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
The episode had a deadening effect on Helen Keller and on Miss Sullivan,
who feared that she had allowed the habit of imitation, which has in
truth made Miss Keller a writer, to go too far. Even to-day, when
Miss Keller strikes off a fine phrase, Miss Sullivan says in humorous
despair, "I wonder where she got that?" But she knows now, since she has
studied with her pupil in college the problems of composition, under the
wise advice of Mr. Charles T. Copeland, that the style of every writer
and indeed, of every human being, illiterate or cultivated, is a
composite reminiscence of all that he has read and heard. Of the sources
of his vocabulary he is, for the most part, as unaware as he is of the
moment when he ate the food which makes a bit of his thumbnail. With
most of us the contributions from different sources are blended, crossed
and confused. A child with but few sources may keep distinct what he
draws from each. In this case Helen Keller held almost intact in her
mind, unmixed with other ideas, the words of a story which at the time
it was read to her she did not fully understand. The importance of this
cannot be overestimated. It shows how the child-mind gathers into itself
words it has heard, and how they lurk there ready to come out when
the key that releases the spring is touched. The reason that we do not
observe this process in ordinary children is, because we seldom observe
them at all, and because they are fed from so many sources that the
memories are confused and mutually destructive. The story of "The Frost
King" did not, however, come from Helen Keller's mind intact, but had
taken to itself the mould of the child's temperament and had drawn on
a vocabulary that to some extent had been supplied in other ways. The
style of her version is in some respects even better than the style
of Miss Canby's story. It has the imaginative credulity of a primitive
folktale; whereas Miss Canby's story is evidently told for children
by an older person, who adopts the manner of a fairy tale and cannot
conceal the mature mood which allows such didactic phrases as "Jack
Frost as he is sometimes called," "Noon, at which time Mr. Sun is
strongest." Most people will feel the superior imaginative quality of
Helen Keller's opening paragraph. Surely the writer must become as a
little child to see things like that. "Twelve soldierly-looking white
bears" is a stroke of genius, and there is beauty of rhythm throughout
the child's narrative. It is original in the same way that a poet's
version of an old story is original.
This little story calls into life all the questions of language and the
philosophy of style. Some conclusions may be briefly suggested.
All use of language is imitative, and one's style is made up of all
other styles that one has met.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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