional c h a r a c t e r s m a y reflect her concept of her own consciousness. M i s s Stein's rigid concept of consciousness s o f t e n s a r o u n d the time t h a t J a m e s ' does. A t the end of The Making of Americans we are a w a r e of the beginnings of the g r a d u a l loosening of " a t t e n t i o n " on the p a r t of the n a r r a t o r , w h o begins t o take over completely as the cent r a l consciousness of her w o r k . In A Long Gay Book this central consciousness h a s begun to allow his attention to relax to the point of a d m i t t i n g thoughts totally u n r e l a t e d to the central focus of the subject m a t t e r . In the " p o r t r a i t s " and finally in Tender Buttons M i s s Stein gives the s t r e a m of consciousness f r e e rein to m a k e its own associations on t h e basis of sounds, rhythms, and syntactical p a t t e r n s . A t t e n t i o n returns again and again to put the consciousness back on the subject of the discourse, only to h a v e it w a n d e r off as soon as it makes an association of its own.

Abstractionism

2 12

in Gertrude

Stein

I n this w a y the s t r e a m o f consciousness proceeds, cluding

both

thought

and

the

other

elements

of

inthe

s t r e a m t h a t h a v e h e r e t o f o r e b e e n s u b m e r g e d . T h i s is n o t to imply that M i s s Stein's consciousness was lacking a t t e n t i o n ; r a t h e r , she a l l o w e d t h e c e n t r a l

in

consciousness

o f h e r w r i t i n g s t o l e t its a t t e n t i o n w a v e r a n d give e x p r e s sion t o t h e c o n t i n u o u s s t r e a m o f i t s e l f . G e r t r u d e Stein began to feel m o r e and m o r e that onlv the p r e s e n t c o n t e n t s o f h e r m i n d , t h e " i m m e d i a t e d a t a o f her consciousness," were o f genuine creative It

was

memory

not

in w e l l - f o r m u l a t e d

thoughts

importance.

depending

for both their content and structure

c o u l d e x p r e s s his o w n b o t t o m n a t u r e , b u t in

that

on one

recording

t h e c o n t i n u a l o n g o i n g o f t h e s t r e a m o f his own p e r s o n a l ity. M i s s S t e i n w a n t e d t o e x p r e s s t h o u g h t s t h a t a r e p r e v e r b a l , o r h a v e a t l e a s t n o t b e e n f o r m a l i z e d i n t o an o r ganized syntactical structure. J a m e s

had discussed

this

p r o b l e m in c o n n e c t i o n w i t h t h e s t r e a m o f t h o u g h t : T h e object of every thought, then, is neither more nor less than all that the thought thinks, exactly as the thought thinks it, however complicated the matter, and however symbolic the manner of the thinking may be. It is needless to say that memory can seldom accurately reproduce such an object, when once it has passed from before the mind. It either makes too little or too much of it. Its best plan is to repeat the verbal sentence, if there was one, in which the object was expressed. But for inarticulate thoughts there is not even this resource, and introspection must confess that the task exceeds her powers. T h e mass of our thinking vanishes forever, beyond hope of recovery, and psychology only gathers up a few of the crumbs that fall from the feast. 8

G e r t r u d e S t e i n w a n t e d t o g i v e up all r e l i a n c e on 8

The Principles

of Psychology,

v. I, p. 276.

intro-

Appendix

213

spection and try the seemingly impossible task of capturing the inarticulate stream of her own consciousness. This, it seems to me, is the key to her creative methods in such writings as the " p o r t r a i t s " and Tender Buttons. Gertrude Stein was thoroughly familiar with the writings of William James and could hardly have avoided reading statements such as the above. W h e t h e r the close correspondence of some of their ideas is due to direct influence is a m a t t e r fruitless to determine, but the similarities seem hardly to be accidental. Other statements by James about linguistic conventions are relevant to techniques in the later writings of Miss Stein's early period. H o w comes it about that a man reading something aloud for the first time is able immediately to emphasize all his words aright, unless from the very first he have a sense of at least the form of the sentence yet to come, which sense is fused with his consciousness of the present word, and modifies its emphasis in his mind so as to make him give it the proper accent as he utters it? Emphasis of this kind is almost altogether a matter of grammatical construction. If w e read "no more" w e expect presently to come upon a "than"; if w e read "however" at the outset of a sentence it is a "yet", a "still", or a "nevertheless", that w e expect. A noun in a certain position demands a verb in a certain mood and number, in another position it expects a relative pronoun. Adjectives call for nouns, verbs for adverbs, etc., etc. 9

