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Harmony of the Senses in English, German, and French Romanticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Erika von Erhardt-Siebold
Erika von Erhardt-Siebold*
Affiliation:
Mount Holyoke College
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Extract

LOCKE'S mention in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) of the blind man who thought he understood what the color scarlet was because it was represented to him by the sound of a trumpet, startled people, like the trumpet blast or glaring color referred to, or even more like the combined effect of both loud sound and loud color. This unbelievable speculation was, however, soon substantiated by other similar observations and, henceforth, became a much repeated paradoxon of literature. The analogy between sound and color was first given a scientific foundation with Isaac Newton's Opticks in 1704. Newton in his comparison between sound and color went so far as to proclaim that the spaces occupied by the seven primary colors were similar to the relative intervals between the notes of the octave.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , June 1932 , pp. 577 - 592
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1932

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References

1 For a comprehensive study of this whole subject-matter I refer to my thesis Synæsthesien in der englischen Dichtung des 19. Jahrhunderts, Englische Studien 53 (1919), pp. 1–157, 196–334. This thesis received the attention of the psychologists at the Erste Farbe-Ton-Kongress (Hamburg, March 2–5, 1927) and recently has been reviewed and supplemented. I can mention here only the interesting articles by Albert Wellek. As they were published, however, after the present paper had been accepted for the PMLA, I am not able to devote any discussion to them. Mr. Wellek's extensive literary material drawn from several languages, though chiefly from secondary sources, will have to be weighed and sifted by the philologist and literary historian before it can serve for psychological conclusions. I draw the attention to the following papers by Mr. Wellek: Beiträge zum Synæsthesie-Problem, (Sammelreferat) Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie, 76 (1930), p. 193 ff; Zur Geschichte und Kritik der Synæsthesie-Forschung (mit Bibliographie) ibid., 79 (1931), p. 325 ff; Das Doppelempfinden im abendländischen Altertum und Mittelalter, ibid., 80 (1931), p. 120 ff; Sprachgeist als Doppelempfinder, Zeitschrift für Aesthetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, xxv, 3 (1931), p. 120 ff.

2 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. A. C. Fraser (Oxford, 1894), vol. ii, 38.—The identity of the blind man was later revealed by Mme de Staël; the famous name of the English mathematician Nicholas Saunderson, blind from his birth, gave substance to his fantastic experience.

3 See reports of J. B. Castel, Mémoires (de Trévoux) pour l'Histoire des Sciences et Beaux Arts (1735), p. 1832 ff; and Adam Smith, “Essay on External Senses” (1757) in Essays on Philosophical Subjects (London, 6th ed.), p. 452. The experience of the blind man (i.e. Nicholas Saunderson) is mentioned by: Shaftesbury, Second Characteristics, Plastics (1712), first printed by B. Rand (Cambridge, 1914); Fielding Tom Jones (1749), (ed. Leipzig, 1844), i, 118; Erasmus Darwin, Botanic Garden (1788), ii, Note III; Mme de Staël, Corinne (1807) ed. Mme de Saussure et M. Sainte-Beuve, p. 36, De l'Allemagne (1813), iii, ch. 10; Sainte-Beuve (quoted in P. Larousse, Grand Dictionnaire Universel du XIX e Siècle, Paris, 1870 sub voce écarlate).

4 Opticks (London, 1718), i, 2, prop. vi, p. 134.

5 Mémoires (de Trévoux) pour l'Histoire des Sciences et des Beaux Arts (1735), pp. 1444 ff, 1619 ff, 1807 ff, 2018 ff, 2335 ff, 2642 ff. See also J. B. Castel, Optique des Couleurs (Paris, 1740), trsl. into German as Farben-Optick (1747).

6 Lettre à M. Decourt, Mercure de France (Oct.-Nov. 1725), p. 2552 ff.

7 Musurgia Universalis, sive ars magna consoni et dissoni (Romae, 1650), t. iii, lib. ix.

8 Esprit, Saillies et Singularités du P. Castel (Amsterdam, 1763), p. 284.

9 Translated by Irving Babbit, The New Laokoon (Boston, New York, 1910), p. 55, from Esprit, op. cit., p. 280.

10 Esprit, op. cit., p. 309 and p. 369.

11 Explanation of the Ocular Harpsichord upon Shew to the Public (London, 1754), with a Postscript by Robert Smith, (London, 1762). Cf. also Notes and Queries, 3rd Series (1762), pp. 178–179. See also Description de l'Orgue ou Clavecin oculaire, inventé et exécuté par M. Le Père Castel … tirée d'une Lettre et mise en Allemand par M. Tellemann, imprimée a Hambourg. … This German translation by the composer, Georg Philipp Teleman, is: Beschreibung der Augenorgel oder des Augenclaviercimbels. … (Hamburg, 1739), reprinted in Lorenz Mizler's Musikalische Bibliothek (Leipzig, 1743), vol. ii, 269.

