Harmony of the Senses in English, German, and French Romanticism

Abstract

LOCKE'S mention in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) of the blind man who thought he understood what the color scarlet was because it was represented to him by the sound of a trumpet, startled people, like the trumpet blast or glaring color referred to, or even more like the combined effect of both loud sound and loud color. This unbelievable speculation was, however, soon substantiated by other similar observations and, henceforth, became a much repeated paradoxon of literature. The analogy between sound and color was first given a scientific foundation with Isaac Newton's Opticks in 1704. Newton in his comparison between sound and color went so far as to proclaim that the spaces occupied by the seven primary colors were similar to the relative intervals between the notes of the octave.