Re: Sounds like...
| From: | Diana Slattery <slattd@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, November 19, 1998, 2:53 |
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"Mathias M. Lassailly" wrote:
> Nick wrote :
>
> > Am I the only person who sees no connection whatsoever between those
> > sounds and color-words? I'd have to randomly guess on them.
> >
> So do I. To me each vowel has a colour. I can see red colour when I hear or
> read French *a*, yellow with *i*, gray with *i*, orange with *o*, brown with
> French *o-accent circonflex*, green with French *u*, deep blue with French
> *ou*, white with French *oeu*, etc. So any word of any language makes me
> think of colors. That's why I couldn't answer the post.
>
Shades of Arthur Rimbaud--one of his most famous pronouncements was about the color of vowels.
>From Une Saison en Enfer: "J'inventai la couleur des voyelles!--A noir, E blanc,
>I rouge, O bleu, U vert.--Je reglai la forme et le mouvement de chaque
>consonne, et, avec des rhythmes instinctifs, je me flattai d'inventer un
>verbe poetique accessible, un jour ou l'autre, a tous les sens. Je reservais
>la traduction. Ce fut d'abord une etude. J'ecrivais des
silences, des nuits, je notais l'inexprimable. Je fixais des vertiges."
"I invented the color of vowels! A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green. --I
regulated the form and the movement of every consonant, and with intinctive
rhythms I prided myself on inventing a poetic language accessible some day to
all the senses. I reserved all rights of translation. At first it was an
experiment. I wrote silences. I wrote the night.
I recorded the inexpressible. I fixed frenzies in their flight."