What Writer First Made You Fall in Love with Perception?

[Prestidigitweeze]

Have you ever read someone whose ability to articulate the spiritual intensity of perception altered your way of experiencing the world? If so, who were they and which of their books or pieces first drew you out of your daze?

Virginia Woolf was mine, The Waves was the novel, and this is the passage that changed my sensory input forever:

"The sun fell in sharp wedges inside the room. Whatever the light touched became dowered with a fanatical existence. A knife was like a white lake. A plate looked like a dagger of ice. Tables and chairs rose to the surface as if they had been sunk under water and rose again, filmed with red, orange, purple like the bloom on the skin of ripe fruit. The veins on the glaze of the china, the grain of the wood, the fibers of the matting became more and more finely engraved. Everything was without shadow. A jar was so green that the eye seemed sucked up through a funnel by its intensity and clung to it like a limpet. Then shapes took on mass and edge. Here was the boss of a chair; here the bulk of a cupboard. And as the light increased, flocks of shadow were driven before it and conglomerated and hung in many-pleated folds in the background."

-- Virginia Woolf, The Waves

[pynch]

Now, that’s a challenge!

I think it would be Proust for me, among others, who at least temporarily draws me out of the “daze”, even if I like to return to my shell afterwards (that’s why some people are artists and others are not, I guess).

There are countless passages in the Recherche, here’s one from the third page of the first volume:

« Un homme qui dort tient en cercle autour de lui le fil des heures, l’ordre des années et des mondes. Il les consulte d’instinct en s’éveillant, et y lit en une seconde le point de la terre qu’il occupe, le temps qui s’est écoulé jusqu’à son réveil ; mais leurs rangs peuvent se mêler, se rompre. Que vers le matin après quelque insomnie, le sommeil le prenne en train de lire, dans une posture trop différente de celle où il dort habituellement, il suffit de son bras soulevé pour arrêter et faire reculer le soleil, et à la première minute de son réveil, il ne saura plus l’heure, il estimera qu’il vient à peine de se coucher. Que s’il s’assoupit dans une position encore plus déplacée et divergente, par exemple après dîner assis dans un fauteuil, alors le bouleversement sera complet dans les mondes désorbités, le fauteuil magique le fera voyager à toute vitesse dans le temps et dans l’espace, et au moment d’ouvrir les paupières, il se croira couché quelques mois plus tôt dans une autre contrée. Mais il suffisait que, dans mon lit même, mon sommeil fût profond et détendît entièrement mon esprit ; alors celui-ci lâchait le plan du lieu où je m’étais endormi, et quand je m’éveillais au milieu de la nuit, comme j’ignorais où je me trouvais, je ne savais même pas au premier instant qui j’étais ; j’avais seulement dans sa simplicité première le sentiment de l’existence comme il peut frémir au fond d’un animal ; j’étais plus dénué que l’homme des cavernes ; mais alors le souvenir — non encore du lieu où j’étais, mais de quelques-uns de ceux que j’avais habités et où j’aurais pu être — venait à moi comme un secours d’en haut pour me tirer du néant d’où je n’aurais pu sortir tout seul ; je passais en une seconde par-dessus des siècles de civilisation, et l’image confusément entrevue de lampes à pétrole, puis de chemises à col rabattu, recomposait peu à peu les traits originaux de mon moi. »

The German version that I usually read:

Spoiler:

