Wednesday, June 2, 2010
The War- Oh My!
I wanted to focus my discussion on Gertrude Stein's sixth chapter where she discusses the war. I was anticipating a sudden and drastic shift in tone; however, I was disappointed and strangely shocked. Chapter six reads like any of her other chapters to me. She is all over the place and can't seem to focus on one topic, or the topic at hand- the war (Before I go any further I would also like to mention that I am only 3/4ths of the way through the chapter, so this is my opinion thus far). She fails to really mention any fear or anxieties about the war really. She does focus on some of the hardships they faced when it came to travelling from place to place or going back to France. However, other then complaining about having to go to other embassies or arguing for the sake of their passports, I saw no real struggles, feelings, or emotions about the war. Their were a couple parts where she mentions that Paris was a little empty, or that things did not seem the same. However, because she jumps back and forth between her trip to England and Spain, it gets confusing as to what is the time period. Furthermore, I saw a constant repeat of the fact that they were very happy when they were in Palma. I was a little shocked by this because I was expecting more details about the war. The details she provides are very few- such as what they hear from their friends in letters. Also, we get one very minor detailed account- when Gertrude wakes Toklas up and brings her downstairs- because from what I understood bombs/gun shots were going off. This was the only experience that they seemed to endure, which barely seemed to effect them. Possibly, their was no real focus on the war because they were not living in France and because they were in places that didn't suffer. However, all I got out of this so far was that they traveled and enjoyed their time with different people like the Whiteheads, that they only endured little effects of the war such as struggling with their travels and passports, criticisms by Stein against the Germans- something we saw in earlier chapters, and that's it. No shift in tone, and she seems to be writing in the same style with more focus on herself than the war. A little dissapointing...then again this book is about something far more important than the war- it's about her..right?
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Mira, I really agree with your point about how Toklas (or Stein) didn't really focus much on the war. However, though the impact of the war on Toklas and Stein may not have been too obvious, the war definitely affected the lives of their friends. I remember there was a part describing Juan Gris having a very hard time financially because nobdoy really wanted to buy art at that time. I mean, I can only imagine this happening for most artists. So from stories like that, I guess you can get an idea of what the war was like and how it affected the lives of the peope.
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ReplyDeleteBoth of you hit on a very interesting observation. While we aren't provided with much insight as to how Gertrude and Alice may have been impacted by the war directly, true to Stein's style of writing, we are given a general survey of how it impacted those around them (e.g., the economic hardship of Juan Gris; the French government sale of Kahnweiler's paintings (108-109); and the death of their good friend, Guillaume Apollinaire).
ReplyDeleteThere is one really poignant passage, however, on page 149, where we are able to get a really good sense of how emotional the war was for Gertrude and Alice. They hear that the Germans are getting closer to Paris and we're told that Gertrude was so upset by this that she "...could not leave her room, she sat and mourned. She loved Paris, she thought neither of manuscripts nor of pictures, she thought only of Paris and she was desolate." Alice (Gertrude) then goes on to write how they wept together.
So there are little nuggets where emotion is shared, but as we have all discovered, they are few and far between and are sometimes easy to miss!