Writer to the Signet

“ As a writer she prides herself on her Realism—strange, ill-comprehended, often misapplied word! The realism of the highly imaginative may easily seem romance to the prosaic; and Signora Deledda will pardon us if we say that if only in her pictures of scenery, in her intimate knowledge of the influence of Nature on the heart and the mind of her votaries, there is something very superior to realism—at least in the common acceptation of the term. ”

“ Perhaps, hereafter, when time shall have shed its healing balm upon her heart, they can be essentially improved.
While the writer would solicit the indulgence of the literary public, she invites that kind and candid criticism, which would tend to improve her style, and correct her faults.
’Tis said that ancient authors on the shelf
Laid by their works till years had roll’d away;
But ah! they did not, like my humble self,
Live in an age of steam! ”

“ Do, in your reply, my dear Savarin, tell me something about your friends Signora Venosta and the Signorina, whose work, so far as yet published, I have read with admiring astonishment at the power of a female writer so young to rival the veteran practitioners of fiction in the creation of interest in imaginary characters, and in sentiments which, if they appear somewhat over-romantic and exaggerated, still touch very fine chords in human nature not awakened in our trite every-day existence. ”

“ How best to classify and treat the thousands of single and double signs was the chief difficulty in compiling the present work. That it will in every respect satisfy the reader is more than is expected—indeed much more than could be hoped for under the best of circumstances. ”

“ The relations of ideas and objects are therefore expressed by placement, and their connection is established when necessary by the abstraction of ideas. The sign-talker is an artist, grouping persons and things so as to show the relations, and the effect is that which is seen in a picture. But though the artist has the advantage in presenting in a permanent connected scene the result of several transient signs, he can only present it as it appears at a single moment. ”

“ This matter, I think, is of importance, for in countries where the imagination of the people, and the language they use, is rich and living, it is possible for a writer to be rich and copious in his words, and at the same time to give the reality, which is the root of all poetry, in a comprehensive and natural form. In the modern literature of towns, however, richness is found only in sonnets, or prose poems, or in one or two elaborate books that are far away from the profound and common interests of life. ”

“ It's a pity you didn't put it on the board with the farrago of nonsense, by which you hope to attract the attention of all the fool bodies in the town."
"Don't speak disrespectfully of my sign, sir," quoth the little barber, waxing wroth. "My sign is an excellent sign—the admiration of the whole village; and let me tell you that it is not in spite and envy to put it down, let spite and envy try as hard as they can. The genius which suggested that sign is not destined to go unrewarded." ”

“ In some one of the many groups of beings who had learned the use of fire, arrows, pots, sheep, and swords, some genius hit upon the idea of written signs as a medium of communication with those distant in space, and as a means of perpetuating a knowledge of the will of the dead among his survivors. But be it observed that only the master, never the man, only the owner of things, the controller of circumstances, was in a position to embody and preserve his judgment and desire in written signs. The new art of writing enhanced the power of rulers, of chiefs. ”

“ Sometimes at night, when he had read the daily paper, he would play upon the flute to amuse his father, for whose qualities he entertained a great respect.
One day he received a note from a well-known firm of Writers to the Signet, requesting the favor of an immediate interview with him. ”

“ LICIDAS: Signora. Content yourself with the sons and don't try to bring the father and the mother. That can't be done.
SIGNORA FANTASTICI: Who told you it cannot be done? It's only a question of tearing men from their habits. You have to make them feel the interest of a new life and the insipidity of their own. You must awaken their imaginations, and they are ours. ”

“ In observing the maxim that nothing can be thoroughly understood unless its beginning is known, it becomes necessary to examine into the origin of sign language through its connection with that of oral speech. ”

“ In a work of this kind a vain wish: for in all books, those only excepted that are simply scientific, and in the highest degree in ixthose that deal with matter, in which human interests preponderate, the personality of the writer must be seen in everything he writes. ”

“ We decided pretty easily that information ought to be signed: common sense leads to this conclusion, and newspapers which are largely unsigned have gained by that device their undesirable influence over civilisation. Creation—that we found a more difficult matter. “Literature wants not to be signed” I suggested. Creation comes from the depths—the mystic will say from God. The signature, the name, belongs to the surface-personality, and pertains to the world of information, it is a ticket, not the spirit of life. ”

“ Less of practical value can be learned of sign language, considered as a system, from the study of gestures of actors and orators than would appear without reflection. The pantomimist who uses no words whatever is obliged to avail himself of every natural or imagined connection between thought and gesture, and, depending wholly on the latter, makes himself intelligible. ”

“ But in the gesture-language the relation between idea and sign not only always exists, but is scarcely lost sight of for a moment. When a deaf-and-dumb child holds his two first fingers forked like a pair of legs, and makes them stand and walk upon the table, we want no teaching to show us what this means, nor why it is done. ”

“ A good sign-maker, then, may become a power among his fellow-men. The deaf man or woman who can express his thoughts in only halting signs is greatly handicapped in his association with others—but let him learn the exact meaning of every sign in the most forceful and clear manner, and he can sway his audience as a speaking orator can. ”

“ But his subtlety was a match for hers. "Your cousin once did me the honour to say I was one-seventh part a poet, and upon my honour I prefer his estimate to yours."
"What is mine?"
"That I'm nothing but a poet. That there wasn't enough of me left over to make a man."
"That is not my estimate, and you know it. I think you so much a man that your heart will keep you right, even though your genius has led you very far astray." ”

