Although it is virtually impossible not to do so (and in many ways
anticipated by the text),I have always suspected that in attempting to read
_Lifting Belly_ as a love-poem to be deciphered and decoded, we are falling
for Stein's joke. Unlike much of her work, Lifting Belly seems to me to
explicitly set up the idea of an external reality, constructed as a kind of
love-poem between two (?) conspiring individuals, it is littered with
innuendo and nuance - absolute referential qualities - to which the reader
ultimately has no access, and which ultimately doesnt exist. Reading it
feels like doubling back on Stein's work, like being urged once more to
enter into an interpretative mode and de-code the 'secrets' embedded in the
text, only to be defeated by the robust impenetrability of its surface. Just
like _Tender Buttons_ there is no way in which meaning can be extracted and
fixed, but unlike _Tender Buttons_, _Lifting Belly_ consistently gestures
towards its own, non-existent, interiority. Peter Quatermain was really
interesting on _Lifting Belly_ , saying that Stein's strategy here
'radically emphasises the reader's sense of the poem's referentiality while
rendering the precise nature of the reference irrelevant' (the reader is not
invited to, and cannot, draw on any shared cultural knowledge in order to
access the text-hence our problems with 'Cow' and 'Caesar'- there is no
assumed knowledge). I always get the sense that Stein would find my attempts
to work out what 'cow' referred to very funny, but also that it is just that
defiant, mischievous aspect of the poem (and the reader's inevitable attempt
to wrestle meaning out of it) that gives the text its inherent dynamism.
>From: Ryan Jerving <jerving@Bilkent.EDU.TR>
>Reply-To: stein-l@ucdavis.edu
>To: stein-l@ucdavis.edu
>Subject: Re: Lifting Belly
>Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 12:33:35 +0200 (EET)
>
>
>In _Lifting Belly_, as elsewhere in Stein, the key words can be inflected
>in multiple and intersecting ways. I'd certainly agree with Renate
>Stendahl's explanation (and with the others on this list who've responded
>to this topic so far) that _Lifting Belly_ is a celebration of Stein's
>relationship with Toklas and a poem that is very orgasmic in both its
>referents and its exhuberant form--an extension of the "This Is This
>Dress, Aider" poem that ends the "Objects" section of _Tender Buttons_:
>"Aider, why aider why whow, whow stop touch, aider whow, aider stop the
>muncher, muncher munchers."
>
>But what do we do with the other, rather obvious, ways that a lot of the
>language in _Lifting Belly_, and in the other passages cited by Stendahl,
>points to pregnancy? The title, of course: a pregnant belly "lifts," and
>it "grows and it [the belly] grows where it [what's inside it] grows," it
>fills it "full of filling." "Cow" also has this connotation of child
>bearing--though this is trickier, since sometimes the referent of "cow"
>seems to slip sometimes into meaning the offspring: the thing a "wife" has
>when she "has a cow" (in the Bart Simpson sense). "Caesar" in this
>reading, of course, calls up "caesarian section": "And where does it come
>out of. It comes out of the way of the Caesars...And the cow comes out
>of the door."
>
>Now I don't think we'd want to put any of this down to some kind of
>celebration of compulsory heterosexuality for the sake of species
>propogation, unless terribly ironic. Or, unless this level of reference
>is designed to register in some other-than-literal way: for example, to
>displace the gendered expectations placed on women to be generative onto
>the field of language itself where generation (of words, sentences,
>paragraphs) is not so inflexibly linked to gender (on even to a
>necessary self-identical subject--the grammar itself supplies the
>generative force).
>
>This is definitely out of my usual critical territory, but I seem to
>recall Kristeva having written something on the issue of pregnancy and
>women's writing that may be useful here. Does anyone have any
>suggestions?
>
>Ryan Jerving
>Department of American Culture and Literature
>Bilkent University
>Ankara, Turkey
>
>On Tue, 5 Feb 2002, jessicalee wrote:
>
> > This is an excerpt from Renate Stendhal's introduction to
> > _Gertrude Stein In Words and Pictures_. I'm not sure how
> > much it will help, but the explanation of terms follows
> > what was said about "Caesar.":
> >
> > "There certainly is ample evidence in Stein's writing that
> > she pleased herself in the sexual role of the 'husband."
> > But this is a husband whose 'wife has a cow.'...The term
> > 'cow' covers a whole range of taboo topics ('sacred cows')
> > of traditional writing: female sexual organs, desire, and
> > above all orgasm. For example: 'Cows are very nice. They
> > are between legs' ('All Sunday'); 'Yes tenderness grows and
> > it grows where it grows. And do you like it. Yes you do.
> > And does it fill a cow full of filling. Yes. And where
> > does it come out of. It comes out of the way of the
> > Caesars...And the cow comes out of the door. Do you adore
> > me. When this you see remember me' ('A Sonatina Followed by
> > Another'). The romance clearly is of a bodily, orgasmic
> > nature. Pleasing Alice seems to have been a prime concern
> > of 'husband' Stein: 'Have Caesars a duty. Yes their duty is
> > to a cow. Will they do their duty by the cow. Yes now and
> > with pleasure.' ('A Sonatina'). A line in 'Lifting Belly'
> > ironically demands, 'Husband obey your wife.' Role-play and
> > role reversal should not be confused with fixed gender
> > stereotypes. If patriarchal patterns are played out, they
> > are played out with gusto, ad absurdum."
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --- "lou L." <ladylouba@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > Although, I am a die hard Gertrude Stein fan. This poem
> > > is one I can not
> > > quite grasp. I can honestly say, I do not know what is
> > > going on-
> > > What about Caesars? What does the cow signify? I have
> > > read it about five
> > > times in the last month. I found it's tone to be one of
> > > playful domestic
> > > bliss, but I can not figure out the underlining meanings
> > >
> > > Looking for feedback ideas and explanations
> > >
> > > thanks!
> > > Ladylouba@hotmail.com
> > >
> > >
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