colored hearing

al final, por exceso de equipaje, decidí dejar un par de libros en casa de mi suegra. los puse en una biblioteca con puertas de cristal, los dejé bien a mano para el próximo viaje. tenemos una casa desmontada en casa ajena. el cuarto de servicio está prácticamente copado por cajas con libros y cds.
uno de esos libros que dejé ahí en el borde del estante como para que se decida a teletransportarse es Speak, Memory de Nabokov. la parte donde habla de su sinestesia, I present a fine case of colored hearing, eso buscaba hoy.
me costó pero encontré la cita que más me intrigó siempre. una amiga con un talento inusual para los idiomas ve los números de teléfono como secuencias de colores y nunca se los olvida, eso, igual, no suena atractivo, si lo pienso acordarse números de teléfono es una habilidad triste, incluso en colores. pero ver colores en letras, eso quiero para mi próximo cumpleaños.

I present a fine case of colored hearing. Perhaps “hearing” is not quite accurate, since the color sensation seems to be produced by the very act of my orally forming a given letter while I imagine its outline. The long a of the English alphabet (and it is this alphabet I have in mind farther on unless otherwise stated) 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 hard mirror of o take care of the whites. I am puzzled by my French on which I see as the brimming tension-surface of alcohol in a small glass. Passing on to the blue group, there is steely x, thundercloud z, and huckleberry k. 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. Adjacent tints do not merge, and diphthongs do not have special colors of their own, unless represented by a single character in some other language (thus the fluffy-gray, three-stemmed Russian letter that stands for sh, a letter as old as the rushes of the Nile, influences its English representation).
I hasten to complete my list before I am interrupted. In the green group, there are alder-leaf f, the unripe apple of p, and pistachio t. Dull green, combined somehow with violet, is the best I can do for w. The yellows comprise various e’s and i’s, creamy d, bright-golden y, and u, whose alphabetical value I can express only by “brassy with an olive sheen”. In the brown group, there are the rich rubbery tone of the soft g, paler j, and the drab shoelace of h. Finally, among the reds, b has the tone called burnt sienna by painters, m is a fold of pink flannel, and today I have at last perfectly matched v with “Rose Quartz” in Maerz and Puol’s Dictionary of Color. The word for rainbow, a primary, but decidedly muddy, rainbow, is in my private language the hardly pronounceable: kzspygv.