History of a literary radical, and other essaysBourne, Randolph Silliman
General
History of a literary radical, and other essays
Bourne, Randolph Silliman
American essays -- 20th century
There has been strategy as well as art in her career. That feminine
Yankeeness which speaks out of her quizzical features has not lived in
vain. She tells with glee of editors captured in skilful sorties of
wit, of connections laboriously pieced together. She confesses to plots
to take the interesting and valuable in her net. There is continuous
action along her battlefront. She makes the acceptance of an article
an exciting event. As you drop in upon her for tea to follow her work
from week to week, you seem to move in a maze of editorial conspiracy.
Her zestfulness almost brings a thrill into the prosaic business of
writing. Not beguilements, but candor and wit, are her ammunition. One
would expect a person who looked like Sophronisba to be humorous. But
her wit is good enough to be surprising, it is sharp but it leaves no
sting. And it gets all the advantage of being carried along on a voice
that retains the least suggestion of a racy Eastern twang. With the
twang goes that lift and breathlessness that makes everything sound
interesting. When you come upon Sophronisba in that charming dinner
group that she frequents or as she trips out of the library, portfolio
in hand, with a certain sedate primness which no amount of New York
will ever strain out of her, you know that for a few moments the air is
going to be bright.
How Sophronisba got rid of the virus of her New England conscience
and morbidities I do not know. She must have exorcised more demons
than most of us are even acquainted with. Yet she never seems to have
lost the zest that comes from standing on the brink and watching the
Gadarene swine plunge heavily down into the sea. She has expelled the
terrors of religion and the perils of thwarted sex, but their nearness
still thrills. She would not be herself, neither would her wit be as
good, if it were not much made of gay little blasphemies and bold
feminist irreverences. There is the unconscious play to the stiff New
England gallery that makes what she says of more than local relevance.
In her serious talk there lingers the slight, interested bitter tang of
the old Puritan poison. But current issues mean much to Sophronisba.
These things which foolish people speak of with grave-faced strainings
after objectivity, with uncouth scientific jargon and sudden lapses
into pruriency, Sophronisba presents as a genuine revelation. Her
personal curiosity, combined with intellectual clarity, enable her
to get it all assimilated. Her allegiance went, of course, quickly
to Freud, and once, in a sudden summer flight to Jung in Zurich, she
sat many hours absorbing the theories from a grave, ample, formidably
abstract, and--for Sophronisba--too unhumorous Fraülein assistant. What
Sophronisba got she has made into a philosophy of life, translated
into New England dialect, and made quite revealingly her own. Before
journalism claimed her for more startling researches, she would often
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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