A UNIVERSE IN THE BUTTONS
BOX
THE SUBBOOK
...................-
OBJECTS
THE SUBPOEM
...................-
A NEW CUP AND SAUCER: NUMBER 24
STANZAS..............................-
1
WORD
COUNT......................- 16
THE SUBPOEM
...................-
OBJECTS: NUMBER 25
STANZAS..............................-
3
WORD
COUNT......................- 49
THE
LEADER........................- THE STEINY ROAD POET
CO-LLABORATORS..............- MODPO STUDENTS/THE BUTTONS
GENRE..................................- VIRTUAL OPERA
LOCATION............................- USA,
UK, Australia, Philippines, S. Africa, Canada.
TIME......................................- ALL HOURS OF EARTH’S CLOCK
TONE.....................................-
AWED
A NEW CUP AND SAUCER.
Enthusiastically hurting a clouded yellow bud and
saucer, enthusiastically so is the bite in the ribbon.
OBJECTS.
Within, within the cut and slender joint alone, with
sudden equals and no more than three, two in the centre make two one side.
If the elbow is long and it is filled so then the
best example is all together.g
The kind of show is made by squeezing.
Part three continues the
discussion of “Objects.” but with associations to Jewish sacred teachings and
Kabbalah with a reflection on why study “Objects.” and “A New Cup and Saucer.”
together.
REPEATING THAT LEADS TO WORDS EQUAL OBJECTS
“If I'm following you,
you're referring to the fact that each of the 5 books of the OT ([Old
Testament:] Torah) is titled
using the first word of the first chapter. For example, Genesis in Hebrew is actually ‘Bereishit,’ which is the first word
of the first chapter. Also, each chapter is titled (as a way of talking/writing
about it) by using the first word.
“This immediately made me
think of the 5th and last book of the OT
(Torah):
Deuteronomy
is, in Hebrew ‘DEVARIM.’
“DEVARIM is translated as
WORDS, but in Modern Hebrew it also means THINGS/OBJECTS.
“Objects and words are linked
in Hebrew, and it seems that they are also linked in Steinese. Could Stein be
describing letters as objects here? And then using all letters (except for 2)
in the poem, so as to make her point?” [In blog
post Part 2, Eleanor had recorded the strange fact that the words of
‘Objects.’ Use every letter of the Roman alphabet except for V and Y.]
More
mind-blowing, Steiny learned that Deuteronomy
(the Book of Devarim) repeats or
summarizes the first four books of Torah. It is considered the Book of Ethics. Devarim is the “mouth” of Torah,
repeating YHWH’s (G-d’s) teachings but more so His will for what his followers must do in living. Is this what
Gertrude Stein had in mind for Tender
Buttons, her sacred catalog of word objects, her sacred troth to her
beloved Alice but also her book of ethics?
DISCOVERING STEINIAN COVENANTS
In a heightened
state of sensing, Steiny got a rush of associations on this stanza of
“Objects.”:
Within,
within the cut and slender joint alone, with sudden equals and no more than
three, two in the centre make two one side.
“#1
The three
are GS, ABT and Leo Stein. First at 27 rue de Fleurus, there were GS & LS
but that pair was put aside when ABT moved in to make three. Now GS & ABT
are center—a new birth in their union.
“#2
The cut and
slender joint sound like a bris, the
male circumcision.
“#3
Within Deuteronomy
is the most significant declaration of faith: "Hear, O Israel:
the LORD our
God, the LORD is one." It is known as the Shema. Therefore if we can associate the English word objects
with Deuteronomy, given
the Hebrew lettering and its association with words, then this is
Gertrude's pledge of allegiance to Alice as her one true love.”
Further research
about circumcision, Steiny discovered the Hebrew for sealing a covenant
literally translates as “to cut.” Those who are not Jewish might think of what
boys generally do to seal a pledge—they each cut themselves and comingle their
blood and become “blood brothers.” Wikipedia for the Hebrew term Brit
milah had an interesting list of reasons for
circumcision:
Reasons for circumcision
In Of
the Special Laws, Book 1, the Jewish philosopher Philo (20 BC - AD 50) gives six reasons for the practice
of circumcision. He attributes four of the reasons to "men of divine
spirit and wisdom." These include the idea that circumcision:
1.
protects
against disease,
2.
secures
cleanliness "in a way that is suited to the people consecrated to God,"
3.
causes
the circumcised portion of the penis to
resemble a heart, thereby representing a physical connection between the
"breath contained within the heart [that] is generative of thoughts,
and the generative organ itself [that] is productive of living beings,” and
4.
promotes prolific-ness by removing impediments to the flow of semen. To these,
Philo added two of his own reasons, including the idea that circumcision
5.
"signified figuratively the excision of all
superfluous and excessive pleasure" and
6. "that it is a symbol of a man's knowing himself.”
