Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein

by Gertrude Stein

  Miss Charles was of the kind of them the kind of men and women I know very well in living. I know very well all the varieties of this kind of them. Some of each kind there is of men and women are very nice ones of their kind of them, some of each kind there is of men and women are not nice ones at all of their kind of them. Miss Charles was not a very nice one, she was not a not nice one at all of her kind of them. Being nice or not a nice kind of one, a pleasant or unpleasant kind of one was not in her an important thing. This is a very certain thing. She was as I was saying in her younger living aggressive in her detailed and generalised conviction of morality and reformation and equalisation. Later in her living she went on in the direction she had been going but her methods then were from the being in her and that then mostly entirely filled her. That made her control everything, every one near her by steady resisting pressure and that was then the way of winning in her. Everything near her, every one near her, every detail of everything was then more or less completely owned by her. She was of the kind of them who own the thing they need for loving. Later as I was saying Miss Dounor left her, Miss Charles had a little owned Redfern almost and Miss Dounor many years later left her and Miss Charles went on always to her ending completely owning the college of Farnham.

  There has been now enough description of Miss Charles. There has been enough description of Miss Dounor. There has been enough description of Miss Dounor and of Miss Charles. There will be now a very little more description of Mrs. Redfern.

  At the time of the ending of the living of the Redferns at Farnham, Alfred Hersland was just coming to his marrying of Julia Dehning. The Redferns after the ending of their living at the college of Farnham never lived anywhere together again. Mrs. Redfern never understood this thing. Always she was expecting it to begin again their living together until after the complete ending of being in Redfern. That made her certain then that they would never live together again.

  After the ending of their Farnham living the Redferns never lived anywhere together again. Mrs. Redfern never understood this thing. She never knew that she would not ever again have him. This never could come to be real knowledge in her and she always working at something to have him again and that was there always in her to the end of him and of her. First she was travelling and studying and then she was working to make some women understand something and many laughed at her and always she was full of desiring and always she was never understanding in desiring. When there was the end of her living with Redfern her brother Alfred was just coming to his marrying Julia Dehning. Martha was then travelling and studying and then she came back to be with her father and her mother was weakening then and later she was dead and Mr. Hersland lost his great fortune and Martha then took care of him. There will be now a little more description of her and then of her with him. There will be a little more description of her written in the history of the ending of the living in her father, in the history of the later living of her brother Alfred Hersland, in the history of her brother David Hersland. More description of her will be part of the history of the ending of the existing of the Hersland family. There will be very much history of this ending of all of them of the Hersland family written later.

  There will be now a little more description written of her and of her living with her father when she came back to the family living back out of her trouble after the ending of the living in Phillip Redfern.

  After the ending of the Redferns’ living at Farnham the two of them, Mr. and Mrs. Redfern never lived anywhere together again. Mrs. Redfern never understood this thing. Always she was expecting it to begin again, their living together and always she was studying and preparing herself to be a companion to him in intellectual living. Always then she was studying and striving and travelling and working. And then he was dead and then she knew they would not live together again. Then she was certain of this thing.

  That was her living then until he was dead and she went back to the ten acre place where then her father and mother were living and her mother was weakening then and a little while later then she died there and Martha finished her living staying with her father who had then lost his great fortune.

  Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything. Disillusionment then in living that gives to very many then melancholy feeling, some despairing feeling, some resignation, some fairly cheerful beginning and some a forgetting and continuing and some a dreary trickling weeping some violent attacking and some a letting themselves do anything, disillusion then is really finding, really realising, really being certain that no one really can completely agree with you in anything, that, as is very certain, not, those fighting beside you or living completely with you or anybody, really, can really be believing anything completely that you are believing. Really realising this thing, completely realising this thing is the disillusionment in living is the beginning of being an old man or an old woman is being no longer a young one no longer a young man or a young woman no longer a growing older young man or growing older young woman. This is then what every one always has been meaning by living bringing disillusion. This is the real thing of disillusion that no one, not any one really is believing, seeing, understanding, thinking anything as you are thinking, believing, seeing, understanding such a thing. This is then what disillusion is from living and slowly then after failing again and again in changing some one, after finding that some one that has been fighting for something, that every one that has been fighting something beside you for a long time that each one of them splits off from you somewhere and you must join on with new ones or go on all alone then or be a disillusioned one who is not any longer then a young one. This is then disillusionment in living and sometime in the history of David Hersland the younger son in the Hersland family living then in a part of Gossols where they alone of rich people were living there will be completely a history of the disillusionment of such a realising and the dying then of that one, of young David Hersland then.

