The midwife to modernism

A BRIEF GLANCE AT GERTRUDE STEIN’S FORMATIVE IMPACT ON MODERN LITERATURE. By Olivia Peters, Staff Writer Illustrated by Channing Smith, Art Director

The year is 1922. You are a young, bright-eyed, aspiring novelist who has recently come from America to Paris to focus on your craft and gain life experiences. An invitation with your name on it is left at the front desk of your hotel. You pick it up hungrily and tear open the wax seal. Your jaw hangs lax, and your eyes glaze over when you see who it’s from. This is it, you’re somebody now. Gertrude Stein has invited you to one of her dinner parties. The memory of 1920s Paris is often overshadowed by the American scene, flappers and prohibition. Yet Europe — Paris, in particular — was the epicenter of the post-war artistic movement. When World War I concluded in 1918, it was considered the most damaging and traumatic events in history.1 In response, countless writers, artists, designers and other creatives began to reject the ways of the past. Realism and Victorian era stylings no longer represented reality. Modernism was birthed as a result, with an aim to more accurately portray industrial-age, post-war life. Gertrude Stein was the midwife at the birth of Modernism

In the mid-century in Paris, anybody who dreamed of becoming someone in the literary world knew the address: 27 Rue de Fleurus.2 Stein moved into this apartment with her brother back in 1903, where they began collecting Post-Impressionist paintings and entertaining people in their renowned art salon. Stein was a writer, and her brother, Leo, an artist. They had paintings by Gris, Matisse and Picasso— all artists whose careers Stein helped to launch.3 Picasso even painted a selfportrait of Stein which hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art today.4 Eventually, Leo moved away to Florence. Despite the absence of her beloved brother, Stein did not miss a social step following his departure. Rather, Stein’s lover Alice B. Toklas moved in and the two of them continued hosting evening gatherings. On a typical weekend evening, Stein engaged men who she deemed to possess literary potential in the salon, while Miss Toklas kept the women busy in the kitchen.

Imagine the friendships that Stein formed here, the admiration visible in the young mens’ eyes, the power that she yielded. It’s certain that Stein valued this captive audience of burgeoning intellectuals and artists, but did she know that those moments in her salon would be preserved in history’s resin? The men that she entertained clamored for glances at her latest works. Stein’s writing style can be described as “deliberately naive.”5 Stein sought to capture the multiple perspectives of cubism—as Picasso did—but with words. She transcended gender roles and explored her sexuality in her work. Arguably, her most well known piece was “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas” in which Stein writes from Toklas’ point of view and describes herself as a main character.6

3 Ibid. 4 “Gertrude Stein.” The Met. 5 A. Gopnik, “Understanding Steinese.” The New Yorker. June 24, 2013. 6 “Gertrude Stein Biography.” The Biography.com Website. January 29, 2020. Yet Stein’s writing did not live on in the same way that her name and impact on young literary greats did. F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway were some of her most successful mentees. Hemingway’s work was noticeably influenced by Stein’s style. He adapted her trademark repetition and simplicity into his own, and his work quickly surpassed Stein’s in popularity; however, her influential molding of his narrative voice is not forgotten. Stein famously said to Hemingway, “You’re all a lost generation,” which became a token phrase used by the public for modernist artists.7

If only the walls of 27 Rue de Fleurus could share the brilliant conversations that occurred in their midst during the birth of Modernism. Young hopefuls were infatuated with the dominating presence and intelligence of the exceptional woman who wandered these halls. Stein showed the lost generation what they had the potential to become, and how they could express themselves in the style of modernism. Gertrude Stein was not a classically beautiful woman, sitting nude for a painter; she was not the subject of romantic poetry; she was not a passive source of inspiration to them. She was their guide. Stein was what those searching creatives needed to become great. She led those men to a realm of success that they simply were not capable of accessing on their own. Gertude Stein gave these artists confidence and in turn, they gave the whole world everlasting art. For that, she is immortal. ■