Synesthesia and Vincent Van Gogh

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Synesthesia and The Quintessential Empath

'Synesthesia' is the ability to feel what others are experiencing, or so said the article to which I gave a quick glance while cruising the internet.  You see someone slapped and you feel the blow.  But how far does synesthesia go? Does the term apply to those who feel the emotional pain of others? My best guess is 'yes'.  But are there yet other flavors of synesthesia?

A few days after I’d learned there was something called 'synesthesia', I was watching a Simon Schama documentary on Van Gogh.  Van Gogh always puzzled me because, to my eye, he painted in a way different from that of any other painter. 

All of the craft is there.  Van Gogh knew his colors, his composition and how to draw things as he did because he’d studied. In these things he ran with the crowd.  He’d paid his professional dues.  What separated him out from the others was the way he laid down each stroke of the brush as if there were no difference between the gesture of his brush and the thing itself.  If the wind rustled a stand of wheat, Van Gogh’s brush rustled with it.  He didn’t paint what he saw with his eyes but rather, what he actually felt with his eyes. In the process, Van Gogh imparted an incomparable kinesthetic sensuality to every canvas he touched. 

If Van Gogh was truly mad, then perhaps that madness should  be laid at synesthesia’s doorstep.  Afterall, who could feel so much and not be mad?