Paris France

by Gertrude Stein

Stein's incomparable, impressionistic memoir of Paris.
 
Published in 1940, on the day that Paris fell to the Germans, Paris France blends Stein's childhood memories of Paris with trenchant observations about everything French. It is a witty fricassee of food and fashion, pets and painters, musicians, friends, and artists, served up with a healthy garnish of "Steinien" humor and self-indulgence. For readers who have previously considered Gertrude Stein to be a difficult or even unreadable author, Paris France provides a delightful window on her personal and unique world.

Genres: France, Nonfiction, Paris, Memoir, Classics, Travel, History

119 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

Gertrude Stein was an American writer who spent most of her life in France, and who became a catalyst in the development of modern art and literature. Her life was marked by two primary relationships, the first with her brother Leo Stein, from 1874-1914, and the second with Alice B. Toklas, from 1907 until Stein's death in 1946. Stein shared her salon at 27 rue de Fleurus, Paris, first with Leo and then with Alice. Throughout her lifetime, Stein cultivated significant tertiary relationships with well-known members of the avant garde artistic and literary world of her time.

Reviews

[Rozhan Sadeghi]

۳.۵/۵

سال گذشته مجبور به رفتن به سفری نه چندان دلخواه شدم که بیشتر از یک ماه طول کشید. برای گرفتن زهر از این دلخواه نبودن سفر، و برای سنگین‌تر کردن دفترچه‌ی (غیر فیزیکی) نوشته‌هام تصمیم گرفتم مشاهداتم از کشوری جدید و مردمی متفاوت از خودم رو ثبت کنم.

«پاریس فرانسه» از کتاب‌هایی بود که بدون قصد و برنامه‌ی قبلی سراغش رفتم. کتاب به من قرض داده شده بود و برای اینکه از سنگینی سایر کتاب‌هایی که در حال خوندنشون هستم کمی فاصله بگیرم شروعش کردم. از همون صفحات اول متوجه شدم باید این کتاب رو قبل از سفرِ یک سال پیش می‌خوندم تا راه‌و‌رسم گفتن از زندگی در کشوری جدید رو درست از گرترود استاین یاد بگیرم. کتاب پاریس فرانسه روایت بازه‌ای از زندگی استاینه که در پاریس زندگی می‌کرده و شاهد تغییر دنیای سنتی قرن ۱۹ به سوی دنیای مدرن قرن ۲۰ام در قلب این ماجرا یعنی فرانسه بوده. اون از فرانسوی‌ها و اخلاقیات به خصوصشون، رابطه‌شون با مد، با واقعیت، با سنت، با هنرمند و نویسنده، با جنگ و با غذا حرف می‌زنه. و در این بین حواسش هست که تمامی این مواجهه‌ها از فیلتری به اسم «خارجی» یا دقیق‌تر «آمریکایی» بودن گذر می‌کنه. اون فرانسه رو نه از دیدی objective بلکه دقیقا از نگاه‌ زاویه‌دار یک آمریکایی بیان می‌کنه و اتفاقا همینه که مشاهدات اون رو خاص و ارزشمند می‌کنه. مشاهداتی که دقیق هستن و خبر از توجه به پدیده‌ها و روابطی می‌ده که شاید خیلی راحت از چشم دیگران پنهان بمونند. این توجه و دقت نه تنها خصوصیت یک نویسنده کاردرست که به نظر من قبل از اون، خصوصیت فردیه که تمام و کمال داره زندگی می‌کنه. هر‌ آنچه که در محیط بیرونی باهاش مواجه می‌شده رو درونی کرده و با نثر مخصوص به خودش اون رو نوشته. این نکته وقتی جالب‌تر می‌شه که زمانه‌ای که استاین، یک آمریکایی یهودی در فرانسه این کتاب رو می‌نویسه در نظر بگیریم. یعنی سال‌های ۱۹۳۹، اوایل شروع جنگ جهانی. خوندن این کتاب به صورت اتفاقی هم‌زمان شد با زندگی در روزهای پرتنش خاورمیانه و زندگی زیر سایه‌ی ترس و اضطراب از جنگ. استاین که نه تنها باید از جنگ مضطرب می‌بوده بلکه باید بابت یهودی‌ بودنش در اون سال‌ها ترسی دو چندان می‌داشته، در کمال تعجبِ من، طوری عمیق زندگی کرده و به جزئیات جنگ و زندگی در خلال اون توجه کرده و اون‌ها رو نوشته که من فقط غبطه خوردم و ازش مشق برداشتم.

