Yes, that's right. I guess that was a little opaque.
Michaela
----- Original Message -----
From: Jo Maddux <JoM@pacmed.org>
To: <stein-l@ucdavis.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2002 5:36 PM
Subject: RE: Lifting Belly
> >constantly endeavors to let her autobiography be written by the language
> itself<
>
> Do you mean . . . by the way (or ways) in which she uses language . . .
> rather than what the language may or may not be referring to? jO
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michaela Giesenkirchen [mailto:mgiesenk@artsci.wustl.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2002 3:12 PM
> To: stein-l@ucdavis.edu
> Subject: Re: Lifting Belly
>
>
> Hm, dear Helen, I am not so sure about the non-existent interiority. This
> is almost to say that Stein's text is empty of meaning. It undermines
> referentiality, yes, but it still means. The shared cultural knowledge is
> language and the ways in which it experiences. Anyone who has done
> biographical research on Stein has the opportunity to recognize how Stein
> constantly endeavors to let her autobiography be written by the language
> itself.
>
> Michaela Giesenkirchen
> --
>
>
> > From: "helen king" <ms_myrnaminkoff@hotmail.com>
> > Reply-To: stein-l@ucdavis.edu
> > Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2002 22:36:42 +0000
> > To: stein-l@ucdavis.edu
> > Subject: Re: Lifting Belly
> >
> >
> >
> > 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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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Feb 06 2002 - 16:30:50 PST