WHAT ARE MASTER-PIECES
AND WHY ARE THERE SO FEW OF THEM?
(1936)
by Gertrude Stein
(1874-1946)
I was almost going to talk this lecture and not write and read
it because all the lectures that I have written and read in America
have been printed and although possibly for you they might even being
read be as if they had not been printed still there is something about
what has been written having been printed which makes it no longer the
property of the one who wrote it and therefore there is no more reason
why the writer should say it out loud than anybody else and therefore
one does not.
Therefore I was going to talk to you but actually
it is impossible to talk about master-pieces and what they are because
talking essentially has nothing to do with creation. I talk a lot I
like to talk and I talk even more than that I may say I talk most of
the time and I listen a fair amount too and as I have said the essence
of being a genius is to be able to talk and listen to listen while
talking and talk while listening but and this is very important very
important indeed talking has nothing to do with creation. What are
master-pieces and why after all are there so few of them. You may say
after all there are a good many of them but in any kind of proportion
with everything that anybody who does anything is doing there are
really very few of them. All this summer I meditated and wrote about
this subject and it finally came to be a discussion of the relation of
human nature and the human mind and identity. The thing one gradually
comes to find out is that one has no identity that is when one is in
the act of doing anything. Identity is recognition, you know who you
are because you and others remember anything about yourself but
essentially you are not that when you are doing anything. I am I
because my little dog knows me but, creatively speaking the little dog
knowing that you are you and your recognising that he knows, that is
what destroys creation. That is what makes school. Picasso once
remarked I do not care who it is that has or does influence me as long
as it is not myself.
It is very difficult so difficult that it always
has been difficult but even more difficult now to know what is the
relation of human nature to the human mind because one has to know what
is the relation of the act of creation to the subject the creator uses
to create that thing. There is a great deal of nonsense talked about
the subject of anything. After all there is always the same subject
there are the things you see and there are human beings and animal
beings and everybody you might say since the beginning of time knows
practically commencing at the beginning and going to the end everything
about these things. After all any woman in any village or men either if
you like or even children know as much of human psychology as any
writer that ever lived. After all there are things you do know each one
in his or her way knows all of them and it is not this knowledge that
makes master-pieces. Not at all not at all at all. Those who recognise
master-pieces say that is the reason but it is not. It is not the way
Hamlet reacts to his father's ghost that makes the master-piece, he
might have reacted according to Shakespeare in a dozen other ways and
everybody would have been as much impressed by the psychology of it.
But there is no psychology in it, that is not probably the way any
young man would react to the ghost of his father and there is no
particular reason why they should. If it were the way a young man could
react to the ghost of his father then that would be something anybody
in any village would know they could talk about it talk about it
endlessly but that would not make a master-piece and that brings us
once more back to the subject of identity. At any moment when you are
you you are you without the memory of yourself because if you remember
yourself while you are you you are not for purposes of creating you.
This is so important because it has so much to do with the question of
a writer to his audience. One of the things that I discovered in
lecturing was that gradually one ceased to hear what one said one heard
what the audience hears one say, that is the reason that oratory is
practically never a master-piece very rarely and very rarely history,
because history deals with people who are orators who hear not what
they are not what they say but what their audience hears them say. It
is very interesting that letter writing has the same difficulty, the
letter writes what the other person is to hear and so entity does not
exist there are two present instead of one and so once again creation
breaks down. I once wrote in writing I write for myself and strangers but that was merely a
literary formalism for if I did write for myself and strangers if I did
I would not really be writing because already then identity would take
the place of entity. It is awfully difficult, action is direct and
effective but after all action is necessary and anything that is
necessary has to do with human nature and not with the human mind.
Therefore a master-piece has essentially not to be necessary, it has to
be that is it has to exist but it does not have to be necessary it is
not in response to necessity as action is because the minute it is
necessary it has in it no possibility of going on.
To come back to what a master-piece has as
its subject. In writing about painting I said that a picture exists for
and in itself and the painter has to use objects landscapes and people
as a way the only way that he is able to get the picture to exist. That
is every one's trouble and particularly the trouble just now when every
one who writes or paints has gotten to be abnormally conscious of the
things he uses that is the events the people the objects and the
landscapes and fundamentally the minute one is conscious deeply
conscious of these things as a subject the interest in them does not
exist.
You can tell that so well in the difficulty of
writing novels or poetry these days. The tradition has always been that
you may more or less describe the things that happen you imagine them
of course but you more or less describe the things that happen but
nowadays everybody all day long knows what is happening and so what is
happening is not really interesting, one knows it by radios cinemas
newspapers biographies autobiographies until what is happening does not
really thrill any one, it excites them a little but it does not really
thrill them. The painter can no longer say that what he does is as the
world looks to him because he cannot look at the world any more, it has
been photographed too much and he has to say that he does something
else. In former times a painter said he painted what he saw of course
he didn't but anyway he could say it, now he does not want to say it
because seeing it is not interesting. This has something to do with
masterpieces and why there are so few of them but not everything.
