To Set the Soul Vibrating
There are moments in Torah that crack open the portal that seems to separate dimensions. That unlock the gates between heaven and earth. Between ourselves and the Source of everything. At such moments there is a flood of sensation. A disturbance of the normal, an unsettling of equilibrium that, surprisingly, we experience as revealed harmony.
One such moment was the giving of Torah at Mount Sinai. There was thunder and lightning. The mountain was enveloped in smoke, and the sound of the shofar reverberated: "And all the people saw the sounds (kolot) and the lightning and the sound (kol) of the shofar." Wait. The people "saw the sounds and the sound of the shofar"? How could they see sounds?
Some translators seek to minimize the implication of such an unnatural sensory experience by translating kolot as "thunder" and by substituting for "saw" a term such as "witnessed." Thus: "The people witnessed the thunder and the lightning and the sound of the shofar." Yet, the Hebrew provokes us: Did the Israelites at Mount Sinai see sounds?
Jewish tradition tells of a difference of opinion between two rabbis in the second century C.E.: Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Ishmael stated that the Israelites saw what was visible and heard what was audible. Rabbi Akiva proclaimed that the Israelites were able to both see and hear what was visible. The argument was not just about words in a text. It expressed opposing points of view about how one processes virtually every aspect of life. Rabbi Ishmael concerned himself with the worldly aspect of Judaism: the here and now; the role of human intelligence and reason in discerning what God wants of us. For Rabbi Ishmael, Sinai was important for the rules of conduct that were introduced. Rabbi Akiva sought the transcendent: life beyond this dimension; the hidden, inscrutable aspect of God. For Rabbi Akiva, senses overflowed their banks at Sinai. Sight and sound became inseparable. Rabbi Ishmael loved the ordinary. Rabbi Akiva hungered for the miraculous.
The conflation of senses continues as a theme throughout the mystical tradition within Judaism. The 20th century kabbalist Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook wrote: "At their source, sound and sight are united. Only in our limited, physical world, in this disjointed world, are these phenomena disconnected and detached....If we are bound to the present, if we can only perceive the universe through the viewpoint of the temporal and the material, then we will always be aware of the divide between sight and sound. The prophetic vision at Mount Sinai, however, granted the people a unique perspective, as if they were standing near the source of Creation. From that vantage point, they were able to witness the underlying unity of the universe. They were able to see sounds and hear sights. God's revelation at Sinai was registered by all their senses simultaneously, as a single, undivided perception."
There was another sensory experience at Sinai. Torah tells us that the mountain "trembled" at the moment of revelation. A few verses later Torah says that the people too "trembled." At that moment nature and humankind shared a sympathetic reaction to the opening up of the universe. There was no mountain, no humankind as separate aspects of creation. There was only the unity of it all.
We bear trace elements of that moment of unity. They stimulate our longing for its return. Poets and artists remind us of it and of our yearning.
The semblance of mountain returned to Sinai
even as the visions remained in Moses’ ears,
and in his eyes the shofar and thunder sounded still.
~ "The Semblance of Mountain," Rivka Miriam
The Artist Whose Paintbox Hissed
Wassily Kandinsky, born in 1866 to musical parents, began studying piano and cello at the age of five. As a young boy he also took up drawing, which he found to be a great source of pleasure. Following his family's wishes, he received a degree in law and joined the Moscow Faculty of Law. Two events in 1896 changed his life forever. He saw an exhibition of French Impressionists that included Monet's Haystacks at Giverny, and he heard a production of Wagner's Lohengrin. Monet's painting made him realize that the power of art did not rely on objects being recognizable. While listening to Lohengrin he "saw all my colors in spirit before my eyes." Kandinsky abandoned his law career and moved to Munich to devote himself entirely to art.
Kandinsky sought to replicate on canvass what he heard in music. Inspired by the compositions of Arnold Schoenberg, he applied himself to creating the effect of atonal music through using colors that created discord: "Clashing discords, loss of equilibrium - opposites and contradictions - this is our harmony," Kandinsky wrote. The pursuit of applying on canvass the power of music led Kandinsky to become one of the first artists to completely leave behind representation and to create entirely abstract paintings. Here is his Composition VII, painted in 1913:
The canvass is awash in color and movement. Similar to the polyphonic music of Schoenberg, Kandinsky's piece supports more than one motif. Analogous to atonality in music are colors and forms that are unresolved with one another. The work conveys a cosmic convulsion which reveals a cosmic harmony: "Technically, every work of art comes into being in the same way as the cosmos - by means of catastrophes, which ultimately create out of the cacophony of the various instruments that symphony we call the music of the spheres” (Wassily Kandinsky).
Kandinsky's work is influenced by the color revolution of the Fauvists, the musical innovations of Schoenberg and others, and by the mystical movements responding to the heightened materialism of the industrial revolution. Color and sound become a unified pathway to the sublime: "Our hearing of colors is so precise....Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies; the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul." (Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Wassily Kandinsky)
Kandinsky wrote that his hearing of colors dated back to childhood: "As a thirteen or fourteen year old boy, I saved enough money to buy myself a paintbox containing oil paints....Sometimes I could hear the hiss of the colors as they mingled."
"Sound calls to fragrance, color calls to sound"
Poets and artists and mystics are not the only ones to explore the conflation of senses. Cognitive neuroscientists increasingly are studying this experience, known as synesthesia. Synesthesia is a blending of the senses. Stimulation of one of them simultaneously produces a sensation in a different one. Those who experience this phenomenon hear colors, see sounds, and taste shapes.
Symbolism, an art movement which developed at the end of the 19th century, was intrigued with cases of "colored hearing" that were being reported in medical journals. Symbolists were not interested in painting mere replications of what appeared in nature. For them natural phenomena were surface manifestations of deep, hidden realities. A synesthetic experience was proof not only that ordinary things in the world are charged with a spiritual intensity but also that behind all phenomena is a unity, one that defies being separated into distinct sensory responses.
Lawrence Marks, Professor of Epidemiology and Psychology at Yale School of Public Health, wrote in Synaesthesia: the Unity of the Senses: "To comprehend...that there are correspondences between dimensions of auditory and visual experience...is to discern, however dimly or remotely, that amidst the diversity of sensory perceptions, there is unity."
Was Kandinsky a synesthete, portraying sounds as he colorfully saw them? Was Torah describing a synesthetic experience to the sound-sight moment of Mount Sinai? While neuroscientists continue to research ever more deeply the subject of synesthesia, we leave the final word here to a poet. Arthur Rimbaud was an inspiration for artists seeking to pursue the spiritual through their art. In his poem "Correspondences," he describes the harmonious union of all things heard, smelled, and seen:
Like echoes long that from afar rebound,
merged till one deep low shadowy note is born,
vast as the night or as the fires of morn,
sound calls to fragrance, color calls to sound.