Subject
novelist Vladimir Nabokov ...
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Opinion
Complete article at the following URL:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227101.600-review-wednesday-is-indigo-blue.html?full=true#bx271016B1
Review: Wednesday is Indigo Blue
29 May 2009 by Liz Else
Book information
Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the brain of synaesthesia by Richard E. Cytowic and David M. Eagleman
Published by: MIT Press
Price: £19.95/$29.95
ACCORDING to Richard Cytowic and David Eagleman, Wednesday is indigo blue. Well, not to me it isn't: it's green.
[ ... ]
Synaesthesia, as it turns out, may be up to seven times as common among artists, novelists and composers as it is among other people. What's more, it seems to run in families. For example, the Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov (see "From father to son") saw letters in colours, as did his mother - who also heard in colours - and as does his son Dmitri. This obviously lends support to the idea that synaesthesia has a genetic underpinning.
[ .. ]
From father to son
"The long 'a' of the English alphabet has for me the tint of weathered wood, but a French 'a' evokes polished ebony. This black group also includes hard 'g' (vulcanised rubber) and 'r' (a sooty rag being ripped)."
Vladimir Nabokov in his autobiography, Speak, Memory
"One character may see another tinged with the aura corresponding to a particular emotion, or perhaps encircled by spikes suggesting antipathy... As for the intensity of an orgasm, it may give birth not only to geometric aberrations in the mind, but... to a seemingly unending tunnel of pleasure through which one races in a crescendo of sensation toward the ultimate release. And a new kind of cinema, perhaps, thanks to an enlightened perception of synaesthesia."
Dmitri Nabokov on how a potential film version of his father's novel Ada could draw on synaesthesia (from Dmitri Nabokov's afterword to Wednesday is Indigo Blue)
Liz Else is an editor at New Scientist
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