| Title | : | The World I Live In |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1590170679 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781590170670 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 182 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1904 |
This new edition of The World I Live In also includes Helen Keller's early essay "Optimism," as well as her first published work, "My Story," written when she was twelve.
The World I Live In Reviews
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A beautiful rendition from an exceptional woman who tells the reader in this moving essay what it is like to be blind, deaf and mute. 'In touch is all love and intelligence', she writes and 'Imagination puts a sentiment to every line and curve'. She may not be able to 'touch the world in its entirely' but she touched me as a reader by her positive outlook and courage! Poetic and gentle.
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The majority of Americans seem to understand Helen Keller in one of two ways: as an inspiring hero who overcame deafness and blindness in young life to become, well, an inspiring hero (see the play "The Miracle Worker" or just about every kid's book on Ms. Keller), or as an inspiring hero who overcame deafness and blindness in young life to become an ardent supporter of human rights and a champion of human dignity (she co-founded the ACLU, for Pete's sake!). "The World I Live In" has introduced me to a third Helen Keller-- the creative Helen Keller. As it turns out, the woman was one HELL of a great writer. Her work shows a deep knowledge of the American tradition (her philosophy is akin to Emerson's; at one point she uses an image that MUST come from Whitman's "Patient Noiseless Spider"; the final chapter riffs on dozens of literary tropes, etc), but her style and mood and vision must all be counted as uniquely her own. It's one thing for Emerson to describe a transparent eyeball; it's quite another for Helen to describe her "seeing hand," especially in her calm, clear prose, which almost approaches the Tao Te Ching in its simple beauty. You of course get her famous optimism here (again, with an Emersonian cast, so it's sharp and moving, not just a Hallmark card); you also get a fair amount of archness (see the preface, where she seems to castigate those who would confine her to only talking about herself) and humor (that final chapter, again, which seems to be an extended satire on the idea of her dreams... her dreams which every psychologist believes to be so interesting, but that are in fact not much different from anyone else's). How could this possibly be as "under-read" as its release in the NYRB classics series would seem to indicate? Students of literature, history, psychology, religion, and wonder will all find something unforgettable here.
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4.5/5
Critics delight to tell us what we cannot do. They assume that blindness and deafness sever us completely from the things which the seeing and the hearing enjoy, and hence they assert we have no moral right to talk about beauty, the skies, mountains, the song of birds, and colors. They declare that the very sensations we have from the sense of touch are "vicarious," as though our friends felt the sun for us! They deny a priori what they have no seen and I have felt. Some brave doubters have gone so far even as to deny my existence. In order, therefore, that I may know that I exist, I resort to Descartes's method: "I think, therefore I am," Thus I am metaphysically established, and I throw upon the doubters the burden of proving my non-existence. When we consider how little has been found out about the mind, is it not amazing that any one should presume to define what one can know or cannot know? I admit that there are innumerable marvels in the visible universe unguessed by me. Likewise, O confident critic, there are myriad sensations perceived by me of which you do not dream.
Reading the first half of this work, I was convinced that I had found an absolute favorite. Indeed, I still stand by the statement that certain of Keller's ideologies regarding philosophy, thought, and the human experience are dangerously underrated: dangerous for the fact that, more than a century after her composition techniques encoded themselves into formal script and postmodern flights of fancy (compare her 'A Waking Dream' to Brooke Rose's
Textermination if you don't believe me), temporarily abled people still view everyone else as acceptably expendable. However, her essay 'Optimism' quickly devolves into a Euro-obsessed piece of propaganda, and the inclusion of her piece composed when she was twelve-years-old is a rather simplistic note to end an otherwise marvelously ingenuous exploration of a variety of topics that result in a number of fascinating insights. Still, I'm very pleased to discover NYRB Classics somewhat redeeming itself when it comes to actually promoting buried classics, rather than slinging another slightly less obscenely famous white boy at the masses. I even learned of a number of other deaf-blind women artists such as Laura Bridgman and Bertha Galeron, the latter praised by Victor Hugo himself, during the course of reading this, which goes to show how much Keller's own reputation has been bolstered by pervasive Highlander, "there can only be one" treatment. That means more material for me once I've gotten through Keller's far more popular, and likely far less vibrant,
The Story of My Life, especially in the case of Bertha Galeron, whose negligence by literary history is rather obscene, to say the least.I should say that organ-music fills to an ecstasy the act of feeling.
