Stein, Gertrude

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'''Gertrude Stein''' ([[February 3]], [[1874]] – [[July 27]], [[1946]]) was an [[United States|American]] [[writer]] and catalyst in the development of [[modern art]] and [[Modernist literature|literature]], who spent most of her life in [[France]].
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[[Image:Gertrude Stein 1935-01-04.jpg|thumb|250px|Gertrude Stein in 1935]]
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'''Gertrude Stein''' (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946), an [[United States|American]] [[Modernism|modernist]] writer, is often viewed as one of the principal leaders and catalysts of the modernist movement in American [[literature]]. Stein became the figurehead for the entire "Lost Generation" of American expatriate artists and writers who lived in [[France]] during the period between the [[World War I|First]] and [[World War II|Second World Wars]]. Her influence, both directly as a writer and indirectly as a patron and supporter of her fellow artists, was inestimable in the development of American literature in the first half of the twentieth century. Among those whom Stein took under her wing were novelists such as [[Ernest Hemingway]], poets such as [[Ezra Pound]], and artists such as [[Pablo Picasso]].
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By bringing a number of disaffected artists and writers together within her large social circle, Stein directly assisted in the rapid development of new and experimental ideas in both literature and the visual arts. Moreover, Stein's fiction, which is among the most abstract and formally innovative of all Modernist writing, would directly inspire a number of her contemporaries to continue their own experiments with form and content that would collectively revolutionize the landscape of twentieth-century literature. Although Stein's works are not as famous or as widely taught as those of some of her colleagues and contemporaries, she is nevertheless acknowledged as one of the seminal influences in the history of twentieth-century American fiction.  
  
 
==Biography==
 
==Biography==
 
===Early life===
 
===Early life===
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Gertrude Stein was born and lived in [[Allegheny, Pennsylvania]] until the age of three, when she and her [[German Jews|Jewish-German]] family moved first to [[Vienna]] and then to [[Paris]]. She returned to America with her family in 1878, settling in [[Oakland, California]]. Stein attended [[Radcliffe College]] and studied under the psychologist [[William James]]. After graduating in 1897, she spent that summer in [[Woods Hole, Massachusetts]] studying embryology at the [[Marine Biological Laboratory]]. This was followed by two years at [[Johns Hopkins Medical School]]. In 1901 she left Johns Hopkins without obtaining a degree.
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Gertrude Stein was born in Allegheny, [[Pennsylvania]] and lived there until the age of three, when she and her German-Jewish family moved first to [[Vienna]] and then to [[Paris]]. She returned to [[United States|America]] with her family in 1878, settling in Oakland, [[California]]. After graduating from college in 1897, Stein spent the summer in Woods Hole, [[Massachusetts]] studying [[embryology]] at the Marine Biological Laboratory. This was followed by two years at Johns Hopkins Medical School. In 1901, she left Johns Hopkins without obtaining a degree. <ref>[http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/hmn/S02/photos/stein.jpg Photo of Gertrude Stein at Johns Hopkins Medical School] Retrieved May 10, 2007. </ref>
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[http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/hmn/S02/photos/stein.jpg]
 
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[[Image:Stein by picasso.jpg|300px|thumb|left|Portrait of Gertrude Stein by [[Pablo Picasso]], 1906]]
 
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In 1902 she moved to [[France]] during the height of artistic creativity gathering in [[Montparnasse]]. From 1903 to 1912 she lived in [[Paris]] with her brother [[Leo Stein|Leo]], who became an admired art critic. Stein met her life-long partner, [[Alice B. Toklas]] [http://www.lama-web.cz/llk/images/muzeum/stein1.jpg], in 1907; Alice moved in with Leo and Gertrude in 1909. During most of her life, Gertrude lived off a stipend from her father's estate, as did all of her siblings, which her brother Michael very capably stewarded and invested. After the success of her memoir "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" in the mid 1930s, Stein became rich in her own right. [http://partners.nytimes.com/books/98/05/03/specials/stein.jpg]
 
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She and her brother compiled one of the first collections of [[Cubism|Cubist]] and modern art. She owned early works of [[Pablo Picasso]] (who became a friend and painted her portrait), [[Henri Matisse]], [[André Derain]], [[Georges Braque]], [[Juan Gris]], and other young painters. Picasso also painted her nephew [[Allan Stein]].
 
