Voices or Images or Nothing, oh my ...
What do you experience when you read?
Some people say that they generally hear the words of the text in
their heads, either in their own voice or in the voices of narrator or
characters; others say they rarely do this. Some people say they
generally form visual images of the scene or ideas depicted; others say they rarely do this. Some people say that when they are deeply enough absorbed in reading, they no longer see the page,
instead playing the scene like a movie before their eyes; others say
that even when fully absorbed they still always visually experience the
words on the page.
From the comments:
This is only very slightly a propos, but just after reading this blog post I was struck by this from Auden's The Dyer's Hand:
"One can read Shakespeare to oneself without even mentally hearing
the lines and be very moved; indeed, one may easily find a performance
disappointing because almost anyone can with an understanding of English
verse can speak it better than the average actor or actress. But to
read Racine to oneself, even I fancy, if one is a Frenchman, is like
reading the score of an opera when one can hardly play or sing."
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