If I Told Him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso

Gertrude Stein is a central figure of both American and European Modernism. A poet, novelist, and champion of the avant garde, Stein is perhaps best known for her Saturday evening Paris salon, where she hosted Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Ernest Hemingway, and other important figures. Stein encouraged these Modernist artists to break with artistic tradition. Stein herself wrote prose and poetry inspired by the Modernist visual aesthetic. Her works contain sharp, repetitive, and often nonsensical juxtapositions that aim to reveal an object, place, or person. Like Picasso’s cubist period paintings, in which he aimed to show many facets of his subject at once, Stein’s poetry is often enigmatic.

Some of Stein’s most famous works are inspired by her Paris salons. In 1909, six years after moving to Paris and three years after Picasso painted her portrait, Stein wrote a small collection of literary portraits. These portraits depicted painters such as Picasso, Matisse, and Paul Cezanne. In each portrait, Stein replicates the painter’s visual style through language. Stein returned to the literary portrait genre in 1923 and wrote “If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso.” The poem, published in 1924, is representative of Stein’s repetitive poetic style and emblematic of her place in the center of the Modernist movement.

Poet Biography

Gertrude Stein was born on February 3, 1874, in Pennsylvania. Stein was the youngest of five children born to Daniel and Amelia Stein, upper-middle-class Jewish-German immigrants. Steins parents spoke English and German at home and hired governesses and tutors to teach their children. The Stein family moved to Vienna, Austria, and then to Paris, France, when Stein was three years old. After a year in Europe, the family returned to America and settled in Oakland, California.

Stein’s mother died when Stein was 14 years old, and her father died three years later. Michael, Stein’s eldest brother, moved the family to San Francisco while making plans for Stein and her sister Bertha to move to Baltimore to be with their mother’s family. While in Baltimore, Stein met Claribel and Etta Cone. These two sisters held Saturday evening salons, or cultural gatherings, like those that Stein would later hold in Paris.

Between 1893 and 1897, Stein attended Radcliffe College, then an all-female annex of Harvard University. There, Stein studied under psychologist William James and experimented with automatic writing and motor automatism. James was one of Stein’s strongest advocates during her time at Radcliffe and encouraged her to pursue medical school. Stein graduated magna cum laude from Radcliffe in 1898. During her time at Radcliffe, Stein witnessed a relationship between two women, which helped to awaken her sexual orientation toward women.

Stein and her older brother Leo moved to Paris in 1903. Stein soon became a central figure in the Parisian art scene through her Saturday salons, which attracted upcoming artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Ernest Hemingway. In 1906, Picasso painted his famous Portrait of Gertrude Stein and gifted it to Stein. Inspired by the aesthetic of Modernist painting, Stein started publishing her writings in 1909 with works such as the semi-autobiographical Three Lives and her first literary portrait of Picasso. Stein attempted another literary portrait of Picasso in 1924, with “If I Told Him: a Completed Portrait of Picasso.”

Leo moved away from Stein’s Paris apartment in 1914, the same year Stein published her controversial poetry collection Tender Buttons. Shortly afterward, Alice B. Toklas, Stein’s life partner whom she met in 1907, moved into the apartment and helped host the Saturday salons. Toklas was Stein’s editor, critic, lover, and confidant. Stein and Toklas both volunteered to drive supplies to French hospitals during World War I (1914-1918). Toklas is also the subject of Stein’s best-selling book, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, published in 1933.

Stein died in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris, on July 27, 1946, after undergoing surgery for stomach cancer. She was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery. When Toklas died in 1967, she was buried next to Stein and her name was engraved on Stein’s tombstone.

Poem Text

If I Told Him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso

           If I told him would he like it. Would he like it if I told him.            Would he like it would Napoleon would Napoleon would would he like it.

           If Napoleon if I told him if I told him if Napoleon. Would he like it if I told him if I told him if Napoleon. Would he like it if Napoleon if Napoleon if I told him. If I told him if Napoleon if Napoleon if I told him. If I told him would he like it would he like it if I told him.

