—for Gertrude Stein
Begin in singing.
Chapter One
Rose.
A Longer Chapter
A word whispered. Called through green. In the years she was growing and lilting hills sung in the night and in the day and in every possible way over water rose the first word, the world. Was I loving you I was loving you even then.
One word. Rose
To Be Sung
Urgently sweetly, with bliss, and sometimes with desperation
Chapter Bliss
Rose.
Chapter Wish
Rose. And Chapter hope …
And this is what bliss is this.
Rose to be sung against the sky and diamonds night.
Red Roses
A cool red rose and pink cut pink, a collapse and a solid hole, a little less hot
In direct sensuous relationship to the world.
Chapter Early and Late Please
I found myself plunged into a vortex of words, burning words, cleansing words, liberating words, and the words were ours and it was enough that we held them in our hands.
Chapter
Sincerely Beverly Nichols Avery Hopwood Allan Michaels and Renee Felicity also how many apricots are there to a pound.
And this is what bliss this is bliss this is bliss.
They found themselves happier than anyone who was alive then.
Chapter Saint
Saint Two and Saint Ten
Saint Tribute
Saint Struggle
Chapter Grace
Chapter Faith
Chapter Example
Saint Admiration
Our Lady of Derision
Saint Deadline—not finished and not finishable. I like thinking of this.
How many saints are there in it? Saints we have seen so far: Tributes are there in it? A Very Valentine—for Gertrude Stein.
Colors are there in it?
A Novel of Thank you. A Basket.
Saint Example and Saint Admiration
Thank you, how many, audacity religiosity beauty and purity your ease your inability to compromise ever thank you
very much.
Your freedoms Saint Derision, Chapter One
Do prepare to say
Portraits and Prayers, do prepare
to say that you have
prepared portraits and prayers and
that you prepare and that I prepare
Yes you do.
A vortex of words very much.
For your irreverence and desire
extremity courage and good humorous
subversiveness
splendorous
Yes you do.
For Your Beauteous
Language is a rose, a woman, constantly in the process of opening
thank you
your freedoms. Released at last from the prisons of syntax. Story.
For your—
Choose wonder.
Choose Wonder
Apples and figs burn.
They burn.
She had wished windows and she had wished.
A novel of thank you and not about it chapter one.
Rose, rose, rose.
Rose whispered, prayed over the child love love. Please please
sweet sweet sweet
Chapter
Susie Asado
Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea
written for a particularly irresistible flamenco dancer
Please be please be get, please get wet, wet naturally, naturally in weather.
Chapter Alice
To not emerge already constructed, already decided, preordained.
Thank you
The difference is spreading.
very much
The permission.
I like the feeling of words doing as they want to do and as they have to do.
I like the feeling.
very much.
The main intention of the novel was to say thank you.
A novel of thank you. In chapters and saints
And it is easily understood that they have permission.
Without telling what happened … to make the play the essence of what happened.
A thing you all know is that in the three novels written in this generation that are important things written in this generation, there is, in none of them a story. There is none in Proust in The Making of Americans or in Ulysses.
Once upon a time they came every day and did we miss them we did. And did they once upon a time did they come every day. Once upon a time they did not come every day they never had they never did they did not come every day any day.
A novel of thank you and not about it.
A story of arrangements
When it is repeated or Bernadine’s revenge. When it is repeated is another subject. How it is repeated is another subject. If it is repeated is another subject. If it is repeated or the revenge of Bernadine is another subject.
inner thought, silent fancies
There is one thing that is certain, and nobody realized it in the 1914-19 war, they talked about it but they did not realize it but now everybody knows it everybody that the one thing that everybody wants is to be free, to talk to eat to drink to walk to think, to please, to wish, and to do it now if now is what they want, and everybody knows it they know it anybody knows it … 1943
… not to be managed, threatened, directed, restrained, obliged, fearful, administered
multiplicity and freedom unfettered ecstatic
thank you
To begin to allow. To allow it.
I had to recapture the value of the individual word, find out what it meant and act within it.
Imagine a door.
To free oneself from convention again and again and again.
Thank you for suggesting once again. And again and again that story is elsewhere, that story must have been, been elsewhere. In every kind of other place. Thank you. Again and again. In every possible way.
