It Appeared That, Experimenting With Physical Colour, Tangible
Paint, They Had Found Out That Red, Yellow, And Blue Were The
Three
primary colours; and then, experimenting with light itself, with colours
not tangible, they found out that red, green, and
Violet were the three
primary colours; but neither of these would do for the dandelion. Once
upon a time I had taken an interest in spectrum analysis, and the theory
of the polarisation of light was fairly familiar; any number of books,
but not what I wanted to know. Next the idea occurred to me of buying all
the colours used in painting, and tinting as many pieces of paper a
separate hue, and so comparing these with petals, and wings, and grass,
and trifolium. This did not answer at all; my unskilful hands made a very
poor wash, and the yellow paper set by a yellow petal did not agree, the
scientific reason of which I cannot enter into now. Secondly, the names
attached to many of these paints are unfamiliar to general readers; it is
doubtful if bistre, Leitch's blue, oxide of chromium, and so on, would
convey an idea. They might as well be Greek symbols: no use to attempt to
describe hues of heath or hill in that way. These, too, are only distinct
colours. What was to be done with all the shades and tones? Still there
remained the language of the studio; without doubt a master of painting
could be found who would quickly supply the technical term of anything I
liked to show him; but again no use, because it would be technical. And a
still more insurmountable difficulty occurs: in so far as I have looked
at pictures, it seems as if the artists had met with the same obstacle in
paints as I have in words - that is to say, a deficiency. Either painting
is incompetent to express the extreme beauty of nature, or in some way
the canons of art forbid the attempt. Therefore I had to turn back, throw
down my books with a bang, and get me to a bit of fallen timber in the
open air to meditate.
Would it be possible to build up a fresh system of colour language by
means of natural objects? Could we say pine-wood green, larch green,
spruce green, wasp yellow, humble-bee amber? And there are fungi that
have marked tints, but the Latin names of these agarics are not pleasant.
Butterfly blue - but there are several varieties; and this plan is
interfered with by two things: first, that almost every single item of
nature, however minute, has got a distinctly different colour, so that
the dictionary of tints would be immense; and next, so very few would
know the object itself that the colour attached to it would have no
meaning. The power of language has been gradually enlarging for a great
length of time, and I venture to say that the English language at the
present time can express more, and is more subtle, flexible, and, at the
same time, vigorous, than any of which we possess a record. When people
talk to me about studying Sanscrit, or Greek, or Latin, or German, or,
still more absurd, French, I feel as if I could fell them with a mallet
happily. Study the English, and you will find everything there, I reply.
With such a language I fully anticipate, in years to come, a great
development in the power of expressing thoughts and feelings which are
now thoughts and feelings only. How many have said of the sea, 'It makes
me feel something I cannot say'! Hence it is clear there exists in the
intellect a layer, if I may so call it, of thought yet dumb - chambers
within the mind which require the key of new words to unlock. Whenever
that is done a fresh impetus is given to human progress. There are a
million books, and yet with all their aid I cannot tell you the colour of
the May dandelion. There are three greens at this moment in my mind: that
of the leaf of the flower-de-luce, that of the yellow iris leaf, and that
of the bayonet-like leaf of the common flag. With admission to a million
books, how am I to tell you the difference between these tints? So many,
many books, and such a very, very little bit of nature in them! Though we
have been so many thousand years upon the earth we do not seem to have
done any more as yet than walk along beaten footpaths, and sometimes
really it would seem as if there were something in the minds of many men
quite artificial, quite distinct from the sun and trees and
hills - altogether house people, whose gods must be set in four-cornered
buildings. There is nothing in books that touches my dandelion.
It grows, ah yes, it grows! How does it grow? Builds itself up somehow of
sugar and starch, and turns mud into bright colour and dead earth into
food for bees, and some day perhaps for you, and knows when to shut its
petals, and how to construct the brown seeds to float with the wind, and
how to please the children, and how to puzzle me. Ingenious dandelion! If
you find out that its correct botanical name is - Leontodon taraxacum - or
- Leontodon dens-leonis - , that will bring it into botany; and there is a
place called Dandelion Castle in Kent, and a bell with the inscription -
John de Dandelion with his great dog
Brought over this bell on a mill cog
- which is about as relevant as the mere words - Leontodon taraxacum - .
Botany is the knowledge of plants according to the accepted definition;
naturally, therefore, when I began to think I would like to know a little
more of flowers than could be learned by seeing them in the fields, I
went to botany. Nothing could be more simple. You buy a book which first
of all tells you how to recognise them, how to classify them; next
instructs you in their uses, medical or economical; next tells you about
the folk-lore and curious associations; next enters into a lucid
explanation of the physiology of the plant and its relation to other
creatures; and finally, and most important, supplies you with the ethical
feeling, the ideal aspiration to be identified with each particular
flower.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 8 of 104
Words from 7121 to 8195
of 105669
