Gertrude Stein was the most influential woman in the 20th century world of art.
From her apartment in Paris at 27 rue de Fleurus sprang literary and artistic giants who benefited from her broad encouragement and patronage. Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jean Cocteau, these were just a few of the writers known to attend her dinner parties. Possessing the particular blunt self-assurance that only a talented yet middling writer can, Stein picked out, promoted and encouraged what would later become the big winners of modernist literature, and art.
She and her brother Leo were among the first patrons of Pablo Picasso. Other associates included Matisse, Cézanne, Gris, and Braque. In fact, Picasso and Matisse were introduced to each other by Stein, thus gifting us one of the all time great artistic rivalries (and we mustn’t forget that within the arts a rival is often more valuable than a friend).
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, a memoir she wrote about her longtime lesbian partner, is brimming with amusing and often pointed observations of the avant-garde in the first half of the 20th century that found its headquarters in Paris, and often at their dinner table. Stein made many friends over the years, and lost a good chunk of them with the publication of that book.
Stein held court every Saturday evenings, at times arranging the seating of her guests to create this or that effect. A stream of new and regular guests were exposed to the avant-guard paintings lining her walls, and discussions, often with the artist present, could last well into the night.
She, more than anyone else at the time, provided a space for artists, mostly men, to come together and break bread, hash out ideas, and spar with one another. Also, and importantly, she could impart a word of worldly wisdom: “Yes, Pound is a bit of an ass, but if you’re nice to him he’ll help get your book published.” I paraphrase, of course.
At the start of my last piece, The temple is holy because it is not for sale: Ezra Pound & The Kingly Office, I looked at the proposal put forth by Timothy Patitsas that while every Christian is called to take up the three offices of Christ—that is, Prophet, Priest, and King—each gender has a primary, initial calling. Men, to king. Women, to prophet.
To bring forth of a word of insight, to create a space where the individual can step out of their own way (repent) enough so that the Spirit can move, this is the work of the prophet. I believe Patitsas has struck on something worth exploring.
Now, I hardly see Stein or Pound as individuals worthy of garlands. But as I have pondered this new perspective on gender from within my own experience studying and working within the world of poetry, I can’t help chuckle at how neatly Pound and Stein fit this framework. They are impressive individuals in the worldly sense, at the very least.
However, neither could embody their respective offices correctly, despite their dynamism; they could not perform their offices in a priestly way. That is, they could not properly sacrifice. Thus they were mere prophet, mere king, of modernism—The Waste Land.
What is true for the culture is doubly true of the arts. The arts are to my mind, inevitably, the frontrunner of the former.
In a recent, excellent discussion between
and , Greene comments, correctly, that:What happened in the mid-2010’s is that men and women started diverging in their cultural perspectives radically, and this is continuing on apace. The thing that we’re going to be dealing with from a cultural point of view, as Christians, as heretics from the regime, is who can deal with this question of how to integrate men and women into a society together.
I will wrap up my first foray into the murky waters of gender in my next, much longer essay where I will propose a multi-decade project to restore poetry to its rightful seat of prominence, reconcile men and women (ok, our children in particular), and get a grip on a healthy use of digital technology.
No big deal.