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Forums / Poetry and Inspiration Discussion /
Gertrude Stein


  • pania
    Jun 28 1:58 AM
    Reply
    Can anyone help?

    In "Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas", Gertrude speaks of "having a cow" and I don't know what she means.

    I had assumed it to be a code for sexual intimacy between them, but I am told the expression means being angry, having an argument.

    Does anyone know?

  • ea
    June 28
    Reply
    you'll have to ask Bart Simpson about that one.

    • pania
      June 28
      Reply
      I am at a real disadvantge when it comes to popular American culture. No way of reading the sub-text.

  • nicki1
    June 28
    Reply
    This might be helpful:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_have_a_cow

    • pania
      June 28
      Reply

      Thanks

      but Gertrude was writing forty years before that.

      • nicki1
        June 28
        Reply
        Oh, well.

        Maybe she was ahead of her time...

        • pania
          June 28
          Reply
          She was, very definitely. But that doesn't help translate the phrase...

          • nicki1
            June 28
            Reply
            I've never heard it to mean anything other than "to get worked up" about something. Does that not work in the context it's written in?

            • pania
              June 28
              Reply
              It works in the context of sexual intimacy - code for orgasm, I suppose. I just wasn't sure that that was the correct reading.

              • nicki1
                June 28
                Reply
                Oh, I see. That does sound a little strange...

                Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

  • CelticQueen
    June 28
    Reply
    I haven't read the work you're talking about, but in normal American usage, to "have a cow" means to throw a tantrum about something, or to get really upset (angry, irritated, etc.) about something so that you throw a tantrum.

    That particular expression has been in use since long before Bart Simpson came along.

    celtic queen

    • pania
      June 28
      Reply
      According to Wikipedia, since the 1950's, but Gertrude wrote this in, by memory, the 1920's.

  • CelticQueen
    June 28
    Reply
    Maybe she started it! cq

  • Barbara
    June 28
    Reply
    from http://us.geometry.net/search.php?mode=books&searchtype=list&search=351N1QYOKN9BJ&productname=feminist%20lit%20plus%20some#2

    (somewhere on that page)
    Turner also offers a convincing new reading of Stein's famously obscure "cows" (in A Book Concluding with As a Wife Has a Cow: A Love Story and elsewhere), previously thought to signify female orgasm; she argues that Stein and Toklas subscribed to the "cult of regularity" that swept Europe in the first decades of the 20th century. Indeed, the love notes, despite their Steinian verbal play, leave little doubt that the recurring cows, "now sweet smelly and complete," are bowel movements--further evidence, for Turner, of the women's extraordinary intimacy, their love "express[ing] itself daily in the rituals of bodily caretaking."

    • pania
      June 28
      Reply
      Thank you very much for that!

      I think I'll stay with the orgasm thought, though.

      The "cult of regularity" made me think of a toilet pan in an old house I once lived in - the pan was oddly shaped, very flat and quite large, and it had ornate decorations of flowers all around the inside. I was told that it came from the time when people examined their morning bowel motion, for signs of health (or illness) and actually took a lot of notice of the appearance. I suppose the flowers made it look a little nicer!

      • Barbara
        June 28
        Reply
        I was kind of surprised to find out it was referring to
        how... romantic.

  • CelticQueen
    June 28
    Reply
    Oh, man, I really need to get out more! cq

  • ea
    June 28
    Reply

    How Now Brown Cow?

    I tend to err on the side of my American roots until I am forced to examine it from the European mindset... I had been thinking maybe she was talking about beverages, in the way of a "brown cow," aka rootbeer float, but having read Barb's discovery, I have NO DOUBT that Gertrude's brown cows were indeed smelly. It wasn't until the last five years or so that the "shelf" in toilets in this area of Germany, next to the French border, started being eliminated (no pun intended.)

    • pania
      June 28
      Reply
      Well, I asked the question, and wanted to know! Now I do, yet somehow I'm not happy...

  • ea
    June 29
    Reply
    I have to say I was quite unnerved by Hemingway's unkind description of her fighting with Alice in his Parisian memoir, A Moveable Feast - after having prevailed upon her good will and tutelage in his Paris years. So much so that it ruined the book for me and I didn't keep it, though it had the Shakespeare & Co. stamp inside the cover, which would make it sacred to many.

    • pania
      June 29
      Reply
      I think he owed Gertrude a lot for her care of him during his lean times, and her encouragement when he was trying a new way of writing and no-one else understood. I've just reread Fiesta, and am blown away by the power of his work, after years of not liking him. I guess I grew up!

      • ea
        June 30
        Reply
        hmmm... Gertrude and her Salons...

        I keep typing Gerturde. I guess it's no coincidence that her name encapsulates both rude and turd.

        • pania
          June 30
          Reply
          hmmmm. Somehow she's stayed on my mind too - take a quick look at the thread in the pub "Comments?"

          • ea
            June 30
            Reply
            I'm sorry, I can't go into the Pub. I'm underage.

  • ea
    July 1
    Reply
    What would Gertrude have to say about translation as a poetic art?

    • Scott Adelmann
      July 1
      Reply
      Tell me. When I read Crime and Punishment, am I reading Doestyevski? Who wrote Crime and Punishment?

      Translation is a poetic art. Show me where I said otherwise.

      • ea
        July 1
        Reply
        I believe you hinted at otherwise in the Haiku/senryu thread when you stated that you doubted that non-Japanese speaking people should attempt it or that they would never be able to appreciate the nuance of Richard Brautigan's haiku. LOL

        • Scott Adelmann
          July 1
          Reply
          Go back and tell me where I said that translation is not a poetic form. Or else I will start to draw every inference from your words that might suit my agenda.

          Translation to and from Japanese is far different than from to and from a western language. You have called me a dunce, yet you seem to know less than I about the topics that seem dear to you. Pity.

          But if you want to start attacking my grey matter, best of luck to you. I'll be watching with great interest to see if you manage as well as you think you will. So far, you haven't.

    • Scott Adelmann
      July 1
      Reply
      But no translator will ever claim authorship. Never. The ideas, even the words in translation, belong to the original author, per the copywrite laws - translation is appended to the existing copywrite and accorded secondary status.

      • ea
        July 1
        Reply
        Not in the case of the bible, I'm afraid.

        • pania
          July 1
          Reply
          I have recently read Karen Armstrong's wonderful book 'The Bible' and she gives credit to the authors of the different books of the Testaments. I didn't retain names, as that was not my primary interest in the book.

          If you are interested, the book is easily available and well worth the read.

          • ea
            July 12
            Reply
            I have audited a course on who wrote the bible so feel I have enough info on it at this point, thanks, (it's generally agreed that most of it is unknown, anon.) but I was actually referring to how the Bible is out of copyright.

    • pania
      July 1
      Reply
      I don't recall that Gertrude ever worked on translations, although it is possible - she had a far ranging set of interests which meant, I am sure, that she would have had to translate work she was interested in from French to English at least.

      To my mind translation is a poetic art. Probably the least recognised, as well as one of the most important. Imagine the works that would be unavailable - from Dante to Neruda - without the work of translators.

      Yet there remains an ineffable content that is untranslateable; the essential mind-set of a culture. To me, that is what makes Japanese haiku available in all their nuances only to Japanese speakers.

      • Scott Adelmann
        July 1
        Reply
        Agreed. Thank you.

      • ea
        July 12
        Reply
        in the same way that English poetry is available in all its nuances only to English speakers? Do the Japanese have something we lack?

  • pania
    July 13
    Reply
    Origami
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