Perceiving different shades and textures of colours

 

"Ancient cultures have more developed and nuanced sensitivities to colour than contemporary societies. In all areas, there is not just one colour black, but several."

That's roughly translated from French in this book I'm reading from historian Michel Pastoureau, Noir - histoire d'une couleur (Black: history of a colour, there is an official English translation).

This is his second book in a series about the history of colours, focused mostly on European history and culture (the author's speciality and field of scholarly research).

It's a fascinating read, first in the introduction to appreciate that the meaning we tend to associate with different colours nowadays is cultural, and different from what it had been in the past. 

Until recently, and for a long while, black and white were not considered to be colours. In antiquity and the middle ages, they were though.

I'm paraphrasing a few bits I thought worth sharing here, namely that there used to be several words associated with the colours black and white. 

Colour was also a matter of expressing light (bright/dark, matte/glossy), matter, texture, surface (smooth/rough), and saturation. In Latin was done with different words, prefixes, and suffixes.

Black is about fighting off darkness and a quest for light.

In Latin, as well as ancient German and English, there were two distinct sets of words for the colours black, one for matte black and another for bright or glossy black.

Some ancient cultures even set more emphasis on other areas of perception than chromatic tone, so brightness, density, or texture was more important than tone. 

I find it difficult to wrap my head around, but apparently because of this, in ancient Greek and Latin for example, there is a word that designates and means both blue, and black ('kuanos in Greek, 'caeruleus' in Latin). 

No wonder some ancient texts are tough to translate, and placing these words and meaning back in their cultural context is extremely challenging.

It's mind-boggling to consider that if I had someone from ancient Greece or Rome looking at the editor with a black screen background I'm typing on now, would have multiple words to choose from to name and describe this colour, when I just have one in mind.

Next time you look at a brand logo, a sign, or an ad, keep in mind that whatever interpretation you have of the colours involved, not only did past cultures have different ones, they also had more words to express what they saw.

Pretty wild.

Black: The History of a Colour, by Michel Pastoureau 

Debt: The First 5,000 Years, by David Graeber [book review]

I don’t rave about non-fiction books as ‘absolutely riveting’ to my friends and family all that often, though I’ll admit it’s kind of more likely if it was written by David Graeber. I highlighted whole passages, enough to question the point of a highlight altogether, and added a bunch of other referenced books to my reading list. In fact, Goodreads tells me I highlighted 272 passages of a 534 page-long book, about one every other page. Clearly I loved it.

“Surely one has to pay one’s debts.”

David Graeber begins the book by with a conversation he had with someone, who apparently said those words in such a way that he started questioning them. This led him to taking a wide view: 5,000 years of history around the world, about debt as a moral and economic notion; the origins of markets and money (and that coins have little to do with barter, which is fascinating in and of itself).

The history is “a way to ask fundamental questions about what human beings and human society are or could be like—what we actually do owe each other, what it even means to ask that question.”

“the central question of this book [is]: What, precisely, does it mean to say that our sense of morality and justice is reduced to the language of a business deal? What does it mean when we reduce moral obligations to debts?”

Financial issues and debt were a thing in my family for a whole period of time growing up. I’m not going into much detail, but I experienced bailiffs and debt recovery agents knocking at the door, furniture being removed, and being evicted from home, among other things. It’s not fun. I used to just blame my parents, but going back 5,000 years and considering debt from different angles and cultures has been eye-opening, both soothing and shaking.

If you’ve experienced debt (I’m pretty sure we all have) and enjoy considering big questions, there’s a fair chance you’ll enjoy it. Plus it’s masterfully written: legible, blending engaging stories with a large amount of bibliographical references, and big questions, as already mentioned. I strongly recommend it. I’m looking forward to reading his posthumous ‘Dawn of Everything’ written with David Wengrow soon.

The Fool: His Social & Literary History - book review

I thought I’d share thoughts and notes about a book I just finished!

First published in 1935, The Fool by Enid Welsford is a rich, extensively researched, and one of the few existing studies of the character of the buffoon in history across cultures, literature, the stage, and finally the screen. From his first recorded appearance in ancient Greece all the way to Charlie Chaplin as the latest successor of the characters’ traditions at the time of writing.

Enid Welsford tells the wild stories of witty parasites, laughter-makers (and/or laughed at), hunchbacks, dwarves, dimwits, jokers, and mischief makers – first through historical accounts, then imagined, and sometimes both.

Fun fact: the paperback re-edition from 1968 I managed to find boasts a sticker saying the original price of the book was £1.10.

I paid about 30 times that amount.The Fool, Court-fool, Court-jester, Buffoon, Harlequin, and Clown are all related characters, sometimes one and the same, even. Though the author splits the book between recorded history and fantasy, it seems challenging to be clear cut about exactly where reality ends (often for lack of clear records beyond royal accounting books) and mythical traits begin.

I’d never read anything quite like this, nearly everything I was reading was completely new, or new perspectives on knowledge I took for granted. Research is also in original language: whole passages of the book are in French and German.

On the topic of myth, the chapter about the Fool as Poet and Clairvoyant, talks about Merlin, the Arthurian legend character – who typically makes me think of a classic high wizard or mage. In fact, the character is correctly named Myrddin, and in the 1932 The Growth of Literature, a Professor Chadwick apparently makes a credible argument for the character to appear as a naked, hairy madman and bard, in two different documents and poems from Wales and Scotland.

The book doesn’t feature many actual examples of witty jests, though I enjoyed this story, apparently from the 14th century, in La Nef des fols du monde:

“It happened one day in Paris that a quarrel broke out between a street porter having sat down to eat his dinner near the shop-door, in order that his fare of plain bread might be made more savoury by the smell of the roasted meat, was annoyed to find the shopkeeper avaricious enough to charge him for this privilege. A fight ensued and the court-fool ‘Seigni Johan’, who was called in to conciliate the brawlers, pronounced the solemn judgement that the porter should pay for the smell of the roast with the sound of his money.”

I wanted to read this because I found the character of the Fool and Joker quite fascinating, and close to my interests about studying play. I was also curious about the historical relationship between this figure, comedy, and power. This comedian figure had a place next to kings in the middle ages (admittedly it was also a tragic figure at times), then in some cases was pitted against religious authorities, and finally seems to have ended up as an entertainer – separate from power.

Comedy and humour, even though important and human, don’t seem to have much dedicated space and time in the modern corporate world, which I think is kind of interesting, and I might have a book idea about it. I also figured that reading books few others have read these days, may lead to thinking and ideas few others have too.

To paraphrase a point made by the author at the end of the book, if one imagines wisdom on a spectrum, you might find a rational intellectual, learned wisdom on one end, and perhaps something opposite on the other end, a kind of natural, instinctual wisdom, so obvious it’s silly – that is where the Fool lives, and thrives.

“So perhaps we may add a fourth order of fools; there are those who get slapped, there are those who are none the worse for their slapping, there are those who adroitly change places with the slappers, and occasionally there are those who enquire, ‘What do slaps matter to the man whose body is made of indiarubber, and whose mind is of quicksilver, and who can even – greatest triumph of all – persuade you for the moment that such indeed is your case?’ For the Fool is a great untrusser of our slaveries, and comedy is the expression of the spirit of the Fool.” – Enid Welsford