White-ness

The certain symbolisms attributed to different colors used to hold a fascination for me: Green indicates fertility and freshness; red, violence and horror; blue, calmness, serenity and sorrow; pink, innocence... It was only later that I realized how arbitrary these symbols could be:

A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles,
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes... (Voyelles, Rimbaud)

Many critics have attempted to decipher the mysteries that lie latent in the sonnet "Voyelles" by Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891). Some have even come up with very interesting reasons as to why "A" should be associated with black and then "E" with white, namely that birth takes place in darkness and then gives way to light and whiteness. As to why "O" comes after "U", critics claim that it is because OMEGA is the ultimate letter of the Greek alphabet and is also associated with purple which accounts for the last color of the spectrum. As interesting as these interpretations are, they might not all be totally what the teenage genius had in mind when he penned these enigmatic verses.

Despite the arbitrariness of color-symbolism, I have always been interested in the diverse connotations which "white"evokes. Literature abounds in examples: The whitness of the whale in Hermann Melville's Moby Dick and the White Div in Abolqassem Ferdowsi's The Shahnameh, are only two of many instances in the world of literature. Blankness/whiteness is being used more and more in the world of cinema to express an intensity beyond words, an example of which comes to the fore in Requiem for a Dream (2000) upon a quick succession of scenes which conveys the hopeless state of the characters of the movie. Another effective example of this white/blankness appears in Mexican director Alejandro Inarritu's 9/11 episode in which he asks his audience: "Does God's light guide us or blind us?" Too much light, after all, can be as blinding as the pervading darkness of Mazandaran (a reference to The Shahnameh).

Perhaps no one has expressed the polysemous nature of "white" as brilliantly as Hermann Melville: "Whiteness is not so much color as the absence of color, and at the same time the concrete of all color"; also: "this divineness had that in it which, though commanding worship, at the same time, enforced a certain nameless terror". The white whale not only evokes terror but also our sense of awe for the ineffable.

But, what can I say of all the whiteness that has held the streets of Toronto in its thrall for a whole week now? Terrifyingly beautiful?