The Sound of Intuition

"El Peñón" in Jalisco, the region of Mexico in which Pedro Páramo takes place

Source: Sandyyeh.w, "El Peñón" hill in Ayutla, Jalisco, April 20, 2019. Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License.

Many written languages refer to spoken ones, but sounds can be hard to describe. The unique qualities of voices challenge verbal description, recognizable yet tough to characterize. In a writing workshop, novelist Janet Fitch asked students to find words for voices they knew well, leading to a rigorous creative workout (Fitch 2020). The elusiveness of some features of sound makes it a useful metaphor for intuitions difficult to convey.

The pitch and intensity of sound often bring words to mind, thanks to familiar synesthetic metaphors. A sound may be “high-” or “low-” pitched (describing hearing in terms of vision), or loud or “soft” (describing hearing in terms of touch). The unique, identifying features of sounds depend on their more elusive timbre, shaped by the harmonic “peaks” in their energy spectra (Kraus 19-21). How would you convey the difference between a cello and a flute playing middle C? How would you describe the difference between Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash singing “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”?

Recent psychological studies indicate that sensitivity to sounds’ features starts early. In a collaborative study of Chinese and U.S. children, Weiyi Ma, William Forde Thompson, and their colleagues found that children as young as 3 responded emotionally to changes in environmental sounds (Ma et al. 1144). Studies of adults’ reactions to sounds suggest that people use the same sonic cues when responding emotionally to voices, music, or noises in their surroundings (Ma et al. 1144). Evidence also indicates that feeling “chills” when hearing music or other sounds isn’t idiosyncratic. Perceptions of "frisson" (a feeling of tickling or tingling) correlate with sounds’ acoustic features. Takuya Koumura and her colleagues have observed that “sounds with dark and compact timbre” are most likely to induce frisson (Koumura et al. 1140). Metaphorically, these chill-inducing qualities describe physical features of sound spectra in terms of vision and touch.

Like scientists, creative writers strive to convey difficult concepts through language. With their craft, novelists and poets may be able to guide researchers trying to describe sound spectra. Writers’ skills at capturing sounds in words also reveal sounds’ abilities to express ineffable memories, intuitions, and thoughts.

Mexican writer Juan Rulfo’s innovative novel, Pedro Páramo (1955), uses sound to create a surprising fictional world. In Rulfo's story, Juan Preciado seeks his father in a remote town (Comala), where sounds signal him and Rulfo’s readers that strange forces are at work. Originally, Rulfo wanted to call his novel Los Murmullos, or The Murmurs (Estrada 83; Keane-Greimas 125). Literary scholars have noticed that sound plays a key role in the novel, shaping not just its setting but its structure (Estrada; Keane-Greimas; Blancas Blancas; Carter). Composer Julio Estrada believes that Pedro Páramo works like a musical composition (Estrada 15). In this novel that inspired Gabriel García Márquez, a soundscape created with words reveals a world without boundaries between life and death.

In Western cultures, vision has become associated with trustworthy perception, reason, and reliable knowledge—none of which exist in Pedro Páramo. Many scenes occur in darkness, so that characters must use sound to discern where they are and what is happening. Juan Preciado encounters a town “devoid of all sound” yet resonant with voices, one of which “shakes him by the shoulders” (Rulfo 5, 21). Described from his and other characters’ perspectives, some of these voices have unique timbres. A woman cries out “in a broken, defeated voice, barely held together by the thread of her wailing” (Rulfo 66). A man speaks in a voice that is “harsh. Dry as the driest dirt” (Rulfo 100). Both descriptions encourage readers to see and touch the voices imaginatively, as Rulfo’s characters do.

In a town “full of echoes,” Juan Preciado becomes aware of “murmuring that sounded like a crowd of people on market day” (Rulfo 39, 58). Descriptions of dripping rain working its way into the earth reinforce this impression of insistent activity. A horse gallops around the countryside, looking for its lost rider. Each compellingly real character Juan meets claims that another one died long ago.

Juan realizes he is feeling rather than hearing the voices, since in this story-world, hearing works metaphorically. Juan’s ears detect rain, wind, and bird calls but also sounds of lives that have ended. Juan senses that “the words I had heard up to that moment … had no sound, they were silent. You could feel them, but they made no sound, like words you hear in a dream” (Rulfo 45-46). When Rulfo describes “the hissing of the rain like the murmuring of crickets,” he suggests sounds that are almost palpable (Rulfo 13). At the same time, he presents hearing as a way to describe what one remembers, intuits, or vaguely senses, such as the emotions of people who have passed.

As a sense whose perceptions challenge language, hearing works well in literature to suggest a dubious but insistent presence. Julio Estrada believes that Rulfo uses el oír como presencia del ser, or “hearing as the presence of being” (Estrada 50-51). Studying creative descriptions of sound may inform scientists as well as writers because these descriptions suggest alternate ways of achieving knowledge. Literary scholar Sam Carter finds that “listening … is always linked to processes of transformation” (Carter 6). “Hearing” an idea rather than “seeing” it need not make that idea suspect. By conveying the emotion and intuition at work in knowledge's origins, hearing may inspire new hypotheses.