She knew full well just how her brain’s slightest act, once it had been deformed by ridicule, would land amidst the literature of her time like a chemical precipitate.
She has prodigiously dismantled the raw materials of style, and radically swept clean the literary arena, making new performances possible. Which has given rare courage to countless young people.
In America, many an author has gained renown by following one of the paths opened up by Stein’s experiments. But Gertrude herself has been systematically undervalued in her own country, where for years now people have been crying out for a few properly American pioneers.
Well, here she is, the all-American pioneer! And once her unpublished manuscripts had been mined for all manner of riches, it was thanks to good old conservative England that this prophet from across the Atlantic was finally recognized.
Gertrude Stein is not a writer in any of the currently accepted senses of the word.
She does not use words to present a subject, but uses a fluid subject to float her words on.
I can point you toward what her art is made of by observing that you never hear anyone say, “I have read such and such a book by Gertrude Stein.” People say: “I have read some Gertrude Stein.”
I doubt any of her writings has appeared in French, especially as the essential feature of her work is its untranslatability into even its own language. For our obliging pioneer has reduced the English language to a foreign language even for Anglo-Americans.
And only her renown, which today is worldwide, and which she owes to the rude trials to which she has subjected the contemporary mind, could lead any audience to criticize what I have just said as a meaningless paradox.
Perhaps much of the opposition unleashed against Gertrude Stein stemmed from the fear of those people who claimed to be stunned.
If ever I let myself go so far as to understand all this — one fine morning I would no longer be able to — order my breakfast.
HAVELOCK ELLIS
About 1920 Havelock Ellis told me that in England where the mothers had silently put up with marriage, women were beginning to suspect marriage — they had enquired as to what their mothers had got out of marriage, and what they got out of it, said Ellis, “was nothing.” Ninety percent of the women in England he assured me found no pleasure in marriage—“and when I put it at ninety percent I’m putting it quite low.”
In 1912, a British “beauty” told me that she alone among all her friends — was not incommoded and thus horrified by her marital duty; they tried every way to avoid it — — “and they’re in love with their husbands, the finest handsomest men in England.” She attributed her exemption from their “agony” to her husband having been attaché to the British Embassy in Paris — — where he had learned — –
That on Lord
“Does everybody have such pleasure when they marry?”
“Everybody”—he actually assured her.
“Even the common people?”
“Even the common people—”
“Well all I can say is — it’s much too good for them.”
A woman told me the perfect consummation of marriage was general among the peasants of the Maremma, Italy.
In 1939—a woman — very superior type — (husband also) — who did housework — described to me how the wives in the tenement houses she had lived in ran out of their apartments screaming in apprehension to elude their husbands when they, “wanted to do it.”
HISTORY OF RELIGION AND EROS
The secret Universe of omniscient creative impetus comprises the power-house generating our obvious universe.
From this power-house science has induced innumerable demonstrations of its mathematical abstract potency.
While Religion has aspired to convince us of its authenticity, its authority
RELIGION AND EROS
Since intellection outgrew the aboriginal simplicities it advanced through two seemingly irreconcilable channels
__________
The mystic meditation of early Asia. The Scientific research of a younger Occident. Each a system for investigating the Power Universe to further man’s, “Domination over all things,” i.e., enjoyment of surprising revelations to be drawn into the open out of the unseen.
Difference of these systems:
The Asiatic mystic-scientist handled no laboratorial or mechanistic intermediary for probing the resources of the power-Universe. He found all needed experimental resources in the Mind-Body make-up of the human individuaclass="underline" an ego laboratory.
Inversely to the direct co-operation of the ancients, the occidental scientist interposes between himself and the Power Universe gigantic machinery, microscopic instrumentation to indirectly contact it. An incommunicative contact which compared to that of the ancients seems perilously like interference.
The oriental attained levitation.
The occidental flies a bomber.
The oriental aspiration contacted Power
the occidental, force:
The distinction —
POWER: creative dynamism, consciously operative, solely constructive.1
In contacting power, lies immunity to the destructive Religion’s salvation.
FORCE merely a derivative of Power isolated, by limitation of intellect from its conscious motivation.
In force lies peril, destruction, fragmentation RELIGION’S DAMNATION.
RELIGION'S POWER OF GOD VERSUS REALISM'S BLIND FORCE wherewith man, mistaking destruction for dominion, furthers the ultimate menace to his perfectability.
Whatever transpired in the Ego-laboratory of mystic research proved so mysterious to the occidentals that finally they easily accepted it as the mystery to end all mysteries: the nothing-at-all.
Albeit to an observer from some cosmic distance the mystery would be cleared—
It is not prohibitive to man, as the complete microcosm, to train his intelligence on his components and gain control of their potentialities. To avail himself of his resources, akin to the atomic, electronic etc. in order to transcend the restrictions of his overt senses.
As the nature of phenomena apparent to us at present depends on the gamut of vibrations to which man, through his senses responds, in the course of his evolution this gamut extends — –
Throughout the ages and still today a few human beings are born who exceptionally react to vibrational stimuli beyond the standard gamut. A simple, rational, electrical extension endowing them with quirks of perception comparable to telepathy, television. . etc.2
THE EGO-LABORATORY
The religious concept that man is fitted to become consciously involved in the relationship of the perceptible to the imperceptible universe originated in occasional men of precursive genius being aware of Life as a Deific Electricity, proceeding from the Absolute Status, conveying to us our animation, our intelligence, our intuition.
It was the logical conviction of such men that increments from this infinite source of power would be at their disposal the more they adapted their organisms to draw upon it.
The mystic, closing his eyes, his ears, inverted the senses from the multiple outlets for contact, concentrating the various electric currents of mind and body to an unique current, of which, its intensity too great for reception in the concrete world, he sought, through meditation, to analyse the abstract potency.