استاین برای من همیشه شخصیت جالبی بوده. زندگیش، تاثیرگذاریش در شکل‌گیری و تکامل جریان هنر مدرن قرن ۲۰، ارتباطاتش با نویسنده‌ها و هنرمندهای نامی و البته شعرهایی که می‌نوشته چیزهایی بودن که این فیگور رو برای من خاص کرده بودن. زن قدرتمند و تاثیرگذاری که جریان‌ساز بوده، هم در هنر و هم در نوشتار. خوندن این -تقریبا- زندگینامه، خوندن این سلوک تماشای آروم و دقیق و این عشق به زندگی از این آمریکایی، از این خارجی ساکن فرانسه در این روزها برام بی‌نهایت شیرین بود.

[Emily]

Well. This is not what I expected. I did not expect to love Gertrude Stein.

Stein and I have met before, but our meetings have never been very successful. I read Ida in high school and attempted The Making of Americans then as well, and both experiences left me veering between bemusement and annoyance. I did not understand what Stein was getting at with her odd, choppy style; she seemed arrogant and possibly insane. And although I've reevaluated many of my high school opinions on literature, I somehow never got around to giving Stein the benefit of a more mature reading, until now.

I must admit, it really paid off. Not that I would exactly reverse my former verdict of arrogance and possible insanity. No, Stein still does and says plenty of things in her 1940 essay-memoir Paris France that I normally find off-putting or flat-out disagree with: her habit, for example, of making sweeping statements about what she considers to be the defining characteristics of a group of people, based sometimes on a single anecdote. In this passage, she's discussing Frenchmen who never marry:

recently in a village not far from here, one day he was about fifty-five and he never had been married, he shot a woman just any woman as he saw her at a distance. No man who had ever been married could have done that, manifestly not.

I mean, what rot: married men aren't immune from psychotic breaks any more than the rest of us. Similarly Stein declares, in defense of her theory that dogs from a given country are similar in temperament to the people from that country, that dachshunds and other German dogs are "rather timid gentle friendly and obedient." As much as I love dachshunds, none of those descriptors are words I would think of applying to the breed, which are in my experience near-fearless, fiercely territorial, hostile toward strangers, and only prone to obedience when there is an immediate culinary reward.

Two things, though. The first is that, as much as Stein's habit of over-enthusiastic extrapolation from insufficient data sometimes generates statements that seem bizarrely wrong, they perhaps oftener result in passages that seem oddly and intriguingly right. One of my favorite sections, and one that would earn the book a five-star rating all on its own were I to give star ratings, is one in which Stein critiques the figure of speech "Familiarity breeds contempt." She argues, on the contrary, that "the more familiar it is the more rare and beautiful it is":

I remember once hearing a conversation on the street in Paris and it ended up, and so there it was there was nothing for them to do, they had to leave the quarter. There it was, there was nothing else to do they had to leave the most wonderful place in the world, wonderful because it was there where they had always lived.



[ ... ]



Familiarity does not breed contempt, anything one does every day is important and imposing and anywhere one lives is interesting and beautiful. And that is all as it should be.

As difficult as it is for me to remember when I am moaning about preparing for yet another 7am committee meeting featuring stale bagels and "lite" cream cheese, I deeply believe in this idea: that doing something day after day, or living in a place day after day, bestows upon that activity or place the beauty and interest of one's own life. It is easy to take the petty way out here, retorting that this is easy for Stein to say because where she lived every day was Paris, and what she did every day was write and collect art and hang out with Picasso and Hemingway, but I think there's a deeper truth here as well, and it's one of which I am glad to have expressed so succinctly and well.

