Personification+and+Synesthesia


 * Personification** is a type of metaphor used extensively in both poetry and prose where a thing or abstraction takes on human-like characteristics or acts in ways that are typically limited to humans. Often, it is used as a means of giving personality to objects that would otherwise have none.

Uses of personification are seen quite often in children's books in sentences like "the wind //howled// through the forest" or "the sun //smiled// down on the people of the village."

One of the most common examples of personification used in everyday life is death. We all have an idea of what 'death' looks like: A tall, skeletal body clothed in a dark cloak and hood carrying around a large scythe. Even though death is not even a 'thing' at all (and much less a person), this image of the Grim Reaper is still widely recognized to represent death. 

Other common examples of personification include Mother Nature, Father Time, ...the list goes on and on.

Philip Larkin uses personification throughout his poems, although the obvious example is his use of it in "An Arundel Tomb." Most of the poem, in fact, revolves around his personifying the effigies of the earl and countess. For example, he writes that "they would not guess how early..." Clearly, to guess, or to even think, is an action usually reserved for humans, and cannot actually be done by statues. Larkin also personifies music in "Reference Back" when he refers to it as a "flock of notes."


 * Synesthesia**, on the other hand, involves the use of your senses.

According to the Internet, "synesthesia is a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway." In plain English, that means that when you are experiencing synesthesia and observe things through one sense, you have some sort of reaction with another of your four senses.

Synesthesia is, however, still a very mysterious phenomenon that has eluded scientific questioning behind why people experience it or who is affected by it. The different cases of synesthesia are also very vast. Some people, for example see certain letters as certain colors, while to others, numbers each have their own personalities. Another classic example is the supposed ability of some talented composers to see colors when they hear certain sounds.

However, in a more poetic sense, synesthetic elements are the poet's use of forcing us to alter the senses with which we observe the scene being described. By doing so, poets can give you more of a feeling of truly 'being there'. After all, we would experience responses from all of our senses were we really there.

Philip Larkin uses this poetic element heavily in the fifth stanza, describing "light/ [of] summer...A bright/ Litter of birdcalls." By pairing visual "light" and "bright" with auditory senses "birdcalls," Larkin is utilizing synesthesia to describe the scene. He also uses it in "the Whitsun Weddings" to describe the fleeting landscape:

"A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped And rose: and now and then a smell of grass Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage cloth Until the next town, new and nondescript Approached with acres of dismantled cars."

Here, Larkin uses visual and olfactory descriptions to draw in the reader once more.