They Are Specialists For Things
Of The Grain-Giving Earth; It Is A Pleasure To Watch Them Grafting Vines
And Olives And Lemons With The Precision Of A Trained Horticulturist.
They Talk Of "Governing" (Governare) Their Soil; It Is The Word They
Use In Respect To A Child.
Now figs are neither white nor black, but such is the terminology.
Stones are white or black; prepared olives are white or black; wine is
white or black.
Are they become colour-blind because impregnated,
from earliest infancy, with a perennial blaze of rainbow hues -
colour-blinded, in fact; or from negligence, attention to this
matter not bringing with it any material advantage? Excepting that
sign-language which is profoundly interesting from an artistic and
ethnological point of view - why does not some scholar bring old lorio's
"Mimica degli Antichi" up to date? - few things are more worthy of
investigation than the colour-sense of these people. Of blue they have
not the faintest conception, probably because there are so few blue
solids in nature; Max Mueller holds the idea of blue to be quite
a modern acquisition on the part of the human race. So a cloudless sky
is declared to be "quite white." I once asked a lad as to the colour
of the sea which, at the moment, was of the most brilliant sapphire hue.
He pondered awhile and then said:
"Pare come fosse un colore morto" (a sort of dead colour).
Green is a little better known, but still chiefly connected with things
not out of doors, as a green handkerchief.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 75 of 488
Words from 19874 to 20136
of 131203
