Deaf and blind writer and social activist Helen Keller is made "Chevalier of the Legion of Honor", by the government of France. She is accompanied by her companion, Polly Thomson.Transcript: "Obviously, Helen's sense of the world, its shape, its texture, its form, comes to her through her sense of touch. But her knowledge of the world comes to her through books. and for books she's indebted, as are all the world's sightless, to a blind Frenchman, Louis Braille. By who's invention the blind of all nations can read. It was to honor his memory. that Helen, in 1952 went to France. At the Paris office of The Foundation for the Blind, she writes in french, the address she is to give on the one hundredth anniversary of his death. "In our way, we the blind are as indebted to Louis Braille as mankind is to Gutenberg." Helen's speech is only part of the world's tribute to a great man.Today, a hundred years after his death, he's being taken from the little village where he lived, to lie for the rest of time in the Pantheon.The burial place of France's great. Behind his coffin march the blind of Paris.The blind of France come to hear her thoughts. French is one of the several foreign languages Helen Keller knows. And it's vowels and accents seem easier for her to pronounce than English.( Helen speaking french), English translation : " Without the Braille system, how incomplete and chaotic would be our education." "The dark portals of frustration would forever have separated us from literature, philosophy and science." In a lifetime lived to the continuous beat of applause, no moment has meant so much to Miss. Keller. Afterwards, Helen Keller, Louis Braille's great disciple, is made Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
28 сен 2024
