This was also posted at Village Blue
That probably comes as no surprise to those of you who have been treated to my often rambling and almost always verbose word fests here and other places on the net. When I started thinking about words this morning. . .what?. . .you don’t start your day thinking about words? Anyway, for some reason Gertrude Stein jumped right into the middle of my thoughts.
Picasso portrait of Stein
Reading lots of words causes you to think about words. It seems to build a fascination with words and how they interplay in the hands and minds of writers. The last couple of years I have been overly mesmerized with taking words apart, breaking them in to pieces and finding new meanings. In the sillier moments words like terminate, can come to mean, Term – in – ate. . . eating in the term or time frame. Or My favorite, because, has become. . .BE – Cause. Be the cause not the result. A stirring to action, as it were. I’m sure that was a scintillating glimpse into my sick mind.
But no one ever played with words better than Gertrude Stein, at least in my assessment. It was almost as if the cadence and sound of the words were even more important than any specific meaning she intended. Of course by that action she brought a meaning perhaps beyond the meaning.
During the 20’s and 30’s she and her partner, Alice B Toklas had an apartment in Paris that was gathering place for Hemingway, Picasso, Fitzgerald, Matise, and many others. Would have been great to have been a mouse in the corner of that room!
Her most famous book was “The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas” which of course was not an autobiography at all. Here is just a little taste of it:
“Before I decided to write this book My Twenty-Five Years With Gertrude Stein, I had often said that I would write, The Wives of Geniuses I Have Sat With. I have sat with so many. I have sat with wives that were not wives, of geniuses who were real geniuses. I have sat with real wives of geniuses who were not real geniuses. I have sat with wives of geniuses, of near-geniuses, of would-be geniuses, in short I have sat very often and very long with many wives and wives of many geniuses.
Fernande, who was then living with Picasso and had been with him a long time that is to say they were all twenty-four years old at that time but they had been together a long time, Fernande was the first wife of a genius I sat with and she was – not the least amusing. We talked hats. Fernande had two subjects hats and perfumes. This first day we talked hats. She liked hats, she had the true french feeling about a hat, if a hat did not provoke some witticism from a man on the street the hat was not a success. Later on once in Montmartre she and I were walking together. She had on a large yellow hat and I had on a much smaller blue one. As we were walking along a workman stopped and called out, there go the sun and the moon shining together. Ah, said Fernande to me with a radiant smile, you see our hats are a success.”
from The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
I think this passage is most indicative of what I enjoy most about Stein:
“The Wives of Geniuses I Have Sat With. I have sat with so many. I have sat with wives that were not wives, of geniuses who were real geniuses. I have sat with real wives of geniuses who were not real geniuses. I have sat with wives of geniuses, of near-geniuses, of would-be geniuses, in short I have sat very often and very long with many wives and wives of many geniuses.”
Those are my word, author, book thoughts this morning. . .what about yours?
