22 pages • 44 minutes read

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

Symbols & Motifs

Exact Resemblances

Exact resemblances, in “If I Told Him,” point toward a larger trend in the history of literary and visual arts towards mimesis. Mimetic art, as described at the beginning of the Western tradition by Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, aimed to correspond with physical reality. This aim resulted in an emphasis on “proportion” (Line 53) and “Exact resemblance” (Line 13) between the art and its subject. In many Western conceptions of art that build upon the Greek tradition, resemblance stood as the model for art’s capacity to capture beauty and truth. This is particularly true of poetry and visual arts.

Stein engages with this idea throughout “If I Told Him,” and presents a non-linear argument that such mimetic ideals are impossible (See: Poem Analysis). This criticism, however, is complicated by the fact that it exists within Stein’s own attempt at a realistic depiction, albeit through abstract means.

Napoleon

Along with the related “queens” (Line 12) and “kings” (Lines 7, 9, 11), Napoleon acts as one of the poem’s few straight-forward symbols. Napoleon appears as a near-homophone of “if I told him” (Line 1), and as a representation of both primacy and history’s constant presence: “Who came first Napoleon at first. Who came first Napoleon the first” (Line 21). What is perhaps more interesting, particularly in a poem that purports to depict Pablo Picasso, is that “Napoleon” is the work’s only proper noun. Napoleon Bonaparte, otherwise known as “Napoleon the first” (Line 21), serves as Picasso’s primary character reference.

Picasso and Napoleon fit together in three main ways. First, both Napoleon and Picasso were social upstarts who came to prominence by challenging the existing hierarchy. Napoleon did this through his seminal role in the French Revolution (1789-1799) that culminated in the death of Louis XVI, then king of France. Picasso had a similar effect on the art world, spearheading the Modernist movement in the early 1900s and dethroning traditional representational art. Secondly, Picasso and Napoleon both turned away from realistic art. Napoleon was famously short, and artists tended to depict him as larger than he actually was in an attempt to show the intangible aspects of him lost in a strict representation. Napoleon, thirdly, was a tyrant who mistreated women later in his life. Stein uses this aspect of Napoleon to navigate and explore her own complicated feelings about Picasso, who demonstrated similar traits.

Calls to the Present

One of the most significant motifs in “If I Told Him” surrounds the complex relationship between the new and the traditional. As a way through these ideas, Stein places particular emphasis on the connection between historical and contemporary life (See: Themes). Without the history of Western art and poetry, artists like Stein and Picasso would have nothing to intentionally deviate from. Rather than simply ignore the vast history behind her and create something new, Stein envisions the contemporary, present moment as containing what precedes it.

The speaker’s constant refocusing on the present moment, such as when they say “Now” (Lines 3, 6) or “Presently” (Lines 22, 38, 50, 52), does not attempt to escape history but understand it as a dynamic aspect of the present moment. In this way, the speaker’s calls to the present demonstrate that history is, like Picasso’s portrait or all of subjective experience, constantly changing and reinterpreted from moment to moment.