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Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Cooking with Tender Buttons Food: Breakfast. Stanzas 10-16. Discussion 2

THE BOOK ..........................-           TENDER BUTTONS
THE SUBBOOK ...................-           FOOD
THE SUBPOEM ...................-           Breakfast
WORD COUNT (Total)……...-           840
STANZA(S)............................-            22
Stanzas 1-9                                       312
—Stanzas 10-16                                   224
THE LEADER........................-           THE STEINY ROAD POET
CO-LLABORATORS.............-            MODPO STUDENTS/THE BUTTONS

The middle stanzas of “Breakfast.” seem to indicate a problem between two opposing forces and strong advice about resolving whatever the issue might be. Poetically, Stein uses rhyme and other devices to catch the reader’s attention.

Among the topics addressed in this post are: losing sound in a bell jar—an argument between Gertrude and Leo Stein; poetic fantasia; romancing of the dinner—roast (beef?) and cake; the ups and downs of relationship; imperative statements and sacramental language.

A breeze in a jar and even then silence, a special anticipation in a rack, a gurgle a whole gurgle and more cheese than almost anything, is this an astonishment, does this incline more than the original division between a tray and a talking arrangement and even then a calling into another room gently with some chicken in any way.

A bent way that is a way to declare that the best is all together, a bent way shows no result, it shows a slight restraint, it shows a necessity for retraction.

Suspect a single buttered flower, suspect it certainly, suspect it and then glide, does that not alter a counting.

A hurt mended stick, a hurt mended cup, a hurt mended article of exceptional relaxation and annoyance, a hurt mended, hurt and mended is so necessary that no mistake is intended.

What is more likely than a roast, nothing really and yet it is never disappointed singularly.

A steady cake, any steady cake is perfect and not plain, any steady cake has a mounting reason and more than that it has singular crusts. A season of more is a season that is instead. A season of many is not more a season than most.

Take no remedy lightly, take no urging intently, take no separation leniently, beware of no lake and no larder.

“It’s interesting that roast is on its own wanting to rhyme so much with toast, and toast is there but its name being suggested with the rack and the crusts.” Peter Treanor

 “And the point, this time, is in the word ‘disappointing.’” Teri Rife

LOSING SOUND IN A BELL JAR

Karren Alenier opened the discussion experiencing a bell jar:

A breeze in a jar and even then silence, a special anticipation in a rack, a gurgle a whole gurgle and more cheese than almost anything, is this an astonishment, does this incline more than the original division between a tray and a talking arrangement and even then a calling into another room gently with some chicken in any way.

“I believe Stein is talking about a bell jar where it is possible create a vacuum. Stein would have been familiar with bell jars as a scientist. The vacuum inside a bell jar is partial and has to do with atmospheric pressure related to gas. This might be associated with a breeze. Here is an example:”

An example of a classroom science experiment involving a bell jar is to place a ringing alarm clock under the bell jar. As the air is pumped out of the sealed bell jar, the noise of the alarm clock fades, thus demonstrating that the propagation of sound is mediated by the air. In the absence of their medium, the sound waves cannot travel.[2]

“The example may account for ‘a talking arrangement and even then a calling into another room’ and given some chicken, Stein might be pointing to an argument she had with her brother during the period when she was writing Tender Buttons. In Roastbeef. stanza 9 and 30, Stein gives us room to comb chickens and a slender chicken, which by way of Plato’s featherless biped as human, may represent Leo Stein, the brother with whom she initially shared the apartment 27 rue de Fleurus. Here, the chicken (Leo) seems to be in the way. If this is an argument between the sister and brother, then cheese seems to pejorative.


“However, bell-shaped jars were used also as covers for cheese—a cheese dome.”

Emily W asked, “Was GS a scientist too?”

Claudia Schumann answered, “Yes, GS studying medicine in college.”

Alenier added:

“Emily, she was doing scientific research at Harvard. She also went to a summer program at the famous Woods Hole marine biology center in Massachusetts.”