Whatever I was expecting from this book, it certainly wasn't what I largely got, in a very good sense of the word. Keller's marvelous ridding thought, philosophy, and holistic fulfillment of human capacity of its inherent assumptions of sight and hearing is a wonder so initially brilliantly yet so hindsightedly obvious that it belongs with the best class of concepts that humanity has composed thus far. Plato's allegory of the cave, the science behind human vision, the sensuality intrinsic to a world experienced through smell and movement, all move beyond the senses that I rely on for 80-95% of my tasks in daily life and into a realm both extremely imaginative and intensely physical that, during the course of reading this, I have realized would be torture to do without. It is astonishing how long this particular text has been around and how little I have seen its influences elsewhere, but then again, considering the usual extremely depressing sets of context impacting older works by disabled women (what works would one even put into that category, especially pre-1950?), it makes perfect sense. That, however, doesn't give anyone today who deals with such topics an excuse for not reading up on an extremely slim pamphlet of essays, each clearly delineated with a brief, subject relevant title (weeding in the stacks today meant dealing some excessively cutesey wootsey and thus borderline useless reference books, and boy was that an eye opener). Inspiring empiring yadda yadda yadda: just give every disabled person the same level of socioeconomic centered care and quality of life that Keller received being a nosy git about it, and Nazis will stop creeping back into the Overton Window so much.
But until they give me opportunity to write about matters that are not-me, the world must go on uninstructed and unreformed, and I can only do my best with the one small subject upon which I am allowed to discourse.No loss by flood and lightning, no destruction of cities and temples by the hostile forces of nature, has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those which his tolerance has destroyed.
One note to any reader of this work is that the editor of this particular edition is an ableist waste of space, so if you must read the introduction, feel free to skip the last infantilizing, sentiment-dripping page of it. After that, be prepared to have many of your conventions challenged and your assumptions blasted out of the stratosphere of their usual self-absorbed orbit, leastwise until the Optimism essay when Keller turns straight up racist US colonialism apologist (she definitely ran into one too horror stories regarding Indian people and Hinduism's relationship with disabled people). So, hardly the work of a perfect saint, but definitely not one deserving of being out of print for more than a century (not the first work by a woman that I've read this year that's suffered from such, disgustingly enough). I'm certainly glad that I read it, extremely valuable, enlightening work that it is.Out of the uncharted, unthinkable dark we came,
And in a little time we shall return again
Into the vast, unanswering dark. -
What a beautiful person Helen Keller was. This book is a collection of essays that she wrote when she was about 24. It’s a quite interesting look into her mind. I read the book because I saw a quote from it in Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained; the quote implied that before she possessed language, she had no self-consciousness. What astounded me was her ability to visualize! She makes it clear that there is a physical world of vision, and a mental world of vision, and if anything the world of the mind is more beautiful and full than that of the physical.
This was the quote that so amazed me: "Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness. I did not know that I knew aught, or that I lived or acted or desired. I had neither will not intellect. I was carried along to objects and acts by a certain blind natural impetus. I had a mind which caused me to feel anger, satisfaction, desire. These two facts led those about me to suppose that I willed and thought."
At the end of the book she has a short autobiography; if you're interested in that you should read "The Story of My Life." But if you're interested in the thoughts of this remarkable person, this is a fascinating short book. -
Ok, so, it is interesting to hear about the senses and language from Hellen Keller's perspective. BUT her style of writing is archaic and grandiose and very hard to remain interested in. Here's a representative sample:
"While I walk about my chamber with unsteady steps, my spirit sweeps skyward on eagle wings and looks out with unquenchable vision upon the world of eternal beauty."
And so on, for the entire book. I finished reading it because I hate leaving books unfinished, and that was about the only reason. -
"The only lightless dark is the night of ignorance and insensibility. We differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond our senses."
"Ideas make the world we live in, and impressions furnish ideas."
"...for, without egotism, the mind is as large as the universe."
"The silent worker is imagination which decrees reality out of chaos."
"The bulk of the world's knowledge is an imaginary construction."
"Of us it is as true as it is of the seeing that the most beautiful world is always entered through the imagination. If you wish to be something that you are not,--something fine, noble, good,--you shut your eyes, and for one dreamy moment you are that which you long to be."
"The infinite wonders of the universe are revealed to us in exact measure as we are capable of receiving them."
