THE SUBBOOK ...................-
FOOD
THE SUBPOEM
...................-
Breakfast
WORD COUNT (Total)……...-
840
STANZA(S)............................-
22
—Stanzas 1-9 312
THE
LEADER........................-
THE STEINY ROAD POET
“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. cheesed, chees·ing, chees·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
“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.
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)!”
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