![]() ![]() ![]() The merely blind have the window of their ears, the merely deaf listen through their eyes. All this came about because she was at once liberated by language and in bondage to it, in a way few other human beings can fathom. ![]() Yet as a child she was accused of plagiarism, and in maturity of “verbalism”-substituting parroted words for firsthand perception. No one nowadays, without intending satire, would place her alongside Caesar and Napoleon and, in an era of earnest disabilities legislation, who would think to charge a stone-blind, stone-deaf woman with faking her experience? ![]() “The Story of My Life,” her youthful autobiography, was on the reading lists of most schools, and its author was popularly understood to be a heroine of uncommon grace and courage, a sort of worldly saint. Fifty years ago, even twenty, nearly every ten-year-old knew who Helen Keller was. It has, so far, lasted more than a hundred, while steadily dimming. Mark Twain compared her to Joan of Arc, and pronounced her “fellow to Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, Homer, Shakespeare and the rest of the immortals.” Her renown, he said, would endure a thousand years. She was the butt of skeptics and the cynosure of idolaters. At least three times-at the ages of eleven, twenty-three, and fifty-two-Helen Keller was assaulted by accusation, doubt, and overt disbelief. Suspicion stalks fame incredulity stalks great fame. ![]()
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