Myerson, Julie(Photo by Nigel Spalding)   British author.
 
 

Vladimir Nabokov     (1899-1977)
 

 In his autobiography, Speak Memory (1966), the Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov tells us of his

"fine case of colored hearing.  Perhaps 'hearing' is not quite accurate, since the color sensation seems to be produced by the very act of my orally forming a given letter while I imagine its outline.  The long a of the English alphabet (and it is this alphabet I have in mind farther on unless otherwise stated) has for me the tint of weathered wood, but a French a evokes polished ebony.  This black group also includes hard g (vulcanized rubber) and r (a sooty rag bag being ripped).  Oatmeal n, noodle-limp l, and the ivory-backed hand mirror of o take care of the whites.  I am puzzled by my French on which I see as the brimming tension-surface of alcohol in a small glass.  Passing on to the blue group, there is steely x, thundercloud z, and huckleberry k.  Since a subtle interaction exists between sound and shape, I see q as browner than k, while s is not the light blue of c, but a curious mixture of azure and mother-of-pearl.  Adjacent tints do not merge, and diphthongs do not have special colors of their own, unless represented by a single character in some other language (thus the fluffy-gray, three-stemmed Russian letter that stands for sh [S], a letter as old as the rushes of the Nile, influences its English representation).
       "... In the green group, there are alder-leaf f, the unripe apple of p, and pistachio t.  Dull green, combined somehow with violet, is the best I can do for w.  The yellows comprise various e's and i's, creamy d, bright-golden y, and u, whose alphabetical value I can express only by 'brassy with an olive sheen.'  In the brown group, there are the rich rubbery tone of soft g, paler j, and the drab shoelace of h.  Finally, among the reds, b has the tone called burnt sienna by painters, m is a fold of pink flannel, and today I have at last perfectly matched v with 'Rose Quartz' in Maerz and Paul's Dictionary of Color.  The word for rainbow, a primary, but decidedly muddy, rainbow, is in my private language the hardly pronounceable: kzspygv" (Nabokov 1966: 34-35).
 

    It should be mentioned that Nabokov's mother was a synesthete, as was also his wife, and his son Dmitri.
 

           International Vladimir Nabokov Society
 
 

Yardley, Jane    British author.
 

"Jane Yardley was brought up in an Essex village but went to university in London, where she has lived ever since. She has a Ph.D from Charing Cross Hospital Medical School and works on medical projects around the globe. Much of her life is therefore spent on aeroplanes and in hotel rooms, and this prompted her to get to work on her first novel. She has synaesthesia, a condition that mixes the senses - so that she has, for example, the gift of hearing music or seeing numbers in colour."

Bashó      (1644 - 1694)  Japanese haiku poet.
 
 
 

Baudelaire, Charles 
 

    Correspondances
 

La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles; L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers. Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent Dans une ténébreuuse et profonde unité,  Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,  Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent. Il est des parfums frais comme des chairs d'enfants,  Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies,  Et d'autres, corrompus, piches et triomphants,  Ayant l'expansion des choses infinies, Comme l'ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l'encens, Qui chantent les transports de l'esprit et des sens.

Nature is a temple where living pillars  sometimeslet forth confused words; in it man goes through forests of symbols which wath him with familiar looks. Like long echoes which from a distance  mingle into a shadowy and deep unity,  as vast as night and light, perfumes, colours and sounds reply to one another. There are perfumes fresh as children's flesh,  sweet as oboes, green as meadows, and others corrupt, rich and triumphant,  Sharing the capacity of expansion that infinite things have,  such as musk, balsam and incense,  which hymn the transports of the mind and the senses. [From Cristopher Robinson, French Literature in the Nineteenth Century; New York: Barnes & Noble; 1978.  Pp. 129-130.

 
 

Buson, Yosa      (1716 - 1783) Japanese haiku poet.
 
 

Chora  (Japanese haiku poet.)
 
 

Issa, Kobayashi   (1763-1827)  Japanese haiku poet.
 
 

Rimbaud, Arthur 
 
 

 Perhaps one of the most famous poems ever written with a synaesthetic theme is Rimbaud's "Voyelles":
 
 
 

Rimbaud later (1873) admitted that he was not a synaesthete, and had made up the correspondences between vowels and colors:
 

"J'inventais la couleur des voyelles! -- A noir, E blanc, I rouge, O bleu, U vert. -- Je réglai la forme et le mouvement de chaque consonne, et, avec des rhythmes instinctifs, je me flattai d'inventer un verbe poétique accessible, un jour ou l'autre, à tous les sens.  Je réservais la traduction" (quoted in Marks 1997/1975: 51).

"I invented the colors of the vowels! -- A black, E  white, I red, O blue, U green. -- I settled on the form and the movement of each consonant, and, with instinctive rhythms, I flattered myself to invent an accessible poetic verb, one day or another, for all of the senses.   I set up the translation [my translation from the  French]

Shiki  (Japanese haiku poet.)
 
 

Last updated: 30.Dec.2004