“ I have never met a man that liked to read signs. I once invented a creature who could play the piano with a hammer, and I mentioned him to a professor in Harvard University whose peculiarity was Sanscrit. ”

“ It is essentially the business of a sign to be in some way queer, for by attracting attention you also secure trade. The first problem of sign-painters was to attract the attention and to reach the intelligence of those who could not read—a class in times not so long since very large and grossly ignorant. ”

“ Moreover, Platonism raised the question of the freedom of genius and of the imagination. Of all men, only the poet, as Sidney and others pointed out, is bound down and restricted by no laws. But if poetry is a matter of inspiration, how can it be called an art? If genius alone suffices, what need is there of study and artifice? For the extreme romanticists of this period, genius alone was accounted sufficient to produce the greatest works of poetry ”

“ The Signora stood a smiling and unseen listener to his description of his journey, and felt her sympathy and admiration increase every moment for the man who, in a hackneyed experience, had seen so much at every moment that was fresh and new, and, travelling the beaten ways of life, had found gems among the worn pebbles, had even broken the pebbles themselves, and revealed a precious color sparkling inside. ”

“ Its successful execution is by an art, which, however it may have commenced as an instinctive mental process, has been cultivated, and consists in actually pointing out objects in sight not only for designation, but for application and predication, and in suggesting others to the mind by action and the airy forms produced by action. To insist that sign language is uniform were to assert that it is perfect—"That faultless monster that the world ne'er saw." ”

“ The two arts of letter-writing and conversation, invaluable both as instruments of pleasure and of culture, seem to be dying out before the encroachment of innumerable trifles, absorbing amusements, tyrannical egotisms, and that pernicious flood of ephemeral literature, whose varieties are daily spawned upon all tables. The long, careful letters, full of thought, full of true personal interest and earnest general sentiment, so common two or three generations ago, are all but unknown now. There is no time left for them. ”

“ They were interested, not in life, but in making pretty verses about life; there were some among them who lived as cheerful ascetics in garret rooms, and gave melodious expression to devilish emotions. But, on the other hand, for every poet, there were thousands who were not poets, but people to whom life was real. ”

“ Sign language, being the mother utterance of nature, poetically styled by Lamartine the visible attitudes of the soul, is superior to all others in that it permits every one to find in nature an image to express his thoughts on the most needful matters intelligently to any other person. The direct or substantial natural analogy peculiar to it prevents a confusion of ideas. ”

“ In spite of the fact that it has been discarded from the school room and efforts made to relegate it to the past, the Sign Language is very much a live language. It is impossible for those who do not understand it to comprehend its possibilities with the deaf, its powerful influence on the moral and social happiness of those deprived of hearing, and its wonderful power of carrying thought to intellects which would otherwise be in perpetual darkness. ”

“ These letters, which we can now read in two volumes, have a delicately insincere sincerity which makes every letter a work of art, not because he tried to make it so, but because he could not help seeing the form simultaneously with the feeling, and writing genuine love-letters with an excellence almost as impersonal as that of his stories. He begins with curiosity, which passes with singular rapidity into a kind of self-willed passion ”

“ While in spiritual matters, signs enable the minister to reach thousands where any other method of communication would reach the few. Spiritual truths told and explained in the language of signs reach the understanding and the conscience of the deaf child as no other means can possibly do. ”

“ But as a cognition must have already been there before it could receive a sign, consequently that knowledge which is denoted by the formation and application of a word must have preceded the symbol that denotes it. A sign, however, is necessary to give stability to our intellectual progress—to establish each step in our advance as a new starting-point for our advance to another beyond. ”

“ I sat last night brooding over this thing till almost dawn. I could not bring myself to the thought of offering my work again to be judged by such people. I made up my mind to take a different course—I sat and wrote a long letter to a certain poet whom I love and honor. He is known as a critic—he will know. I told him the whole story, and asked him to read the poem.
It was something that I had never thought about, the effect of The Captive upon commonplace people. I was so full of my own rapture—I made my audience out of my own fancy. And now these snuffy little men come peering at it! ”

“ Our day is too vast for comment. All that we can record is our daily impressions; and how much more readily these fall into letter shape than into treatise or play or novel or poem! These four forms necessitate structure, analysis, synthesis; they presuppose penetration into the significance back of events. The letter is free from all these requirements, and therefore is better fitted to express our times than, for example, the poem, which to-day, false to its old high calling, deliberately avoids all divination, all guesses at the ultimate and the infinite. ”

“ There is a growing sentiment among sign painters that when a sign or notice is to be put up in a public place it should be written in characters that are at least legible, so that, to quote "The Manchester Guardian" (as every one seems to do) "He who runs may read." ”

“ It gives us a graphic if not elaborate sketch of the personality and development of the great novelist, is particularly full and authentic concerning her earlier years, tells enough of the leading motives in her work to give the general reader a lucid idea of the true drift and purpose of her art, and analyzes carefully her various writings, with no attempt at profound criticism or fine writing, but with appreciation, insight, and a clear grasp of those underlying psychological principles which are so closely interwoven in every production that came from her pen."—Traveller. ”

“ Thus the signs for "now," "past," and "will" are used with all verb signs to indicate time, and "finished" is used to designate the complete tenses. "One" and "many" are added or prefixed to mark the singular and plural, while "male" and "female" indicate "sex." Others of this class are the progressive sign and the auxiliary verbs.
In connection with its incompleteness and imperfection when compared with written or spoken language, it should be remembered that the sign language was originally designed as a means of educating young deaf children and the vocabulary was therefore limited. ”