Narration

by Gertrude Stein

  As I say I have been very bothered about everything and I will tell about something else. When you are talking is it the same as when you are writing and when you are writing is it the same as when you are lecturing and when you are lecturing is it the same as knowing what history is and is knowing what history is is it the same as writing autobiography, and is it all alike because after all if you know what you are doing are you always doing it in the same way and then there is letter writing. I must only I have forgotten to do it write a whole long history of this thing that is what letter writing is because now I know.

  There is one thing undoubted talking, writing and listening are not the same thing, and I will tell you why. When you talk you talk that is to say what you say has no importance mostly to any audience because any audience has no feeling that they are an audience not while everybody is just talking and this of course includes yourself and since any audience when you are just talking has no feeling that they are any audience then are they an audience and quite rightly you do not cannot must not shall not write as you talk, which of course you do not even when you say you do which anybody does say they do only of course not of course it is not true.

  When you write this is of course recognition there is the recognition that you recognize what you write as you write, while as you talk there is of course some recognition but really is there any real recognition recognition of what you talk as you talk. I myself think not, and therefore naturally not you do not write as you talk, because as you write you recognize what you write as you write and as you talk you do not recognize what you talk as you talk. There really is no real reason why you should since after all you are not your audience as you talk nobody really is not really as anybody talks that is just talks.

  I knew I would have to do something else before I could begin to tell anything I know anything about history and now I know what it is I must know something about conversation and this is what I do know about conversation that is about talking.

  You can see how difficult the writing of history is, I think anybody can see from this that is because conversation that is talking is what it is newspapers are what they are, mystery stories are what they are and anybody is what they are and anything that is anywhere where anybody is is what it is. You can see it is difficult very difficult that history can ever come to be literature. But it would be so very interesting if it could be so very interesting. Anybody can see that there is more confusion that is to say perhaps not more confusion but that it is a more difficult thing to write history to make it anything than to make anything that is anything be anything because in history you have everything, you have the newspapers and the conversations and letter writing and the mystery stories and audiences and in every direction an audience that fits anything in every other way in which any audience can fit itself to be anything, and there is of course as I have been saying so much to trouble anyone about anyone of any of these things.

  And now before anything else to continue that is to begin that is to go on about letter writing. Letter writing is a very interesting part of audience writing. When you are young you write about yourself inside or what you are doing or you write a letter of overwhelming that is a love letter or a mixture of this thing and in all this writing the audience is in a state of diffusion, and the letter is as it is as any of you may know, that is to say you write as if anybody was hearing only you have the vagueness of knowing that no one is hearing, the question of listening does not yet come in.

  Adult letter writing is directed to some one even if the same thing is said as is said to anyone any other one to whom you are then that is at that time writing but nevertheless it is directed to some one and the audience is not a diffused one but it is a distant one and how does that effect letter writing, well you know something about this thing and it really is the only time in writing when the outside and the inside flow together without interrupting, not generally with much concentrating, but still at any rate with not much interrupting. It is the one time when writing for an outside does not make the inside outside or the outside inside it is a diffusion but not a confusing, it is really a kind of an imitation of marrying of two being one, and yet being two and presumably two as much as anything. There can be a whole description of this thing but this is enough with which to begin.

  And now before once more talking about something leading up to history let us finish with the subject of lecturing. Now in lecturing as in acting you introduce something else the physical the actual physical presence that connects the audience to the one doing anything and what does that do. Well anything does something that we are all beginning to know at the same time that we all know that anything does nothing.

  One cannot of course go on forgetting that anyone that is it is a natural thing that no one really not anyone knows what anyone means by what they that is that one is saying and yet every one knowing this thing still always has to tell some one that is anyone something. It is a well known fact that no human being can really stand not being able to tell some one something, you see an audience not understanding does not make any difference as long as anyone can tell anyone something. Anyone travelling will tell anyone even if that one does not understand the language the other one is talking will persistently attempt to tell that other one something.

