by Moe Zilla

Created on: January 20, 2008   Last Updated: May 11, 2009

I never understood Gertrude Stein until someone explained what was brilliant about this single line of poetry.

"Before the flower of friendship faded, friendship faded."

Yes, it's got an "iambic" rhythm, where every other syllable is stressed. But besides its lulling beat, the middle four syllables end up repeated in the last four syllables. It suggests a weariness, one critic explained, and that's heightened by the recurring use of the letter "f," just like the air leaking out of a friendship.T he line itself is like a flower itself, moving in a regular pattern towards its center. It's meaningful and it's sad, but it's also a line of poetry that's extremely well-constructed!

Gertrude Stein had a brilliant mind, attending Radcliffe college in 1893 (where she studied under William James, the brother of the famous novelist Henry James). After graduating she even spent two years at Johns Hopkins Medical school. There's a specific intellectual ability that allows someone to match a thought to a specific rhythm, and then to tweak those words so there's a special harmony among their letters. One of the basic principles of great art is said to be "repetition" - you'll see this in the recurring columns of great architecture, or patterns repeating themselves in a painting. Gertrude Stein understood this principle and its effect, and she used it effectively to convey ambivalence, thoughtfulness, and the trapped-in-the-present immediacy of the "lost generation" of expatriates living in Paris (a phrase Stein is often credited for creating.)

Another line of Stein's poetry has always fascinated me.

"Giving it away. Not giving it away. Is there any difference? Giving it away. Not giving it away."

It's almost an exercise in dissecting the sentence for meaning. Stein takes what should be an important concept and treats it as a nearly meaningless abstraction. I like to think it's just a fun exercise in rhythm and words, but it's so well constructed that there must be a sincere wondering behind it. Is there any difference? It's hard to resist a question that's asked so poetically.

The same is true for Stein's most famous line, "A rose is a rose is a rose." I think with a sharp and intelligent mind, Stein found real comfort in "tautologies" - sentences which repeated themselves while meandering along to their point. Even in Stein's non-fiction, you find a fierce commitment not just to individual reactions, but to individual ways of expressing them. In "Three Lives" she tells the life story of three women, one a poor woman living in Connecticut who is doomed by poverty. Ultimately it's as though she's captured the woman's entire life perspective within just a few pages, since the lack of details and the weary repetition actually become deeply meaningful here, showing empathy for the emptiness of the woman's life.

Gertrude Stein is a challenging read, but ultimately you realize that you're pressed up against a very intelligent mind - and following its words can be very rewarding...

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