the ocular harpsichord of louis-bertrand castel - Gewina

70 Maarten Franssen
perience, to communicate to those who have a taste for this kind of beauty, a pleasure as
intense and as permanent as that which the finest ear derives from musical sounds.'*^
In France, on the other hand, Castel's name was already completely forgotten at
the begiiming of the 19th century. In his review of the Salon of 1846, Baudelaire
suddenly argued for an analogy between colours and sounds, in apparently
complete ignorance of its history. In fact, he almost sounded like Castel reincarnated:
"In colour there are harmony, melody and counterpoint to be found ...
Harmony is the basis of the theory of colour. Melody is the unity in colour, or
coloiu" in general ... The colorists design from nature; their figures are naturally
delimited by the harmonious struggle of harmonious masses," and he ended
with: "I do not know whether any analogist has ever solidly established a
complete scale of colours and feelings ..."'"*
During the 19th century nothing more was said on the subject except by one
or two isolated figures, until, from about the last decades of the 19th century,
there suddenly emerged an enormous interest in the psychological phenomenon
of synaesthesia. Weliek has listed some 800 titles on this subject for the period
1880-1931.'"^ The phenomenon was considered a purely psychological one, a
kind of automatic association of certain colours with certain sounds or smells, or
combinations of such, which people reported actually to experience. There was
no connection at all with the eighteenth-century discussion on colour music. In
fact, the phenomenon of synaesthesia is hardly reported before the period it was
so extensively studied. One of the first instances is a fragment of E.TA. Hoffmaim
from 1814, in which he confessed to experience in the
state of delirium that immediately precedes falling asleep, especially when I have listened a lot
to music, an analogy of colours, tones and scents ... The smell of the dark red carnation has a
strange magical force on me; inadvertently I sink into a dreamlike state and I hear, coming
Brewster, Treatise, pp. 131, 134-135. The 200.000 copies are mentioned on p. 7. Note,
moreover, with an eye on the theses of Neubauer and Barry, that Brewster's kaleidoscope did not
show the abstract colour patterns of todays toy versions, but instead used the standard heroic
human figures of academic painting.
In Baudelaire, Oeuvres completes, vol. 2, pp. 423-426: "On trouve dans la couleur I'harmonie,
la melodic et le contrepoint ... L'harmonie est la base de la theorie de la couleur. La
melodic est I'unite dans la couleur, ou la couleur generale ... Les coloristes dessinent comme la
nature; leurs figures sont naturellement delimitees par la lutte harmonieuse des masses colories
... J'ignore si quelque analogiste a etabli solidement une gamme complete des couleurs et des
sentiments".
Weliek, "Synaesthesieforschung," pp. 369-373. In his other articles, Weliek discusses the
ocular harpsichord as being part of the early history of synaesthesia. My study will have made clear,
I hope, that this is not the right way to look at it.