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

by Gertrude Stein

  I am altogether a discouraged one. I am just now altogether a discouraged one. I am going on describing men and women.

  I know one, he is of the resisting kind in men and women and he is completely an instrument being he is so completely that in a sense he has no volition though to very many knowing him he is almost a crazy one in living out ideas he has in him. I know this one, he has it in him to have vibratingly sensitive resisting being, that is all him and always when he wishes to do any working he must put himself quiescently ready so that something will play on him, some influence something and then it vibrates through him and he makes something does some work and not even really making himself a quiescent being is volition in him, it is simply a shutting off from himself by an almost senseless feeling of resisting any other thing, it is not choice in him of something and volition certainly is the act of choosing. This one as I am saying and I know very many who know him this one as I am saying is to very many an obstinate exaggerated self directing completely self-directing one and this one is completely an instrument nature, this one is like a violin a completely vibrating thing to anything that really can effect him. This one, I know this one very well in his living, this one in his loving is not loving as mostly men and women are doing who love the attacking kind of them if they are resisting kind in them, the resisting if they are of the attacking kind of them this one as I am saying in his loving is completely loving a resisting one, one like himself and this is very interesting. Mostly when one needs heightening of the being in them they get it from those very like them, for loving they need those different from them, for courage and emulation and influencing those like them and sometimes some love those like them and these are mostly then instrument natures or natures needing pretty complete influencing throughout their being but this is a very complicated question an excessively complicated question and sometime I am going to write a book and it will be a very long one and it will be all full up, completely filled up with pairs of them twos of them, sometimes threes and fours and fives but mostly with twos of them, twos of men, of women, of women and men, of men and women. Now to say just a little more of this one this instrument one that I am knowing pretty well now in the living in him. This one was not really succeeding very well in living, this one would not be succeeding very well when he was not any longer a young man, when he was an older one and had not any longer youthful beauty feeling and vibration in him and then too he would come to have fixed ideas in him, that would be a natural thing for him, and then perhaps later he would come to be a crazy one or just one that was failing in living. Some like him not so completely vibrating having some volition in them might be successful in living, some like him having a dulled vibration in them and fairly stupid feeling in them and much desire for good eating and drinking and sleeping can be successful enough in living. I know some of such of them, sometime oh sometime, really truly sometime there will be a description a complete description of every one.

  Now I will be describing four men, I know them all pretty well, two of them the first and the last are fairly whole ones inside them to mostly every one, the two others are mostly pieces of living to mostly every one knowing them.

  I know these four pretty well then, they are all in a way of the engulfing kind of the resisting kind in men and women, the four of them have that in common in every other way they are very different each one of them from the three others of them.

  The first one has engulfing being so brightly, so gaily, so concentratedly in him that it is a very fresh and gay and juicy thing in him the being in him. He is quite successful in living this one, quite successful in loving and always all his living he has had very much loving in him. He has not much real independence of action this one, he needs some one to start him to do everything excepting dancing and loving, this comes to him from the mere existing of women in the world around him. In mostly everything else some one starts him and he is very gay then in keeping going. When he is a sad one he does not want to see any one, that happens sometimes to him, he cannot start himself then, no one is starting him then, he is a sad one then and not succeeding in living. Really he is a very lively one in living and on the whole not unsuccessful in living. He is completely sensitive and not at all a bad one not a bit a bad one but not really a very actively good one he has no initiative for taking any responsibility on himself for himself or for any one. Always though he is responsible for himself, living gives him that initiative and he goes on living, sometimes he is a little fussy and then he remembers his father was so before him, he would like to be a different person not be like his father in any way and there he is he finds himself being just like his father after all the different kind of living that he has been having. This one has a genuinely sensitive being, this one is not a selfish one, self-seeking, this one is not apparently engulfing and yet really this one is completely of the engulfing resisting kind of them, this one has this being in him that is certain. It is gay and sparkling in him it is well concentrated in him, it is an engulfing resisting being that is certain.

  The second one, I know this one from the history of him from letters he has written, this one has engulfing murky being as hopeful and yet as a weak thing in him. He needs so much stimulating that after he was not any longer a very young one he could not get enough of it to keep going, he never engulfed anything really in his living not himself, not any one not any woman not any man, but he was always hopeful that sometime he would do this thing, hope was always there in him, when he was a very young one he was vigorous in aspiring, later he was not vigorous in anything but always hopeful and always of the engulfing resisting kind of them though never really engulfing or resisting anything. This was the being in him, he was not an unattractive one, sometime there will be more history of him written of his loving and of his not supporting himself by working and of his despairing and of his always hoping. This is enough of him just now, alright then.