T h e conventions that William James describes here are the very ones Miss Stein violates in her syntactically discontinous style. W e have seen how Miss Stein violates every kind of expectancy James has listed. It is almost as though she wanted to prove that the whole system of 9

Ibid., p. 263.

214

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

v e r b a l c o m m u n i c a t i o n is a set of which

no w r i t e r

is b e h o l d e n .

Stein

f o r m a l i z e d habits

Since

the

to

contemporary

a r t i s t c r e a t e s his o w n c o n v e n t i o n s , then that w r i t e r w h o h a d e s c a p e d f r o m his d e p e n d e n c e on the p a s t w o u l d rep o r t the contents o f his consciousness in the f o r m that t h e y c a m e to his m i n d a n d n o t r e f o r m t h e m b y any conv e n t i o n s — l i n g u i s t i c o r o t h e r w i s e — t h a t depend on memory or tradition. O n e of

G e r t r u d e S t e i n ' s a l m o s t seductive

techniques

p r e s e n t s the r e a d e r w i t h a series o f sentences of

tradi-

t i o n a l s y n t a x , m o d i f i e s t h e m s l o w l y with a series of discontinuities, the

reader

tences

he

and

then

suddenly has

read

continues

the modification

discovers

that

make

sense

no

the p a s t

few

whatsoever.

until senThe

r e a d e r r e a l i z e s t h a t his m i n d h a s m a n a g e d to a d a p t all of the sentences t o s o m e t h i n g r e s e m b l i n g t r a d i t i o n a l meanings b e c a u s e his p s y c h o l o g i c a l set is a l m o s t unwilling to accept a n y v i o l a t i o n s o f its expectancies. J a m e s h a d discussed this c h a r a c t e r i s t i c o f the h u m a n m i n d m a n y y e a r s b e f o r e G e r t r u d e Stein w a s to challenge it in h e r writing. So delicate and incessant is this recognition by the mind of the mere fitness of words to be mentioned together that the slightest misreading, such as "casualty" for 'causality,' or "perpetual" for "perceptual," w i l l be corrected by a listener whose attention is so relaxed that he gets no idea of the meaning of the sentence at all. Conversely, if words do belong to the same vocabulary, and if the grammatical structure is correct, sentences with absolutely no meaning may be uttered in good faith and pass unchallenged. 1 0 10

Ibid., p. 263.

Appendix

215

James has outlined quite neatly b e f o r e the fact why most readers find Gertrude Stein's abstract writings so disruptive to their sensibilities. T h e y discover t h a t a lifetime development of reading, speaking, and writing habits go f o r naught. If all original a r t is disorientative to minds versed in traditional forms, then G e r t r u d e Stein's writings are so totally disruptive t h a t they unfortunately do almost nothing but arouse frustration, anger, and ultimately ridicule.

Selected Bibliography

This bibliography includes only those items definitely of aid on the specific subject of the book. I have listed the works in separate categories to make more clear the specific ways various entries were useful. BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF WRITINGS OF AND ON GERTRUDE STEIN Firmage, George James. A Check-list of the Published Writings of Gertrude Stein. Amherst, Mass.: U . of Mass. Press, 1954. Haas, Robert Bartlett and Donald Clifford Gallup. A Catalogue of the Published and Unpublished Writings of Gertrude Stein. New Haven: Yale U . Press, 1 9 4 1 . Sawyer, Julian. Gertrude Stein. A Bibliography. New Y o r k : Arrow Editions, 1 9 4 1 . . "Gertrude Stein ( 1 8 7 4 ) : A Checklist Comprising Critical and Miscellaneous Writings about Her Work, Life and Personality from 1 9 1 3 - 1 9 4 2 , "

2i8

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

Bui. Bibl., X V I I ( J a n . - A p r . 1 9 4 3 ) , 2 1 1 - 1 2 ; X V I I I (May-Aug. 1943). n - i 3 . " G e r t r u d e Stein: A Bibliography, 1 9 4 1 - 1 9 4 8 , " Bui. Bibl., XIX ( M a y - A u g . , Sept.-Dec. 1 9 4 8 ) , 1 5 2 - 5 6 , 183-87. Stein, G e r t r u d e .