I'm reminded of the Harvey Keitel character in the Wayne Wang/Paul Auster film Smoke: Keitel plays a smoke shop proprietor who takes a photograph of the same street corner at the exact same time every morning for decades. His profession is not glamorous and his photographs are not, individually, great artworks, but his years of practice of this activity lend it an unexpected depth and beauty, create a connection between him and the changing neighborhood (or quarter) in which he lives. Yet outwardly there's nothing special about his smoke shop over any other smoke shop, which is just what Stein is writing about here: the very act of living imparts life to one's actions and to the place where one lives.

The second mitigating circumstance that struck me about Stein's oft-bizarre extrapolations, is that she is sometimes coming to wrong conclusions willfully, almost as an act of magical thinking. Paris France was written in 1939 and is profoundly concerned with the recent outbreak of the Second World War. Stein had been in France during the carnage of the first World War, and is terrified and grief-stricken at the idea that the experience is about to be repeated—or worse, that from now on there will be a constant state of "general European war." So when she claims, for example, that dachshunds are timid and gentle and so German people must be timid and gentle too, or when she asserts that the French are logical and "logical people are never brutal, they are never sentimental, they are never careless," she does not so much believe these things as that she desires them—desperately—to be true, and perhaps half-believes that by asserting them she can bring them into being. At certain points in her narrative this doubt and desperation leak through to the surface in a way I found quite poignant:

I thought poodles were french but the french breed always has to be refreshed by the german one, and the german pincher is so much more gentle than our Chichuachua little dog which it resembles, and so everything would be a puzzle if it were not certain that logic is right, and is stronger than the will of man. We will see.

      The characteristic art product of a country is the pulse of the country, France did produce better hats and fashions than ever these last two years and is therefore very alive and Germany's music and musicians have been dead and gone these last two years and so Germany is dead well we will see, it is so, of course as all these things are necessarily true.

Stein's circling syntax here is very much that of a person vacillating between trying to reassure herself, and wishing to express her doubt to someone else who will reassure her. It would be a puzzle; it is certain; we will see. We will see, it is so, of course.

In a similarly poignant way, Stein is attempting here to tell the story of the early 20th century and the art community that began then in Paris, but that is not the story that currently preoccupies her. She says at one point, in a sentence which is its own paragraph and which mimics the rhythm of a sigh:

It is difficult to go back to 1901 now that it is 1939 and war-time.

And so 1939 keeps intruding on her points about 1901, and she must resort to long, discursive tangents to talk herself back to a point where 1901 is visible to her once more. After the line above, for example, she tells an anecdote that begins at the intersection of war (her true preoccupation) and food; she then writes for six pages about the French and their relationship with food through history, finally arriving at the statement: "and that brings me to the Paris I first knew when the Café Anglais still existed." This exercise in historical imagination enables Stein to access 1901 again for a time, although eventually 1939 seeps back again into the stream of her thoughts.

My motivation to read Paris France came from the fact that David and I are traveling to Paris in May, but the book turned out to have more insight about the 1939 psychology of Gertrude Stein than about Paris or the French people. Still, that psychology was both moving and fascinating, and Stein's keen ability to relate a well-observed anecdote had me marveling on a number of occasions. Some of these anecdotes, in fact, are almost like free-standing miniatures, and I wonder if Stein has been an inspiration for Lydia Davis. I'll leave you with one of these which particularly struck me:

So one day there I saw a boy about thirteen years of age a stout well-set up and comfortably dressed boy sitting by the water-side, next to him was a woman evidently not his mother but a relation and there they sat. Large tears were rolling down his cheeks. What is it, I asked her, oh she said sorrow, but it will pass. He has failed in his examinations, but it will pass. And quite impersonally she sat by and indeed it was sorrow but as she said, sorrow passes.

[Bill on GR Sabbatical]

Mlle. Stein was telling the story of her life of her life in Paris and in the country between 1900 and 1939 and it was Paris France and it was exciting and peaceful. Part of the story was that one has a great deal of pleasure out of dogs because one can spoil them as one cannot spoil one's children because if the children are spoiled, one's future is spoilt but dogs one can spoil without any thought of the future and that is a great pleasure. But part of the story was that there are two sides to a Frenchman, logic and fashion, and it is evident that cooking in France always was logic and fashion and tradition which is French, and that is the reason why French people are exciting and peaceful. Thank you.

