Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.
Loveliness extreme.
Extra gaiters, Loveliness extreme.
Sweetest ice-cream.
The phrase ‘A rose is a rose is a rose’ comes from the poem ‘Sacred Emily’ written in 1913 by Gertrude Stein (1874-1946).
American writer Gertrude Stein was a central figure in the Parisian art world. An advocate of the avant garde, Stein helped shape an artistic movement through a novel form of expression. Her home at 27 rue de Fleurus that she shared with Alice B. Toklas, her lifelong companion and secretary, became a gathering place for young artists and writers of the period between World Wars I and II: from Pablo Picasso to Henri Matisse, from Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald.
A bold experimenter and self-proclaimed genius, Stein rejected linear writing for a spatial, process-oriented 20th-century literature. The results were dense texts but not commercially successful. Her essay “Miss Furr and Miss Skeene” (1922) is one of the first homosexual revelation stories to be published. The poem ‘Sacred Emily’ is based on the technique of stream of consciousness, musicality and rhythm.
On 31 December 2024 I bought a bunch of yellow roses for myself. In the morning, I looked at them while eating breakfast. I chose a rose and put it in the lounge/study to keep me company. It stood out on the red wall. It was unique and special. I took a picture of it. I started to play with the image and multiply the rose, its energy, its joy, its irreverence, its languor. The phrase came to mind.
The repetition in ‘A rose is a rose is a rose’ evokes the many meanings of the rose, which follow one another in an automatic, almost unconscious manner, sensual echoes like the swirls of its petals.
It makes me think that love is an unconscious force, taking on a thousand forms, a thousand desires, a thousand beauties, and that there is no judgement in love. As we say in Italy, “non è bello ciò che è bello ma è bello ciò che piace/ it is not beautiful what is beautiful but beautiful what is liked”.
Gaia Del Negro
