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Chapter 1 - Gertrude Stein for anyone

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Jennifer Ashton
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Chicago
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Summary

In The Geographical History of America, or The Relation of Human Nature to the Human Mind (1937), Gertrude Stein describes the effect of flying over the United States and looking at the land from above, which she distinguishes from what happens when you “climb on the land”:

When you climb on the land high human nature knows because by remembering it has been a dangerous thing to go higher and higher on the land which is where human nature was but now in an aeroplane human nature is nothing remembering is nothing no matter how many have been killed from up there it is not anything that is a memory…

And so the human mind is like not being in danger but being killed, there is no remembering, no there is no remembering and no forgetting because you have to remember to forget no there is none in any human mind.

What does Stein mean by the “human mind” if it involves no remembering or forgetting (faculties most of us would tend to associate with nothing if not our minds)? The best way to make sense of this counterintuitive definition is to look at what else Stein aligns with the “human mind” in opposition to what she calls “human nature.” She adds to the distinction between climbing on the land and looking at it from above in another passage when she remarks that “the land is flat from on high.”

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Chapter
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From Modernism to Postmodernism
American Poetry and Theory in the Twentieth Century
, pp. 30 - 66
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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  • Gertrude Stein for anyone
  • Jennifer Ashton, University of Illinois, Chicago
  • Book: From Modernism to Postmodernism
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511485442.002
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  • Gertrude Stein for anyone
  • Jennifer Ashton, University of Illinois, Chicago
  • Book: From Modernism to Postmodernism
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511485442.002
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Gertrude Stein for anyone
  • Jennifer Ashton, University of Illinois, Chicago
  • Book: From Modernism to Postmodernism
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511485442.002
Available formats
×