Everybody's Autobiography by Gertrude Stein Read Free Book Online

but the painter can only include what he sees and he has so to speak only one surface and that is a flat surface which he has to see and so whether he will or not he must see it in that way. They can include as much as they can but it has to be seen, Marie Laurencin said it and she saw it and it has to be seen.
    Braque was another thing. Braque was a man who had a gift of singing and like all who sing he could mistake what he sang as being something that he had said but it is not the same thing. When I say he sang I mean he sang in paint, I do not believe he sang otherwise but he might have, he had the voice and the looks of a great baritone.
    In mistaking what he sang as something that he had said he lived his life and he was always hoping that the time would come that he could be sure that he was the one that had said what he could only sing and it never came although he sometimes felt that it had come. Like all singers he was very seductive, Juan Gris used to say of him he seduces me and then he seduces me again and I know he is just singing but he seduces me again.
    Well anyway he always had been on the point of seducing himself and Juan and Picasso and occasionally any one to believe that he was the one that had all the ideas that made cubism and modern painting. And when the Autobiography was written considerable time after there was written what he signed as written by him but it was never in French but in English and he never read or wrote English of course not and it said that there was no sense in the Autobiography because it was written by one who did not understand and who said that Picasso had invented everything. Well anyway. When I came back from America I went into Kahnweiler’s one day and somebody was hidden in the back. Who is in there I asked Kahnweiler I always like to know who is anywhere and I always ask. Braque said Kahnweiler, oh I must speak to him. I went in Braque was very old looking and he was verypale and he sat and was looking in front of him. How do you do I said to him and I shook hands with him. He shook hands but he did not get up, shaking hands in France is funny, no matter how mad you are with any one you shake hands if you are French an American or an Englishman can refuse to shake hands but a Frenchman cannot, when a hand is there it has to be shaken, and so we shook hands. I asked him how his wife was and we said a few words and then we left and I had not seen him again until I met him when they were hanging the pictures and Picasso was there. I said hello to each one and shook hands with each one and we did not look at the pictures of Braque but we began talking. I asked Pablo what he had been doing and he said he was not painting he was leading a poet’s life still and here he was with Braque who was still painting. Well I said and Picasso said well you did see Dali, sure I said but you did not come no said Pablo you see I knew you would tell him what you thought of my poetry and you would not tell me. Sure I did I said and that was easy, why said he, why I said because you see one discusses things with stupid people but not with sensible ones, you know that very well I said getting a little angry, one never discusses anything with anybody who can understand one discusses things with people who cannot understand and that is the reason I discussed with Dali and I do not discuss with you. What he said Dali cannot understand anything, of course he can’t I said you know that as well as I do, he looked a little sheepish yes I guess that is true, he said and then he got excited but you said that painters can’t write poetry, well they can’t I said, look at you, my poetry is good he said Breton says so, Breton I said Breton admires anything to which he can sign his name and you know as well as I do that a hundred years hence nobody will remember his name you know that perfectly well, oh well he muttered they say he can write, yes said I you do not take their word for