Ellen Meloy's chapter "The Deeds and Sufferings of Light" is a brief account of her exploration of memory, spirit, and culture through color. Although she says that “colors challenge language to encompass them” when ultimately language “cannot; there are more sensations than words for them” (7), she does a wonderful job in her attempts to put words to the colors she experiences. She poetically describes color, pulling her vocabulary from memories, cultural connotations, and common experiences.
By doing so, she helps to capture the emotion of color. She is obviously very moved by colors, and acutely touches on the nostalgia that they carry with them. Not only do her vivid descriptions give her reader a mental image of her experiences, but they also impart her impressions and feelings on the reader. In her nostalgia I find myself experiencing nostalgia of my own, moved by the charged poetry of Meloy’s depictions. When she asks, “What do the eyes rest upon--mind disengaged, heart not--that combines senses and affection into a homeland?” she touches upon the ability of the human spirit to amalgamate physical and visual sensations with emotion to give color personal and cultural significance. I think we can all relate to Meloy’s associations between color and emotion, and I am very interested in the way we colors trigger different feelings within us and create a sense of home, comfort, and memory from our visual stimulus. (For example, warm autumnal hues will always remind me of crunching leaves in my childhood and bring the smell of woodsmoke to my nostrils, filling me with the sense of coziness and contentment.)
With the receptiveness of an impressionist painter and the sensitivity of a romantic, Meloy somehow wraps her vocabulary around color although she recognizes it is often better understood “without words.”
Perhaps because color is so specific and vast is why languages delay creating words for them. The thought of creating a new word for a color makes my head spin. It would be like naming that feeling of a chilly, smoked autumn day you described with a single word.
ReplyDeleteI love how you brought up the notion of "nostalgia." Meloy writes about huge universal ideas in a very personal way. She paints a larger picture when discussing the characteristics of color and yet takes the time to discuss specific detailed connections she has with color (such as those she connects to memories of her brother). We speak from what we know. This also ties into her ideas on perspective. Our personal perspective is highly influenced by our past which then informs our preferences and use of color. The more we glean from the world around us, the bigger our "artistic vault" of information will be, we then pull from. Nostalgia can function as a link to this.
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