Afraid and not.
Happy and sad times.
And that fall how I just thought if I could make a pot-au-feu I might survive—and you looked on sadly. And you took my hand after awhile. That fall you saved my life. For the first time. Thank you.
And if I could only help you now. Somehow. I want to very much.
Elissa and Annabelle and Anatole. Dale and Julie and Suzanne and Marilyn and Monica and the French Carole
and Diana Chapmann she’s called.
Judith.
Urgent. My darling Zenka passed away this morning. She was in the nursing home. Please call. Love, Judith
Letting love to have a mother. Letting love to have letting love to have a mother letting love to have.
In plenty of time.
Rose. The first word, the first world I know.
Thank you in every possible way.
Preparing a novel and paving the way.
Catherine, Caroline, Charlotte and Celestine.
In the place of no one not yet.
Miss miss miss miss miss and gossip
When they cannot stop it altogether when they cannot stop it altogether.
Come and kiss me when you want to because if you do you have more than done that which is a satisfaction to have been most awfully obliged to have as a delight and more than that.
Thank you.
Very much very much and as much and as much and then markets, markets are open in the morning and except on Monday.
Do you think we should follow the sign for Perugia?
very much
Chapters of magic near the beginning and end (interchangeable)
Puccini is striped like the campanile but it’s all right.
Sage grows.
Very content followed by five bells.
We are very well fish.
Sage grows so let it.
Children grow.
Let them.
Ideas.
Notions of the novel
So let them.
Wild capers grow everywhere.
A tribute to Gertrude Stein and a travel diary so let it.
Roses and rosemary everywhere
For my
beautiful mother
Rose
marie
Maso
the one word
of my world my father calling across the green
Rose
Chapter Always
These days thinking of you, always, always.
Chapter Alice
who named her Rose in hope, as the century turned 31
Grandma Alice very much
If they say and it is an established fact if they say that he has gone away is there anybody to ask about it. It is so very easy to change a novel a novel can be a novel and it can be a story of the departure of Dr. Johnston it can be the story of the discovery of how after they went away nobody was as much rested as they hoped to be.
Everything that will be said will have a connection with paper and amethysts with writing and silver with buttons and books.
I am a simple girl in some ways do not want the Isle of Capri the Lago Giacomo Puccini will do. If not this time then next. Looking all over Florence for the cross that got lost.
Consider whether they would be at all interested.
It can be easily seen that a novel of elegance leaves something to be desired.
Repeat. It can be easily seen that a novel of elegance leaves something to be desired. She knew in about the middle of it. Time to write.
Let me say it here. Everything I loved or wanted or feared.
Accuse me if you like one more time of overreaching. I miss you. Love you. Want.
And time to write.
This spa water is only for drinking. And the woman makes a breaststroke through the air, for swimming Bagno Vignoni, 30 kilometers away let’s go.
In the green Fiat. Have to finish Gertrude Stein, have to finish Traveling Light—and the hills and the cypresses. Cypress, cypress, cypress, pine. Ava Klein turn over on your side.
There is never any altogether the easiest way is to leave out anything.
The whole chapter is thinking about the courage you afford and thinking out loud and the flowers and so not to be afraid. There is music in the head so sing continuously.
Chapter Rose
Who named you Carole Alice at mid-century. Thank you in every possible way.
Song of joy
And say what you need and like and want. Pleasure. A novel and you out loud. When she has been satisfied when she has been satisfied.
Begin again.
She may be coming in any moment darling.
Begin again.
Fanny irresistible.
Jenny recalled.
Henrietta as much as that.
Claribel by and by
Rose as plainly seen
Hilda for that time
Ida as not famous.
Katherine as it should have it in preference
Caroline and by this time
Maria by this arrangement Esther who can be thought of
Charlotte and finally.
She rolls the rosy aureole and pearl the world around and round. Sea pearl to pearl with her and lip she shudders honey gold and conjures—this must be Paradise—or maybe Paris. She came to be happier than anybody else who was alive then. Gorgeous lilting rosy pearl. She rides the women world syntactic. Sings Paris Paris Paris Paris. And they walk the poodle Basket.
Thank you.
The way it looks exactly like it.
The way you can get it to look exactly like you see and feel. Almost exactly. Thank you most of all for that.
Who in this world is luckier than I?
A very valentine—for Gertrude Stein.
Little by little and more and more I begin to understand you very much.
A novel and the future of the novel and the rest and the rest is diamonds.
Father calling to Mother, Rose across the world first word. Repeated again and again rose rose rose rose rose rose rose.
A novel of thank you and not about it.
It might be allowed
With thanks to Nicole Cooley, Keith Waldrop, John O’Brien.
Someone named Rose at mid-century named her.
In hope. 5 joyful 5 sorrowful mysteries.
Thank you in every possible way
Once more I thank you.
An arrangement of their being there and never having been more glad than before.
