Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1913 (Special number))

SPECULATIONS

MANY roads are being broken today and along these roads conscious-
ness is pursuing truth to eternity. This is the age of communication
and the human being who is not a “ communicant ” is in the sad
plight, which the dogmatist defines as being a condition of spiritual non-
receptivity.
Some of these newly opened roads lie parallel and almost touch.
In a large studio in Paris, hung with paintings by Renoir, Matisse and
Picasso, Gertrude Stein is doing with words what Picasso is doing with
paint. She is impelling language to induce new states of consciousness and
in doing so language becomes with her a creative art rather than a mirror
of history.
In her impressionistic writing she uses familiar words to create percep-
tions, conditions, and states of being, never before quite consciously ex-
perienced. She does this by using words that appeal to her as having the
meaning that they seem to have. She has taken the English language,
and, according to many people, has misused it, or has used it roughly, un-
couthly and brutally, or madly, stupidly and hideously, but by her method
she is finding the hidden and inner nature of nature.
To present her impressions she chooses words for their inherent quality
rather than for their accepted meaning.
Her habit of working is methodical and deliberate. She always works
at night in the silence and brings all her will power to bear upon the banishing
of preconceived images. Concentrating upon the impression she has received
and which she wishes to transmit, she suspends her selective faculty, waiting
for the word or group of words that will perfectly interpret her meaning to
rise from her sub-consciousness to the surface of her mind. Then and then
only does she bring her reason to bear upon them, examining, weighing and
gauging their ability to express her impression. It is a working proof of the
Bergson theory of intuition. She does not go after words—she waits—and
lets them come to her, and they do.
It is only when the art thus pursues the artist that his production will
bear the mark of inevitability. It is only when the “elan vital” drives the
artist to the creative overflow that life surges in his production. Vitality
directed into a conscious expression is the modern definition of genius.
It is impossible to define or to describe fully any new manifestation
in aesthetics or in literature that is as recent, as near to us, as the work of
Picasso or of Gertrude Stein; the most that we can do is to suggest a little,
draw a comparison—point the way and then withdraw. To know about them
is a matter of personal experience—no one can help another through it.
First before thought must come feeling, and this is the first step toward
experience, because feeling is the beginning of knowledge. It does not
greatly matter how the first impress affects one . . . one may be shocked,

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