"Bibliography,"

transition,

III

(Feb.

1 9 2 9 ) » 47-55GERTRUDE STEIN'S WRITINGS " A m e r i c a n L a n g u a g e and L i t e r a t u r e , " unpub. ms. in Yale U . Lib. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. New York: Random House, 1 9 3 3 . " C u l t i v a t e d M o t o r A u t o m a t i s m : A Study of Character in Its R e l a t i o n to A t t e n t i o n , " Psych. Rev., V ( M a y 1 8 9 8 ) , 295-306. Everybody's Autobiography. N e w Y o r k : R a n d o m House, 1937Four in America, introd. T h o r n t o n W i l d e r . N e w H a v e n : Y a l e U . Press, 1 9 4 7 . The Geographical History of America. New York: Random House, 1936. Geography and Plays. B o s t o n : F o u r Seas Press, 1 9 2 2 . How to Write. P a r i s : Plain Edition, 1 9 3 1 . Lectures in America. B o s t o n : Beacon Press, 1 9 5 7 . L e t t e r to A l f r e d Stieglitz, M a y 6, 1 9 2 1 , unpub. T L S , Yale U. Library. The Making of Americans. P a r i s : Contact Editions, 1925. The Making of Americans, abridged version. N e w Y o r k : Harcourt, Brace, 1 9 3 4 .

Selected Bibliography

219

Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein: with two shorter stories. Paris: Plain Edition, 1932. Narration. Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1935. "Normal Motor Automatism," with Leon Solomons, Psych. Rev., I l l ( 1 8 9 6 ) , 492-512. Picasso. London: B. T . Batsford, 1948. Portraits and Prayers. New Y o r k : Random House, 1934Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, ed. and introd. Carl Van Vechten. New Y o r k : Modern Library, 1962. Things as They Are. Pawlet, Vt. : Banyan Press, 1950. Three Lives. New York: Modern Library, 1936. Two: Gertrude Stein and Her Brother, and Other Early Portraits. New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1 9 5 1 . Useful Knowledge. New York, 1928. What Are Masterpieces, introd. Robert Bartlett Haas. Los Angeles: The Conference Press, 1940. BOOKS AND ARTICLES ON GERTRUDE STEIN, OR I N W H I C H COMMENTARY ON GERTRUDE STEIN APPEARS

Aldington, Richard. "The Disciples of Gertrude Stein," Poetry, X V I I (Oct. 1 9 2 0 ) , 35-40. Anonymous. "Three Lives," Nation, X C (Jan. 20, 1 9 1 0 ) , 65. Baldanza, Frank. "Faulkner and Stein : A Study in Stylistic Intransigence," Georgia Rev., X I I I (Fall 1 9 5 9 ) , 274-286. Bridgman, Richard. "Melanctha," Am. Lit., X X X I I I (Nov. 1 9 6 1 ) , 350-9. Brinnin, John Malcolm. The Third Rose: Gertrude Stein and Her World. Boston: Little, Brown, 1959.