A list of addresses and who went to see them.
Bruschetta, crostoni, lentils with pasta, grilled lamb, tiramisu.
Spaghetti with clam sauce.
Come and kiss me when you want to.
We are very well fish
Lavishly well fish
And Alice Babette, petite crevette. On the rue Christine after the war. Adore. Picking flowers gentle. Rose is a rose is a rose eternal and I am I because my little dog knows me.
She wanders gorgeous key syntactic. Violet-breasted. Poodle Basket.
Third religion
Where.
Fourth religion
Where they grow vegetables so plentifully.
Fourth religion
If you courtesy.
Second religion
If you hold a hat on your head.
Third religion
If they are not told.
Fourth religion
Across to me.
Fourth religion
She walked across to me.
Third religion
And what did she see.
Second religion
What did she say to me.
First religion
When she walked across to me.
I found myself plunged into a vortex of words, burning words, cleansing words, liberating words, and the words were all ours and it was enough that we held them in our hands …
I shall not speak for anybody. I shall do my duty, I shall establish that mile. I shall choose wonde
r. Be blest.
*
Footnotes
Our Walks
Often in the evening we would walk together; I greeted at the door of 5 rue Christine by Gertrude’s staunch presence, pleasant touch of hand, well-rounded voice always ready to chuckle. Our talks and walks led us far from war paths. For generally having no axe to grind nor anyone to execute with it, we felt detached and free to wander in our own quarter where, while exercising her poodle, “Basket,” we naturally fell into thought and step. Basket, unleashed, ran ahead, a white blur, the ghost of a dog in the moonlit side streets:
Where ghosts and shadows mingle—
As lovers, lost when single,
The night’s enchantment made our conversation as light, iridescent and bouncing as soap bubbles, but as easily exploded when touched upon—so I’ll touch on none of them for you, that a bubble may remain a bubble! And perhaps we never said d’imperissables choses.
—Nathalie Barney
Sweetnotes
Their Cakes
The discovery of cakes had always been a peace time pursuit of Gertrude and Alice. Meeting them by chance at Aix-le-Bains, I enquired why they happened to be on the opposite bank of the Lac du Bourget, and was informed of a new sort of cake created in one of the villages on a mountain beyond. But first obliged to go on errands, they descended from the lofty seat of their old Ford car—Alice be-jeweled as an idol and Gertrude with the air of an Indian divinity.
She accepted her fame as a tribute, long on the way but due, and enjoyed it thoroughly. Only once, in Paris—and indeed the last time I saw her—did the recognition of a cameraman displease her, for he waylaid her just as we were entering Rumpelmayer’s patisserie. In order to satisfy the need for cake, and the photographer’s wish, she was photographed by him, through the plate-glass window, eating the chosen one.
Her meals—continued
Melon and prosciutto, artichoke risotto, grilled sausages, another tiramisu. Ravioli with truffles, fish stew, panecotta and so forth.
Please another Piero della Francesca.
And so forth
I am not striving at all but only gradually growing and becoming steadily more aware of the way things can be felt and known in words, and perhaps if I feel them and know them myself in the new ways it is enough, and if I know fully enough there will be a note of sureness and confidence that will make others know too. And when one has discovered and evolved a new form it is not the form but the fact that you are the form that is important.
I find you young writers worrying about losing your integrity and it is well you should, but a man who really loses his integrity does not know that it is gone, and nobody can wrest it from you if you really have it.
Hemingway you have a small income; you will not starve; you can work without worry and you can grow and keep this thing and it will grow with you. But he did not wish to grow that way, he wished to grow violently.
Everybody’s life is full of stories; your life is full of stories; my life is full of stories. They are very occupying, but they are not very interesting. What is interesting is the way everyone tells their stories.
Thornton Wilder: The fundamental occupation of Miss Stein’s life was not the work of art but the shaping of a theory of knowledge, a theory of time, and a theory of the passions … the formalization of a metaphysics.
Mina Loy: she swept the literary circus clear for future performances.
For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.
Wassily Kandinsky, 1910: The apt use of a word (in its poetical sense), its repetition, twice, three times, or even more frequently, according to the need of the poem, will not only tend to intensify the internal structure but also bring out unsuspected spiritual properties in the word itself. Further, frequent repetition of a word (a favorite game of children, forgotten in later life) deprives the word of its external reference. Similarly, the symbolic reference of a designated object tends to be forgotten and only the sound is retained. We hear the pure sound, unconsciously perhaps, in relation to the concrete or immaterial object. But in the latter case pure sound exercises a direct impression on the soul. The soul attains to an objectless vibration, even more complicated, I might say more transcendent, than the reverberations released by the sound of a bell, a stringed instrument or a fallen board. In this direction lie the great possibilities for literature of the future.
