There is such a description in the famous modern prose "Moonlight on the Lotus Pond": "The breeze passes by, bringing wisps of fragrance, as if it were a faint song on a tall building in the distance." "Lotus fragrance" originally belongs to a sense of smell, which seems to have nothing to do with "singing", but the author connects it with the ethereal and beautiful feeling of "singing" from the "distant building" to achieve a "faint joy" artistic conception.
In Chinese, this rhetorical device of transferring one sense to another or multiple senses and expressing emotions by "feeling borrowing" is traditionally called "transference", and Mr. Qian Zhongshu calls it "synaesthesia". The image described by "synaesthesia" is a multidimensional image with three dimensions, and the aesthetic feeling it inspires is the beauty of language connection, and synaesthesia was first used in poetry. Please see:
There is a saying in Li Jing's "Huanxisha" in the Southern Tang Dynasty: "The chicken is far away in the drizzle dream, and the small building blows through the jade cold." Poets communicate with each other with the sound of hearing and the coldness of touch, and write the sadness and pain of music.
The last four sentences of Tang Bai Juyi's Seven Laws "Heavy Topic": "I have promised that the tiger will flow and lie in the clouds, and I will not fight for the dragon's tail. From the boundary of Qier, it should be clean, and there is no sound of rumors. " Using synaesthesia rhetoric, the visual "seeing" is transferred to the auditory "infamous voice". The poet turned a deaf ear to the various reputations of his official career, his eyes were clean, and his feelings of seclusion beyond things came to the fore.
Du Fu's poems about bamboo are "Rain washes quietly, wind blows fine fragrance". Bamboo has no fragrance, and then when the breeze blows, it makes a rustling sound, such as smelling fine incense. This is the poet comparing Xiuzhu to an ideal beauty.
There is also a poem in Du Fu's quatrains: "If you want to be a fish beam, the clouds cover the turbulence, because it is rainy and cold in April. There is a dragon cave in Qingxi, and bamboo and stone are like mountains. " The poet used a cold voice to render a thrilling and cold atmosphere, but the poet did not directly write how to feel cold because of the rain, but wrote "the rain is cold", which is really interesting.
For example, in Han Yu's "Listening to the Skillful Teacher Playing the Piano", "A hundred birds are singing, and suddenly I see a lonely phoenix, but I can't reach the limit and fall sharply." The sound of the piano is transferred from hearing to vision, and even to the sense of movement. The last sentence, "I am smart and sincere, and I can't put my intestines in ice charcoal!" Achieve the realm of "sound into people's hearts".
Li Shangyin, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, wrote in his poem Untitled: "In the morning mirror, she saw her hair clouds changing, but she dared to use her evening songs to cope with the cold of the moonlight." Moonlight is either "white" or "clear" in essence, but the poet uses "cold" to describe it, which makes people feel cold when they look at the moon.
Later, synaesthesia was used in various styles:
(1) Application of Synaesthesia in Novels
A description of Wang Xiaoyu in Lao Can's Travels: "The voice is not very loud at first, but I feel that there is an unspeakable beauty in my ears: the five internal organs and six lungs are ironed like iron, and there are 36,000 pores everywhere. Like eating ginseng fruit, every pore is not happy." This passage first moved from hearing to touch: "Like iron, everywhere", and then moved to taste: "Like eating ginseng fruit". Blend colorless and invisible external sounds with inner feelings.
There is such a description in Fortress Besieged: "When Fang Hung-chien saw Miss Tang not smiling, there was still a smile on her face, like the sound in the air after the music stopped. Many women will smile so sweetly, but their smiles are just soft exercises of facial muscles ... "Laughing without smiling is seen visually, and the lingering sound is felt from the hearing, which is" sweet ".
It comes from the taste. This is to describe Miss Tang's smile through sight, hearing and taste, and to meet many women with sweet smiles can express their feelings more accurately.
(2) The application of synaesthesia in prose
Lu Xun said in "In Memory of Liu Hezhen Jun": "I will deeply understand the sorrow of this inhuman thick black ..." Here, the word "thick black" is used to modify the feeling of "sadness", highlighting Lu Xun's extreme grief over the death of young martyrs and his cruel resentment against reactionary rulers.