»Im Schlaf versammelt der Mensch um sich im Kreise den Lauf der Stunden, die Ordnung der Jahre und der Welten. Er zieht sie instinktiv zu Rate, wenn er aufwacht, und liest in einer Sekunde daraus ab, an welchem Punkt der Erde er sich befindet, wieviel Zeit bis zu seinem Erwachen verflossen ist; doch können ihre Ordnungen durcheinandergeraten, sie können zusammenbrechen. Wenn ihn beispielsweise gegen Morgen, nachdem er eine Weile schlaflos dagelegen hat, beim Lesen der Schlummer in einer ganz anderen als der normalen Schlafstellung überfällt, dann genügt das Heben eines Arms, um die Sonne in ihrem Lauf anzuhalten und rückwärts gehen zu lassen : er verliert sein Zeitgefühl, und in der ersten Minute seines Erwachens wird er meinen, er sei eben erst zu Bett gegangen. Oder wenn er in einer noch unüblicheren und ausgefalleneren Stellung einschlummert, etwa nach dem Abendessen in einem Lehnstuhl, dann ist das Durcheinander in den aus der Bahn geworfenen Welten vollkommen, der Zaubersessel trägt ihn in Windeseile durch Zeit und Raum dahin, und in dem Augenblick, da er die Lider öffnet, ist ihm, als liege er einige Monate früher in einer anderen Gegend. Doch es genügte, daß ich in meinem eigenen Bett tief schlief und mein Geist sich dabei völlig entspannte, damit ihm der Lageplan des Ortes entglitt, an dem ich eingeschlafen war; und wenn ich mitten in der Nacht erwachte, wußte ich nicht, wo ich mich befand und deshalb im ersten Augenblick nicht einmal, wer ich war; ich verspürte nur, ursprünglich, elementar, jenes Daseinsgefühl, wie es in einem Tier beben mag; ich war entblößter als ein Höhlenmensch; doch dann kam mir die Erinnerung – noch nicht an den Ort, an dem ich mich befand, wohl aber an einige andere, an denen ich gewohnt hatte und wo ich hätte sein können – gleichsam als Hilfe von oben her, um mich aus dem Nichts zu ziehen, aus dem ich von selbst nicht herausgefunden hätte; in einer Sekunde überflog ich Jahrtausende der Menschheitsgeschichte, und die verschwommen und flüchtig geschauten Bilder von Petroleumlampen und von Hemden mit Umlegekragen fügten nach und nach die originären Züge meines Ich wieder zusammen.«

And here’s Moncrieff’s English translation:

Spoiler:

“When a man is asleep, he has in a circle round him the chain of the hours, the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly host. Instinctively, when he awakes, he looks to these, and in an instant reads off his own position on the earth’s surface and the amount of time that has elapsed during his slumbers; but this ordered procession is apt to grow confused, and to break its ranks. Suppose that, towards morning, after a night of insomnia, sleep descends upon him while he is reading, in quite a different position from that in which he normally goes to sleep, he has only to lift his arm to arrest the sun and turn it back in its course, and, at the moment of waking, he will have no idea of the time, but will conclude that he has just gone to bed. Or suppose that he gets drowsy in some even more abnormal position; sitting in an armchair, say, after dinner: then the world will fall topsy-turvy from its orbit, the magic chair will carry him at full speed through time and space, and when he opens his eyes again he will imagine that he went to sleep months earlier and in some far distant country. But for me it was enough if, in my own bed, my sleep was so heavy as completely to relax my consciousness; for then I lost all sense of the place in which I had gone to sleep, and when I awoke at midnight, not knowing where I was, I could not be sure at first who I was; I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence, such as may lurk and flicker in the depths of an animal’s consciousness; I was more destitute of human qualities than the cave-dweller; but then the memory, not yet of the place in which I was, but of various other places where I had lived, and might now very possibly be, would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I could never have escaped by myself: in a flash I would traverse and surmount centuries of civilisation, and out of a half-visualised succession of oil-lamps, followed by shirts with turned-down collars, would put together by degrees the component parts of my ego.”

[Penforhire]

I'm thinking it was E.R. Eddison (The Worm Ouroboros). As a child I remember thinking some of his seemingly endless descriptive passages were long-winded but I was also transported.

[John A. A. Logan]

For me, Knut Hamsun's 1890 novel, HUNGER.
At one point the protagonist is attempting to write outdoors in a park, with a pencil on paper...he begins to perceive the commas as stubborn insect-like creatures adhering to the paper, resisting the wind.
The protagonist often describes his own perception of his own perceptions...alienated from them, attributing them to hunger alone...though at times the reader can perceive that the protagonist's subconscious is actually perceiving reality clearly...more clearly than the protagonist/narrator consciously realises as he doubts himself...and his perceptions.

[Rizla]

Ondaatje is the most sensual writer that I've read. A friend said to me he writes like someone dropped hot lead into water

[John A. A. Logan]

Originally Posted by pynch

Now, that’s a challenge!

I think it would be Proust for me, among others, who at least temporarily draws me out of the “daze”, even if I like to return to my shell afterwards (that’s why some people are artists and others are not, I guess).