Stein
considered herself as Alice’s husband. The question is what did Stein consider
her symbolic penis and how that penis might be cut to keep the proscribed
covenant?
STEIN'S MISSING LETTERS POINT TO YHVH
To this deluge
of associations, Peter Treanor exclaimed that the missing letters from the text
of “Objects.” pointed to YHWH, one of the sacred names of G-d. He was filling
in the blanks on Eleanor’s Theory #2—The
Incomplete Roman Alphabet (see ALPHABET THEORIES of Stepping
on Tender Buttons: “A New Cup and
Saucer.”, “Objects.” Part 2 of 3.) While Steiny went back and reread what
Eleanor said and noted that the missing letters were Y and V (not W), she
guessed Peter was still on to something. Here’s what Eleanor said:
“If you go
back to look at that Hebrew table [above], you can see where the translation is
"Lord." The equivalent Hebrew word is shown—and that's the 4-letter
word Peter refers to.
“OMG, Peter,
that is an amazing discovery you made, connecting the ‘V’ and the ‘Y’ to god's
name. This is blowing my mind.
“I put the
letter ‘V’ here (and not W) because that Hebrew letter makes a ‘V’ sound, it is
how it's pronounced in Hebrew now (both modern & biblical). I believe it's
transliterated as ‘W’ because of historical reasons, ancient pronunciation
perhaps. The letter names are ‘yud’ and ‘vav’ and they each look like ‘cut and
slender joints,’ and if the ‘vav’ doesn't look like an elbow...well..then I
don't know what does!!!”
With
Eleanor’s help, now Steiny sees in a Wikipedia entry for Tetragrammaton, the word YHWY “is the most common
transliteration of the tetragrammaton in English academic studies, the
alternatives YHVH, JHVH and JHWH are
also used.” Here is the beauty of studying something difficult together—what
several person know, find or see feeds the effort to understand in a more
timely fashion and what is discovered together is exhilarating.
THE LITTLE THAT HOLDS A
LOT: YUD
Without much fanfare,
Eleanor offered links to videos about the Hebrew Y or yud and the Hebrew V or vuv.
While the man speaking in these videos is an Orthodox Jew, Eleanor “enjoy[ed] the openness of the interpretation in so far as
scientific discovery is woven into the explanation.”
Eleanor
added that each letter has a numeric value: yud
is ten and vav is six. What these letters cum numbers equate to, in
terms of Jewish practice, is significant, but Eleanor seemed to indicate that
the Buttons might find additional significance by knowing these equivalents.
Already Steiny is thinking about Stein’s use of the numbers zero and one in
other work she has written.
Eleanor
continued “The yud symbolises a contraction from the infinite into the finite
(or some such), which seems synonymous with ‘squeezing.’ The kind of show is made by squeezing."
THE V THAT
REVERSES TIME: VUV
According to
the video on vuv, this letter connects heaven and earth, but it is also a “man
standing.” All of space can be envisioned as a cube that incorporates the four
directions (north, south, east, west) plus above
and below (this makes six “sides”).
THE H WITH
SOUL: HE
Steiny thinks
the discussion is not complete until we hear about the Hebrew letter H or he or hay, which is equal to the number five. Also in G-d’s name YHWH, he/hay
is repeated twice. Since Stein repeats with purpose, hearing about the
repetition of he/hay seemed important.
Still
curious about the inner workings of the letters making up YHWH or YHVH, Steiny
found this cantillation video called “Yod He Vav He” that had this descriptive text:
YHVH is the sacred tetragrammaton, the four sacred Hebrew letters which
stand for the holy name of God.
YOD represents the creative, masculine
principle; the fire of the Will of Spirit, the Father.
HE represents the Divine feminine
principle; the Shekinah Glory, the Cosmic Mother.
VAV is the son, the regenerating power
of the Love Light.
The second HE is the daughter, the
Heart and the Breath of Life.
Steiny
cannot help but like the transliteration confusion of how to spell the Hebrew
letters. He [hay] according to the description above refers to femaleness but
one of the English transliterations he
points to maleness. This is the kind of crossover that goes a long way in
conjecturing what Stein was thinking in Tender Buttons.
OF BUTTONEER
SEERS & TRANSFORMERS
Allan Keeton
said he was “having trouble following all the Jewish and Hebrew stuff” and
Peter agreed, saying it was overwhelming but nonetheless,
“I am
enchanted by Yud, The little that holds a
lot, the infinite contracted into the finite. And the ideas that all
letters have the Yud in them, that when you put pen to paper that first point
is the Yud. And that all things are made from a countless stream of Yud seems to me that all words, all
language, and especially GS, and all consciousness is contracting the infinite
into the finite.
