Есе “The postmodernism and it’s characteristics in the composition «Tender Buttons» by Gertrude Stein”

«The postmodernism and it’s characteristics in the composition «Tender Buttons» by Gertrude Stein»

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was an American writer known for her unique cubist style. According to the researcher Paul Cohen, Stein’s contribution to the development of literary theory was not adequately appreciated by her contemporaries: Stein never seemed to fit comfortably in the mainstream of modernism. Chroniclers of a modernist pantheon featuring Proust, Rilke, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, Pound, Lawrence, Eliot, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and Hemingway were likely to ignore or marginalize Stein. Even F.W. Dupee, writing an introduction to the Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, says that her work “occupies an anomalous position among the various modern schools. (17)

This is relevant in relation to contemporary literary criticism as well. The perspective of modernist criticism, although it allowed for an understanding of certain aspects of Stein’s work, limited the comprehension of numerous others, particularly when it came to her portraits. Despite being a sympathetic critic, John Malcolm Brinnin almost completely disregarded Stein’s portraits. However, as literary philosophy developed and discussions about the positions occupied by the author and reader became more prevalent, attention to Gertrude Stein became more focused.

Previously, it may have been believed that her criticism of the formal structure of novels was merely a way to justify her unconventional writing style and her inability to conform to established norms. However, it is now seen as a clear insight into the underlying episteme of traditional narrative structure. Her goal was to establish a new role for the writer, as proposed by Roland Barthes in his criticism of authorial presence in realism. (H. Gass, 4) In short, she is as enigmatic as writers like Alain Robbe-Grillet and William Burroughs, who similarly reject traditional plot and character structures to inhabit a “continuous present” in their storytelling. In our work, we will attempt to identify several features of postmodern literature that are characteristic of the structure of Gertrude Stein’s works. One such feature, noted by literary critics, is fragmentation, the absence of the characteristic sequential narrative structure of classical literature.

Gertrude Stein’s style primarily employs non sequiturs. Rather than following narrative logic, causal sequence, and linear duration, she embraces abstraction and Mallarmean space. While critics struggle to locate a stable center within Tender Buttons, Stein challenges the very assumptions that underlie it, questioning its intelligibility and the epistemic discourse that demands a return to the source or founding basis. However, this aspect of Stein’s work is often overlooked by critics. It is similar to “epistemic discourse” which, as Jacques Derrida remarks, “absolutely requires… that we go back to the source, to the center, to the founding basis, to the principle, and so on”. (Schmitz, 1206) One reason why Tender Buttons is so richly meaningful, and paradoxically rhetorical, is because it reflects Gertrude Stein’s efforts to illustrate the arbitrary nature of language, and her work is a prolonged, lyrical argument in support of her perspective.

Narrativity denotes processuality, and thus causality and historicity. Jacques Rancière, reflecting on the autonomy of self-referential writing that is characteristic of modernism and particularly postmodernism, writes about a change in the very structure of representation. The former traditional representation was based on Aristotle’s thesis that poetry is not the concrete use of language, but fiction. Literary literature was defined by the ancient philosopher as imitation of actors. This poetic principle also served as a political principle.

It set forth a hierarchy opposing the causal rationality of actions to the empiricism of life as it unfolds. Poetry, Aristotle said, is more “philosophical” than history, because poetry builds causal plots binding events together in a whole, while history only tells the events. as they evolve. The privilege of action over life distinguished noble poetry from base history, to the extent that it distinguished those who act from those who do nothing but “live,” who are enclosed in the sphere of reproductive and meaning- less life. As a consequence, fiction was divided into different genres of imitations There were high genres, devoted to the imitation of noble actions and characters, and low genres devoted to common people and base subject matters. The hierarchy of genres also submitted style to a principle of hierarchical convenience: kings had to act and speak as kings do, and common people as common people do”. (13)

In this sense, the fragmentation and absence of historicity in the narrative structure serve as a political manifesto of the rejection of any hierarchy in line with postmodern philosophy. This results in Gertrude Stein’s particularly critical attitude towards the nature of language. In her writing, Gertrude Stein consistently challenges the rules of language, questioning the structural elements of grammar and meaning that provide stability to philosophical and scientific discourse. If evaluated using these frameworks, her writing may be deemed as lacking in meaning. In “Tender Buttons,” she goes so far as to reject the basic principle of using the copula in sentences, which is considered a fundamental rule in traditional grammar. Structurelessness is also achieved through constant questioning.

Structure is evoked by the triadic division of Tender Buttons, the nature of the catalogue. The text itself is set within an interrogative framework, a refrain of questions, persistent calls for identification, for naming. (Schmitz, 1208) “Nickel, what is nickel, it is originally rid of a cover” (Stein, 9); “Cloudiness, what is cloudiness, is it a lining, is it a roll, is it melting”. (Stein, 38)

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