"Man looks within himself and in time finds the measure and meaning of the universe."
"The next important thing seldom happens in dreams."
"The highest result of education is tolerance...Tolerance is the first principle of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think." -
An enlightening read written by Helen Keller during her adults years. I'm not sure what I was expecting from the book and was actually anticipating that I wouldn't enjoy it as much as I did. It is an interesting to read, from Helen's own words how she perceived the world around her without having sight and hearing. Many examples were provided in how she used what she understood to conceptualize things that were abstract to her, for example how she conceptualize distances, or how a setting sun appears, even colors. The book is a great example how human difficulty such as blindness and deafness can be compensated by other human senses and the mind.
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Audible.
Me ha gustado mucho. Esa integración entre lo táctil, lo onírico y lo abstracto de las ideas. Guay. -
This book is so inspiring. To think that someone can be transformed from a self-described state of "vacancy absorbing space" into a thoughtful, brilliant person writing beautiful observations about her three senses, is amazing.
"It is not for me to say whether we see best with the hand or the eye. I only know that the world I see with my fingers is alive, ruddy and satisfying."
"I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light, but who see nothing in city streets, nothing in books. What a witless masquerade is this seeing!"
"The thousand soft voices of the earth have truly found their way to me - the small rustle in tufts of grass, the silky swish of leaves, the buzz of insects, the hum of bees in blossoms I have plucked, the flutter of a bird's wings after his bath, and the slender rippling vibration of water running over pebbles."
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Helen Keller’s The Story of My Life is firmly lodged in the autobiographical canon, and even people who haven’t read it or seen its adaptations, usually under the title The Miracle Worker, are familiar with the details of Keller’s childhood. You would expect her followup book to be a sequel, but The World I Live In is a completely different beast. From the direct first page to the rapturous final chapter, Keller explains her condition, corrects misunderstandings and dispels the notion that she is incapable of living a full life. Ironically, through putting her experience on paper and bringing herself down to earth, Keller comes off as even more extraordinary. The term “life-changing” gets attached to books easier than to any other art form, but The World I Live In deserves the label. One can’t help but be transformed by it.
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Wow. This book had many unexpected results for me. As Hellen Keller describes with vivid detail the world that she lived in, I got the distinct impression that I was the blind person and she the one who could truly see, as I do not have nearly the grasp on God's goodness in creation as she did. Without the senses of sight and hearing, Keller's primary interaction with the world is through touch. And she argues that all people use touch primarily as well. Her reflections on creation through the "lens" of someone without sight gave me a deeper and clearer appreciation for how God formed us with His hands, and helped me to greater appreciate the immense value and perspective of those with disabilities. One of my favorite quotes from the book was something like this "If I could make a man, I would put their mind and their soul in their fingertips."
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A wonderful insight into the mind of an amazing woman. This work seems to be a response to those who think that the blind or the blind/deaf cannot experience reality but poorly. "The only lightless dark is the night of ignorance and insensibility," she replies. Then she explains her world of touch, smell, and taste, particularly how touch and feeling allow her to experience the world around her. "It is more difficult to teach ignorance to think than to teach an intelligent blind man to see the grandeur of Niagara." She displays intelligence, humor, and humanity in the pages of this little gem.
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According to Keller, Schopenhauer is an enemy to the race and it was his own fault that he was given "ashes for bread." I say fooey on this. I enjoyed reading about her ways of "seeing" the world and her dreams, but I found her religious citations and insistence that blindness is not only perhaps equal but superior to sight quite naive and repetitive. A product of the times I suppose.
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No deja indiferente. Un libro sinestésico, sensitivo a veces metafísico contado con delicadeza e incluso con voluptuosidad a pesar de tener privados los sentidos del oído y la vista! Helen Keller nos expone como siente su mundo. Mujer sorda, ciega y en el siglo XIX, hay que leer este libro. Da para reflexionar sobre muchos temas.
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هيلين كيلر إنسانة جميلة و ملهمة جدا .. تحكي في هذا الكتاب عن اللغة في عالمها .. عالم بلا صور و أصوات (كونها صماء و كفيفة) حيث سلواها الوحيدة هي اللمسة الإنسانية .