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When Britain declared war on Germany in [[World War I]], Stein and Toklas were visiting [[Alfred North Whitehead]] in England. They returned to France and, after Stein had been taught to drive by her friend [[William Edwards Cook]], they volunteered to drive supplies to French hospitals; they were later honored by the French government for this work. Stein and Toklas became close friends with writer [[Natalie Barney]], and Stein became friends with wealthy writer and magazine publisher [[Bryher]]. 
 
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By the 1920s her [[Salon (gathering)|salon]] at ''27 Rue de Fleurus'', with walls covered by avant-garde paintings, attracted many of the great artists and writers including [[Ernest Hemingway]], [[Ezra Pound]], [[Henri Matisse]], [[Thornton Wilder]], [[Sherwood Anderson]], and [[Guillaume Apollinaire]]. She coined the term "[[Lost Generation]]" for some of these [[expatriate]] American writers. During this time she became friends with writer [[Mina Loy]], and the two would remain lifelong friends. Extremely charming, eloquent, and cheerful, she had a large circle of friends and tirelessly promoted herself. Her judgments in literature and art were highly influential. She was Ernest Hemingway's mentor, and upon the birth of his son he asked her to be the godmother of his child. In the summer of 1931, Stein advised the young composer and writer [[Paul Bowles]] to go to [[Tangier]], where she and Alice had vacationed.
 
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[[Image:Homosexualitystein.jpg|220px|thumb|right|Gertrude Stein and her lover [[Alice B. Toklas]]]]
 
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Ernest Hemingway describes how Alice was Gertrude's 'wife' in that Stein rarely addressed his (Hemingway's) wife, and he treated Alice the same, leaving the two "wives" to chat. Alice was 4'11" tall, and Gertrude was 5'1" (Grahn 1989).
 
  
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Prior to World War II she made public her opinion that Adolf Hitler should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and privately petitioned the committee to do just that. "I say that Hitler ought to have the peace prize, because he is removing all the elements of contest and of struggle from Germany. By driving out the Jews and the democratic and Left element, he is driving out everything that conduces to activity. That means peace ... By suppressing Jews ... he was ending struggle in Germany" (New York Times Magazine, May 6, 1934).
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In 1902, Stein moved to [[France]] during the height of artistic [[creativity]] gathering in Montparnasse. From 1903 to 1912, she lived in Paris, where she met her life-long companion, Alice B. Toklas. During most of her life, Gertrude, like her siblings, lived off a stipend from her father's estate, which her brother Michael very capably stewarded and invested. After the success of her memoir "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" in the mid-1930s, Stein became rich in her own right.  
  
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Politically ambiguous, Gertrude Stein was an openly homosexual feminist, but has also been described as a [[Conservatism|conservative]]; she regarded the jobless as lazy, opposed [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] and his '''[[New Deal]]'''. She advocated the [[Nationalist]] side during the [[Spanish Civil War]]. [[Judy Grahn]] (1989), in what is arguably an aggrandizement of Stein, describes her as "a 19th Century Republican; in her manners and manner of speech she was Victorian; socially was more liberal than not, with developed individualism coupled with democratic values based in pragmatism; thus at the opening of the German occupation of France she favored collaborative [[Vichy France|Vichy]] government, but by the end she did not, having witnessed firsthand the hardship it brought to the peasants." (p.140-141)
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When [[Britain]] declared [[war]] on [[Germany]] in [[World War I]], Stein and Toklas were visiting [[Alfred North Whitehead]] in England. Following the war, Stein began holding regular salons at her home at 27 Rue de Fleurus, which attracted many of the great artists and writers living in Paris at that time, including [[Ernest Hemingway]], [[Ezra Pound]], [[Henri Matisse]], [[Thornton Wilder]], [[Sherwood Anderson]], and [[Guillaume Apollinaire]]. Around this time Stein coined the term "[[Lost Generation]]" for the generation of writers and artists living in the aftermath of World War I with its powerful assault on the hopes of many who who had thought history was progressing  toward a freer, fairer, and more just society. At the personal level, Stein was extremely charming, eloquent, and cheerful, and she developed her salon gatherings into a large and highly productive social circle.
  
