Synaesthesia
as a poetic device
Yoshio Nagano |
'The
application of synaesthesia, a universal but less normal psychological
phenomenon, to a most subtle literary imagery is by no means a matter
of rarity, in view of the fact that literature ever aims at every
possible means of effect or mental impression for its primary concern.
Above all, this is the case with poetry which is a specific form
of elevated emotion or thought, Here it is noticeable that the poetical
imagination not only makes the best of such common varieties of synaesthesia
as clinically testified in actual life but further goes on to create
more of fresh types otherwise undreamed-of. This fact bears witness
to a final success with which synaesthetic metaphors have found their
way into the stock in trade of poetical devices after standing the
test of language-a medium of communication by nature-which is necessarily
involved in the expression of what takes place in man's innermost
world.
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