كتاب ملهم لإنسانة تاريخية . -
My experiences with the Helen Keller story are like everyone else's: you read a story in elementary school about how deaf and blind Helen learned to speak and went to college because of her teacher, Annie Sullivan. Then a little while later you see one version or another of The Miracle Worker because every few years, without fail, The Miracle Worker comes on TV and you're like, "Oh, yeah, I remember that Helen Keller thing..." And between those experiences you hear the jokes about rearranging the furniture and "reading" the waffle iron. Then later on you discover Apples to Apples and learn that a (more or less) properly played "Helen Keller" card is an instant win because it's pretty freaking hilarious every time. In fact, you can even Like it on Facebook: "Apples to Apples: The Helen Keller Card".
People make offhand Helen Keller jokes all the time, but their thoughts never seem to go much deeper than "Being deaf and blind would suck a lot." I myself never really thought that long about it even though I had my mother rent The Miracle Worker every week for months. But I never really thought about it.
Maybe it's because I never had to-- that I was never faced with it on an everyday basis. Or maybe I did think about it as in-depth-ly as my 8 year-old brain could go and when my questions went unanswered they dissipated.
In any event, while reading The World I Live In, I was continually surprised by the little things that never occurred to me and I found myself saying, "Oh, yeah! How does she do/experience that? What's that like?"
Helen takes us through her world in 15 chapters and explains how her world compares to ours in day to day life- speaking, reading, writing, and her life before Annie Sullivan.
Then, in Chapter 15, Helen lets loose a rhapsodic torrent of ethereal beauty. Chapter 15, "A Waking Dream", weaves history, literature, and fantasy into a veritable tapestry of...of...of...beauticiousness. I sincerely want Herbert to come over and read "A Waking Dream" to me while I drift off to sleep. I loved this chapter. I think it was included to show that her imagination is just as good as-- if not better than-- the average person's, and it is. It's most certainly better than mine; my actual dreams are only half as good and that's only because of the drugs I'm on, and she's talking about a daydream. That's serious creativity.
The World I Live In is a quick, pretty, and interesting read, and absolutely worth it.
5 stars
Blauthor, Blauthor! -
En este libro Keller nos habla de su manera de "ver" las cosas, como usa sus sentidos y explica por qué usa el lenguaje de los sentidos que no posee.
Me gustó sobre todo el ensayo que habla sobre las manos. Una imagen que me gustó desde el momento que la vi es "Mis manos son mi corazón" de Gabriel Orozco.
Siento que la gente que hace cosas de sus manos pueden entender lo personal de lo manual. En el caso de Helen Keller en el que el tacto es su sentido principal, es muy interesante leer sus descripciones de las manos que ven, de como mediante las manos reconoce a la gente, etc… -
Una obra maravillosa que expresa toda la luz que habita en la mente de quien algunos se empeñan en llamar sordociega. No es solo un estilo hermoso, ni siquiera una deliciosa descripción de la riqueza de un mundo dominado por el tacto, el olfato y el gusto. Es un manifiesto que expresa una inmensa gratitud por la existencia, y ensalza el valor que ilumina todos los valores: el amor, lo mas bello, el bien que ilumina al mundo.
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Amazing book by Helen Keller. The fact that she could experience the world in such a vivid way, even exceeding our own experiences through practiced study of her other senses is amazing. She used to her whole body, every cell as a tuning device to perceive the world around her. Her writing denotes with wonderful understanding how shocking the world is to those of us who rely on sight and sound to only, to interpret the world around us.
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I read this over a decade ago and was struck by its beauty and the depth and miracle of her words and work. Reading ‘The World I Live In’ this time around caused me to recognize a bit of mindfulness practice in her experience and was once again struck by the depth and beauty of her poetic language.
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I read this because Annie Dillard, in The Writing Life, referenced it. They have some similarity of style, but this was a very interesting read to help us see outside of the normal box that we are in.
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The greatest book ever. I’ll read it from now and then to awaken my soul and emotions. It explained to me how feelings and real experiences can create meanings to the surrounding objects. It made me rethink the humans’ faculties.
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an impressive book for reasons that are self-evident though i wish the style hadn't gotten in the way of letting me feel the weight of it. especially liked the later third of the book regarding dreams. not a fave but worth a read
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This book would be good to use in a creative writing class. I liked reading her insights about the three senses she uses to interact with the world.
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The overall impression of this book was beauty. There was palpable optimism and all melancholy was balanced perfectly with humour. I suggest this to every poet I know.
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про сприйняття світу незрячими
цікаво, але надто багато описів