 
===World War II and after===
 
===World War II and after===
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With the outbreak of [[World War II]], Stein and Toklas moved to a country home that they had rented for many years previously in [[Bilignin]], [[Ain]], in the [[Rhône-Alpes]] region. Referred to only as "Americans" by their neighbors, the Jewish Gertrude and Alice escaped persecution probably because of their friendship to Bernard Faÿ, a collaborator with the Vichy regime and connections to the [[Gestapo]].
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With the outbreak of [[World War II]], the salons came to an end, and Stein and Toklas moved to a country home that they had rented for many years previously in Bilignin, Ain, in the Rhône-Alpes region. Referred to only as "Americans" by their neighbors, the Jewish Gertrude and Alice were able to escape persecution because of their friendship with Bernard Faÿ, a collaborator of the Vichy regime with connections to the [[Gestapo]].
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When Bernard Faÿ was sentenced to hard labor for life after the war, Gertrude and Alice campaigned for his release. Several years later, Alice would contribute money to Faÿ's escape from prison.
 
  
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After the war, Gertrude's status in Paris grew when she was visited by many young American soldiers. She died at the age of 72 from [[stomach cancer]] in [[Neuilly-sur-Seine]] on [[July 27]], [[1946]], and was interred in Paris in the [[Père Lachaise]] cemetery. In one account by Toklas<ref>''Someone Says Yes to It: Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and "The Making of the Americans"''; Janet Malcolm; The New Yorker, June 13 & 20, 2005; p.148-165 see p.164 for another description that Toklas gave of Stein's last words: "What is the question and before I could speak she went on—If there is no question then there is no answer".</ref>, when Stein was being wheeled into the operating room for surgery on her stomach, she asked Toklas, "What is the answer?" When Toklas did not answer, Stein said, "In that case, what is the question?"  
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After the war, Gertrude's status in [[Paris]] grew when many young American soldiers visited her. She died at the age of 72 from stomach [[cancer]] in Neuilly-sur-Seine on July 27, 1946, and was interred in Paris in the Père Lachaise cemetery. In one account by Toklas,<ref>Janet Malcom, “Someone Says Yes to It: Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and ‘The Making of the Americans,’” ''New Yorker,'' June 13–20, 2005, 148–165.</ref> when Stein was being wheeled into the operating room for surgery on her stomach, she asked Toklas, "What is the answer?" When Toklas did not answer, Stein said, "In that case, what is the question?"
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Stein named writer and photographer [[Carl Van Vechten]] as her [[literary executor]], and he helped to usher into print works of hers which remained unpublished at the time of her death.  A monument to Stein stands on the Upper Terrace of [[Bryant Park]], [[New York]].
 
  
 
==Writings==
 
==Writings==
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After moving to Paris in 1903 she started to write in earnest: novels, plays, stories, libretti and poems. Increasingly, she developed her own highly idiosyncratic, playful, sometimes repetitive and sometimes humorous style. Typical quotes are  
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After moving to Paris in 1903, Stein started to write in earnest: novels, plays, stories, libretti, and poems. Increasingly, she developed her own highly idiosyncratic, playful, occasionally repetitive, and sometimes humorous style. Typical quotes are:
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:"[[Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose]]."
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:"Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose."
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and
 
 
:"Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle."
 
:"Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle."
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as well as
 
 
:"The change of color is likely and a difference a very little difference is prepared. Sugar is not a vegetable."
 
:"The change of color is likely and a difference a very little difference is prepared. Sugar is not a vegetable."
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These stream-of-consciousness experiments, rhythmical word-paintings or "portraits", were designed to evoke "the excitingness of pure being" and can be seen as an answer to [[Cubism]] in literature. Many of the experimental works such as ''Tender Buttons'' have since been interpreted by critics as a feminist reworking of patriarchal language. These works were loved by the avant-garde, but mainstream success initially remained elusive.
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These stream-of-consciousness experiments, rhythmical word-paintings or "portraits," were designed to evoke "the excitingness of pure being" and can be seen as an answer to [[cubism]] in [[literature]]. Many of the experimental works such as ''Tender Buttons'' have since been interpreted by critics as a [[feminism|feminist]] reworking of patriarchal [[language]]. These works were loved by the [[avant-garde]], but mainstream success initially remained elusive.
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[[Judy Grahn]] lists the following principles behind Stein's work:
 
