| a digression on allegory |
 a digression on allegory
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Jun. 15th, 2008 @ 11:38 pm 
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This is a scheme of æsthetic signs or elements, simple indeed and consisting of only a few elemental colours, which is actually employed to convey great lessons in human safety and great necessities of the commonwealth. It need hardly be said that I allude to the railway signals. They are as much a language, and surely as solemn a language, as the colour sequence of ecclesiastical vestments, which set us red for martyrdom and white for the resurrection…It is perfectly conceivable that a degree of flexibility or subtlety might be introduced into these colours so as to suggest other and more complex meanings. We might (under the influence of some large poetic station-masters) reach a state of things in which a certain rich tinge of purple in the crimson light would mean “Travel for a few seconds at a slightly more lingering pace, that a romantic old lady in a first-class carriage may admire the scenery of the forest.”
from G.F. Watts, G.K. Chesterton |
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