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Context N°8
With John Beer, Robert Burton, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Giles Gordon, Eugene Hayworth, Christine Hume, Jim Knipfel, Ben Marcus, Harry Mathews, Ann Quin, Francois Rabelais, Gilbert Sorrentino, Gertrude Stein, John Taylor, Curtis White
Context From "Composition as Explanation" Gertrude Stein
There is singularly nothing that makes a
difference a difference in beginning and in the middle and in ending
except that each generation has something different at which they are
all looking. By this I mean so simply that anybody knows it that
composition is the difference which makes each and all of them then
different from other generations and this is what makes everything
different otherwise they are all alike and everybody knows it because
everybody says it. It is very likely that nearly every one has
been very nearly certain that something that is interesting is
interesting them. Can they and do they. It is very interesting that
nothing inside in them, that is when you consider the very long history
of how every one ever acted or has felt, it is very interesting that
nothing inside in them in all of them makes it connectedly different.
By this I mean this. The only thing that is different from one time to
another is what is seen and what is seen depends upon how everybody is
doing everything. This makes the thing we are looking at very different
and this makes what those describe it make of it, it makes a
composition, it confuses, it shows, it is, it looks, it likes it as it
is, and this makes what is seen as it is seen. Nothing changes from
generation to generation except the thing seen and that makes a
composition. Lord Grey remarked that when the generals before the war
talked about the war they talked about it as a nineteenth-century war
although to be fought with twentieth-century weapons. That is because
war is a thing that decides how it is to be done when it is to be done.
It is prepared and to that degree it is like all academies it is not a
thing made by being made it is a thing prepared. Writing and painting
and all that, is like that, for those who occupy themselves with it and
don’t make it as it is made. Now the few who make it as it is made, and
it is to be remarked that the most decided of them usually are prepared
just as the world around them is preparing, do it in this way and so I
if you do not mind I will tell you how it happens. Naturally one does
not know how it happened until it is well over beginning happening. To
come back to the part that the only thing that is different is what is
seen when it seems to be being seen, in other words, composition and
time sense. No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the
particular variety of creating his time is the one that his
contemporaries who also are creating their own time refuse to accept.
And they refuse to accept it for a very simple reason and that is that
they do not have to accept it for any reason. They themselves that is
everybody in their entering the modern composition and they do enter
it, if they do not enter it they are not so to speak in it they are out
of it and so they do enter it; but in as you may say the
non-competitive efforts where if you are not in it nothing is lost
except nothing at all except what is not had, there are naturally all
the refusals, and the things refused are only important if unexpectedly
somebody happens to need them. In the case of the arts it is very
definite. Those who are creating the modern composition authentically
are naturally only of importance when they are dead because by that
time the modern composition having become past is classified and the
description of it is classical. That is the reason why the creator of
the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic,
there is hardly a moment in between and it is really too bad very much
too bad naturally for the creator but also very much too bad for the
enjoyer, they all really would enjoy the created so much better just
after it has been made than when it is already a classic, but it is
perfectly simple that there is no reason why the contemporary should
see, because it would not make any difference as they lead their lives
in the new composition anyway, and as every one is naturally indolent
why naturally they don’t see. For this reason as in quoting Lord Grey
it is quite certain that nations not actively threatened are at least
several generations behind themselves militarily so aesthetically they
are more than several generations behind themselves and it is very much
too bad, it is so very much more exciting and satisfactory for
everybody if one can have contemporaries, if all one’s contemporaries
could be one’s contemporaries. There is almost not an interval. For
a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause
almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and
literature the rapidity of the change is always startling. Now the only
difficulty with the volte-face concerning the arts is this.
When the acceptance comes, by that acceptance the thing created becomes
a classic. It is a natural phenomena a rather extraordinary natural
phenomena that a thing accepted becomes a classic. And what is the
characteristic quality of a classic. The characteristic quality of a
classic is that it is beautiful. Now of course it is perfectly true
that a more or less first rate work of art is beautiful but the trouble
is that when that first rate work of art becomes a classic because it
is accepted the only thing that is important from then on to the
majority of the acceptors the enormous majority, the most intelligent
majority of the acceptors is that it is so wonderfully beautiful. Of
course it is wonderfully beautiful, only when it is still a thing
irritating annoying stimulating then all quality of beauty is denied to
it. Of course it is beautiful but first all beauty in it is
denied and then all the beauty of it is accepted. If every one were not
so indolent they would realize that beauty is beauty even when it is
irritating and stimulating not only when it is accepted and classic. Of
course it is extremely difficult nothing more so than to remember back
to its not being beautiful once it has become beautiful. This makes it
so much more difficult to realize its beauty when the work is being
refused and prevents every one from realizing that they were convinced
that beauty was denied, once the work is accepted. Automatically with
the acceptance of the time sense comes the recognition of the beauty
and once the beauty is accepted the beauty never fails any one. Beginning again and again is a natural thing even when there is a series. Beginning again and again and again explaining composition and time is a natural thing. It
is understood by this time that everything is the same except
composition and time, composition and the time of the composition and
the time in the composition. Everything is the same except
composition and as the composition is different and always going to be
different everything is not the same. Everything is not the same as the
time when of the composition and the time in the composition is
different. The composition is different, that is certain. The
composition is the thing seen by every one living in the living that
they are doing, they are the composing of the composition that at the
time they are living is the composition of the time in which they are
living. It is that that makes living a thing they are doing. Nothing
else is different, of that almost any one can be certain. The time when
and the time of and the time in that composition is the natural
phenomena of that composition and of that perhaps every one can be
certain. No one thinks these things when they are making when
they are creating what is the composition, naturally no one thinks,
that is no one formulates until what is to be formulated has been made. Composition is not there, it is going to be there and we are here. This is some time ago for us naturally. The
only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen
and what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing everything. This
makes the thing we are looking at very different and this makes what
those who describe it make of it, it makes a composition, it confuses,
it shows, it is, it looks, it likes it as it is, and this makes what is
seen as it is seen. Nothing changes from generation to generation
except the thing seen and that makes a composition. Now the few
who make writing as it is made and it is to be remarked that the most
decided of them are those that are prepared by preparing, are prepared
just as the world around them is prepared and is preparing to do it in
this way and so if you do not mind I will again tell you how it
happens. Naturally one does not know how it happened until it is well
over beginning happening. Each period of living differs from
any other period of living not in the way life is but in the way life
is conducted and that authentically speaking is composition. After life
has been conducted in a certain way everybody knows it but nobody knows
it, little by little, nobody knows it as long as nobody knows it. Any
one creating the composition in the arts does not know it either, they
are conducting life and that makes their composition what it is, it
makes their work compose as it does. Their influence and their
influences are the same as that of all of their contemporaries only it
must always be remembered that the analogy is not obvious until as I
say the composition of a time has become so pronounced that it is past
and the artistic composition of it is a classic. |

