—Evening! There are times when you cast such an extraordinary light, it makes me want to hold on to it and give it away to strangers. I’ve taken so many photographs just as the sun flares out from a low horizontal, casting its sheen so the greens are amplified and the shadows darken, and all the colors in the garden take on augmented radiance.
—Thank you.
—I’m writing this while I’m thinking of a small still-life painting by Chardin, Seville Orange, Silver Goblet, Apples, Pear, and Two Bottles (1750), I saw a few days ago at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Evidently this painting has not ever been in a public space; it has spent its life in private hands. But the person who owns it has lent it to the Met while she is away, and so there it is for all to see. A work of such tender, acute attention to how light touches materials of differing opacities, densities, colors: skin of an apple or pear, glass bottle, silver goblet, placed together on a thick stone table, its edge duplicating the picture plane, emphasizing the illusion of material gravity.
—I do that most days—touch objects on your table, the candlesticks and flowers.
—Yes, and I love it when you do. And in the painting, it is not so much the objects we recognize as the way the light—your light!—enters from the picture’s left, and caresses each surface with a quickened, radiant bloom. How long did it take Chardin to paint this picture? Did he wait patiently each day for the autumnal light to enter, brushes readied for his palette of oil paint? This is what a photographer would do, but a painter must have a different kind of patience, to anoint time’s luminous movement with paint: wet, dry, wet. Was he partly observing, partly recollecting? Glass and metal, fruit and table, each receiving the light differently, and so its effects are distributed across the picture plane, a kind of illuminated wind made manifest, held, forever transfixed.
to Stephan Wolohojian
light (adj.1)
“not heavy, having little actual weight,” from Old English leoht (West Saxon), leht (Anglian), “not heavy, light in weight; lightly constructed; easy to do, trifling; quick, agile,” also of food, sleep, etc., from Proto-Germanic *lingkhtaz (source also of Old Norse lettr, Swedish lätt, Old Frisian, Middle Dutch licht, German leicht, Gothic leihts), from PIE root *legwh- “not heavy, having little weight.” The adverb is Old English leohte, from the adjective.
Meaning “frivolous” is from early 13c.; that of “unchaste” from late 14c., both from the notion of “lacking moral gravity” (compare levity). Of literature from 1590s. Light industry (1919) makes use of relatively lightweight materials. The notion in make light of (1520s) is “unimportance.” Alternative spelling lite, the darling of advertisers, is first recorded 1962. Light horse “light armed cavalry” is from 1530s. Light-skirts “woman of easy virtue” is attested from 1590s. Lighter-than-air (adj.) is from 1887.
light (adj.2)
“not dark,” Old English leoht (West Saxon), leht (Anglian), “luminous, bright, beautiful, shining; having much light,” common Germanic (cognates: Old Saxon and Old High German lioht, Old Frisian liacht, German licht “bright”), from the source of Old English leoht (see light (n.)). Meaning “pale-hued” is from 1540s; prefixed to other color adjectives from early 15c. In earlier Middle English in reference to colors it meant “bright, vivid” (early 14c.).
light (n.)
“brightness, radiant energy, that which makes things visible,” Old English leht (Anglian), leoht (West Saxon), “light, daylight; spiritual illumination,” from Proto-Germanic *leukhtam (source also of Old Saxon lioht, Old Frisian liacht, Middle Dutch lucht, Dutch licht, Old High German lioht, German Licht, Gothic liuhaþ “light”), from PIE root *leuk- “light, brightness.”
The -gh- was an Anglo-French scribal attempt to render the Germanic hard -h- sound, which has since disappeared from this word. The figurative spiritual sense was in Old English; the sense of “mental illumination” is first recorded mid-15c. Meaning “something used for igniting” is from 1680s. Meaning “a consideration which puts something in a certain view” (as in in light of) is from 1680s. Short for traffic light from 1938. Quaker use is by 1650s; New Light/Old Light in church doctrine also is from 1650s. Meaning “person eminent or conspicuous” is from 1590s. A source of joy or delight has been the light of (someone’s) eyes since Old English:
Ðu eart dohtor min, minra eagna leoht [Juliana].
Phrases such as according to (one’s) lights “to the best of one’s natural or acquired capacities” preserve an older sense attested from 1520s. To figuratively stand in (someone’s) light is from late 14c. To see the light “come into the world” is from 1680s; later as “come to full realization” (1812). The rock concert light-show is from 1966. To be out like a light “suddenly or completely unconscious” is from 1934.
light (v.1)
“to touch down,” as a bird from flight, “get down or descend,” as a person from horseback, from Old English lihtan “to alight; to alleviate, make less heavy,” from Proto-Germanic *linkhtijan, literally “to make light,” from *lingkhtaz “not heavy” (see light (adj.1)). Apparently the etymological sense is “to dismount” (a horse, etc.), and thus relieve it of one’s weight.”
Alight has become the more usual word. To light on “happen upon, come upon” is from late 15c. To light out “leave hastily, decamp” is 1866, from a nautical meaning “move out, move heavy objects” (1841), a word of unknown origin but perhaps belonging to this word (compare lighter (n.1)).
light (v.2)
“to shed light; to set on fire,” late Old English lihtan (Anglian), liehtan (West Saxon), originally transitive, “to ignite, set on fire,” also in a spiritual sense, “to illuminate, fill with brightness.” It is common Germanic (cognates: Old Saxon liohtian, Old High German liuhtan, German leuchten, Gothic liuhtjan “to light”), from the source of light (n.).
Meaning “furnish light for” is from c. 1200; sense of “emit light, shed light, shine” is from c. 1300. Buck writes that light is “much more common than kindle even with fire, and only light, not kindle, with candle, lamp, pipe, etc.” To light up is from c. 1200 as “give light to” (a room, etc.); 1861 in reference to a pipe, cigar, etc. Related: Lighted; lighting.