osprey_archer: (flying)
[personal profile] osprey_archer
If you had a time machine, where would you go? Right now, I'm gunning for Coney Island; I've been reading John Kasson's Amusing the Million and Luna Park sounds simply irresistible, the fairy tale architecture limned in electric lights at night.

(Note to self: must stop using the word 'limned' all the time.)

But the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 pioneered that use of electric lights; and it too has a strong pull on me. It would be a splendid place to take a time machine.

And if I'm going back to the 1890s, most of all I'd want take a train to Boston to visit Josephine Preston Peabody, dreamer, poet, and delightfully wry diarist. “I doubt not that the time will come when, instead of going to a Symphony, even on a stand-up, I shall derive immense spiritual joy from dusting the whole lower floor with a smile upon my face."

I'm having trouble deciding what to quote. An outburst of proto-feminist outrage? Or the overflow of joy at an accepted poem, an unexpected trip to England, even just a beautiful day? Wistful longing after companionship - or a whimsical letter outlining for a friend a lovely outing they should take - or exultation in the bliss of solitude?

Or almost all of the above?

“But how a walk on a day like this shows me that delight of – what? Dryad-life?...I only mean that, walking in the wind, over the snow, the opal wintry sky smiling at one – one cannot understand how people ever wish to fall in love – how they can ever be married. ‘Oh,’ I said to myself -- ‘Even if you loved any one enough, it would be imprisonment in a garden! How can you belong to anybody, anybody!’”

I want to make Peabody a centerpoint of my dissertation. I have no idea how to do this, or how to justify it; but damn, I really want to.
This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting

Profile

osprey_archer: (Default)
osprey_archer

May 2025

S M T W T F S
    123
4 5 6 7 8910
111213 14151617
18 19 20 21 22 2324
25 262728293031

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated May. 28th, 2025 09:20 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios