Gertrude Stein

I’m starting a new blog project. Every week I will be writing on a different modern poet. By modern, I mean a poet from the 20^th century. I’ll write what I think of their lives, their works, their deaths. I’ll write about the poet and the poetry. I’ll write about Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot, cubism, allergies, the color green, and much more.

Today, the poet is Gertrude Stein, and the poem is ‘Picasso.’

http://lumpy-pudding.tumblr.com/post/64566809/gertrude-stein-portrait-of-picasso

 Stein writes: “This one was one who was working and certainly this one was needing to be working so as to be one being working.”

The whole poem goes on like so. The first three sentences are as follows:

“One whom some were certainly following was one who was completely charming. One whom some were certainly following was one who was charming. One whom some were following  was one who was completely charming.”

Stein’s poem has the form of a short story started, but not finished, by Faulkner. The sentences are long and winding, repetitive, and use the same dozen or so words.

Stein even said see wanted her poetry to have ‘sameness.’ No focal point. She preferred portraits rather than stories. ‘Picasso’ is a portrait, not a story. Not a narration. Subject matter was not important, according to Stein.

A quick way to describe Picasso’s vision: “When he saw an eye from a profiled view, the other eye did not exist.” He saw flat surfaces stripped of hidden meaning. Stein’s style is similar. She strips down her writing to words that are not representations. Language, to Stein, equals calligraphy. In other words, language or words do not represent or symbolize something, but are actually ‘the thing itself.’ The concept is that Stein utilizes what is seen, rather than what is remembered. When one sees a profile of a person, the assumption is that the other side does have an eye. Both Stein and Picasso assume nothing. There is a continual blank slate, a flat surface, which is filled before their perception by what they immediately observe. But, how does one describe Stein’s perception?

            The reader can assume that Stein’s subject is Picasso. Her poem is about an artist whose style she appreciates and deviates toward. Stein’s gaze, her perspective, her style, really has nothing to do with Picasso in the sense that he was a painter who painted this or that and lived this sort of life. Instead, her perspective in poem ‘Picasso’ is objective. Let’s return. . .

“This one was one who was working and certainly this one was needing to be working so as to be one being working.”

The action of working can be the work of the artist painting, like Picasso. Word choice is Stein’s style. In order to be, Picasso had to be painting. The artist is being an artist when he is creating work. What is the individual itself, though? Being what? By unusual choice of words, Stein brings into question the existence of the individual with . . . “this one was needing to be working so as to be one being working.” This sentence operates on different levels intellectually—it can be meta-art, if work is painting.