If I Told Her Analysis
Originally referring to the advance guard or “the part of the army that goes forward ahead of the rest”, the term avant-garde usually indicates to the idea that artists, with social power within their work, are “leaders of a new society” (Tate). Avant-garde artists of the cubist movement focused on alterations of form and innovative perspective. An advocate of the avant-garde, Gertrude Stein’s poems “A Carafe, That is a Blind Glass” and “If I Told Him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso” were heavily influenced by her personal life and the artistic movements of the time, as seen by the grammatical and psychological approaches she takes in her writing. Furthermore, through the selection of very specific words, Stein manages to explore distortions
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Cubist literature explores the stream of consciousness and “fragmentation of the individual” often through erratic words and sentence structure (Neuffer). Gertrude Stein incorporates this artistic movement into her poetry as she takes control of the English language, morphing it into something nearly unrecognizable. Her poem “A Carafe, That is a Blind Glass”, shifts from the description of a physical distortion to distortions in language and syntax in order to explore the connection “between what is perceived and the person who perceives it” (Wasserstrom 92). The glass is described as a “spectacle” as it serves as a lens for one to view the world through but is a “single hurt color” due to the dark liquid that fills it (Stein, “Carafe” 1,2). The light that passes through the carafe refracts due to the opaque liquid and creates a “not unordered in not resembling” reflection as the observed world seems different but still retains order (Stein, “Carafe” 3). Once someone notices the warped nature of consciousness, “the difference [spreads]” and things that at one time seemed familiar and steady now seem different and almost foreign (Stein, “Carafe” 3). Tender Buttons and “A …show more content…
Additionally, despite her unstructured syntax, she utilizes grammar to lock her chosen words into place and to influence the reader to revert to deeper roots and significance. The rigidity of her writing- narrowing in on specific definitions- greatly contrasts the wide range of interpretations that stem from it. Iconic language conveys meaning and for Stein’s writing, “the iconic nature of language” shatters the “symbolic (conventional, habitual)” definitions (Kaufmann 449). In “A Carafe, That is a Blind Glass”, Stein’s selected words battle between their iconic and symbolic connotations as she describes the shape of a carafe, isolating it so that its singularity engages with the multiplicity of reality. The poem is “not a re-creation of a carafe, but an anatomy of language and culture” in which language “is no longer an instrument of perception but has become an instrument of culture that obscures perception” (Kaufmann 452, 448). Benjamin Whorf created the concept of linguistic determinism- the hypothesis that claims, “language determines the way we think” (Myers 379). Though Whorf’s idea may be a bit extreme, language does influence the way we think. The “restricted vocabulary” in Stein’s equation of Picasso to Napoleon in “If I Told Him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso” ensures that Picasso will be thought of having the transcendent qualities
Cubist literature explores the stream of consciousness and “fragmentation of the individual” often through erratic words and sentence structure (Neuffer). Gertrude Stein incorporates this artistic movement into her poetry as she takes control of the English language, morphing it into something nearly unrecognizable. Her poem “A Carafe, That is a Blind Glass”, shifts from the description of a physical distortion to distortions in language and syntax in order to explore the connection “between what is perceived and the person who perceives it” (Wasserstrom 92). The glass is described as a “spectacle” as it serves as a lens for one to view the world through but is a “single hurt color” due to the dark liquid that fills it (Stein, “Carafe” 1,2). The light that passes through the carafe refracts due to the opaque liquid and creates a “not unordered in not resembling” reflection as the observed world seems different but still retains order (Stein, “Carafe” 3). Once someone notices the warped nature of consciousness, “the difference [spreads]” and things that at one time seemed familiar and steady now seem different and almost foreign (Stein, “Carafe” 3). Tender Buttons and “A …show more content…
Additionally, despite her unstructured syntax, she utilizes grammar to lock her chosen words into place and to influence the reader to revert to deeper roots and significance. The rigidity of her writing- narrowing in on specific definitions- greatly contrasts the wide range of interpretations that stem from it. Iconic language conveys meaning and for Stein’s writing, “the iconic nature of language” shatters the “symbolic (conventional, habitual)” definitions (Kaufmann 449). In “A Carafe, That is a Blind Glass”, Stein’s selected words battle between their iconic and symbolic connotations as she describes the shape of a carafe, isolating it so that its singularity engages with the multiplicity of reality. The poem is “not a re-creation of a carafe, but an anatomy of language and culture” in which language “is no longer an instrument of perception but has become an instrument of culture that obscures perception” (Kaufmann 452, 448). Benjamin Whorf created the concept of linguistic determinism- the hypothesis that claims, “language determines the way we think” (Myers 379). Though Whorf’s idea may be a bit extreme, language does influence the way we think. The “restricted vocabulary” in Stein’s equation of Picasso to Napoleon in “If I Told Him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso” ensures that Picasso will be thought of having the transcendent qualities