The Making of Americans, Being a History of a Family's Progress

by Gertrude Stein

  As I have been saying each one has their own being in them, each one has their own sensitiveness to things in them, each one is of a kind of them. Of each kind of them some are more completely themselves than others of their kind of them and this is now a very long discussion of the way being is in some and in others of one kind of them and then of being in some and in others of all the kinds of them all the kinds there are of men and women.

  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 realty 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 really 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 tearful 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 hook 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.

  I
t 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 sometime 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 even 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 like 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.

  Some have a measure in living and some do not have any measure to determine them. Many in their living are determined by the measure of some one, they are to themselves to be like some one or very near to what that one is for them, they are like some one or are something like some one, they have then a measure by which they can determine what they are to be, to do in living. Such then are always followers in living, many of such of them have their own being in them, all of such of them have some being in them, all of such of them have a measure that determines them, they are themselves inside them, they need only come very near doing, being some certain thing which is established already as a standard for them by some one who did not have any standard to make her or him some one and that one is a master and the others having themselves inside them and such a one as a measure for them are schoolmen, and now there will be very little description of these things in men and women for it is something that is important in the being in David Hersland the second son. The important thing now to be discussing is concrete and abstract aspiration, concrete and generalised action in many men and women of very many kinds of them and now there will be a beginning of discussing the feeling in each one of being a bad one, of being a good one, the relation of aspiration and action, of generalised and concrete aspiration and action.

  It happens very often that a man has it in him, that a man does something, that he does it very often, that he does many things, when he is a young one and an older one and an old one. It happens very often that a man does something, that a man has something in him and he does a thing again and again in his living. There was a man who was always writing to his daughter that she should not do things that were wrong that would disgrace him, she should not do such things and in every letter that he wrote to her he told her she should not do such things, that he was her father and was giving good moral advice to her and always he wrote to her in every letter that she should not do things that she should not do anything that would disgrace him. He wrote this in every letter he wrote to her, he wrote very nicely to her, he wrote often enough to her and in every letter he wrote to her that she should no
t do anything that was a disgraceful thing for her to be doing and then once she wrote back to him that he had not any right to write moral things in letters to her, that he had taught her that he had shown her that he had commenced in her the doing the things things that would disgrace her and he had said then when he had begun with her he had said he did it so that when she was older she could take care of herself with those who wished to make her do things that were wicked things and he would teach her and she would be stronger than such girls who had not any way of knowing better, and she wrote this letter and her father got the letter and he was a paralytic always after, it was a shock to him getting such a letter, he kept saying over and over again that his daughter was trying to kill him and now she had done it and at the time he got the letter he was sitting by the fire and he threw the letter in the fire and his wife asked him what was the matter and he said it is Edith she is killing me, what, is she disgracing us said the mother, no said the father, she is killing me and that was all he said then of the matter and he never wrote another letter.

  It happens very often that a man has it in him, that a man does something, that he does it very often that he does many things, when he is a young man when he is an old man, when he is an older man. Some kind of young men do things because they are so good then they want every one to be wise enough to take care of themselves and so they do some things to them. This is very common and these then are very often good enough kind of young men who are very good men in their living. There will soon be a little description of one of them. There are then very many men and there is then from the generalised virtue and concrete action that is from the nature of them that might make one think they were hypocrites in living but they are not although certainly there are in living some men wanting to deceive other men but this is not true of this kind of them. One of such of these kind of them had a little boy and this one, the little son wanted to make a collection of butterflies and beetles and it was all exciting to him and it was all arranged then and then the father said to the son you are certain this is not a cruel thing that you are wanting to be doing, killing things to make collections of them, and the son was very disturbed then and they talked about it together the two of them and more and more they talked about it then and then at last the boy was convinced it was a cruel thing and he said he would not do it and his father said the little boy was a noble boy to give up pleasure when it was a cruel one. The boy went to bed then and then the father when he got up in the early morning saw a wonderfully beautiful moth in the room and he caught him and he killed him and he pinned hint and he woke up his son then and showed it to him and he said to him “see what a good father I am to have caught and killed this one,” the boy was all mixed up inside him and then he said he would go on with his collecting and that was all there was then of discussing and this is a little description of something that happened once and it is very interesting.