So you see why talking has nothing to do with
creation, talking is really human nature as it is and human nature has
nothing to do with master-pieces. It is very curious but the detective
story which is you might say the only really modern novel form that has
come into existence gets rid of human nature by having the man dead to
begin with the hero is dead to begin with and so you have so to speak
got rid of the event before the book begins. There is another very
curious thing about detective stories. In real life people are
interested in the crime more than they are in detection, it is the
crime that is the thing the shock the thrill the horror but in the
story it is the detection that holds the interest and that is natural
enough because the necessity as far as action is concerned is the dead
man, it is another function that has very little to do with human
nature that makes the detection interesting. And so always it is true
that the master-piece has nothing to do with human nature or with
identity, it has to do with the human mind and the entity that is with
a thing in itself and not in relation. The moment it is in relation it
is common knowledge and anybody can feel and know it and it is not a
master-piece. At the same time every one in a curious way sooner or
later does feel the reality of a master-piece. The thing in itself of
which the human nature is only its clothing does hold the attention. I
have meditated a great deal about that. Another curious thing about
master-pieces is, nobody when it is created there is in the thing that
we call the human mind something that makes it hold itself just the
same. The manner and habits of Bible times or Greek or Chinese have
nothing to do with ours today but the masterpieces exist just the same
and they do not exist because of their identity, that is what any one
remembering then remembered then, they do not exist by human nature
because everybody always knows everything there is to know about human
nature, they exist because they came to be as something that is an end
in itself and in that respect it is opposed to the business of living
which is relation and necessity. That is what a master-piece is not
although it may easily be what a master-piece talks about. It is
another one of the curious difficulties a master-piece has that is to
begin and end, because actually a master-piece does not do that it does
not begin and end if it did it would be of necessity and in relation
and that is just what a master-piece is not. Everybody worries about
that just now everybody that is what makes them talk about abstract and
worry about punctuation and capitals and small letters and what a
history is. Everybody worries about that not because everybody knows
what a master-piece is but because a certain number have found out what
a master-piece is not. Even the very master-pieces have always been
very bothered about beginning and ending because essentially that is
what a master-piece is not. And yet after all like the subject of human
nature master-pieces have to use beginning and ending to become
existing. Well anyway anybody who is trying to do anything today is
desperately not having a beginning and an ending but nevertheless in
some way one does have to stop. I stop.
I do not know whether I have made any of this
very clear, it is clear, but unfortunately I have written it all down
all summer and in spite of everything I am now remembering and when you
remember it is never clear. This is what makes secondary writing, it is
remembering, it is very curious you begin to write something and
suddenly you remember something and if you continue to remember your
writing gets very confused. If you do not remember while you are
writing, it may seem confused to others but actually it is clear and
eventually that clarity will be clear, that is what a master-piece is,
but if you remember while you are writing it will seem clear at the
time to any one but the clarity will go out of it that is what a
master-piece is not.
All this sounds awfully complicated but it is not
complicated at all, it is just what happens. Any of you when you write
you try to remember what you are about to write and you will see
immediately how lifeless the writing becomes that is why expository
writing is so dull because it is all remembered, that is why
illustration is so dull because you remember what somebody looked like
and you make your illustration look like it. The minute your memory
functions while you are doing anything it may be very popular but
actually it is dull. And that is what a master-piece is not, it may be
unwelcome but it is never dull.
And so then why are there so few of them. There
are so few of them because mostly people live in identity and memory
that is when they think. They know they are they because their little
dog knows them, and so they are not an entity but an identity. And
being so memory is necessary to make them exist and so they cannot
create master-pieces. It has been said of geniuses that they are
eternally young. I once said what is the use of being a boy if you are
going to grow up to be a man, the boy and the man have nothing to do
with each other, except in respect to memory and identity, and if they
have anything to do with each other in respect to memory and identity
then they will never produce a master-piece. Do you do you understand
well it really does not make much difference because after all
master-pieces are what they are and the reason why is that there are
very few of them. The reason why is any of you try it just not to be
you are you because your little dog knows you. The second you are you
because your little dog knows you you cannot make a masterpiece and
that is all of that.
It is not extremely difficult not to have
identity but it is extremely difficult the knowing not having identity.
One might say it is impossible but that it is not impossible is proved
by the existence of master-pieces which are just that. They are knowing
that there is no identity and producing while identity is not.
That is what a master-piece is.
And so we do know what a master-piece is and we
also know why there are so few of them. Everything is against them.
Everything that makes life go on makes identity and everything that
makes identity is of necessity a necessity. And the pleasures of life
as well as the necessities help the necessity of identity. The
pleasures that are soothing all have to do with identity and the
pleasures that are exciting all have to do with identity and moreover
there is all the pride and vanity which play about master-pieces as
well as about every one and these too all have to do with identity, and
so naturally it is natural that there is more identity that one knows
about than anything else one knows about and the worst of all is that
the only thing that any one thinks about is identity and thinking is
something that does so nearly need to be memory and if it is then of
course it has nothing to do with a master-piece.