220

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

Burke, Kenneth. "Engineering with W o r d s , " Dial, L X X I V (April 1 9 2 3 ) , 4 0 8 - 1 2 . Cargill, Oscar. Intellectual America, Ideas on the March. New Y o r k : MacMillan, 1941 Church, Ralph. " A Note on the Writing of Gertrude Stein," transition, X I V (June 1 9 2 7 ) , 184-8. Corke, H i l a r y . "Reflections on a Great Stone F a c e : T h e Achievement of Gertrude Stein," Kenyon Rev., X X I I I (Summer 1 9 6 1 ) , 367-89. Dupee, F . W . "Gertrude Stein," Commentary, XXXIII (June 1 9 6 2 ) , 5 1 9 - 2 3 . Eagelson, H a r v e y . "Gertrude Stein: M e t h o d in M a d ness," Sewanee Rev., XLIV (Apr.-June 1936), 164-77. Evans, Oliver. "Gertrude Stein as Humorist," Prairie Schooner, X X I (Spring 1 9 4 7 ) , 9 7 - 1 0 2 . . " T h e Americanism of Gertrude Stein," Prairie Schooner, X X I I (Spring 1 9 4 8 ) , 70-74. Gallup, Donald C. " A Book is a Book is a B o o k : A History of the Writing and Publication of Gertrude Stein's Three Lives," New Colophon, I ( J a n . 1 9 4 8 ) , 67-80. . " T h e Gertrude Stein Collection," Yale U. Lib. Gazette, X X I I (Oct. 1 9 4 7 ) , 22-32. . " T h e Making of The Making of Americans," New Colophon, I I I ( 1 9 5 0 ) , 54-74. Garvin, H . R . "Gertrude Stein: A Study of H e r T h e o r y and Practice," unpub. doc. diss. Michigan, 1 9 5 0 . Gass, William H . "Gertrude Stein: H e r Escape f r o m Protective L a n g u a g e , " Accent, XVIII (Autumn I 9 5 8 ) . 233-244-

Selected Bibliography

221

Haines, George IV. "Forms of Imaginative Prose: 19001940," Southern Rev., V I I (Spring 1 9 4 2 ) , 755-75. . "Gertrude Stein and Composition," Sewanee Rev., L V I I (Summer 1949), 4 1 1 - 2 4 . Hoffman, Frederick J . Gertrude Stein. U. of Minnesota Pamphlets, No. 10. Minneapolis, 1 9 6 1 . Hoffman, Michael J . "Gertrude Stein in the Psychology Laboratory," Am. Quarterly, X V I I (Spring 1 9 6 5 ) , 127-32. Lachman, Arthur. "Gertrude Stein as I Knew H e r , " unpub. ms. in Yale U . Library. Lane, J . W . " T h e Craze for Craziness," Cath. World, C X L I V (Dec. 1 9 3 6 ) , 306-09. Leach, Wilford. "Gertrude Stein and the Modern Theatre," unpub. doc. diss. Illinois, 1956. Levinson, Ronald Bartlett. "Gertrude Stein, William James and Grammar," Am. Journal of Psych., L I V (Jan. 1 9 4 1 ) , 124-8. Lowe, Frederick W . "Gertrude's Web: A Study of Gertrude Stein's Literary Relationships," unpub. doc. diss. Columbia, 1957. Mercier, Vivian. " I n Joyce's Wake, a Booming Industry," NYTBR, L X V I (July 30, 1 9 6 1 ) , 5, 20-1. Miller, Rosalind S. Gertrude Stein: Form and Intelligibility. New Y o r k : Exposition Press, 1949. Pearson, Norman H . " T h e Gertrude Stein Collection," Yale U. Lib. Gazette, X V I (Jan. 1 9 4 2 ) , 45-7. Porter, Katherine Anne. The Days Before. New Y o r k : Harcourt, Brace, 1952. Reid, Ben. Art by Subtraction: A Dissenting Opinion of Gertrude Stein. Norman, Okla.: U . of Oklahoma Press, 1958.

222

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

Riding, L a u r a . " T h e N e w Barbarian and Gertrude Stein," transition, I (June 1 9 2 7 ) , 153-68. Rogers, W . G. When This You See Remember Me. N e w Y o r k : Rinehart, 1948. Saarinen, Aline B. " T h e Steins in P a r i s , " Am. Scholar, X X V I I (Autumn 1 9 5 8 ) , 437-48. Skinner, B. F . " H a s Gertrude Stein a Secret?" Atlantic C L I I I ( J a n . 1 9 3 4 ) , 50-7Sprigge, Elizabeth. Gertrude Stein: Iler Life and Work. New Y o r k : Harper, 1957. Stein, L e o . Journey into the Self. New Y o r k : Crown, 1950. Stewart, Allegra. "Quality of Gertrude Stein's Creativity," Am. Lit., X X V I I I ( J a n . 1 9 5 7 ) , 488-506. Sutherland, Donald. Gertrude Stein: A Biography of Her Work. N e w H a v e n : Y a l e U . Press, 195 1. Wilcox, Wendell. " A Note on Stein and ^Abstraction," Poetry, L V (Feb. 1 9 4 0 ) , 254-57. Wilson, Edmund. Axel's l

Castle.

