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Misu Choi (Sculpture Double Majored in English 0397116) |
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Why the New Vision?
3. What is Cubism?
3.1 Cubism Contrast with Surrealism
3.2 Cubist Writing
4. The Influences
3.1 Concept of Perception from William James
3.2 Realization of the Reality from Paul Cezanne
5. Going Back to the Time and Space
1. Introduction
Gertrude Stein’s writing has been considered difficult to interpret and mysterious because it is grammatically deviant, unfamiliar structure and the absence of referential interpretation. Stein’s writing was inevitably experimental to discover new way adjusting to the new vision in the new world pointedly development of the machinery. Therefore, unconscious mind and obscurity is not only explanation and it rather conceal and distort the significance of her work and gender identity as individual is peripheral and implications are over-interpretation.
In this paper, I discover what inspired the new vision and Cubism identifying the feature of Stein’s work and contrasting with Surrealism. Then, against the consideration that Stein simply substitutes the sense of the movement of the visual art, I introduce William James’ psychology theory and Paul Cezanne’s concept of the vision as whose relevant concept influences her writing to support Stein’s originality. To emphasize and make clear that she accomplished the new form of literary as her medium, I analyze her writing mainly Tender Buttons in terms of the structure, repetition and sound. In the last section, I discover what Stein’s writing produces socially as a result. I describe it as new relationship with the readers, inspiration and influence to the writers and all sorts of the artist.
2. Why the New Vision?
The approach I take is to analyze the specific feature in her work. Tender Buttons is one of the poetry collections that Stein’s cubist writing experiment has shown more distinctively. According to Stein’s statement that there is no interpretation because there is nothing to interpret, here, I choose to focus on the form in the sequence rather than interpret. Therefore, I list the elements as structure, sound and repetition.
Stein’s writing is not totally a non-sense but it is the combination of the sense and the non-sense. It shows the insertion of logic and the logic is possible to coexist with perception in mind in the surface of the linguistic consciousness. It shows that Cubist writing does inevitably involves with logic but in a fragmental unordered form and in unstable human consciousness.
NOTHING ELEGANT.
A charm a single charm is doubtful. If the red is rose and there is a gate surrounding it, if inside is let in and there places change then certainly something is upright. It is earnest. (410 TB: Objects, Stein)
“NOTHING ELEGANT” appears between the lines about the objects “DIRT AND NOT COPPER” and “MILDRED’S UMRELLA”. Compare to those, this line gives much lead to her public argument on writing and it is relatively explainable. “I think in that line the rose is red for the first time in English poetry for a hundred years”(Stein: “Lecture at Chicago”). As she expresses the doubt on the convention she also inserts her point in “NOTHING ELEGANT” and she describes the mechanism in the reader’s mind how it could be taken. “a single charm” represents the convention which had been taken without any challenge and Stein doubts it because it is readymade so it does not express how the writer perceives the object on one’s own. Thus, the idea that ‘rose’ is ‘red’ only makes strange and rigid image without the realization of objects existence. I find the reason why this convention had taken place in the literature because rose had been a tool not the object itself which has its own existence. Stein, however, though taking the weight of the existence of the objects, she negates the hierarchy among the objects.
The most significant observation to the language composition of Stein’s writing and her work is the recognition of the severance from the conventional use of language. The severance was generated by most significantly, the development of “the machine”. The experience which is given by the development of machinery produced totally a new cognizance and Stein accepted and represented it in her work along with other Cubist artist such as Picasso.
In the same period, by contrast, Pound and Eliot imply their reaction or opinions against the time and current of the society. For them, each words and the implication in those are the tools to carry the meaning and the idea of the writer was usually connected to the history and myth. To be a poet in 20th century, historical intelligence was a virtue and it was to be shown in their poetry; Stein calls it “patriarchal writing”.