Once upon a time they came every day and did we miss them we did. And did they once upon a time did they come every day. Once upon a time they did not come every day …
Chapters in the middle
So then out loud.
Everyone.
And so forth.
All and one and so forth.
By and one and so forth.
Grammar will. Grammar. Obliged.
Grammar is not grown.
Grammar means that it has to be prepared and cooked. Forget about grammar and think about potatoes.
Or gnocchi. We are touring Italy. Tuscany and Umbria a little.
Cypress cypress cypress cypress cypress pine.
Grammar is not grown.
Susan Howe, My Emily Dickinson:
To restore the original clarity of each word-skeleton both women (Gertrude Stein and Emily Dickinson) lifted the load of European literary custom. Adopting old strategies, they revived and reinvented them …
Emily Dickinson and Gertrude Stein also conducted a skillful and ironic investigation of patriarchal authority over literary history. Who polices questions of grammar, parts of speech, connection and connotation? Whose order is shut inside the structure of their sentence? What inner articulation releases the coils and complications of Saying’s assertion? In very different ways the counter-movement of these two women’s work penetrates to the indefinite limits of written communication.
No one can know the difference between why I did and why I did not.
Not that kind of novel then.
And in my own very gradual real move toward a more abstract fiction who have been the models? Woolf, Woolf, Beckett, Beckett, Woolf Woolf, Woolf, then Stein, Stein, now Stein. Stein now for some time very much. I’ve been loving you following you Chapter Gratitude. Yes for some time, time now so what about it say for example John Reed?
John Reed: She (Stein) lives and dies alone, a unique example of a strange art.
And where have you gotten your chronology from for your master narratives? And what has it cost you?
And what have you taken for legibility? And what has it cost finally?
Be nice. Try to be.
Thank you for the strangeness and the beauty. Reality is remote say it.
Imagine a door a room plenty of ice and snow also as often as they came in they went out.
And so forth …
They finally did not continue to interest themselves in description.
Chapter Derision just the other day one of The Famous Post-Modern Novelists says when asked about The Great American Writers: Oh not Gertrude Stein, no, no not Stein.
Joyce
Picasso on Joyce: He is an obscure writer all the world can understand.
Stein drains the text of psychological and mythical overtones thank you very much. She cannot be solved and thank you.
Leave me leave something to confusion.
And I thank you.
The central theme of the novel is that they were glad to see each other.
Susan Howe: In the college library I use there are two writers whose work refuses to conform to the Anglo-American literary traditions these institutions perpetuate. Emily Dickinson and Gertrude Stein are clearly among the most innovative precursors of modernist poetry and prose, yet to this day canonical criticism from Harold Bloom to Hugh Kenner persists in dropping their names and ignoring their work. Why these two pathfinders were women, why American—are questions too often lost in the penchant for biographical detail that “lovingly” muffles their voices.
A novel of thank you and not about it.
It is a much more impressive thing to any one to any one standing, that is not in action than acting or doing anything doing anything being a successive thing but being something existing. That is then the difference between narrative as it has been and narrative as it is now. And this has come to be a natural thing in a perfectly natural way that the narrative of to-day is not a narrative of succession as all writing for a good many hundreds of years has been.
A space of time filled with moving.
To want everything at once. To write everything at once.
Susan Howe: Writing was the world of each woman. In a world of exaltation of his imagination, feminine inscription seems single and sudden.
Chapter Alice, Chapter Jane, Chapter Karen, Chapter Gina.
Chapters in the middle
Notes to myself: The plays conceived as painting. To be apprehended all at once. Meditations inviting dreaming, dalliance. Yet filled with internal movement. Living in itself. Intensity and calm. Mystery and joy. Surprise, delight. Robert Wilson’s Four Saints last summer. Bliss. Joyous. Well fish.
A novel is a continual surprise.
Chapters as literary device rather than the natural division of novelistic time.
Listening to the Baltimore aunts telling the same stories over and over but each time a little differently.
Ricotta with a pear. This is a story of that in part. Don’t forget the pecorino. In part.
A novel of thank you in chapters and saints. Children and fish. Thank you for desire. Reverence and Irreverence. Repeating.