Emily W replied:

“I studied Chemistry down the street from Harvard. When the vacuum is broken, air will rush in, equalizing the pressure. It's the same thing that happens in our lungs when we inhale. Which makes me think of the spongy, ‘cheesy’ if you will, texture of them. Maybe she had some sitting in specimen jars around the lab. Maybe the lungs or the exhale or gurgle has something to do with the talking and calling.”

A breeze in a jar and even then silence,

“I can see and hear the cheesy wheezy lungs inflating (in the rack of the rib cage, also ribs of lamb called a rack).

“There's a feel of some sort of experiment going on—tubes, jars, heat rising, steam, a breeze created, a test tube rack, all that gurgling as the liquids boil and bubbles bubble, like some kind of distillation. Anticipation and astonishment at the results and transformations in the process

“But I also thought of this when reading breeze in a jar then silence, this seemed to suggest the breeze made a noise and then all was quiet, maybe when the breeze stopped.”

Launching an extended analysis, Alenier replied:

“Emily and Pete, I'm thinking about the broken vacuum and the pressure being equalized. Maybe Gertrude felt she was living in a fishbowl as the metaphor goes and by breaking that jar, that bell jar, the social pressure on her diminished. And as a consequence she could breathe better.

STEIN’S POETIC FANTASIA

With stanzas ten and eleven, Stein is creating a poetic fantasia.

“The last line of stanza one flows poetically into the first line of stanza two, keying on the word way:”
…even then a calling into another room gently with some chicken in any way.

A bent way that is a way to declare that the best is all together, a bent way shows no 

“Stanza 12 image-wise seems the most fantasia like to me with its single buttered flower and how Stein is advising the reader to regard it suspiciously as it glides. It makes me think of the animated film Fantasia.”
Suspect a single buttered flower, suspect it certainly, suspect it and then glide, does that not alter a counting.

“Stanza 13 repeats the word hurt but it seems to me more poetic than negative given the repetition of the word mended:
A hurt mended stick,
a hurt mended cup,
a hurt mended article of exceptional relaxation and annoyance,
a hurt mended,
hurt and mended is so necessary that no mistake is intended.

Emily W interjected:

“Mending—another job for women, an important one since new clothes weren't quite so cheap. A family member told me that when he was in school it was alright to go to school with clothes that had been mended, but not that were torn or had a hole.”

ROMANCING OF THE DINNER

Alenier continuing said,

“In stanzas 14 and 15, Stein moves to what I'm going to call a romancing of the dinner with the roast and cake:
What is more likely than a roast, nothing really and yet it is never disappointed singularly.

A steady cake, any steady cake is perfect and not plain, any steady cake has a mounting reason and more than that it has singular crusts. A season of more is a season that is instead. A season of many is not more a season than most.

“Also notice the alliteration steady steady steady singular season season inStead season season moSt.

“Stanza 16 also plays with alliteration but of L:”
Take no remedy lightly, take no urging intently, take no separation leniently, beware of no lake and no larder.

“lightly intently leniently lake larder.”

Picking up on stanza 15, Teri Rife said,
“I think that steady cake could be a cheesecake, which is a cake that may have crusts. Cheesecake is ancient, generally believed to have been first made by the Greeks. From pappaspost.com:”

‘Greek brides and grooms were also known to use cheesecake as a wedding cake. It also became a custom for a Greek bride to bake and serve cheesecakes to her new husband’s friends as a gesture of hospitality. Incidentally, this concept eventually paved the way for wedding cakes to become a tradition that continues today.’

“When the Romans conquered Greece, the recipe came to them. They modified it adding eggs, and sometimes put it into pastry.

LANGUAGE THAT SINGS

“We've seen the ‘s’ alliteration over and over. It's so singing. And, look, the word ‘sing’ is actually right there in the middle of the stanza, contained in the word ‘singular.’ And, look again, there are 4 ‘seasons!’ Another instance of the repetition of a word 4x, Emily, and this time with a noun—unless, of course, it's a verb (to season our breakfast).”

