His mental and sensory capacities appear to have been superhuman. Balzac appointed himself the recording secretary of French society and proceeded to write novels at a fantastic speed with the intention of capturing the whole of life. Dickens never doubted that he was much more than a writer-that he was childhood’s sword and shield against the heartless adult world. What can account for the weirdly inflated personalities of so many writers from a hundred and fifty years ago-the extravagant traits and cosmic ambitions upon which Victor Hugo, who loved everything grandiose, fondly pasted the label “monstrous”? Emerson and Whitman thought of themselves as gods, more or less.
His ear could locate the underground noises of moles and ants, and his eyesight could zoom in, binocularlike, on the farthest distances.
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