December 2016 – my chautauqua

” A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue – vowels / One day I will recount your latent births.” VOYELLES Arthur Rimbaud

When I think of the days of the week, in my mind’s eye I see some of them as shapes and colours. Saturday is a red upright rectangle, Sunday a white oval. Wednesday is also an oval, but yellow, whereas Monday is orange but shapeless. The other days of the week have neither shape nor colour. The proper name for this crossing-over of the senses is, of course, synaesthesia. Mine is limited to just four of the days of the week, but in certain people it can be much more pronounced. Not much to shout about, perhaps, but at one time, in the world of the arts, it was a hot topic.

Rimbaud wrote a poem about it – “Voyelles” – in which letters themselves – the 5 vowels – summon up colours and sounds. He was sharing in a popular belief. Baudelaire’s poem “Correspondances” had earlier talked of “perfumes as cool to the touch as children’s flesh”. Rimbaud had a friend, Ernest Cabaner, who taught the piano by sticking pieces of coloured paper on the piano keys, because he believed each note of the octave corresponded to a particular vowel and colour. Rimbaud himself wrote that he imagined a future “universal language” that could be understood by all the senses at once.

The importance of the idea of synaesthesia in the late 19th century was bound up with a general belief in the interconnectivity of all the arts. The art form many avant-guard artists aspired to was music, seen as the purest, most abstract of all the arts, since there was no requirement for it to represent the real world. Language, colours and sound were seen to be coming together. Critics appreciated the musical qualities of poetry, not just its meaning. The formal elements of visual art began to be described as a language. Where poetry had led, painting followed. In the 1880s and 90s, post-impressionist painters began to use colour expressively, rather than as a way of representing objective reality.If Matisse or Gauguin wanted a face to be green, then green it became. If Rimbaud wanted a boat to be drunk, then drunk it was.

In effect poets and artists were liberating the formal elements of their medium – words and colours – from the requirement to correspond with the outside world. And so language and form begin to take on a life of their own. Rimbaud’s word-pictures are powerful and interesting in their own right without needing to be explained in relation to the real world. This is the same move towards abstraction that Matisse made in his paintings. Colour for him was synaesthetic – it had emotional power and could hold the painting together without the need to be realistic. This was the first necessary step on the road to abstract art. These days line, shape, texture and colour are sufficient to carry a whole painting.

Abstract art is an acquired taste. Not everyone likes it. I do. But then I would, wouldn’t I? I see Saturday as a red rectangle.

Two scenes, over 50 years apart, one from a novel, the other from a film, have always struck a chord with me.

In 1915 Franz Kafka published “Metamorphosis” which opens with Gregor Samsa waking up to find he has changed into some kind of beetle or cockroach. He still feels like Gregor Samsa but is trapped inside an exoskeleton – a hard outer shell from within which he looks out at the threatening world ruled by his father.

Mike Nichols’ film “The Graduate”, released in 1969, contains a scene in which Benjamin Braddock, played by Dustin Hoffman, is presented at his graduation party wearing the all-encasing diving-suit and goggles his parents have given him as a present. We have already become aware of Benjamin’s anxiety about the teenage pressures of girls, family and future prospects. Nichols takes us inside the wetsuit and we hear Benjamin’s laboured breathing and feel the claustrophobic smothering of the suit as we look out through the goggles at the demanding, threatening world of adults.

I think these scenes are more than metaphors for alienation. I believe they represent felt experience, the explanation for which can be found in psychology.

In 1960 the psychologist R.D. Laing published “The Divided Self” in which he refers to the schizoid anxieties of psychologically insecure people. He identified a condition known as “engulfment” in which the individual feels he is being buried or drowned by the world around him. Such a person commonly dreads turning from a living being to a dead thing, an automaton, a robot. To come to terms with these feelings he seeks isolation, withdraws within a shell, and comes to feel as if his real self is trapped within an alien body, and this self looks out from within a fixed exterior which serves as a shield against a threatening outside world.

Both Gregor and Benjamin are suffering from anxiety and in particular from engulfment. There is a difference in the degree of this anxiety represented by the form of their outer shells. Benjamin’s wetsuit is restricting and uncomfortable – comic even. Gregor’s insect exoskeleton, however, evinces a dreadful fear and disgust. There is a world of difference between the uncomfortable squirming felt by Benjamin Braddock and the anguish and dread felt by Gregor, but they belong to the same condition. Laing tells us that psychosis is a continuum. On a scale of 1 to 10 Benjamin is at 2 and Gregor at 9.

In “The Graduate” Dustin Hoffman’s acting style was a perfect fit. It is the same mechanical, “rabbit-in-the-headlights” style he used later to good effect as the autistic brother in “Rainman”.There is an early shot of him in “The Graduate” gliding on a moving walkway, staring ahead, rigid and robot-like. Hoffman was a proponent of “method” acting, which involves drawing on personal experience to lend authenticity to the emotions being portrayed. What experience was he drawing on when he played Benjamin Braddock?

Engulfment is not just a theory. It exists. I know it exists because I have experienced it myself. There was a time when I felt that the physical thing seen by other people was not me but a false outer shell being operated from within by a hidden real me. It is common for people to put on a false front behind which they can hide their real feelings. This was different, though. Engulfment led me to experience my two selves as a physical reality. I had an exoskeleton. For a time I was Gregor the Graduate.