In her pursuit of finding “a way of naming things that would not invent names, but mean names without naming them,” Gertrude Stein made the following statements (among many others) about nouns:
“Things once they are named the name does not go on doing anything to them and so why write in nouns. . . And therefore and I say it again more and more one does not use nouns. . . Nouns as I say even by definitions are completely not interesting.”
“Nouns must go in poetry as they had gone in prose if anything that is everything was to go on meaning something.”
“A noun is the name of anything, why after a thing is named write about it. A name is adequate or it is not. If it is adequate then why go on calling it, if it is not then calling it by its name does no good.”
“As I say a noun is a name of a thing and therefore slowly if you feel what it is inside that thing you do not call it by the name by which it is known.”
“When I said. \ A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. \ And then later made that into a ring I made poetry and what did I do I caressed completely caressed and addressed a noun.”
The last statement is a bit inconsistent if we are to take her previous statements on face value, but she never admits to actually using a noun to “name” anything, she is “addressing” it. Stein’s problem with nouns seems to be that they refer to things, and it seems much more consistent to call her work nonreferential than to say it is nonsensical. The common reading of her chain of roses follows as if the statement ends with an unspoken “any way you slice it,” a reminder of trivial fact that shares nothing with Stein’s “address.” I have to read more of her lectures before coming even close to a definitive claim here, and I really don’t mean to give this little aphorism such high priority, but the noun to me is emptied by the phrasing and not solidified. When Stein reacts to the cultural appropriation of the line: “Now listen! I’m no fool. I know that in daily life we don’t go around saying ‘is a … is a … is a …’ Yes, I’m no fool; but I think that in that line the rose is red for the first time in English poetry for a hundred years,” I have a hard time believing that, according to her own rules, she has really said anything about “the rose,” but rather has maybe said something about the color red without having to name it.
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