Emily W asked:

“I was thinking about what you said about ‘a Rose is rose...’ how Stein said she was doing something different with every repeat, but I have to wonder, how is the reader supposed to know what she is doing with the repeats? Is it even important?”

Rife answered:
“The way I look at it is that it's important to me to figure out everything I can about this remarkably spare, yet very rich text. It's become all about the journey, not the destination. Even though I will never know what Stein is doing, I do know that it enriches my life to try, especially in the company of others.

‘...steady...steady...steady...’ is like what we say when we're trying to balance something that's precarious, and the tension in the situation seems to increase as time goes along—a ‘mounting reason’ for carefulness. The ‘steady-ness in the first line pops up in the second, too, in the form of ‘instead.more...more...many...most’ This is building.”

Alenier commented:

“Teri, I also think your discussion about steady—mounting reason—falls in line with ‘the difference is spreading’ (“A carafe, that is a blind glass.”).

RELATIONSHIP ROLLERCOASTER

Moving in a different direction, Treanor asked answered:

“Is there something being said about relationships?

“There's division and arrangement in stanza 10.

“The best is all together in stanza 11.

“Stanza 12, A single buttered flower (a buttercup? any yellow flower? Or butter and flour?) which we are told to suspect and does not alter in a counting, which seems to emphasize it always stays as one, on it's own no matter how often we count it.

“Stanza 13, we have the series of things (objects) that are hurt and mended. Hurt is a recurring theme in TBs, it’s a strange word to use for an object as hurt requires consciousness, it is a feeling, how can an object be hurt? Does she mean some kind of damage? But hurt and mending seems to suggest repair or healing. Repair or re-pairing or pairing suggests relationship. Healing as relationship?

“Stanza 14, never disappointed singularly. Singularly can be singular or exceptional.

“Stanza 15, singular again, singular crusts.

“Stanza 16, take no separation leniently.

“Woven in with whatever else is woven in there, there does seem to be some sort of suggestion about being single, hurt and mending (healing), disappointment and an urge to not accept separation.

“And a steady state (I want to say steady state not steady cake when I read this), a steady cake seems to be perfect and not plain. Is a cake a mixture of ingredients? A mixture of many, not a single ingredient but a relationship of ingredients. An elaborate (not plain) cake that has a reason for mounting does sound like a wedding cake, mounted in tiers.

Circling back to her question on Stein’s use of repetition, Emily W commented:

“I don't mean to be stuck on the repeating, well at least not too stuck. I am really just curious about it, since there are so many things one might try to convey through repetition, and spoken repetition is much easier to make sense of than written! It's like little mental puzzles to sort out, but maybe it doesn't even matter what she was thinking when she wrote it, but as you suggest, Teri, maybe it's more about what we as readers make of it.

“Anyway, the hurt, could be anything, feelings, something torn or broken, but whatever it is, it's been fixed. hurt and mended is so necessary that no mistake is intended.
To me this sounds like advice, of sorts—make sure to fix things so it doesn't get worse.”

Answering Emily W, Rife said:
“I think Gertrude fully intends for us to be stuck on the repeating, maybe not just because the word or idea being repeated is somehow important but also because repeating is part of the natural human speech pattern. We just sort of go on and on, filling up any silence.


Monday, December 21, 2015

Cooking with Tender Buttons Food: Breakfast. Stanzas 1-9. Discussion 1

THE BOOK ..........................-           TENDER BUTTONS
THE SUBBOOK ...................-           FOOD
THE SUBPOEM ...................-           Breakfast
WORD COUNT (Total)……...-           840
STANZA(S)............................-            22
—Stanzas 1-9                                       312
THE LEADER........................-           THE STEINY ROAD POET
CO-LLABORATORS.............-            MODPO STUDENTS/THE BUTTONS

“Breakfast.” is the third subpoem of Tender Buttons section 2 Food. Unlike “Roastbeef.” and “Mutton”, “Breakfast.” is not a food but a time of day to eat. While stanza 14 of “Breakfast.” (this stanza will be addressed in the next blogpost) mentions roast, meat does not play much of a role in this subpoem. However, the meeting of the minds comes into play as Stein addresses daily process, philosophical discourse, creativity, and literary concerns.

