Abstract
When discussing the use of color terms in societies that diverge from ours (in time, space, and other respects), the problem is not only that the ways colors are perceived, differ, but also that the use and importance of colors in the daily lives of users vary vastly from society to society. (The (in)famous, now much critiqued case is of course that of the many words for ‘snow’ in the Inuit languages and dialects).
The chapter sets out to examine the null-hypothesis (‘Horace was suffering from color blindness’) and finds there is no evidence to support it in the corpus examined here (comprising the bulk of his poetic production, with the exception of parts where color terms are less likely to occur: most of the Sermones, the Epistulae and Ars Poetica). The pragmatic angle on all of this is that one cannot discuss the use of language in the abstract (e.g. based on isolated vocabulary entries). What is needed is to place the study in a wider, societal context, to the extent that this is possible (avowedly, there are difficulties in cases like Horace’s, where the relevant societal structures have been changed or lost over time, such as it has happened to the ‘languaculture’ of which Horace was a member). Even so, the poet emerges from my study as one who decidedly has a certain ‘feel’ for color, but perhaps did not always use it in ways that we consider familiar.
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Notes
- 1.
An early version of the saying is due to Shakespeare, Love’s labour’s lost:
“Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye.” (Act 2, Scene 1).
- 2.
The traffic lights in the Kansai area (cities like Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe and so on) always have seemed to me to be more in accordance with Western practice—I have no explanation for this phenomenon, if indeed it exists.
- 3.
“… the best-known wine of ancient times, probably white and sweet. Today elegant and red.” (Johnson 2009: 107).
- 4.
The two Sicilian master painters, Apelles and Zeuxis, are reported to have engaged in a contest for the title of ‘Supreme Painter’. The criterion was naturalness. Apelles painted a nature morte with fruits, done so well that one member of the jury was tempted to grab a fig and taste it—he only got his hands dirty, of course. But Zeuxis was even more proficient: he painted a floral composition that was so true to nature that a bee mistook the flowers for real and got stuck in the wet paint. (As recounted by the Greek philosopher-linguist Diodorus Siculus).
- 5.
One should also remember, as Clarke remarks, that “the Roman response to certain colours and colour terms may have been different from our own” (2003: 3), echoing a sentiment earlier expressed by Alice Kober (1934). On this, see also Steinmayer’s and others’ (2000) discussion on the Classics website.
- 6.
It is by no means a coincidence that the illustrative examples here almost spontaneously came out in ‘black and white’; more on this later.
- 7.
The French poet Arhur Rimbaud’s (1854–1891) sonnet Voyelles (“A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles, …”) is the classical example of this trend.
- 8.
Compare that even in the Bible, ‘black’ carries these connotations. The Bride in Canticle defiantly proclaims her beauty despite her blackness:
“I am black but comely, ye daughters of Jerusalem” (Cant. 1:5).
- 9.
Or ‘clear, smooth’ (Garrison 1991: 223). (The Romans did not appreciate a suntan, neither in men nor in women).
- 10.
ater and lividus carry additional connotations such as ‘doom’ and ‘malice’.
- 11.
The terms for ‘dazzling’, such as splendidus, splendens, fulgens, etc. have not been included in the spectrum for ‘white’, although one could argue that they might have their proper place here, especially in view of the contrasts that Horace makes use of in relation to other colors. (Cf. Od. III, 13, where the glittering splendor of Horace’s favorite spring of unknown location (fons Bandusiae, splendidior vitro ‘the Bandusian spring, clearer than glass’) contrasts with the red blood (rubro sanguine) of the animal to be sacrificed to/in it). See also below, Sect. 11.
- 12.
Norwegian has similarly a commonly recognized (though highly restricted) term for this color: bæsjebrunt, literally ‘shit-brown’ (often used in older farm houses for painting floors).
- 13.
- 14.
furvus ‘dark, somber’ could perhaps have been counted here as well; for ‘white’, one could have included such terms as splendidus or splendens ‘splendid’.
- 15.
As Nesbit & Hubbard remark, for Horace bad teeth are the “hallmark of decaying courtesans”. (1978: 125).
- 16.
I am indebted to Steven J. Willett, Shizuoka University, Japan, for this observation.
Interestingly, the river has retained its magic, both color- and otherwise, all the way into our own times. Compare how Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, in her novel The Blind Assassin (2000), has her heroine, while honeymooning in Rome, look down from her hotel window on “the Tiber, floating along, yellow as jaundice” (p. 304).
- 17.
On Homer’s ‘wine-dark’ sea and its many (mis-)interpretations, see Maxwell-Stuart (1981), esp. pp. 6ff.
- 18.
Clarke mentions that many scholars have ‘downplayed’ the value of this color word and instead, suggest that we translate purpureus as ‘gleaming’ or ‘silver’ (swans). Clarke herself does not buy into this, however (2003: 292).
- 19.
While Clarke does not mention this occurrence in her 2003 conspectus of color terms (where she lists only examples from the Odes), she does mention caeruleus/caerulus as being derived from Catullus and Propertius (pp. 47–49).
Garrison (1991) specifically refers to the invasion of the Cimbri & Teutones in 101 B.C.
- 20.
As does Clarke (2003: 140).
- 21.
As mentioned earlier, a number of them are hapax legomena.
- 22.
- 23.
Examples include murreus, luteus, furvus, cressus and others. For instances of their usage, see the listing in Section 7.3.
- 24.
Some other Roman poets do have a few references to this specific color, when it comes to the heavens above; ‘blue’ is also sometimes used for the color of the sea (cf. Clarke 2003: 47).
- 25.
Neither were, presumably, the people of antiquity in general, as among others, William Gladstone has maintained (Gladstone 1877; I owe this reference to Jacqueline Clarke, in personal communication).
Gladstone’s hypothesis of a “cultural deficiency” among the Greeks and Romans (not to speak of passing references to those early Indo-Europeans still being in their cultural ‘infancies’) has been resoundingly refuted by scholars such as Irwin (1974: 201–203) and Maxwell-Stuart (1981).
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Acknowledgements
An earlier, much shorter version of this paper appeared as Mey 2005a; a revised version as Mey 2005b. For the present, thoroughly revised and enlarged version, I owe thanks to Professor Jacqueline Clarke of the University of Adelaide, South Australia, who provided a number of useful comments and corrections.
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Mey, J.L. (2014). Horace, Colors, and Pragmatics. In: Romero-Trillo, J. (eds) Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics 2014. Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06007-1_6
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