Stein, however, intended disconnection from the conventional usage of language and sought the elements of the words other than implications and symbols. Resisting analogy and implication that are inherited and connected from the past, Stein gives her effort to realize the new vision into her writing. Stein writes the realization from the objects concentrated in the presence. She combines the time she is being with the object at time and the time she realizes and writes and it revitalizes on the reader’s time. Instead the signifiers that imply the coherent meaning and referential idea by each words and line, she brings viewer’s reality specified by simultaneity of time and space into the literature. That is shown by deviant grammar order, repetition, musical effect and non-coherence and these are what puzzle the reader because the habitual way of interpretation on conventional writings is not appropriate to apply on her experimental writing.
It is easy to consider Stein’s works only transformed version from painting into writing. However, Stein did not simply borrow the technique from the visual art movement. Dekoven states that it is not her techniques but her vision that both Stein and Picasso shares.
Stein is pointedly aware in Picasso that writing and painting are different means for expressing his twentieth-century vision, their mutual “understanding of things.” The terms she uses to describe the difference tell us clearly that she could not have seen herself adapting or translating into her own medium techniques that belong to Picasso’s.(Dekoven 94)
Dekoven’s point is that Stein’s writing explored the potentiality of the function of the language in literary writing more profoundly. I agree with her point and it motivates on my analysis discovers Stein’s originality that she accomplished in literal medium. Accordingly, to clear of the false charge that Stein’s experiment was just to trans-version from visual medium into linguistic medium, it is important to trace the influences on her and what the nature of the language that she explored was and how she lights it on and develop it.
Therefore, I insist that what we have to read in Steins work is not the reference and the analogy in the past tense of her time but the form and new relations she engages with the subject and the new elements that she emphasizes which are making revitalization possible. But this does not mean that her writing is impromptu and not explainable. It is still possible to trace her intention by her biography, works and lectures.
3. What is Cubism
3.1. Cubism Contrast with Surrealism
As simultaneity of time and space on plane was the significance for the cubist painter, time and space on the language was that for Stein. “Literary cubism” is the name after her literary tendency to describe her writing. Stein writes the realization from the objects concentrated in the presence. In terms of assertion to the simultaneity, contrast between cubism and surrealism aids identify the new vision of cubist. Dekoven introduces in her journal in 1981 that Stein’s emphasis in her work Picasso that she shares the same vision with Picasso.
The surrealists still see things as everyone sees them, they complicate them in a different way but the vision is that of everyone else, in short the complication is the complication of the twentieth century but the vision is that of the nineteenth century. Picasso only sees something else, another reality. Complications are always easy but another vision that that of all the world is very rare. (43 Picasso)
Here, Stein contrasts surrealist from Picasso’s cubist painting that surrealism only tends to deviate from the scientific reality relying on the artist’s imagination using the described and depictive signifier which possesses its own meaning so that has possibility of interpretation by others. In surrealist painting, each object in the context conveys “idea” and the colors and shape is only to constitute the figure. By Steins point, in contrast, Picasso performs his intention by representing meaningless subjects so that he could create formative style and tendency by accepting and adjusting throughout his new vision. The new vision is more focused how to see rather than what to see. That is, in cubist painting, the subject is not the main interest but the form itself. Instead, the sides of the subject reassemble by the painter’s perception of multi dimension. In the same way, Stein complicates the elements of poetry by her new vision but in the linguistic term. The objects in Tender Buttons such as “UMRELLA”, “PETTI COAT” and “FIRE” are not described as generalized ordinary objects but take its own meaning made by discovered existence and by relation with stein’s time and space. In other words, each object makes individuality.
3.2 Cubist Writing
According to Robert Hughes in his book The Shock of the New, Cubist tried to discover how to capture the identity of changes in technology of civilization which changes their appearance persistently and at the same time, how to reflect the radical changes of human consciousness.(16 Hughes) That is, Cubist discovered not only the appearance of the superficial landscape of the changing society but also how the outer reason influences human perception and how to convey it to the medium: painting and writing.