  This one the third of these four of them I know very well indeed now and it took me a very long time to know him but that is not what I am now telling. This one was of the engulfing murkily resisting kind of them but he mostly was too ambitious and had too much vanity in him and was too self-sacrificing for any one to know it of him. He was really truly such a one, that is certain. He had very much vanity and self-sacrificing and affection and ambition in him and only slowly it came out of him that he was a rather dry engulfing murky resisting being. There will be here very little description of him, he is a very important one to be well known because he has the being in him so contused in him that it teaches one a great deal to completely learn him. I like him and I know him I will now tell a little more about him.

  Every one is sometime a little a lovely one to me. Some are sometimes quite very lovely ones to me, some are more some are less lovely to me. Sometime for a little almost every one is a lovely one to me. Every one I have been describing I will be describing I am describing, every one I am I can ever be knowing is sometime a little, more, a very lovely one to me. This is a very nice feeling in me inside me when some one is really a lovely one to me. Mostly every one pretty nearly every one certainly every one is sometime a little a lovely one to me. Some one is very much a lovely one to me. Each one certainly is sometime sometimes a lovely one to me. All these I am describing have it in them to have been sometime to be sometimes a lovely one to me. Every one, each one is certainly sometime a little a lovely one to me. This one I am now describing was for sometime really a quite lovely one to me. This one as I was saying was of the dependent independent resisting murkily engulfing kind of them but as I have been saying this was rather gently and a little dryly in him and mostly not any one knew it of him that he was of the engulfing murky kind of them. This one was a very gentle one, a very affectionate one, a really very self-devoted one, a really very ambitious one, a really very vain one, a really very appealing one and always also a fairly aspiring one, and always there was murky engulfing in this one but it was a little dry a little very pretty in this o
ne. This one was to very many quite a lovely one. This one's living and being is quite interesting, sometime there will be written a very complete history of this one. This one mostly to every one who really came to know this one very well was a piece of being not a very completely whole one. Sometime there will be a complete history of this one.

  The fourth one of these four of them that all have it in them to have murky engulfing resisting being was very little to me a lovely one. He was very really a lovely one to his wife and she was older than he was and he really was not a bad one not a good one not a bad one, he was not a very lovely one to most of those he came to know in living. Every one is to me sometime a little a lovely one, that is pretty nearly certain.

  This one was of the engulfing murky resisting kind of them but engulfing was in him the swallowing of very little things, he never had it in him to do any large swallowing, he never was really engulfing a woman he was engulfing, she needed to thrust herself inside him and so he a little was doing swallowing and often he had it in him to be wanting to do to be be doing engulfing but he never really knew it in him, he was of the murky resisting engulfing kind of them but he had it in him only really as nibbling. To himself he was a very noble one, to himself he was almost a heroic one, to himself he was completely a good man, completely entirely a good one with not any mean ways in him and this really was a very natural thing seeing that murky resisting engulfing being was a nibbling swallowing thing in him, this could not be himself to himself inside him, that is certain, and so to himself inside him he was a completely good one almost a heroic one. If any one if his sister-in-law said to him but you nibbled and swallowed that thing that was not a noble thing to be doing, he would be saying, I am a good one my wife knows that every one knows that and if I did that thing it was the right thing for me to be doing. He was not a bad man this one, he was to himself completely almost heroically a good one, to his wife who was never quite completely engulfed by him she wanting to be completely engulfed by him felt him to be completely entirely a very lovely one, to his wife he was completely entirely a good one as he was to himself completely inside him. This is enough now of this one, he was to mostly every one a complete enough one, this will be now some descriptions of some other men and women.

