Narration

by Gertrude Stein

  And so you have this curious situation. Newspapers are written as if what is happening is happening as they are writing and as it is happening in that way they can have in them no beginning and ending but after all they are writing and they are writing not as it is happening not as it the newspaper is printing or being read and yet all that has to be as if it were.

  As I say they try to bridge the gap in every way. Head lines were invented to help them do this better, they are all taught exactly how it can be done and as they are so well taught finally it happens not as if it had begun but as if it had never been done. Finally the newspaper gets its readers so that it does not make any difference whether any event can or will happen as long as the newspaper can go on getting larger and larger with anything or smaller and smaller with anything, and always tell be telling that thing, that they are larger and larger and smaller and smaller in telling everything. That is what is finally happening that everybody has to know what everybody or anybody does but does anybody have it as a feeling what anybody or everybody does no not at all.

  And so that is what the newspaper is.

  And that brings us nearer and nearer to the writing of history of biography of autobiography, I keep getting nearer and nearer but am I really near enough.

  We now know what the newspaper is and what it does and why it has to be made easier and easier because the more completely in every way everybody anybody knows anything knows everything that is always happening the more easily, the more easy it is to make it easy for anyone to know this thing what is always happening.

  A newspaper man is trained to make this easy by never changing, nothing must ever be changing, things are happening but nothing must ever be changing about their being happening, the newspaper must never give to anyone reading it a feeling that anything is changing about something being always happening, if it ever could or would or should then anyone would come to have some suspicion that there might be a beginning and ending to anything and if there is a beginning and ending to anything then it destroys the simplicity of something always happening.

  It is all a very curious thing but this is a true story of newspaper writing and the detective fiction just completely the other way progresses by a continuous beginning and ending and once more therefore destroys itself into not existing. It is too bad because it might have been yes it might have been something but always beginning and ending is as destructive to existing as never beginning and ending.

  You do see this thing.

  And now let us begin to think about another thing, about the feeling of a thing being existing even when it is a happening as the newspaper has it be.

  Is a thing realler because not that you have really seen it but you have seen the place where it did happen. That is to say is there more beginning and end to it if you know what it looks like the place the actual place where the thing happened.

  It seems to have more beginning and ending to it then and perhaps it really has not really has but gives the emotion of reality somewhat clearer.

  It is for this reason that local newspapers have a different way of saying that anything is happening from metropolitan newspapers. The small local newspaper has the feeling that they are telling not what is happening as something that is happening but they are telling what happened to some one whom every one mayor may not know but might know and certainly anyone does know the exact spot the very place where the thing that happened has happened, that makes small town newspapers have a slightly different feeling about what is happening than the big newspaper and therefore they might if they were not a newspaper they might bring anyone that is every one to have the feeling that writing which is not what is happening gives anyone.

  Why is it that even the small newspaper which has to help them the local feeling of the place the actual place that anything that has happened why have they no intensity in their writing such as anyone describing anything made up inside them can give to that writing.

  Why is it.

  Oh why is it.

  Think of Defoe, he tried to write Robinson Crusoe as if it were exactly what did happen and yet after all he is Robinson Crusoe and Robinson Crusoe is Defoe and therefore after all it is not what is happening it is what is happening to him to Robinson Crusoe that makes what is exciting every one. You cannot go over it too often and so you can come you will come to know everything about anything being written.

  I have come as far as this and it is really quite far to have come yes it is it really is quite far to have come and still all history and autobiography and biography have yet to come that is it is here but we have yet to come to know how and where it does come from.

  Next time I am going to write more history for you, autobiography I have already done, biography I have already done I will tell you about that one, and so slowly yes slowly I will come to some knowing what it is that makes anything what it is what it was and what it has become.

  But really and truly all about history and biography and autobiography will be both finished and begun oh yes it will yes it will it really will be both finished and begun in the next one.

  LECTURE 4

  AFTER all anybody is as their land and air is. Anybody is as the sky is low or high, the air heavy or clear, anybody is as there is wind or no wind there. I t is that which makes them and the arts they make and the work they do and the way they eat and the way they drink and the way they learn and everything.

