314 HAUNTING EFFECT EXPLAINED 



resolved as soon as I can pull myself together to 

 imitate it and am furiously excited about it. And 

 as to bird music, it doesn't haunt me not because it 

 is inimitable, and I am not such a fool as to imagine 

 it is, consequently I just enjoy it and think no more 

 about it. 



The true explanation of the haunting effect has 

 already been given by anticipation in this chapter. 

 The continued agitation is due to the expression in 

 music which affects us in different degrees. And I 

 take it that we are far more powerfully affected by 

 orchestral music than by vocal, because singing is 

 wholly, purely human and is ours, but instrumental 

 music is not ours in the same way: it is ours, as I 

 have said, but clarified, beautified, spiritualised 

 beyond the range of the human voice, and the 

 expression is consequently intensified. 



Lest this should not appear obvious I will state it 

 in other words: the effect is intensified for the very 

 reason that it Is not wholly human — whoUy of the 

 earth, like our own voices; but is reminiscent of 

 the earth and our earthly lives. It stirs us more 

 than the voice because it is the voice, clarified, 

 beautified, coming to us from otherwhere; and the 

 effect is thus similar to that of any human-like sound 

 or tone, in itself beautiful, heard in solitude or in a 

 lonely desert place; or, to give a concrete instance, 

 like the contralto sound in the modulated evening 

 call of the tinamu, which made the tears gather in 

 the heart and rise to the eyes of my friend the gaucho. 



Passages from other writers could be quoted on 