He also explains that “perspective” which represents the depth and the distance of the scene through the color and the size of the object is a way to generalize human’s experience and does not represent how the human realize the object as the way it self. He continues to explain the process of the realization that when we perceive the object our eyes keep moving and there is fragmentary spreads in our brain in every single moment and as we take a movement the range of that spread becomes bigger. If it is necessary the brain is able to separate certain frozen sight. Then he concludes the paragraph with this explanation that the existence of the viewer also can affect the appearance of the object; namely “the relevance of the reality”. (16 Hughes)
A CARAFE, THAT IS A BLIND GLASS.
A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading.(407 TB: Objects, Stein)
The famously problematic line “The difference is spreading” can be explained supported by Hughes description that fragmentary spreads in our brain and it becomes bigger as we move in the sphere of time and space. This interpretation leads to the previous line. She is negative toward by her words “spectacle” , “a single hurt color”, “and “an arrangement in a system to pointing” and her reason is those are ordered and do not resemble the object. This represents her position that is against determined idea in literary medium and along with the acceptance of the concept of the vision that relates with unstable human perception. Her statement in Composition as Explanation(1926) makes more clear about this and makes more specific about the common word “difference”.
It was all so nearly alike it must be different and it is different, it is natural that if everything is used and there is a continuous present and a beginning again and again if it is all so alike it must be simply different everything being alike it was simply different, this kept on leading one to lists. (519 C.A.E. Stein)
This introduces the creation of the new “formative” that the repetition of “the difference” produced by the sequent of the time finally required the canister to be stored. This is also the same concept on the vision of the viewer with Cezanne’s. The additional explanation will be continued in the next section.
4. The Influences
4.1 Realization of the Reality from Paul Cezanne
Cezanne’s reality of the subject included the viewer (the painter himself) as the human being that has instability in their vision and perception. The reality of the object is represented on the canvas not only by the imitation but along with the viewer’s instable perception.
“Realization” was the concept most crucial to Cezanne-the realization or achievement of his own ideas of form, inspired by an immediate confrontation with nature, but without slavish reproduction of appearances. […] The harmony Cezanne strove for had first to be “ constructed,” and instead of denying the existence of tensions between divergent forces, it would reconcile such contrasts by means of “the right placement of color gradations,” or in other words, through conscious design. (20 Ruhberg)
According to Ruhberg, Cezanne accepted the reality that human perception which is the part of the reality of the object is unstable and changes in every moment by moment. Moreover, in search of the essence of it, he gives his effort to construct the element discovering the “formation”. It is identical as we observe that he substitutes regular pattern which is determined by recognition for the absence of refined description of the object. In his serial object Mt. St. Victoire, he represents the section which is divided by every single strokes of the brush. His object is visible simultaneously with his perception and the relation between the object and according to Hughes, relativity and the procedure specifies his unique style. We can find the common idea in Stein’s Writing because her works are explainable with reading not the referential meaning but the formation of the language.
Cezanne also negated the perspective that makes the hierarchy among the object. To accomplish this intention, he tries to locate the subject in the same distance from his vision. As we see his serial work Mt. St. Victoire, he avoids the object which lies closely from his vision such as tree branch or the ground right beneath his position. This makes connection with Stein’s work that any single object does not makes importance than others but overall objects are existing as it creates relativity for one another. In other words, compare to a drama, there is no hero.
ROOMS
A plain hill, one is not that which is not white and red and green, a plain hill makes no sunshine, it shows that without a disturber. So the shape is there and the color and the outline and the miserable centre. It is not very likely that there is a centre, a hill is a hill and no hill is contained in a pink tender descender. (444 TB. Stein)
This line shows as direct as the interpretation of Cezanne’s work. Stein shares the same vision with Cezanne as she stated in her biography that she was motivated by Cezanne’s idea that there is no center and nothing is fixed. For her word ‘tender’ represents instability of human perception.
