Speaking of l’audition colorée, the French structuralist Gerard Genette in one of his essays quotes a book by Paul Delbouille, POÉSIE ET SONORITÉS (1961): « Toutes les couleurs ont au moins été attribuées une fois à chacune des voyelles ». This probably means that VN’s synaesthesia (the way different sounds related to different colors) was as unique as his handwriting or fingerprints. We know that the colors of VN’s vowels were not the same as the colors of Rimbaud’s voyelles, which might have been equally unique.

 

Sergey Karpukhin