the green and golden world
“There are some strange summer mornings in the county, when he who is
but a sojourner from the city shall early walk forth into the fields,
and be wonder-smitten with the trance-like aspect of the green and
golden world. Not a flower stirs; the trees forget to wave; the grass
itself seems to have ceased to grow; and all Nature, as if suddenly
become conscious of her own profound mystery, and feeling no refuge
from it but silence, sinks into this wonderful and indescribable
repose.”
—Herman Melville, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, 1852.
the idea of green as a color
“[N]othing can more vividly suggest luxuriance of life, than the idea
of green as a color; for green is the peculiar signet of all-fertile
Nature herself.”
—Herman Melville, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, 1852.
Light blue be they perpetual colour
“Wondrous fair of face, blue-eyed, and golden-haired, the bright
blonde, Lucy, was arrayed in colours harmonious with the heavens. Light
blue be they perpetual colour, Lucy; light blue becomes thee best. . .
.”
—Herman Melville, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, 1852.
fluid lapis lazuli
“All the waves in Lucy’s eyes seemed waves of infinite glee to him. And
as if, like veritable seas, they did indeed catch the reflected
irradiations of that pellucid azure morning; in Lucy’s eyes, there
seemed to shine all the blue glory of the general day, and all the
sweet inscrutableness of the sky. And certainly, the blue eye of woman,
like the sea, is not unifluenced by the atmosphere. Only in the open
air of some divinest, summer day, will you see its ultramarine,—its
fluid lapis lazuli.”
—Herman Melville, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, 1852.
a miscellaneous and Pantheistic whole
“He did not see that there is no such thing as a standard for the
creative spirit; that no one great book must ever be separately
regarded, and permitted to domineer with its own uniqueness upon the
creative mind; but that all existing great works must be federated into
the fancy; and so regarded as a miscellaneous and Pantheistic whole. .
. .
—Herman Melville, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, 1852.
the heart of a man
“Deep, deep, and still deep and deeper must we go, if we would find out
the heart of a man; descending into which is as descending a spiral
stair in a shaft, wthout any end, and where that endlessness is only
concealed by the spiralness of the stair, and blackness of the shaft.”
—Herman Melville, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, 1852.
The food of thy soul
“The food of thy soul is light and space; feed it then on light and space.”
—Herman Melville, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, 1852.
where the two blues meet
“‘Don’t let us stop here,’ cried Isabel. ‘Look, let us go through
there! Bell must go through there! See! see! out there upon the blue!
yonder, yonder! far away—out, out!—far, far away, and away, and away,
out there! where the two blues meet, and are nothing—Bell must go!’”
—Herman Melville, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, 1852.
A River Runs Through It: The White River Badlands
simple colors
“I want a joy that takes simple colors, street organs, ribbons, flags,
not a joy that takes one’s breath away and throws one into space.”
—Anais Nin, The Diary of Anais Nin, Volume Three, 1939-1944, 1969.