An approach to support the assumption that Stein’s work is not a simple trans-version or cross over is to trace the influences that originate her tendency. I suggest another influence that lays the foundation stone of ‘Literary Cubism’ for Stein: William James and Paul Cezanne share very common concept on the instable perception and the relationships with surroundings. The following section continues.
4.2 Concept of Perception from William James
Stein studied psychology under William James who wrote The Principle of Psychology when she was in Harvard. Moreover, there is substantial common between Stein’s literary tendency and James’ psychological theory because she started to develop her writing under his supervision (176 Ramazani). In his book The Principle of Psychology, His main argument is about human’s perception related with time and space.
When we come to study the perception of Space, we shall find it quite analogous to time in this regard. Date in time corresponds to position in space; and although we now mentally construct large spaces by mentally imagining remoter and remoter positions, just as we now construct great durations by mentally prolonging a series of successive dates, yet the original experience of both space and time is always of something already given as a unit, inside of which attention afterward discriminates parts in relation to each other. Without the parts already given as in a time and in a space, subsequent discrimination of them could hardly do more than perceive them as different from each other; it would have no motive for calling the difference temporal order in this instance and spatial position in that.(610 James)
According to his argument, perception of time and space is not only simultaneous but also coexist influencing each other in the human perception. For example, if we recall the memory of the observation of certain scene and an event, the behavior or the movement of the object locates in the duration of the time and in the difference of the visual space simultaneously and we cannot separate those. This gives an explanation about Stein’s writing that she intentionally uses –ing participle and prepositions persistently.
ROASTBEEF.
In the inside there is sleeping, in the outside there is reddening, in the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling. In the evening there is feeling. In 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. All the standards have steamers and all the curtains have bed linen and all the yellow has discrimination and all the circle has circling. This makes sand.(p.422 TB Food: Stein)
When we approach it with literal meaning, how we perceive and capture the weight of the objects change by the feelings. Also as she uses the preposition, the change is made by the point of view in the different space and the movement among the space gives the sense of time.
Moreover, the repetition of –ing ending sound is noticeable part throughout most part of this book. It appears to be the feature intended to revitalize the reality of the object in terms of not the lexical meaning it has but the image and punning of the sound. Rogers claims in his article New out breaks of futurism in 1913 Boston Transcript that “reading aloud” is the crucial way to approach to Stein’s experimental writing Tender Buttons.
With Tender Buttons, “a page read aloud, quite apart from its sense or nonsense, is really rhythmical, a pure pattern of sound, as Picasso’s canvases are pure patterns of color. Some feel a curious hypnotic effect in her sentences read aloud. By the effects she wishes for. And to some listeners there comes a perception of some meaning quite other than the content of the phrases.”(White: No. 32 Rogers)
As Rogers take “sound” one of the distinctive elements that specifies the effect of her work, it is not difficult to see the verbal articulation that recurs when we read it aloud. It truly gives that effect and the way to read Stein’s work “aloud” cannot be ignored because Stein sometimes play with the sound of the words as substitutes the words sound similarly but do not have coherent lexical appropriation. Stein exhibits human perception of the language that has the possibility of the raw utterance and alternative between the mistake or rationalization. However, the approach is meaningful but does not explain the intention and the concept. However, as I comprehend, the preposition leads the movement in time and space and –ing participle existence in the sense of the present time and it binds up the viewer’s time and the reader’s time.
There is another part in James’ book that helps the explanation about Stein’s intention to create her own form.
After the emotional and active needs come the intellectual and æsthetic ones. The two great æsthetic principles, of richness and of ease, dominate our intellectual as well as our sensuous life. And, ceteris paribus, no system which should not be rich, simple, and harmonious would have a chance of being chosen for belief, if rich, simple, and harmonious systems were also there. Into the latter we should unhesitatingly settle, with that welcoming attitude of the will in which belief consists.(315-316 James)
This also reminds Cezanne’s effort to draw the essence from the perception which is made by the doubt of itself. That is to say, pursuit of the aesthetic is the last procedure of the desire to accomplish and it is natural. Cezanne tried to deduct the form through defining the mountain as the sphere, humans head as globus and this was the last part after approaching to the objects admitting the instability of human perception.
