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The Senses

by Margery Casares

 

TASTE:

 

Taste is perhaps the most difficult of the senses to describe, though some authors have certainly mastered the technique. 

 

Christopher Morley's incomparable description of cider in his essay on Cider is worth noting.  He says:  "At the peak of its deliciousness it has a small, airy sparkle against the roof of the mouth, a delicate tactile sensation like the feet of dancing flies.  This, we presume, is the 4 ½ to 7 percent of sin with which fermented cider is credited by works of reference."

 

((I can't think of anything which could more accurately describe effervescence than "a small airy sparkle against the roof of the mouth."))

 

Another master's account of muscadines:

 

"...a grape, known by the musical name of muscadine, which I esteem as altogether the wildest and raciest of all wild fruit.  Its juice  has the musty flavor of old wine along with a strange aromatic quality peculiarly its own."

 

SIGHT:

 

Sight is the easiest of the senses to describe.  The hero might bring the heroine's character to life by the way he sees her, and vise versa.

The point-of-view character is the one who makes a scene come to life for the reader.  The POV character should use all the senses at some time or other, but the author will find the sense of sight to be the most easily accomplished. 

 

From SONG OF INNOCENCE — A scene in which the hero sees, feels, and hears what is happening.

 

Enemy troops were everywhere, as if they had materialized out of the air.  The world exploded.  A sudden searing pain hit Charles in the chest, another in the head.  He felt himself lifted up and slammed into the dirt.  Clutching at the fire in his bosom, he brought his arms up and stared in confusion at the dripping blood. 

 

Then he saw and understood, but nothing seemed real.  Everything was misty green, obscure and turbid, like seeing under water.  In a state of shock, he lowered his arms and lay back, semiconscious. 

 

Pain engulfed him, filling every cell of his body, swallowing him in its intensity.  A black hole opened up, and he fell into it. When his senses returned, he focused on the only images his brain

registered: the golden sun slanting through the forest growth, snow-capped summits of the majestic Gross-Glockner and Venediger mountains, green and black hues of pines and firs and the heady scent of them, high- soaring eagles, and brilliantly colored wild flowers tumbling down the mountainside to the valley floor. At intervals he rallied enough to know he was being carried. The sound of human voices seeped into his consciousness but he could not tell what the voices said or to whom they belonged.  Pain clutched at him, tore his body into shreds of agonizing awareness and, as quickly as it came, it thrust him off into a black void of unawareness.  He continued to come and go, fighting for consciousness, feeling every aching fiber of his being, then gratefully plunging back into the blessed darkness.

          

ODOR:

 

Consider synonyms for the noun smell: odor, aroma, perfume, scent, fragrance, redolence, stench, stink, savor, tang.  Also consider: essence, sweetness, musk, breath, whiff, and taint.

 

Many adjectives are useful in describing odors.  If you are imaginative, the following words will call up the odors to which these particular adjectives apply: acrid, pungent, sharp, fishy, musty, sour, sweet, delicate, strong, far-reaching, crisp, sickening, curious, strange, raw, rancid, cloying, penetrating, sensual, stinging, tantalizing, spicy, suffocating, fetid, gaseous, cool, hot, metallic.

 

Note how masters of expression make odors realistic:

 

Robert Louis Stevenson's The Sea Fog.

 

The air struck with a little chill, and set me coughing.  It smelt strong of the fog, like the smell of a washing house, but with a shrewd tang of the sea salt.

 

Christopher Morley's The Smell of Smells.

 

As soon as I stepped out of doors I caught that faint but unmistakable musk in the air; that dim, warm sweetness.  It was the smell of summer.....  when one first issues from the house at breakfast time it is at its highest savor.  Irresistibly it suggests worms, and a tin can with the lid jaggedly bent back, and a pitchfork turning up the earth behind the cow stable.  Fishing was first invented when Adam smelled that odor in the air.

 

Now notice how others than masters do it:

 

THE CHIMERA:

 

The darkness was complete, no stars, no moon; he was not out in the alley where he should be.  He sniffed.  No smell of garbage, or mildew, or fleshly human corruption assaulted his nostrils.  But a different odor, a chemical odor tickled his nose, and a subtle musky animal scent mixed with it penetrated his consciousness.

 

An almost imperceptible panting--panting too near--set his heart thudding, and he grew still, holding his breath.  His eyes finally absorbed the image of a large beast, and his ears picked up the soft sound of its grunting.

 

SOUND:

 

We have already briefly touched on the sense of hearing (sound) with examples of imitative words.  Most words denoting sound are imitative words, such as: whine, bark, growl, bray, roar croak, cackle, neigh. These words and others like them which are used in describing sounds made by animals, birds, etc. are instinctively chosen by writers.

 

What words would we use to describe the pleasant sound of a flowing stream?  We might use any of these imitative words: ripples, gurgles, murmurs, trickles, splashes, patters, babbles. 

 

However if we were describing the sound made by a swift-flowing stream (or a waterfall), we might say that it : rushes, roars, plunges, swells, bellows, or thunders--all of which are also imitative words.

 

Thompson in his By Ways and Bird Notes, writes:

 

Often I awoke in the small hours and heard the raccoons growling and chattering in the brake.  At such times the swash of a river had a strangely soothing effect, a lullaby of fairy land.

 

Again, an example from SONG OF INNOCENCE:

 

They walked for some time before emerging into a picturesque glade where a stream swelled into a vast whirling pool at the foot of a magnificent waterfall.... a thundering splendor of a torrent, crashing from the mountain top and roaring into high-spitting white foam below.

 

INTERESTING FACT: The only man-made structure visible from space is the Great Wall of China.

 

INTERESTING FACT: Christopher Columbus had blond hair. 

 

INTERESTING FACT: Karl Marx once served as a reporter on the New York Herald Tribune (then known as the New York Tribune.)  In 1848 he worked in the London office of the Tribune, and his boss, the managing editor, was Richard Henry Dana, who himself became the world-famous author of Two Years Before the Mast.

 

INTERESTING FACT: The Grand Canyon was not seen by a white man until after the Civil War.  It was first entered on May,29,1869, by the geologist, John Wesley Powell.

 

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