Saints I have definitely seen so far.
Saint Catherine
Saint Francis
Saint Claire definitely
I am calling from Italy to say that there is smoke coming out of my computer and she says is there still a picture when you use the battery and and I say yes and she says don’t worry it will all be OK wait until I get there. And I tell her I will meet her in the fortezza and I do, and it is.
The central theme of the novel is that they were glad to see each other.
A very valentine.
An arrangement of their being there and never having been more glad than before …
I will wait for you in the fortezza for as long as it takes.
Chapter written in the very hot sun while waiting.
Seeing Saint Catherine’s Head. (Siena)
Loving repeating is one way of being. This is now a description of such being. Loving repeating is always in children. Loving repeating is in a way earth feeling. Some children have loving repeating for little things and story-telling, some have it as a more bottom being. Slowly this comes out in them in all their children being, in their eating, playing, crying and laughing. Loving repeating is then in a way earth feeling. This is very strong in many, in children and in old age being. This is very strong in many in all ways of humorous being, this is very strong in some from their beginning to their ending.
Chapter Emily Rose and Katie Grosvenor
Again and again and again
A very valentine
How are the cats?
Thank you
Go red go red, laugh white.
Suppose a collapse in rubbed purr, in rubbed purr get.
Little sales ladies little sales ladies
Little saddles of mutton.
Little sales of leather and such
beautiful beautiful, beautiful beautiful.
Most tender buttons.
Trembling was all living, living was all loving, someone was then the other one.
Please may I have a piece of your Pecorino di Pienza thank you very much.
We have been planning a little trip to Italy in June.
Any time is the time to make a poem. The snow and sun below.
A short novel in cats
She loved her little black and white.
She loved her orange very much.
She loved her gray.
She loved her brown stripes.
But she loved her gray the most. Fauve.
It is because of this element of civilization that Paris has always been the home of all foreign artists, they are friendly the French, they surround you with a civilized atmosphere and they leave you inside of you completely to yourself.
An inner language
Merci beaucoup.
How many more than two are there. (I miss gossiping with you)
And I was once or twice in Vence and loving you very much.
Chapter J and Z.
And on the rue de Fleurus.
The Germans were getting nearer and nearer Paris and the last day Gertrude Stein could not leave her room, she sat and mourned. She loved Paris, she thought neither of manuscripts nor of pictures, she thought only of Paris and she was desolate. I came up to her room, I called out, it is all right Paris is saved, the Germans are in retreat. She turned away and said, don’t tell me these things. But it’s true, I said, it is true. And then we wept together.
And then we wept.
How muffled the world suddenly—as if walking through snow
to the last village of Zenka, perched on a hill
where forever resides, and hasn’t it been nice?
Having gone to London in the month of May and roses to say good-bye.
Already I miss you very much.
Chapter 5
And how to thank you.
It was very nearly carefully in plenty of time.
Could if a light gray and heart rending be softer could it and light gray be paler could it and light gray be paler. Not the least resemblance between that and that.
Once more. Thank you very much. Once more. Once. Twice. Once more. I shall miss you. The things we used to do and say. And how we will not get to the Lago Giacomo Puccini this time.
The patience of a saint.
Not this time.
It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing. If a bird or birds fly into the room is it good luck or bad luck we will say it is good luck.
A novel of thank you and a travel diary. With and without birds. Looking for an Agritourismo late at night. How many saints have we seen so far?
Saint Francis definitely all over the place, and Saint Claire and Saint Catherine from before.
And how many parts of saints?
Pray to the rib of the saint for strength. The leg of the saint.
It was not a mistake.
Allowed to watch composition. Witness creation. Thank you thank you.
Written in Vence on “honeymoon”: A Sonatina. Pussy said that I should wake her in an hour and a half if it didn’t rain. It is still raining what should I do.
Secrets, gossips, hopes, disappointments, household life, erotic life, artistic doubts, apologies, jokes, intimacies.
And if not the real story, then what the story was for me.
Chapter Ava.
Don’t leave anything out.
To accomplish wishes one needs one’s lover.
—for Helen P
Can we stay in Pienza one more day?
Don’t leave anything out.
