The Gertrude Stein Interview

12th February, 2009 - Posted by Maude -

Dear Friends,

I’ve been away traveling and seeing old friends. I hope you’ve enjoyed the soup missives while I was out and about the Universe. While I was out meeting old friends I interviewed a few of them for your enjoyment. Here is the first of a series of interviews. Starting with a bang - the old gal herself, back from a long hiatus, Ms. Gertrude Stein.

Maude: Well, Gertrude it’s very kind of you to come and talk with us.

Gertrude Stein: Miss Maudie, I have always been talking. Those who know me always say that I have always been talking talking talking and there I have to agree so it is just pretty much a pleasure just a great big pleasure to be back doing all this talking this talk talk talking with none other than yes dear it’s true it’s most definitely you that is on the other end of the talking.

M: Thank you Gertrude. I’d like to start with a little reading from a book of yours called The Making of Americans. I think this is an excellent time for us all to be thinking again about how we are thinking about Americans and who could help us more with that than you. You wrote:

“Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. ‘Stop!’ cried the groaning old man at last, ‘Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree.’

“It is hard living down the tempers we are born with. We all begin well, for in our youth there is nothing we are more intolerant of than our own sins writ large in others and we fight them fiercely in ourselves; but we grow old and we see that these our sins are of all sins the really harmless ones to own, nay that they give a charm to any character, and so our struggle with them dies away.”

That passage has always meant a great deal to me. It did back in the days when I was fighting for the big causes and now that I just fight the little causes because really, that’s all that is necessary for me to fight.

Do you think this is a good time for America, the whole America, not just one side or one place, to really think about again, about being American and fighting.

GS: Ah Maude, a most excellent question, the perfect question because there right there on the page is my answer and I don’t even have to say it but we can just print it out for all the people. Here, I’ll read it to you,

“I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it. Everybody is a real one to me, everybody is like some one else too to me. No one of them that I know can want to know it and so I write for myself and strangers.

“Every one is always busy with it, no one of them then ever want to know it that every one looks like some one else and they see it. Mostly every one dislikes to hear it. It is very important to me to always know it, to always see it which one looks like others and tell it. I write for myself and strangers. I do this for my own sake and for the sake of those who know I know it that they look like other ones, that they are separate and yet always repeated. There are some who like it that I know they are like many others and repeat it, there are many who never can really like it.

“There are many that I know and they know it. They are all of them repeating and I hear it. I love it and I tell it, I love it and now I will write it. This is now the history of the way some of them are it.

“I write for myself and strangers. No one who knows me can like it. At least they mostly do not like it that every one is of a kind of men and women and I see it. I love it and I write it.

“I want readers so strangers must do it. Mostly no one knowing me can like it that I love it that every one is a kind of men and women, that always I am looking and comparing and classifying of them, always I am seeing their repeating. Always more and more I love repeating, it may be irritating to hear from them but always more and more I love it of them. More and more I love it of them, the being in them, the mixing in them, the repeating in them, the deciding the kind of them every one is who has human being.

“This is now a little of what I love and how I write it. later there will be much more of it.

“There are many ways of making kinds of men and women. (That’s when I wrote my) descriptions of every kind of way every one can be a kind of men and women.”

So that’s it.

M: Gertrude, you’ve always had a way with the rhythm, the particular rhythm of life and all the repeating that goes on. I’d have to say you really hit the nail on the head there. Well done!

Today most people are not too familiar with your particular way of using words and repeating. People used to call your way of talking Steinese and it crept into the vocabulary of America. When you were out and about with all your writing and speaking I guess you could say it just rubbed off on them. Look how it has rubbed off on me! But of course I have a tendency to adapt myself to dialect wherever I am.

Do you think you can still speak to the Americans today?

GS: I am speaking. And even if they have forgotten me they have not forgotten their repeating. And they have not forgotten all their fighting. Today I see a lot of fighting inside themselves. Go to Powell’s and look at the Rose Room. It is full of books that help people root out and try to rid themselves of their own selves. Their is a whole room full of books to use as weapons against the self even as we are being gentle because to be good truly good we must be must be only gentle and present. Really this is okay because it is today and it is just another form of the same repeating. But let’s not kid them Maudie, there they are repeating and fighting and well, who can they be but just people, just Americans and so they are.

M: Probably your most famous phrase of repeating the Steinese that has stayed in our American culture even to those who don’t know that it is Steinese has to do with these very same roses that the room is named after. You said, “A rose is a rose is a rose.” Those of us here in Portland, in the City of Roses, have always appreciated you saying that. It was really quite a nice tribute after all.

GS: To say the name is not a small thing but after hurrying and fighting so much it can be easily forgotten even while speaking it and so I said, “A rose is a rose is a rose.” It is helpful in remembering. That kind of naming and remembering and that kind of repeating is worthwhile, especially while your mind is assaulting you or assaulting all the sins of the world. It is a nice place to rest and rejuvenate. I could say the same of Portland. What a wonderful place just to place oneself for all the refreshing of which you are refreshing the people and call it nourishing. So keep on nourishing them in the repeating. It is very American after all.

M: Thank you Gertrude. Those are very kind words. Our time for interviewing is nearly coming to a close. Do you have any last words for our dear readers?

GS: Just this - a tea is not tea is not tea at all of any kind of tea when it is served by Maude it is nourishing nourishing infusion. I hope no one will be confused on this point because it really is not tea or even tea but infusion and nourishment and the soul. There, that should just about do it.

M: Thank you so much for your time Gertrude. I hope you can join us again another time.

GS: It would be my pleasure pleasantly mine.