NEIL SCHMITZ
567
not. What the sign says: islis not, the discourse itself shows. "The
difference is spreading." In this writing, then, we read the realizing
movement of a different consciousness ("not unordered in not resem–
bling") express ing itself, as in speech, from phrase to phrase. The
familiar world "out there" pictured by representational writing col–
lapses into th e final reality of "present thinking," and this is the
immediate world before us.
"N ickel, what is nickel, it is originally rid of a cover." What
is
nickel? Originally it is a faceless element, unearthed ore not yet
translated into co inage or plating. Originally it is without designation,
without interpretation, without value. No sign covers it. No research
discovers it. The gesticulating verb,
rid,
suggests the arbitrariness and
possessive distortion of the sign, of the research. Nickel is thus
originall y in the sign less breast of Nature as nickel, nameless. What
nickel-thing are we considering here? We do not specifically know this,
but the supple thinking of nickel is abundantly present. "The change
in that," the change in the way nickel is regarded, sets before us the
small value of a nickel. Those who know something about Gertrude
Stein, at their own peril, can now begin to impose a recognizable face
on this nickel. There are, for example, all those original Gs in Glass,
Glazed, Glitter, and the small change a nickel makes: red cents, copper
pennies. There are five Steins (Michael, Simon, Bertha, Leo, Gertrude),
a g lazed coi n (Gertrude) and a glittering coin (Leo). "The change has
come." The Steins are dispersed, but there are many different changes
in this change, transformations as well, and these exchanges of value
and meaning dominate the movement of the discourse. "There is no
search " (for motive, moral , and plot), but" there is that hope and that
interpreta tion ." For her, for us, though obviously for the searched a
search (d iscovery) is "unwelcome." This play on currency, on words,
on concealmen t, turns "sinecure," a saving financial arrangement, into
sin-cure, the cleansing redemption of a wrong. What wrong? " There is
no gratitude (Gertrude?) in mercy and in medicine. There can be
breakages in japanese. " The face is there, is not there. Against great
pressure Gertrude Stein had abandoned her medical studies at johns
Hopkins for life in France as an artist, and against even greater
pressure she had managed a break with her brilliant, glittering,
convincing brother, Leo, who was a sometime Orientalist, a collector
of japanese art. In 1911, just back from Spain, secure in her footing
with Alice B. Toklas, no longer dominated by her brother, pleasurably
exper imenting with portraiture, Gertrude Stein might well contem–
plate with relish the subject of mutability and ponder the notion of
redemption.
