And They Thought He Was Quare

FEATURED AUTHOR—JEFF MANN And They Thought He Was Quare for J.M. Parks Lanier Because he was a man speaking to men they thought he was not speaking to them. Because he was a man endued with more lively sensibility, with more enthusiasm, with more tenderness, they were unenthusiastic and mean, downright mean. Because he had a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul than are supposed to be common among man(un)kind, they were inhuman and uncomprehending. Because he was a man pleased with his own passions and with his own volitions and rejoiced more than other men in the spirit of life that was in him, they neither sang with him nor rejoiced. Because he delighted in contemplating similar volitions and similar passions as manifested in the goings-on of the universe and was habitually (a quare habit, they said) impelled to create them where and when he did not find them, they grew darkly suspicious of his lies. And because to this he added a disposition to be affected more than other men by absent things (and, oh, there were so many things absent) as if they were present, and could conjure up in himself passions which more nearly resembled passions produced by real events than other men are accustomed to feeling in themselves (what is real, what unreal?) they looked the other way. Because he had acquired a readiness and a power in expressing what he thought and what he felt, and especially those thoughts, those feelings which arose in him spontaneously (as from the green fuse exploded the flower) without immediate external excitement (the secret inner life was force enough) they crossed the street to the other side. ...