The Puzzle of Stein

The puzzle of Stein: why did she write the way she did? Well-read – she shared Woolf's love of Shakespeare and the Elizabethans – and yet her writing suggested to publishers and newspapers – and still suggests to some readers today – that she had no knowledge of the English language, was perhaps not an English speaker, and was imperfectly educated; or if none of those applied was perhaps not in possession of a sound mind. Well, none of those did apply, so why? Why write as she did? Was it deliberately experimental, deliberately original? She was – as she seemed to think, and to often imply – a genius! Was it not deliberate but authentic? She was writing in English as she thought, and so disregarded other people's plead for commas. Why should she instruct her readers when to take a breath, they can decide for themselves. Her writing may have been appalling, but the newspapers she said always quoted it and what is more quoted it correctly; they don't quote those they admire. So, she was different; judged unreadable, but different. A new literary movement with very few followers; and yet she believed totally in her ability to write. You have to admire that if nothing else. She amused herself, and that really is the whole point of creativity. Although it's hard not to say when reading her, particularly The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, “What an ego!” and “Where is Alice?”

Picture credit: Gertrude Stein sitting on a sofa in her Paris studio (source: Library of Congress, Wikipedia).

From journal, April 2022.

Tide

Poetry washes over one, born as I was in an age where it was not learned, much less recalled, and little read for pleasure. Instead it was dissected, line by line, stanza by stanza – never any talk of metres – for its meaning must be found, and enjoyment destroyed. No time was given to how to recite – perform – it; to locate its beat, its rhythm. It was not drummed into one and I feel the lack, as words of verse, including those much admired, come in...then go out...like a tide. A feeling might remain for a poem or the poet, but the poetry itself does not survive.

Picture credit: The Inrushing Tide, 1885, David James (source: WikiArt).

From journal, April 2022.

Another Night, Another Day

'Another night, another day', to echo Housman; the blind drawn down to shut out the moon, the curtains pulled to let in the sun; and still Housman's mind is consumed with thoughts of death, the grave; and so mine too thinks on dying: those who want to live die young; those who want to die live long, suffer the infirmities of age. 'What man is he that yearneth for length unmeasured of days?' Not he, Housman; not I, a woman. And yet Housman for all his sad verse and doomed love lived into his seventies; made into poems sorrow's sum; gave to his readers unhappy reading, a melancholy feeling; that Death was close, was Life's companion.

Picture credit: Alfred Edward Housman, photo by E. O. Hoppe, 1910 (source: Wikipedia).

From journal, April 2022

See A Shropshire Lad and Other Poems by A. E. Housman (Penguin Classics).

A Time

A door opened and shut – blown open by a gust and slammed to; a veil – before a face, before a window, before a hidden space – parted and closed. Endless avenues, tree-lined; long unlit corridors; and dark uninviting tunnels. A slight figure with a plain face, neither young or old, walking through, wandering along, looking down, still intimidated by life, and bewildered by the time that has passed.
Behind a door, in a room, in another world, files of memory are repeatedly visited and rifled through; old stories told – the same sentences used – and with half-attention, never whole, listened to, by the young, by the old, by those who were not there – in that time or place – and those who were – living, at least, or shared the experience; and faded snapshots looked at, some more bleached than others. A time, a time, a time...a time that comes back as if it were yesterday; a time that seems so far away its edges are a little blurred. There are no words...there is a dislocation between word and reality – the words drop, the thought – the memory – hangs unfinished...

Picture credit: Youth and Time, 1901, John William Godward (source: WikiArt).

Written April 2022