At the Crossroads of the Senses: The Synaesthetic Metaphor Across the Arts in European Modernism

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Polina Dimova

At the Crossroads of the Senses

The Synaesthetic Metaphor Across the Arts in European Modernism

Polina Dimova

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Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Pennsylvania State University Press
12 November 2024

Series: Perspectives on Sensory History

Inspired by Richard Wagner’s idea of the total artwork, European modernist artists began to pursue multimedia projects that mixed colors, sounds, and shapes. Polina Dimova’s At the Crossroads of the Senses traces this new sensory experience of synaesthesia—the physiological or figurative blending of senses—as a modernist phenomenon from its scientific description in the late nineteenth century to its prevalence in the early twentieth.

Structured around twenty theses on synaesthesia, this book explores the integral relationship between modernist art, science, and technology, tracing not only how modernist artists perceptually internalized and absorbed technology and its effects but also how they appropriated it to achieve their own aesthetic, metaphysical, and social goals. Through case studies of prominent multimodal artists—Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, Richard Strauss, Aleksandr Scriabin, Wassily Kandinsky, František Kupka, Andrei Bely, and Rainer Maria Rilke—At the Crossroads of the Senses reveals the color-forms and color-sounds that, for these artists, laid the foundations of the world and served as the catalyst for the flourishing exchanges among the arts at the fin de siècle.

Rooted in archival research in France, Germany, Russia, and the Czech Republic, At the Crossroads of the Senses taps overlooked scientific sources to offer a fresh perspective on European modernism. Sensory studies scholars, literary critics, and art historians alike will welcome its many contributions, not least among them a refreshing advocacy for a kind of sensuous reading practice.

By: Polina Dimova
Imprint: Pennsylvania State University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 254mm, Width: 178mm, Spine: 27mm
Weight: 188g
ISBN: 9780271097817
ISBN 10: 0271097817
Series: Perspectives on Sensory History
Pages: 290
Publication Date: 12 November 2024
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Polina Dimova is Assistant Professor of Russian at the University of Denver.

Reviews for At the Crossroads of the Senses: The Synaesthetic Metaphor Across the Arts in European Modernism

“I have never come across a book or manuscript that explores this topic in such depth, breadth, and detail. Dimova’s overview of the history of perceptions of synesthesia and of controversies surrounding the topic of synesthesia is extraordinarily enlightening, and the synthesis of a wide variety of approaches to this complex topic is impressive and highly readable.” —Karen Evans-Romaine,author of Boris Pasternak and the Tradition of German Romanticism