The original memoirs described the 20th century. the beginning of the golden age of Parisian artists | Culture

Painters Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, writers Ernest Hemingway and F.S. Fitzgerald, and dozens of other artists who have become artistic icons today appear in Gertrude Stein’s biography, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

This work is a literary joke. Modernism icon G.Stein speaks through the lips of her life partner Alice B.Toklas regarding herself and those who inspired her, with whom she spent time and whose career she contributed to. True, those described in the book criticized the text: H. Matisse was outraged by the way his wife was portrayed, and E. Hemingway was not forgiven for being called a coward, but now this book is among the most important non-fiction works of the 20th century. It was published in Lithuanian by Kitos knogos, translated from English by Violeta Tauragienė.

Wide World photo/Gertrude Stein in her apartment in Paris

An icon of modernism, a cult figure of Parisian bohemia, a unique phenomenon of literature and culture, one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, an eminent patroness and matron of modernist art – this is how the American G.Stein (1874-1946) is usually described, who spent more than 40 years in Paris, in her work and in life, as if in a mirror, reflecting in a small way all the innovations, ups and downs of the interwar European art world.

Together with her older brother Leo, having inherited her father’s substantial capital and not being able to worry regarding money, in 1903 G.Stein moved to the French capital, which has become a mecca for artists, became the owner of a legendary art salon and a picture collector, the organizer of bohemian Saturday gatherings and a patron of young talents, an experimental writer, poet and essayist, an advocate of an alternative lifestyle and sexual freedom. G.Stein is the author of the term “lost generation”, which describes the generation of writers whose representatives survived the First World War and wrote works regarding it.

In the book “Alice B. Toklas autobiography”, the reader is immersed headlong into the bohemian period of 1903-1933, breathed with the new winds of modernism. Paris, which had then become a special center of attraction for many artists from Puritan countries – all of them flocked here in search of freedom of expression. Artists G. Braque, P. Cézanne, H. Matisse and P. Picasso regularly visited G. Stein’s salon on Fleurus street.

Writers Sh.Anderson, G.Apollinaire, TSEliot, FSFitzgerald, E.Hemingway, E.Pound often stopped by. The young E. Hemingway was persuaded by G. Stein to give up journalism and become a writer, and he described the salon in the memoir “A Holiday Always With You” (1964). When the owner of the salon became interested in the theater, dramatists started visiting Fleurus street: surrealists J. Cocteau and A. Breton, Dadaist T. Tzara, creator of the “theatre of cruelty” A. Artaud.

The book has been translated into 26 languages, and Modern Library listed it as one of the 20 best non-fiction books of the 20th century. The autobiography is not written in my own name, but in the name of Alice B. Toklas (1977-1967) – lover, friend, secretary, housekeeper and, most importantly, constant companion in life – and it seems to speak in her voice, from her perspective.

The author probably followed the autobiographical mystifications of well-known authors – JW Goethe’s “Poetry and Truth”, V. Woolf’s “Orlandu”, so in the memoirs that took on the features of a novel, reality merged with fiction, embellished by G. Stein’s extremely subjective and often sardonic assessments. The publication of the book was partially financed by the Lithuanian Council of Culture.