Synaesthesia

The article I presented in class today was on Synaesthesia, which i found really interesting. One thing this article brought to mind was modern poetry. Poets are always describing things as "tasting green" "smelling smooth" or "feeling orange." In one of my English classes, we talked about this as a figure of speech, also called synesthesia. That brought to my mind a question relating to Professor Blum's comment that synesthesia became "popular" in the early 1900s. (I might have gotten that date wrong.) I thought that the popularity of synesthesia might be related to the use of the synesthesia as a figure of speech by popular poets around this time. In particular, I thought of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" [also known as "Song of Myself] published in the mid 1850s which, if I remember correctly, contains a lot of unusual imagery and synathesia. Emily Dickinson, writing about the same time (1860s), also used surprising comparisons, often with synesthesia:

Example From: "I heard a fly buzz when I died"
With BLUE uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see

She describes a fly's buzz as being "blue." I wonder if these poets had synesthesia or if they were merely influenced by the popularity of synesthesia of the time.

As I was looking for examples of synasthesia in poetry at this time period, I came across an article that seems to have answered my own question: "Theorist of the evolution of human consciousness were also apt to regard the rapid increase in synasthesia [in literature] brought about by both the intensive scientific search for new cases and the popular fad of affecting synasthesic perception, as evidence that it was a newly emergent...trait [in literature]."

I found this quote in: Bright Colors Falsely Seen By Kevin T. Dann. http://books.google.com/books?id=dxxX9qAnRVsC&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=walt+whitmans+synesthesia&source=web&ots=dhIoaXtOEZ&sig=gWm7xURClVZDVmkauuxe3h-g3FM&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=9&ct=result


I think it's interesting how trends in one area affect trends in other areas - for example: science influenced literature which influenced public awareness and fads about synasthesia.