This must not be put in a book.
Why not.
Because it mustn’t.
Yes sir.
Chapter
I know at least 4 or 5 Amys now.
To begin to allow. To allow it.
She was not to come again. She came and she asked and she was answered and she was not to come again not to come she was asked and she was answered and she was answered and she was asked and she was not to come again well she was not to come again. This is the first time she came she was not to come again. To reason with Bertha and Josephine and Sarah and Susan and Adela and never Anns. What is the difference between chocolate and brown and sugar and blue and cream and yellow and eggs and white. What is the difference between addition and edges and adding and baskets and needing and pleasure. It was not a mistake.
When she was and help me when she was what was she to me.
… generosity depends upon what is and what is not held out and held up and held in that way.
Allow flowers.
A basket—for Gertrude Stein. And for Alice add flowers. And some eggs.
Explain looking. Explain looking again. Alice
explain looking again.
The sound of thinking and the sound of thought. A piece of thinking. Don’t forget to add flowers. First poppies and broom and then after awhile sunflowers come out. The yellow hovering.
Every color of saint.
Blue saints green saints yellow saints black saints and red angels.
A back and forth. A basket.
We need transference of letters and parcels and doubts and dates and easier.
A novel is useful in more ways than one.
Someday we will be rich. You’ll see and then we will spend money and buy everything a dog a Ford letter paper, furs, a hat, kinds of purse.
For Helen, touring Italy. And we will buy a villa someday or a farm if that is what you really want I love you. A Florentine chandelier and a Venetian one. Two more Maine coons perhaps (another gray, another one with stripes) and time to write and all the time in the world to write. All the time in the world to write. Maybe another orange one.
What would you buy?
Time to write. Time to write. I would buy all the time in the world to write. I’d quit my job. Because it takes all the time.
One wish: | 1) time to write. |
| 2) time to write. |
And after that.
time to write.
Stretches and stretches of happiness.
More time.
Left.
Left.
Pretty.
I
had
pretty
a
good
pretty.
I often think about another.
Who need never be mentioned.
Lifting belly high.
That is what I adore always more and more.
Some Amys in that way and some not.
A basket and so forth and what got lost.
Delirious and looking up from lip and clitoris and mound she sees the city of Paris lit up. Trembling was all living, living was all loving, someone was then the other one. The women walk the streets syntactic. Sing Paris Paris Paris Paris. A large white poodle dog and walking down the boulevard.
Chapter Pussycat
Touring through that part of Italy. Her meals: written in a notebook—penne with funghi, game hen with Norcia sauce, tiramisu.
She came to be happier than anyone else who was living then.
She came to be happier … In the gorgeous city of Paris. Poodle dog. Yellow flowered hat. Alice Babette.
10,000 paradises
Everyone dies. Say it enough times. Everyone dies everyone dies
everyone even you everyone
with and without cats
with and without baskets
dies 10,000 kinds of thank you and paradise
First religion | She saw me and she said two |
will stay and two will go away, two will go away and two | |
will stay and two will stay and two will go away. Can you | |
go away so soon. | |
First religion | First religion here. |
Second religion | Second religion here |
Third religion | Third religion here. |
Fourth religion | Fourth religion being here and having her and |
she having been and she is perfection. |
|
Third religion | Third religion being here or is |
she perfection third religion is here and she is perfection. |
|
Third religion or is she perfection. |
We have left the cathedral behind us. Saints seen so far:
How many saints are there in it?
Beginning again and again is a natural thing … Beginning again and again and again explaining composition and time is a natural thing
A Little Novel
Any and everyone is an authority.
Welcome.
Does it make any difference who comes first.
What Does She See When She Shuts her Eyes, a novel
So the characters in this novel are the ones who walk in the fields and lose their dog and the ones who do not walk in the fields because they have no cows.
When she shuts her eyes she sees the green things among which she has been working and then as she falls asleep she sees them a little differently.
When she shuts her eyes … Everyone dies. I can’t cope. A gun would be nice. What’s wrong with me? Please say it soon. Everyone dies.
You have cancer.
Why do you lie?
Everyone.
A Short Novel
I feel useless.
Is it in any particular corner?
