I would have liked to be the only one.
One is one.
If I am would I have liked to be the only one.
Yes just this.
If I am one I would have liked to be the only one which I am.
But we know that I know.
That if this has come to be one of this too to this
one not only now but how, this I know how.
Now Duchant's version, and I'll just read it through quickly, but
I want to point out that here the pronoun forms, he changes it around, so
that he makes it part feminine, part masculine in this way.
[FOREIGN] The thing I wanted to say is this.
What could have been and then [FOREIGN].
They're two different things.
One is one.
Translated here in the masculine [FOREIGN] and
the feminine would be [FOREIGN] that's in the plural so you can't tell.
[FOREIGN] three and three.
[FOREIGN] and then now look at this next line, [FOREIGN].
I would have liked to be the only one, but
he puts that in the feminine text referring to her [FOREIGN].
I would have liked to be the only one, one on one.
if I could have been loved to be the only one, that's exactly it.
If I would have, I would have liked to be served the only one, which I am.
But we know what it is, if this one has come, this one to be one, [FOREIGN].
[FOREIGN] which is masculine, because if it were feminine it would be [FOREIGN].
Pas seulement maintenant mais comment ceci je sais maintenant.
So when he translates it, he subtly has her say I'm a woman but
I'd really like to be a man.
And you don't get that in the same way in the English.
It's much subtler.
And I'm surprised she wasn't annoyed by it actually because he spells it out.
He never talked about that to her, but
clearly what he's saying here, her real dream.
And that was true of Stein.
I mean, she only hung around with men.
She was not a feminist.
She was very rude to most women, put them down,
what she wanted to be was one of the boys, really.
The French cannot quite reproduce Stein's clip monosyllabic lines with their rhyme
and paragraph, not only now, but how.
This I know how.
But Duchant captures her tone, the one subtle change he makes is
the revealing remark, I would have liked to be the only one which in English
has no gender designation becomes [FOREIGN].
And further in translating line 13,
if I am one, I would have liked to be the only one.
Duchant creates an odd split making odd one masculine, un, but
the only one left so feminine.
If I would have liked, I would have liked to be the only one.
Now, to conclude in her own writing, Stein never gave herself away so fully.
Her pronouns usually have a studied indeterminacy.
She never anywhere would have said publicly I really want to be a man,
she would say it in her diaries and so on.
But Duchant playfully implies that Stein is all too aware to be that the only one
is to be a male one.
Indeed a man like because at that time, to be an artist women hadn't
really become famous artists would have been to be a man like Picasso.
And she adds proudly, which I am [FOREIGN] indeed she is the one.
It's what Stein had always wanted.
Yes, just this.
Now here Duchant embellishes the lines slightly making it [FOREIGN].
Yes, nothing but this exactly.
Why the extra emphasis?
Because Duchant sympathizes with Stein's need to be exactly the only one.
It was a need not felt by Rose Selavy for
Rose could always shift back to become Marcel.
Marcel Duchamp in fact himself was not bisexual.
He was very much a man, he had the confidence.
From his perspective une could become un any time.
Stein on the other hand was who she was.
She couldn't adopt another identity as readily as did Marcel.
Indeed the ironic distance so central to Duchamp's oeuvre, was not her [FOREIGN].
Serious if also very funny and single-minded,
she understood that three and three are not winning.
Three, whether at the love triangle at the back of the stanzas in medication,
or in her relationship to Picabi and Picasso was a crowd, three's a crowd.
Unlike Duchant and here she had been more like Picasso,
she had no desire to be a translator of someone else's work, she was the only one.
This one not only now but how, this I know now.
So Marceau must Selave, Rose selave,
Fresh Widow, the Rose of Arrow had no such ego.
Certainly he too wanted to be one, to have autonomy as creator but for
the sake of his close friend Piccabia, who was getting a bad press in these years,
he was quite willing to do a quick translation of
a verbal composition whose indeterminacy in word play he could obviously relish.
Especially a composition by an author as sympathique as Gertrude Stein.
This I know now.