My very first impression upon reading Gertrude Stein’s prose was that maybe, somehow, my reader was printed incorrectly. My second impression was a simple thought; maybe there is more here than what first meets the eye, perhaps Stein merely wanted to lead the reader into a false sense of poetic and rhythmic gibberish and hoped that someone out there got more from her words than what was merely on the page.
Stream of consciousness: stream of consciousness is simply writing what comes to mind and continuing to do so until either time runs out or you’ve exhausted your mind’s reserves for such weird and fascinating thoughts and while these thoughts are actually being paid attention to they thunder loudly in your head and low and behold it’s raining outside which can bring thunder which scares me a little but lightning is nice…
THIS is what Stein does, at least what I believe she wanted to put forth to her readers; this sense of being inside her head or the heads of the her characters in such a modernist way that it allows the reader to flow through and with these thoughts and images and feelings like it really is a stream. This can be seen clearly in many, if not all of her works, in particular the poem ‘Susie Asado.’
Lines and words within the first half of the poem conjure in my mind the image of the narrator sitting down to a formal tea. The line: “When the ancient light grey is clean it is yellow” gives me the impression that the narrator is describing tea leaves before and after infusing them in hot water. The line: “This is a please this is a please there are the saids to jelly” implies to me the small talk and conversations taking place as they are drinking tea. What link all of this together in my own mind are the lines:
A pot. A pot is the beginning of a rare bit of trees. Trees tremble, the old vats are in bobbles, bobbles which shade and shove and render clean, render clean must. (pp. 5 (13).
I got the image of the tea pot and the idea that the narrator is connecting “trees” with the tea leaves as leaves grow on trees and tea leaves need to “tremble” and “shove” and be strained clean to have drinkable tea. All of these images can be linked with the idea of Stein writing, or indeed creating, a stream of consciousness where everything is linked in some obscure way.
These connections can also be seen in the following lines:
Drink pups drink pups lease a sash hold, see it shine and a bobolink has pins. It shows a nail.
What is a nail. A nail is unison. (pp. 5 (13).
The reader may not get anything from such a seemingly nonsense procession of words but if we were to follow the idea that maybe this was simply a stream of Stein’s consciousness we can start to see patterns and connections between these sentences. Firstly, “lease a sash hold” brings to the reader’s mind the idea that a sash is used to hold something in place, to connect pieces together that would otherwise be awry.
As the ‘stream’ progresses and the reader follows on to the idea of a “bobolink” which is a black bird and the collective noun for these birds is a chain, we can start to see possible connections. The poem then states that “a bobolink has pins” and “It shows a nail”; again the reader can see the progression in ideas from a sash, to a ‘chain’, to pins and a nail, all devices that connect or bring things together, culminating in the line “A nail is unison”, possibly the simplest way Stein could convey links between two things and the actual embodiment of the connection itself: the nail.
From this, are we to infer that the “sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea” is what brings to Stein’s consciousness the image or indeed memory of Susie Asado? Indeed, the lines: “Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea/ Susie Asado” are repeated quite often throughout the poem and perhaps drinking tea conjures Asado for Stein as the use of repetition puts forth an emphasis to the reader and shows that this is important.
Upon reflection, it can be deduced that my conclusions here indicate the possibility that there is indeed more the Stein's prose than the seeming gibberish that meets the eye of the reader and alludes to the fact that she may have used writing through a stream of consciousness to get these deeper meanings across.
There is, however, always that underlying worry that maybe I have been misled and this was all part of Stein's plan; to make the reader search for meaning amongst this random collection of words, to be lead and perhaps to lead ourselves, down our own stream of consciousness.
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