What does she see when she shuts her eyes a novel.
Paradise. What does she see?
And how to thank you.
You changed my life.
And how to thank you.
It was nearly very carefully in plenty of time.
This is the time to do or say so.
Chapter
Not useless. Not a bird. Not a cherry. Not a third. Not useless. Not at all. Not elite. Not small.
It’s useless.
So the characters in this novel are looking out the window of a green Fiat touring Italy and one of them is thinking about Gertrude Stein and reading her out loud in between cypress cypress cypress and the map and the guidebook and I feel useless.
Zenka.
The month of June and Defiance due and The Bay of Angels excerpt due and The novel of thank you due for Martine. And that perfectly awful woman Mattie Garrett at the Tuscany Writing Workshop and the computer up in smoke.
Oh that perfectly awful Mattie Garrett, she thought turning toward the dark window, has spoiled all of our fun!
The fax this afternoon. Useless.
Blue birds on a black hat. And as it happens. Black birds on a blue hat. And as it happens. Blue birds on a blue hat. And not next to as it happens. Black bird and a black hat.
Chapters 84 and almost 85, but not quite
People die in and out of order
in easy and hard ways people die
people die out of—
The things we used to do
sweetness of the yellow broom.
even though you are 84
even though everyone must
everyone has got to
in or out of order
drinking vieux marc, a trip to the sea
as if love could send you back there again
swept up, side swept, wind
like magic as if love
your beloved Dylan Thomas and Eliot your friend,
he was always kind, he lent me money, not anti-Semitic, he lent
me money, nonsense, oh such nonsense.
And Gertrude Stein
People die in 5, 6, 7 and
7, 6, 5
in the day and the night.
Afraid and not.
Happy and sad times.
And that fall how I just thought if I could make a pot-au-feu I might survive—and you looked on sadly. And you took my hand after awhile. That fall you saved my life. For the first time. Thank you.
And if I could only help you now. Somehow. I want to very much.
Elissa and Annabelle and Anatole. Dale and Julie and Suzanne and Marilyn and Monica and the French Carole
and Diana Chapmann she’s called.
Judith.
Urgent. My darling Zenka passed away this morning. She was in the nursing home. Please call. Love, Judith
Letting love to have a mother. Letting love to have letting love to have a mother letting love to have.
In plenty of time.
Rose. The first word, the first world I know.
Thank you in every possible way.
Preparing a novel and paving the way.
Catherine, Caroline, Charlotte and Celestine.
In the place of no one not yet.
Miss miss miss miss miss and gossip
When they cannot stop it altogether when they cannot stop it altogether.
Come and kiss me when you want to because if you do you have more than done that which is a satisfaction to have been most awfully obliged to have as a delight and more than that.
Thank you.
Very much very much and as much and as much and then markets, markets are open in the morning and except on Monday.
Do you think we should follow the sign for Perugia?
very much
Chapters of magic near the beginning and end (interchangeable)
Puccini is striped like the campanile but it’s all right.
Sage grows.
Very content followed by five bells.
We are very well fish.
Sage grows so let it.
Children grow.
Let them.
Ideas.
Notions of the novel
So let them.
Wild capers grow everywhere.
A tribute to Gertrude Stein and a travel diary so let it.
Roses and rosemary everywhere
For my
beautiful mother
Rose
marie
Maso
the one word
of my world my father calling across the green
Rose
Chapter Always
These days thinking of you, always, always.
Chapter Alice
who named her Rose in hope, as the century turned 31
Grandma Alice very much
If they say and it is an established fact if they say that he has gone away is there anybody to ask about it. It is so very easy to change a novel a novel can be a novel and it can be a story of the departure of Dr. Johnston it can be the story of the discovery of how after they went away nobody was as much rested as they hoped to be.
Everything that will be said will have a connection with paper and amethysts with writing and silver with buttons and books.
I am a simple girl in some ways do not want the Isle of Capri the Lago Giacomo Puccini will do. If not this time then next. Looking all over Florence for the cross that got lost.
Consider whether they would be at all interested.
It can be easily seen that a novel of elegance leaves something to be desired.
Repeat. It can be easily seen that a novel of elegance leaves something to be desired. She knew in about the middle of it. Time to write.