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#Commonality
 
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#Essence
 
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#Value
 
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#Grounding the Continuous present
 
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#Play
 
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#Transformation
 
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Though she and her brother Leo collected cubist painters, the biggest visual or painterly influence on Stein's work is that of [[Cezanne]], specifically in her idea of equality, what Judy Grahn calls commonality, distinguishing from universality or equality: "the whole field of the canvas is important." (p.8) Rather than a figure/ground relationship, "Stein in her work with words used the entire text as a field in which every element mattered as much as any other." It is a subjective relationship that includes more than one viewpoint, to quote Stein: "The important thing is that you must have deep down as the deepest thing in you a sense of equality."
 
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Grahn ascribes much of the repetition of Stein's work to her search for descriptions of the "bottom nature" of her characters, such as in ''The Making of Americans'' where even the narrator's essence is described through the repetition of narrative phrases such as "As I was saying" and "There will be now a history of her." Grahn: "Using the idea of everything belonging to a whole field and mattering equally, as well as each being having an essence of its own, she inevitably wrote patterns rather than linear sequences." (p.13)
 
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Grahn means value in the sense of overall lightness or darkness of a painting. Stein used many Anglo-Saxon words and few Latin-based words: blood instead of sanguine. She also avoided words with "too much association". "One consequence of developing ''value'' and ''essence'' as the basis of her work, rather than social themes, dramatic imagery or linear plots, is that she developed a remarkable objective voice. To an uncanny degree at times, social judgement is absent in her author's voice, as the reader is left the power to decide how to think and feel about the writing." Grahn  continues, "Anxiety, fear and anger are not played upon, and this alone sets her apart from most modern authors. Her work is harmonic and integrative, not alienated; at the same time it is grounded useful, not wistful and fantastic." (p.15)
 
  
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Stein predominantly used the present tense, "ing", creating a continuous present in her work, which Grahn argues is a consequence of the previous principles, especially commonality and centeredness. Grahn describes play as the granting of autonomy and agency to the readers or audience, "rather than the emotional manipulation that is a characteristic of linear writing, Stein uses ''play''." (p.18) In addition Stein's work is funny, and multilayered, allowing a variety of interpretations and engagements. Lastly Grahn argues that one must "''inster''stand...engage with the work, to mix with it in an active engagement, rather than 'figuring it out.' Figure it in." (p.21)
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It is important not to underrate Stein's works immediately because of their seeming idiosyncrasies. As critic Judy Grahn says of Stein's work, "the whole field of the canvas is important." Rather than a "figure/ground" relationship, "Stein in her work with words used the entire text as a field in which every element mattered as much as any other." It is a subjective relationship that includes more than one viewpoint, and to quote Stein: "The important thing is that you must have deep down as the deepest thing in you a sense of equality."<ref>Judy Grahn, ''Really Reading Gertrude Stein: A Selected Anthology with Essays by Judy Grahn'' (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1989), 4. ISBN 0895943808</ref>
  
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Though Stein influenced authors such as Ernest Hemingway and [[Richard Wright (author)|Richard Wright]], as hinted above, her work has often been misunderstood. Composer Constant Lambert (1936) naively compares Stravinsky's choice of, "the drabbest and least significant phrases," in ''L'Histoire du Soldat'' to Gertrude Stein's in "Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene" (1922), specifically: "Everday they were gay there, they were regularly gay there everyday," of which he contends that the, "effect would be equally appreciated by someone with no knowledge of English whatsoever," apparently entirely missing the pun frequently employed by Stein.
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Though Stein influenced authors such as [[Ernest Hemingway]] and [[Richard Wright]], her work has often been misunderstood. Composer Constant Lambert (1936) naively compares Stravinsky's choice of, "the drabbest and least significant phrases," in ''L'Histoire du Soldat'' to Gertrude Stein's in "Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene" (1922), specifically: "Everyday they were gay there, they were regularly gay there everyday," of which he contends that the, "effect would be equally appreciated by someone with no knowledge of English whatsoever."  
  
