If I Told Him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1924

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Art’s Ability to Capture a Likeness

Stein’s main concern in “If I Told Him” is art’s ability—or lack thereof—to capture a likeness. This concern is primarily focused on the visual arts and its attempts to depict individuals in portraits. But Stein extends her focus to larger questions about communication and the subjective nature of experience. Similar to how viewers can easily misunderstand an abstract painting, artists too are prone to perceptual errors. Stein highlights this potential for error by setting the poem in the present tense, thereby making the portrait exist only in each moment (See: Poem Analysis). If an object can only be experienced in each present moment, it is impossible to understand it objectively. Instead, it can only be understood through each subjective impression.

Throughout the poem, Stein struggles with this problem of subjectivity and her own impulse to create an exact resemblance. The clearest instance of this struggle is after Stein’s speaker provides various understandings of what an exact resemblance is. In Line 13, the speaker strips this understanding of representation down to its constituent words. Unable to give explanation or justification for the long history of attempting exact resemblances, the speaker ends the line simply stating “For this is so. Because” (Line 13). This final statement mirrors the kind of explanation given when people do not understand the drive behind their actions but are nevertheless compelled to do them merely because it is a thing that is done. The same line’s opening points toward the fundamental absurdity of what an exact resemblance is supposed to be. If you compare “Exact resemblance to exact resemblance” (Line 13), they need to be identical. Otherwise, neither are exact.

The Connection Between Visual and Literary Arts

“If I Told Him” participates in the tradition of Western visual arts far more than it does in the tradition of Western literature. The poem’s form—particularly its emphasis on non-hierarchical space—creates an experience similar to looking at a canvas where all of the artist’s subjects are presented at once (See: Literary Devices).

The speaker’s disregard for conventional English grammar in lines like “Can curls rob can curls quote, quotable” (Line 42) point toward Stein’s use of language as both a visual and verbal medium. The curls represent an abstract shape like those used by visual artists to depict their subjects, while the reference to quotes suggests that Stein has not completely abandoned language’s verbal component. Instead, Stein’s poetry exists both spatially and temporally as a type of verbal collage.

Collages were essential to the early development of the Modernist visual aesthetic, and Stein’s use of similar techniques reinforces the intimate connection between visual art and her poetry. The technique, originally dubbed papier collé by early practitioners Braque and Picasso, involves assembling different forms and mediums to create a flat, fragmented whole. During the early phases of the medium, collages often consisted of newspaper clippings or printed images of significant historical figures. Collages are particularly interesting because they, by their very nature, require artists to use older visual objects to create something new. Stein’s introduction of “Napoleon” (Line 1) as a near-homophone of “if I told him” (Line 1) reflects the collage form and how it can create uniformity and balance from two otherwise unlike things.

Stein’s use of such a significant figure from the past also ties in with her interpretation of history.

Lessons and Ever-Presence of a Patriarchal History

Stein’s “If I Told Him” engages with the complex relationship between past and present. In part, the poem navigates this relationship through the use of collage-like techniques and principles which place the past and present together in constant juxtaposition. One of the most prominent ideas provoked through Stein’s use of juxtaposition relates to patriarchal history’s continued influence on the present.

The subversion of traditional portraiture that Stein explores in the poem has intimate ties to the history of Western patriarchy. Portraits were a significant way for important male lineages to communicate and demonstrate their power and history. Males from influential households were often painted from a very early age due to the historical importance of a patriarchal line. Like portraits of Napoleon (See: Symbols & Motifs), these portraits of male heads of household exaggerated certain desirable features while still maintaining a recognizable resemblance. Portraits of women, by contrast, were often extremely idealized and unrecognizable as their subjects.

Any attempt at portraiture—especially one that references Napoleon and his historical importance—also engages with this patrilineal history. The poem’s last line, "Let me recite what history teaches. History teaches” (Line 91), feeds into this idea. History and its lessons merely repeat themselves without consideration or development, much in the same way that family portraits repeat the same motifs of patriarchal rule. History, in this sense, is the story of one self-similar man after another, and Stein is acutely aware of how visual art perpetuates this idea of history. Stein’s speaker both articulates and makes fun of this idea when she turns a similar procession of male pronouns into laughter: “He he he he and he and he and and he and he and he” (Line 41).