Let me say it here. Everything I loved or wanted or feared.
Accuse me if you like one more time of overreaching. I miss you. Love you. Want.
And time to write.
This spa water is only for drinking. And the woman makes a breaststroke through the air, for swimming Bagno Vignoni, 30 kilometers away let’s go.
In the green Fiat. Have to finish Gertrude Stein, have to finish Traveling Light—and the hills and the cypresses. Cypress, cypress, cypress, pine. Ava Klein turn over on your side.
There is never any altogether the easiest way is to leave out anything.
The whole chapter is thinking about the courage you afford and thinking out loud and the flowers and so not to be afraid. There is music in the head so sing continuously.
Chapter Rose
Who named you Carole Alice at mid-century. Thank you in every possible way.
Song of joy
And say what you need and like and want. Pleasure. A novel and you out loud. When she has been satisfied when she has been satisfied.
Begin again.
She may be coming in any moment darling.
Begin again.
Fanny irresistible.
Jenny recalled.
Henrietta as much as that.
Claribel by and by
Rose as plainly seen
Hilda for that time
Ida as not famous.
Katherine as it should have it in preference
Caroline and by this time
Maria by this arrangement Esther who can be thought of
Charlotte and finally.
She rolls the rosy aureole and pearl the world around and round. Sea pearl to pearl with her and lip she shudders honey gold and conjures—this must be Paradise—or maybe Paris. She came to be happier than anybody else who was alive then. Gorgeous lilting rosy pearl. She rides the women world syntactic. Sings Paris Paris Paris Paris. And they walk the poodle Basket.
Thank you.
The way it looks exactly like it.
The way you can get it to look exactly like you see and feel. Almost exactly. Thank you most of all for that.
Who in this world is luckier than I?
A very valentine—for Gertrude Stein.
Little by little and more and more I begin to understand you very much.
A novel and the future of the novel and the rest and the rest is diamonds.
Father calling to Mother, Rose across the world first word. Repeated again and again rose rose rose rose rose rose rose.
A novel of thank you and not about it.
It might be allowed
With thanks to Nicole Cooley, Keith Waldrop, John O’Brien.
Someone named Rose at mid-century named her.
In hope. 5 joyful 5 sorrowful mysteries.
Thank you in every possible way
Once more I thank you.
An arrangement of their being there and never having been more glad than before.
A list of addresses and who went to see them.
Bruschetta, crostoni, lentils with pasta, grilled lamb, tiramisu.
Spaghetti with clam sauce.
Come and kiss me when you want to.
We are very well fish
Lavishly well fish
And Alice Babette, petite crevette. On the rue Christine after the war. Adore. Picking flowers gentle. Rose is a rose is a rose eternal and I am I because my little dog knows me.
She wanders gorgeous key syntactic. Violet-breasted. Poodle Basket.
Third religion | Where. |
Fourth religion | Where they grow vegetables so plentifully. |
Fourth religion | If you courtesy. |
Second religion | If you hold a hat on your head. |
Third religion | If they are not told. |
Fourth religion | Across to me. |
Fourth religion | She walked across to me. |
Third religion | And what did she see. |
Second religion | What did she say to me. |
First religion | When she walked across to me. |
I found myself plunged into a vortex of words, burning words, cleansing words, liberating words, and the words were all ours and it was enough that we held them in our hands …
I shall not speak for anybody. I shall do my duty, I shall establish that mile. I shall choose wonder. Be blest.
*
Footnotes
Our Walks
Often in the evening we would walk together; I greeted at the door of 5 rue Christine by Gertrude’s staunch presence, pleasant touch of hand, well-rounded voice always ready to chuckle. Our talks and walks led us far from war paths. For generally having no axe to grind nor anyone to execute with it, we felt detached and free to wander in our own quarter where, while exercising her poodle, “Basket,” we naturally fell into thought and step. Basket, unleashed, ran ahead, a white blur, the ghost of a dog in the moonlit side streets:
Where ghosts and shadows mingle—
As lovers, lost when single,
The night’s enchantment made our conversation as light, iridescent and bouncing as soap bubbles, but as easily exploded when touched upon—so I’ll touch on none of them for you, that a bubble may remain a bubble! And perhaps we never said d’imperissables choses.