  This is then complete disillusionment in living, the complete realisation that no one can believe as you do about anything, so not really any single one and to some as I am saying this is a sad thing, to mostly every one it is sometime a shocking thing, sometimes a shocking thing, sometime a real shock to them, to mostly every one a thing that only very slowly with constant repetition is really a complete certain thing inside to give to them the being that is no longer in them really young being. This is then the real meaning of not being any longer a young one in living, the complete realising that not any one really can believe what any other one is believing and some there are, enough of them, who never have completely such a realisation, they are always hoping to find her or him, they are always changing her or him to fit them, they are always looking, they are always forgetting failing or explaining it by something, they are always going on and on in trying. There are a very great many of them who are this way to their ending. There are a very great many who are this way almost to their very ending, there are a great many men and women who have sometime in them in their living complete disillusion.

  There is then as I am saying complete disillusion in living, the realising, completely realising that not any one, not one fighting for the same thinking and believing as the other, not any one has the same believing in her or in him that any other one has in them and it comes then sometime to most every one to be realising with feeling this thing and then they often stop having friendly feeling and then often they begin again but it is then a different thing between them, they are old then and not young then in their feeling.

  Young ones sometimes think they have it in them, this thing, some young ones kill themselves then, stop living then, this is often happening, young ones sometimes, very often even, think they have in them this thing but they do not have it in them, mostly not any young one, as a complete realisation, this thing, they have it in them and it is sometimes, very often then an agony to them, some of them kill themselves or are killed then, but r
eally mostly not any of them have really realised the thing, they may be dead from this thing, they have not realised the thing, it has been an awful agony in them, they have not really grasped the thing as having general human meaning, it has been a shock to them, it may perhaps even have killed completely very completely some of them, mostly then a young one has not really such a thing in them, this is pretty nearly certain, later there will be much description of disillusionment in the being of David Hersland who was always in his living as I was saying trying to be certain from day to day in his living what there was in living that could make it for him a completely necessary thing.

  This is then a very little description of feeling disillusionment in living. There is this thing then there is the moment and a very complete moment to those that have had it when something they have bought or made or loved or are is a thing that they are afraid, almost certain, very fearful that no one will think it a nice thing and then some one likes that thing and this then is a very wonderful feeling to know that some one really appreciates the thing. This is a very wonderful thing, this is a thing which I will now be illustrating.

  Disillusionment in living is the finding out nobody agrees with you not those that are and were fighting with you. Disillusionment in living is the finding out nobody agrees with you not those that are fighting for you. Complete disillusionment is when you realise that no one can for they can’t change. The amount they agree is important to you until the amount they do not agree with you is completely realised by you. Then you say you will write for yourself and strangers, you will be for yourself and strangers and this then makes an old man or an old woman of you.

  This is then one thing, another thing is the perfect joy of finding some one, any one really liking something you are liking, making, doing, being. This is another thing and a very pleasant thing, sometimes not a pleasant thing at all. That depends on many things, on some thing.

  It is a very strange feeling when one is loving a clock that is to every one of your class of living an ugly and a foolish one and one really likes such a thing and likes it very much and liking it is a serious thing, or one likes a colored handkerchief that is very gay and every one of your kind of living thinks it a very ugly or a foolish thing and thinks you like it because it is a funny thing to like it and you like it with a serious feeling, or you like eating something and liking it is a childish thing to every one or you like something that is a dirty thing and no one can really like that thing or you write a book and while you write it you are ashamed for every one must think you are a silly or a crazy one and yet you write it and you are ashamed, you know you will be laughed at or pitied by every one and you have a queer feeling and you are not very certain and you go on writing. Then some one says yes to it, to something you are liking, or doing or making and then never again can you have completely such a feeling of being afraid and ashamed that you had then when you were writing or liking the thing and not any one had said yes about the thing. In a way it is a very difficult thing to like anything, to do anything. You can never have again either about something you have done or about something any one else has done the same complete feeling if some one else besides the first one sees it, some other one if you have made it, yourself if you have understood something, you can never again have the complete feeling of recognition that you have then. You can have very many kinds of feelings you can only alone and with the first one have the perfect feeling of not being almost completely filled with being ashamed and afraid to show something to like something with a really serious feeling.

  I have not been very clear in this telling, it will be clearer in the description of master and schools in living and in working, and in painting and in writing and in everything.