  The thing that bothers me that always bothers me is why and how a writing that sounds just like a writing that is creating, is not creating, it is a bothersome thing that. I have just been reading two books that have concentration imagination and they tell what they have to tell and they are interesting and all the time you know they know that they will not be books that anybody could possibly think of reading five years hence and why. It is easy to ask and to answer somehow but to really know why, you know they know I know that this is true but to really know the real reason why to really know what is the difference between any book having interest reality imagination and concentration and will not last and one that will last is a most difficult thing to do. Of course it is easy enough to know it after it has lasted, anybody of course could do that but to know now why to really know why now, well it is not easy it really is not easy at all to know to really know anything about this thing. I always have thought I always have wondered I do still think and wonder about this thing. Is it that it has to be told somehow enough the thing to be told or is it the thing to be told itself. I am wondering.

  One of you brought me poetry to read the other day and I said remember that if you have to use strained words to say what you have to say by strain existing in the words that you are using, what feels to you a rare emotion becomes common-place not ordinary that is alright but just common-place and a common-place thing does not contain feeling. That is what makes a common-place thing a common-place thing, that that it does not contain feeling.

  Let me say that so that you that is I cannot may not be mistaken in saying this thing.

  What makes a thing as it is coming out in being said or written what makes that thing a common-place thing, not what is that they felt before they said anything that is always supposing that they stopped long enough to feel anything. Has anything anything to do with stopping long enough to feel anything is it or is it not so.

  Let me get solidly down really solidly to one of any two things and that one is the audience there may be there is there could be there will be there can be there shall be there has been there or again is not an audience to anything. Anything is not alike to any audience and yet it is. That is what any one is inclined to know that any audience is not alike or is and is mostly either one that is not alike or is.

  That is something that is really not anything and I have found out that it is made up of anything and that anything is that one thing.

  What is an audience and why is anybody that is everybody always mentioning that thing. Anybody can mention an audience it is perfectly extraordin
ary how often I myself have had it mentioned that an audience is an audience and yet after all what do I who hear them tell it or they who tell it to me know about it. I have really found out quite a good deal about what an audience is by a simple series of adventures with it. I have been without it, and I have been with it, I have been myself be it to myself and I I have almost been without being it to myself and then I came suddenly to find myself having had it without hearing that I was going to have had it that is not an outside audience but myself to it and then I found out something about Shakespeare’s sonnets and really this has something to do with history although perhaps perhaps although even I do not believe it even if I do which I do.

  Then listen while I tell it but this I know anybody will do because it is something to tell which is not the telling of it. But nevertheless this I will do.

  Writing was writing if it was being written and in it even if I was talking I was not talking as I was writing, nor was I writing as I was talking, why should anyone do that, but think use your common sense why should really why why should anyone do that.

  Just really why should anyone do that that is why do I not do that of course I do not nobody should do that.

  And this is the reason why.

  As I say anybody is as their land and air and water sky and wind and anything else is and everything always is, it is not curiously not necessary to look out of the window to know that and yet everybody can need to do that they need to look out of the window not to find out what is what but for two reasons one reason is that they look out of the window which is what they do and the other is that as they look they look out of the window, not because of anything not because of that. Really and truly has anyone more curiosity than they have and what can they do about it.

  I saw a fire engine house to-day that was exactly like the ones they used to be when I was a child even inside to the man sitting and yawning while he was waiting, he was waiting for a fire and sometimes a fire comes. There is no why not about that because sometimes a fire alarm comes and sometimes the fire comes and it was exactly as I remembered although if I had to try to tell about it I would not have quite remembered not quite remembered particularly how the doors looked in proportion to the buildings.

  But to come back to the audience because after all there is no one who can be one if he is not one and so sometimes this can happen that no one alone has been no one has been one audience to that thing. I was, to that fire engine house. I really was I was just that thing I was one audience nothing was happening that is to say the building was exciting but it always had been, what would be the matter with it if it had not been. Very well then an audience did I always have one have I always been one, am lone, when anything is no longer happening, look alike if you like and then be that one of anyone or two of them.

  So then the audience is the thing. It helps a lot to know anything about this thing if you think are always really always thinking about the narrating of anything of narrative being existing.

  So then what did I know about myself as an audience.

