Synaesthesia
of a sensory experience defined in
the terms of another sense; the
synthesis of, for example, color
and sound: a blue note
Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness :
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find ;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas ;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
~ From "The Garden," Andrew Marvell, 16? ~
With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.
~ From "I heard a fly buzz when I died...," Emily Dickinson, circa 1862 ~
...Something knocked in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first, faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing;
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
the darkness perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire, and flowers,
the overpowering night, the universe.
And I, tiny being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss.
I wheeled with the stars.
My heart broke loose with the wind.
~ From "Poetry," Pablo Neruda, 19?~
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands
~ From [somewhere i have never travelled], e.e.cummings, 1931~
The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun and now the
orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music and the opera of voices pitches a key
higher. ~ From The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925 (44 Scribners, 1992 ).
And it starts up north from Hollywood, water on the driving side,
Concrete mountains rearing up, throwing shadows just about five.
Sometimes you can smell the green if your mind is feeling fine;
There ain’t no finer place to be, than running Lake Shore Drive.
~ From "Lake Shore Drive," Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah, 1971
Some people are decidedly synesthetes, people who actually experience the
world through combined senses/modalities. Some see colors as numbers; for
others, sounds have taste. This amazing multiple-intelligence approach to
experience is exemplified in science, art, and film, as well. In movie, Mask, for
example, Rocky Dennis (played by Eric Stoltz) shows a new blind friend what
colors feel like--using warm potatoes, cotton balls, and other camp kitchen items
to convey the sense of sight.
But what of those of us who do not have an innate synaesthesia but wish to use
the combined senses as a literary trope in our own writing?
One exercise (of many, I'm sure) helps us to generate this trope (without making
it too contrived, of course):
Make a list of sounds down one side of your page.
Make a list of colors down the center of the page.
Make a list of tastes (oral, not stylistic) down the other side of the page.
Without negative self-judgement, with uncensored, unfettered approaches, now
draw get out three bowls or small boxes. Cut up the lists so that each word is a
separate piece of paper and is put into its own box. (That is, you should have
three boxes: one for sound, one for taste, one for color.) shuffle the slips, close
eyes, draw one from each box/bowl. Does is make sweet poetry? I'll bet it does.
I'll bet you can learn to generate your own synaesthesia, describing the voice of
the lead singer of Fine Young cannibals as caramel in tone, the smell of a greedy
attitude, the color of a bad note on American Idol, the texture of a TV ad that is
really, really bad.
Enjoy the combining or crossing of senses. And put the combinations to work.
~Elvis; Blue Hawaii
Museums of the Mind, Dr. Hugo Heyrman
"Synesthesia and its Influence in the Arts"; Allison Westbrook, McNair Scholar
"Pseudosynaesthesia in Literature";
background art in the RoxanneWrites HOME page for art credits
section.
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