There are countless passages in the Recherche, here’s one from the third page of the first volume:

« Un homme qui dort tient en cercle autour de lui le fil des heures, l’ordre des années et des mondes. Il les consulte d’instinct en s’éveillant, et y lit en une seconde le point de la terre qu’il occupe, le temps qui s’est écoulé jusqu’à son réveil ; mais leurs rangs peuvent se mêler, se rompre. Que vers le matin après quelque insomnie, le sommeil le prenne en train de lire, dans une posture trop différente de celle où il dort habituellement, il suffit de son bras soulevé pour arrêter et faire reculer le soleil, et à la première minute de son réveil, il ne saura plus l’heure, il estimera qu’il vient à peine de se coucher. Que s’il s’assoupit dans une position encore plus déplacée et divergente, par exemple après dîner assis dans un fauteuil, alors le bouleversement sera complet dans les mondes désorbités, le fauteuil magique le fera voyager à toute vitesse dans le temps et dans l’espace, et au moment d’ouvrir les paupières, il se croira couché quelques mois plus tôt dans une autre contrée. Mais il suffisait que, dans mon lit même, mon sommeil fût profond et détendît entièrement mon esprit ; alors celui-ci lâchait le plan du lieu où je m’étais endormi, et quand je m’éveillais au milieu de la nuit, comme j’ignorais où je me trouvais, je ne savais même pas au premier instant qui j’étais ; j’avais seulement dans sa simplicité première le sentiment de l’existence comme il peut frémir au fond d’un animal ; j’étais plus dénué que l’homme des cavernes ; mais alors le souvenir — non encore du lieu où j’étais, mais de quelques-uns de ceux que j’avais habités et où j’aurais pu être — venait à moi comme un secours d’en haut pour me tirer du néant d’où je n’aurais pu sortir tout seul ; je passais en une seconde par-dessus des siècles de civilisation, et l’image confusément entrevue de lampes à pétrole, puis de chemises à col rabattu, recomposait peu à peu les traits originaux de mon moi. »

The German version that I usually read:

Spoiler:

»Im Schlaf versammelt der Mensch um sich im Kreise den Lauf der Stunden, die Ordnung der Jahre und der Welten. Er zieht sie instinktiv zu Rate, wenn er aufwacht, und liest in einer Sekunde daraus ab, an welchem Punkt der Erde er sich befindet, wieviel Zeit bis zu seinem Erwachen verflossen ist; doch können ihre Ordnungen durcheinandergeraten, sie können zusammenbrechen. Wenn ihn beispielsweise gegen Morgen, nachdem er eine Weile schlaflos dagelegen hat, beim Lesen der Schlummer in einer ganz anderen als der normalen Schlafstellung überfällt, dann genügt das Heben eines Arms, um die Sonne in ihrem Lauf anzuhalten und rückwärts gehen zu lassen : er verliert sein Zeitgefühl, und in der ersten Minute seines Erwachens wird er meinen, er sei eben erst zu Bett gegangen. Oder wenn er in einer noch unüblicheren und ausgefalleneren Stellung einschlummert, etwa nach dem Abendessen in einem Lehnstuhl, dann ist das Durcheinander in den aus der Bahn geworfenen Welten vollkommen, der Zaubersessel trägt ihn in Windeseile durch Zeit und Raum dahin, und in dem Augenblick, da er die Lider öffnet, ist ihm, als liege er einige Monate früher in einer anderen Gegend. Doch es genügte, daß ich in meinem eigenen Bett tief schlief und mein Geist sich dabei völlig entspannte, damit ihm der Lageplan des Ortes entglitt, an dem ich eingeschlafen war; und wenn ich mitten in der Nacht erwachte, wußte ich nicht, wo ich mich befand und deshalb im ersten Augenblick nicht einmal, wer ich war; ich verspürte nur, ursprünglich, elementar, jenes Daseinsgefühl, wie es in einem Tier beben mag; ich war entblößter als ein Höhlenmensch; doch dann kam mir die Erinnerung – noch nicht an den Ort, an dem ich mich befand, wohl aber an einige andere, an denen ich gewohnt hatte und wo ich hätte sein können – gleichsam als Hilfe von oben her, um mich aus dem Nichts zu ziehen, aus dem ich von selbst nicht herausgefunden hätte; in einer Sekunde überflog ich Jahrtausende der Menschheitsgeschichte, und die verschwommen und flüchtig geschauten Bilder von Petroleumlampen und von Hemden mit Umlegekragen fügten nach und nach die originären Züge meines Ich wieder zusammen.«