N e w Y o r k : Scribner's,

l

93 -

. The Shores of Light: A Literary Chronicle of the Twenties and Thirties. N e w Y o r k : F a r r a r , Straus & Cudahy, 1 9 5 2 .

WORKS USED PRIMARILY AS BACKGROUND M A T E R I A L : HISTORICAL, CRITICAL, AND

METHODOLOGICAL

Apollinaire, Guillaume. The Cubist Painters: Aesthetic Meditations, trans. Lionel Abel. N e w Y o r k : Wittenborn, Schultz, 1949.

Selected Bibliography

223

Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell. New York : Henry Holt, 1 9 1 1 . . Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. T . E . Hulme. New Y o r k : Putnam, 1 9 1 2 . . Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy Margaret Paul and W . Scott Palmer. Garden City, N . Y . : Doubleday Anchor, 1959. . Time and Free Will, trans. F . L . Pogson. New Y o r k : Harper Torchbooks, i960. Ellmann, Richard. James Joyce. New Y o r k : Oxford, 1959Flaubert, Gustave. Three Tales, trans. Arthur McDowall. Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1947. Frank, Joseph. "Spatial Form in Modern Literature," Sewanee Rev., L I I I (Sum. and Aut. 1 9 4 5 ) , 221-40, 433-5 6 > 643-53Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton: Princeton U . Press, 1957. Gallup, Donald, ed. The Flowers of Friendship : Letters Written to Gertrude Stein. New Y o r k : Knopf, 1 9 5 3 . Hoffman, Frederick J . The Twenties: American Writing in the Postwar Decade. New Y o r k : Viking, 1955. Humphrey, Robert. Stream of Consciousness in the Modern Novel. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U . of California Press, 1954. James, William. Essays in Radical Empiricism. New Y o r k : Longmans, Green, 1 9 1 2 . . The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel to Pragmatism. New Y o r k : Longmans, Green, 1909. . A Pluralistic Universe. New Y o r k : Longmans, Green, 1909. . Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old

224

Abstractionism

in Gertrude

Stein

Ways of Thinking. N e w Y o r k : Longmans, Green, 1910. . The Principles of Psychology) 2 vols., N e w Y o r k : Henry Holt, 1890. Kandinsky, W a s s i l y . Concerning the Spiritual in Art, trans. M i c h a e l Sadleir. N e w Y o r k : Wittenborn, Schultz, 1 9 4 7 . L e w i s , W y n d h a m . Time and Western Man. N e w Y o r k : Harcourt, Brace, 1928. M e y e r h o f f , H a n s . Time in Literature. Berkeley and L o s A n g e l e s : U . of C a l i f o r n i a Press, 1 9 5 5 . M o r r i s , Charles W . Foundations of the Theory of Signs, v. I, no. 2, International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. C h i c a g o : U . of Chicago Press, 1 9 3 8 . . Signs, Language, Behavior. N e w Y o r k : Prentice-Hall, 1 9 4 6 . Peckham, M o r s e . " M e t a p h o r : A Little Plain Speaking on a W e a r y S u b j e c t , " Connotation, I (Winter 1 9 6 2 ) , 29-46. P e r r y , R a l p h B a r t o n . The Thought and Character of William James, b r i e f e r version. N e w Y o r k : G e o r g e Braziller, 1 9 5 4 . Shattuck, R o g e r . The Banquet Years: The Arts in France, 1 8 8 5 - 1 9 1 8 . N e w Y o r k , 1 9 5 8 . T o k l a s , Alice B . What Is Remembered. New Y o r k : H o l t , R i n e h a r t & Winston, 1 9 6 3 .

