{"id":4961,"date":"2013-08-29T17:08:35","date_gmt":"2013-08-30T00:08:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/?p=4961"},"modified":"2013-08-29T19:28:49","modified_gmt":"2013-08-30T02:28:49","slug":"rose-is-a-rose-is-a-rose-is-a-rose-at-100","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/29\/rose-is-a-rose-is-a-rose-is-a-rose-at-100\/","title":{"rendered":"Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose…at 100 !"},"content":{"rendered":"

The question often is \u201cHow many roses are there in \u201cit?\u201d\u00a0 The \u201cit\u201d being Gertrude Stein\u2019s most famous phrase about the proverbial bloom so popular on Mother\u2019s Day, weddings, the Bachelorette, \u00a0or just when you need to convince that special someone that you spoke out of place and need a full-bodied tasty wine and wonderful Italian dinner and a crystal vase for the long-stemmed beauties that you are holding penitently!<\/p>\n

To be precise, \u00a0there are four \u201croses\u201d in it (and no “a” at the beginning,) as opposed to more than four saints in Four Saints in Three Acts<\/em>, which, to digress for a moment, was a super-hit and crowd favorite in it\u2019s most recent incarnation as Gertrude Stein\u2019s SAINTS<\/em> \u00a0at the just ended New York International Fringe Festival. (See previous post.)<\/p>\n

\"St.

St. Therese of the Roses: Roses and Saints, full-circle<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cRose is a rose is a rose is a rose,\u201d was first used in Stein\u2019s poem \u201cSacred Emily\u201d written in 1913, so this year is its 100th<\/sup> birthday .<\/p>\n

\"Having

Having your roses and eating them too<\/p><\/div>\n

The piece was not published until nine years later in GEOGRAPHY AND PLAYS<\/b> with an introduction by Sherwood Anderson whose book WINESBURG, OHIO <\/b>\u00a0had recently received critical acclaim. .<\/p>\n

Here is the section of the work in which the famous phrase appears written in the best Steinese:<\/p>\n

\u201cNight\u00a0town.<\/i><\/p>\n

Night \u00a0town\u00a0a\u00a0glass.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

Color\u00a0mahogany.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

Color\u00a0 mahogany \u00a0 center.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

Rose\u00a0is\u00a0a\u00a0rose\u00a0is\u00a0a\u00a0rose\u00a0is\u00a0a\u00a0rose.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

Loveliness\u00a0extreme.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

Extra\u00a0gaiters.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

Loveliness\u00a0extreme.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

Sweetest\u00a0 ice-cream.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

Page\u00a0ages\u00a0page ages\u00a0page\u00a0ages.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

Wiped\u00a0Wiped\u00a0wire\u00a0wire.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

Sweeter\u00a0than\u00a0peaches\u00a0and\u00a0pears\u00a0and\u00a0cream.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

Wiped\u00a0wire\u00a0wiped\u00a0wire.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

Extra\u00a0extreme.\u201d<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

\"Gaiters

Gaiters and ice cream, a match made in Gertrude’s mind<\/p><\/div>\n

\"3461.1L\"<\/p>\n

The line was re-used seven times in future works including Gertrude\u2019s children\u2019s book THE WORLD IS ROUND<\/strong> in which one of the characters is named Rose after a girl that \u00a0GertrudeandAlice got to know during their annual getaways in the French countryside in Bilignin.<\/p>\n

In 1935, speaking quite professorially to a group of \u00a0enthralled University of Chicago students, Gertrude quite clearly laid out the facts of the “rose:”<\/p>\n

\u201cNow listen. Can\u2019t you see that when the language was new \u2013 as it was with Chaucer and Homer \u2013 the poet could use the name of a thing and the thing was really there? He could say \u2018O moon,\u2019 \u2018O sea,\u2019 \u2018O love,\u2019 and the moon and the sea and love were really there. And can\u2019t you see that after hundreds of years had gone by and thousands of poems had been written, he could call on those words and find that they were just worn out literary words? The excitingness of pure being had withdrawn from them\u2026 Now you all have seen hundreds of poems about roses and you know in your bones that the rose is not there. All those songs that sopranos sing as encores about \u2018I have a garden! oh, what a garden!\u2019 Now I don\u2019t want to put too much emphasis on that line, because it\u2019s just one line in a longer poem. But I notice that you all know it; you make fun of it, but you know it. Now listen! I\u2019m no fool. I know that in daily life we don\u2019t go around saying \u2018\u2026is a\u2026is a\u2026is a\u2026\u2019. Yes, I\u2019m no fool; but I think that in that line the rose is red for the first time in English poetry for a hundred years.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Was she being her word-smithy, genius self by using the word “red” because of its two spellings!?<\/p>\n

In celebration of “rose” to the fourth power, here are just a few of the many rose-related items found in Google’s encyclopedic Image Search:<\/p>\n

\"The

The real thing…the sealing wax stamp used on the back of their letters<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Many

Many a father’s Father’s Day nightmare<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Many

Many a mom’s anytime nightmare<\/p><\/div>\n

\"The

The socks that keep on shrinking<\/p><\/div>\n

\"An

An amber brooch with those prehistoric critters entombed<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Rose

Rose biscuits, not from the ABT cookbook<\/p><\/div>\n

\"A

A belt buckle for the cowgirl or cowboy who need that special scent on the trail<\/p><\/div>\n

\"A

A touch of heaven in Notre Dame<\/p><\/div>\n

\"imgres-3\"<\/p>\n

How to make roses on a stick:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=v-UUtPt9-Mg<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Happy birthday to roses everywhere – red, yellow, pink, white, buds, wilted, dried, perfume-bottled, Gypsy…because “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.”<\/p>\n

\"YellowRose\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The question often is \u201cHow many roses are there in \u201cit?\u201d\u00a0 The \u201cit\u201d being Gertrude Stein\u2019s most famous phrase about the proverbial bloom so popular on Mother\u2019s Day, weddings, the Bachelorette, \u00a0or just when you need to convince that special someone that you spoke out of place and need a full-bodied tasty wine and wonderful […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[74,81,89,320,318,317,319],"class_list":["post-4961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historic-facts","tag-four-saints-in-three-acts","tag-geography-and-plays","tag-gertrude-stein","tag-gertrude-steins-saints","tag-rose-is-a-rose-ia-a-rose-is-a-rose","tag-sacred-emily","tag-sherwood-anderson"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4961"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5019,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4961\/revisions\/5019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}