21 pages • 42-minute read
A Carafe, that is a Blind Glass
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Symbols & Motifs
The Single Hurt Color as an Ode to Fauvism
Besides Cubism, Stein was also influenced by Fauvism, which is French for “the wild beasts.” With her brother Leo, she purchased Fauvist works like Henri Matisse’s Woman with a Hat (1905). While Cubism distorted representation via shapes, Fauvist painters challenged perceptions through bright, gaudy colors. Thus, the "single hurt color" (Line 1) might represent a significant strain in Stein's poetics and her aim to create poems mimicking the painting styles she admired, like Fauvism. Similar to how a Fauvist painting might unsettle or "hurt" a viewer's perception due to the force of the wild color palette, Stein's presentation of the carafe could "hurt" the reader's brain, as they struggle to wrap their head around Stein's portrait of the carafe.
The color stands out since it's the one time Stein mentions color. Nowhere else in the poem does Stein use the word “color” or any word that signifies color. In the context of the poem and Stein's poetics, the color reinforces the extravagance of the text. While the word “color” points to color, the syntax and arrangement symbolize the Fauvist use of color since it, too, is over-the-top and unrestrained.
Systems, Order, and How to Create a Spectacle
As a motif, ideas about systems and order occur throughout Stein's short prose poem. The idea of systems occurs in the first segment when the speaker attaches the carafe to a “kind” (Line 1) and a family. From the start of the poem, the speaker arranges the carafe and situates it within a specific context. In the next segment of the poem, the speaker references both systems and order with "spectacle" (Line 1). The motif of systems and order add another layer to "spectacle" since the system—the world something or someone is in—often determines what qualifies as a spectacular event.
The rendering of an everyday object, like a carafe, becomes a sensation or an ordeal because Stein's system of composition makes it so. Producing a spectacle relies on order. A person must deliberately plan out how to draw people's attention and captivate them. The speaker emphasizes the link between systems and spectacle when they note an "arrangement in a system to pointing." The pointing is key, too, since people often point at a spectacle. Here, the speaker is pointing at the spectacle of the carafe.
Obsession with Nouns
In another lecture, "Poetry and Grammar," which is part of Stein's 1935 work Lectures in America, Stein defines poetry as "nothing but using losing refusing and pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns" (Stein, Gertrude. Lectures in America. United States, Beacon Press, 1957). The glass carafe symbolizes Stein's frenetic preoccupation with nouns. In the title, the speaker gives the glass carafe eyesight yet takes away its ability to see. In Line 1, the speaker supplies the glass carafe with a family and a greater context or a "kind." Such treatment is rather sweet or, as the title of the book implies, "tender."
In Line 2, the abuse starts as the speaker brings pain to the carafe with a "single hurt color." Soon, the speaker betrays the carafe’s commonness by calling it "not ordinary" (Line 2) and allowing for the possibility that many readers won't find a resemblance between this carafe and other kinds of glass objects. It's as if the speaker has detached the carafe from the family in Line 1 and placed it within a disorienting order that might derive from the speaker's subjective reality or subconscious. Either way, through the speaker's aggressive treatment of the glass carafe, Stein acutely displays her obsessive, tempestuous relationship with nouns.
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