12 See references to the color-organ in my article Some Inventions of the Pre-Romantic Period and their Influence upon Literature, Englische Studien, vol. 66, 3.

13 Interlude to Canto III of Loves of the Plants and Temple of Nature (London, 1803), pp. 88–89.

14 Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence, ed. Thomas Sadler (London, 1869), i, 179.

15 Airey-Force Valley, lines 11–15.

16 Werke, ed. Minor, vol. ii, 238.

17 Walter Steinert, Ludwig Tieck und das Farbenempfinden der romantischen Dichtung (Dortmund, 1907), p. 15.

18 Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, 4. Bd. (Weimar, 1894), Farbenlehre, vol. ii, pp. 257–262. For other references to the color-organ, especially in German and French literature, see my article.

19 Synaesthesien, op. cit., p. 85.

20 Marginalia, Poetical Works, ed. James A. Harrison (New York, 1902), vol. xvi, pp. 17–18.

21 Works (Edinburgh and London, s. d.), vii, 137.

22 J. G. v. Herder's Sämmtliche Werke (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1853), p. 59.

23 This whole problem needs investigating from the point of view of comparative literature; the best study is still Irving Babbitt, The New Laokoon, op. cit.

24 Mémoires (de Trévoux) op. cit., p. 1447 ff.

25 The Botanic Garden, op. cit., ii, note iii.

26 Already the 18th century saw in the color-organ an argument of defence for the new literary synæsthesia. See my article Some Inventions, op. cit., p. 000.

27 Prometheus Unbound, iv, 256–261.

28 Letter to B. Bailey, November 22, 1817.

29 Marginalia, op. cit., p. 31.

30 A Tale of the Ragged Mountains, Poetical Works, op. cit., v, 167.

31 Franz Sternbald's Wanderungen (ed. Minor), ii, 283.

32 Endymion, iv, 294.

33 Gareth and Lynette, 320.

34 To —, 1–4.

35 Epipsychidion, 453–456.

36 Thalassius, Poems, (London, 1904), iii, 296.

37 Corinne, ed. Mme. Necker de Saussure et M. Sainte-Beuve (Paris), p. 221.

38 Ibid., p. 32.

39 Ibid., p. 233.

40 Ibid., p. 234.

41 Ibid., p. 178. Notice that the same synæsthetic expression recurs in De L'Allemagne (Paris, 1874), p. 393.

42 The most interesting theories are given in the Athenaeum (1798–1800), founded by the brothers Schlegel; this was the official organ of the older Romantic school. For further examples, see my thesis Synaesthesien, op. cit., pp. 78–102.

43 Corinne, op. cit., p. 178.

44 Ibid., p. 187.

45 Ibid., p. 188.

46 Ibid., pp. 189–190.

47 Ibid., p. 183.

48 De L'Allemagne, (Paris, 1874), p. 17.

49 Corinne, op. cit., p. 36.

50 De L'Allemagne, op. cit., pp. 479–480.

51 Corinne, op. cit., p. 69.

52 Bride of Abydos, i, 176–179.

53 Works, ed. Rowland E. Prothero (London, 1898), iii, 164.

54 Ibid., ii, 325–326.

55 Diary, op. cit., i, 179.

56 Jean Marie Carré, Madame de Staël et Henry Crabb Robinson d'après des Documents inédits, Revue d'Histoire Littér. de la France xix, p. 542.

57 Poetical Works, op. cit., vii, p. 142. (The italics are mine.)

58 Wordsworth's Prelude, ed. Ernest de Selincourt (Oxford, 1926), p. 514.

59 Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, ed. G. W. Knight, (London, 1904), ii, 178.

60 The Excursion,vi, 482.

61 Found frequently in Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth.

62 Intimations of Immortality, 111–112.

63 Airey-Force Valley, 14.

64 Biographia Literaria, (London, 1817), vol. ii, ch. ix.

65 Anima Poetae, ed. E. H. Coleridge (London, 1895), October 25, 1802.

66 To Jane, (“The keen stars were twinkling”), 21–24.

67 Fragments of an Unfinished Drama, 215–216.

68 The Sensitive Plant, 25–28.

69 Rosalind and Helen, 1108–1110.

70 Letter to Thomas Love Peacock, Rome, March 23, 1819.

71 Letter to Fanny Keats, April 13, 1819.

72 See my Synaesthesien, pp. 252–254.