  I wondered often when I was quite young and watching and still I am doing that thing watching anything inside me happen in relation to myself or in relation to anyone what anyone being as it were as if they were to be as I was where and when I am would believe as to what was happening. Do you see what I mean. That is the beginning anyhow one beginning of an audience being existing. And always anybody can know that always there is no such thing existing as anyone really not knowing as if it were anything of anyone else what is going on as if it were going on. When that happens they call it introspection but call it what you like it is after all anybody or nobody watching. I suppose inevitably if anyone is going to be anybody telling anything and knowing anything of telling anything they are bound to begin with this thing, why not since after all you have to know less about it than about any other thing because nobody can do any contradicting because after all there it is and it is not at all there and it is not all there and nobody who says yes can say no and nobody who says yes can say no and nobody can say yes I know or no I know nobody no nobody at all because after all there is nothing there at all and that is something to which if there is there is no no no yes and there is no I guess. Nothing at all and all is such a comfort as it is where it is. That is what anybody who is to know how they are to tell what they are to tell is sure to have as all there is as well. And so they begin so. This you all of you know.

  Then after all what is the use as you all all of you know this. So then beside as anyone can come to be certain of then if it is as it is that is an audience is what it is what is it if an audience is this, pretty soon then can feel again that an audience is this, and then introspection can go on but the habit of this thing makes it cease to be this, because the audience and is it this keeps going on and so finally since it is all one, even when it is not this and it commences then not to go on being this although of course although of course yes it always will go on.

  That is one, that is one audience then this.

  So then we go on.

  And then gradually anything goes on that is to say it is does not go on but any way there is anything there any way and is anyone that is are you the audience for that too that is to say do you see it when it is there and is it there and what have you to say, what have you to say.

  What is it to be an audience, I tell I must get down solidly to that what is it to be to have an audience what is it and is it the same thing or is it.

  What is it.

  That is to say can does anyone separate themselves from the land so they can see it and if they see it are they the audience of it or to it. If you see anything are you its audience and if you tell anything are you its audience, and is there any audience for it but the audience that sees or hears it. And if you do do that to yourself or anything else you see does that after all begin what you began when you were it as it happened to come to be it or not. Who is alike when everybody looks at anybody and which is like which, the thing which has been seen or the thing which is prepared for it that is prepared to be seen because after all who cannot who will not prepare it. Really no one, when you come to think about it and yet every one does, does not prepare it. And all this has so much to do with writing a narrative of anything that I can almost cry about it.

  I will try to be as simple as I can.

  I had a funny experience once, this was a long time after I had been writing anything and everything as you all more or less have come to know it, it was about five years ago and I said I would translate the poems of a young french poet.

  I did this not because of the poetry but because of the poet he had been very nice to me and I was grateful for it and so I wanted to make him happy and the way to show it was to translate the poetry of the young french poet.

  So I began to translate and before I knew it a very strange thing had happened.

  Hitherto I had always been writing, with a concentration of recognition of the thing that was to be existing as my writing as it was being written. And now, the recognition was prepared beforehand there it was it was already recognition a thing I could recognize because it had been recognized before I began my writing, and a very queer thing was happening.

  The words as they came out had a different relation than any words I had hitherto been writing, as they came out they had a certain smoothness they went one into the other in a different kind of fashion than any words ever had done before any words that I had ever written and I was perplexed at what was happening and I finished the whole thing not translating but carrying out an idea which was already existing and then suddenly I realized something I realized that words come out differently if there is no recognition as the words are forming because recognition had already taken place.

  I concluded then that Shakespeare’s sonnets were not written to express his own emotion I concluded that he put down what some one told him to do as their feeling which they definitely each time for each sonnet as their feeling and that is the reaso
n that the words in the sonnets come out with a smooth feeling with no vibration in them such as the words in all his plays have as they come out from them.

  Now anybody really ought to know this now really anybody should and anybody can know how this has to do with what every one always wants to know what has anybody’s hearing anything have to do with their being an audience to anything, and what has being an audience or having an audience or having been an audience have to do with anything that is to say what has it all to do with telling anything.

  Everybody always says do you write for an audience well do you and what is an audience and is it almost impossible or is it possible to make an audience of yourself and is it almost impossible or is it possible to rid yourself of yourself as an audience. And anyhow what has an audience to do with it. Well in a way everything and of course what they really mean by an audience when they say audience well perhaps really nothing nothing at all and yet perhaps everything.