"Looking at the leaves turn red in the valley simplifies my mind, a javelin flying past those tightly packed tubes of paint in which so many subtle frequencies of light have been trapped, and landing where there is only blood and fire."
— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Chatto & Windus
Date
2000
Metaphor
"Looking at the leaves turn red in the valley simplifies my mind, a javelin flying past those tightly packed tubes of paint in which so many subtle frequencies of light have been trapped, and landing where there is only blood and fire."
Metaphor in Context
Red ochre was the first decorative material. Even Homo erectus, barely upright and still nervous on safari, one and a half million years before the delivery of the first armoured Land Rover, loved to rub a little rouge into her bearded cheeks. The linguists tell us that after black and white the first stain of colour in every lexicon is red. Once light and dark have been distinguished what’s fundamental is blood and fire. Looking at the leaves turn red in the valley simplifies my mind, a javelin flying past those tightly packed tubes of paint in which so many subtle frequencies of light have been trapped, and landing where there is only blood and fire.
(p. 2)
(p. 2)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Edward St. Aubyn, A Clue to the Exit (London: Chatto & Windus, 2000).
Date of Entry
09/18/2015
