“Let Us Save China”: Gertrude Stein and Politics

Abstract

Much has been written about Stein's politics ever since it was revealed, in 1996, that Stein had translated many of Philippe Pétain's speeches (Burns and Dydo, “Gertrude Stein”; Van Dusen). If some critics accuse Stein of collaboration with Vichy France, others defend her by pointing out contradictory evidence regarding her behavior during the war years. Barbara Will, in Unlikely Collaboration; Gertrude Stein, Bernard Fay, and the Vichy Dilemma (2011), casts Stein in the role of pro-Vichy thinker whose support of Pétain was “heartfelt and dogged” (118). In addition to translating Pétain's speeches, Stein was a close friend of Bernard Fay, who, as head of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, was an official high up in the administration of Vichy France. Charles Bernstein, Edward Burns, and Joan Retallack take up Stein's defense in jacket2's online dossier Gertrude Stein's War Years; Setting the Record Straight (2012). They argue that no conclusive evidence ties Stein explicitly to Vichy France (Burns) and highlight the irony in some of her statements—for instance, that Hitler deserved the Nobel Peace Prize (Bernstein, “Gertrude Stein”; Retallack). Furthermore, Stein published her writing in both the Vichy-sponsored magazine Patrie (“Fatherland”) and the anti-Nazi and anti-Vichy journals Confluences, Fontaine (“Fountain”), and L'arbalète (“The Cross-Bow”) during the war years (Burns and Dydo, “Three Lives”; Burns). She sympathizes with the French maquis in her postwar memoir Wars I Have Seen and writes about the inner workings of the Resistance in her play In Savoy; or, Yes Is for a Very Young Man (Wagner-Martin).