Katherine Mansfield and Artistic Synaesthesia: Weaving Colour, Rhythm and Mood

Abstract

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) often displayed a tendency to cross boundaries between the arts and the senses in her professional as well as personal writings. The central aim of this thesis is to examine the inter-art quality of her work in the contexts of Modernist inter-disciplinary studies. My interest in Mansfield’s artistic synaesthesia extends to the circle of modernist writers and artists active in London and Paris in the second decade of the 20th century, particularly the Rhythmists, a group deriving their name from the literary magazine—Rhythm—to which they all contributed. Free exchange of ideas and liberal crossing of artistic borders were the norm during the time which Mansfield wrote. Mansfield created under her intuitive understanding of the translatable emotional aspects that are embedded in all art forms. Together with her contemporaries—second wave Fauvist painters J. D. Fergusson and Anne Estelle Rice—Mansfield was an enthusiastic advocate for weaving painterly, musical, as well as other artistic elements into fiction. Her search for maximum expression begins with colour—from a tentative to a confident, ‘rhythmical’ use of Fauvist pigments. Preoccupation with visual impact raises a question of vision, especially in relation to the ‘innocent eye’ and childlike play-acting, both on the borders of crossing from one form of perception to another, to continuously renewed seeing, and inviting trans-sensuous artistic effects. Her mature works also demonstrate a musical concern as Mansfield incorporates rhythm in her narrative through choreographed movements, reiterated images, and atmospheric descriptions. In this sense, her stories are also reminiscent of Debussy’s nocturnes, which reinvent conventional rhythmic and melodic structures. All these lead up to the specified mood and atmosphere of her stories. Mansfield desired a ‘covering atmosphere’ or ‘charm’ for her work. Such features are reminiscent of both Keatsian and Chinese aesthetic ideas. Mansfield’s artistic synaesthesia has not received the scholastic attention it warrants. Viewing her method and her ability to absorb artistic influences in the trans-sensory, trans-border and trans-national contexts of Modernism opens up dynamic connections between her writing and the arts. Key words: Katherine Mansfield; Modernism; interdisciplinary studies; artistic synaesthesia