ABSTRACT
Does Bottom convey confusion or wisdom? Do we sneer at his synaesthetic muddle? Or perhaps, as would romantics and symbolists, do we share his regret? Or do we, like the neo-classical or modernist critic, approve of those bounds to perception and communication? We could simply point out that Bottom is wrong. Our primary experience of the world is synaesthetic, and artists know well how the senses colour and inflect one another. Stravinsky once reported that to experience his music set to dance was ‘to hear the music with one’s own eyes’ (Taper 1987: 258). How would we know what to feel when gazing at the shapes and shadows of the film and TV screen were it not for the suggestive promptings of sound and music?