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Gertrude Stein wrote in long hand, typically about half an hour per day. Alice B. Toklas would collect the pages, type them up and deal with the publishing and was generally supportive while Leo Stein publicly criticized his sister's work. Indeed, Toklas founded the publisher "Plain Editions" to distribute Stein's work. Today, most manuscripts are kept in the [[Beinecke Library]] at [[Yale University]].
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In 1932, using an accessible style to accommodate the ordinary reading public, she wrote ''The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas''; the book would become her first best-seller. Despite the title, it was really her own autobiography.
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In 1932, using an accessible style to accommodate the ordinary reading public, she wrote ''The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas''; the book would become her first best-seller. Despite the title, it was really her own autobiography. She described herself as extremely confident, one might even say arrogant, always convinced that she was a genius. She was disdainful of mundane tasks and Alice Toklas managed everyday affairs.
 
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The style of the autobiography was quite similar to that of ''The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook'', which was actually written by Alice and contains several unusual recipes such as one for [[Hashish]] Fudge (also called [[Alice B. Toklas brownie]]s), submitted by [[Brion Gysin]].
 
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Several of Stein's writings have been set by composers, including [[Virgil Thomson]]'s operas ''Four Saints in Three Acts'', ''The Mother of Us All'', and [[James Tenney]]'s skillful if short setting of ''Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose'' as a [[canon (music)|canon]] dedicated to [[Philip Corner]], beginning with "a" on an upbeat and continuing so that each repetition shuffles the words, eg. "a/rose is a rose/is a rose is/a rose is a/rose."
 
  
 
== Selected works ==
 
== Selected works ==
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{{wikisource author}}
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*''Three Lives'' (The Grafton Press, 1909)
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*''[[Three Lives]]'' ([[The Grafton Press]], 1909)
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*''Tender buttons: objects, food, rooms'' (1914) [http://www.bartleby.com/140/ Online version] (Retrieved May 11, 2007)
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*''[[Tender buttons: objects, food, rooms]]'' (1914) [http://www.bartleby.com/140/ online version]
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*''Geography and Plays'' (1922)
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*''[[Geography and Plays]]'' (1922)
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*''The Making of Americans'' (written 1906–1908, published 1925)
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*''[[The Making of Americans]]'' (written 1906-1908, published 1925)
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*''Four Saints in Three Acts'' (libretto, 1929: music by Virgil Thomson, 1934)
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*''[[Four Saints in Three Acts]]'' (libretto, 1929: music by [[Virgil Thomson]], 1934)
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*''Useful Knowledge'' (1929)
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*''[[Useful Knowledge]]'' (1929)
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*''How to Write'' (1931)
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*''[[How to Write]]'' (1931)
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*''The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas'' (1933)
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*''[[The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas]]'' (1933)
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*''Lectures in America'' (1935)
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*''[[Lectures in America]]'' (1935)
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*''The Geographical History of America or the Relation of Human Nature to the Human Mind'' (1936)
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*''[[The Geographical History of America or the Relation of Human Nature to the Human Mind]]'' (1936)
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*''Everybody's Autobiography'' (1937)
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*''[[Everybody's Autobiography]]'' (1937)
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*'Picasso'' (1938)
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*''[[Picasso (book)|Picasso]]'' (1938)
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*''Paris France'' (1940)
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*''[[Paris France]]'' (1940)
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*''Ida; a novel'' (1941)
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*''[[Ida; a novel]]'' (1941)
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*''Wars I Have Seen'' (1945)
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*''[[Wars I Have Seen]]'' (1945)
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*''Reflections on the Atom Bomb'' (1946) [http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/stein-atom-bomb.html Online version] (Retrieved May 11, 2007)
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*''[[Reflections on the Atom Bomb]]'' (1946) [http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/stein-atom-bomb.html online version]
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*''Brewsie and Willie'' (1946)
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*''[[Brewsie and Willie]]'' (1946)
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*''The Mother of Us All'' (libretto, published 1949: music by Virgil Thompson 1947)
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*''[[The Mother of Us All]]'' (libretto, published 1949: music by Virgil Thompson 1947)
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*''Last Operas and Plays'' (1949)
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*''[[Last Operas and Plays]]'' (1949)
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*''The Things as They Are'' (written as ''Q.E.D.'' in 1903, published 1950)
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*''[[The Things as They Are]]'' (written as ''[[Q.E.D.]]'' in 1903, published 1950)
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*''Patriarchal Poetry'' (1953)
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*''[[Patriarchal Poetry]]'' (1953)
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*''Alphabets and Birthdays'' (1957)
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*''[[Alphabets and Birthdays]]'' (1957)
 
  
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== Further reading ==
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==Notes==
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* Janet Malcom: ''Gertrude Stein's War'', The New Yorker, June 2, 2003, p. 58-81
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<references />
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* Behrens, Roy R. (2005). ''COOK BOOK: Gertrude Stein, William Cook and Le Corbusier''. Dysart, Iowa: Bobolink Books. ISBN 0-9713244-1-7.
 
