I'm Back

So after a very long hiatus, I have returned to my blog. I will be trying to post every week or every couple of weeks. The class this blog was started for has since ended but I'm still doing some research on synesthesia and am still wanting to share that research.

For this post I want to concentrate on Vladimir Nabokov who is most famously known for his novel 'Lolita'

Nabokov had what is know as grapheme-color synesthesia. This is where letters and numbers are perceived as have their own distinct color. Basically when Nabokov looked at words, he saw them in color. This type of synesthesia is one of the most common forms of synesthesia.

 He embraced his synesthesia, often giving his characters synesthestic characteristics. In his memoir 'Speak, Memory', Nabokov wrote about his synesthesia and how it affected him during his life.
         "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’ (vulcanized rubber) and ‘r’ (a sooty rag being ripped). Oatmeal ‘n’, noodle-limp ‘l’, and the ivory-backed hand-mirror of ‘o’ take care of the white. . . . Passing on to the blue group, there is steely ‘x’, thundercloud ‘z’ and huckleberry ‘h’. Since a subtle interaction exists between sound and shape, I see ‘q’ as browner than ‘k’, while ‘s’ is not the light blue of ‘c’, but a curious mixture of azure and mother-of-pearl." -Speak, Memory

Along with using his synesthesia in his work, Nabokov is also one of the best examples of the theory that synesthesia is genetic. Nabokov's mother not only had grapheme-color synesthesia, she also had colored hearing and Nabokov's son Dmitri also inherited synesthesia. Scientists have not been able to pinpoint which genes might be responsible for synesthesia.