Index

abstractionism, definition of, 2830 Aldington, Richard, "The Disciples of Gertrude Stein," 23n. Atlantic Monthly, 201 automatic writing, 25-6, 199-207 Basic English, 25, 136 Beckett, Samuel, 193-4 Bergson, Henri, 16, 20, 27, 195 Time and Free Will, I95n. Braque, Georges, 16, 162 Bridgman, Richard, 90, 94n. "Melanctha," 20, gon., 94n. Brinnin, John Malcolm, 21, 106, 161, 197 The Third Rose: Gertrude Stein and Her World, 19, 32n., 53n., io6n., i 6 i n . , I97n., i99n.

Burke, Kenneth, "Engineering with Words," 2gn. Cage, John, 177 Camera Work, 135, 143 Carmen, 42 Cézanne, Paul, 63, 66 " L a Femme au Chapeau," 62 Chicago Tribune, review of Tender Buttons (June, 1914). I75n. Clark, Harriet, 32 Claudel, Paul, 147 Collège de France, 27 Contact Press, 100 Corke, Hilary, "Reflections on a G r e a t Stone Face: T h e Achievement of Gertrude Stein," 23n. Dodge, Mabel, 143 Dreiser, Theodore, 28, 52, 85 Sister Carrie, 33-5

226

Index

D u c h a m p , M a r c e l , Nude Descending a Staircase, 170 D u r r e l l , L a w r e n c e , The Alexandria Quartet, 77, 115 Einstein, A l b e r t , T h e o r y of R e l a tivity, 16 E l i o t , T . S., 134 E l l m a n n , Richard, 193 James Joyce, 193-4 E v a n s , D o n a l d , 175 F a u v e s , 16 F a y , B e r n a r d , 98 Flaubert, Gustave " U n C o e u r Simple," 63-4, 70 Trois Conies, 62-4 F o r d , F o r d M a d o x , 100 F r a n k , Joseph, " S p a t i a l Form in M o d e r n L i t e r a t u r e , " 29n. F r a s e r , Sir J a m e s , 18 F r e u d , Sigmund, 18, 51, 93, 203 Frye, Northrup, Anatomy of Criticism, 24 G a l l u p , D o n a l d , 97-8, iOOn., 116, 142 " T h e M a k i n g of The Making of Americans," 98n. G a r v i n , H . R., " G e r t r u d e S t e i n : A Study of H e r T h e o r y and P r a c t i c e , " 20, 82n. G e r t r u d e Stein Collection, 63n., I35n. Gibson, R o l a n d , I02n. Haines, G e o r g e I V , " G e r t r u d e Stein and Composition," H 5 n . H a r v a r d U n i v e r s i t y , 25, 26, 27, 115, 201, 205, 209 H e m i n g w a y , E r n e s t , 100 H o f f m a n , F r e d e r i c k J., Gertrude Stein, 20

H o w a r t h , H e r b e r t , I02n. James, H e n r y , 16, 34-5, 41, 91, 208 The Ambassadors, 40, 91 The Wings of the Dove, 35, 40, 91 J a m e s , W i l l i a m , 16, 20, 25, 26n., 27. 5 i . 195- 199, 207, 208-15 Essays in Radical Empiricism, 209-10 The Principles of Psychology, 209, 212 Johns Hopkins University, 26, 115 Jolas, Eugene, 176 Joyce, James, 16, 18, 27, 34, 62, 193, 194. 196 Dubliners, 33 Finnegans IVake, 18, 193 Ulysses, 18 Jung, C . K . , 18 L a w r e n c e , D . H . , 45 Leach, W i l f o r d , " G e r t r u d e Stein and the M o d e r n T h e a t r e , " 20n. Levin, H a r r y , 63n. Levir.son, Ronald Bartlett, " G e r trude Stein, W i l l i a m James and G r a m m a r , " 209n. L e w i s , W y n d h a m , 27 L o w e , Frederick W . , " G e r t r u d e ' s W e b : A Study of G e r t r u d e Stein's Literary Relationships^," 20n. M c A l m o n , Robert, 100 M c D o w a l l , A r t h u r , 63n. M a t i s s e , H e n r i , 26, 68, 165, 180 Mercier, Vivian, "In Joyce's W a k e , A B o o m i n g Industry," l8n.