[Theo Logos]

First, ignore the blurb describing this book as “Matched only by Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast.” They both describe Paris, and part of their periods overlap, but beyond that it’s quite a stretch to compare the two. Firstly, there is simply no comparison to Stein’s strange, staccato style of writing; it is unique, a literary fingerprint all her own. Secondly, Stein’s perspective is as unique as her style. The details that she picks out to highlight are as peculiar as she herself.

Stein’s describes Paris as largely define by a great holy triumvirate — civilization, logic, and fashion. Oh yes, and cooking. But cooking is really part of being civilized, as is, come to think of it, logic and fashion. So Stein’s Paris is actually synonymous with Civilization.

”Because fashion must never be useful, must very often be exotic, and must always be made to be French. That is what fashion is, and it must change.”

”So when hats in Paris are lovely and French and everywhere then France is alright.”

”Fashion is in everything except in the making of war, but war makes fashions.”

”Well, anyway, even if there is no food, and there is a war, and she is not a good cook, cooking is important.”

”After this war the men very likely will regain elegance, and the women fashion and elegance. It is all very exciting.”

Most fascinating about this book is that it was published in 1940 on the day that Paris fell to the Nazis. Many passages note the war in an oddly nonchalant way. Stein writes:

I really have never known Paris in the midst of a declaration of war. Wars always take place in vacation time, and in vacation weather, so one is not in Paris. Paris is always there, at least we in the country suppose so, although at such a time we are not very conscious of its existence…Paris is there, and gradually, even here quite far away one begins to know that it is there.

Ultimately, I find Stein’s Paris France to be most valuable as an oddity and a cultural artifact. It also may be the easiest place to access Gertrude Stein’s truly bizarre writing voice, so there’s that.

[Julie]

i've heard people struggle with book, then they give up and go do something to make themselves feel better.

i struggle with things, then i give up and go read this book to make myself feel better.

same thing with the teacup ride at storyland, when i was little. it makes you a bit disoriented, but as soon as you stop fighting it, it's good fun.

i do not feel the same way about Three Women, by the way.
try The World Is Round, instead.

[tai]

some nice sentences and juxtapositions but overall, tedious.i can't imagine enjoying this unless you care about stein as a figure, leading you to want to hear her privileged rambling.

[Julian Worker]

This is a memoir written by Gertrude Stein and published in 1940 on the day that Paris fell to Germany during World War II.

The book blends Stein's childhood memories with a commentary on French people and culture. The novel is personal. She begins the novel with her earliest memories of Paris and mentions everything French that she experienced during her childhood in San Francisco before heading to Paris as a young adult.

Stein lived in Paris her entire adult life before leaving just prior to the arrival of the German army and it is quite obvious that she is deeply connected to the city and entire culture although quite a few of her observations may seem to be stereotypical.

[Maria]

Memoir, surprisingly optimistic on the eve of war. Some really delightful passages; good for Stein novice. Better in a way than A Moveable Feast by Hemingway, who stole her style. Nice, very nice, intro by Adam Gopnik.

[Aviva Pellman]

*2.5 stars

Rarely will I praise a man over a woman, let alone that man be Hemingway, but Hemingway did the whole Paris in the 20s schtick much better than Gertrude Stein (and I didn’t even like A Moveable Feast like that). I think that fundamentally I just dislike Stein’s style. She’s barebones and repetitive in a way that I think is supposed to come off as witty and wry, but it simply falls flat for me and is drudgery to read. For instance, this line: “Foreigners should be foreigners and it is nice that foreigners are foreigners and that they inevitably are in Paris and in France” (20). Yeah there’s a bit going on here but it feels like a bit for the sake of a bit. Idk.