And here’s Moncrieff’s English translation:

Spoiler:

“When a man is asleep, he has in a circle round him the chain of the hours, the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly host. Instinctively, when he awakes, he looks to these, and in an instant reads off his own position on the earth’s surface and the amount of time that has elapsed during his slumbers; but this ordered procession is apt to grow confused, and to break its ranks. Suppose that, towards morning, after a night of insomnia, sleep descends upon him while he is reading, in quite a different position from that in which he normally goes to sleep, he has only to lift his arm to arrest the sun and turn it back in its course, and, at the moment of waking, he will have no idea of the time, but will conclude that he has just gone to bed. Or suppose that he gets drowsy in some even more abnormal position; sitting in an armchair, say, after dinner: then the world will fall topsy-turvy from its orbit, the magic chair will carry him at full speed through time and space, and when he opens his eyes again he will imagine that he went to sleep months earlier and in some far distant country. But for me it was enough if, in my own bed, my sleep was so heavy as completely to relax my consciousness; for then I lost all sense of the place in which I had gone to sleep, and when I awoke at midnight, not knowing where I was, I could not be sure at first who I was; I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence, such as may lurk and flicker in the depths of an animal’s consciousness; I was more destitute of human qualities than the cave-dweller; but then the memory, not yet of the place in which I was, but of various other places where I had lived, and might now very possibly be, would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I could never have escaped by myself: in a flash I would traverse and surmount centuries of civilisation, and out of a half-visualised succession of oil-lamps, followed by shirts with turned-down collars, would put together by degrees the component parts of my ego.”

"I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence, such as may lurk and flicker in the depths of an animal’s consciousness; I was more destitute of human qualities than the cave-dweller; but then the memory, not yet of the place in which I was, but of various other places where I had lived, and might now very possibly be, would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I could never have escaped by myself: in a flash I would traverse and surmount centuries of civilisation, and out of a half-visualised succession of oil-lamps, followed by shirts with turned-down collars, would put together by degrees the component parts of my ego.”

Yes, that's good stuff.

[crich70]

As far as fiction goes I'd guess it was Ted Geisel as he was one of the 1st authors I was able to read. I also read Maxwell's "The Bible Story" books quite often back then too. In fact I still have my set of the books.

[rkomar]

I had a few authors spring to mind, but when I thought about them some more, I wasn't sure they fit into the "Perception" mould originally asked for. I'm not sure about any of the authors mentioned after either. Are we talking about strictly physical perception via the five senses, or are we also talking about conscious or unconscious apprehension, as well? In "Hunger", the perceptions were hallucinations. Do they still count?

[cearbhallain]

I think it was Samuel R DeLaney in a novella called Simplex, Comples and Multiplex. I may be confused about either author or title as it's been more that a quarter of a century since I read it.

[John A. A. Logan]

Originally Posted by rkomar

I had a few authors spring to mind, but when I thought about them some more, I wasn't sure they fit into the "Perception" mould originally asked for. I'm not sure about any of the authors mentioned after either. Are we talking about strictly physical perception via the five senses, or are we also talking about conscious or unconscious apprehension, as well? In "Hunger", the perceptions were hallucinations. Do they still count?

In HUNGER, the protagonist often takes HIS OWN perceptions for mere hallucination...but often, through acting on the messages he so much distrusts himself, believing them to be just illusion caused by hunger, he actually succeeds in advancing his own survival.
It is as though the hunger has also opened the door to the unconscious mind, with, as you say, its extra-physical senses.

In Robert Bly's introduction to his own 1967 translation of HUNGER, he writes:

"One interesting faith runs through all of HUNGER - a curious, almost superstitious faith in the unconscious. The main character listens a great deal 'with his antennae'. He senses the woman in black under the street lamp in linked to him even before he talks to her. He is sure the word, 'Cisler' is a sign to him from 'higher powers'. He obeys his impulses instantly, showing an unusually open avenue between his unconscious and his consciousness, no matter if it is an impulse to bite his own finger (which pulls him out a serious daze), or the impulse to hire a taxi and drive off to a non-existent address, or the impulse to speak to strangers. He takes great delight in obeying these impulses."

This idea of "listening with the antennae" would seem to me indistinguishable from, inseparable from, any idea of perception.
You could also argue it to be the basis of clear perception.