The Buttons Collective begins with the first nine stanzas of “Breakfast.”, which has a 312-word count, including the title. Among the topics addressed in this post are: breaking fast—exploring the title Breakfast; the various abuses of cheese; a shining breakfast and that sudden slice that changes everything; Cubism is not imitation; a loving tongue and cups; Gertrude Stein and fashion; party in Batteau-Lavoir; cocoanut, whale tongue and more fish; and finding the calm in clamour. This is a complicated set of stanzas and while much was seen, undoubtedly more exists in these words then have been commented on.

BREAKFAST.
A change, a final change includes potatoes. This is no authority for the abuse of cheese. What language can instruct any fellow.

A shining breakfast, a breakfast shining, no dispute, no practice, nothing, nothing at all.

A sudden slice changes the whole plate, it does so suddenly.

An imitation, more imitation, imitations succeed imitations.

Anything that is decent, anything that is present, a calm and a cook and more singularly still a shelter, all these show the need of clamor. What is the custom, the custom is in the centre.

What is a loving tongue and pepper and more fish than there is when tears many tears are necessary. The tongue and the salmon, there is not salmon when brown is a color, there is salmon when there is no meaning to an early morning being pleasanter. There is no salmon, there are no tea cups, there are the same kind of mushes as are used as stomachers by the eating hopes that makes eggs delicious. Drink is likely to stir a certain respect for an egg cup and more water melon than was ever eaten yesterday. Beer is neglected and cocoanut is famous. Coffee all coffee and a sample of soup all soup these are the choice of a baker. A white cup means a wedding. A wet cup means a vacation. A strong cup means an especial regulation. A single cup means a capital arrangement between the drawer and the place that is open.

Price a price is not in language, it is not in custom, it is not in praise.

A colored loss, why is there no leisure. If the persecution is so outrageous that nothing is solemn is there any occasion for persuasion.

A grey turn to a top and bottom, a silent pocketful of much heating, all the pliable succession of surrendering makes an ingenious joy.

“These stanzas seem like a big jump from talking about breakfast. But maybe she was talking about the paintings all along?” Emily W

The quest to become for Gertrude Stein was huge. She called it finding Gloire. She wanted the sunshine of genius, that light that shines on you so that others know you are special.” Karren Alenier 

BREAKING FAST

While the Buttons Collective did not begin by discussing what Stein’s title “Breakfast.” might indicate, the Steiny Road Poet [a.k.a. Karren Alenier] believes this is where the discussion should start. Peter Treanor had this to say but in relation to stanza 1:

Breakfast.
A change, a final change includes potatoes. This is no authority for the abuse of cheese. What language can instruct any fellow.

Breakfast seems to have a double meaning here. Breakfast the meal and breaking from that which is fast, or fixed (her old relationship with Leo or maybe the old use of language). Or an imperative, we need to break fast, meaning quickly. So breaking free and breaking free quickly. Maybe that is part of the rapid change that is happening. This meal for the new day/age dawning.”

Karren Alenier added:

“One more thought to add to the break fast meaning is that during Yom Kippur, Jews abstain from eating to atone for the year's sins they have committed. The meal taken at sundown of that holy day is called a break fast. The holiday is about a new beginning, it is about change in behavior and there is lots of instructional language offered in those prayers. Does this relate to cheese? well, maybe. The meal typically served is dairy.”

THE ABUSE OF CHEESE

What initially caught Alenier’s attention was the phrase abuse of cheese. She said:

“Join me in standing in the 21st century like a visitor to art gallery as I stand before this phrase: abuse of cheese. Here is another instance of how Stein's work reached into the future and our now.

