Like Diana, I was also struck by the conversation we had about synesthesia, and how many class members seem to have some form of it (truly amazing!). Last semester I was in an amazing Russian literature class where we read the works of Vladimir Nabokov. He was a grapheme-colour synesthete, he saw letters as being different colours, a condition he shared with his mother. While his synesthesia was not the same as the music-colour and music-sensation synesthesia we discussed in class, I find this other form just as compelling. As someone who can not imagine what it is like to have not merely an association between two completely different sensations, but to feel like they are unwaveringly connected, this concept fascinates me.
I’ve been rereading some of my favorite parts of Speak, Memory, Nabokov’s autobiography, and I thought I would share his description of his synesthesia. His description of different letters being in different groups according to how they appear to him is a completely foreign concept to me. I would love for us to do some classwork on synesthesia, as I find it such a fascinating multidisciplinary concept. So sorry for sharing this very long paragraph, but I just absolutely cherish his description and his language! I would love if anyone in class who has it would describe it to us as well. 🙂
“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 [Ш], 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”