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* Monique Truong: "The book of salt", Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003. A novel about a young Vietnamese cook who worked in Stein's Montparnasse-household.
 
  
 
==References==  
 
==References==  
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* Behrens, Roy R. ''COOK BOOK: Gertrude Stein, William Cook and Le Corbusier.'' Dysart, IA: Bobolink Books, 2005. ISBN 0971324417
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<references /> <!-- in other words, dump the footnotes here —>
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* Burns, Edward (ed.). ''The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1913–1946.'' New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. ISBN 0231063083
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* Grahn, Judy. ''Really Reading Gertrude Stein: A Selected Anthology with Essays by Judy Grahn.'' Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1989. ISBN 0895943808
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* Grahn, Judy (1989). ''Really Reading Gertrude Stein: A Selected Anthology with essays by Judy Grahn''. Freedom, California: The Crossing Press. ISBN 0-89594-380-8.
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* Malcom, Janet, “Gertrude Stein's War.” ''New Yorker,'' June 2, 2003, 58–81.
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* The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1913-1946, 2 v. (editor).  
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* Stein, Gertrude. ''Gertrude Stein on Picasso.'' New York: W. W. Norton, 1970. ISBN 087140513X
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* Gertrude Stein on Picasso (editor).  
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* Toklas, Alice B., and Edward Burns. ''Staying on Alone: Letters of Alice B. Toklas.'' New York: W. W. Norton, 1982. ISBN 0871401312
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* Staying on Alone: Letters of Alice B. Toklas (editor).  
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* Rice, William, Edward Burns, and Ulla E. Dydo. ''The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder.'' Yale University Press, 1996. ISBN 0300067747
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* The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder, co-ed. with Ulla Dydo.
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*Truong, Monique. ''The Book of Salt.'' Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003. A novel about a young Vietnamese cook who worked in Stein's Montparnasse-household.
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* [[Ernest Hemingway]] Wikipedia article
 
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== Quotes ==
 
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* "A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears".
 
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* "Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense".
 
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* "Hemingway, remarks are not literature".  
 
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* "I've been rich and I've been poor. It's better to be rich".
 
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* "America is my country, but Paris is my hometown".  
 
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* "You are all a lost generation".
 
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* "It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for the future, none at all. It certainly is extraordinary, but it is certainly true".
 
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* "[[Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose]]".
 
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* "To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write".
 
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* "Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle".
 
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* "There is no there there."
 
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* "I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences."
 
  
 
== External links ==  
 
== External links ==  
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All links retrieved June 20, 2017.
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{{Commons|Gertrude Stein}}
 
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{{wikiquote}}
 
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* [http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/vv:@field(SUBJ+@band(Stein+Gertrude)) Photographic portraits of Gertrude Stein, by Carl Van Vechten], in the [[public domain]]
 
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* [http://www.clpgh.org/exhibit/neighborhoods/northside/nor_n101b.html A letter by Alice relating Gertrude's thoughts about Pittsburgh]
 
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* [http://ellensplace.net/gstein1.html The World of Gertrude Stein], extensive biography site
 
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* [http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/photonegatives/SearchExec.asp?curpage=01] - several photographs.
 
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* [http://www.geocities.com/duanesimolke/Stein.html Gertrude Stein Links]
 
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* [http://www.centerforbookculture.org/context/no6/williams.html The Work of Gertrude Stein] by [[William Carlos Williams]]
 
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* {{gutenberg author| id=Gertrude+Stein | name=Gertrude Stein}}  
 
* {{gutenberg author| id=Gertrude+Stein | name=Gertrude Stein}}  
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* [http://www.paulbowles.org/vetsch.html Interview with Paul Bowles on Gertrude Stein]
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*[http://www.ubu.com/sound/stein.html UbuWeb: Gertrude Stein] featuring a reading of ''If I Told Him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso'' and ''A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson.''
  
