If you have ever read a book, seen a film or sat and stared at a painting, you know what evocative means. The power of any great piece of art, perhaps a play (like Long Day's Journey into Night or Children of a Lesser God), brings out something in us.

This sense, this feeling that is brought forth, is evocative. The ability to create internal and external connections, is to me, what art does. It transcends us by making these neurons fire.
When you look at a Wyeth or listen to Mozart and feel connected to a world or a person far away, you are experiencing this power.

Silence can be evocative also. Think about still moments on a summer's evening-screen porch.

A winter's morning where you can hear the ice melting on trees.

A moment of silence in a piano concerto, where the notes hang in the air like incense.

THAT is evocative.

E*vo"ca*tive (?), a.

Calling forth; serving to evoke; developing.

Evocative power over all that is eloquent and expressive in the better soul of man. W. Pater.

 

© Webster 1913.

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