  One having in him very thickly in him murky resisting engulfing being often threatened he would kill himself and he sometimes made a poem before he was ready to kill himself because he could not have in living what he needed to completely content him. This is now a very little description of this one. This one is quite an interesting one, this one is rather strong in his living in his being this one is fairly successful in living. This one as a very young one was not a very adroit one, was rather reckless and given to having things happen to him, had courage in him, was a pretty hard one to manage, was quite a funny one. He was when he was a young one a reckless one, quite in almost a foolish way a daring one and in a way very many liked him very well then and not any one then could in any kind of a way manage him. When he was a little older then he was quite affectionate with his brother and his father, his mother was less interesting to him, his brother was very fond of him, his brother was older, his father liked to hear him say funny things then, and then when he was a little older again this one not yet any more than quite a young man he was quite a stingy one, a very prudent one, a very openly suspicious one, quite popular with men, not very interesting to women, quite devoted to his brother, quite cold in his relations to any one having any need of him, completely without enthusiasm, quite openly suspicious as I was saying, very prudent in his business living and quite a good business man, and as I was saying completely certain that he should take care of himself completely that not any one would do this thing for him. This was the being in him and as I am saying it was interesting. When he was quite a young man he decided on marrying and then when his mother tried to interfere with him he told the people that his mother was a bad one and he told her that be had written a poem and now he would kill himself and she believed him. This one as I am saying was openly a suspicious one, openly a man thinking only of his own well being, he was quite a funny one, he was very popular with men, he was not very interesting to women but they mostly did not at all dislike him, he had been when he was a young one quite reckless and quite daring, he always had all his living very affectionate ways in him, he always was certain that he would be master in any house which was his own house completely master of it and always he was a pleasant and quite a funny fellow and he could be openly flattering and openly suspicious and he was both all of his living and always he was very funny to every one, very amusing, as I was saying he was always pretty popular with men and not at all unpopular with women. He had his passionate resisting engulfing being in him quite alive and completely in between aggression and resisting, he was not attacking with it, he was not resisting with it, it never was doing one thing or the other thing neither aggressive in it or resisting in it, he had all the qualities of it of his kind of being, they were all complete alive and living in him, they were so to speak not in motion, this as I am understanding is the being in him, he had almost not any really stupid being in him, he was completely his own being and this was completely alive, completely not moving in him. This is the way I am now understanding this one, it is very certain that I must sometime completely be understanding this one for I am constantly now feeling thinking about knowing certain ones in a way connected with this one and it is important to me that I sometime understand them, it is important to me very important indeed to me that I sometime understand every one, I am always keeping on wanting to do this thing mostly all the time, certainly pretty nearly all the time, yes always somewhere in me that is certain, always somewhere in me, mostly all through me I am hoping that sometime I will be understanding every one every kind there are of men and women knowing, feeling, completely realising them, each one, every one, and sometime I certainly am hoping to be completely understanding several I am knowing that are a kind of them connected in kind with the kind of which I have just been a little describing one. I am then certainly going on with my hoping. I will now go on with my description of a considerable number of men and women, some men, some women, all of the resisting kind in men and women.

  This one of whom I am now going to be giving a very little description is not completely of the engulfing kind of the resisting kind of them, he is a murky passionate resisting one but not a really engulfing one, he is as near to being an engulfing one as one can be without being one. He is as near an engulfing kind as one can be who is not it at all but is completely disturbed in loving so that it is really in him that in a way he is not an engulfing kind of a one. This one then in a way is connected with Mr. Hissen the grandfather of the Hersland children in his kind of being, this one has in him religion, very completely in him but he is not a complete one, he is not complete inside him completely all that there is of religion in him, he is lost in loving, lost in religion, not completely a lost one but sometimes quite completely a lost one, has to be afraid inside him to be rescued by some one from the quite completely lost condition of him. This one is not then a very complete one inside him, that is natural from the being in him. This one like some others like him loses himself from inside him by loving feeling by religion in him, this one then does not do this completely in him, he is a little all himself inside him and so then this one all his living is a very incomplete one, always then he is not succeeding very well in living, mostly then some one masters him enough so that he does not completely fail in living completely lose himself out from him and he too a little helps with this being with the being in him that is in him that makes him a little the complete thing in religion in himself inside him. This one then in a way in loving, in religion, loses the feeling after the emotion, must then begin again and this is a natural thing from the nature of him, he is not at all engulfing, he is as near to it as any one can be who completely entirely is not it. I am finding this description very interesting. I am understanding more
and more now the being in him. This is all that I will now be writing of him. He was quite an elegant one quite a graceful one in his expression, in his daily living, when he was a young one he was quite completely an idealist then, always he had religion and loving in him. This is all I am now going to be saying about him.