“Cheese in our time refers to a recreational drug made from heroin and over-the-counter cold medicines, etc. I also found a satirical statement about how modern consumption of cheese, the food, has been become an all out addiction.

“Now back to stanza 1 of "Breakfast."—the key word here is change. The French are aficionados of cheese so there seems to be some caution issued here where potatoes, a staple of eating in Western culture, represent ordinary behavior. This is then followed with a statement or rather a question about what language can inform any person? Next I'm going to look at the definition of cheese.”

cheese 1
 (chēz)
n.
1.
a. A solid food prepared from the pressed curd of milk, often seasoned and aged.
b. A molded mass of this substance.
2. Something resembling this substance in shape or consistency.

“Let's not forget that the TB Food section starts with Roastbeef, which points to cows and milk, the main substance of cheese.”

cheese 2
 (chēz)
tr.v. cheesedchees·ingchees·es Slang
To stop.
Phrasal Verb:
cheese off Chiefly British Slang
To anger or irritate: The footballers were cheesed off by the referee's decision that cost them the game.
Idiom:
cheese it Slang
1. To look out. Often used in the imperative.
2. To get away fast; get going. Often used in the imperative.

“Could Stein be telling us she will no longer take abuse for her decision to change her life in radical ways—giving up a lucrative profession (as a medical doctor) and marrying a woman instead of a man?”

cheese 3
 (chēz)
n. Slang
An important person.

“Is Stein the cheese here?”


cheese
 (tʃiːz)
n
1. (Cookery) the curd of milk separated from the whey and variously prepared as a food
2. (Cookery) a mass or complete cake of this substance
3. (Cookery) any of various substances of similar consistency, etc.: lemon cheese.
4. big cheese an important person
5. as alike as chalk and cheese as different as chalk and cheese See chalk6

“I'm particularly interested in this definition where cheese is described as a cake. In the Food section, cake is used 11 times. In "Breakfast.", cake is used three times in stanza 15.

“Words related to cheese from the Urban Dictionary:
sex, food, penis, dick, money, vagina, ass.”

Emily W responded:

“A change makes me think about the change in the process of making cheese. The milk is curdled by an acidic substance. Cheese used to be very handy because it was a dense energy source that was easily transported and didn't spoil so quickly as milk.

“Abusing cheese is such an odd thing to say. (I didn't know it referred to a drug nowadays!) It must be something else that is being abused that cheese represents? Or is abusing cheese—taking too much of it? Or not eating it so it grows moldy—wasting food might be considered abusive.”

Alenier answered:

“I like your description of cheese making and it is a portable food once milk is transformed into those cakes called cheese.

“I agree that abuse of cheese is odd.

“I'm thinking, however, these lines refer to Stein as the cheese—the big cheese--the important person. Whatever the change is, and she says it is final, includes something that is a mundane staple (potatoes). Forgive me, Alice, but Gertrude could be referring to the change in daily living that includes marriage to ABT and loss of GS's brother Leo from their lives. The change also involves the importance of language (Stein’s writing) in GS & ABT's lives. This will instruct audience (any fellow).”

Treanor said:

“The potatoes at breakfast make me think of hash browns and latkes. (Both are also referred to as cakes.)

“Cheese is typically taken for breakfast in France with bread and ham. So cheese and potato at the breakfast table could be seen as a meeting/clash of cultural norms maybe. Maybe the final change in the cultural landscape (of writing) will involve the US ingredient of hash browns to the cultural table that previously was solely European in flavour, with cheese that is now cheesy.

Authority is interesting, authority as in ‘power to do so’ but also refers to author, writer, composer. An author ity, the ability to write cheesily perhaps. 
And what language can instruct any body? with all this author-ly authority you would think of a written language perhaps, but that would mean the person would have to be able to read, so I would think more of music or images (the language of painting, visual representation) as the language that could instruct any fellow. If fellow is indeed a person. And not any (who) fell low. Maybe the bible or some other holy text is one that could instruct if one has fell low.

