On yellow

[Ian Livingston]

Look into alchemy.  The four colors of transmutation: black, white, yellow
and red.  See Eliade,  The Forge and the Crucible.

On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 9:13 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I do not think most of what is below is helpful in determining why Cyprian
> makes his yellow
> remark........probably has to do with indentification with certain
> countries, as has gone around...........
>
> But, Pynchon is nothing if not layered and, at least, it is all part of
> our tangential education that comes out of the Pynchon
> surround............There we go, another way to define Pynchon's 'music':
> Surround sound...
>
> I like the shield etymology and do wonder............................?
> The word *yellow* comes from the Old English<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English>
> *geolu*, or *geolwe* which derived from the Proto-Germanic<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Germanic>word
> *gelwaz*.[4] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow#cite_note-3> The oldest
> known usage of this word in English is in the Old English poem *Beowulf<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf>
> *, in a description of a shield made of wood from a yew tree<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yew_tree>
> .[5] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow#cite_note-OED-4> In the English
> language, yellow is used to describe objects having the color between green
> and orange in the visible light spectrum (gold<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold>,
> egg yolks, sunflowers, etc.). The color is associated with age and aging,
> both with people and objects (i.e. yellowed-paper). Ethnographically, the
> term yellow has also been used as a slang term for both oriental persons and
> light-skinned African-Americans. The term is associated at times with
> jealousy, as well as cowardliness. Lastly, it is associated with sensational
> journalistic practices, or *yellow journalism*, and resistance to militant
> trade unions.[5 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow#cite_note-OED-4>
>
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