The Story of My Life: With her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of her education, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert MacyKeller, Helen
General
The Story of My Life: With her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of her education, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy
Keller, Helen
Deafblind women -- United States -- Biography; Keller, Helen, 1880-1968
Her whimsical and adventuresome spirit puts her so much on her mettle
that she makes rather a poor subject for the psychological experimenter.
Moreover, Miss Sullivan does not see why Miss Keller should be subjected
to the investigation of the scientist, and has not herself made many
experiments. When a psychologist asked her if Miss Keller spelled on her
fingers in her sleep, Miss Sullivan replied that she did not think
it worth while to sit up and watch, such matters were of so little
consequence.
Miss Keller likes to be part of the company. If any one whom she is
touching laughs at a joke, she laughs, too, just as if she had heard
it. If others are aglow with music, a responding glow, caught
sympathetically, shines in her face. Indeed, she feels the movements
of Miss Sullivan so minutely that she responds to her moods, and so she
seems to know what is going on, even though the conversation has not
been spelled to her for some time. In the same way her response to music
is in part sympathetic, although she enjoys it for its own sake.
Music probably can mean little to her but beat and pulsation. She cannot
sing and she cannot play the piano, although, as some early experiments
show, she could learn mechanically to beat out a tune on the keys. Her
enjoyment of music, however, is very genuine, for she has a tactile
recognition of sound when the waves of air beat against her. Part of her
experience of the rhythm of music comes, no doubt, from the vibration
of solid objects which she is touching: the floor, or, what is more
evident, the case of the piano, on which her hand rests. But she seems
to feel the pulsation of the air itself. When the organ was played for
her in St. Bartholomew's, the whole building shook with the great
pedal notes, but that does not altogether account for what she felt and
enjoyed. The vibration of the air as the organ notes swelled made her
sway in answer. Sometimes she puts her hand on a singer's throat to
feel the muscular thrill and contraction, and from this she gets genuine
pleasure. No one knows, however, just what her sensations are. It is
amusing to read in one of the magazines of 1895 that Miss Keller "has
a just and intelligent appreciation of different composers from having
literally felt their music, Schumann being her favourite." If she knows
the difference between Schumann and Beethoven, it is because she has
read it, and if she has read it, she remembers it and can tell any one
who asks her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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