Anaxagoras, by D. H. Lawrence

When Anaxagoras says: The snow is black!
he is taken by the scientists very seriously
because he is enunciating a ‘principle’, a ‘law’
that all things are mixed, and therefore the purest white snow
has in it an element of blackness.

That they call science, and reality.
I call it mental conceit and mystification
and nonsense, for pure snow is white to us
white and white and only white
with a lovely bloom of whiteness upon white
in which the soul delights and the senses
have an experience of bliss.

And life is for delight, and for bliss
and dread, and the dark, rolling ominousness of doom
then the bright dawning of delight again
from off the sheer white snow, or the poisoned moon.

And in the shadow of the sun the snow is blue, so blue-aloof
with a hint of the frozen bells of the scylla flower
But never the ghost of a glimpse of Anaxagoras’ funeral black.

— D. H. Lawrence, ‘Anaxagoras’

Lamenting the dusk, Eclipsing twilights—and Gaussian geometries

Lamenting the Dusk, Eclipsing twilights—and Gaussian geometries is an essay in progress.

This night in the late seventies exemplified the blackness of Sumi, its wide spectrum which incloud’s a deafening depth through a range of luscious gradation: sumi no notan. This analogy, and metaphor has been gifted by the journey having led me to study Shodo and Boku-ga. It was in Batim, Ilhas Goa; the birthplace of my mother, where the night howled a storm, spraying its gaussian distribution of electricity in streaks of lighting, appearing to stand still above as if this spectacular was meant only for this quiet village. The palm trees were fleetingly projecting shadows that shivered and changed shapes, intermingling forms and presenting fresher frights. Perhaps if one were to make ink out of the soot of burnt palm tress—would it be as dark as the Japanese and Chinese made sumi? The blacks appeared blacker than the Cardinal India Ink, through which I had got introduced to the concept of blackness, abysmal in density, a  richness of material form—far distant from any analogy to wealth. This was a richness of tone: in depth, in texture, coalescing into phantasmal umbras, conjured by sudden flashes into the darkness.