Photo by Nikki Dobrowolski |
Rainbows always catch our attention. They're rare enough to not bore, but common enough not to frighten. They're color on a grey day—all the colors of the, forgive me, rainbow in fact—after a storm, and have enough cultural baggage to make us feel good, as heralds of happiness, with an echo of tales of leprechauns and their hidden pots of gold.
All good, but also a shame, because we usually stop there, and seldom reflect, oh, how both Rene Descartes and Isaac Newtown studied rainbows, the former in his 1637 treatise...
Aw, the hell with it. Let us not pull rainbows down from heaven and pick over them with our microscopes. As much as I'm inclined to do just that, roll out the science, today ... well, not in the mood. Today, let's err on the side of romance.
So let's cut across the field, veering from technology to poetry, and take the advice of John Keats, who complains specifically about people who would study rainbows, in his poem "Lamia"—Lamia being a child of Poseidon, a child-devouring sea monster. He uses "philosophy" in its older sense, encompassing science, and "awful" in its meaning, not of a bad thing, but "inspiring awe."
Thank you regular reader (and photo contributor) Nikki Dobrowolski, for sending the photo, taken in her back yard. That's some backyard.
Thank you. Saturday morning poetry to reflect on a rainbow (or how not to) is a beautiful start to this Holiday weekend
ReplyDeleteI'll have to disagree with Keats: learning how light divides into its component colors adds rather than subtracts magic from the experience.
ReplyDeletejohn
Some joys are best if they're left simple, and appreciated rather than analyzed.
DeleteI don't, for example, need a mathematical breakdown of Bach to find the magic in his compositions. Hearing them is enough.
Contemplation of rainbows did indeed lead such as Descartes and Newton to develop the science of optics. Which has contributed mightily to many aspects of modern life we now consider commonplace or mundane. Keats was a wonderful poet, but even if one knows how the rainbow is made, that knowledge need not diminish the emotion expressed by his older contemporary Wordsworth.
ReplyDelete"My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.
So was it when my life began.
So is it now I am a man."
Tom
Thank you for posting my photo. The view does make up for some of the shortcomings of living in a tiny town.
ReplyDelete