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* [http://www.paulbowles.org/vetsch.html  Interview with Paul Bowles on Gertrude Stein]
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[[Category:Writers and poets]]
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===Listening===
 
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*[http://www.ubu.com/sound/stein.html UbuWeb: Gertrude Stein] featuring a reading of ''If I Told Him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso'' and ''A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson''.
 
  
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*[http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/piece.pl?pid=320 Art of the States: Becoming Becoming Gertrude] Text-sound piece featuring excerpt from ''The Making of Americans''.
 
  
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Latest revision as of 20:32, 20 June 2017

Gertrude Stein in 1935

Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946), an American modernist writer, is often viewed as one of the principal leaders and catalysts of the modernist movement in American literature. Stein became the figurehead for the entire "Lost Generation" of American expatriate artists and writers who lived in France during the period between the First and Second World Wars. Her influence, both directly as a writer and indirectly as a patron and supporter of her fellow artists, was inestimable in the development of American literature in the first half of the twentieth century. Among those whom Stein took under her wing were novelists such as Ernest Hemingway, poets such as Ezra Pound, and artists such as Pablo Picasso.

By bringing a number of disaffected artists and writers together within her large social circle, Stein directly assisted in the rapid development of new and experimental ideas in both literature and the visual arts. Moreover, Stein's fiction, which is among the most abstract and formally innovative of all Modernist writing, would directly inspire a number of her contemporaries to continue their own experiments with form and content that would collectively revolutionize the landscape of twentieth-century literature. Although Stein's works are not as famous or as widely taught as those of some of her colleagues and contemporaries, she is nevertheless acknowledged as one of the seminal influences in the history of twentieth-century American fiction.

Biography

Early life

Gertrude Stein was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania and lived there until the age of three, when she and her German-Jewish family moved first to Vienna and then to Paris. She returned to America with her family in 1878, settling in Oakland, California. After graduating from college in 1897, Stein spent the summer in Woods Hole, Massachusetts studying embryology at the Marine Biological Laboratory. This was followed by two years at Johns Hopkins Medical School. In 1901, she left Johns Hopkins without obtaining a degree. [1]

In 1902, Stein moved to France during the height of artistic creativity gathering in Montparnasse. From 1903 to 1912, she lived in Paris, where she met her life-long companion, Alice B. Toklas. During most of her life, Gertrude, like her siblings, lived off a stipend from her father's estate, which her brother Michael very capably stewarded and invested. After the success of her memoir "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" in the mid-1930s, Stein became rich in her own right.

When Britain declared war on Germany in World War I, Stein and Toklas were visiting Alfred North Whitehead in England. Following the war, Stein began holding regular salons at her home at 27 Rue de Fleurus, which attracted many of the great artists and writers living in Paris at that time, including Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Henri Matisse, Thornton Wilder, Sherwood Anderson, and Guillaume Apollinaire. Around this time Stein coined the term "Lost Generation" for the generation of writers and artists living in the aftermath of World War I with its powerful assault on the hopes of many who who had thought history was progressing toward a freer, fairer, and more just society. At the personal level, Stein was extremely charming, eloquent, and cheerful, and she developed her salon gatherings into a large and highly productive social circle.

World War II and after

With the outbreak of World War II, the salons came to an end, and Stein and Toklas moved to a country home that they had rented for many years previously in Bilignin, Ain, in the Rhône-Alpes region. Referred to only as "Americans" by their neighbors, the Jewish Gertrude and Alice were able to escape persecution because of their friendship with Bernard Faÿ, a collaborator of the Vichy regime with connections to the Gestapo.

After the war, Gertrude's status in Paris grew when many young American soldiers visited her. She died at the age of 72 from stomach cancer in Neuilly-sur-Seine on July 27, 1946, and was interred in Paris in the Père Lachaise cemetery. In one account by Toklas,[2] when Stein was being wheeled into the operating room for surgery on her stomach, she asked Toklas, "What is the answer?" When Toklas did not answer, Stein said, "In that case, what is the question?"

Writings

After moving to Paris in 1903, Stein started to write in earnest: novels, plays, stories, libretti, and poems. Increasingly, she developed her own highly idiosyncratic, playful, occasionally repetitive, and sometimes humorous style. Typical quotes are:

"Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose."
"Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle."
"The change of color is likely and a difference a very little difference is prepared. Sugar is not a vegetable."

