[Illustration]
I
The most stupendous apparition of red that I ever saw was a tropical
sunset in a cloudless sky,--a sunset such as can be witnessed only
during exceptional conditions of atmosphere. It began with a flaming of
orange from horizon to zenith; and this quickly deepened to a fervid
vermilion, through which the crimson disk glared like the cinder of a
burnt-out star. Sea, peak, and palm caught the infernal glow; and I
became conscious of a vague strange horror within myself,--a sense of
distress like that which precedes a nightmare. I could not then explain
the feeling;--I only knew that the color had aroused it.
But how aroused it?--I later asked myself. Common theories about the
ugly sensation of bright red could not explain for me the weirdness of
that experience. As for the sanguine associations of the color, they
could interpret little in my case; for the sight of blood had never
affected my nerves in the least. I thought that the theory of psychical
inheritance might furnish some explanation;--but how could it meet the
fact that a color, which the adult finds insufferable, continues to
delight the child?
All ruddy tones, however, are not unpleasant to refined sensibility:
some are quite the reverse,--as, for example, the various tender colors
called pink or rose. These appeal to very agreeable kinds of sensuous
experience: they suggest delicacy and softness; they awaken qualities of
feeling totally different from those excited by vermilion or scarlet.
Pink, being the tint of the blossoming of flowers and the blossoming
of youth,--of the ripeness of fruit and the ripeness of flesh, is
ever associated with impressions of fragrance and sweetness, and with
memories of beautiful lips and cheeks.
No: it is only the pure brilliant red, the fervid red, that arouses
sinister feeling. Experience with this color seems to have been the
same even in societies evolved under conditions utterly unlike those of
our own history,--Japan being a significant example. The more refined
and humane a civilization becomes, the less are displays of the color
tolerated in its cultivated circles. But how are we to account for that
pleasure which bright red still gives to the children of the people who
detest it?