I wouldn’t feel right rating this any lower because I ultimately have reverence for Stein and all of the other American greats and I know that my own literary ineptitude and impatience is slightly at fault here. Plus of course there were a few banger lines. But yeah overall not a fan :/

[Justin Shen]

Stein writes like a child inspecting an object for the first time, turning it over in her hands, looking at it up close (with eyes squinting) then from afar (with eyes wide open) ad infinitum, shaking it against her ear, giving it a whiff, biting it for good measure, etc. By doing this she gives equal weight to her varied interests, whether it's the meaning of the twentieth century, the age of a nation, or the question of how wartime life reshaped the hunting habits of domesticated cats and dogs in the French provinces. Everything, she seems to suggest, is not just worthy of our attention, but worth playing and toying with. (In this way she's reminiscent of Anne Carson, one of her literary heirs.) Not quite a memoir about Paris, France as it was, Paris France is really about the delightful oddities and impish whims of Stein herself. And that's just fine by me.

[Fin]

Familiarity does not breed contempt, anything one does every day is important and imposing and anywhere one lives is interesting and beautiful. And that is all as it should be.

Gertrude Stein is very wise and insightful, case in point:

Civilisation makes young men interested in a woman of thirty.

But she is also a truly avant-garde writer, insofar as reading her makes you distrust your own knowledge of the English language and its basic communicative ability. This book is less extreme in that regard than her other work (although I haven't read much of her in general) and could aaaalmost be read as a social essay on Paris and France in the twentieth century, except for its strange habit of reorienting everyday speech and common sayings toward the strange and unfamiliar, through techniques as simple as apparently random repetition or sudden change of focus or digression. There is a poetic, musical logic that plays upon this semantic uncertainty too, turning moments of otherwise simple description on their head or subtly intensifying them.

She heard weather, she heard water she heard snow, she heard water everywhere, it was that kind of weather. She heard snow around she very nearly heard the moon and she heard the rain and she heard the mountains...
There they stood and the snow in the fields and the water splashing and the man in wooden shoes, looking through his spy-glass at something.
What should they do.
It was really war-time.

[Derek]

I was happy with this book. Stein’s over-the-top generalizations about French people seem like a perfect satire on travel writing, tourism, and American dilettantism. To misquote Dame Edna, for Americans, Paris is the world’s best kept secret.

[Illiterate]

Stein lauds civilization and reason in the face of fascism.

[E]

modernism that feels like surrealism

[Alana]

she gertrude on my stein till i paris france

[Abr]

مروری بر «پاریس فرانسه» خودزندگی نگاره‌ی گرترود استاین، شاعر،رمان‌نویس و نمایشنامه‌نویسِ آمریکاییِ تبارِ ساکنِ پاریس.

-پس از خواندن شکسپیر و شرکای سیلویا بیچ، دلم می‌خواست درمورد کسانی که با سیلویا ارتباطی داشته‌اند اطلاعات بیشتری کسب کنم. بیست و ششم و اسفند ماه که به مجموعه‌ی آبی رفته بودم چشمم به «پاریس فرانسه»ی گرترود استاین افتاد و با خود گفتم: این باید مال من باشه!
پس از سفر چند روزی حال و حوصله‌ی مطالعه نداشتم، تا این‌که به‌یاد این‌کتاب افتادم و شروع به خواندنش کردم.

-در سال ۱۹۴۰، گرترود استاین کتابی با نام «پاریس فرانسه» منتشر کرد که حاوی خاطراتی از دوران کودکی تا بزرگسالی‌‌اش در فرانسه بود. خاطراتی سرد و گرم، از فرانسه و مردمش و فراز و نشیب‌های دوران جنگِ جهانی دوم، که به قول خودش: جنگ نبود، دورانِ جنگ بود.
-استاین در این خودزندگی‌نگاره تغییراتِ مُد، آشپزی، هنر، سبک زندگی و عشق، در بین مردمِ پیش از جنگ و هم‌چنین درون جنگ را شرح می‌دهد. شرح حالی که خواندنش از دیدگاه یک آمریکاییِ مقیم فرانسه بسیار جالب و گاهی حیرت‌آور است.
-استاین در بخشی از کتاب می‌نویسد که دوست دارد دوران جنگ‌را از نظر یک کودک ببینید و در ادامه ما شاهد احوالِ هلن، کودکی هستیم که در‌ حومه‌ی پاریس و با سگش زندگی می‌کند و از تغییراتِ رفتاری سگ‌ها و گربه‌ها و هم‌چنین پیش‌بینی‌هایش در دوران جنگ می‌گوید.
-شاید در ابتدا خواندن کتاب برای‌تان مشکل باشد و حس کنید نویسنده خاطراتش را جسته گریخته و پراکنده نوشته است، اما استاین و پاریس فرانسه‌اش، یکی از دلایل تولدِ نثر و هنر مدرن آمریکا در زمان خود بودند. سبکی با حداقل استفاده از علایم سجاوندی و هم‌چنین تکرارِ کلمات و جملات، که در ابتدای کار می‌تواند برای خوانندگان دشوار و خسته کننده باشد. برای آشنایی بیشتر با این سبک، به‌جز استاین، می‌توانید نگاهی به آثار همینگوی نیز بی‌اندازید.

