Jansy/Victor: Brits seeking help igniting their ciggies ask “Do you have a LIGHT, please?” while the French ask “Avez-vous du FEU?” The French are more accurate, since a flame is more effective than a lamp in “lighting” a cigarette.
The early Greeks gave priority to FIRE as one of the four basic elements of their physical cosmos: Earth, Fire, Air, Water. Light was considered a secondary entity, a byproduct of Fire. Consider the word TORCH! Much has CHANGED!! Fire in the familiar form of flickering flames plays no role in the Standard Model of elementary particles. PALE FIRE, indeed! What we have is HEAT as a form of energy, visible only in a very narrow frequency range.
PS: Will we see any write-ups of Prof Blackwell’s Symposium on VN the Scientist?
CTaH
On 27/11/2008 00:11, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
Victor Fet [Following Shimanovich's comment] yes, Lermontov could not find right grammar for "fire" to fit it in Russian line with "light"[...] it is probably important that VN's novel is NOT called "Pale Light"[...] Are there cultures which have different terms for celestial lights than earthly ones [...]Fire is source of light, not the other way round, but why we refer to sunlight - not sunfire? Still brimming with intellectual-emotional-fire-light charge from this week's Stephen-Blackwell's[...] hyperwonderful symposium at Knoxville, TN.
JM:Just for the fun (in the mood of your observation on "Pale Light"), here is the image of a box of "safe" matches produced by "Fiat Lux"( Thomas A. Edison should have kept these in his pockets).
On the issue of "earthly lights", I often hear "fireflies" in Brazil being referred to as "vagalumes" (wandering-lights) and "pirilampos" ( "piri" probably indicates fire) - but I think this popular designation is entomologically incorrect.