Chapter Two: “Synaesthesia” in the Works of the Poet Lo Fu
Section One: The Unique Mastery of the “Poetry Demon”
Among Taiwan’s modern poets, Lo Fu and Zheng Chouyu are highly esteemed. Lo Fu is revered as the “Poetry Demon,” while the poet Zheng Chouyu enjoys the fine reputation of the “Wanderer.”
Lo Fu’s title as the Poetry Demon is not without foundation. Based on the author’s analysis of his poems, Lo Fu’s imagination is strange and unpredictable, and he frequently produces astonishing lines of verse. From the perspective of rhetorical analysis, Lo Fu excels in the use of “synaesthesia,” “hyperbole,” and “surrealism.” These three advanced expressive techniques cause his lines to frequently present montage-style (Montage) surreal situations and irrational yet marvelous artistic realms, making them extremely eye-catching.
In this short essay, we shall first explore the various types of synaesthesia that appear in Lo Fu’s poetry.
Section Two: Lo Fu’s Techniques of Synaesthesia
“Synaesthesia” (Synaesthesia), also known as “transferred sensation” (transferred epithet)¹, is defined as follows: “Transferred sensation is a rhetorical method that employs concrete and vivid language, describing the qualities and appearances of things by shifting the angle of perception.”²
“Synaesthesia refers to expressing the qualities of things perceived by one sense through the perception of another sense. The renowned British musician Marion said: ‘Sound is visible color; color is audible sound.’”³ This precisely illustrates that sound and color can intercommunicate, and that interaction among the senses indeed exists.
The forms of synaesthetic expression may be broadly divided according to two major criteria:
(1) Based on whether other rhetorical devices are employed:
- Direct synaesthesia
- Mediated synaesthesia (assisted by other rhetorical devices)
(2) Associative intercommunication among the senses:
Based on the sense involved in synaesthesia and its corresponding interacting sense, these are divided into:
- Auditory transference
- Visual transference
- Olfactory and gustatory transference
- Tactile transference
- Multiple sensory intercommunication
The poet Lo Fu employs every one of these without omission. This demonstrates that Lo Fu’s sensory acuity far surpasses that of his contemporaries.
1. Auditory Transference
From “Jinlong Chan Temple”⁴
Evening bell—
is the small path
down which tourists descend the mountain.
Ferns,
along the white stone steps,
chew their way all the way down.
Li Yuanluo comments: “The ‘evening bell’ is an auditory image, while the ‘small path’ descending the mountain is a visual image. The bell’s sound is resonant and lingering; the path is winding. Their conceivable and visible forms bear a certain resemblance. Thus Lo Fu achieves this aesthetic synaesthesia of sight and hearing.”⁵
This kind of “transforming sound into form,” a sensory transference from “sound → vision,” can likewise be seen in the following passage:
From “Saigon Night Market”⁶
The man chewing gum
pulls the accordion into
such a long deserted alley.
The accordion player walks along the deserted alley; the music he pulls out is lingering and melodious. Yet as it enters the poet’s ears, it is imagined as the accordion player pulling out a long alley. This method of transforming sound into a visual image is a distinctive feature in Lo Fu’s works.
2. Visual Transference
From “Entering the Mountain with the Sound of Rain Yet Seeing No Rain”⁷
Descending the mountain,
still no rain in sight.
Three bitter pine nuts
roll along the road sign all the way to my feet.
Reaching out to grasp them,
they turn out to be a handful of birdsong.
From “Echo”⁸
No matter what, I cannot recall how you became so thin—
so thin like a single phrase of xiao flute music.
I try to hold you with both hands,
yet you evade and flicker between the seven holes.
This “transforming form into sound: shifting from vision toward hearing”—this type of sensory fusion—is quite common and especially characteristic within Lo Fu’s synaesthetic rhetoric. For example:
“Three bitter pine nuts / roll along the road sign all the way to my feet / reaching out to grasp them / they turn out to be a handful of birdsong.”
Not only is the sound effect marvelous, but the imagination is strange and unpredictable. Any perceptive and experienced reader, upon encountering such lines, can most likely guess that they are from the hand of Lo Fu.
“No matter what, I cannot recall how you became so thin / so thin like a single phrase of xiao flute music.”
Through metaphor, a visual image is transformed into sound, describing slenderness as a phrase of flute music. Such breathtaking imagination is precisely the result of employing the synaesthetic technique of “transforming form into sound.”
Beyond this, Lo Fu also makes unambiguous use of “transforming form into taste, smell, or touch: shifting from vision toward gustation, olfaction, or tactility.” For example:
From “An Alley on Huaxi Street”⁹
A woman who has just put on makeup stands at the doorway,
maintaining a smile
that carries the smell of freshly applied paint.
Another squats beside a small stall,
gulping oyster soup,
while reaching into her trousers
to scratch an itch.
To coat a woman’s smile with the smell of fresh paint—such creativity indeed compels one to pound the table in admiration. The poet never explicitly states that the prostitute has caked her face with cheap cosmetics. Instead, he takes a detour, inwardly disliking the smell after her makeup, likening it to the pungency of newly brushed paint.
3. Olfactory and Gustatory Transference
From “The Snake Shop”¹⁰
One slash for the venomous,
one slash also for the non-venomous.
Beheaded and then skinned—
a hissing sound.
What a body, white and tender, laid bare.
Then severed at the waist,
then simmered into a pot of soup thicker than tears.
“To simmer into a pot of soup thicker than tears” blends the thickness of soup (a gustatory image) with tears (a visual image), intermingling flesh with blood and tears. If it were truly such a pot of soup, gourmets would probably find it hard to swallow, would they not? This, of course, is the poet’s contemplation born of compassion. After witnessing the severe punishment of the snake being skinned and chopped apart, he himself likely had little appetite left. From these lines we can see that “synaesthesia” can also be performed within a single line, in the most concise and refined form.