There is hardly a common man who (if consulted) would not say that things come to us in the first instance as ideas; and that if we take them for realities, it is because we add something to them, namely, the predicate of having also 'real existence outside of our thought.' (318 James)
This gives much explanation about Stein’s short sentence and fragmentary composition with seemingly unrefined structure in Tender Button. Namely, refined idea and the structure fail to represent the real existence in other words “the sense of the reality”. Stein instead shows the procedure as the way to find the meaning despite it is rare figure of the composition as Cezanne’s work that divides each space by each stroke of his brush because Stein accepts the original human conscious cannot be lead in the long sentence structured form. Randa Dubnick explanation in her book The Structure of Obscurity quoting Stein’s explanation in Poetry and Grammar supports the relation between James’ theory and Stein’s writing.
Such a way to express one self is the natural way when one expresses oneself in loving the name of anything. Think what you do…when you love the name of anything really love its name. Inevitably you express yourself…in the way poetry expresses itself that is in short lines in repeating what you began in order to do it again. Think of how you talk to anything whose name is new to you a lover a baby a dog or a new land…Do you not inevitably repeat what you call out and is that calling out not of necessity in short lines.(234 P.A.G, Stein)
Often in Tender Buttons lines that appear to be sentences are not sentences…This fragment promises to be a sentence until it is truncated after the word when, which normally is used to introduce a subordinate clause…Here each word is quite independent of those preceding and following in the speech chain, at least as far as the mental images of signifieds are concerned. (38 Dubnick)
Dubnick observes short sentences which are located fragmentally in Stein’s writing builds up its meaning as the lines proceed and it resembles the flow of the mental images. As a result, over all poems the fragment images will be stacked up in the reader’s visual imagery. It is similar image with Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon that the figures that are not relevant directly but from the different sources(faces from African art, fruits from the ordinary, bodies represented in multi dimension collectively, geometric shapes from the painter’s formation) are described by extent of the colors division by the lines so the whole shapes takes place and invades one another. Commonly, Stein writes sometimes her relatively logical idea or arguments among the pile of the repetition of the fragment and irrelevant object and those invades one another and make a connection not only by the meanings but as the unit that makes the form.
4. Going Back to the Time and Space
The shock that Stein including other Cubist artists experienced was in time of the modernity that is the good old day from today. The reader today might also feel strange about Stein’s writing at the same time indifference about the significance about her work when they do not imagine how big impact the modernity was. Stein’s challenge influenced the minimalism which is the extreme essence of the art history including the literary.
A. Primary Sources
Stein, Gertrude. “Tender Buttons” Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein. Ed. Carl Van Vechten
: Random House:1946
Stein, Gertrude. “Composition as Explanation”. Selected writings of Gertrude Stein.
Ed. Carl Van Vechten. New York: Vintage Books. 1990
B. Secondary Sources
DeKoven, Marianne. “Gertrude Stein and Modern Painting: Beyond Literary Cubism”
Contemporary Literature Vol. 22, No. 1 1981, p.81-95
DeKoven, Marianne. A different Language. Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press. 1983
Dubnick, Randa. The Structure of Obscurity. Illinois: University of Illinois Press. 1984
Hughes, Robert The Shock of the New. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, INC. 1981
James, William. The principle of Psychology, Vol.1,2. New York: Cosmobooks.2007
Ramazani, Jahan The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Vol.1: Modern Poetry Ed. Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann, Robert O Clair. W.W. Norton&Company;3rd Edition:2003
Ruhrberg, Karl. Art of the 20th Century Vol.1 Ed. Ingo F. Walther. Köln: Tachen: 2005
Stein, Gertrude. “Poetry and Grammar”, Lectures in America. Boston:Beacon Press.1935
White, Ray Lewis. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas Ed. Ray Lewis White. Boston: G. K. Hal & Co:1984