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also marked her first manual perception, and thus her birth as a complete «perceptual individual». Her first
120 perception, her first recognition, was of a bagel, or «bagelhood» — as Helen Keller’s first recognition, first
utterance, was of water («waterhood»).
(15) After this first act, this first perception, progress was extremely rapid. As she had reached our to
125 explore or touch a bagel, Miss J., in her new hunger, now reached out to explore or touch the whole world.
Eating led the way the feeling, the exploring of different foods, containers, implements, etc. «Recognition»
had somehow to be achieved by a curiously roundabout sort of inference or guesswork, for having been
130 both blind and «handless» since birth, she was lacking in the simplest internal images (whereas Helen
Keller at least had tactile images). Had she not been of exceptional intelligence and literacy, with an
imagination filled and sustained, so to speak, by the images of others, images conveyed by language, by the
word, she might have remained almost as helpless as a baby.
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(16) A bagel was recognized as round bread, with a hole in it; fork as an elongated flat object with
several sharp tines. But then this preliminary analysis gave way to an immediate intuition, and objects
140 were instantly recognized as themselves, as immediately familiar in character and «physiognomy»; were
immediately recognized as unique, as «old friends». And this sort of recognition, not analytic, but synthetic
and immediate, went with a vivid delight, and a sense that she was discovering a world full of
enchantment, mystery, and beauty.
2
(17) The commonest objects delighted her — delighted her, and stimulated a desire to reproduce them.
She asked for clay and started to make models: her first model, her first «sculpture» was of a shoehorn,
and even this, somehow, was imbued with a peculiar power and humor, with flowing, powerful, chunky
curves reminiscent of an early Henry Moore.
150
(18) And then — and this was within a month of her first recognitions — her attention, her appreciation,
moved from objects to people. There were limits, after all, to the interest and expressive possibilities of
155 things, even when transfigured by a sort of innocent, ingenuous, and often comical genius. Now she needed
to explore the human face and figure, at rest and in motion. To be «felt» by Miss J. Was a remarkable
experience. Her hands, only such a little while ago inert, doughy, now seemed charged with a preternatural
160 6) animation and sensibility. One was not merely being recognized, being scrutinized, in a way more
intense and searching than any visual scrutiny, but being «tasted» and appreciated meditatively, imagi-
natively and aesthetically, by a born (a newborn) artist. They were, I felt, not just the hands of a blind
woman exploring,
165 but of a blind artist, a meditative and creative mind, just opened to the full sensuous and spiritual reality of
the world. These explorations too pressed for representation and reproduction as an external reality.
(19) Miss J. Started to model heads and figures, and within a year was locally famous as the Blind
170 Sculptress of Saint Benedict’s. Her sculptures tended to be half or three-quarters life size, with simple but
recognizeable features, and with a remarkably expressive energy. For me, for her, for all of us, this was a
deeply moving, an amazing, almost a miraculous, experience. Who would have dreamed that basic powers
175 of perception normally acquired in the first months of life, but failing to be acquired at this time, could be
acquired in one’s sixtieth year? 7) What wonderful possibilities of late learning, and learning for the handi
180 capped, this opened up. And who could have dreamed that in this blind, palsied woman, hidden away,
inactivated, over-protected all her life, there lay the germ of an astonishing artistic sensibility (unsuspected
by her, as by others) that would germinate and blossom into a rare and beautiful reality, after remaining
dormant, blighted for sixty years?
Notes:
2
gnosis — recognition
2
perceptive — for purposes of gaining knowledge of something through the senses.
2
hiatus — a break or interruption
(4) Helen Keller was born blind and deaf and became a lecturer, author and educator. Her teacher, Anne
Sullivan, devised a method of teaching her to identify (and name) her sensory perceptions (e.g. the feel of
water on her hand).
(5) impulse — a sudden urge to do something
(6) preternatural — supernatural
(7) But the case of Madelaine J., as I was to find, was by no means unique. Within a year I had
encountered another patient (Simon K.) who also had cerebral palsy combined with profound impairment
of vision. While Mr. K. Had normal strength and sensation in his hands, he scarcely ever used them — and