From “Waterside”¹¹
And at this moment, a fragrance of hair comes winding over,
like a clear spring flowing past the lips.
Suddenly turning around, unexpectedly I see
in your eyes blooming
a pond of such moving water lilies.
“A fragrance of hair comes winding over / like a clear spring flowing past the lips” depicts the imagined encounter between scent and taste buds—an olfactory shift and fusion toward gustation. Skillful use of sensory transference (synaesthesia) can stimulate creativity and guide association. The poet leans in with his nose to smell his wife’s hair fragrance, yet likens that fragrance to a clear spring winding over and flowing past the lips, as though it could truly be tasted. Such a technique indeed earns the author’s deep admiration.
4. Tactile Transference
From“Angel in the Fire”¹²
You complain my blood is not hot enough.
There is mist in your eyes,
hair like autumn grass,
too much fat on the lower abdomen,
and hands cold as a snake.
When you burst into laughter, it carries the terror of a solar eclipse.
“Hands cold as a snake” renders the tactile sensation of “cold” into an image (visualized form), borrowing the outward appearance of metaphor to express the intercommunication between touch and sight.
“When you burst into laughter, it carries the terror of a solar eclipse” links sound with vision through metaphor, producing a shocking and horrifying special effect.
From Lo Fu’s“Song of Everlasting Regret”¹³
A pair of wings
flies into the moonlight outside the hall—
gradually fading farther and farther away,
a whisper
flickering and bitter.
In this subsection, “wings” and “moonlight” are both visual images. Through the connective function of “synaesthesia,” they become linked with “whisper,” which represents an auditory image—that is, first shifting from visual imagery to auditory imagery. Next, through another layer of synaesthetic linkage, the auditory image “whisper” connects with “flickering” (a visual image) and “bitter” (a gustatory image).
“Flickering” is a visual verb; “bitter” is a gustatory adjective. Here they join hands, working together to “emotionalize” the concrete and audible image of “whisper.” The author refers to this as “transforming the concrete into the abstract.”
5. Multiple Sensory Intercommunication
From “Sharing an Umbrella”¹⁴
On the days we shared an umbrella,
our laughter was never once wet.
Along the railway tracks of Qingtongkeng,
we walked toward the mining district,
peeling oranges as we ate,
calculating
the speed of transition from cold rain to a sneeze.
This short poem is also an example of the use of “synaesthesia: interweaving of the senses.”
“Our laughter was never once wet” links the auditory image (laughter) with the tactile image (wetness), echoing the preceding line “sharing an umbrella.”
“The speed of transition from cold rain to a sneeze,” on the other hand, reverses the process by linking the tactile image (cold rain) with the auditory image (the sound of a sneeze), forming something akin to a “reversible reaction” in physics. Such a structural design is quite rare.
This demonstrates that the poet 洛夫, in addition to being adept at employing “hyperbole as a rhetorical device,” is also highly skilled in his mastery of “synaesthesia: sensory interweaving.”
Notes
〈1〉 The distinction between “transferred sensation” and “synaesthesia”:
“Transferred sensation merely involves the borrowing of adjectives between the senses, as if asking one to hear with the eyes and see with the ears, remaining primarily at the level of the sensory organs; however, feeling warmth upon seeing the color red, or sensing chilliness toward the color green, tends more toward the aim of emotional transference.”
That is, “transferred sensation” refers to the intercommunication of sensory experience, whereas “synaesthesia” refers to the ‘mind-sense’ that integrates sensory experience.
See Huang Lizhen, Practical Rhetoric (Revised Edition), 2004, Taipei: Guojia, p.169.
〈2〉 Yang Chunlin and Liu Fan (eds.), The Great Dictionary of Chinese Rhetorical Art, Xi’an: Shaanxi People’s Publishing House, 1991, p.1129.
〈3〉 From Li Yuanluo, Poetic Aesthetics [On the Beauty of Synaesthesia in Poetry], Taipei: Dongda, 1990, p.536.
〈4〉 Recorded from Lo Fu, Magic Songs—Collected Poems of Lo Fu, Taipei: Penglai, 1981, pp.46–47.
〈5〉 Li Yuanluo, Poetic Aesthetics [On the Beauty of Synaesthesia in Poetry], Taipei: Dongda, 1990, p.547.
〈6〉 Recorded from Lo Fu, Magic Songs—Collected Poems of Lo Fu, Taipei: Penglai, 1981, pp.10–11.
〈7〉 Recorded from Lo Fu, Magic Songs—Collected Poems of Lo Fu, Taipei: Penglai, 1981, pp.25–26.
〈8〉 Recorded from Lo Fu, An Illustrated Interpretation of Dreams, Taipei: Bookman, 1999, pp.48–49.
〈9〉 Recorded from Lo Fu, Moonlight House, Taipei: Chiuko, 1990, p.61.
〈10〉 Recorded from Lo Fu, The Stone That Brews Wine, Taipei: Chiuko, 1983, pp.93–94.
〈11〉 Recorded from Lo Fu, The Stone That Brews Wine, Taipei: Chiuko, 1983, pp.93–94.
〈12〉 Recorded from Lo Fu (1981), The Wound of Time, Taipei: China Times Publishing, pp.201–204.
〈13〉 Recorded from Lo Fu, Magic Songs—Collected Poems of Lo Fu, Taipei: Penglai, 1981, pp.134–145.
〈14〉 Recorded from Lo Fu, The Stone That Brews Wine, Taipei: Chiuko, 1983, p.11.