In his essay "Green", Zhu Ziqing described the pond water green in plum rain pool, Ruian, Zhejiang: "This thick green is really lovely. She is loosely wrinkled, like a skirt dragged by a young woman; She is smooth and bright, like being painted with "bright oil"; As soft as egg white, so tender. " The writer transforms the green of vision into the softness of touch and the gentleness of taste, just like tasting delicious food.
It can be seen that synaesthesia is a figure of speech with special expressive force, which can stimulate association and appreciate aftertaste, thus setting off and blending with each other, rendering atmosphere, deepening poetic artistic conception and improving expression effect. "The artistic image created by synaesthesia can make readers feel immersive, as if they are watching something, smelling its fragrance, listening to its voice, tasting its taste, and being warmed and cooled by it" and so on.
Synaesthesia is unique in that it has rhetorical effects of "transmitting sound by sound" and "transmitting sound by form". Words that often appear in common language are: such as "sweet words", which is the connection between taste and hearing; "Cold eyes" refers to the connection between touch and vision; "Scream" is the sound of touch and hearing; "sour words", which is the transfer of taste and hearing; "glib tongue", this is the intersection of touch and taste.
Synaesthesia is an effective means of expression in literary works, but it is not to exchange feelings at will, so we must find opportunities to exchange feelings with each other.
(1) Vision shifts to hearing, and the poet Kong Wuzhong said, "Float a leaf to ride the wind and lie down to listen to the sound of the moon"; "The light of the sun and the moon is like sound, the moon is as clear as water, and the light of the sun is like a copper song", all of which can be called excellent works to move vision to hearing.
(2) Hearing shifts to vision. Baishi wrote in "Ancient Poetry" that "the lost bells form cobwebs and spread into rings in the gaps of columns". "Clock" is an auditory image and "cobweb" is a visual image. It can be seen that synaesthesia is a figure of speech with special expressive force, which can stimulate association and appreciate aftertaste, thus setting off each other, blending with each other, rendering the atmosphere, deepening the artistic conception of poetry and improving the expression effect. "The artistic image created by synaesthesia can make readers feel immersive, as if they are watching something, smelling its fragrance, listening to its voice, tasting its taste, and being warmed and cooled by it" and so on. The "formed" connection allows the "clock" to be touched and checked. Ancient fairy tales remain in people's minds, and then become historical memories and are vividly depicted.
(3) Hearing and touch are interlinked. Li Bai, a great poet in the Tang Dynasty, famously said, "See the autumn moon in the old days, and the Yangtze River is cold." . The sound of running water in the pen is "chill" or "coolness".
(4) The sense of smell turned to hearing, and the poet still used the poem "Laughing at the wind on the water". It is a good sentence that smell turns to hearing, and laughter can also give off bursts of fragrance.
Of course, synaesthesia is not only the communication of sensory organs, but sometimes it is possible to feel something that does not belong to a certain sensory category, but is abstract in itself. For example, "on this day, I feel I am flying in a grand symphony." And "in season, the north may just stir the snow, and the water is thin and the mountains are cold."
Synaesthesia can be divided into descriptive synaesthesia and figurative synaesthesia.
(1) Descriptive synaesthesia: for example, "the lilies on the roadside exude the fragrance of My Sweetie"; "The sound is dull and dull." The most classic sentence in Song Qi's Yulouchun is "The green smoke is lighter than the cold, and the branches of red apricots are noisy in spring", in which the word "noisy" has both vision and hearing, and the realm is between birds and flowers. The word "Noisy" connects the two senses of vision and hearing. It not only writes "Red of Apricot" in posture, but also writes "Numerous Flowers", which is also red and numerous. If Noisy, it is thriving and full of spring.
(2) Metaphorical synaesthesia: Synesthesia is not a metaphor, but it is often used with metaphor. For example, "the breeze blows, bringing a faint fragrance, as if it were a distant song from a tall building." And "but light and shadow have a harmonious melody, such as a famous song played in the Vatican." It's metaphorical synaesthesia. The former sentence "Xiang Xiang" combines vision and taste, and combines taste and hearing through metaphor; The latter sentence compares the visual sense of "light and shadow" to "playing a famous song" to communicate with the auditory sense. The function of synaesthesia here is similar to metaphor, but it is qualitatively different from metaphor: metaphor is a comparison with form, and feeling is a communication with spirit. Chew carefully, and Xiao Fang will have a taste.
Reading Synaesthesia will definitely play a greater role in literary life and achieve perfection. Let people feel more real and profound about everything in the world.