Index M e y e r h o f f , H a n s , Time in Literature, 27n. M i l l e r , Rosalind S., Gertrude Stein: Form and Intelligibility, 2 1 , 59n., 2o8n. M o d e r n L a n g u a g e Association, 85 M o d e r n Library, 176 M o o d y , W i l l i a m V a u g h n , 59 M u n s t e r b e r g , H u g o , 25, 199 Olivier, Fernande, 147 P a u l , Elliot, 176 Peckham, Morse, " M e t a p h o r : A L i t t l e P l a i n Speaking on a W e a r y S u b j e c t , " i8on. Picasso, Pablo, 1 6 , 26, 68, 1 6 2 , 170, 1 7 1 , 176, 1 7 9 B l u e Period, 3 3 Girl Before a Mirror, 170 P l a i n Edition, 1 4 4 Pound, E z r a , 1 3 4 P r o u s t , M a r c e l , 27 Remembrance

77

Psychological

of Things Review,

Past,

199

R a d c l i f f e College, 2 5 , 59, 199, 2 0 5 , 207 R a n d o m H o u s e , 144, 1 7 6 R e i d , B e n , 2 3 , 2gn., 99 Art by Subtraction: A Dissenting Opinion of Gertrude Stein, i8n., 2 1 - 2 , ggn., I96n. R i c h a r d s o n , D o r o t h y , 34 R i d i n g , L a u r a , 203 " T h e N e w B a r b a r i a n and G e r trude Stein," i 8 i n . , 203n. R o g e r s , W . G . , 23 When This You See Remember Me, 2 0 - 1 R u m b o l d , Estelle, 3 2

227

Russell, Bertrand, M athematica, 16

Principia

S a w y e r , J u l i a n , Gertrude Stein: A Bibliography, 23n. Schonberg, A r n o l d , Five Pieces for Orchestra, 16 Verkldrte Nacht, 3 3 Skinner, B . F., 2 0 1 - 3 " H a s G e r t r u d e Stein a S e c r e t ? " , 202 Solomons, L e o n M . , 26n., 1 9 9 , I99n., 200, 201, 203,

209

Sprigge, Elizabeth, Gertrude Stein: Her Life and Work, 2 1 , I75n. Stein, G e r t r u d e "human mind," 202-3 "human nature," 202-3 psychology l a b o r a t o r y e x p e r i m e n t s : " T h e P l a c e of R e p e t i tion in M e m o r y , " 1 9 9 ; " F l u c tuations of the A t t e n t i o n , " 199; "The Saturation of Colors," 199 writings o f : " A m e r i c a n L a n g u a g e and L i t e r a t u r e , " 15411. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 17, 35n., ioon., 199, 200n., 207 Brewsie and Willie, I28n. "Cezanne," 163 "Cultivated Motor Automati s m , " 26n., 1 2 6 , i99n., 204n., 207 Everybody's Autobiography, 22n. Four in America, 20, 1 9 4 Four Saints in Three Acts, 1 7 " T h e G e n t l e L e n a , " 64-74, 86, 91

228

Index

The Geographical History of America, 202n. Geography and Plays, 143, 166 G. M. P., 144, 1 5 5 - 6 " T h e G o o d A n n a , " 64-74, 86, 9i "Guillaume Apollinaire," 172-4 "Irma," 171-2, 174 Jenny, Helen, Hannah, Paul and Peter, 1 4 4 Lectures in America, 98n., 1 2 2 , 135, 178; "The Gradual M a k i n g of the M a k i n g of A m e r i c a n s , " 98, I45n., 2 0 4 n . ; "Pictures," i78n.; "Poetry and G r a m m a r , " 6 1 , i 8 4 n . ; " P o r t r a i t s and R e p e t i t i o n , " i63n. letter to A l f r e d Stieglitz ( M a y 6, 1 9 1 2 ) , 1 3 5 A Long Gay Book, 97, 1 1 7 , 1 3 0 , 1 4 2 , 144, 1 4 5 - 5 6 , 1 5 7 , 1 5 8 , 1 6 1 , 1 6 3 , 166, 1 8 5 , 2 1 1 The Making of Americans, 16, 1 7 , 25, 26, 36, 3 7 , 52, 68, 69, 9 1 , 93, 95, 96, 9 7 - H 2 , 1 4 3 , 144, 146, 1 4 7 , 148, 1 5 0 , 1 5 6 , 1 5 8 , 1 5 9 , 166, 179, 200, 207, 209, 2 1 1 Many Many Women, 97, 144, 156 " M a t i s s e , " I43n. Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein, 1 4 4 , I47n. " M e l a n c t h a , " 20, 3 7 , 57, 63, 73, 74-96, 1 0 3 n., i n , 1 2 7 , 1 2 8 , 1 3 1 , 132, 133 " M i s s F u r r and M i s s S k e e n e , " 163 " M r s . Edwardes," 169-70