-کتاب از ابتدا تا انتها برایم پُر از شگفتی بود، پاریس، فرانسه و مردمش به‌طور تقریبی از زمین تا آسمان با افکار من متفاوت از آب در آمده بود. البته، باید این را در نظر داشت که این کتاب در نیمه‌ی اول قرن بیستم نوشته شده.
یکی از نکات جالبی که (پس از خواندن پاریس فرانسه و شکسپیر و شرکای سیلویا) مدام به آن فکر می‌کنم است که: آیا ممکن است بازهم قرنی مثل قرن بیستم سرشار از شگفتی باشد؟
بسیار از غول‌های ادبیاتی و هنری در این قرن جان گرفتند و شناخته شدند و امروزه آثارشان به زبان‌های کثیری ترجمه شده و من به این فکر می‌کنم که آیا چیزی برای کشف مانده؟

در آخر:«خلاصه قرن از صد سال تشكيل شده است و صد سال زمان زيادى نيست. هركسى مى‌تواند كسى را بشناسد كه کس ديگری را به‌خاطر دارد و مى‌تواند تا صد سال عقب برود. اگر با دو نسل نتوان اين‌كار را كرد به راحتى با سه نسل مى‌توان. خلاصه صد سال زمان زيادى نيست.»
[پاریس فرانسه | گرترود استاین]

[راحله پورآذر]

.اینقدر بی ادعا و راحت و مهربان در مورد هر چیزی نظر می‌دهد که آدم ناخواسته بی‌قضاوت می‌شود.
نویسنده شیوه‌ی نگارشی خاصی داشته، جمله‌های شکسته و به شدت ساده، در ترجمه هم خوب درآمده.

فرانسوی‌ها مد را دوست دارند، مد را دوست ندارند مد را طبیعتاً خلق می‌کنند... فصل و مدی که با فصل می‌آید چیزهایی هستند که فرانسه با آنها زندگی می‌کند. زمین فصل‌هایش را دارد و مردمی که روی آن زندگی می‌کنند مد دارند و همین است و بس.
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اینکه بخواهی دیگران به چیزی باور داشته باشند که تو باور داری متمدنانه نیست چون شالوده‌ی متمدن بودن این است که بر خویشتن‌ات همانطور که هست تسلط داشته باشی و اگر همانطور که هست تسلط داشته باشی مسلم است که نمی‌توانی بر هیچ‌کس تسلط داشته باشی یعنی اصلاً کار
آنها به تو ربطی ندارد. به خاطر این عنصر تمدن است که پاریس همیشه مأمن تمام هنرمندان خارجی بوده است
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جنگ متمدن نمی‌کند... جنگ نمی‌تواند متمدن کند، برای متمدن شدن زندگیِ خصوصی لازم است. و البته معروفیت و شهرت هم همان اثر جنگ را دارد چوب لای چرخ متمدن شدن می‌گذارد.

[Iben Lauvland Longva]

Ikke min skrivestil dessverre

[Richard Thompson]

Gertrude Stein's unique narrative voice is the main reason to read and love this short book. She is brash and opinionated, and in that way she is very American, but she certainly has knowledge and deep appreciation of France and its people. Her passions are as strong as those of the French themselves. She finds many things to admire in French culture, some of which most of us don't usually associate with the French. For example, she sees the French as being very logical. Maybe, but only in a very indirect way that is different from how we usually use the term. She makes a lot of broad generalizations that are questionable, but in the greater scheme of things that does not matter because the book is about her subjective impressions of the French. The total look and feel overwhelms the individual anecdotes and observations that make up the book.

