PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED

"Would I had seen a white bear : ( for how can I imagine it ? )"

## MANIFESTO:

in the form of a criticism of the works of Gertrude Stein.

It is safe to say that whatever is new in liter-
ature will be found, along with the rest of it, in the writings
of other times. For that reason it is possible
and even highly advisable to seek a significance in recorded
work, whose relationships are thorough/stable, 
bafling to discover in the troubled
waters of today. It is only the modern emphasis which gives
new work a present distinction.

But the necessity for the modern focus and the
meaning of the changes involved are the everlasting stumbling
blocks to criticism, especially that which would be timely.
For this reason we have great labors spent upon established
names and seldom anything, from the mind of classical
attainments, touching the risks of today. It is because of
this lack of heart and ability that the scholar is
often, and rightly, held in little esteem among the ablest
thinkers and craftsmen.

Crying for adequate comment and elucidation, no
one whose business it should be to do so, has yet taken the
trouble - following this twi theme - to investigate the

["PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED", "2", "vigorous and constantly augmented writings of Gertrude Stein\nin many ways of all American literary works the most modern.", "\" The verbs auxiliary we are concerned in here,\ncontinued my father, are am; was; have; had; do; did;\nmake; made; suffer; shall; should; will; would; can;\ncould; owe; ought; used; or; is; wont. - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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" If I should see a white bear, what should I say ?
If I should never see a white bear, what then ? "

" If I never have, can, must, or shall see a white
bear alive; have I ever seen the skin of one ? Did I ever see
one painted ? - described ? Have I never dreamed of one ? "

Note how the words _alive_, _skin_, _painted_, _described_, _dreamed_ come into the design in these sentences. The feeling is of words themselves, a curious immediate quality quite different apart from their meaning, much as in music/notes are dropped, so to speak, into a repeated chord one at a time, one after another - for itself alone. compare this with the same effects common in all that Stein does. To continue -

" Did my father, mother, uncle, aunt, brothers or
sisters, ever see a white bear ? What would they give ? How
would they behave ? How would the white bear have behaved ? Is
he wild ? Tame ? Terrible ? Rough ? Smooth ?

Note the play upon _rough_ and _smooth_ ( though it is
not certain that this was intended ), _rough_ seeming to apply
to the bear's deportement, _smooth_ to a surface, presumably
the bear's coat . In any case the effect is that of a
comparison relating primarily not to any qualities of the
bear himself but to the words _rough_ and _smooth_ . And so to
finish -

" Is the white bear worth seeing ? "

" Is there no sin in it ? "

" Is it better than a black one ? "

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In this manner ends Chapter 43 of *The Life and The handling of the words and to ality of the sentences is a wh Gertrude Stein has woven today Opinions of Tristram Shandy. some extent the imaginative qu direct fore-runner of that whie into a synthesis of its own.

Starting from scratch we get, possibly, thatch ; just as they have always done in a poetry.

Then they would try to connect it up by something like - The mice scratch, benefit the thatch.

Miss Stein does away with all that. The tree-versists on the contrary used nothing else. They saved - The mice . . . under the . . .

It is simply the skeleton, the "formal" parts of, writing, those that make form, that she has to do with, apart from the "burden" which they bear. The skeleton, important to an all knowledge of the "soft parts" reigns as at the present day in all intellectual fields.

Stein's theme is writing. But in such a way as to be the words themselves envisioned as the first concern of the moment, dragging behind them a dead weight of logical burdens, among them a dead criticism, which broken through might be a gap by which endless other enterprises of the understanding should issue - for refreshment.

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It is a revolution of some proportions that is contemplated the exact nature of which may be no more than sketched here but whose basis is humanity in a relationship with literature hitherto little contemplated.

And at the same time it is a general attack on the scholastic viewpoint, that mediaeval remnant, with whose effects from generation to generation literature has been infested to its lasting detriment. It is a break away from that paralysing vulgarity of logic for which the habits of science and philosophy coming over into literature ( where they do not belong ) are to blame.

It is this logicality as a basis for literary action which in Stein's case, for better or worse, has been wholly transcended.

Having taken the words to her choice, to emphasize further what she has in mind she has completely unlinked them ( in her most recent work ) from their former relationships in the sentence. This was absolutely essential and unescapable. They have now each a quality of its own, in a new relationship to each other, but not conjoined to carry the burden of science and philosophy have been laying upon them. They are like a cross, let us say, seen from an airplane.

Whatever the value of Miss Stein's work may turn out, finally to be she has at least accomplished her purpose of getting down on paper this much that is decipherable. She has placed writing on a plan where it may deal unhampered

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with its own affairs, unburdened with scientific and philosophic
lumber.

For after all, science and philosophy are today, in
their direct upon the mind, little more than fetishes of
unspeakable abhorrence. And it is through writing that their
grip upon us has assumed its steel-like temper.

What are philosophers, scientists, religionists;
they that have filled up literature with their pap? Writers,
or a kind. Stein simply erases their stories, turns them off and
#### does without them. Their
logic also, rounded merely on the limits of the perceptions,
which is supposed to transcend the words. Stein denies it.
The words, in writing, transcend everything.

