Subject
TT-2: Hue Person's Mnemoptical Trickery (fwd)
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More on the relationship between color and memory from ADA:
Does the coloration of a recollected object (or anything else about its
visual effect) differ from date to date? Could I tell by its tint if it
comes earlier or later, lower or higher, in the stratigraphy of my past? Is
there any mental uranium whose dream-delta decay might be used to measure
the age of a recollection? The main difficulty, I hasten to explain,
consists in the experimenter not being able to use the sameobject at
different times (say, the Dutch stove with its little blue sailing boats in
the nursery of Ardis Manor in 1884 and 1888) because of the two or more
impressions borrowing from one another and forming a compound image in the
mind; but if different objects are to be chosen (say, the faces of two
memorable coachmen: Ben Wright, 1884, and Trofim Fartukov, 1888), it is
impossible, insofar as my own research goes, to avoid the intrusion not
only of different characteristics but of different emotional circumstances,
that do not allow the two objects to be considered essentially equal
before, so to speak, their being exposed to the action of Time. I am not
sure, that such objects cannot be discovered. In my professional work, in
the laboratories of psychology, I have devised myself many a subtle test
(one of which, the method of determining female virginity without physical
examination, today bears my name). Therefore we can assume that the
experiment canbe performed ? and how tantalizing, then, the discovery of
certain exact levels of decreasing saturation or deepening brilliance ? so
exact that the something which I vaguely perceive in the image of a
remembered but unidentifiable person, and which assigns it somehow to my
early boyhood rather than to my adolescence, can be labeled if not with a
name, at least with a definite date, e.g., January 1, 1908 (eureka, the
e.g. worked ? hewas my fathers former house tutor, who brought me Alice
in the Camera Obscurafor my eighth birthday). (pp. 546-7)
I happen to remember in terms of color (grayish blue, purple, reddish gray)
my three farewell lectures ? public lectures ? on Mr Bergsons Time at a
great university a few months ago. I recall less clearly, and indeed am
able to suppress in my mind completely, the six-day intervals between blue
and purple and between purple and gray. But I visualize with perfect
clarity the circumstances attending the actual lectures. (p.548)
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L
More on the relationship between color and memory from ADA:
Does the coloration of a recollected object (or anything else about its
visual effect) differ from date to date? Could I tell by its tint if it
comes earlier or later, lower or higher, in the stratigraphy of my past? Is
there any mental uranium whose dream-delta decay might be used to measure
the age of a recollection? The main difficulty, I hasten to explain,
consists in the experimenter not being able to use the sameobject at
different times (say, the Dutch stove with its little blue sailing boats in
the nursery of Ardis Manor in 1884 and 1888) because of the two or more
impressions borrowing from one another and forming a compound image in the
mind; but if different objects are to be chosen (say, the faces of two
memorable coachmen: Ben Wright, 1884, and Trofim Fartukov, 1888), it is
impossible, insofar as my own research goes, to avoid the intrusion not
only of different characteristics but of different emotional circumstances,
that do not allow the two objects to be considered essentially equal
before, so to speak, their being exposed to the action of Time. I am not
sure, that such objects cannot be discovered. In my professional work, in
the laboratories of psychology, I have devised myself many a subtle test
(one of which, the method of determining female virginity without physical
examination, today bears my name). Therefore we can assume that the
experiment canbe performed ? and how tantalizing, then, the discovery of
certain exact levels of decreasing saturation or deepening brilliance ? so
exact that the something which I vaguely perceive in the image of a
remembered but unidentifiable person, and which assigns it somehow to my
early boyhood rather than to my adolescence, can be labeled if not with a
name, at least with a definite date, e.g., January 1, 1908 (eureka, the
e.g. worked ? hewas my fathers former house tutor, who brought me Alice
in the Camera Obscurafor my eighth birthday). (pp. 546-7)
I happen to remember in terms of color (grayish blue, purple, reddish gray)
my three farewell lectures ? public lectures ? on Mr Bergsons Time at a
great university a few months ago. I recall less clearly, and indeed am
able to suppress in my mind completely, the six-day intervals between blue
and purple and between purple and gray. But I visualize with perfect
clarity the circumstances attending the actual lectures. (p.548)
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L