There are only a few references to specific people. She mentions Fitzgerald in passing and includes a story about Picasso and dogs, but if she had made Fitzgerald "an American" and Picasso "a Spaniard" it wouldn't have affected the story. I can almost hear her publisher saying, "Gertrude, you know so many famous and interesting people, put a few of them into the book," so that she grudgingly agreed to drop a couple of famous names. There are also only a few direct references to Paris itself. Mostly it is just about France and French society and character in general, without reference to place, and where location is mentioned, it seemed to be more often in the provinces than in Paris. Still I think that the title is not misleading because Paris comes across as a living, breathing presence. The world that Ms. Stein builds creates a sense of place that is just as tangible as it would have been if she had given us street addresses, arrondissements, and famous buildings.

The other lurking background presence is war. The book is clearly intended as antiwar writing, but as with the people and locations, the discussion of war is entirely indirect. The two world wars overshadowed everything else in French history in the first half of the twentieth century, and Ms. Stein doesn't shy away from this, but she deals with it by talking about the French attitude toward war and the impact that war has had on people and society, without any description of battles, politics or specific events. It's all consistent with the overall tone of the book where indirection plays off against strong opinionated assertions.

[Sparrow .]

Gertrude Stein was 66 when she published Paris France (in 1940). (I just noticed there is no comma in the title, which makes sense because Gertrude often avoids commas, in sentences like:

By the way the Austrian croissant was hurriedly made at the siege of Vienna in 1683 by the Polish soldiers of Sobieski to replace the bread that was missing and they called the crest of the emblem of the Turks whom they were fighting.

) Her point -- if it isn't obvious -- is that the croissant is not naturally French; it was brought from Austria by Marie Antoinette: "they took it over completely so completely that it became French so completely French that no other nation questions it." This is part of the digression on cooking, if it's possible for Gertrude Stein to have a digression.

Gertrude is attempting to define the Frenchness of France, a place she had lived for 37 years, through two great wars -- but really the second one was just beginning. Gertrude is very stoic about wars. (Paris France was written just before my most beloved Gertrude Stein book, Wars I Have Seen, a book I grew up with (it was my father's); and the same copy just perished in my recent flood.) The best part of Paris France is the story of Helen Button (she is a young French girl whose name is really Hélène Bouton, but Gertrude calls her by her Anglicized name):

Helen Button started out with her dog William. As they were walking along suddenly William stopped and was very nervous. He saw something on the road and so did Helen. They neither of them knew what it was at first and at last as they approached very carefully they saw it was a bottle, a bottle standing up right in the middle of the road. There had been something in the bottle but what, it looked dark green or may be blue or black, and the bottle was standing up in the middle of the road not lying on its side the way a bottle on the road usually is.

William the dog and Helen the little girl went on. They did not look back at the bottle but of course it was still there because they had not touched it.

That is war-time.




So you see, she does use commas sometimes.

[Claire Scorzi]

Em breve, vídeo para ele (nem acredito!)

[Tina]

I think I have a new least favorite book. Bored to tears. Very tangential, repetitive, non sensical, and odd.

[ReemK10 (Paper Pills)]

Paris and France described by Gertrude Stein as only Gertrude Stein can. Very entertaining!

[Roos]

Either this is almost illegibly weird or I'm not Intellectual Enough to get it - possibly a bit of both.

