"But circumstance cannot deepen or lighten the colour of a man’s mind; if we bring anything into the world it is the colour of our minds, and what is the colour of our minds but fate? and what is fate but character?"
— Moore, George Augustus (1852-1933)
Date
1924
Metaphor
"But circumstance cannot deepen or lighten the colour of a man’s mind; if we bring anything into the world it is the colour of our minds, and what is the colour of our minds but fate? and what is fate but character?"
Metaphor in Context
He seems to have looked on king, queen, and infanta with a cold, melancholy detachment, which some critics have attributed to the court of Philip IV, and they may be pardoned for doing so, so difficult is it for us to estimate the effect on the soul in a court in which the etiquette was so strict that it was a capital offence, punishable by death, for a man to stretch forth his hand to save the queen from falling. But circumstance cannot deepen or lighten the colour of a man’s mind; if we bring anything into the world it is the colour of our minds, and what is the colour of our minds but fate? and what is fate but character? In thinking of Velasquez we translate the tone of silvery-grey that pervades all his canvases into a moral quality: melancholy, concluding that his melancholy -- he need not have been aware of it -- was his gift, which, despite his almost excessive realism, allowed him to remain an aesthetic painter.
(pp. 35-6)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
George Moore, Pure Poetry: An Anthology Edited by George Moore (London: The Nonesuch Press, 1924). <Link to archive.org>
Date of Entry
01/08/2019