—Nathalie Barney
Sweetnotes
Their Cakes
The discovery of cakes had always been a peace time pursuit of Gertrude and Alice. Meeting them by chance at Aix-le-Bains, I enquired why they happened to be on the opposite bank of the Lac du Bourget, and was informed of a new sort of cake created in one of the villages on a mountain beyond. But first obliged to go on errands, they descended from the lofty seat of their old Ford car—Alice be-jeweled as an idol and Gertrude with the air of an Indian divinity.
She accepted her fame as a tribute, long on the way but due, and enjoyed it thoroughly. Only once, in Paris—and indeed the last time I saw her—did the recognition of a cameraman displease her, for he waylaid her just as we were entering Rumpelmayer’s patisserie. In order to satisfy the need for cake, and the photographer’s wish, she was photographed by him, through the plate-glass window, eating the chosen one.
Her meals—continued
Melon and prosciutto, artichoke risotto, grilled sausages, another tiramisu. Ravioli with truffles, fish stew, panecotta and so forth.
Please another Piero della Francesca.
And so forth
I am not striving at all but only gradually growing and becoming steadily more aware of the way things can be felt and known in words, and perhaps if I feel them and know them myself in the new ways it is enough, and if I know fully enough there will be a note of sureness and confidence that will make others know too. And when one has discovered and evolved a new form it is not the form but the fact that you are the form that is important.
I find you young writers worrying about losing your integrity and it is well you should, but a man who really loses his integrity does not know that it is gone, and nobody can wrest it from you if you really have it.
Hemingway you have a small income; you will not starve; you can work without worry and you can grow and keep this thing and it will grow with you. But he did not wish to grow that way, he wished to grow violently.
Everybody’s life is full of stories; your life is full of stories; my life is full of stories. They are very occupying, but they are not very interesting. What is interesting is the way everyone tells their stories.
Thornton Wilder: The fundamental occupation of Miss Stein’s life was not the work of art but the shaping of a theory of knowledge, a theory of time, and a theory of the passions … the formalization of a metaphysics.
Mina Loy: she swept the literary circus clear for future performances.
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.
Wassily Kandinsky, 1910: The apt use of a word (in its poetical sense), its repetition, twice, three times, or even more frequently, according to the need of the poem, will not only tend to intensify the internal structure but also bring out unsuspected spiritual properties in the word itself. Further, frequent repetition of a word (a favorite game of children, forgotten in later life) deprives the word of its external reference. Similarly, the symbolic reference of a designated object tends to be forgotten and only the sound is retained. We hear the pure sound, unconsciously perhaps, in relation to the concrete or immaterial object. But in the latter case pure sound exercises a direct impression on the soul. The soul attains to an objectless vibration, even more complicated, I might say more transcendent, than the reverberations released by the sound of a bell, a stringed instrument or a fallen board. In this direction lie the great possibilities for literature of the future.
Martin Ryerson: If you realized that she worked insistently, every day, to be published the first time by a real publisher, publishing house after she was sixty. But I wonder who will do that, who will have the insistence, you understand the obsession, the surety the purity of insistence to do that. No concessions. She used to tell me, Don’t you ever dare to make a concession. Then one walks down, down, down. There’s no end of walking down.
Acts
Curtain
Characters
Characters
Curtain
Acts
There is no one and one
Nobody has met anyone.
Curtain Can Come.
(for Zenka Bartek 1912-1997)
Curtain.
And this is
what bliss
is and
this and
this is
what
bliss is.
very much
White lights lead to red lights which indicate the exit.
Spaghetti arrabiata, spaghetti bolognese, polenta, grilled pork, escarole, spinach, ricotta, tiramisu …
Saint Francis hundreds of times, Saint Sebastian certainly, Saint Simon, Saint Claire is a big one, the head of Saint Catherine, Saint Francis is a very big one, Saint Peter and Saint John of course. Saint Bliss.
Preparing a novel prepared to stay.
And paving the way.
Thank you very much.
Chapter Rose
Even then I was loving you
very much.
End in singing.
Who goes away tonight. They all do. And so they do.