Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose

The sentence "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." was written by Gertrude Stein as part of the 1913 poem Sacred Emily, which appeared in the 1922 book Geography and Plays. In that poem, the first "Rose" is the name of a woman. Stein later used variations on the phrase in other writings, and "A rose is a rose is a rose" is probably her most famous quote, often interpreted as "things are what they are". In Stein's view, the sentence expresses the fact that simply using the name of a thing already invokes the imagery and emotions associated with it.

Gertrude Stein's repetitive language refers to the changing quality of language in time and history. She herself said to an audience at Oxford University that the statement referred to the fact that when the Romantics used the word "rose" it had a direct relationship to an actual rose.


For later periods in literature and visual art this would no longer be true.

Gertrude Stein was a member of The Lost generation, a group of expatriated American writers who resided primarily in Paris in the 1920's and 1930's. The group consisted of many influential American writers including Hemingway, Fitzgerald, William Carlos Williams, Thornton Wilder, Archibald MacLeish and Hart Crane. These writers were disillusioned with the American society and bitter about their World War I experiences.

She was the first writer who made integral to her work the idea of an indeterminate and discontinuous universe. Words represented neither character nor activity: they were "not imitations either of sounds or colors or emotions. Language was an intellectual re-creation. Through an emphasis on such stylistic devices as repetition she used language to deny meaning and representational concerns. As she pointed out, she would "write as if the fact of writing something were continually becoming true and completing itself, not as if it were leading to something. A rose is a rose is a rose. And a universe is a universe is a universe.