Synaesthesia and syncretism

Ratna Raman

Mr Y.K. Sharma, a teacher of English literature in Delhi University, channelled his extensive reading into the layered teaching of poetry to undergraduates. He introduced us to the word 'synaesthesia,' in the context of Romantic poetry. The word synaesthesia (ancient Greek; syn-together, aesthesia-of sensation) crops up in the English language in the nineteenth century, and continues to be in great use in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Evidence of synaesthesia, however, can be found much earlier, across cultures.

Modern science explains that our five organs of sense perception specifically allow us to feel or touch, taste, smell, hear and see. An inability to use any of these faculties is termed an impairment or disability. The extraordinary experience wherein more than one sense perception comes into play in any particular context is less discussed.  

The Natya Shastra documents how different colours are associated with a range of emotions, providing an interplay between the visual and abstract emotions.  The colour black, for instance, once associated with mourning, now features consistently in high couture in the West. Shakespeare's Iago, describes jealousy as a 'green-eyed monster' while in Kathakali, green colour is associated with the heroic. Studies show that people often associate different musical sounds with different colours. Similarly, letters and numbers have associations with a range of smells and colours.  Such possibilities involving connectedness must be explored further. 

The word 'anaesthesia'   refers to the introduction of a drug that can lead to a total loss of sensation that can numb pain. An anaesthetic (adjective) person is someone who is insensitive or unable to feel   pain or intense emotion.

Synaesthesia, involving an exchange between different sense perception channels, allows for a sensitive, highly attuned subject, namely the visionary, Romantic poet. Being 'anaesthetic' implied an absence of sensitivity and feeling while being 'synesthetic' refers to a heightened mode of perception with transformative possibilities. 

In "Harlem"  Langston Hughes  examines the consequences of deferred  dreams, asking:  

"Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?"

Dreams and hopes can be like ripe fruit, dried and stored away for the future or subject to decay, in the manner of runny sores and stinking, decomposed meat. Dreams can taste of sugar; crusty or syrupy and can also weigh a person down.  When left unrealised, they tend to self-destruct noisily.  Langston Hughes evokes for the reader the urgency of the dream that remains unfulfilled, transforming it through a range of images that can be felt, heard, tasted, touched and smelt. The gamut of tactile, auditory, olfactory and visual exchange, re sensitises the reader. This synesthetic experience, assailing sense perceptions, demands heightened awareness and serious reflection.  Written in 1951, the poem highlights the impossibility of the realisation of the American Dream for a majority of the African people. It continues to speak for the marginalised and the dispossessed of the world, voicing their hopes and frustrations. 

  Cultures, philosophies and thought processes abound in the world that we inhabit. Yet the murky air diminishes clear vision, its stench suffocates our lungs and chafes at skin. In Linguistics, 'syncretic' indicates the merging of different inflections of a word during the development of a language.

In language, the attempt to amalgamate (unite or combine) differing cultural practices, beliefs and convictions leads to an inclusive syncretic culture. To make this possible, we must de-anesthetise ourselves, discard uni-dimensional perception and adopt synesthetic perspectives for life and living.