Final is strange, a final change, it sounds so...well…final. What change is final? Only death springs to mind.”

Alenier responded,

“I guess Stein's selection of the word final is very emotional. I'm thinking of it as a hard-and-fast decision and not so much death.”

Emily W asked:

“If she is referring to herself then as the ‘cheese,’ is she also taking on the role of the instructor in language too?”

Treanor offered:

“Yes Karren maybe final change is referring to something she has been labouring over, but has finally come to a decision about.

“It does seem that the final decision, which includes potatoes, does not give the authority to abuse cheese (the old). So the new doesn’t contain the authority to abuse the old, established, matured, solidified cheese. Is she saying that new ways don’t need to trash the old? She’s writing a new way but still sees the older ways as tasty, solid and flavorsome. She'd just like some new tastes as well, some tubers from the new world to add to the meal.”

Answering both Emily W and Peter Treanor, Alenier responded:

“Emily, Bingo! I think you hit the nail head on! Yes, I think Stein would be insinuating that she is that important person who would lead the instruction of language. instruction of language is one of the important themes of TB.

“Pete, I think you are on to something important—aspects of what is habitual (old) support what is groundbreaking (new). It's like the partnership of GS & ABT.”

Teri Rife added this abuse of cheese:

“Check out "The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction," said to the the first long-lived cheap (two-penny) periodical in Britain, published from 1822 to 1847. Here's a link to a section describing how cheese is made from potatoes in Thuringia and Saxony:  https://books.google.com/books?id=50EFAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA431&lpg=PA431&dq=potatoes+and+cheese+in+literatu...                                                         
“Looks like this periodical was a source of instruction (weird though it appears to be), along with amusement for any fellow.”  

Here Steiny will pause to say that whatever the abuse of cheese meant to Stein, it was important to her and may have been a popular term during her time to disparage literary work. Stein uses the word cheese again in stanza 10 which will be discussed in the next blogpost. In Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein, a collection of experimental prose and word portraits written by Stein between 1909 and 1912, she wrote this line that begins with cheese:


To lie in the cheese, to smile in the butter, to lengthen in the rain, to sit in the flour all that makes a model stronger, there is no strangeness where there is more useful color, a description has not every mission.

A SHINING BREAKFAST & SUDDEN SLICE

While Emily W and Claudia Schumann pondered what a shining breakfast might mean, Peter Treanor suggested:

A shining breakfast, a breakfast shining, no dispute, no practice, nothing, nothing at all. “I thought of eggs, fried, sunny side up, shining away, bright, yellow and glistening. A big yellow orb like the sun.”

Moving on to stanza 3, Schumann added:

A sudden slice changes the whole plate, it does so suddenly.
A sudden slice could mean an interruption. Like on Sundays, I enjoy the quiet of morning not having to rush out to work or some place else. But while I'm enjoying my breakfast—the phone rings (a sudden slice).”

THE SLICE THAT SUDDENLY CHANGES EVERYTHING

Taking the discussion to the philosophic plane, Alenier addressed stanzas 2 through 5:

A shining breakfast, a breakfast shining, no dispute, no practice, nothing, nothing at all.

A sudden slice changes the whole plate, it does so suddenly.

An imitation, more imitation, imitations succeed imitations. 

Anything that is decent, anything that is present, a calm and a cook and more singularly still a shelter, all these show the need of clamor. What is the custom, the custom is in the centre.

“In my thinking, these 4 stanzas belong together. There is a quality about them that seems philosophic.

“Stanza 1—no dispute, no practice, nothing, nothing at all. Taken all together, Stein moves around the word shining in a cubist manifestation. She is examining. Breakfast connotes a beginning but also a change (fed after a long hiatus where one eats after abstention.)

“Stanza 2—we see a part (slice) versus entirety (whole) and there is the word change.

“Stanza 3—seems judgmental as well as declension: one intimation, more intimations and one quantity of imitations trumping another. It's some kind of philosophic argument.