[Peyman Talebi]

اولین کتاب سال ۱۴۰۲، کتابی است که مدت‌ها جایش در میان آثار مربوط به فرانسه و پاریس قرن بیستم در میان ترجمه‌شده‌های فارسی خالی می‌نمود. «پاریس فرانسه» شرح احوالات نویسنده‌ای امریکایی است که حالات فرانسه و مخصوصا پاریس را پیش و در خلال هجوم نازی‌ها در جنگ جهانی دوم شرح می‌دهد.
نثر سخت‌خوان گرترود استاین و عدم استفاده او از علایم نگارشی سبب شده که کتاب آن‌چنان دلچسب و خواندنی نباشد. پراکندگی موضوعی روایت‌ها و عدم انسجام آنها دلیل دیگر این قضیه است. نثر همینگوی را تا حد زیادی متاثر از استاین می‌دانند و معتقدند همینگوی بود که شیوه نوشتن استاین را با نثر استادانه خود به پختگی رساند. حرف درستی است و برای اثباتش کافی است «پاریس جشن بیکران» را با این جستارهای آشفته مقایسه کنید تا ببینید همینگوی از آن نثر پیچیده و آشفته، چه بنای شکوهمندی ساخته است.
درمورد ماجرای جنگ جهانی هم اکثر اشارات استاین، خسته‌کننده و پریشانند، این یکی را هم باید با متن درخشان سارتر درباره حالات پاریس در جریان اشغال در ۱۹۴۰ مقایسه کرد. (در شماره یک مجله «کتاب روزاروز» چاپ شده)

ترجمه پوپه میثاقی ترجمه خوبی نیست. مشخص است که بخشی از «بدی» ترجمه به‌خاطر نثر استاین است، اما بخشی دیگر به الزام مترجم برای حفظ سبک استاین برمی‌گردد که اصرار بیهوده‌ای است، چرا که بعضی از جملات کتاب را به سادگی می‌توان بدون درنظر گرفتن آن الزام بی‌جهت، به جملاتی راحت‌تر مبدل کرد.

[soulAdmitted]

Ci vuole ingegno per sistemare accuratamente la scrittura, con l'ingenuità giocosa di una ragazzina arguta.
Facendo risultare la trascrizione del parlato poco fortuita, molto mirata, ma senza infastidire. Anzi.
E comunque, se volete conoscere, nel dettaglio, la differenza tra la guerra e il tempo-di-guerra, chiedete a Hélène Bouton, meglio nota come Helen Button. Bambina. E a William. Cane.

Inizieranno dicendovi che la storia prevede una bella quantità di tempo di guerra. Poi, ad esempio, vi diranno che i cani e le galline sono più dispettosi del solito. Che in effetti il sole splende. Che molti più bambini e bambine possono giocare in strada perché non ci sono padri e fratelli in giro. Che si parla di castagne, noci e nocciole, chiedendosi se ci sia il verme dentro. Che non ci sono mattine. Che ci sono stelle cadenti. Che le suore non indossano le cuffie. Che si sogna che è tempo di guerra. Che quasi quasi si ode la luna. Che si ascolta, si ascolta. Che non ti dicono di andare a scuola. Che vanno via tutti, tutte, continuando a voltarsi indietro e poi non c'è più nessuno da nessuna parte.

[Nicole]

This was a weird take on a memoir, but I supposed it is quite fitting for Gertrude. Gertrude made a lot of interesting observations about the French, and Parisians, in the post-WW1 era; and there were a lot of interesting comments about the French's opinions leading up to WW2. A lot of what she wrote about felt more like she was sharing facts and not so much her opinions on matters. I enjoyed some of the anecdotes, but after awhile, it became very repetitive.

[sam]

a delight. I like stein and I like her style. there's a rhythm in this, like waves and waves, and then a steady stream, and then a dam, and then the waves again.

I found many passages to be beautiful, and some to be a drag. that is her non-fiction I'm afraid. I found it much more alluring than Toklas.

[Alina Stepan]

Un livre sur la guerre qui ne parle pas trop de la guerre. Beaucoup de repetitions d’une valeur stylistique, que j’ai trop apprécié. Et pourtant... Apparement, les Français - au moins ceux habitant à la campagne, où Gertrude Stein et sa partenaire se sont établies en fuyant la guerre - s’ancraient dans les plus triviales des activités, afin de ne pas penser au guerre. Le livre et un peu ennuyant à cause de cela.

[Alex]

I think reading Gertrude Stein is more an experience than just reading. You have to let the words wash over you without trying too hard to make sense of what she’s saying. It’s an onslaught of fragmented thoughts, and if you disrupt them by looking for sense, it ruins the whole thing.