Martin Ryerson: If you realized that she worked insistently, every day, to be published the first time by a real publisher, publishing house after she was sixty. But I wonder who will do that, who will have the insistence, you understand the obsession, the surety the purity of insistence to do that. No concessions. She used to tell me, Don’t you ever dare to make a concession. Then one walks down, down, down. There’s no end of walking down.
Acts
Curtain
Characters
Characters
Curtain
Acts
There is no one and one
Nobody has met anyone.
Curtain Can Come.
(for Zenka Bartek 1912-1997)
Curtain.
And this is
what bliss
is and
this and
this is
what
bliss is.
very much
White lights lead to red lights which indicate the exit.
Spaghetti arrabiata, spaghetti bolognese, polenta, grilled pork, escarole, spinach, ricotta, tiramisu …
Saint Francis hundreds of times, Saint Sebastian certainly, Saint Simon, Saint Claire is a big one, the head of Saint Catherine, Saint Francis is a very big one, Saint Peter and Saint John of course. Saint Bliss.
Preparing a novel prepared to stay.
And paving the way.
Thank you very much.
Chapter Rose
Even then I was loving you
very much.
End in singing.
Who goes away tonight. They all do. And so they do.
Divining Stein
Lisa Shea
There is no use in finding out what is in anybody’s
mind. There is no use in finding out what is in
anybody’s mind.
—How to Write
FROM GERTRUDE STEIN I LEARNED that language is born in sense and nonsense, in mystery and banality, in secrecy and subterfuge, in dissonance and rhyme; that it can only ever be a beautiful, dangerous, private offering; that it exists apart from its creator, un-arbitrary and uncompromised, incapable of being duplicated and therefore, in its way, divine.
I recall the photograph of Stein seated on the commodious sofa in her famous Montparnasse salon, herself a monumental figure whose near catatonic stare betrays nothing of her meticulous, frank, sovereign, mischievous mind. She appears to be a still life beneath the lively company of paintings by Matisse, Cezanne and Picasso—including his appropriately outsized portrait of her—whose friendships she cultivated and whose works she so sagely promoted and acquired. And yet how her words on the page caper and cavort, charm and conceal, comfort and confound in a cagey effluence, not stopping until the whole enterprise of language itself has been put forth and put to rest, put forth and put to rest, put forth and put to rest.
Reading, among other books, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, The Making of Americans and Four Saints in Three Acts— savoring the serious, goofy brilliance of these works—was a literary liberation the likes of which I had never experienced. Stein’s “little sentences,” as she called them, were revelatory. Especially important for me was the marvelously colloidal Tender Buttons. A series of disarming, aphoristic discourses on objects, food and rooms, the work was seminal in my understanding of what was meant by literary modernism.
Coming across exquisite, inscrutable lines like “Dining is west” and “A white hunter is n
early crazy” made me believe, as no other writer had—I was a senior in high school—in the supremacy of poetic language, the efficacy of its instruction and the stunning variety of its uses. I marvelled at how Stein’s so-called automatic writing (she never called it that) concealed a powerful quality of deliberateness, of inevitability, how such earnest sounding prose contained an undeniable element of willful, high hilarity, how a single sentence could be made to tell an entire story. Stein had, somehow, got hold of the process of thought (her thought) itself and laid it down. Writing, Stein’s heavily associative narratives seemed to proclaim, was a slipstream into and out of which flows this wondrous, unreliable entity called consciousness.
Stein had, in fact, studied psychology with William James at Radcliffe and medicine at Johns Hopkins University before taking off for Paris, about which she wrote, “America is my home but Paris is my home town.” You can detect the science in Stein’s writing—the doggedness, the specificity, the sobriety. It is nothing if not rigorous, the stuff of philosophical inquiry. And yet her work reads madly, obscurely, drunkenly. There is about it the quality of something rarefied, monastic; resistant to and defiant of being understood, learned from, made one’s own. It is, in a word, difficult.
Stein’s radical example, her conceptual and stylistic innovations, led me to the disparate, fiercely modern writings of Joyce and Beckett and Pound, and to such later cloistered yet adamantly catholic writers as Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, Simone Weil, John Ashbery and Lydia Davis. I still find Stein’s work wild and invigorating, pleasingly solecistic and not so much solipsistic as solitary, unto itself, by turns loquacious and taciturn, modest and good-naturedly vain, driven by wisdom, by wile.
I had first read Stein in the heady fever-dream of my own early creative writing efforts. The poetry (and poetic prose) I emulated and tried to imitate was “fancy,” by which I mean highblown, willfully obscure and language-drunk. Inaccessibility was all. I worshipped Baudelaire, Ponge, Russell Edson, Rimbaud, Djuna Barnes, Ronald Firbank, Gerard Nerval, Henri Michaux. The works of these literary oddballs and experimenters, these writers of deranged sensibility (remember the wonderful story of Nerval walking his pet lobster on a pink ribbon through the Tuileries?) made the world seem, at last, desirable, strange, possible, new.
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