But what can a master-piece be about mostly it is
about identity and all it does and in being so it must not have any. I
was just thinking about anything and in thinking about anything I saw
something. In seeing that thing shall we see it without it turning into
identity, the moment is not a moment and the sight is not the thing
seen and yet it is. Moments are not important because of course
master-pieces have no more time than they have identity although time
like identity is what they concern themselves about of course that is
what they do concern themselves about.
Once when one has said what one says it is not
true or too true. That is what is the trouble with time. That is what
makes what women say truer than what men say. That is undoubtedly what
is the trouble with time and always in its relation to master-pieces. I
once said that nothing could bother me more than the way a thing goes
dead once it has been said. And if it does it it is because of there
being this trouble about time.
Time is very important in connection with
master-pieces, of course it makes identity time does make identity and
identity does stop the creation of master-pieces. But time does
something by itself to interfere with the creation of masterpieces as
well as being part of what makes identity. If you do not keep
remembering yourself you have no identity and if you have no time you
do not keep remembering yourself and as you remember yourself you do
not create anybody can and does know that.
Think about how you create if you do create you
do not remember yourself as you do create. And yet time and identity is
what you tell about as you create only while you create they do not
exist. That is really what it is.
And do you create yes if you exist but time and
identity do not exist. We live in time and identity but as we are we do
not know time and identity everybody knows that quite simply. It is so
simple that anybody does know that. But to know what one knows is
frightening to live what one lives is soothing and though everybody
likes to be frightened what they really have to have is soothing and so
the master-pieces are so few not that the master-pieces themselves are
frightening no of course not because if the creator of the master-piece
is frightened then he does not exist without the memory of time and
identity, and insofar as he is that then he is frightened and insofar
as he is frightened the master-piece does not exist, it looks like it
and it feels like it, but the memory of the fright destroys it as a
master-piece. Robinson Crusoe and the footstep of the man Friday is one
of the most perfect examples of the non-existence of time and identity
which makes a master-piece. I hope you do see what I mean but any way
everybody who knows about Robinson Crusoe and the footstep of Friday
knows that that is true. There is no time and identity in the way it
happened and that is why there is no fright.
And so there are very few master-pieces of course
there are very few master-pieces because to be able to know that is not
to have identity and time but not to mind talking as if there was
because it does not interfere with anything and to go on being not as
if there were no time and identity but as if there were and at the same
time existing without time and identity is so very simple that it is
difficult to have many who are that. And of course that is what a
master-piece is and that is why there are so few of them and anybody
really anybody can know that.
What is the use of being a boy if you are going
to grow up to be a man. And what is the use there is no use from the
standpoint of master-pieces there is no use. Anybody can really know
that.
There is really no use in being a boy if you are
going to grow up to be a man because then man and boy you can be
certain that that is continuing and a master-piece does not continue it
is as it is but it does not continue. It is very interesting that no
one is content with being a man and boy but he must also be a son and a
father and the fact that they all die has something to do with time but
it has nothing to do with a master-piece. The word timely as used in
our speech is very interesting but you can any one can see that it has
nothing to do with master-pieces we all readily know that. The word
timely tells that master-pieces have nothing to do with time.
It is very interesting to have it be inside one
that never as you know yourself you know yourself without looking and
feeling and looking and feeling make it be that you are some one you
have seen. If you have seen any one you know them as you see them
whether it is yourself or any other one and so the identity consists in
recognition and in recognising you lose identity because after all
nobody looks as they look like, they do not look like that we all know
that of ourselves and of any one. And therefore in every way it is a
trouble and so you write anybody does write to confirm what any one is
and the more one does the more one looks like what one was and in being
so identity is made more so and that identity is not what any one can
have as a thing to be but as a thing to see. And it being a thing to
see no master-piece can see what it can see if it does then it is
timely and as it is timely it is not a master-piece.
There are so many things to say. If there was no
identity no one could be governed, but everybody is governed by
everybody and that is why they make no master-pieces, and also why
governing has nothing to do with master-pieces it has completely to do
with identity but it has nothing to do with master-pieces. And that is
why governing is occupying but not interesting, governments are
occupying but not interesting because master-pieces are exactly what
they are not.
There is another thing to say. When you are
writing before there is an audience anything written is as important as
any other thing and you cherish anything and everything that you have
written. After the audience begins, naturally they create something
that is they create you, and so not everything is so important,
something is more important than another thing, which was not true when
you were you that is when you were not you as your little dog knows
you.
And so there we are and there is so much to say
but anyway I do not say that there is no doubt that master-pieces are
master-pieces in that way and there are very few of them.
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