Narration (10 page)

The biographer has the same trouble, of course there is the other thing,
Vasari and Plutarch are like that, they make them up so completely that if they are not invented, they might as well be they do not really feel that anyone of the ones about whom they tell had any life except the life they are given by their telling. That can happen and when it does it is writing, it is like historical plays and historical novels which can have that thing happen that really in writing the only existing the character has is the character the writer has given to them but how can an historian who knows everything really knows everything that has really been happening how can he come to have the feeling that the only existence the man he is describing has is the one he has been giving to him. How can he have this feeling, if he cannot then he cannot have the recognition while in the processes of writing, which writing really writing must really give to the one writing. After all the historian the historian who really knows everything and an historian really does he really does how can he have the creation of some one who has no existing except that the historian who is writing has at the moment of writing and therefore has as recognition at the moment of writing being writing. The historian is bound to have with him all the audience that has known every one about whom he is writing. It is worse than the wailing of the dead soldiers in L’Aiglon there are so many auditors there have been so many auditors, and there really can only be the one that is the one, and there are so many of them there have been so many of them and how can the historian lose them how can he how can he lose any of them and how can he lose all of them and if he does not how can history be writing that is be literature. How can it. Well I am sure I do not know.

It this thing, this thing that dimly worries anyone who thinks about an historical anything which has induced every one, Mark Twain in A Yankee At King Arthur’s Court and then all that have been written since then has
made them attempt to in one way and another way try to make a thing a thing that they recognize while they are writing make it something that had no existing before that writing gave it that recognition, they tried to do this by changing something. Of course it is something to do but is it really interesting not interesting enough.

What can the historian do, well I do hope he will do something, I almost would like to be an historian myself to perhaps do something. You see that is why making it the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas made it do something, it made it be a recognition by never before that writing having it be existing. It is a natural thing to do if writing is to be writing, but after all it ought to be able to be done as history as a mystery story. I am certain so certain so more than certain that it ought to be able to be done. I know so well all the causes why it cannot be done and yet if it cannot be done cannot it be done it would be so very much more interesting than anything if it could be done even if it cannot be done.

I wish it could be done and if it could be done all these reasons for its not having been done would be of no importance because it will have been done.

That is what makes anything everything that it has been done and so perhaps history will not repeat itself and it will come to be done. Perhaps no perhaps yes anyway this is all I know just at present about how writing is written how an audience is existing how anyone telling anything is telling that thing.

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