colors, colors, more colors than we thought possible

“Never had we seen rooms so full of light. The sunrays danced upon colors, colors, more colors than we thought possible, we who had seen no houses save the white ones, the brown ones and the grey. There were great pieces of glass on the walls, but it was not glass, for when we looked upon it we saw our own bodies and all the things behind us, as on the face of a lake.”

—Ayn Rand, from Anthem, 1946.

it is good to behold green, red, yellow, and white

“Of colours it is good to behold green, red, yellow, and white, and by all means to have light enough, with windows in the day, wax candles in the night, neat chambers, good fires in winter, merry companions; for though melancholy persons love to be dark and alone, yet darkness is a great increaser of the humour.”

—Robert Burton, from The Anatomy of Melancholy, first published in 1621; reprinted in 2001.

now we see through a glass, darkly

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

—Paul, 1 Corinthians, 13: 12, King James Version of the Holy Bible, 1611.

in aenigmate

“There is a surprising sentence about enigma in St. Augustine’s treatise, De trinitate. Nobody, says Augustine, can really understand the word “darkly” (for him, in aenigmate) in Paul’s text, “For now we see through a glass, darkly,” unless they have learned about tropes. For, Augustine adds, aenigma is a trope, a species of the genus allegory. He says this as a matter of course, not as some specialized or esoteric knowledge.”

—Eleanor Cook, Enigmas and Riddles in Literature, 2006.

not through a glass, but “as He is”

“The good master [Paul] teaches us . . . that ‘with face unveiled’ from the veil of the law, which is the shadow of things to come, ‘beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord,’ i.e., gazing at it through a glass, ‘we may be transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the spirit of the Lord’ . . . we shall see Him, not through a glass, but ‘as He is’; which the Apostle Paul expresses by ‘face to face.’”

—Augustine, as quoted in Enigmas and Riddles in Literature by Eleanor Cook, 2006.

the arch-angel Gabriel

“I was one day reading Young’s Night Thoughts, and when I came to that passage which asks ‘who can paint an angel,’ I closed the book and cried, ‘Aye! who can paint an angel?’ A voice in the room answered, ‘Michael Angelo could.’ ‘And how do you know,’ I said, looking round me, but I saw nothing save a greater light than usual. ‘I know,’ said the voice, ‘for I sat to him; I am the arch-angel Gabriel.’ ‘Oho!’ I answered, ‘you are, are you; I must have better assurance than that of a wandering voice; you may be an evil spirit—there are such in the land.’ ‘You shall have good assurance,’ said the voice, ‘can an evil spirit do this?’ I looked whence the voice came, and was then aware of a shining shape, with bright wings, who diffused much light. As I looked, the shape dilated more and more: he waved his hands; the roof of my study opened; he ascended into heaven; he stood in the sun, and beckoning to me, moved the universe. An angel of evil could not have done that—It was the arch-angel Gabriel.”

—William Blake, as quoted in Major’s Cabinet Gallery of Pictures: with Historical and Critical Descriptions and Dissertations, by Allan Cunningham, 1833. From William Blake: The Critical Heritage, edited by G.E. Bentley, Jr, 1975.

descriptions of enigma

“In descriptions of enigma, the most common lexis and troping by far is that of light and dark. Down through the centuries, poets and rhetoricians and novelists and others routinely speak of enigma as “dark” or “obscure.” Johann Buchler’s 1548 Parnasstus’ Poeticus provides a list of modifiers for the Latin word aenigma. The list reads: “caecum, durum, latebrosum, tenebrosum,” that is, “blind (i.e. dark or unintelligible or concealed), hard, obscure, shadowy.”. . .

“Obscure” belongs to a whole family of synonyms that describe riddles and enigmas: veils, clouds, mists, and so on.”

—Eleanor Cook, from Enigmas and Riddles in Literature, 2006.

Aenigma.

Sermo obscurus, a riddle or darke allegorie, as: The halfe is more then the hole.

—Richard Sherry, from A Treatise of the Figures of Grammar and Rhetoric, London, 1550. As cited in a footnote in Enigmas and Riddles in Literature by Eleanor Cook, 2006.

“The half is often more than the whole”

“Was not their error that they forgot the solid truth of Hesiod’s saying that ‘The half is often more than the whole?’ He meant that when it is useful to get the whole, but the half is sufficient, then the modestly sufficient, the better, is more than the disproportionate, the worse.”

—Plato, from his Laws. As quoted in Enigmas and Riddles in Literature by Eleanor Cook, 2006.

omnes ab ovo

“The central question in biology today was posed by William Harvey nearly 350 years ago: omnes ab ovo, everything comes from the egg.”

—Horace Freeland Judson, on embryology. From The Search for Solutions, 1980.