  So then although anyone can say that they do not write for an audience and really why should they since anyway the audience will have its own feeling about anything nevertheless the writer writing knows what he is writing as he recognizes it as he is writing it and so he is actually having it happen that an audience is existing even if he as an audience is not an audience that is is one not having a feeling that he is an audience and yet that is just what a writer is. As he is a writer he is an audience because he does know what an audience is. He is not as one is when one is talking and every one is talking and talking is talking because then anyone talking is not hearing what an audience is. What makes writing writing is hearing what an audience is that is to say makes recognition while in the act of writing what he is writing. It is so easy to know no not so easy to know and it is so easy to say no so hard to say but hard or easy it is said and known this what I have to say and do say as I say that is as I write.

  Now in lecturing as I say another thing is happening there is the physical exciting, and that in a way destroys the physical something that a writer is while he is writing, because while he is writing that physical something by existing does not connect him with anything but concentrates him on recognition. That is the reason why the lecturer the debater the orator recognizes what his audience hears but does not recognize what he himself says and that is very interesting. Of course if you are reading what you are lecturing then you have a half in one of any two directions, you have been recognizing what you are writing when you were writing and now in reading you disassociate recognizing what you are reading from what you did recognize as being written while you were writing. In short you are leading a double life. And that too may be interesting anything may be interesting but what has it to do with history writing, well something because a great many people about whom historians are writing have been orators or some such thing.

  So then I do feel I am beginning to know a little more really a little more than I expected to be knowing about how history is and is to be and has been and might be written. After all can it be written.

  It is certain that any man that is any human being at no time has the same feeling about anything as anyone can have who tell them or to whom they tell anything, anyone who is alone is alone but no one can have that thing happen and go on living that is continue to be alone and so anyone that is every one is always telling anyone anything or something.

  That is what mysticism is, that is what the Trinity is, that is what marriage is, the absolute conviction that in spite of knowing anything about everything about how anyone is never really feeling what any other one is really feeling that after all after all three are one and two are one. One is not one because on
e is always two that is one is always coming to a recognition of what the one who is one is writing that is telling. So there we have this which always has been and the historian along with all the things he has to tell has to tell this thing as if it were happening and it never is happening, the one is not one, the two are not one, the three are not one, and still in violent living, in the thing that makes history what it is in the telling, the two although they are not one still again are not two and the three although they are not one are again not three.

  We talked a great deal all this time we talked a great deal how hard it is to tell anything anything that has been anything that is, and that makes a narrative and that makes history and that makes literature and is history literature.

  Well how far have we come.

  Can history be literature when it has such a burden a burden of everything, a burden of so many days which are days one after the other and each day has its happening and still as in the newspaper what can make it matter if it is not happening to-day, the best thing that can happen about that happening is that it can happen again. And that makes the comfort of history to a historian that history repeats itself, that is really the only comfort that an historian can have from anything happening and really and truly it does not happen again not as it used to happen again because now we know really know so much that has happened that really we do know that what has happened does not happen again and so that for poor comfort has been taken away from the historian.

  Of course if you like anything does happen again but when one does know as the historian now does know all the things that happened every day while it was happening then for the purpose of the historian history is no longer repeating and so the historian has now no comfort really none left to him.

  And what is he to do, well that is a question, what is anybody to do about writing, well that is the question.

  I personally think that the solution is that anyone must amuse himself with anything and not think to recognize anything beside this thing, beside playing with what he is playing with as he is writing what he is recognizing while the writing is being written by him.

  What I mean is this, history has gotten to be so that anybody can if they go on know that everything that happened is what happened and as it all did happen it is a very serious thing that so much was happening. Very well then. What can be the addition to anything if everything is happening, look out of any window, any window nowadays is on a high building if it happens right and see what is happening. Well enough said, it is not necessary to go on with recognition, but soon you do know anybody can know, that it is all real enough. It all is all real enough, not only real enough but and that is where it is such a difficult thing not real enough for writing, real enough for seeing, almost real enough for remembering but remembering in itself is not really an important enough thing to really need recalling, insofar as it is not seeing, but remembering is seeing and so anything is an important enough thing for seeing but it is not an important enough thing for writing, it is an important enough thing for talking but not an important enough thing for telling.

