Who Did Invent the Blue Hour? – An Interim Conclusion

(5.5.2022) Who did invent the concept, the notion of the ›blue hour‹ anyway? Artist Jan Fabre claimed that it had been his ancestor, entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre. But as soon as we have no definitive answer, we must stay cautious with that. Because what we are attempting here is to give an interim conclusion – by assembling, in a decidedly European perspective, artists, writers and – of course – also scientists, brief: people that are to be subsumed into the category of (creative) observers.
We had started our journey – embarking on a ›History of the Blue Hour‹ – which is nothing less than my personal cultural history, but also a cultural history of (usually hybrid) light, as well as a specific history of the blue hour phenomenon (the narrowing of perspective being the one conditon to embark on a history of light and its configurations in dusk and dawn anyway – we had started this journey, being aware that there is a rather timeless phenomenon of twilight – and that there is whatever creative observers have made of it. In the context of particular cultural configurations.

Let’s start roughly in the middle of the 19th century, let’s start with the blue hour in Jane Eyre, novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë, published in 1847:

»No sooner had twilight, that hour of romance, began to lower her blue and starry banner over the lattice, than I rose, opened the piano, and entreated him, for the love of heaven, to give me a song.« (p. 289 in the edition that I have at hand)

We do not encounter here the explicit naming of a ›blue hour‹, but what we have here (the context of the passage, as the content of the novel, is not of immediate interest to us here) is an interesting combination; which is why I’d like to start from this, taking the passage as a kind of compass to embark anew on our journey.

›Twilight, that hour of romance‹ – a German reader, choosing to read this novel in translation might encounter a translation like ›Dämmerung, Stunde der Romantik‹, which would leave him asking perhaps what exactly ›Romantik‹ might mean here; because it could mean to him, what in the English languange is referred to as ›Romanticism‹. Even more so, as the prominent configuration of blue, twilight, and romantic ideas of whatever kind, indeed culminating also in the concept of a ›blue hour‹ (but supposedly only later), cannot be separated from the period of Romanticism.

Let’s briefly look at some examples, one taken from the epistolary novel Hyperion by German poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1797/99):

»O Athen! rief Diotima; ich habe manchmal getrauert, wenn ich dahinaussah, und aus der blauen Dämmerung mir das Phantom des Olympion aufstieg!
Wie weit ists hinüber? fragt ich.
Eine Tagreise vielleicht, erwiderte Diotima.
Eine Tagreise, rief ich, und ich war noch nicht drüben? Wir müssen gleich hinüber zusammen.«

A longing for Athens, for Greece, is expressed here, as well as triggered anew, as one might say, by the naming of a phantom, by projecting of this phantom into the blue twilight: by evoking the Olympieion, the temple of the Olympian Zeus at Athens (for nocturnal picture see here).

(Picture: George E. Koronaios)

We might contrast this passage with a somewhat earlier example, taken from Ulrich Bräker, a Swiss writer who is not to be subsumed into the category of Romanticism. The passage is taken from his autobiography, having been published in 1789:

»Aber mir war schon oft, ich sey verzückt, wenn ich all’ diese Herrlichkeit überschaute, und so, in Gedanken vertieft, den Vollmond über mir, dieser Wiese entlang hin und hergieng; oder an einem schönen Sommerabend dort jenen Hügel bestieg – die Sonne sinken – die Schatten steigen sah – mein Häusgen schon in blauer Dämmerung stand, die schwirrenden Weste mich umsäuselten – die Vögel ihr sanftes Abendlied anhuben.«

The writer is contemplating the house he has ›built‹ (on the right), the existence he has created, and his whole life in the end, with his house seen in blue twilight during a summer’s evening. It is from the last chapter of his autobiography, and in some sense, a final, a conclusive impression (given in this context).

With a third example, taken from Georg Büchner’s Lenz novella (written in 1836, published posthumously in 1839), we may conclude that blue twilight, although none of these three writers is speaking explicitly of a ›blue hour‹, is common in pre-Romanticism, in Romanticism, as well as in Post-Romanticism. The passage – also a final impression from the very end of the novella – reads:

»Er sass mit kalter Resignation im Wagen, wie sie das Tal hervor nach Westen fuhren. Es war ihm einerlei, wohin man ihn führte. Mehrmals, wo der Wagen bei dem schlechten Wege in Gefahr geriet, blieb er ganz ruhig sitzen; er war vollkommen gleichgültig. In diesem Zustand legte er den Weg durchs Gebirg zurück. Gegen Abend waren sie im Rheintale. Sie entfernten sich allmählich vom Gebirg, das nun wie eine tiefblaue Kristallwelle sich in das Abendrot hob, und auf deren warmer Flut die roten Strahlen des Abends spielten; über die Ebene hin am Fuße des Gebirgs lag ein schimmerndes, bläuliches Gespinst.«

The landscape is that of the Vosges mountains (for an example see below).

(Picture: H. Schreiber)

***

Now we may turn more to the end of the 19th century, towards the notoriously famous fin-de-siècle.
As we already have seen (see my The Bue Hour Continued), French poet Arthur Rimbaud explicitly speaks of »heures bleues» – using the plural, which might confuse scientists, since the period of dusk and dawn usually is not that long –, in his poem Est-elle Almée?, written in »Juillet 1872«, but published apparently only in 1895 (it is the city of Brussels, evoked in twilight, here).
Since in 1890 we find also two painters, Max Klinger and Albert Besnard, painting a blue hour respectively (or naming, what they painted, after the blue hour, or inventing the concept on their own; I do not know the painting by Besnard), the chronology gets somewhat complicated. But not too complicated, since we have created a framework now, against which claims of certain people, of certain people having ›invented‹ the notion, can be tested. This framework might be concluded by naming the poem Blaue Stunde by German poet Stefan George, published in 1899.

It is not very likely, we now have to conclude, that entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre did invent the ›blue hour‹. Although being a fabulous writer in his own right, and although being someone being in touch with French poet Stéphane Mallarmé, and also influencing Belgian fin-de-siècle poetry as a writer in his own right, Fabre did publish his 10 volumes of most influential entomologist writing only after the before-mentioned poem by Rimbaud was written in 1872. It is still possible that earlier writings, his thesis for example, may contain the notion (or that Fabre invented the notion independently) – I do not know that, and as said, what I am doing here is meant to be an interim conclusion. It is also possible, of course, that the notion was ›invented‹ by many people, independently. But the claim that one particular writer, poet or scientist was indeed the first to speak of the ›blue hour‹, was the first to combine these two words in whatever European or Non-European language, has to be tested from now on. Against the chronology given here (on the right the Blaue Stunde by Max Klinger).

Further reading:
Angelika Overath, Das andere Blau. Zur Poetik einer Farbe im modernen Gedicht, Stuttgart 1987
Gabriele Sander (ed.), Blaue Gedichte, Stuttgart 2001

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