" N o r m a l Motor Automatism," 26n., 199, 2 0 1 , 2 0 i n . "Picasso" (shorter portrait), I43n. Picasso, I79n. P o r t r a i t s , 16, 30, 68, 96, 160, 161-74 "Portrait of Constance F l e t c h e r , " 166-8 Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia, 17, 143, 168-9 " P o r t r a i t of P i c a s s o , " 1 6 4 - 5 Portraits and Prayers, I43n., 1 6 5 , 169 R a d c l i f f e themes, 2 1 , 58-61 Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, I43n., l64n., i68n., 176, i82n. " S t o r y e t t e H . M . , " 165-6 Tender Buttons, 16, 1 7 , 25, 26, 96, 1 4 3 , 1 5 7 , 1 6 3 , 166, 1 7 4 , 1 7 5 - 9 7 , 2 0 ° , 2 0 1 , 202, 2 1 1 , 2 1 3 Things as They Are (Quod Erat Demonstrandum), 15, 1 7 , 3 1 - 6 1 , 62, 63, 70, 7 1 , 72, 75, 77, 78, 94, 95, 95n-, 1 0 2 , h i , 1 2 6 , 200, 205 Three Lives, 1 5 , 1 7 , 25, 26, 36, 40, 52, 56, 6 1 , 62-96, 97, 1 0 2 , I03n., 104, 109, 1 1 0 , I I I , 126, 1 3 2 , 200, 206-7 Two: Gertrude Stein and Her Brother, 1 7 - 8 , 97, 1 4 2 , 144, 1 4 5 , 1 5 6 - 6 1 , 1 6 3 , 166 Stein, L e o , 26, 1 5 7 , 1 5 8 , 1 5 9 Journey into the Self, 94 Stein, M i c h a e l , 26, 1 4 7 Sterne, Laurence, Tristram Shandy, 115 S t e w a r t , A l l e g r a , " Q u a l i t y of G e r t r u d e Stein's C r e a t i v i t y , " 20, 209n.

Index Stieglitz, A l f r e d letter from Gertrude Stein ( M a y 6, 1 9 1 2 ) , 135 Camera Work, 135 S t r a v i n s k y , Igor, 27 S t r e a m of consciousness, 16, 134, 207-15 S u t h e r l a n d , D o n a l d , 23, 74, gg, 133. 210 Gertrude Stein: A Biography of Her Work, 19, 74n., 99n., i 8 i n . , 209n. T o k l a s , A l i c e B., 35n., 100, 144,

229

Webster's

Third

Unabridged

International

Dictionary,

28

W e e k s , M a b e l , 32 W h i t e h e a d , A l f r e d N o r t h , 20, 27 Principia

Mathematica,

16

W i l d e r , T h o r n t o n , 20, 194 "Introduction" America,

to

Four

in

20, 194

W i l s o n , E d m u n d , 99 Axel's

Castle,

99

W o o l f , V i r g i n i a , 34 The

Waves,

77

i57> 159, 175. 200, 207 Transatlantic Review, IOO transition, 176

Y a l e C o l l e c t i o n of A m e r i c a n L i t -

V a n V e c h t e n , C a r l , i64n., i82n.

Y a l e U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s , 18, 144

e r a t u r e , Ó3n., 97, 100, lOOn., I 35 n ->

I54n.