sense-values

Updated: May 23, 2025

And yet even in the absurd, a sympathetic observer may detect a purpose which is honest and right. Miss Stein has indubitably written nonsense, but she began with sense. For words have their sound-values as well as their sense-values, and prose rhythms do convey to the mind emotions that mere denotation cannot give.

Henry Seidel Canby - Definitions: Essays in Contemporary Criticism