Before the Flowers of Friendship Faded, Friendship Faded. With ALS to Rene Crevel.
ONE OF 100 COPIES
WITH A LETTER TO RENÉ CREVEL
Stein, Gertrude. Before the Flowers of Friendship Faded Friendship Faded. Written on a poem by Georges Hugnet. Paris: Plain Edition, [1931].
4to.; brown printed wrappers with flaps; glassine dust-jacket.
Boxed together with:
Autograph letter signed, “Gertrude,” to Rene Crevel, Paris, France, n.d; one leaf of Stein’s Paris letterhead, 27 Rue de Fleurus, both sides covered, with two folds from creasing.
First edition of Stein’s trans-adaptation of Hugnet’s poem; one of 100 press-numbered copies (this is copy #16), 120 printed in black on Antique Montval paper with deckled edges, the entire edition. Wilson A16b. Together with a letter to the young gay surrealist novelist and art critic Rene Crevel (1900-1935), on the death of a mutual friend. It reads in full:
My very dearest Rene,
Yes when I heard of/ the death of Jeannie R[ ] / my first thought was of/ you because you used to speak/ so delightfully of her and I had / [2] come to know Jean quite well / and
gotten very fond of him / he really has a very tender heart / a thing sufficiently rare and
you / my dear Rene have one too and / he had talked to me a great / deal about his sister poor / lad, my only comfort is that / your handwriting is getting / a look stranger and so I
am sure / you will get better and this / summer we will see each / other, you will come to
us / or we will go to you because / we do love you very much / better than most people. /
Hemingway wanted to go to see you / but he too is sad, I said to him / that I think one has
a second / adolescence from 29 to 35 like / one has from 16 to 21 when / one is sad and
you are all [ ]/ darlings just there but then / after it gets better and you will / be the best
and so happy new / year and lots of real love
Gertrude.
Crevel, who killed himself at the age of 35, managed to publish numerous articles and three books first: La morte difficile (1926), a book on Paul Klee (1930), and Dali ou l’anti-obscurantisme (1930).
Stein’s “translation” of the Hugnet poem “Enfances” was originally slated to be printed alongside Hugnet’s original, in a book representing their collaboration. However, at the last minute, Hugnet opted out of the joint publication project, over a disagreement over equal billing and, most likely, fear that his poem would be overshadowed given Stein’s reputation. Before the Flowers of Friendship Faded Friendship Faded was the title selected by Toklas as a jabbing reference to Hugnet’s change of heart. The only time the two poems did appear together was in the winter 1931 issue of Pagany.
Hugnet’s fears were borne out. Stein’s poem does indeed take on a life of its own, playing with rhymes and images from “Enfances” and becoming a meditation on poetry itself as a form. At first glance, much of the poem appears to be incoherent, but Stein’s “nonsense” is never random or careless:
They will be white with which they know they see, that
darker makes it be a color white for me, white is not
shown when I am dark indeed with red despair who comes
who has to care that they will let me a little lie like
now I like to lie I like to live I like to die I like to lie
and live and die and live and die and by and by…
Not interested in conventional “meaning” as discerned from clues like a linear narrative or context, Stein forces her readers to find sense in the words themselves and their sounds, drawing attention to the organic movement of language within a poem, instead of focusing on what the poem is trying to “say.” (ed. Peter Quatermain, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 54: American Poets, 1880-1945, Third Series, University of British Columbia Press, 1987, pp. 428-463)
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