Movement ( for which in a petty way logic is taken )
the so-called search for truth and beauty, is the effect of
a breakdown of the attention. It is aimless, without
progress.

It is the essence of all knowledge.

How can anyone presume to tell by standard measurement
what Miss Stein is writing about? What else is first rate
writing but the making of a new scale, explanation, urgently
needed.

Either, we have been taught to think, the mind moves
in a logical sequence to a definite end which is its goal ( this
is in fact the very limited location of all sciences and
philosophies ) spitting itself on the anatomy of the brain,

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like Munchausen's bear on the
honey-sweet learning; or it will
other than movement itself be
only as supreme.

Take your choice, both are wrong of the mind in
fullest play.

If the attention could be
let us say, at one time, moving
accurate pursuit of the modern
it is most to the point, something
place under an optimum of the
intention could be observed.

The goal has nothing to do with the silly function which logic, natural or otherwise, enforces. Yet it is a goal. It moves as the sense we feel, remains fresh, living. One is concerned with it as with anything pursued and not with the rush of air or the gut sense of the horse one is riding - save to a very minor degree.

Movement is essential to knowledge since the attention
left, up and down and through
the thickness of it.

Writing, like everything else, is a question of
how humanly refreshed interest is.
It is directed, not idly, but
as most often happens ( though not necessarily so), toward
that point where movement is
perhaps being blocked ( by the end of logic
the parts, if I am not mistaken,
where Gertrude Stein will be found.

There remains to be explained only the bewildering volume of what she has written. One page, one might say, would be all that was necessary, to contain the foregoing. But it is in this, the quantity of her work, its apparent repetitiveness, its iteration, what I prefer to call its extension, which is the final clue to what will say.

It is, of course, a progression (not a progress) being conveniently, with "Melanetha", from the book entitled "Three Lives", and coming up to today.

Her rational is one thing, her extension is another. It has to do, not so much with the words, this time, but with the world - or people and things. ###
### Writing is a tool; use it well.

How in a democracy, such as the United States, can writing which has to compete with excellence throughout the world and throughout life to exist at all, remain in the field and be, at the same time, objective (true to fact) and intellectually searching, subtle and instinct with powerful additions to our lives? It is impossible, without invention of some sort, for the very good reason that observation of all about us engenders the very opposite of what we seek. And yet what we do see can in no way be excluded. Satire and escape are two possibilities.

But if one remains to reject satire, what then? To be democratic, local, in the sense of attached life with integrity to actual experience, Stein, or any other artist, must for subtly ascend to a plane of almost abstract design. To writing, then, as an art in itself. Yet the surface must

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be rendered as it appears, under which, untouched, the
significance may be deliniated. It is one of the major problems
of the artist, that nature is something.

Begin then with "Melanetha". Here is a thrilling
clinical record of the life of a coloratura woman in the present
day United States, told with a directness and truth comparable
to the best in "Germinie Lacerteux". It is without question
one of the best bits of characterization
produced in
America. It is universally admired.

But for Stein to tell a story of that sort, even
with the utmost genius, is not enough today under the
conditions in which we live, since by the very nature of its
composition it does violence to the larger scene which
would be portrayed.

True, a certain way of deliniating the scene is
to take an individual like Melanetha and draw her carelessly. But
this is what happens. The more carefully the drawing is made,
the greater the genius involved and the greater the interest
that attaches, therefore, to the character as an individual,
the more exceptional that character becomes in the mind of the
reader and the less typical this scene.

It was no use for Stein to go on with "Three Lives".
There that phase of the work had to end.

Stein's pages have become like the United States
viewed from an airplane - the same senseless repetitions, the
endless multiplications of toneless words.

No use for Stein to fly to Paris and forget it. The
thing, the U.S., the unmitigated stupidity, the drab tedious-

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the
ness of the democracy, the overwhelming number of/offensively
ignorant, the dull of nerve - in there in the artist's mind and
cannot be escaped by taking a strip. She must resolve it if
she can, if she is to be. That is the artist's
articulation with existence. Somehow something must be done
about these things or we go insane.

And this is exactly to return to art, to writing, as
the major interest and the problems of the artistic situation
as the material itself.

Truly, the world is null of emotion - more or less -
but it is caught in bewilderment to a far more important
degree. And the purpose of art, so far as it has any, is not
at least to copy that, lies in the resolution of difficulties to
its own organization or materials. And by so doing, in this
case, rather than by copying, it takes its place as most
human.

To deal with Melanchthon, with characters of whomever
it may be, the modern Dickens is not therefore human. To
write like that is not, in the artist to be human at all, since
nothing is resolved, nothing is done to resolve the bewilderment
which makes or emotion so much inanity. It does,
is to overlook the gross instigation and # with all
subtly to examine the object minutely for "the truth" - which is
so to be done, as is commonly practiced, or more properly, in
any thing at all.

To be most useful to humanity, or to anything else
for that matter, an art, writing, must stay art, not banking
to be science, philosophy, history, the humanities or any-
thing else it has been made to carry in the past. That is
the answer to art for art's sake. It is the enforcement which
underlies Gertrude Stein's extension and progression to date.