Gertrude Stein: biography, quotes, books

Gertrude Stein went down in history as an innovator and literary revolutionary. This woman, through her whole life, carried the idea of freedom from social norms, creating her own. Contemporaries openly cursed her and scolded her for unruly disposition. But today Gertrude Stein is a standard of progressive thought and a pioneer of modernism. Who is she and what role did she play in the history of contemporary art?

Biography

February 3, 1874 in a small American town Allegheny was born a girl. She came from a rich Jewish family and was the second child. Her father successfully engaged in construction and trade in real estate and soon he put together a decent capital, which the children had enough for the rest of his life.

The girl was named Gertrude. From a young age she showed herself as a curious child, studied well at school and, on the advice of her father, went to college, where she studied psychology and medicine. However, all this was alien to her, and the relationship with her father was tense. Having spent her childhood between the two cultural capitals - Paris and Vienna, Gertrude Stein immediately felt a desire for beauty.

The conflict has exhausted itself with the death of the parents. Gertrude and her older brother Leo were orphaned early. First their mother died of cancer, then her father died. Now the young Steins with a huge inheritance and a constant income from the family enterprise were left to themselves.

Leo moved to Paris, where he rented a small apartment on Flairs Street, 27. Soon after leaving school, his sister also moved to him. It is from this moment begins the turbulent creative life of Gertrude.

The cozy home of Steinov after the Luxembourg garden soon turned into a bohemian shelter. Leo was a critic of art and was engaged in buying and collecting paintings of talented but still unrecognized artists working in a new direction (cubism).

Gertrude Stein in the circle of the Parisian intelligentsia could boast of a high aesthetic taste and flair. She was educated, intelligent and at the same time sharp at the tongue, so her opinion was not only listened to, but also feared sometimes. She inspired and supported many novice artists and writers and gathered around her a real creative circle. Despite such public employment, Gertrude paid time to her own writer genius, although not immediately appreciated by critics.

Eternal Beloved

About the personal life of a freedom-loving American knows exactly what she preferred to women's society. She had many male friends, but her heart belonged only to Alice Toklas. They met in 1907 and since then they have never parted. Alice traveled around Europe and decided to meet with compatriot in Paris. The meeting was fatal. All Paris was gossiping about their relations. This was a frank challenge to society. The pair was inseparable until Gertrude's death.

Grandmother of Modernism

In the literature, Stein is known as an innovator. She did not think about the ease of style and always experimented with texts, phrases, ambiguous aphorisms. Like her friend-artist Picasso, Gertrude Stein took more care of the form, not the content. It was one of the first in the history of literature to use in the narrative the reception of a stream of consciousness without punctuation. It is this quality - to discover new facets of the word - that later became the basis of modernism, and the writer herself was called the grandmother of the style.

Despite the demands of the times and traditions established in the literature, Gertrude Stein did not want to adapt her creations, although sheer criticism and deeply wounded the writer. She was eager to gain recognition in her lifetime, but contemporaries considered her strange.

Known books and quotes

Literary creativity Stein is often identified with painting. Each word in the work, like a smear of paint, falls on the canvas paper and everyone equally. The well-known books of Gertrude Stein (Ida, Three Lives) were written largely under the influence of outstanding classics (Shakespeare, Flaubert), as well as the relationship with contemporary writers (Hemingway, Fitzgerald) with whom she was friends, whom Supported. This is a unique synthesis of the European avant-garde and American color. In addition, before the modern reader came poetic works, lectures on literature and the famous aphorisms of the writer-innovator.

Criticism

One of her first creations, written in 1909, was the novel Three Lives. Gertrude Stein talked about three women's fates, three characters. The action takes place in America, in BridgePoint. Narration is quite restrained, later it was defined as "emotional anesthesia". Critics, using the correlation of prose with painting, pointed to the influence of the French artist Cezanne in the creation of the heroine of Good Anna. Free syntax and open sexuality of the heroine Melankta gave the right to refer to the friendship of Stein and Picasso. But the influence of the Fauvista Matisse is felt most sharply in the character of Silent Lena.

In 1937 another important book was published. It was a frank account of his life, which Gertrude Stein did not immediately decide. "Autobiography of each" - this name received the work. On the pages of the book the reader not only acquaints himself with the main milestones, people and experiences in the life of the author, but also with her self-esteem. The book details the trip of Stein in the US after a 30-year absence and the changes that have occurred in the country. The work is filled with playful and mysterious aphorisms, to which Gertrude Stein was so ingenious. Quotations from her works, by the way, is a separate study and a puzzle for critics.

Confession

1940 was a turning point for the whole of France. The occupation by the Germans, the war temporarily paralyzed the creative life of Paris. The situation for Gertrude was complicated by the fact that she was Jewish. She was offered to leave for a while, but, already an elderly lady, she decided to trust her fate and stay in a country house. In 1944, the alarming situation began to decline, and the writer safely returned to her native Paris. However, two years later Gertrude Stein was diagnosed with cancer. From the pain saved only morphine. July 27 was a difficult operation. Her heart writers could not stand ...

During the life of Gertrude Stein never received public recognition. For all her efforts and creative experiments, she received ridicule, betrayal and disapproval. Only in the middle of the last century the writer was talked about positively. Gertrude Stein's books were translated into many languages, including Russian, and replenished the golden fund of world art. And the writer himself was ranked among the classics of American literature.

Muse of Art

Her personality was multifaceted and at the same time mysterious. Stein openly expressed her opinion, was free from prejudice, but was sensitive to criticism of others. Such a controversial person simply could not remain unnoticed by masters of art. So, Pavel Chelishchev (the Russian founder of mystical surrealism) used the image of Gertrude for writing the canvas "Phenomena". No less famous work is the "Portrait of Gertrude Stein" - the creation of Pablo Picasso.

The writer appears in the cinema: in the feature film "Modernists" (1987), in the picture of Woody Allen "Midnight in Paris" (2011). The image of Gertrude is present in literary works: Hemingway "The Feast That Is Always with You" and Satterthwaite "The Masquerade." The poetry of Stein in different years was based on music by American composers Virgil Thompson (1934) and James Tinney (1970). Today in New York, in Bryant Park, there is a monument to the writer.

Interesting Facts

• In the house of Gertrude Stein, many artists of the time tried to enter. Who appealed to the writer for personal advice, who is behind the support, who is behind the "reasonable" criticism. Her famous guests were Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald, whom Gertrude Stein herself gave the definition of the "lost generation" - early adults who could not find their place in life.
• Gertrude's older brother Leo Stein did not approve of the sister's decision to live with Alice Toklas. He expressed his protest at the departure from the house on Fleuryu Street and the severance of kinship with Gertrude.
• Despite the fact that Gertrude Stein was a guiding star for many beginning geniuses of art and a rich source of theoretical knowledge, she assessed her own literary talent modestly, and long hard work often received no response from society at all. Disappointment was reinforced by the fact that she enjoyed the respect and admiration of her "inmates" while they were inexperienced. With the receipt of recognition, they often broke off friendly ties and even spoke negatively about the writer's personality.