Unless you’re a Greek scholar, you need a dose of reckless effrontery to write about this book. Chromata. Lexicon of Greek color terms by Maria Fernanda Ferrini, published by eum, the publishing house of the University of Macerata and thus reaching the fourth volume which collects the words that begin with delta. The lexicon is obviously aimed at specialist researchers and makes use of an immense philological apparatus which ranges from the works of ancient authors to collections of texts, papyri, ostraka and registrations. However, some reminiscences of high school Greek are enough to realize the richness and originality of many observations: there we find words full of suggestions and charm, literary quotations that operate with unexpected analogies, careful explanations of the way of proceeding of ancient science, perhaps even the suggestion of a new philosophical perspective.
Against all the statements that attribute to the Greeks physiological or cultural blindness to colors or to some of them, Ferrini’s research highlights the infinite articulation that derives from the belief that color is connected to things; in fact, color, he writes, is in Greek culture «a quality linked to things, not separable from them”; «colors are an integral part of a perceptual context, they are ‘colors of something’» (vol. I, p. 9). In ancient philosophy and science, color does not simply describe an object, but identifies it and distinguishes it as an intrinsic or acquired quality, relates it to others, inserts it into the context of nature. For this reason it does not only have aesthetic value, but primarily cognitive value: «it is more of a something For know that something from know” (ib.). Color then manifests itself in change and movement, it is placed not only in space, but also in time, operating according to a scanning of the visible spectrum different from ours.
The vision of color is physiologically the same, but chromatic concepts and terms are products of culture and the Greeks are more attentive to brightness than to hue, they consider hue and brightness as complementary factors; sometimes writers construct metaphors and metonymies in which the chromatic notation even becomes secondary. However, according to the author, this must not ensnare us in the search for the literal meaning of a word that appears strange and unusual to us, reducing the complex relationship between perception, conceptualization and nomenclature to a single dimension.
In this regard, Maria Fernanda Ferrini had dedicated a specific study to “black water” (Μέλαν ὕδωρ: conceptions and interpretations“Rudiae” 7, available online at Academy). We read in Homer that water is sweet, good to drink, fresh, but also white or black, and ‘black’ is an epithet of water also in Empedocles and Anaxagoras, who writes that even snow is black. Perhaps the adjective ‘white’ for water seems acceptable to us: after all, do we also talk about white light, meaning ‘transparent’, but black? and the snow?
As a first move, Ferrini clarifies that the term leukos means white, bright, shining, brilliant, clear and limpid, mélas instead black, dark, gloomy, dark, gloomy, gloomy. However, the connection of water with black has to do with the Greek conception of the elements, primary components of matter, air, water, earth and fire. Opposite to fire, water, by contrast and analogy with the pairs white/black and hot/cold, takes the epithet of white or black. It would therefore resemble a hypothesis, an a priori definition. In the peripatetic treatise About colors water, like air, is instead defined as white by nature, but can appear black due to the effects of light or shadow, as in the case of the rough sea and its rippled surface, or of time and the biological transformations in relation to moisture content. Ferrini analyzed the passages in the critical edition of Pseudo Aristotle in 1999 for ETS and in Colors and soundspublished by Bompiani in 2008.
Let’s go back to Lexicon to cite just a few examples of apparent paradoxes. Aithaléos means smoky, smoky, fumigating, burning with fire, but also: black, blackish, dark. The terms connected with the verb aítho, explains Ferrini, oscillate between the meanings linked to flame and fire and what is incinerated or burned. «A chromatic notation emerges in any case, with two images that are in themselves opposite (the glow of the flame, red; or the darkness of the soot, black), but complementary, as they relate to the different processes that can originate from a same reality, fire or heat” (vol. I, p. 25).
Galakóchrōs, milky white, instead leads to a reflection on the versatility of some adjectives suggested by the analogy. Their meaning can “oscill between the indication of consistency, density, appearance (sometimes also the abundant presence of liquids, juice; the typical temperature of freshly milked milk, and the flavour), and the more specifically chromatic one » (vol. III, p. 13).
Glaukos it is also one of the most interesting examples of the “interaction between lexicon, cognitive and emotional domain” (ibid., p. 21). It means: sparkling, shiny, glowing, clear, with clear shimmers, azure, light blue, blue-green, blue-grey, brilliant green, silver-green, glaucous, glaucescent. The interpretations of philologists are really conflicting here, they go from originally denying a chromatic character to multiple meanings of yellow-red, yellow, green, blue-green and blue. Ferrini accepts its versatility by speaking of a vast range of shades of green and blue, and between blue and green, fading towards grey, but adds the glow, the shimmer, the sparkle, the full light, the weak light and transparency. The reference to positive or negative aesthetic and moral qualities is also ambivalent, to the point of indicating illness. The derivatives and compounds of this adjective oscillate between brightness and colour, they can be names of plants and animals or refer to coloring processes in alchemy or even be used in the medical field in eye diseases, such as glaucoma.
We conclude with diafanḗs, diaphanous, transparent, limpid, clear, translucent, pellucid; incandescent, red-hot, red-hot; evident, clearly visible, manifest; notable, illustrious. This is the diaphanous which becomes in Aristotle the difficult technical term in the theory of light and color, but in addition to the notion of appearing through (say) can mean ‘brilliant’ as it is pervaded by light in depth.
The books by Maria Fernanda Ferrini not only fill the gap in a chromatic lexicon in the field of specialist studies, they offer us a series of interesting phenomenological and philological reflections and bring back some words that are simply beautiful such as, just to give a few examples, dolichóskioslong-shadowed, or asteromarmarofenghḗswith the white glow of a star.
On the cover, Amphora of the potter Andocides and the painter Psiax, Attica, 530-500 BC. C., London British Museum
