Towards the end of his life, the French poet Paul Valéry jotted down his admiration for the “most beautiful possible line” of all poetry. What sort of beauty was this, such that Valéry recognized it as the aim and the apex of his art? This talk will analyze Valéry’s claim to unsurpassable beauty by drawing out its poetic lineage as well as its links to the emerging science of synesthesia.

Liesl Yamaguchi, Assistant Professor of French at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of On the Colors of Vowels: Thinking through Synesthesia.