These stream-of-consciousness experiments, rhythmical word-paintings or "portraits," were designed to evoke "the excitingness of pure being" and can be seen as an answer to cubism in literature. Many of the experimental works such as Tender Buttons have since been interpreted by critics as a feminist reworking of patriarchal language. These works were loved by the avant-garde, but mainstream success initially remained elusive.

It is important not to underrate Stein's works immediately because of their seeming idiosyncrasies. As critic Judy Grahn says of Stein's work, "the whole field of the canvas is important." Rather than a "figure/ground" relationship, "Stein in her work with words used the entire text as a field in which every element mattered as much as any other." It is a subjective relationship that includes more than one viewpoint, and to quote Stein: "The important thing is that you must have deep down as the deepest thing in you a sense of equality."[3]

Though Stein influenced authors such as Ernest Hemingway and Richard Wright, her work has often been misunderstood. Composer Constant Lambert (1936) naively compares Stravinsky's choice of, "the drabbest and least significant phrases," in L'Histoire du Soldat to Gertrude Stein's in "Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene" (1922), specifically: "Everyday they were gay there, they were regularly gay there everyday," of which he contends that the, "effect would be equally appreciated by someone with no knowledge of English whatsoever."

In 1932, using an accessible style to accommodate the ordinary reading public, she wrote The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas; the book would become her first best-seller. Despite the title, it was really her own autobiography.

Selected works

  • Three Lives (The Grafton Press, 1909)
  • Tender buttons: objects, food, rooms (1914) Online version (Retrieved May 11, 2007)
  • Geography and Plays (1922)
  • The Making of Americans (written 1906–1908, published 1925)
  • Four Saints in Three Acts (libretto, 1929: music by Virgil Thomson, 1934)
  • Useful Knowledge (1929)
  • How to Write (1931)
  • The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933)
  • Lectures in America (1935)
  • The Geographical History of America or the Relation of Human Nature to the Human Mind (1936)
  • Everybody's Autobiography (1937)
  • 'Picasso (1938)
  • Paris France (1940)
  • Ida; a novel (1941)
  • Wars I Have Seen (1945)
  • Reflections on the Atom Bomb (1946) Online version (Retrieved May 11, 2007)
  • Brewsie and Willie (1946)
  • The Mother of Us All (libretto, published 1949: music by Virgil Thompson 1947)
  • Last Operas and Plays (1949)
  • The Things as They Are (written as Q.E.D. in 1903, published 1950)
  • Patriarchal Poetry (1953)
  • Alphabets and Birthdays (1957)

Notes

  1. ↑ Photo of Gertrude Stein at Johns Hopkins Medical School Retrieved May 10, 2007.
  2. ↑ Janet Malcom, “Someone Says Yes to It: Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and ‘The Making of the Americans,’” New Yorker, June 13–20, 2005, 148–165.
  3. ↑ Judy Grahn, Really Reading Gertrude Stein: A Selected Anthology with Essays by Judy Grahn (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1989), 4. ISBN 0895943808

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Behrens, Roy R. COOK BOOK: Gertrude Stein, William Cook and Le Corbusier. Dysart, IA: Bobolink Books, 2005. ISBN 0971324417
  • Burns, Edward (ed.). The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1913–1946. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. ISBN 0231063083
  • Grahn, Judy. Really Reading Gertrude Stein: A Selected Anthology with Essays by Judy Grahn. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1989. ISBN 0895943808
  • Malcom, Janet, “Gertrude Stein's War.” New Yorker, June 2, 2003, 58–81.
  • Stein, Gertrude. Gertrude Stein on Picasso. New York: W. W. Norton, 1970. ISBN 087140513X
  • Toklas, Alice B., and Edward Burns. Staying on Alone: Letters of Alice B. Toklas. New York: W. W. Norton, 1982. ISBN 0871401312
  • Rice, William, Edward Burns, and Ulla E. Dydo. The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder. Yale University Press, 1996. ISBN 0300067747
  • Truong, Monique. The Book of Salt. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003. A novel about a young Vietnamese cook who worked in Stein's Montparnasse-household.

External links

All links retrieved June 20, 2017.


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