Q. Isak Dinesen sometimes
mentions colors in her stories. What, if any, significance do the colors
have?
A. Isak Dinesen's use
of colors seems to be inspired by Goethe's Theory of Colors. The biographer
Citati explains Goethe's theory in terms of "'the ancient, mysterious hexagon'
of colors, dear to the alchemists:
-
Yellow: the color closest to light, merry and
tenderly stimulating, which expands the heart and soothes the spirit.
-
Reddish yellow (orange), which gives the eye a
sensation of warmth, recalling the sun's rays at sunset.
-
Violent reddish yellow (red lead), energetic,
crude, primitive, which seems to transfix the gaze, enrages animals, and
generates an incredible excitation.
-
Blue: dark, distant, cold, sad.
-
Bluish red: tender, disquieting.
-
Reddish blue: constituting an almost unbearable
presence.
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Green: where eye and ear find true rest.
-
Purplish red: the color that contains all other
colors and cloaks the sovereigns and popes; also the terrible color that
will light up heaven and earth at the Last Judgment." [Goethe. New
York: The Dial Press, 1974, p. 23.]
The Spring 2001 issue of Scandinavian Studies
(Volume 73 Number 1) features an article by Mark Mussari about Isak Dinesen's
uses of the color blue in Winter's Tales: "Recognizing blue's power
to express longing, the emotional state that pervades the collection, Dinesen
deftly merges the sensual and the spiritual in her chromatic and often
oneiric imagery."
| Coulsong