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Reinventing Language, Vowel By Colorful Vowel, Clark Lunberry

Clark Lunberry

A Fable of a Fable, or “The Story of One of My Follies”: After he’d invented “the color of vowels,” regulated the “form and movement of each consonant,” the young poet then, applying his “instinctive rhythms” to the task, proudly proclaimed that he had alchemically created “a poetic language accessible, some day, to all the senses.” Notably, with his project in place, this poet, Arthur Rimbaud, tells us that he was then quick to “reserve translation rights.” This legal move on the poet’s part was perhaps thought initially necessary because, as he notes in 1873, the described synesthetic impact of …