Psycho Vox; or, The Emerson System of Voice Culture — John Shaqi
Psycho Vox; or, The Emerson System of Voice CultureEmerson, Charles Wesley
Science
Psycho Vox; or, The Emerson System of Voice Culture
Emerson, Charles Wesley
Voice
The picturesque voice springs from the desire to make other minds think
what it cannot literalize. The state of mind which produces this voice
is that of asking the hearer to imagine real things that cannot be
presented to the senses. For an illustration of this, read the poem,
“Midsummer,” by Trowbridge.
There is a voice of fact and a voice of power. The voice of fact gives
information; the voice of power appeals to the imagination. The artistic
voice is the voice of the imagination. One of the offices of the
imagination is that of image making. In children this power is very
noticeable. When some children think of a thing, an image of it rises in
their minds; they suppose this image to be a fact of experience, and,
with no thought of falsehood, describe it as such. Because of this they
are frequently whipped for lying; and this power of mental image making,
which, if properly developed, would be of inestimable value to the
child, instead of being guided, is cruelly interfered with and arrested.
This power of mental image making is always highly developed in great
artists. Great musical composers first hear the music in their minds,
and then make it intelligible to others through the noted page. The
great painter carries objects in his mind long before he puts them on
canvas, and is able as well to create new objects suggested by things he
has seen. An architect sees in his mind the magnificent temple, when as
yet not a stone of which it is to be built has left the quarry. John B.
Gough declared that sometimes he was unable to distinguish persons whom
he saw in the audience from those which his imagination created.
Wordsworth did not write “The Daffodils” while looking at the flowers as
sense objects. It was afterwards, when he saw them as they lived in his
imagination, that he wrote of them in a way that has made them real to
the imaginations of others.
“For oft when on my couch I lie,
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye,
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.”
I have dwelt upon the physiology of the voice, showing its relation to
psychology. In the third and fourth volumes of the Evolution of
Expression we deal with the direct relation of psychology to Oratory.
* * * * *
INDEX.
A
Animation of voice 102-104
B
Breathing through the nose 30
C
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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