  It is a very queer thing this not agreeing with any one. It would seem that where we are each of us always telling and repeating and explaining and doing it again and again that some one would really understand what the other one is always repeating. But in loving, in working, in everything it is always the same thing. In loving some one is jealous, really jealous and it would seem an impossible thing to the one not understanding that the other one could have about such a thing a jealous feeling and they have it and they suffer and they weep and sorrow in it and the other one cannot believe it, they cannot believe the other one can really mean it and sometime the other one perhaps comes to realise it that the other one can really suffer in it and then later that one tries to reassure the other one the one that is then suffering about that thing and the other one the one that is receiving such reassuring says then, did you think I ever could believe this thing, no I have no fear of such a thing, and it is all puzzling, to have one kind of feeling, a jealous feeling, and not have a fear in them that the other one does not want them, it is a very mixing thing and over and over again when you are certain it is a whole one some one, one must begin again and again and the only thing that is a help to one is that there is really so little fundamental changing in any one and always every one is repeating big pieces of them and so sometimes perhaps some one will know something and I certainly would like very much to be that one and so now to begin.

  All this leads again to kinds in men and women. This then will be soon now a description of difference in men and women morally and intellectually in them between concrete acting, thinking and feeling in them and generalised acting, thinking and feeling in them.

  Many women and men have a completely sure feeling in them. Many men and women have certain feeling with something inside them.

  Many have a very certain feeling about something inside them. Many need company for it, this is very common, many need a measure for it, this will need explaining, some need drama to support it, some need lying to help it, some are not letting their right hand know what their left hand is doing with it, some love it, some hate it, some never are very certain they really have it, some only think they love it, some like the feeling of loving it they would have if they could have it. Some have a feeling they would have it if they had their life to live over again and they sigh about it. Certain feeling in men and women is very interesting.

  As I was saying in many there is the slow reacting, slow expressing being that comes more and more in their living to determine them. There are in many of such ones aspirations and convictions due to quick reactions to others around them, to books they are reading, to the family tradition, to the spirit of the age in educating, in believing, to the lack of power of articulating the being in them that makes them need then to be filled full with other reactions in them so that they will then have something. Some of such of them spend all their living in adjusting the being that comes to active condition inside them in their living to the being they have come to be in living from all being that has been affecting them in all their living, some of such of them want a little in them to create their living from the being inside them and they have not the power in them for this thing, they go on then living the being of every one that has been making them. It is a wonderful thing how very much it has to be in one, how it needs to be so strongly in one anything, how much it needs to be in one anything so that thing is a thing that comes then to be done, it is a wonderful thing how very much it needs to be in one anything, any little any big thing so that that thing will be done by that one. It is a wonderful thing as I was saying and I am now repeating, it is a wonderful thing how much a thing needs to be in one as a desire in them how much courage any one must have in them to be doing anything if they are a first one, if it is something no one is thinking is a serious thing, if it is the buying of a clock one is very much liking and everybody is thinking it an ugly or a foolish one and the one wanting it has for it a serious feeling and no one can think that one is buying it for anything but as doing a funny thing. It is a hard thing to be loving something with a serious feeling and every one is thinking that only a servant girl could be loving such a thing, it is a hard thing then to buy that thing. It is a very wonderful thing how much courage it takes to buy and use them and lik
e them bright colored handkerchiefs when every one having good taste is using white ones or pale colored ones when a bright colored one gives to the one buying them so much pleasure that that one suffers always at not having them when that one has not bought one of such of them. It is a very difficult thing to have your being in you so that you will be doing something, anything you are wanting, having something anything you are wanting when you have plenty of money for the buying, in clocks in handkerchiefs, so that you will be thinking, feeling anything that you are needing feeling, thinking, so that you will be having aspirations that are really of a thing filling you with meaning, so that you will be having really in you in liking a real feeling of satisfaction. It is very hard to know what you are liking, whether you are not really liking something that is a low thing to yourself then, it is a very difficult thing to get the courage to buy the kind of clock or handkerchiefs you are loving when every one thinks it is a silly thing, when every one thinks you are doing it for the joke of the thing. It is hard then to know whether you are really loving that thing. It takes very much courage to do anything connected with your being that is not a serious thing. It takes courage to be doing a serious thing that is connected with one’s being that is certain. In some, expressing their being needs courage, in foolish ways, ways that are foolish ones to every one else, in them. It is a very difficult thing to have courage to buy clocks and handkerchiefs you are loving, you are seriously appreciating, with which you have very seriously pleasure with enjoying and everybody is thinking then that you are joking. It is a very difficult thing to have courage for that which no one is thinking is a serious thing.