Everybody's Autobiography (5 page)

Well we went on and I said I would go and see him which I since have done, by the way some of his early painting is very large and full of emotion, there has just been recently an exhibition of Spanish painting here and a good deal of Spanish painting done in Spain, they do do more than can be done, which carries them so far that they are not there, but certainly twentieth century painting is Spanish, they do it but it is never begun. That is what makes the painting today Spanish.

Well anyway the Dalis left and I did not see Picasso for some time and then one day I happened to go in to Rosenberg's Gallery and they were hanging a show of Braque and Rosenberg said did I want to come in and there were Picasso and Braque and we said how do you do you.

It was funny about The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, writers well I suppose it is because writers write but anyway writers did not really mind anything any one said about them, they might have minded something or liked something but since writing is writing and writers know that writing is writing they do not really suffer very much about anything that has been written. Besides writers have an endless curiosity about themselves and anything that is written about them helps to help them know something about themselves or about what anybody else says about them. Anything interests anybody who is writing but not so a painter oh no not at all. As I told Picasso the egotism of a writer is not at all the same egotism as the egotism of a painter and all the painters felt that way about The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Braque and
Marie Laurencin and Matisse they did not like it and they did not get used to it.

The first to feel that way about it was Braque or Matisse or Marie Laurencin. Matisse had pieces translated to him so did Braque, Marie Laurencin had pieces translated to her but not by me. Matisse I never saw again but Braque yes twice and Marie Laurencin once.

Henry McBride wrote to me that he had seen Matisse in New York, he said all the painters should be delighted because I had revivified them at a moment when everybody was not thinking about painting. Henry McBride wrote that as he said these words Matisse shuddered. Later on they wrote in English it was written in English in transition it never was written in French, Matisse said that Picasso was not the great painter of the period that his wife did not look like a horse and that he was certain that the omelette had been an omelette or something. Braque said that he had invented cubism, he did not say this but at any rate if what he said was so then that was so. And Marie Laurencin, Marie Laurencin is always Marie Laurencin, we had not met for many a year.

This was a long time after.

In later years perhaps it had to do with the Autobiography and how it affected me but anyway there has been a tendency to go out more and see different kinds of people. In the older days mostly they came to see me but then we began to go out to see them. I had never been to any literary salons in Paris, and now well I did not go to many of them but I did go to some.

It is natural that if anybody asks you to go anywhere, once you have the habit of going anywhere, that you go anywhere once. If you go again you go again but if you have a lot of interest in seeing anything you will go anywhere once. Anyway I will.

René Crevel used to tell us about Marie Louise Bousquet and her salon. She had all the old men and then at the same time she would have the young men. She liked the young men to upset the
old men and she liked to upset the young men to please the old men and besides she was very gay and very lively and very kind to every one and it was a literary salon and of course we had never been.

And now after the Autobiography and Bernard Faÿ had translated it and they all had read it we began to naturally be going out more to meet French literary people and one day we went to André Germain's.

André Germain is a very funny man, he is the son of the Credit Lyonnais the most important bank in France and the son of a banker is not the same as a son of a notary. In the first place he is always rich and that makes that difference and he is always careful and he always is taken care of, but he can like revolutions and he very often does. André Germain did.

That afternoon I was talking to a very pleasant man and finally he said he was Monsieur Bousquet and his wife would so want me to come. I said yes of course and he went off and telephoned and then we went. Then we went again and there we met Marie Laurencin.

Marie Laurencin had been in Paris ever since the war was over, and sometimes everything went well with her and sometimes everything did not go so well but she always went on pretty well. She was not one of the painters who made an extraordinarily large amount of money during the period that was called the epoch roughly from twenty-three to thirty-three she made less then than any of them and finally she took to teaching and all her pupils found her very amusing. She had grown stout by then but not too stout to be amusing. The French women always used to say a woman's silhouette should change every ten years. It should not grow less it should grow more and mostly it does. Marie Laurencin's had but it made her just that more pleasing. She used to play the harmonium and René Crevel and all the others described her doing so and it was very pleasing. Her pupils later were pleased
that when they could not draw a foot she would tell them that she herself when she could not do anything always did it in profile, that was an easier way to do everything.

We had met from time to time not often but from time to time during this period, always by accident and we were always pleased to see each other and had embraced each other and said Chère Gertrude and Chère Marie, and now we once again met accidentally. I knew that Marie had not been pleased that I had spoken of all of them and of the old days but then I knew painters were like that so when we met there at Marie Louise's salon we embraced as we had always done and then she told me just how she felt about everything that I had done and this is what she said.

She said of course no painter could be pleased the past of a painter was not a past because a painter lived in what he saw and he could not see his past and if his past was not his past then it was nobody's past and so nobody could say what that past was. And Apollinaire belonged to the painters they had all loved him and as they had all loved him nobody could describe him nobody could describe anybody whom all the painters had loved because the painters could no longer see him and Picasso had no past because he had a son and if one had a son one had no past and so nobody could dare to describe anything and that well that was the way she felt about it and we could embrace again but that was the way it was and it was that way and that is what she had to say.

It was interesting, she stated what they felt they the men could not say this thing because as they said it it would have sounded foolish to them but that is the way they did feel, I imagine Marie Laurencin was right painters feel that way about anything and as painters they are right that is the way they should feel about anything.

After all anybody creating anything has to have it as a present thing, the writer can include a great deal into that present thing
and make it all present 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 very
pale 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 whether somebody can paint, don't he an ass I said, Braque spoke up, a painter can write
he said I have written all my life, well I said I only saw one thing of yours that was written and that in a language that you cannot understand and I did not think much of it that is all I can say, and he said but that I did not write he said, oh didn't you I said well anyway you signed it I said and I have never seen any other writing of yours so you do not count, and anyway we are talking about Pablo's poetry, and even Michael Angelo did not make much of a success of it. Rosenberg the dealer murmured although nobody heard him and then there was Fromentin. You see I said continuing to Pablo you can't stand looking at Jean Cocteau's drawings, it does something to you, they are more offensive than drawings that are just bad drawings now that's the way it is with your poetry it is more offensive than just bad poetry I do not know why but it just is, somebody who can really do something very well when he does something else which he cannot do and in which he cannot live it is particularly repellent, now you I said to him, you never read a book in your life that was not written by a friend and then not then and you never had any feelings about any words, words annoy you more than they do anything else so how can you write you know better you yourself know better, well he said getting truculent, you yourself always said I was an extraordinary person well then an extraordinary person can do anything, ah I said catching him by the lapels of his coat and shaking him, you are extraordinary within your limits but your limits are extraordinarily there and I said shaking him hard, you know it, you know it as well as I know it, it is all right you are doing this to get rid of everything that has been too much for you all right all right go on doing it but don't go on trying to make me tell you it is poetry and I shook him again, well he said supposing I do know it, what will I do, what will you do said I and I kissed him, you will go on until you are more cheerful or less dismal and then you will, yes he said, and then you will paint a very beautiful picture and then more of them, and I kissed him again, yes said he.

Rosenberg went out with me, oh thank you thank you, he said, he must paint again oh thank you thank you said he.

I did not see him often again practically not. He was going out and staying out all evening until the morning and drinking Vichy water and then he went away with his dog to Cannes and we went away for six months to Bilignin but before that he did have a show of the pictures he had painted before he stopped painting and it was a great success the show and he said he was not going to commence painting but he did not talk much about poetry or anything and as I said he went away with no one but his dog an Airedale terrier called Elf which he had once bought in Switzerland.

What was the effect upon me of the Autobiography