“And the
make up of the Hebrew name of G-d, amazed me too, that it was made equally of
feminine and masculine parts/ principles H H and Y W / V. It figures that it
took Christianity to remove the female from the equation, and look where that
has got us…
“This bit of
the thread has been so incredible, I look forward to the book and the movie of the Tender
Buttons thread search for divine symbolism in the writings of Stein by the
intrepid Buttoneer seers, And I love the word tetragrammaton, although it does sound like one of the autobot's
names in Transformers.”
Eleanor
suggested to Peter, “About the yud
and contracting the infinite, you
might be interested in tzimtzum.”
Far be it for Steiny to make
Tzimtzum, a term that is part of the mystical teachings of Isaac Luria,
understandable in a few words. Better to follow Eleanor’s Wikipedia link above.
What Steiny will say is that Tzimtzum embraces contradiction on a cosmic level
and Gertrude Stein works contradiction in ways that defy and embrace logic. She
uses simple words to create a complex world. That’s why Steiny advises not
going into the Steinian woods alone (especially, a difficult work like Tender Buttons)
Allan
observed that “Objects.” seemed to be insisting on a Hebraic hermeneutics. He also thought he would
call G-d, just -o- and Steiny impressed by –o- but stopped by hermeneutics had to look that up.
her·me·neu·tics (hûr
m
-n
t
ks, -ny
-)
n. (used with a sing. or pl.
verb)
The theory and
methodology of interpretation, especially of scriptural text.
Allan
explained further:
“I'm not a
Christian, but I believe that Christian scholars use the term hermeneutics regularly.
“The root is
Hermes = Mercury (= mind) the messenger god who can freely travel between all
the realms: Mt Olympus, The Underworld, Earth...
“As to
character & word.
I was struck
by the videos that Eleanor gave us.
Where
letters are numinous things.
Who are
they?
Maybe I mean
personalities or gods or some such thing.
“I'm trying
to figure out how to use these Jewish definitional moves
letters =
numbers = archetypes = first time they are written
in
understanding Gertrude Stein.”
Then Eleanor
rejoined the conversation to say:
“I feel like I
need to spend more time thinking about the connections here, Allan. You've
challenged me in exciting ways with your comments. Truth be told, I have grown
up with this idea that each Hebrew letter is mysterious and full of hidden
meaning, so it is only here in this forum that I'm suddenly made aware of how
strange that may seem. I don't feel this type of connection to English letters at
all, but it seems that Stein may well have, and this probably can be found
throughout these ‘Objects.’”
CIRCUMCISION & WORD
Next Eleanor
responded to Steiny’s association with circumcision:
“Karren
[a.k.a. Steiny], I was sceptical about the connection you made with circumcision....
until I realised that the Hebrew name for circumcision is brit milah and milah is
another word for word!! ‘Covenant of
the Word.’
“When an
Orthodox Jewish boy turns 3 he has his very first haircut, it's a ceremony
called Upsherin—‘within the cut’?? ‘no more than 3’?? At this time, it
is often also customary to begin to teach the boy the aleph bet (Hebrew
alphabet) by smearing honey on each letter and having him taste it—encouraging
him to associate letters/words/reading with sweetness and joy.”
WAXING
PHILOSOPHIC
—From Eleanor:
Allan wrote
(in a thread above):
"I'm
trying to figure out how to use these Jewish definitional moves
letters =
numbers = archetypes = first time they are written
in
understanding Gertrude Stein."
Al said to
me during the live webcast on September 18 (1:03):
"Finally,
in the end, as much as I love these poems, I think what I love better is the
fact that we use the poems to bring all these people together, including you.
Is it possible to think of the poems as a means or a tool to do what we're
doing here?"
Stein wrote:
Within,
within the cut and slender joint alone, with sudden equals and no more than
three, two in the centre make two one side. If the elbow is long and it is
filled so then the best example is all together. The kind of show is made
by squeezing.
I'd like to
read Stein via Allan's and Al's words.
I'M TRYING
FINALLY, IN
THE END
WITHIN,
WITHIN
Stein starts
with a repetition, because when you try something new, or try to persuade
someone of a new idea, you often have to repeat yourself. Repetition is a good
method to use, in both teaching and learning.
HOW TO USE
THESE JEWISH DEFINITIONAL MOVES
WE USE THESE
POEMS TO BRING ALL THESE PEOPLE TOGETHER
SO THEN THE
BEST EXAMPLE IS ALL TOGETHER
Stein
presents her poem to us, as a community - no matter what our gender, sexual
persuasion or religion - and we are therefore, time and again, drawn towards
each other as we both interpret and enact each poem. How do we incorporate so
many different, unlikely interpretations? By working together. This is how a
new language is formed.
