James was deeply beholden to Blood, and his final publication was a tribute, “A Pluralistic Mystic” (1910), in which he reaffirmed Blood's view that “philosophy must pass from words, that reproduce but ancient elements, to life itself, that gives the integrally new.” James's interest was initially aroused by The Anaesthetic Revelation (1874), in which Blood proposed to dispel the trance of philosophical monism by recourse to nitrous oxide. That a line of me could put you to sleep?īenjamin Blood (1832-1919)-farmer, inventor, pugilist, journalist, poet, and philosopher-lived in Amsterdam, New York, carrying on a wide correspondence with such luminaries as Grover Cleveland, Oliver Wendel Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Cullen Bryant, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and William James. I’m just a letter, but sometimes I’m more. There is room beneath these tortured wings Then takes his weight as he wobbles forward, His little leg sticks out as if testing the ground, Then left, swag-bellied rake, redundant in his torso. He rolls as he rambles, rippling like a tent. He says, jabbing his finger three times in the air. None of this curve-of-the-earth shit for him. He’s all right angles and straight lines. held that each letter of the alphabet has its own personality.”
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