But we shall go into
these matters more in detail in our special chapters.
In the representative arts, particularly painting and sculpture, the
associated images are fused with the visual sensations which constitute
the medium. I see the softness and sweet-odorousness of the painted
rose petal, just as I see the real rose soft and sweet; I see the
surface of the statue firm and shapely, just as I see the human body
so. This is because the ideas of the things represented in painting
and sculpture seem to be actually present in the visual sensations
which they interpret; the flower and the man seem to be there before
me. In these arts, aesthetic perception is a fusion of image with
sensation in much the way that normal perception is. In literature and
music, on the other hand, the connection between the sense medium of
the art and the associated images is less close; and for the reason
that the sounds are no part of the things which they bring before the
mind. In looking at a picture of a rose, I see the red as an element
of the rose represented; whereas, in reading about a rose, I only seem
to hear a voice describing it. In the latter case, therefore, the
olfactory and visual images have a certain remoteness and independence
of the word-sounds; I do not actually see and smell them in the sounds.
However, in the case of familiar words with a strong emotional
significance, the fusion of image with sound may be almost complete.
Who, for example, does not see a sweet and red image of a rose into
the word-sounds when he reads:--
Oh, my love's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June.
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