Subject
TR : Fwd: Nabokov & a color question
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----- Forwarded message from cangrande@bluewin.ch -----
Date: Mon, 9 May 2005 16:30:44 +0200
From: Nabokov Please forgive this question re Homer. Where else
should I haveasked?
>
> Jansy wrote: ". . . The homeric"purpureum" might not necessarily
> refer to a "wine-redsea" but to the absence of a word for blue. .
."
>
>Was there no word for blue when Homer wrote? I have heard that blue
is
> the last color to be named in every language, but have heard no
definite reason
> why this is so. What about Athena's glaucous eyes,which Andrew Lang
> translated as gray eyes and which somebodyinterpreted, in a program
> about Ulysses, as eyes of the mostbrilliant blue that television
> could produce? Was the sea wine-redbecause there was no word for
> blue? (I've not seen the
>Mediterranean, but I've seen red wine and it's hard to imagine any
sea
that
> color or any shade of "wine-dark". Maybe unfermentedjuice of purple
> or black grapes? Or maybe on rare occasions, as duringan unusual
> sunset? Or maybe I don't party often enough.)
>
> Mary Krimmel
>
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