  That is really the trouble with what history is, it is important enough for seeing but not important enough for writing, it is important enough for talking but not important enough for telling. And that is what makes everybody so troubled about it all about what history is, because after all it ought to be important enough for telling for writing and not only important enough for talking and seeing, it really ought to be, it really ought to be, but can it be. Cannot it really be.

  I feel about history the way I do about crime stories they ought to be they really ought to be they really ought to come to be literature but do they.

  And so we always come back to what literature is.

  What is literature.

  Literature is the telling of anything but in telling that thing where is the audience. There is an audience of course there is an audience but where is that audience. Undoubtedly that audience has to be there for the purpose of recognition as the telling is proceeding to be written and that audience must be at one with the writing, must be at one with the recognition must have nothing of knowing anything before or after the recognition, and can that be true of the historian or of the newspaper man. No alas there have been some exceptions but are they really exceptions, not enough exceptions to really encourage anyone.

  The case of Boswell’s Johnson is an interesting one, Boswell conceived himself as an audience an audience achieving recognition at one and the same time that Johnson achieved recognition of the thing he Johnson was saying, Johnson was saying those things as if he were writing those things that is achieving recognition of the thing while the thing was achieving expression and Boswell by the intensity of his merging himself in the immediacy of John son achieved recognition as Johnson himself was doing. But how can any historian do the same how can he, he would if he could but how can we, a newspaper man certainly cannot that I think I have certainly made plain as plain as it plainly cannot be done by the very thing the newspaper man has to really have to be done that is has to be done if the newspaper is to be what it is and of course the newspaper is to be what it is what it has had to become to have done what it has had to have done. But the historian well what can he do about it yes well what can he do about it. I wonder I do wonder what can he do about it.

  The biographer has the same trouble, of course there is the other thing, Vasari and Plutarch are like that, they make them up so completely that if they are not invented, they might as well be they do not really feel that anyone of the ones about whom they tell had any life except the life they are given by their telling. That can happen and when it does it is writing, it is like historical plays and historical novels which can have that thing happen that really in writing the only existing the character has is the character the writer has given to them but how can an historian who knows everything really knows everything that has really been happening how can he come to have the feeling that the only existence the man he is describing has is the one he has been giving to him. How can he have this feeling, if he cannot then he cannot have the recognition while in the processes of writing, which writing really writing must really give to the one writing. After all the historian the historian who really knows everything and an historian really does he really does how can he have the creation of some one who has no existing except that the historian who is writing has at the moment of writing and therefore has as recognition at the moment of writing being writing. The historian is bound to have with him all the audience that has known every one about whom he is writing. It is worse than the wailing of the dead soldiers in L’Aiglon there are so many auditors there have been so many auditors, and there really can only be the one that is the one, and there are so many of them there have been so many of them and how can the historian lose them how can he how can he lose any of them and how can he lose all of them and if he does not how can history be writing that is be literature. How can it. Well I am sure I do not know.

  It this thing, this thing that dimly worries anyone who thinks about an historical anything which has induced every one, Mark Twain in A Yankee At King Arthur’s Court and then all that have been written since then has made them attempt to in one way and another way try to make a thing a thing that they recognize while they are writing make it something that had no existing before that writing gave it that recognition, they tried to do this by changing something. Of course it is something to do but is it really interesting not interesting enough.

  What can the historian do, well I do hope he will do something, I almost would like to be an historian myself to perhaps do something. You see that is why making it the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas made it do something, it made it be a recognition by never before that writing having it be existing. It is a natural thing to do if writing is to be writing, but after all it ought to be able to be done as history as a mystery story. I am certain so certain so more than certain that it ought to be able to be done. I know so well all
the causes why it cannot be done and yet if it cannot be done cannot it be done it would be so very much more interesting than anything if it could be done even if it cannot be done.

  I wish it could be done and if it could be done all these reasons for its not having been done would be of no importance because it will have been done.

  That is what makes anything everything that it has been done and so perhaps history will not repeat itself and it will come to be done. Perhaps no perhaps yes anyway this is all I know just at present about how writing is written how an audience is existing how anyone telling anything is telling that thing.

  PRINTED IN U.S.A.