           Now.

           Not now.

           And now.

           Now.

           Exactly as as kings.

           Feeling full for it.

           Exactitude as kings.

           So to beseech you as full as for it.

           Exactly or as kings.

           Shutters shut and open so do queens. Shutters shut and shutters and so shutters shut and shutters and so and so shutters and so shutters shut and so shutters shut and shutters and so. And so shutters shut and so and also. And also and so and so and also.

           Exact resemblance to exact resemblance the exact resemblance as exact resemblance, exactly as resembling, exactly resembling, exactly in resemblance exactly and resemblance. For this is so. Because.

           Now actively repeat at all, now actively repeat at all, now actively repeat at all.

           Have hold and hear, actively repeat at all.

           I judge judge.

           As a resemblance to him.

           Who comes first. Napoleon the first.

           Who comes too coming coming too, who goes there, as they go they share, who shares all, all is as all as as yet or as yet.

           Now to date now to date. Now and now and date and the date.

           Who came first Napoleon at first. Who came first Napoleon the first. Who came first, Napoleon first.

           Presently.

           Exactly do they do.

           First exactly.

           Exactly do they do.

           First exactly.

           And first exactly.

           Exactly do they do.

           And first exactly and exactly.

           And do they do.

           At first exactly and first exactly and do they do.

           The first exactly.

           And do they do.

           The first exactly.

           At first exactly.

           First as exactly.

           As first as exactly.

           Presently

           As presently.

           As as presently.

           He he he he and he and he and and he and he and he and and as and as he and as he and he. He is and as he is, and as he is and he is, he is and as he and he and as he is and he and he and and he and he.

           Can curls rob can curls quote, quotable.

           As presently.

           As exactitude.

           As trains.

           Has trains.

           Has trains.

           As trains.

           As trains.

           Presently.

           Proportions.

           Presently.

           As proportions as presently.

           Farther and whether.

           Was there was there was there what was there was there what was there was there there was there.

           Whether and in there.

           As even say so.

           One.

           I land.

           Two.

           I land.

           Three.

           The land.

           Three

           The land.

           Three.

           The land.

           Two

           I land.

           Two

           I land.

           One

           I land.

           Two

           I land.

           As a so.

           The cannot.

           A note.

           They cannot

           A float.

           They cannot.

           They dote.

           They cannot.

           They as denote.

           Miracles play.

           Play fairly.

           Play fairly well.

           A well.

           As well.

           As or as presently.

           Let me recite what history teaches. History teaches.

Stein, Gertrude. “If I Told Him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso.” 1923. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

Gertrude Stein’s “If I Told Him” begins with the speaker wondering if an unnamed male—likely Pablo Picasso—“Would [. . .] like it if I told him” (Line 1). After repeating this phrase, replacing “if I told him” with the similar-sounding word “Napoleon” (Line 2), the speaker moves through a series of affirmations and negations such as “Now. / Not now” (Lines 3-4) and “Shutters shut and open” (Line 12). These affirmations and negations are interspersed with references to “kings” (Lines 7, 9, 11) and “queens” (Line 12).

The poem moves to ideas of repetition and “Exact resemblance[s]” (Line 13), and from there to ideas of presence. While exploring presence, the speaker places particular emphasis on primacy, asking “Who came first” (Line 21) and responding with “Napoleon the first” (Line 21) and variations. The speaker then, at Line 41, repeats the words “he,” “and,” and “is” in different orders.

The speaker transitions to repeating “trains” (Line 45) and “proportions” (Line 51). After which, at Line 55, they repeat “was there,” and then begin counting to three. Each time the speaker counts, they inject either “I land” (Line 59) or “The land” (Line 63). The speaker then plays around with homophones and slant rhymes before ending the poem by stating that they will “recite what history teaches. History teaches” (Line 91).