I have to say that I did not enjoy the writings James did on his younger life as much as I did those about his later life. Perhaps because I found the content of the selections about his later life more interesting. When he was writing about Minnie and Alice there was just so much more emotion there than when he was writing about say...peaches. I did enjoy the piece The Galerie d'Apollon. James would be the super not typical boy that, instead of running all over the place bored out of his mind, would be fascinated by all the culture surrounding him when visiting the Louvre. Some of his descriptions, of both his feelings and his surroundings, are just lovely. The piece I found most interesting was The Death of Minnie Temple. You can tell that James loved his cousin very much by the way he describes her. He just absolutely raves about her:
"she was to remain to us the very figure and image of a felt interest in life, an interest as magnanimously far-spread, or as familiarly and exquisitely fixed, as her splendid shifting sensibility, moral, personal, nervous, and having at once such noble flights and such touchingly discouraged drops, such graces of indifference and inconsequence, might at any moment determine."
"she made it impossible to say whether she was just the most moving of maidens or a disengaged and dancing flame of thought."
I found the introduction to this one quite funny because here is this entry devoted to her and it shows a sample of a letter that she sent and she kind of is railing on him! She says, "The trouble is, I think, that to me you have no distinct personality. I don't feel sure to who I am writing when I say to myself that I will write to you. I see mentally three men, all answering to your name, each liable to read my letters and yet differing so much from each other that if it is proper for one of them it is unsuitable for the others."
A bit harsh telling someone that they do not have a distinct personality...especially someone who you are close with.
The entry about Alice was quite heartbreaking. I remember when we were talking about his letter telling of her death in class that somebody said that they felt it had no emotion. That is obviously not the case here, it was really quite touching.
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