LETTER =
NUMBERS = ARCHETYPES
THE POEMS AS
A MEANS OR A TOOL
THE CUT AND
SLENDER JOINT ALONE
Stein uses
letters, she cuts up words and then rejoins the letters in new, hitherto
unknown ways. Her mind is her tool, but so is her slender pen, the cut of the
paper and each letter too - each letter as it stands alone, in anticipation of
being used, and bringing with it a depth of meaning which will never be fully
understood, and yet will bring so much to each reader.
Allan
responded directly to Eleanor’s observations:
I like your shuffling of the three
phrases Eleanor.
I like the contractive repetitive
tsimtsum of
WITHIN, WITHIN
I also like how the cut and slender
joint alone
makes the poems seem more tool-like.
I can see the letters & numbers cut
&
slenderly jointed.
I get stuck trying to think of
archetype as cut & jointed or as a tool.
Maybe that is backward.
Maybe this is tool as an archetype.
The primordial shape of shaping &
fashioning for use.
That sounds like creation.
How many fractally recurring instances
of fashioning & shaping,
on all scales & in all
places, has gone on to get us here
where we can talk about the archetype
of tool making?
I consider the stars going supernova to
create the higher elements:
iron, nickel, etc.
amongst this shaping.
Why?
Because archetypes
self-replicate,
they don't have humans to do it for
them.
—from Dave:
Eleanor's
post above has put me in a philosophical mood. Allow me to respond as follows.
Perhaps there
is a holiness to words, any words, as they connect us to the universe at an
elevated level, at the level of Mind, at the privileged level at which God
operates. So when we contract (tzimtzum) ourselves to allow the words in, and
we study them, and we allow other human beings in to help us study them and
realize and feel our common humanity, we create new worlds for ourselves, we
become larger ourselves, we are less alone as God was less alone after creating
Adam and Eve. We, in God's image, are replicating Creation on a smaller scale.
It is an ongoing Creation, human history and culture and our growing
interconnectedness. We are not God, we are not perfect (far from it), but we
did inherit a divine spark that is continuing to build the world through human
connection and knowledge and imagination. We sense that in ModPo and feel a
warmth and joy because of it, without always quite realizing what is happening.
—from Mary:
Dave, that
is beautiful -- and I'm also thinking of a spark glowing.
This
linguistic intricacy for me plumbs not just the unconscious possibilities of
what Stein absorbed in her family tradition and from her transplanted Judaism
in America, but our own deepest awe to do with words and
reverence for certain phrases and associations that seem to open up to radiant
places.
And
uncomplicated too for Stein in some ways because this is pre-Holocaust and she
would re-inscribe and register something very different, would have looked
at her own ambivalence, beliefs or likings so differently had
she lived into the 1950s.
—from Judy:
I may be
off—but I also come from a Jewish tradition—and there is this thing in Judaism
that is referred to as 'Gematriah'—loosely
it is like a numerology of sorts—that each Hebrew letter corresponds to a
number and if you add up the value of a particular word, it might equal the
value of another word—and there is a correlation between the two words—that
might sound a bit obscure—but evidently a lot of you, and Stein too, have a
Jewish mentality.
—from Steiny:
“Objects.”
shows how wide Stein's mind was. She can transport us from daily living—things
in the kitchen & the garden, make us think of baseball & the body—while
moving us to higher planes of viewing our world and beyond. Truly I think what
she accomplishes goes beyond Judaism. We always have to come back to her system
of pointing. And by the by I'm gathering 'system of pointing' was part of the
zeitgeist. Something I picked up Roger Shattuck's The Banquet Years.
FINDING WHAT WILL BE ENOUGH
This time
Steiny admits that not every association broached got mentioned in the overall
write up—like Tamboura Gaskins assigning the sexual to “yellow bud and saucer are a nipple and surrounding areola, and the enthusiastic hurting is bit of
passionate, rough foreplay involving the breasts with some enthusiastic
biting on the rib area.” However, the Buttons Collective is getting so good at
review that salient points missed are likely to be picked up in ensuing
discussions.
This brings
Steiny back to Ariadne’s thread mentioned in the discussion about “A
New Cup and Saucer.” but spilling into what has been discussed in
“Objects.”. If Ariadne’s thread is about
solving a problem on various planes—the physical (how to work your way through
the maze of the Minotaur), the mental (the method for problem solving), and the
ethical (the rules one follows to achieve success), it seems likely that this
connection to a higher plane of intelligence, embodied for Stein in how words
are handled in a contracting and expanding universe will continue throughout
the rest of Tender Buttons. The
overriding question for Steiny, if not for the Buttons Collective, is will Gertrude
Stein come to any satisfactory resolution? What we do know is Tender Buttons was the founding love
poem and pledge from Stein to Toklas that their bond was sacred and it lasted
beyond Stein’s death. So maybe as is sung in the Jewish Passover tradition: Dayenu—this will be enough.
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