Expressions related to an emotion that was stimulated by a great work of art ("a raising of the dorsal hairs" and a "spinal tingle" - with variants) were favored by Vladimir Nabokov. In a more general sense the "raising of the dorsal hairs" is employed by biologists to indicate an aggressive response from an animal. In connection to the "spinal tingle", as informed in a stub by wikipedia, the tingling results from "a reaction to either being spooked (e.g. an animal sensing danger) or a human perceiving something so personally moving that it sends chills down their body. The sensation can be spontaneous but can be felt before it happens similar to a yawn or sneeze. This sensation is similar to adrenaline and may cause goose bumps or chills. Some have also reported being able to recreate this sensation without being frightened."

However, whenever this kind of physiological response is applied to a reaction to great art, I always thought it had originated from Nabokov's precepts (in his fiction and in his non-fiction). At times more recent writers employed it, but it always seemed that then they were making a reference to VN. Today I found its use in a 1986 text, with no Nabokovian tag, authored by Ray Bradbury *. Unfortunately I don't have the original expression as it was set down in English by Ray Bradbury.

In a rough translation from the Portuguese we get a hint: " I wrote the title The Lake in the first page of a story that, two hours later, finished writing itself out.Two hours after I'd been sitting in front of my typing-machine in a sunny verandah, with tears dropping from the tip of my nose and my dorsal hairs standing erect. Why was there an erection of hairs and a running nose? I perceived that, at last, I'd managed to write a really good story. The first one, in ten years of writing."

Having discovered the "Writers Digest" internet-address after searching for more articles by Giles Harvey, I saw that there's still another piece related to Nabokov that was brought up by him last February (12 Feb. 2011). In it there is his report of a sighting (Nabokov's "Strong Opinions" present in a satire by Coetzee) :

"In 1969, Writer's Digest offered Vladimir Nabokov $200 for a 2,000 word response to the question, "Does the writer have a social responsibility?" His answer: "No. You owe me 10 cents, Sir." Coetzee, we imagine, would have been less reticent. Senor C's contribution to Strong Opinions (which of course borrows its name from Nabokov's fiercely apolitical collection of interviews and occasional prose) is so saturated, and at times clogged, with the horrors of contemporary history that one is almost tempted to ask, "Does the writer have a literary responsibility?" Obviously he does, but confronted with the often quite brilliant tirades against the Bush Administration, Guantánamo, unregulated global capitalism, and the Iraq war that comprise the bulk of the novel, this reader had difficulty weighing the level of Coetzee's commitment to it. Yet Senor C, for all his similarities, is not J.M. Coetzee, and Diary of a Bad Year is not the Op-Ed page of a left-wing newspaper. "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person," said Oscar Wilde: "Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth." And not just the truth. Behind the mask of fiction, one is free to test the waters of permissible thought; indeed, one can wade right into the unsayable. Thus, faced with the machinations of the Bush Administration on the question of torture we find ourselves returned to the question of ecumenical shame." Untimely Meditations By Giles Harvey- Book Review - Diary of a Bad Year, by JM Coetzee | Open Letters ...