Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the English edition
- List of abbreviations
- General editor's note on transliteration and references
- General introduction
- PART I The creative environment
- PART II The process of creation
- Part III Time and space in the world of the novels
- Introduction
- 19 The master of men and hours
- 20 Chronology and temporality in The Idiot
- 21 The ascending spiral
- 22 Time of power and power of time
- 23 The havens of eternity
- 24 The dream of space and the space of the real
- 25 The inventory and the expressionist orchestration of scenery and lighting
- 26 The semantics of colour
- 27 The hero in space: sighting and seeing
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index of names
26 - The semantics of colour
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the English edition
- List of abbreviations
- General editor's note on transliteration and references
- General introduction
- PART I The creative environment
- PART II The process of creation
- Part III Time and space in the world of the novels
- Introduction
- 19 The master of men and hours
- 20 Chronology and temporality in The Idiot
- 21 The ascending spiral
- 22 Time of power and power of time
- 23 The havens of eternity
- 24 The dream of space and the space of the real
- 25 The inventory and the expressionist orchestration of scenery and lighting
- 26 The semantics of colour
- 27 The hero in space: sighting and seeing
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index of names
Summary
I found very interesting, for instance, what Ch. Blanc says about Velasquez' technique in Les Artistes de mon temps, his shadows and half-tones consist mostly of colorless, cool grays, the chief elements of which are black and a little white. In these neutral, colorless mediums, the least cloud or shade of red has an immediate effect.
Letter from Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theodore (1884)Vanity and truth of statistics
Most people think that Dostoyevsky is not a colourist. Except in portraits, where hair must be brown, fair, grey or white, eyes dark, blue, green or hazel, skins pale or waxen or, in contrast, rosy, and lips bloodless or vividly red, there are statistically very few colours in his novels.
The Double, for instance, is strongly influenced by Gogol, an undoubted colourist, but it contains only twelve mentions of green (in a briefcase, carpet, armchair, and uniforms), seven of black, three of which are contrasted with white, five of grey, five of red (excluding references to faces), three of pink, one of crimson, four of sky blue, one of yellow, one of gold.
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- Information
- Dostoyevsky and the Process of Literary Creation , pp. 399 - 411Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989