“Stanza 4—there some kind of moral argument being presented in this stanza. It has to do with how to live and it dwells on what is habitual (custom).

Emily W responded:
“Breakfast is a habit for most people, not just to eat it, but even what they eat. Our habits are conveniences that make it easy to be able to think about something else.

Karren, I've been thinking and thinking about what you said about breaking habits and getting into the chaos of life. Of course, not all habits are bad, they make life easier in many ways, and some are good. But I also think that there is a habit that is ‘being me,’ i.e., I might call it finding my style (artistically, speaking) and this is what I want to develop, so it is unique and recognizable. And at the same time, I want to develop it (break/add habits). There are many approaches, learn something new, get a new perspective, talk to someone interesting, etc. etc. Maybe one might call it ‘adding a slice’ that suddenly changes everything.

“GS talks about imitation here, and I believe that is our habit, we imitate, we soak up what we see, what we hear. The challenge is to take that imitation and rework it, add a new layer to it, that is, add our style over it, so it becomes something more than just a pure imitation.”

Treanor jumped in with:

Custom is a form of personal, social or societal habit. What is the custom, the custom is in the centre. Habit (custom) is central it seems.”

Taking another tack, Rife offered:

“I've been thinking about the possibility that this fast we're breaking might be not a food fast (Gertrude would flip those words and make us think that she predicted the rise of McDonald's) but rather a fast from companionship--Gertrude's from Alice and Alice from Gertrude's. When I read the book of selected love notes from Gertrude to Alice, I was given to understand that it was Gertrude's custom to stay up far past Alice's bedtime to write. So, Gertrude would leave a love note for Alice to find when she got up in the morning, to keep the connection until they were together again.

“All that having been said, I'm seeing quiet daily routine each morning in need of a shake-up. Quietude: ‘...no dispute, no practice, nothing, nothing at all.’ (There are all those unusual commas signifying the breath, as we saw in Objects.) and ‘...a calm and a cook and more singularly still a shelter...’ Is this Alice moving about the house while Gertrude is still sleeping? Then, boom, it's show time. Gertrude's up! We break our fast from one another with an actual or metaphorical shining breakfast.

“I'm still thinking about the imitations upon imitations. Is Alice typing what Gertrude wrote during the night previous?”

CUBISM IS NOT IMITATIVE ART

After an exchange between Emily W and Teri Rife about creativity, Verse 39 of the Tao Te Ching, repetition, and the ability to remember what we learn, Rife said,

“Yes, perhaps imitating goes with the instructing. And though I brought up ‘endlessly repeating’ from the Tao Te Ching verse because of the cadence of the words, there's a difference between repeating and imitating, I think. It may be that ‘An imitation, more imitation, imitations succeed imitations.’ has something to do with the old ways of writing, the old ways of making art and music versus the new. I looked around for a quote from Guillaume Apollinaire we discussed previously in Objects that mentions imitation. Here it is:”

The difference between Cubism and earlier painting is that it is not an imitative art, but a conceptual art, which reaches up to the heights of creation.

When depicting conceived-reality or created-reality, the painter can obtain a three-dimensional effect, can, so to speak, cubify. He could not do that by just representing seen-reality, unless he resorted to trompe-l'oeil, with foreshortening or perspective, which would distort the quality of the conceived or created form.

Scientific Cubism is one of the pure tendencies. It is the art of painting new compositions with elements taken not from reality as it is seen, but reality as it is known.

“Everyone is aware of this inner reality. One does not have to be educated to conceive of a round shape, for example.

“The geometrical appearance which so struck those who saw the first scientific canvases resulted from the fact that essential reality was there depicted with great purity, with contingent visual and anecdotal elements eliminated from the work."

Alenier responded,

“Teri, that's an important point about imitating being old school. It makes me think of the saying ‘imitation is highest form of flattery.’ Well in this context, we Xperience 2 dimensions (flat-ery) versus 3 (cubism)!”